The Heretic's Daughter

by Kathleen Kent

  He started to kneel to take his place by Andrew but Tom held up his hand and said, “No. We don’t need you. You can go away.”

  “Don’t be stupid, boy. Your brother is at death’s door, and unless the arm comes off, he’ll pass over that threshold for sure. Now, you can be brave for your brother’s sake by holding his other arm.”

  “No,” Tom said more forcefully, and the doctor rocked back on his heels, no doubt thinking of the coins he would forfeit by leaving his work undone. He picked up the belt and looped it together, forming a small noose, and motioned to the sheriff. I heard a woman call out of the growing dark, “Let the boy die in peace.” The sheriff drew an agitated breath and, closing the door behind him, began walking towards us. I felt Andrew’s hand searching for mine and the anger twisted in my spine. I said, forcing the words from deep in my throat, “If you touch him, I’ll curse you.” There was a stirring in the straw as bodies pulled closer, straining to hear the outcome.

  The doctor turned to me, his brows drawn down, “What did you say?” But he had heard what I had said as clearly as if I had shouted the words. It showed in the way he tensed and looked over his shoulder at the murky figures standing in the lessening light, their hair wild and disarrayed, their clothing soiled with human filth, some torn into shroudlike tangles. He looked back at me with uncertain eyes and saw a flame-headed, remorseless child who had been thrown into a cell for doing the Devil’s work. He began to gather up his things, but in all the world, there is no better whip against the diminishing effects of fear than the enlivening thoughts of coins in the purse, and so he paused and studied Tom again in a cautious manner. Tom sat poised with his fists balled in his lap, but for all his protesting he was only a boy. The doctor set his jaw and called to the sheriff to come so that he could finish up what he had interrupted his dinner to do.

  I saw Tom look wildly around for something, some kind of weapon or stick, to keep the doctor at bay. His hand closed around the straw and he held it up to his face as though he had found some great treasure. The doctor had started to say to the sheriff, “Now, pull back these two and then grab hold of this one and be quick about it . . . ,” when Tom drew back his arm, his good throwing arm, and let loose the weighted straw, hitting the doctor square in the chest and in the face. It was as though Tom had wounded him with a full measure of lead shot, so loud did the doctor swear and jump up and brush himself down. On his black great coat, the coat of his calling, and on his white linen shirt, were smeared dark and evil-smelling stains. All through the straw were the remnants of waste from women who, through illness or weakness from hunger, could not reach the slop buckets in time. Tom had only to reach a little ways to find it.

  The doctor stamped his foot with rage and spit out, “You little bastard. Look what you’ve done.”

  “Aye, that shit will never wash out.” We looked around, astonished at the strength in the voice and saw it was the old woman who had advised Goody Faulkner to keep her shawl from the sheriff’s wife. She was feeble and bent and had a ragged cough but her eyes were sharp and amused as they looked on the doctor. She opened her toothless mouth in laughter and said, “It’s the bile, you see? There’s never so great a stain as that which comes from the outraged body of a woman wronged. No, you’ll have to lop off a basketful of limbs to pay for a new coat such as that.” The doctor pulled away from her abruptly as though she were wearing plague sores.

  The sheriff swung the door to the cell open and said, “You’d best go now. You’ll get nothing from this lot.”

  The doctor grabbed his tools and turned once to say, “Your brother will be dead before the sun comes up.” We sat mute together over Andrew’s huddled body, too dazed to speak, and so the only answer to follow him out was the sound of the key being turned in the lock. I slept badly, in and out of waking from hour to hour, but whenever I opened my eyes I saw Tom kneeling next to Andrew, holding his hand and smoothing his forehead with a small rag or spilling a few drops of water into his mouth. Andrew continued to shake with fever and fell back into his troubled dreams. Every so often Tom would gently lift our brother’s sleeve and follow the progress of the red mark that crept upwards and upwards towards Andrew’s heart. Close to dawn on Sunday I woke to the sound of Andrew’s voice. I thought he was in his ravings, for Tom had leaned his head down to better hear. I crawled through the straw to be closer to them and I saw that Andrew’s eyes were queer and clouded. His lips were cracked and bleeding but his words were calm and orderly.

