The Heretic's Daughter

by Kathleen Kent

  I turned away to face the wall and sneaked my hand into my apron and pinched off a piece of bread, rolling it in my fingers to make it smaller. I held up my hand to my face as though to stifle a yawn and passed the ball of dough into my mouth. I chewed it until it turned to liquid and then swallowed it. My belly, brought to life, growled loudly, and so I ate another piece, all the while thinking that it might have been better to eat nothing than to eat a little morsel and feel the grinding pangs of hunger so keenly.

  I tapped Tom and slipped him a piece of bread and then I stood up to visit the slops and stretch my cramping legs. There was a bucket at each end of the cell, and the one nearest to me was full to overflowing, the floor surrounding it dark and glistening. So I picked my way to the other end, the chains at my wrists swaying heavily, making my steps awkward. I looked at my feet, being careful not to trip on a leg or tread on a hand, and in so doing I did not at first see the faces of the women who had been hidden from me in the dark of the evening before. As I approached the bucket, I looked up and saw Aunt, sitting with her back propped against the far wall. And with Aunt, her head on her mother’s lap, was Margaret.

  The joy that I felt at seeing them was so powerful that my knees weakened and I uttered a sharp “Oh” that drew looks from the women around me. My eyes filled with tears and I said, reaching out, tripping over something or someone, “Aunt. . .” A woman reached up to steady me as the smile on my face faltered and faded. There was no doubt that it was my mother’s sister, but the eyes that met mine were filled with anger and resentful purpose. I said again, “Aunt.” I added, “It is Sarah,” but her eyes only hardened more and the protective arm around Margaret tightened. The chains from Aunt’s wrists draped in front of Margaret’s face, casting ringed shadows across her cheeks. Margaret’s eyes were not on mine, they were pointed at some distant place. Her mouth moved slightly, as though she were conversing with the air, and although she could not have failed to see or hear me, she never once looked in my direction.

  I stood stupidly for another few breaths, staring at my shoes, and heard Aunt say, as though she were chasing a dog or a rat from her doorstep, “Whisht.” I looked up and she gestured me away viciously with her free arm and said again, “Whisht.” Her chains rattled in the silence and I turned around and walked, stumbling, back to my place next to Tom, my face wet with tears. I looked around, my chin tucked into my neck, my breath jerking and shuddering, and saw many pairs of eyes look away, as though my tears were somehow more revealing and shameful than had I been using the slops for all to see.

  The morning passed into noon, and before the families were let into the corridor, the prisoners drew lots to see who would have the chance to empty the slop buckets in the yard above and in so doing have a few minutes to walk about and breathe in the fresh air. Two women from our cell would take up our buckets first, and then someone from the men’s prison would take up their bucket as well as the bucket from the condemned women’s cell. The condemned women were never allowed out of their cell for fear they would take to the sky and escape over the rooftops or cast out their spirits to further torment the people of Salem Village. Being so young and newly placed in the prison, Tom and I were not included in the drawing of lots. The few visiting families came and went and the afternoon sun warmed and dried out the stones, turning them from green to gray to white. They would be damp again come morning and moss would appear again like wet paint spread over mortar.

  I watched the short wall under the iron bars at the corridor, and whenever a woman who rested there got up to walk about, I took her place and called out to Mother and to Richard. And every time we would speak, their hands would appear to reach out to me, and in this way I knew their voices were real, as real as the stones, and not a part of a fevered imagination.

  Sometime in the afternoon the door to our cell was opened, and Abigail Faulkner, a woman of about my mother’s age, was led into our cell. She stood blinking in the half-light, and several women from Andover gasped out, “It is Reverend Dane’s daughter.” Along with her niece Betty Johnson, Goodwife Faulkner would be one of more than a dozen of the Dane family, by blood or by marriage, who would be locked in chains. She would be condemned to die on September 17th but would plead her belly and be reprieved. Her child would be born past its time in December, after she was released, as though the hardship of prison life had sealed her womb, preventing the babe from being born in that rank and hopeless place.

