The Heretic's Daughter

by Kathleen Kent

  Hannah soon became impossible to hold, so I tried tethering her with my hand round her wrist, but she pulled and protested, so I dragged her outside, and as the day was hot, I sat with her under the nearest wagon. I kept her content, letting her dig in the dirt, not scolding her for making piles of it in her apron. She looked every inch an orphan, unwashed and unkempt. Since Mother had left, we had all grown dirtier and shabbier, and I looked at the grime packed under my nails and thought with a twinge of Margaret’s smooth, clean hands.

  We had stayed under the wagon for most of an hour when I heard the doors open and two men walked to the wagon carrying a third man, who was coughing and wheezing in the extremis of old age. They had left the service early to give the old man some air. As they approached, they began speaking, and before I could make my way from under the wagon, they had lifted the grandfather into the straw at the back. I could not then, without terrible embarrassment, show myself to them, and the longer they talked, the more difficult it became to come out like some lizard crawling from under a stone. I could only see their lower legs but I could hear their voices clearly and I hoped Hannah would be still and not give us away.

  The first man said as he clapped the old man on the back, “What think you of them coming bold as ever to the meetinghouse?” He had recently switched his square-toed boots around left to right but they had not had time to form themselves to their new occupants, so his feet looked put on crossways.

  The other man, shorter and stouter and with the lingering burr of a childhood spent in Scotland, said, “The children are fey, no doubt about it. But it’s him that makes my blood thicken.” He put a great weight on “him” and I knew he was speaking of Father. He continued conspiratorially, as one would tell a ghost story to a child. “What kind of a man hunts alone? In these woods. Filled with Indians. A dead shot that one. He felled a bear as big as a house with one shot to the neck. I saw the carcass, passing up the road. Biggest I’d ever seen. They say the Indians are even afraid of him.”

  Then Goodman Crossways said, “I was told a few years back, in Boston he killed a man with one blow to the head.”

  “No,” said Goodman Stout, “it was fifteen year ago if it was a day, and he knocked the man down in Billerica. Near killed him. But didn’t. He was fined for it, though.”

  The old man had stopped coughing, and I heard the wagon creak as he lay back on the straw to rest. The two pairs of legs came closer together and their voices lowered to near whispers.

  Said Crossways, “Don’t worry. You can speak. The old man’s as deaf as a post. They fined Carrier because who would have the bones to put chains on that giant? He was a trained soldier in the royal guards, you know. Some say bodyguard to the King, until he switched sides to Cromwell. It’s not many men who could have a witch to wife and still remain at liberty. Have you heard the worst, though?”

  Said Stout, “Aye. Between us two, and God grant the second Charles a long life, being a Scot I have some fond remembrance of Old Oliver. But killing a king is something else entirely.”

  Crossways shushed him and said apprehensively, “It’ll never be known for sure but that rumor of taking an axe to the first Charles has followed him for near thirty years as closely as hide on a dog. The man must be charmed to have escaped the King’s justice for so long.”

  Then Stout spat on the dirt and said, “Charmed? An executioner’s always masked, so who’s to say? Besides, even if it could be proved he killed the King, who’s going to serve the warrant on him? You? Robert Russell, who has his ear to the ground, has put about that there is a secret society of Cromwell’s old army living as plain as a tit out of an ol’ bawd’s blouse. Here, right here in Andover. They look after one another and are sworn to avenge any of their own that are captured or mistreated. Russell says that they would come to the traitor’s house in the wee hours before morning and cut off the offending head, put it in a black bag, and plant it in some bog, just like they did to Charles the first. Oh yes, quite a charm. One with an iron point at the end.”

  Crossways said, “Merciful Jesus. It’s not enough that we have witchcraft to fear, but now we must lock our doors against avenging guardsmen.”

  Then Stout rested his foot on the wheel, brushing the powdery dust from his boots and clucking his tongue over Cromwell’s hidden army. Hearing Robert’s name made me wonder if he was working quietly as our murmet, shaking to life the breeze of fear-inspiring gossip to chase away the crows.

  Stout continued, “And what about Roger Toothaker dead in his Boston cell? The jailer said that a tall man came to visit him on the day of his death. The tall man went in. The tall man came out and a few hours later Dr. Toothaker is stone dead without a mark on him. I tell you, there are secrets in that death. No matter what the inquest said.”

  At that moment, the meetinghouse doors opened and the congregants, hot and restless to catch a bit of breeze, spilled out into the yard. In that moment I grabbed Hannah and we crawled out from the far side of the wagon, but as I stood up I turned, and the stout Scotsman caught sight of me. It must have appeared to him that we had formed ourselves out of the vapors in the air, for his eyes widened as he awakened from surprise to fear, the realization growing that I had overheard his gossiping. I felt his eyes burning into my back as I walked to stand at the wagon, waiting for Father.