  He lifted his head slightly and said, “Richard promised that we shall all go hunting again in the autumn. And that I shall have a turn at the flintlock, if I’m careful. Now I’ll have my arm to hold it and I will be as good a shot as Father.”

  “You shall have a turn. And you shall bag the biggest ground hen in the colonies.” Tom smoothed Andrew’s hair back from his forehead and he smiled and closed his eyes again. His head slumped to the side and his breathing coarsened until I felt faint trying to slow my breathing to his. Sometime before the dark turned to light I fell asleep saying good-bye to Andrew. I had tried to do what Mother had told me to do. To tell him that I loved him. That he would be missed. That I was so very sorry that I could do nothing to save him or lessen his pain. I had taken his presence as a dreary constant, giving him no greater attention than I had given the livestock: there to be led about to do my bidding or to share in my labors. I was sorry at the end that I had not been kinder or more patient. And he was always so with all of us.

  As soon as I closed my eyes I began to dream, and in the dream I saw Andrew standing on a riverbank. It must have been spring, for the light was so bright and so yellow-hazing that all of the grasses and trees appeared indistinct and wavering, like melting butter. He was wearing Father’s long flintlock strapped across his shoulder and he was poised with his arms around Tom and Richard. He looked up, his face good and moon-simple, and smiled broadly, as though he saw me standing on the other side of the river. He opened his mouth to speak, but before I could hear his words I felt my shoulder being shaken, and I woke to Tom’s tearful face close to mine. I had fallen asleep slumped over Andrew’s chest and I started to cry with the awareness that Andrew had gone.

  I put my arms around Tom but he pulled my hands from his neck and said, “Sarah, look and see.” But I did not want to see Andrew’s face crumpled into death. Tom shook me by the shoulder and said my name again. I looked into his face, expecting to see my twin in mourning, but Tom’s face was not closed in grief. His eyes were slanted with joy and his mouth was upturned, laughing in disbelief. He said to me, pulling up the sleeve on Andrew’s shirt, “Look at his arm.”

  And I looked and saw that the red mark had begun its retreat back down Andrew’s arm, down from the shoulder to the elbow and from there to his wrist. His breathing was deep and regular, and when I felt his head, it was cool and covered with a fine sheen of sweat. When he finally opened his eyes, he had returned to the wit of a child, his smile foolish, his only request for soup and some bread.

  When the sheriff came down later in the morning, he strode into the cell to look at Andrew. He stared at me for a few surprised heartbeats before saying, “If that’s not witchcraft, then there never was.” As he returned to the door, he told us that Andrew could stay one more day and then he would have to return to the men’s cell. As soon as his footsteps faded up the stairs, I ran to the short bars and called out across the corridor to Richard and Mother, “Andrew is alive. He is alive.” For the first time in many days their answering voices made me feel enough joy to press back the hopelessness of Salem prison. And for a few brief minutes I could forget that there were only six days left for my mother to dream or wake or feel anything at all.

  The day was Sunday, and so a morning prayer meeting was held in the women’s cell. Goodwife Faulkner was asked to lead us all in prayers of thanksgiving. When Father came at noon, he brought us food and washed clothing and more clean water. He grabbed the bars hard when Tom told of the doctor coming t
o take Andrew’s arm, and I thought he would pull them from their casings. I propped Andrew’s head higher into my lap so that he could speak, and his first words in waking were “Father, I can go out hunting with you now,” and Father said to him, “Son, you shall be the first of your brothers to fire the flint.” When his time in the corridor was finished, he told us he would be back on Tuesday and every day from then on, until Friday. Well into evening my brothers and I held hands, and our fingers were folded together as strongly as the links in our chains.

  PEOPLE WILL ASK those who have lived beyond terrible trials, “How did you come to get beyond your loss?” as though the survivor who suffered the loss should simply stop up their nose until breath is starved from the lungs. It is true that some people will lose their desire for life and refuse food and drink after the death of a beloved, or if there is too much pain and injury to the body. But a child, so recently come into the world from the void of creation, can be more resilient than the strongest man, more strong willed than the hardiest woman. A child is like an early spring bulb that carries all the resources needed within its skin for the first push through the soil towards the sun. And just as a little bit of water can start the bulb to grow, even through fissured rock, so can a little kindness give a child the ability to push through the dark.

