The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane

by Katherine Howe

  She drew the light along the spines of the books, its yellow orb illuminating three spines at a time together with her chin and knuckles, leaving the rest of the room swathed in black. Connie moved the lamp to the bottom shelf, where the thickest, heaviest books were kept. These would be Bibles, or possibly Psalters. Puritan doctrine held that literacy was necessary—even vital—to receiving divine grace. As such, every proper New England home must have its own copy of the revealed word of God. Placing the lamp on the floor, she wrestled the largest volume out of the shelf, supporting it with one slender arm while she thumbed it open. Yes, a Bible—an old one, judging from the idiosyncratic spelling and the fragility of the paper. Seventeenth century, she thought, pleased with her training. For a fleeting moment she caught herself weighing what a Bible like this might be worth. But no; Bibles were the most common printed texts, so not all that rare, even when they were this old. And this one was rotted with mildew and water damage. The pages felt pulpy and begrimed under her hands.

  As she thumbed a page midway through Exodus, Connie wondered to herself what she might hope to find as she sifted through this house. Liz had said that Connie and Sophia sounded as if they would have gotten along, but she had never really known Sophia. Who was this odd, stubborn woman? Whose story was hidden here?

  At the moment that these idle thoughts wandered through her mind, the hand that was holding the Bible vibrated with a hot, crawling, pricking sensation—something between a limb falling asleep and the painful shock that comes from unplugging a frayed lamp wire. Connie screamed in pain and surprise, dropping the heavy book with a thud.

  She rubbed her hand, the strange sensation so fleeting that after a moment she doubted she had ever really felt it. Connie knelt to see if she had damaged the antique book.

  The Bible lay open on the floor, raked by the glowing light from the oil lamp, surrounded by a rising cloud of dust stirred by its fall to the carpet. Kneeling on the floor, Connie reached forward to gather up the Bible when she noticed something small and bright protruding from between its leaves. Nudging the lamp nearer, Connie traced her fingertip down the edge of the pages until she found the little glimmering object, then slowly withdrew it from its hiding place.

  It was a key. Antique, about three inches long, with an ornate handle and hollow shaft, probably designed for a door or a substantial chest. She turned the key over in the soft light from the lamp, wondering why it had been hidden in the Bible. It seemed too bulky for a bookmark. As she warmed the small metal object in her hands, puzzling about what it could mean, she noticed the tiniest shred of paper protruding from the end of the hollow shaft. She knitted her brows together in concentration.

  Carefully, delicately, she caught the end of the paper with her thumbnail and withdrew it slowly from the shaft. It looked like a miniature parchment, tightly rolled into a tube. She laid the key in her lap and held the parchment up to the lamp, unrolling the crisp, brittle slip one millimeter at a time. It was brown and stained, barely as long as her thumb.

  On it, in a watery ink barely legible in the flickering light, were written the words Deliverance Dane.

  Interlude

  Salem Town, Massachusetts

  Mid-June 1682

  Major Samuell Appleton, Esquire, flexed his toes inside his boot and frowned. His big toe had carried a dull ache for weeks now, and he could not stop himself from worrying it. He could feel it, swollen and hot, chafing egregiously inside the stiff leather of his shoe. His thick woolen stockings only made the boiling in his toe worse. He sighed. Perhaps his wife could fix another poultice for it, when the day’s work was done. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and dabbed at his moist forehead with a handkerchief. The afternoon yawned before him, and he sent a private request to God to make it pass quickly.

  The day outside was dusty and warm, and yellow sunbeams spilled through the meetinghouse windows, casting bright puddles of light on the wood-planked floor. Appleton sat in a majestic tapestried armchair behind the broad library table at the front of the room, elbows propped on the table, arms folded. The room in front of him hummed with low conversation as the men and women crowded onto benches and side chairs awaited the beginning of the court session. White coifs bent over knitting and needlework; men leaned sunburned heads together, nodding. Those being brought to the bar for their offenses sat sullen-faced near the front, some of them wringing their hands. Appleton grunted to himself. Court days always made for good spectacle. For a godly people, he reflected, his neighbors surely took their interest in one another’s sins. Whores and blackguards all of them, he thought.

