The Heretic's Daughter

by Kathleen Kent

  But instead he said to her, “How did you learn that?”

  “The Indians are a small people, but they can fell a larger man in just that way and open up his ribs before his heart stops beating.”

  “Teach me that,” he said, and so she did. Once our watering was done we moved behind the barn so we would not be seen. She spent most of an hour showing Richard how to sweep a man’s feet out from under him, indifferent to the direction and manner of the attack. I thought that Mercy’s hands lingered overly long on Richard’s arms and chest, and after a time they rolled around in the dust until the sweat poured in muddy rivulets down their faces and arms. I left, disgusted with their play when Richard sat upon Mercy’s chest, her legs bent upwards, her skirt up around her thighs. Tom’s eyes would have started from their sockets if I hadn’t grabbed his arm and made him leave. I could hear Mercy’s laughter even after I had returned the buckets to the well on the far side of the house.

  MOTHER HAD AN unsettling ability to foretell the weather. It was the dregs of July and the sky had been dark for days with a blanket of low, roiling clouds. We were close to harvesting the wheat, and Father watched the sky carefully, as too much rain would ruin the crop. She assured him that the clouds would not release their water, though she believed there would be winds and lightning. We feared the summer lightning, as there had been little rain and it could bring fire enough to consume a barn, or a field of crops, within the time it took to fill six buckets of water from the well. There had been stabs of lightning in the far distance, and after supper Tom and I ran to Sunset Rock just to the north of our house to watch the march of heavenly fire crossing the Merrimack River to the west.

  There was a greenish, sickly light within the clouds and a sort of leadenness to the air that made the hairs on our arms stand on end and the backs of our necks ache. Mercy had climbed the boulder with us and stood for a short while wringing her apron like it was the head of a chicken. Her breathing was rapid and shallow, and within a few moments she hurried away back in the direction of the house. I danced up and down to the music of the advancing thunder. Soon the lightning could be seen jumping over Bald Hill, making white fairy lights over Blanchard’s Pond. Then there was a pause, and the sky darkened until I could barely see Tom standing next to me. I felt his hand creep into mine, and we waited and waited, until a ragged arm of blue and yellow light jumped from the sky and spread like poured mercury over Blanchard’s Plain, only a few leagues away. My teeth were knocked together with the sound of it and my ears at first were deafened and then clicked rapidly like a stone caught in a miller’s wheel.

  The air turned still of a sudden, and a much colder puff of wind at my back caused my shoulders to seek each other for comfort. I turned around to face the east and saw the front of another storm coming fast to meet its twin. There were cascading ripples of light over in the direction of Salem Town, as though a flash of arms was being presented before the battle would be joined over Blanchard’s Plain.

  The coming storms had made me reckless and I felt myself being raised up on my toes as if the winds were trying to enlist me to their ranks. I said to Tom that we could better see the lightning from the hayloft in the barn, but he was shivering and pale and he answered me by pulling my arm from its roots, climbing down from the rock. I went to bed that night but could not sleep, my ears trained to the retreating sounds of thunder that rolled by diminishing fits and starts into our little room. That is how I knew that Mercy had slipped out of bed a few hours after Mother and Father had gone to sleep. She stood at the foot of the bed listening for any change in my breathing and then crept barefoot from the room. I counted to ten and then rose to follow her. Pulling my skirt quickly over my head, I carried my shoes for stealth. As I stepped from the house, I saw the white form of her shift struggling against the wind to open the door of the barn, and then she was swallowed by the black inside.