  The day passed into evening, and when I lay down next to Tom, I ate another small piece of bread and hugged myself close to his body. And I counted Day 1 spent in my prison, the 11th day of August, 1692. There would be eight more days before my mother was to be taken out of her cell and hanged.

  WHEN I WOKE the next morning, my head ached from lack of sleep; the moaning woman had cried for the longest time, until the Samaritan finally gave her whatever drink it was that made her sleep. After an hour of listening to her, I found myself wanting to shout out, “For pity’s sake, give her the flask and let us rest.” I struggled to sit up and took a drink from the skin that Father had left us. To my dismay I saw that the leather had been chewed almost through sometime during the night, causing drops of the precious clean water to seep out onto the floor. I would have to sleep with it tucked into my bodice to keep the rats from taking it all.

  The women went through the same rituals of dress as the morning before and Goodwife Hoar soon made her way down the rows of women, asking for bread to be shared. When she passed me she did not stop, saying only, “God bless you children,” before she went on. She would bless us every morning that we were in prison but she would never again ask us for food. I watched the short wall eagerly for a space to open up so that I could speak to Mother, but the women there were in no hurry to leave their places.

  Footsteps on the stairs made everyone pause and grow tense and expectant. It was too early for the slops to be emptied and the visits from the families would not come for hours. There were two pairs of footsteps descending, the sheriff’s rapid, heavy steps along with someone else’s, and I wondered if there was to be an early trial. The door to our cell opened, and a woman, short and thick, walked in and started looking around the room as though searching for someone. I heard a whispered hiss, “The sheriff’s wife.” The door remained ajar but Sheriff Corwin’s shadow stayed at the threshold. His wife strode confidently to Goodwife Faulkner and said, pointing to her shawl, “I’ll give you bread for the shawl.”

  An old woman from across the room rasped out, “Don’t do it, missus. You’ll need it come September.” She laughed unpleasantly but it ended in a barking cough. Goody Faulkner shook her head and pulled the shawl closer around her shoulders. The sheriff’s wife shrugged and asked several other women, some who looked new to the cell, with clean hands and clean aprons, and a few desperate others who had been there awhile, to barter at a pittance pieces of their clothing. One of the women had been stripped down to her shift, but when she offered up a piece of the hem, Goody Corwin shook her head and moved on. She looked around once more and her eyes fell on me and Tom. She walked over and said, not unkindly, “Stand up and let me see you.”

  I stood up and she pulled me to her as though she would embrace me. Her right hand held my shoulder while the left hand came to rest palm down on my head. She then pulled me back again and looked down at her left hand to see exactly where the top of my head had come to rest on her chest. She had been measuring me to see how tall I was, but I did not know the reason until someone called out with outrage, “For the love of Jesus. Leave them their clothes. Do you want to kill them with the damp?”

  Goody Corwin did not acknowledge the speaker but said to me, “When you get hungry enough, we’ll talk again.” She gave my chin a squeeze and left us so that Sheriff Corwin could fasten the locks once more. When she had gone, I whispered to the woman next to me, “Why did she want our clothes? Is she so poor?”

  The woman snorted, “Her? She’s tighter than a tick with money. She’
s got more coin than all of us put together. She barters us with food for our clothes and then sells them at market for coin, saying the clothes are from the bodies of the unclaimed dead.” I shivered deeper into my shawl, thinking I would never barter with the sheriff’s wife, no matter how weakened I became from hunger.

  The afternoon brought no visit from Father and I was able to get to the bars only a few times to speak to Mother. There was a growing flutter of fear within me as the day passed and the words “seven days, seven more days” ran again and again through my mind. Despite my earlier intentions, I made a promise to myself that when the sheriff’s wife next came I would offer her every bit of clothing in trade for ten minutes in my mother’s cell. When I called across the corridor to the men’s cell, asking Richard about Andrew, there was a long pause before he spoke. Finally he answered, “Andrew is bearing up. But he is worse today than yesterday. I fear his wound is festering and the poison has entered his body. Without proper care. . .” He paused, leaving me to imagine what was to become of Andrew without clean water to wash his wounds or salve to stop the poison from spreading.