  Appleton glanced off to his left at the smug knot of jury men seated in a row of straight-backed chairs, waiting to pass judgment on their peers. He knew most of them by sight: Lieutenant Davenport, the jury foreman, was a decent man with a frightening countenance. He bore a deep pink scar across his face from the Indian wars at the Eastward that made him look ferocious and angry, but it masked a forthright soul. Next to him sat William Thorne, a genial fellow who ran a tavern out on Ipswich road, and Goodman Palfrey, a cordwainer who was forever volunteering for town committees. Appleton snorted with distaste. Palfrey had sat on almost every jury this year, on top of being elected town fence viewer. There were rumors he was putting himself forward for full church membership as well. Appleton detested a man who did not know his place. The other three men were unknown to him—local artisans most likely, propertied enough to serve, but still of a largely middling sort.

  Appleton waved over the clerk, a slight, nervous young man named Elias Alder. The little clerk leapt to his feet in a tangle of limbs, slid a heavy sheet of paper across the library table toward the judge, and withdrew off to the side, holding the tip of his quill anxiously to his mouth. By the end of the session his lower lip would be black with ink, Appleton reflected. Appleton held the paper at arm’s length, squinting to make out Elias’s unfortunate penmanship. Four suits scheduled this afternoon. He sighed again, returned the paper to the clerk, and nodded. The throb in his toe was no better.

  The clerk cleared his throat, Adam’s apple bobbing visibly in his neck, and the murmuring meetinghouse grew quiet.

  “Deliverance Dane versus Peter Petford for slander!” he announced, and the assembled populace burst into a rising twitter of commentary that continued for a full five minutes.

  “Enough!” bellowed Appleton, and the roar quieted down without fully disappearing. The judge surveyed the meetinghouse with a withering eye, casting his magisterial gaze over each watching face. When he felt the attention of the room settling on him once again, he continued. “Goodwife Dane, you shall render your deposition.”

  A young woman rose from the front row of deponents, smoothing her skirts as she did so. Her dress was of a neat dove gray, and her collar and modest head covering were improbably fresh and white for a woman of her station. A heavy knot of tree-bark hair rested on the nape of her neck, just visible beneath her coif, and her soft cheeks shone with warmth and health. Appleton knew that this woman was spoken of in the village, but he had never seen her before. She wore a placid expression like a veil overlying the unmistakable confidence that radiated forth from her face. Appleton reflected that in some women such confidence might be mistaken for pride.

  She lifted her eyes to his, and for a moment he was bathed in their coolness. As the young woman held his gaze he felt the bustling room recede around him, and an unfamiliar tingling sensation, like a beam of sunlight entering his forehead. Appleton felt his putrefying toe submerge as though into a cold, babbling stream, and the numbness of it carried away the dull, burning ache. Unaware that he was doing so, Appleton let out a soft sigh of relief. All at once the moment passed, and the judge shook himself, blinking, the sound of the meetinghouse pressing in around him once more. He flexed his foot inside his shoe, and the toe did not protest. He looked sharply at her. The Dane woman wore a small, knowing smile.

  She reached into the pocket that was tied to her belt to withdraw a fold
ed sheet of paper. She spread the paper out in her hands and began to read aloud in a softly modulated tone.

  “I testify and saith that on the eve of the new year the said Petford bade me come see to his child that was sick and that he had a good mind it was afflicted by some mischief. I hastened to the said Petford’s house whereupon I found Martha, Petford’s daughter, aged about five years, suffering a pain in her head and near dead with fever. I brewed a tincture of physick for the said Martha who drank it down and grew quieter and slept. As she slept the said Petford did rail and moan that surely some evil sorcery had been worked upon the child, for she had thrived yet one week previous.