  On the way home we were all quiet, suppressed by the leaden, hateful stares that had followed us across the green and down Boston Way Road. I pressed myself closer to my brothers, despite the wilting heat, and held Hannah’s damp and drowsy body tightly in my arms. I looked at each of their faces and thought, here is Richard, a young man with a dark and moody nature. And here is Andrew, who is made a simpleton through ravaging illness. And there is Tom, whose sweet, enlivening nature is diminished daily by fear and uncertainty. I knew the composition of their inner selves, not just because it was revealed to me through their actions day to day, but because it was written plainly upon their faces. There was nothing hidden or contrary to give a lie to the face they gave to the world. And I had believed until that morning, as a child believes, that the intent and worth and very history of a person is stamped like a maker’s mark on a silver chalice.

  But when I looked at Father dressed in yeoman’s clothes, the bones and muscles and tendons formed in opposition to rock and tree and dirt, his forehead crimped by months and years of staring into a planter’s sun, my understanding of him was shattered. I thought of Father’s old crimson coat hanging on the murmet’s back, the coat with the saber’s slash across the arm. Of the many times he had left us to go alone into woods where no other sober-minded fellow would venture. Of the deadly accuracy of his long-barreled flintlock. I thought of the tale-spinning of the two men at the meetinghouse and wondered how stories of a soldier’s life and the death of a king could be fashioned from the body of a man who to all of the new England shouted, I am Farmer, Husbandman, and Toiler.

  But if what they said was widely believed, it made all the more sense for Uncle to have run like a hare from Father’s axe laid across our table. And for Allen’s face to drain to the color of snow when Mother warned him that he would lose his head if he tried to chase us from our home. I remembered her warning me of the men willing to walk over my living body to get to the red book, the journal of our family’s history. My desire in that moment to dig it up and read it burned a hole in my stomach. And finally, I remembered the stories Uncle told us as we crouched around the fire. Stories of the execution of King Charles I of England, who was taken up the steps of Whitehall-Gate, bent over a block, and separated head from neck by a tall, hooded executioner who held the head aloft for all of London to see and proclaimed, “The King, tyrant, and despoiler of the people, is dead.”

  As we left the meetinghouse yard, the only one to bid us farewell was Lieutenant Osgood’s little black slave. He was standing off away from the crowd of the men and women of the meetinghouse, small and twisted, his shoes still immense on his bare feet, his coat more threadbare
and ragged than ever. It was fitting that this boy, ignored, shunned, and despised, should be the only one to stand and wave to us until we’d disappeared from sight. I would never see him again, but I would often dream of him, and in my dreams his coat was new, the buckles on his shoes silver, his black face as sad and timeless as the dark half of the moon.

  ON JULY 20TH Mary Lacey, Mercy Williams’ friend who had taunted me in the Andover burial grounds and who had only just been put into Salem prison, gave testimony that she was indeed a witch, as were her own mother and grandmother. She told her inquisitors that Richard and Andrew were also witches and that Goody Carrier revealed to her at a midnight gathering of witches that the Devil had promised that she, my mother, would be Queen in Hell. On the 21st of July, John Ballard brought his cart for my two oldest brothers.

  He waited until Father had left for his long walk to Salem and then strode as bold as anything into our house with the warrants. I had to call Richard and Andrew from the barn and stood alone with him in the common room while he smirked at me and told me with a crooked finger, “You’ll be next, little miss.” When Richard walked in and saw the master of warrants, he looked for an instant as if he might make a run but he thought better of it when John Ballard clapped his hand roughly on my shoulder and said to Richard, “If you don’t come I can just take this one here.”

  Richard submitted to having his hands tied in front, and Andrew, following his brother’s lead, willingly held out his hands to his captor. He shrank back only when the bonds were tightened hard around his wrists. They climbed into the cart, and as the constable adjusted his reins to depart, I whispered, “Richard, remember what Mother said. Tell them whatever they wish to hear.”

  But my heart tightened into a fist when he said, “There’s nothing they can do to make me give a false statement. If Mother can hold fast, so can I.”

  The cart pulled away and I followed after, saying, “Richard, think of Andrew, then. He will take your lead and do what you do and say what you say.” The cart was pulling away faster than I could walk, and I ran after them for a quarter mile crying out, “Richard, please, Richard. . .” He looked at me defiantly, braced with the pride of a young man who is strong and stubborn but who, until that day, has only shed his precious blood onto the edge of a shaving razor. He had turned eighteen on the 19th of the month, two days before his arrest.

  When I returned to the house I found Tom curled up next to the hearth, rocking back and forth on his haunches, his face streaked with tears that had washed away the grime in pink bands down to his chin. I had no words to give him, so I sat next to him in the ashes and waited for Father to return. Upon arriving in Salem Town, five miles east of Salem Village, Andrew and Richard would be locked into the basement of Thomas Beadle’s Inn for the night, as the constable did not want to take the chance of meeting my father along the road to the prison. The next morning they were taken in front of the magistrates, and among them, to see for himself the growing tide of spectral evidence, was Cotton Mather, spiritual advisor and exemplar to half of the ministers in the colonies. From his own mouth he gave instructions to Richard and Andrew to offer truthful testimony to the court. He told them that God and their earthly judges would be merciful to them if they offered up a full confession of their witchcraft. Mary Lacey, who had admitted freely to being a witch and spectrally torturing some of the girls of Salem Village, then entreated Richard to repent and admit his guilt to all. She accused him of bewitching the long-suffering Timothy Swan, the young man with whom Allen Toothaker had lived in Andover. She said Mother had killed seven people using a poppet that she stabbed with needles.