  NIGHT CAME AND Tom and I ate our hard bits of bread and finished the water in the skin. The air was warmer than it had been and despite all my worries I fell quickly into a dreamless sleep. Sometime during the darkest hours before dawn I heard loud shouts from the men’s cell for the sheriff to come. The shouting went on and on but it was hours before we heard his footsteps lumbering down the stairs. He lived with his wife in the upper floors but would never come down before morning unless the cells had caught fire and smoke was rising from his floorboards.

  I heard the men’s cell being opened and pleading voices asking for help. Soon the door to our cell opened and there on the threshold, holding up a slumped figure between them, was Richard and an older man. They dragged the sagging figure further into the straw, and when they laid him down, I saw it was Andrew. I clung to Richard but he was pulled quickly out by the sheriff, who locked him back in his cell. When the sheriff returned, he said to Tom and me, “The doctor comes on Saturdays. If he’s still alive by ten of the clock, he’ll have a look. There’s better light here and here he’ll stay until then.”

  Several of the women came to help us bathe Andrew’s face with a few drops of our precious water taken from the common barrel and loosen his clothing. His manacles had been pried open and removed, so his arms were free. They would not have been removed had he been expected to live. He had a raging fever, which made his face dark and livid like the raw liver of a deer, while his scars from the pox were pitted and white. When we pulled back the sleeves from his shirt I caught my breath, for on his right wrist where he had been bound and tortured was a festering wound that seeped with a yellowish matter. A band of bright red under the skin traveled up his arm from the wound. One of the older women put her nose to the wound and sniffed.

  “It’s poisoned,” she said. “Once the red reaches past his shoulder. . .” She paused, shaking her head. “He’ll die if the arm doesn’t come off.” Someone else whispered, “He will die if it does.”

  “Doesn’t come off. Doesn’t come off.” The words rattled around in my ears but I could not make sense of them until I looked at Tom’s face and saw the horror in it.

  We stayed by Andrew’s side until the doctor came in. He was a narrow, spindly man who shooed us away as though we were a brood of cottage fowl. He lifted Andrew’s arm and studied the line of red, shaking his head all the while. He turned to me and said, “Your brother, the tall one in the cell across, said that I would be paid in coin for care tendered.” I looked at him, not understanding, but Tom said, “My father will pay. When he comes.”

  “Very well,” said the doctor. “I’ll come back tonight. The arm must come off and right away. And mind you, afterwards, I’ll expect to be paid whether this one lives or not.” When he stood up to leave, I looked down at Andrew’s face and was startled to see his eyes open, looking at me. Eyes filled with pain and with understanding. For hours we sat with Andrew and tried to comfort him. He cried and shifted about and said over and over, “I’ll be good. Don’t take my arm. I’ll be good.” When I could stand it no more, I threw myself against the short bars and cried out, “Mother, what can we do? What can we do?” The answer came to me, escorted by the shadows from the condemned cell, floating insubstantial and piecemeal like a waving tendril of smoke in the corridor.

  “Make your best good-byes to him, Sarah. Be with him. Help him to be strong. Give him comfort.” I heard no more words from her, only the sound of weeping. The bitter kind that comes when a child is to depart the earth before the one who gave him birth.

  Soon Andrew’s crying stopped as he dropped into the sleep of the desperately ill and Tom and I took turns holding his head. Some of the women came to offer advice or to give us prayers in place of hope. Some of the women came only to look and be comforted that someone else was closer to death than they. When the noon hour arrived and the families of the jailed pressed into the corridor, Reverend Dane appeared, bringing bread and meat and a small pot of soup for us. The sheriff let him into our cell, and when he bent down to look at Andrew, I wanted nothing so much as to throw myself into the comfort of his arms and plead with him to take me with him when he left. He put his hands on our heads and blessed us with great tenderness. Then he pulled Tom and me closer to him and said quietly, so as not to wake Andrew, “Your father comes tomorrow with more food and with warmer clothing. He does not know how very sick is Andrew or he would have come with me this day. I fear that when he comes tomorrow Andrew will be gone from us.” As though he had heard the whispers, Andrew shifted and groaned in his sleep.