  I walked the short distance to the barn, careless to the sound of my shoes, as the winds were still high and struck at the largest trees, making them creak and groan. I bounced the door until it parted enough to let me pass, then stood in the blackness, listening. I could hear the gentle milling about of the cow and the ox in their stalls and I let them settle before feeling my way forward. It came to me then. The sound of mewling and sighing, not from the stalls but higher up, in the loft. I inched my way towards the ladder and froze as a flash of light illuminated everything, enough for me to see the rolling eyes of the aged draft horse jerking against his tether. The mewling stopped for an instant and then resumed with greater force. I found my way to the ladder and climbed slowly upwards, minding the hem of my skirt, until my head cleared the last rung. At that instant, there was another flash of light, this one revealing two people wrestling and fighting together as though each would commit bloody murder on the other. When the dark returned, I could hear them rolling about in the dried billows of hay and then I heard Mercy laugh and Richard’s voice say, “Hold still, then, you bitch.” The words were coarse but there was laughter in his voice as well. And then there was silence but for the strangled sounds of their breathing. I slipped one shoe from my foot and brought it behind my head, aiming for the tangled shadows a few feet away. The lightning soon came, and I threw the shoe with all my might at Mercy’s head. Blackness fell again, but not before the gratifying sounds of Mercy yowling and cursing. I was down the ladder and out the door, running before they could think of following me.

  I crawled back into bed and kept my back to her when Mercy shadowed her way in. I could feel her eyes on me and then felt a sharp weight as she dropped my shoe upon the bed. The ropes beneath us shifted as she settled her head on her arm, but I knew she would not easily fall into sleep. A strong, raw animal smell came from her body. I rolled the word around and around in my mind before parting my lips and whispering, “Whore.” The sound of it mingled with the rising storm and so I did not know whether or not she heard me say it. Margaret came to me in a dream that night. She stood on the far side of the Shawshin River and called out to me something I could not hear over the roaring of the wind. She cupped her hands around her mouth but still I could not hear her words. I ran back and forth on the embankment, looking for a way to get across, but there was no boat and no bridge. She pointed to a place beyond my shoulder, and the words floated to me. “Fire, Sarah. Fire.”

  I woke to Tom shaking me frantically by the foot. He was shouting, “Fire, Sarah! The fields are on fire!”

  Hannah opened her eyes then and, seeing the terror in Tom’s face, screamed like something dying. She clutched tightly to my legs, threatening to trip me as I struggled to pull a skirt over my head. I picked her up and ran with Tom to the edge of the fields. Mercy was running with Father towards a wall of smoke, and the world to the east of the barn was made of yellow, low-surging light. I could see Andrew running as fast as he could, bringing buckets of well water to Richard, who had climbed to the top of the barn to dampen the roof. There was a slight rise behind the barn and as I crested it I could see where the fire had started. A lone elm that had stood for generations had channeled the lightning as easily as a gutter channels rainwater. The split trunk lay blackened and dead and the fire was consuming the outer fields of hay on the far side of the path running along the crest from north to south. The wind buffeted first to the west and then to the east as the twin storms combined. I saw a man working next to Father, both desperately trying to make a space between the fields of hay and the tender shafts of wheat, their hoes rising and falling in rapid succession.

  Mother grabbed at my shoulder and thrust me back in the direction of the barn, shouting, “Bring the scythes, Sarah, and there is another hoe just within the door. Hurry, for God’s sake, or we will be burned to the ground.”

  I ran until my lungs ached, wondering what I was to do with Hannah. I could not bring her into the burning fields, and my brothers would be needed to keep the flames at bay. Her nails drew blood when I pulled her from my neck, and as I tied her to a post with a
leather strap, she kicked and cried piteously. Her fear of being abandoned made her feral, and the whites of her eyes showed as she bit at the strap. I shouted to Andrew to remember to rescue Hannah if the barn should catch fire and prayed he would remember her in the confusion. I gathered up the needed tools and raced back to the fields, hoping I wouldn’t trip and cut off my legs, falling on the newly sharpened scythes. Mother and I worked next to the men as they dug their shallow trench, scything away the stalks to make a path the fire could not jump. But the fire raged on towards us and into the wheat, and I could feel the heat of it on my cheeks, curling my hair. I stopped for a moment to rest, but Mother pushed me and said hoarsely, “Don’t stop. Keep working.” I could hear Tom somewhere behind me as he lay down buckets of sand over the fallen shafts of grain.

