She looked at me, surprised, but said, “If you want. We shall start today, before supper.”
I ventured cautiously, “Why do we not see. . .” I stopped, waiting for some warning word or gesture that I was not to talk of Uncle’s family. But she reached out with one hand and smoothed flat the skirt over my lap, brushing away all the shadows hiding in the folds.
She said, “You mean to say, ‘Why have we seen so little of Margaret?’ ” I nodded and she cradled her elbows in her palms and looked away. “Your uncle has been made shameless with hard drink and has neglected his wife and children. The elders of Billerica have given him more than one warning to better tend his family. We have offered help many times but were refused, and resentment grows where help is not wanted.”
“But why should he refuse us?” I asked.
“There is great enmity between your uncle and father.” She paused but did not say why this should be. “And now,” she continued, “there is greater reason for Roger Toothaker to hate us. We have been given this house because your grandmother came to know the worth of your father over a man who calls himself a healer and a man of God but spends his days with a cup in one hand and a bawd in the other.”
Now I had a new word for Mercy and I said teasingly, “And all of this is in your great red book?”
She took my elbow forcefully and said with an edge, “You must never speak of the red book to anyone. Promise me now that you will keep this one thing a secret, even among your brothers. Promise me.”
The only secrets I had ever kept were girlish confidences with Margaret. But here was a different thing. My mother was demanding of me to keep a secret about a large leather-bound book of which I knew nothing. Her face was backlit by the growing flames from the hearth, and though her eyes were in shadow, I could feel her questioning gaze. It was the first time she had asked me for anything beyond the labor of my two hands. I nodded and whispered, “I promise.”
She raised a forefinger to her chest, tapped it several times, and then pointed to me, the movement of her finger forming the illusion of a thread connecting us, breastbone to breastbone. She said, “Someday I will tell you what is in the book, but not today. Come, it’s time to start the baking. I hear your father stirring.”
She turned away but I could yet feel the glint of fear in her, like a flame inside a hooded lantern. I did not see the red book again for the whole of the winter, but I kept my promise not to speak of it.
We started our lessons that day as Mother had promised, and, as she was patient with me, the scratchings of my quill soon grew into passable letters. Sometimes as we sat at table side by side practicing some tiresome Bible passage, she would place her left hand over my right and guide it from chaos to order, and I came to seek out the closeness of our bodies. What I dreaded most was copying from a catechism book by the great Cotton Mather, passages such as “Heaven is prepared for pious children; Hell is prepared for the naughty” or “What a sad thing ’twill be, to be among the devils in the Place of Dragons.”
When my fingers could no longer write she would read to me so that my head would increase in knowledge, much as a pillow casing will swell, the more goose down is forced into it. She had a little tract of poems by a woman named Anne Bradstreet whose works had been published by an Andover pastor. Late into evening the words became a boat on which we floated, out past the cornfields covered over with snow, out past the murmet unclothed and barren but for the drifts wrapped round it. Out beyond great marbled stones that slept under ice until the warming action of the earth in spring forced them tumbling to the surface.
To sing of wars, of captains, and of kings,
Of cities founded, commonwealths begun,
For my mean pen are too superior things;
Or how they all, or each their dates have run;
Let poets and historians set these forth,
My obscure lines shall not so dim their worth.
With her reading done we would sit in silence, perched together on our bench, our minds wandering far away, and I would rest my head upon her shoulder and she would let it lie there for a while.
THE LAUGH WAS a childish thing. It burst out loud and injurious over the reverently meditating parishioners. The stunned Reverend Barnard was poised at the pulpit, his mouth open as if to call back into his throat the pious words he had only just released. His eyes searched me out but he did not know me at first. Some goodwife sitting in front turned her head around and hissed at me as one would hiss at a yowling cat.
I had not meant to laugh. I had been sitting quietly listening as the Reverend repeated a sacrament-day sermon given two Sundays before by his colleague Samuel Parris in Salem Village. The daughter and the niece of this Reverend Parris had begun having strange fits, and it had been given out that the girls were under an evil hand. I had listened with delicious fearfulness as he told of the girls’ torments as they twisted and cried out or fell motionless upon the floor. At times they were bitten or pinched by unseen agents and at other times they raced about their rooms, leaping into the hearth as though they would fly up the chimney. I had looked up into the rafters, wondering if the invisible world was even then gathering to make mischief in Andover as well. Reverend Barnard had called for a day of fasting and quoted from Psalms, “Sit thou at my right hand, till I make thine enemies thy footstool.” And with those words I had pleasant thoughts of propping my shoes up on Phoebe Chandler’s backside. My eyes wandered to the gallery above and I spied sitting there the little black slave boy. He was looking at me as though he had been waiting only for my gaze to meet his. The orbs of his eyes crossed and he stuck out his tongue, the tip of it passing beyond his chin. I smiled at his antics and he started mimicking the Reverend as he preached his sermon, exaggerating every movement of his face and body. Just as the Reverend would lean into the pulpit and point to some member of the congregation, so would the boy lean forward and point his finger at me. And when the Reverend’s eyes gazed heavenward to invoke the Almighty, the boy rolled his eyes upwards in the thrall of a palsied fit. And so I laughed.