  The sheriff called out from the door, and as the Reverend rose to leave, he said, “Have faith in God, children. Andrew’s pain is soon to be over.” He reached out to place a hand on Tom’s shoulder, but Tom pulled abruptly away. His face was dark with anger and with some stubborn resentment, and I wanted to cuff his ears for refusing a kind hand. But the greatness of the man was in his understanding of the human heart, and as he looked around the tightness and darkness of our cell, he said to Tom in parting, “Faith is what saves us from despair, son. But anger will do in its place for now. I will go and see your mother. Shall I pass some message to her?”

  “Tell her . . . Tell her . . . ,” I began but could not finish. How could I give words of comfort or ask for them in return with the sheriff standing at the door to the cell, beckoning impatiently for the Reverend to leave. It would be like trying to build a raft to ride a storm-ridden ocean with only a few sticks to lash together. My swimming eyes turned back to the Reverend’s and paused there.

  Squeezing my hands in his he said, “I will tell her, Sarah. I will tell her.” He gave a bag of food to his daughter, Goody Faulkner, and prayed over the heads of the women despite the sheriff’s harping. When Sheriff Corwin finally came to put a hand on the Reverend’s arm to make him leave, the look the sheriff got was surely as scorching as the look Adam received from the Archangel when he was driven from Paradise. The hours stretched on into the afternoon and Andrew’s fever continued to burn hot. He mumbled and murmured of things he saw behind his quivering lids. Sometimes he whispered and laughed. Sometimes he shouted and threw up his hands. But his words were not the words of a half-witted boy. They were clear and reasoned, as though the fire in his body had refined and sharpened his mind.

  Around sunset, as the flickering light flowed through the openings in the walls, Andrew opened his eyes and looked first at me and then at Tom. “What day is it?” he asked quietly.

  Tom answered, “It is Saturday.”

  Andrew drew his brows together as though calculating the days and said, “The doctor comes soon now?”

  “Yes,” said Tom, his voice grinding and choked.

  “He’ll take my arm,” Andrew whispered softly as though hearing it for the first time. Alarm sprang into his eyes and he said, catching his breath, “He’ll take my arm. Tom, he’s going to take my ar
m.” He grabbed at Tom with his left hand and held on tightly. “Don’t let him take my arm. I’d rather die.”

  “Andrew,” I said, cradling his head tighter in my arms, the tears falling into my mouth. “The doctor said you’d die. . .”

  “No,” Tom said, reaching for Andrew’s good hand, “You won’t die.” He looked at me defiantly and said again, “You won’t die, Andrew. I won’t let him take your arm. D’ye hear me?” He looked down at Andrew. “I’ll sit here all night and the next night and the next. I’ll look over you, Andrew. No one’s going to take your arm.” He held on to Andrew’s hand until Andrew fell back into his sleep and there he sat until the sheriff opened the door to let in the doctor. In one hand he carried a small leather bag and a belt. In the other he carried a small skinning knife and a cleaver.

  He said loudly to the sheriff, “The light is going. I will have to work quickly. Stand here by the door in case I need you to hold him down.” The cell had grown quiet but for the sound of whispered prayers and some fragile cloth being torn into bandages. As the doctor moved into the cell I saw several of the younger women put their hands over their ears to block out the screams. My hands went protectively over Andrew’s eyes to shield him from the approaching doctor, and the anger that had plagued Tom came and bit me squarely behind the neck. The doctor turned to one of the women and said, “Bring me whatever water you have and then stand back.”