  That kindness came in the form of Dr. Ames. When he entered our cell on that Monday, the 15th of August, I did not at first recognize him. He came in holding a kerchief to his nose and carrying a fitted calfskin bag. I thought at first he was a minister, as his coat was long and dark and he wore a sober, wide-brimmed hat. He soon put the cloth away into his pocket and I saw that he was a young man, perhaps no more than thirty, with a narrow, even nose and dark eyes banded above with thick black brows. He was greeted by several of the women, who reached out and swarmed around him, beseeching him for aid. He calmed them all with a few words and made his way around from woman to woman, stopping here to look at a wound and offer salve, or stopping there to hold a hand and talk for a while. With each supplicant, he would speak to that woman as though she were the only one in his presence, and more than a few would clasp his hand to her face and offer blessings for his gentle care. When he finally came to us, he knelt down and said kindly to Andrew, “Well, then, here is a miracle I can see for myself.” He smiled at Andrew and Andrew returned the smile and held out his arm for the doctor to see more clearly.

  As he examined the arm, he said casually to me, “You do not remember me, do you, Sarah?”

  I was startled to hear my name and looked at him more closely. He turned his face to me and said, “I went to your home with the message from your uncle, Roger Toothaker.” And then it came to me: the young doctor from Haverhill who had been to Boston to treat the prisoners there. He was the one who had brought the note to Father. The note Father had read and then thrown into the fire. He quickly unpacked dressing and ointment from his bag and wound it around Andrew’s wrist. When he was finished with the binding, he treated Tom’s chafed skin and then turned to my raw and burning wrists.

  “I know your father,” he said, wrapping strips of cloth around my wrists under the metal cuffs. “Or rather I should say I know of him. He is a person often spoken of in Boston. In certain fellowships.”

  I looked at him blankly and he continued, his fingers gentle and cool on my wrists. “Do you know how your uncle died?”

  “It is said he was poisoned,” I answered, uncomfortable with his question. “He was poisoned by . . . someone,” I ventured, and I looked at his eyes with uncertainty.

  He then held my hands in his slender ones and said quietly, “No, Sarah, not poisoned by someone. But by himself.” When I started to open my mouth he said quickly, “I know what people have said about your father. It is true that he came into the cell the day your uncle died. It is also true that your uncle pleaded with him for forgiveness. He had been tortured by his inquisitors and knew that through his own weakness he would be forced to cry out against you, the children. He told me he repented of what he had said against your mother and that he would rather die than bring more harm. This was all written in the note to your father. But I do not believe your father was the cause of his death.”

  I stared at Tom, whose eyes showed me that I was not alone in harboring the belief that Father had done murder for our cause. I remembered Father once saying that Uncle had made good on a bad end, and I asked, “What do you mean?”

  The doctor dropped his eyes and said, “Your uncle was under great distress and complained to me that his heart was failing. He asked of me to give him foxglove.” I knew only that foxglove was a potent poison, and when I looked up at him, he said, “Foxglove in very small amounts is used for soothing an unsteady heart. In larger amounts it kills within hours, but unless you have a practiced eye, the death will often appear as though the heart stopped of its own accord. He asked for a large measure of it some days before his death, and because he was a doctor I bowed to his wisdom and . . . I gave it to him. But before I took my leave of him for the last time, I said to him, ‘Be very careful to take only so much as you need.’ And he replied to me, holding up the little bag of herbs, ‘All that is here is what I need.’ ”

  In my mind’s eye I saw Uncle, cold and pale, lying dead in the dirty straw of his cell, and I found the pity for him I had lost while taking a beating in the yard of Chandler’s Inn so many months ago. I looked down the length of the cell, trying to make out the forms of my aunt and cousin, but I could not see them through the murky light. I had no doubt that they yet believed what I had dared to believe: that my father poisoned his brother-in-law to save his own family.