The silence following my exhaled breath built slowly, every member following the gaze of every other until finally resting their eyes on me. They were like a den of foxes so surprised at finding a hen dropped into their midst that they were stunned into motionless waiting. It would take the rumbled growling of their leader to bring them round to their true natures. I looked up at my mother holding a sleeping Hannah but her expression was unreadable, caught somewhere between caution and disbelief. I looked back at the pastor and his eyes had narrowed, his face set into satisfied indignation. He shifted his weight slightly, setting his feet as though approaching a battle, and started drumming the text with his fingers, stabbing the words, prompting them to leap from the page and flood over my head like rain from the sky. And though his voice raked the whole of the congregation, his words were meant for me.
“The Church is separated from the world and the Devil’s main purpose is to pull down the Church. In the world the Devil comes in many forms. He comes with disease and pestilence. He comes in the allure of carnal desires. He comes in spells and incantations. In unseemly conduct such as pridefulness and hot rebelliousness” — here he looked briefly at my mother before returning to me — “and, sometimes, sometimes in the form of a child. The Devil preys on the weak both as his victim and as his instrument. It is therefore left to all of us to watch for these instruments. To root them out where necessary and purify them with prayer, with punishment, and, when necessary, with the fire of the Word. . .” His voice had reached such a pitch that had I not been holding to the bench where I sat, I would have crawled over twenty matrons to escape.
There came a loud and prolonged clearing of the throat from the men’s pews. Scrutiny lifted from me at the rasping sound, like a vast shifting of stones, and men and women turned in their seats to stare at my father. He sat with his long legs pulled up at sharp angles, his eyes calmly regarding the prayer book made tiny in the giant
splay of his fingers. He continued to read, his lips moving slightly, turning the pages as though he was alone at home, deep in spiritual contemplation, undisturbed even by a bothersome clot of phlegm in his throat. The fox had lost the scent and the Reverend continued his planned sermon, but I did not hear any of it for I was blinded to everything but my hands twisting in my lap.
When I followed Mother out, I hung my head and let the cape cover my face lest I see the censuring looks. I had no doubt that this day, the 28th day of February, would prove to be very black and that Iron Bessie would have her say against my thighs once we had returned home. I could see Father and Robert Russell standing close to the cart, deep in talk, but they stopped their speaking as we approached. Mother passed Hannah to me and was mounting the wheel step when something in their manner made her pause.
“Robert, your face is very long. Has Reverend Barnard’s strong message curdled your breakfast?” she asked.
He smiled slightly but his brow knitted together and he said, “There is very bad business in Salem Village these past few weeks. The Reverend Parris’ niece and daughter, and some others, have cried out upon three women, one a slave and two village women, for bewitching them. There may be a formal complaint made to the magistrates, which will mean a trial.”
“There are always cries and whispers of witchery, Robert, especially in winter, when idleness marries with fearfulness and superstition. You heard our good Reverend, the Devil is everywhere to be found, but, God willing, he will stay in Salem Village. From what I hear they are a contentious lot, and their quarrels will make a pretty stew for him to feed upon for some time to come.” She stepped into the cart and reached down for Hannah. Father placed a restraining hand upon her knee and nodded to his friend to continue.
“Contentious people live here in Andover as well. The winter months are indeed giving more time and opportunity for mischief and for gossip. I have heard quite a bit of it here and around. At the meetinghouse and at Chandler’s Inn. Your brother-in-law is still singing his song of displacement to anyone who will listen.”
“A song that no doubt grows a verse with every telling,” she said lightly. But the men did not smile and so she set her shoulders and said, “Go on.”
“Gossip abounds that you have used witchery and cast spells. I myself heard Samuel Preston say that soon after you returned a cow to him this September past, it sickened and died. He said you cursed him after he refused to compensate you for some imagined injury and foretold that it would die and so it did. Your nephew Allen has been fanning the fires of the property dispute you had with Benjamin Abbot last March. He and Ralph Farnum both say they heard you lay a curse on Benjamin, and soon after, he grew a swelling in his foot and in his groin that had to be lanced by Dr. Prescott.”
I looked over at the burial stones peeking above the snow in the church graveyard, some leaning so close to the ground they seemed to be listening to the voices of the dead, and remembered Phoebe’s eager retelling of the argument between my mother and Benjamin Abbot.
“And now,” he continued, “Timothy Swan is joining the chorus, saying that his illness is brought about by malcontented spirits.”
“The only malcontented spirits Timothy Swan has encountered are his own shadow and my nephew who shares his house.” My mother’s amused listening was giving way to restlessness, and a barbed tone had crept into her voice.
But Robert pressed on. “And that is only the men. There is much talk among the women as well. Susannah Holt has put it about that you charmed the wind to carry away the fire from your crops and onto hers, and Mercy Williams has told so many stories about your foretelling storms and the healing of animals that she is like the town crier before a plague.”