  Richard had seen these judges at work at Mother’s trial and the trials of others, and he did little to hide his contempt for them. To every question he answered them a curt “No” or “I have not done it.” The chief magistrate, John Hathorne, then turned to Andrew, but to every question put to him he answered the same. When the magistrates could not get the compliance they had grown accustomed to having, they ordered Richard and Andrew to be taken into another room to reconsider their answers. The high sheriff and executioner of Essex County, George Corwin, waited for them in the anteroom with two lengths of rope. Richard was told to lie facedown on the floor, where his wrists were tied behind his back and his feet were bound together. After the rope had been wound round his ankles, it was then yanked up short and looped around his neck, arching his head back to meet his feet. This was called “the bow,” and even with the strongest of men it took only a little while for the back to weaken, the legs and head to lower, and the rope to tighten around the throat. The strangling was slow and agonizing and, unlike with a drop from a tree branch, the neck was not broken quickly to end the victim’s suffering. The tender flesh at the neck would crimp and bruise and burn, the eyes would bulge from the head and soon the blood would first trickle and then course through the nose in a torrent as the vessels burst from the pressure. The path for air would be inexorably shut off, and if the prisoner fainted, all would be lost for the laxity of the limbs would cause the rope to completely crush the airway. And although it was a departure from the usual methods of extracting a confession used in the new England, it was nevertheless called English torture because it was not considered as cruel as branding, burning, or racking.

  Richard, being very strong and determined, looked to die rather than confess, so the sheriff threw Andrew down onto the floor and tied him so brutally that he bled from his wrists and neck where the rope cut into his skin. Richard later told me that Andrew cried like a little child and begged and pleaded to be released. He said over and over again, his words barely squeezing past the grip of the rope round his throat, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. . .” It was Andrew’s suffering more than the danger to his own body that made Richard agree to tell his judges whatever they wished to hear.

  When they brought my brothers back into the gathering room of the meetinghouse, Richard told the magistrates that he and Andrew were indeed witches but they had been so for only a little while. When asked who had made them turn against God, Richard told them that Mother had held their hands to the Devil’s book and made them swear their allegiance to him. He gave them the names of other witches but named only men and women who were in jail already accused and awaiting trial or who had been found guilty and hanged. Andrew said not a word but clung to Richard’s shirt and it took Sheriff Corwin and another man to separate them when their chains were brought to bind them for transport to Salem jail.

  WHEN FATHER RETURNED late that afternoon and found Richard and Andrew gone, the look on his face was truly terrible. He stood and stared at a point beyond our heads and I thought the stones of the hearth would crack or the dying embers of ash and oak beneath the flue would rekindle to a raging fire. He ran into the yard and paced about and pulled at his hair and tore his hat between his hands. I could hear his voice as he hatched aloud desperate plans to rescue them but in the end he returned to the house and sat at the table, his long arms dangling between his knees. Tom and I clung together as we had done atop Sunset Rock the night of the lightning storm, and waited for Father to find his way back to us from whatever blasted and empty place he had traveled to. Hannah, hungry and afraid, cried herself to sleep under the table, a piece of dried corn bread crumbled within her hand.

  Finally, long after evening had filled the common room, his voice called to us out of the shadows and he brought us each to his side, his arms encircling us with his strength and raw-boned comfort. And for the first time in my life my father held me and let my tears mix with his. In the morning we would all rise from our beds to face the slanting light, our desperate hope partnering with us as we began the summer harvesting. Most of the field would be left to rot, as there were only three of us to cut and bind and shock the staffs of wheat. But we worked side by side up and down the dusty rows, our mouths cottony from the heat and growing despair, our arms sore and trembling from the endless swinging of the scythe, and our eyes dry from searching
the northern horizon for the approaching relentless crawl of the prison cart.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  July–August 1692

  AUGUST IS THE month for mad dogs but it was in the last days of July that we saw the cur come trotting south down Boston Way Road. Tom and I had been left alone to work in the barn since early morning. Father had gone on the long walk to Salem, carrying in his sack scarcely enough food for one person. Food that must now be shared amongst three. He made the trip erratically every few days, fearing that the constable would be watching and would come and take the rest of us while he was away.

  We had all cinched our waistbands ever tighter, and hunger was a song that played in our heads morning and night. The heat had dried the Shawshin to a little stream, starving Ballard’s Pond to a muddy pit and draining our well down to the smooth and mossy stones at the bottom. We had harvested whatever wheat we could, and while Tom worked from the loft to spread new straw for the animals, I thrashed and winnowed small piles of grain. The mice were the only living things in abundance in the barn, but the cow had given so little from her udder that I was loath to put out saucers of milk for the snakes. The cats, fearing the lurcher, had long since disappeared. As I watched the mice boldly eating the grain, I wondered how we could manage the back end of winter with no bread. It had been quiet in the loft for some time, the dust still settling from the last forkful of straw thrown down.