  “I made to sleep upon the floor nearby the child’s bed. Some hours hence I awoke to Martha’s awful cries as she clutched herself and saith, O, I am pinched, and now, O, I am burnt, and she tore at her clothes. I took her into my arms and held her as she pitched to and fro in her fits, and then loosed one final breath and died.

  “The said Petford, being much aggrieved for the death of his only child, cried what witch hath murdered Martha, and looked upon me strangely. I saith that none ha’ killed his child but it was God’s will, and then I hastened back to Salem.

  “Some weeks hence Susanna Cory saith to Nathaniel, my husband, that she had heard the said Petford tell Goody Oliver that I must surely have written my name in the Devil’s book. He ha’ spake sundry unfair cruelties by me though I only crafted physick for his daughter, thereby murdering my good name, and since then I ha’ felt angry carriages in the town.”

  As she read her account the townsfolk gathered in the meetinghouse listened rapt, gasping aloud at the drama of her recitation. When she finished, the room vibrated with controversy as the onlookers weighed her statement, dying down to a subdued hush when the clerk stood up from his desk.

  Goodwife Dane passed her deposition to the clerk, lowered her gaze to the floor, and resumed her seat on the bench. Whispers eddied around her, but she gave no sign of hearing them.

  “If Goodwife Cory be here she shall render her deposition,” demanded Appleton, reasserting his control over the room. How he hated these old gossips with their wagging fingers.

  A frank-looking woman of about fifty years stood from her place next to Goody Dane. She held her head stiffly, her hands planted on her hips, unashamed of the darning and patches that spotted her dress. She pulled a paper from her own pocket, held it up close to her good eye, and read aloud in a rasping monotone.

  “I testify and saith that as I passed the said Petfahd’s house one faw-noon I huhd the said Petfahd tell Goody Olivah that that Deliverance Dane of Salem is a common rogue and witch that she ha’ murdered his darter as part of her pledge to do the Devil’s work. I tarried and saith to that Petfahd that she seemed none a witch to me but only a wise woman. I saith also that I ha’ known the said Deliverance’s mother and that she were cunning also. The Olivah then countehed that Deliverance once bought several bottles of her and that when she asked Goody Dane whehfoah she wanted bottles she said to read the watah with. Goody Olivah and Goodman Petfahd then told diverse other tales of felonious sawceries which I could scarce believe. I ventured to the afawsaid Dane’s house to tell them what were being said.”

  After surrendering her testimony to the clerk, Goody Cory cast a glower toward the man whom Appleton assumed to be Petford, a roguish-looking sort sitting on the opposite bench with his head cupped in his hands. She sat and folded her arms, sniffing her disapproval of the proceedings.

  “Very well,” said Appleton. “If Nathaniel Dane be present, he shall deliver his deposition.”

  A tall young man seated on Goody Dane’s other side rose. He was simply and neatly dressed, and looked like he might smell pleasantly of burning leaves. There was an out-of-doors quality to his countenance that made Appleton muse that this Goodman Dane would be a top fowler.

  The man uncrumpled a little slip of paper, glanced down at his wife, and then paused a moment to draw breath. Appleton noted that the young man’s eyes had dark circles under them, and that his face was whitish yellow under his sunburn. The room waited.

  “I testify and saith,” he read, pronouncing each word with deliberation, “that my wife be no kind of witch, but that the said Petah Petfahd ha’ hardened his heaht for sadness at the loss of his child Mahther, and only sought to blame where naught could be helped.”

  He started to recrumple the paper before Elias plucked it out of his hands and then settled himself again next to his wife. Appleton just glimpsed Goodman Dane brush his fingertips over his wife’s knee, and in that tender gesture the true depth of Dane’s fear unfurled before him. To have one’s wife talked about as a sorcerer was a worrisome thing indeed. If she did not prevail in this slander case, the rumors would only grow worse; a reputation for demoniac doings might never be undone. Heaven help them if Petford not be found guilty, he reflected. To think that a weak man’s grief could undo a young family such as this. Appleton, embarrassed by this limpid feeling of pity and sorrow for the couple seated before him, looked for help back at the clerk. Elias prompted him by mouthing the name of the next witness.