He turned and called to his niece, Elizabeth, who was standing at a distance by Robert’s horse, speaking in hushed and furtive tones to Richard, both of them trying to ignore the gentle taunting by Tom and Andrew. Richard was not yet as tall as Father but he had to stoop down to match his height to Elizabeth’s, as she was very small. She walked over to us and stood meekly in front of the cart, her hands clasped and her head bowed as she had been taught to do. She was not so very pretty but she was clean and neat, her face and hair pale, her eyes so light a blue as to lack almost all color.
“Elizabeth, tell Goodwife Carrier what you have heard from the other women.” When she paused he added then very gently, “Go on. Tell her.”
Her breath quickened and her eyes sought out the group of women still standing about the yard talking. Among them was Mercy Williams, red underskirt nowhere to be seen, only the respectable dark gray of her cloak. Elizabeth’s voice barely raised itself above a whisper and her lips fought to move not at all. “I have heard Mercy Williams and Phoebe Chandler tell Mary Lacey and others that Goodwife Carrier practices witchcraft against them and that she goes nightly to Blanchard’s Pond to have meetings with other witches.”
“That’s a neat trick. And just how am I to walk there and back in the span of one night?” Mother asked, her hand knotted on one hip.
“They say you fly there, mistress. On a pole.”
For the second time that morning, there was sharp laughter, and it drew many looks to my mother. Heads came together, hands were raised to mouths to mask the buzzing of voices, and men and women widened their circles away from us, as though to avoid an overflowing cesspool. Elizabeth twisted her body from us, longing to walk away with the others, and her eyes searched about for somewhere to land. When her gaze crossed over mine, it lingered for a moment, and I caught my breath, for I knew that she had heard stories of me as well. The dread that had poured over me on the way to Samuel Preston’s farm returned to lick its way from my eyes to my neck. It congealed and tightened there like an insect caught in an amber necklace.
Mother notched her head over her shoulder towards the parishioners still gathered at the front of the meetinghouse and said, “Just what am I to do with such nonsense? What answer should I make to people who are so foolish as to believe that someone who is of this earth, certainly no angel with wings, can fly on a pole in the dead of night to make sport at Blanchard’s Pond?”
Robert moved closer to the wagon, placing his hands upon the wheel, and when he looked up into her face, I saw a passion that was greater than the sentiments of neighborly concern.
“These days are very harsh, Martha. There are still smallpox and Indian raids not two days’ ride from here. People are very much afraid, and fear makes fools of us all. The best answer is no other answer but calmness and” — here he paused, tightly gripping the wheel — “most of all restraint.”
She looked at him, her mouth twisted into a half smile, and then at Father, who continued to stare at the ground, his brow shadowed by the brim of his hat. Expelling her breath sharply, she pointed her chin in the direction of home and repeated the word “restraint.” But I knew she was dismissing all the talk as easily as she would have dismissed a whaler returned from the sea, recounting tales of monsters from the deep. Mother tapped my shoulder to give Hannah to her and I crawled into the back, finding my place between Tom and Andrew. As Father climbed onto the driving board, she said in parting to Robert, “I hear you have been courting the Widow Frye. I hope that we are to have a wedding soon or people will start their gossiping about you as well.”
He did not answer but only signaled good-bye as we rolled away across the snow. I looked at Mother and saw that she was unmoved by Robert’s words and it lessened my own fears. Father’s face was more difficult to read, for his mouth neither smiled nor frowned, and the flesh surrounding his jaw clenched and unclenched. I turned and waved to Elizabeth, but she did not return the wave.
We had gone only half the distance down Boston Way Road, when the horse came up lame and everyone was forced to walk home except for me and Hannah and Tom. Tom would have walked as well but for the tightening in his chest from the bitter cold. He lay with his head in my lap, pale and gasping, but I pestered him until he gave me, with fits and star
ts, the story of the massacre of York he had heard from the older boys. And with the retelling of so many missing scalps, so many hacked-off legs and arms, so many captives taken away and traded from Abanaki to Narragansett, we made our way slowly, slowly to the house. The welcoming warmth of our fire was made all the sweeter for the carnage of a massacre left outside our door.
THE OLD WOMEN used to say, “When the days begin to lengthen, the cold begins to strengthen.” But in the first few days of March the glow of the afternoon sun warmed the ice and snow enough to form little rivulets and streams between each embankment, and we watched Father eagerly to give us a sign that it was time to take up our buckets and venture into Billerica Meadow for the mapling. When it was time, we wrapped ourselves in cloaks and shawls, stuffing straw into our shoes, for the ground was still frozen where the shadows lay, and followed him single file into the woods. We went in order of age and height, first Father, then Richard and Andrew, then Tom and myself, looking like the last of some children’s crusade returning through a blackened forest from the land of the Turk, our only weapons a mapling rod, a hook, and a little tin bucket.
The Heretic's Daughter Page 14