  The heat was terrible, but worse was the billowing smoke that found its way into every opening, until our eyes and ears and throats blistered and watered. I pulled my skirt up around my face to breathe, and suddenly I was standing alone in the tortured field, lost in a wall of smoke. I felt panic rising in my throat and turned to see a tongue of flame flowing like a runnel of silk towards the sole of my shoe. I cried out but could see nothing beyond the gray mass and would have run but did not know north from south, east from west. I sank to my knees and felt a creeping blankness in my head, like a drawstring tightening within a gray felt bag. There was a pain at my shoulders as fingers clamped around my arms. Strong hands lifted me up, and we ran through the fire clouds until I could see the sky and the fields again. Mercy clapped me harshly on the back as we coughed and spit foaming ash from our lungs. I looked up and saw the bruised knot my shoe had left on her brow, large enough to show through the blackened soot covering her face.

  She said to me, without malice, “It seems we may both be homeless soon.”

  My family and some of our close neighbors gathered on the crest, expecting to watch the burning of the remainder of the wheat. Robert Russell stood next to Father, as well as Samuel Holt and his brother Henry Holt from the farms near Ladle Meadow. A growing light came from the eastern horizon and the wind changed course and blew suddenly from the west, rushing to meet the dawn. The fire stalled for a moment, the heads of the flames licking at the air like tracking hounds. And then the fire turned and flowed east, churning and fast, as though it would throw itself into the sea. The Holts raced back to their farms, and with them ran my Father, his long hoe braced over one shoulder, its heated metal head sending up wisps of steam. A cold splinter of thought shifted in my head as I remembered Allen’s threat to burn us out. But our fields and house remained. It would be many more hours of work with a bucket and hoe before I could fall into bed, my skin and hair bathed and perfumed in acrid smoke. When I finally remembered Hannah, left tethered in the barn, it was in the full light of morning. She had fallen asleep, her first and last fingers pressed wetly into her mouth, but woke as soon as I lifted her to take her to the house. She would demand to be carried for days afterwards, eating and sleeping only in the circling embrace of my arms.

  THE FIRE HAD burned the hay but left the wheat. The flames had come close to the corn, wilting some of the silk tassels and puckering the husks. The kernels from those ears at summer’s end would have a scorched taste, as if they had been dragged through the ashes in the hearth. The loss was disappointing but did not compare with the loss of some of our neighbors. The Holts suffered far worse, losing most of their yield. The fire stopped only when it came to the waters of the Skug River after sweeping across the whole of Ladle Meadow. When Robert Russell came to the house days after for the harvesting of the wheat, he said there were hardened feelings from the Holts, as our crops had been spared and theirs had not. I could see that Robert’s sandy brows had been burned quite off, and one cheek was oozing from raised, seeping blisters. His leather doublet was cracked and blackened from the heat, and I pitied him as he had no wife to bind his wounds or mend his vest. He had been widowed for many years and would have to marry again soon or be thought scandalous.

  He turned to my mother and said with a smile, “Susannah Holt said she saw you dancing on the crest before the wind turned direction.” Robert could often play with her in such a way, and where the rest of us would have been singed for it, she would only dip her chin and smile. Sometimes the color in her cheeks would flare, if only for a moment. Had I been older, I might have sensed that she, though a married woman, was not above being seduced by a winning, handsome man. Rattling some pots at the hearth she said, “I cannot help that their fields were burned. I am sorry for it. They are decent enough folk. But Susannah is old and half blind, and if I was dancing about, it was to put out the fire from the hem of my skirt.” Later, when we had milled the wheat into flour at Parker’s Mill, we would send four bags of it to Susannah Holt, but the bread she made from it was not enough to soak up the bitter juices of resentment.