  “If Goodwife Mary Oliver be here she shall present her deposition,” Appleton barked.

  A woman of indistinct middle years arose on the other side of the meetinghouse aisle, her puckered face bristling with a tobacco-stained mustache. Just looking at her made Appleton think of tart pickled plums, and he pursed his lips with displeasure. She unfolded her own sheet of paper, raised her nose an inch or so, and spoke.

  “I testify and saith that the said Deliverance Dane was a known healah and like a witch also, sost say so could be no defamement. One John Godfrey did tell me at this instant month that he hud a calf which were wasted and afflicted and asked the said Goody Dane whehfoah the animal was sick. She took watah of the calf into a bottle and boilt it in a kittle upon the fyah, whereupon she told the said Godfrey that his calf would be well though it was bewitched. And thus the calf was wal.”

  At this the assembly gasped aloud, and a fresh swell of murmurs swept through the meetinghouse.

  “Silence!” bellowed Appleton. “You shall continue, woman.”

  Goody Oliver seemed to enjoy the effect of her testimony, surveying her audience with a proud smirk. “Anothah time,” she began again, “I ha’ sought physick from heh for a pained foot. She bade me entah heh house and did apply some liniment to my foot which she made by mashing hairbs and readin’ in some book. I asked her what book war this and she said nowt but placed the book on a high shelf and asked me if my foot weh feeling bettah, which it was.”

  The townsfolk gathered in the meetinghouse burst forth in a fresh torrent of commentary as Goody Oliver pressed her lips together in satisfaction. She surrendered her deposition to Elias with great ceremony, remained standing a moment longer than was strictly necessary, and then resumed her seat. Appleton gazed on her with distaste. He could already imagine her recounting this minor testimony to her neighbor over a fence post with all the authority attendant on a capital trial. Telt ’em, I did, he imagined her saying. That Dane shan’t think to chahge so much of me next time my foot be pained! Scurrilous hag.

  “Mr. Saltonstall,” Appleton intoned, casting an impatient eye on the muttering audience, “you shall examine the defendant.”

  In the far rear corner of the meetinghouse a pair of boots adorned with overlarge, well-buffed buckles dropped down from where they had been resting, crossed, on the seat of an empty chair. Their owner, dressed in overcoat and breeches of fitted richness, fashionably snug about the elbows, topped by an ostentatious lace collar stretching almost to his shoulders, pulled himself up to his full six feet and ambled to the front of the room. Someone ought to have a word with young Richard Saltonstall, Appleton reflected. I’d slice those curls off myself given half a chance. Richard’s father had never carried himself so. No sooner does God grant favor on your ships than you forget to pay obeisance to God.

  “Thank you, sir,” said the lawyer, his vo
ice polished and confident. “’T’would be my pleasure.” He turned to face the crowded benches and announced “Goodman Peter Petford, defendant, shall submit to examination!”

  The roguish man whom Appleton had noticed rocking and holding his head during the depositions looked around himself and rose, uncertain. Saltonstall gestured him toward a chair at the side of the library table, and Petford seated himself uneasily. In the corner Elias hovered, quill poised to jot down his every utterance. Saltonstall looked to Appleton for approval, and Appleton nodded.

  “Goodman Petford, yeoman,” Saltonstall began, “you stand accused of sundry acts of slander for telling lies most grievous and spreading ill will of Goodwife Dane in the town. You are now before authority. I expect the truth of you.”

  “I am a gospel man,” said Petford, his voice wavering. He hung his head down near his shoulders, gaze averted. Appleton noticed that Petford’s cheeks appeared hollow and dark, the skin of his head clinging to his skull. He looked dreadful, broken.

  “How came you to ask Goodwife Dane to call upon your ailing daughter?” asked Saltonstall, addressing his question boldly to the assembled populace. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, voice booming into every corner of the meetinghouse.

  “I ha’ heard tell that she were able with physick for those ill,” muttered Petford.

  “Who spoke thusly?” demanded the lawyer.