  “One of the doctors at your uncle’s inquest is well known to me,” he continued. “He saw the signs of poison and told me of it. I believe that once your uncle had seen your father, he took the only sure course to seal his own lips and in so doing protect the ones he loved.”

  The door of the cell opened and the sheriff rattled his keys loudly against the door. The young doctor gathered up his things and said, “My name is Dr. Ames, and though I live now in Haverhill, my family home is in Boston. I want you to give a message to your father, and you must remember it word for word. Can you do that?”

  When I nodded my head, he continued, “Tell him that I and a few others are friends to your father. And tell him that we will do our level best to help him. Did you hear me, Sarah? Tell him we will do our level best.”

  I repeated the message, putting the emphasis on the word “level” as he had done, and he said in parting, “I will come as often as I can to look after you. You must know that this is not the world, and there are many who believe that this” — and he gestured about the cell — “all of this, is a shame to humanity.” He smiled reassuringly at us once again and then left to see after the prisoners across the corridor. He had offered help and for that I had greater hope for myself and for my brothers. But he had said nothing about saving my mother. Later, before dusk, the sheriff came for Andrew, and it was only after Tom and I had struggled to walk him to the corridor and he heard Richard’s voice calling to him that he stopped his crying and pleading to be left with us.

  When Tom and I laid ourselves down that night, my last thoughts before falling to sleep were of Uncle. I thought of his quick and lively nature and remembered his ready laugh and the way the smoke from his pipe floated up beyond the prominent dome of his glistening forehead, curling up to the ceiling like a vagrant wish. And the way he delighted in calling Margaret and me his twins. I did not think much of the nights he came back to his home and family dizzy from drink, or of the late hours spent at an inn. Or of the tears Aunt had shed waiting for his return. I thought more of the stories he had told us by the light of the hearth. Tales of rampant Indians and wandering spirits and the deaths of pagan kings. I thought of him proudly astride Bucephalus, named after the war steed belonging to Alexander. The ancient king so beloved by his men until he led them off the face of their circumscribed maps into the lands of specter
s and strange men. The king who was given the cup of poison so that his men could return to the known world. But Uncle had taken up the cup of poison with his own hand in the hopes of returning those he loved safely back from the land of monsters, and for that I wept long and hard for him.

  TUESDAY MORNING I woke with a start, a terrible panic seizing me by the throat. The wailing woman with the rotted tooth had continued her screeching throughout the night, giving me dreams of eagles falling headlong out of the sky to the earth. It was the 16th of August and I spent most of the morning pressed against the bars, speaking to Richard and Mother of the world outside our cells. We spoke only of the past. Of Mother’s garden or the plentiful harvest we had had the year before or the enormous turkey Richard had shot early last spring. Mother’s voice was weak and several times I asked her to speak out more clearly so that I could hear her words. The women at the short wall took pity on Tom and me and walked about the cell giving us more time to talk, but soon we were edged away from the wall and back into the middle of the cell.

  I saw Mary Lacey come creeping past us to use the slops and my feeling of helplessness turned to rage. She was our neighbor from Andover and yet she had cried out falsely against my mother to try to save herself. She cut her eyes at me and I remembered sharply her face gawking at me over the village gravestones while Mercy Williams held me prisoner in her arms, telling me she would burn me alive in my own bed.

  I rushed at her, pushing her hard enough to throw her to the ground. There were protesting words as Mary struggled over several of the seated women trying to rise to her feet again. But no one came to scold me, or to assist Mary. And there were more than one pair of eyes that glinted with satisfaction. She would not look me in the face but gathered up her skirt and stepped away deeper into the cell. I felt Tom’s hand on my shoulder but I shrugged him off, too close to anguished weeping to allow comfort. I held my breath to slow my heart but its rapid beating was felt in every part of my body. My head throbbed and my eyes danced in their sockets, keeping time with the swirling, particled air, illuminated like mayflies in stippled shafts of sunlight. I looked around at the women scattered about the cell, sitting or standing slack-jawed and loose-limbed, and it enraged me. Where was the will to rise up and protest? To plan escapes or at least make demands upon our captors? Where was the outrage, the anger, the fury?