  Mercy and I made a peace of sorts, and as we worked scything down the shafts of wheat, she taught me a little song she had learned from a French trapper who traded with the Indians. The words were foreign to my ears and, as I did not know its meaning, I decided it must be a lullaby, for the words were soft and lisping. But then she told me with a twisting of her upper lip that the song was about a butterfly that goes from flower to flower to flower before drowning blissfully in the weight of the pollen.

  Once the wheat had ripened, we had at most eight days to finish harvesting before the heads shattered and released their kernels. All the stalks were bound and shocked in three days. The mounds of sheaves were plentiful, perhaps a hundred or so, and they were dry and would be easy to flail and winnow. I liked best the winnowing, and I matched the bouncing movement of my basket to Mercy’s. We made a game to see who could be the first to separate out the chaff from the kernels. It was at such a time that she first spoke of her family, which was lost to the Wabanakis. She had had a mother and a father, two older brothers, and two sisters, the youngest being but four years of age. The Indians had crept in at first light and set the roof of the house on fire. As each one of her family left the house to escape burning alive, they were knocked over the head and left for dead. She was taken captive along with an older brother who later died along the long trail to Canada. Finishing her story, she smiled her crooked smile, and snaking her fingers about my wrist said, “But I shall get a new family soon, I think.”

  But that was not to be.

  MERCY AND MY mother stood facing each other, arms folded at their chests, both throwing knives with their eyes. It was August, and though the day had just begun, the heat from the cooking fire was near unbearable in the common room. Sweat poured from Mercy’s red face, soaking through the front of her apron and wilting the corners of her cap. Mother’s dress had large damp stains under the arms, but her face in profile was as smooth and cold as a gravestone. From the back it looked as if the laces of her bodice would burst from the arching of her rigid spine. I held my breath, making myself small, for I did not want to be remembered and sent from the room.

  The morning had started peaceably enough. Father had gone hunting at first light with Andrew and Tom. Richard had left with a few bags of ground wheat for barter in the town’s market. The three of us had risen early to do the baking for the week and I was shredding greens from the garden, sifting through sprigs of rosemary lying in fragrant bunches upon the table. A pot of rabbit for the day’s dinner was already beginning to bubble as it swung from the lug pole under the flue. As the men were not present, Mother and Mercy had tucked up their skirts and aprons into their waistbands, giving them easy movement about the hearth. Mother had just tested the heat of the baking niche with her arm and found it ready. The skin on her right arm was forever as smooth as an infant’s bottom, for all the hair had been burned off by the heat. Hannah sat below the table at my feet, playing happily with a wooden spoon that she spun dizzily across the wooden planks of the floor. Mother was in a brighter mood that morning, for she had nursed the milk cow back to health. The cow’s udde
r had become swollen and painful with the damp heat and had been giving less milk. Mother had made a poultice of some mossy herbs in warm water that she bathed over the cow’s teats every hour until the swelling had gone and the cow could once again give her full measure. Mercy said she had never seen a cow with such an illness heal so quickly.

  The clouds made good on their promise of rain. The wheat had been harvested and the corn swelled and grew hearty. The yield from the corn would be plentiful, bringing greater opportunity for trade. Mother had spoken almost cheerfully about the tallow she would get for candles and the wool she would have for spinning in the autumn. She talked of getting a young heifer and a sow for more milk and meat. Mercy must also have thought that this day was a good one to do some bartering with my mother, trading the scandal of a bastard child she said was to come for the respectability of Richard’s name in marriage. But Mercy made a bad show of it and bleated out the news like a stranded goat. When she finished, there was a great crash as Mother slammed down the lid for the oven, making Hannah start and cling to my legs in fright. And there they stood, both of them working to master their emotions, my mother tempering her anger, and Mercy, I believe, stuffing down her fear. Richard had turned seventeen in July and by all accounts was a man and could take a wife, but only with the consent of his father.

  Suddenly Mother pushed up her sleeves and said, “Very well, then. You say you are with child, so let me see with my own eyes if that be the case.”