The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane

by Katherine Howe

  Over the shoulders and heads of the townsfolk she could just see the row of accused women, their hands clasped together in chains, heads bowed, standing immobile before the raised platform of judges, with the railed box of jurymen off to one side. Deliverance was the second from the left; Mercy recognized the dress that her mother had been wearing when Jonas Oliver took her away, though it was now browned, splotched with filth, and torn in places. Mercy edged around the back corner of the room, keeping her eyes locked on her mother’s back. As she climbed over the legs crowding the aisle, she saw Deliverance glance quickly over her shoulder, meeting Mercy’s gaze with a tired face showing blurred relief and dismay.

  “Watch yahself, gahl!” growled a grizzled man, his clothes reeking of fish. He rubbed his shin and stared at her accusingly. She murmured an apology and continued to creep through the crowded pews, wishing to reach the far front corner of the room, where she might see her mother’s face. All around her swirled snippets of gossip and conversation, none seemingly tied to a particular person, but all arising as a whole from the observing crowd.

  “…ne’er ha’ thought Rebecca Nurse would do…”

  “…came to hah in the night, the very image o’ her, ridden on a broomstick, with a candle in the straws…”

  “…an’ her eight children gone, born then withered in her arms…”

  “…for suckling devils and imps, they said…”

  “…vengeful scold, and I seen it too…”

  Mercy’s eyes darted from face to face in the crowd, and all of them—wrinkled, toothless men, fresh young matrons, lace-collared gentlefolk, ruddy-cheeked children—all were contorted with biliousness, mouths opening and shutting like angry fish snapping at shreds of flesh in the water.

  Mercy reached the far corner of the meetinghouse, pressing her shoulder against the wall and balling her fists together in her apron. Behind the row of the accused, in the front pew, at the very center of the whole room’s breathless attention, sat a passel of girls about her own age, some a little older, quite a few even younger, wringing their hands and writhing about, squealing and carrying on. Mercy scowled. She knew one or two of them. That Ann Putnam, she knew her, and Lord forgive her, but how she loathed that girl. Proud and flighty, never first with a new thought, but always embraced others’ notions with the loudest voice. Mercy’s nostrils flared. Ann was a mite older than the other girls; oughtn’t she to be in better straits?

  Of the accused women, apart from her mother Mercy recognized only two: Sarah Good, a common enough sight in both Salem Town and Salem Village, roaming the streets with her little girl, raving and distracted. Even now she stood, eyes rolling, mouth slack, one hand twitching. Mercy had always been a little afraid of Sarah Good, and her wild infant was known to squall and bite. She wondered where little Dorcas was. A scan of the assembly did not reveal her. Then, on her mother’s other side, Mercy recognized with some surprise the wizened stoop of Rebecca Nurse—and she a full church member! A godly woman, known to all, and not for a witch neither.

  She being accused, why, the judges must forbear to carry forth this madness, Mercy thought in her father’s voice. How she wished that her father were here. His word had carried weight in the Village. He would know what must be done. He would never loiter in the house ’til past time for the trial to begin.

  As these thoughts traveled through Mercy’s mind the conference among the judges drew to a close, and one of them—“John Hathorne, him who was a magistrate afore,” according to a whisper a few rows behind where Mercy stood—spoke to someone seated in the pew just opposite the wailing girls with a few curt words, too quietly spoken to reach the farthest gallery.

  Mercy squinted—her eyes did not always focus on the same point all at once—and saw a bony, aged man, his bald head speckled with liver spots, get to his feet. Judge Hathorne spread his hands in a gesture of calm and quietude, and a wave of shushing traveled from the front rows of the meetinghouse, washing over the assembled populace and then breaking in a coil up against the farthest walls. As quiet overlaid the assembly, the man started to speak. Mercy strained to hear what he said.

  “…long suspected Goody Dane of sorcery,” he was saying when the whispers finally died enough for Mercy to hear him. “My fears were most horribly confirmed on a night these ten years ago, in which my poor daughter Martha died at the hands of some diabolical mischief whilst Goody Dane was ministering to her.”

  At this the pewful of girls broke out squealing and wailing, and Ann Putnam rose to her feet with a scream, pointing at Deliverance and crying, “I ha’ seen it! Her very image is come to me in the night, and she saith ‘I killed Martha Petford, and if you call out on me I shall kill you, too!’”

  The crowd gasped, and a few of the other girls burst forth with their own revelation of Deliverance’s threats and recriminations. “She came in at my window, brandishing her fiery broom!” one screamed, as another cried, “And at mine! She bade me come to her wicked sabbaths and sign my name in the Devil’s book!”

  Lieutenant Governor Stoughton, his wattles quivering in rage, pounded on the library table with a gavel as one of the girls fell over fainting, and Ann Putnam, her voice rising, added, “Aye! And she bade me take off my clothes, and showed me a specter of my father all dressed in winding sheets, and saith I must go with her, lest my father be kilt as well!”

  Hands reached forth to restrain the flailing Ann, who seemed to be tearing at the collar of her dress, as someone lifted up the fainting girl and smacked her gently on the cheeks until her eyelids started to flutter. Governor Stoughton rose from his seat, smashing down the gavel and bellowing, “Abominable! Abominable! I shall hear what the accused has to say for herself!”

  And at this the crowd quieted, loath to miss what Deliverance might say. As a body they leaned forward, holding their breath. Mercy knotted her fists more tightly together under her apron, lest her rage and indignation result in an unwanted and uncontrollable effect. “She lies,” Mercy hissed under her breath. “She never had nowt to do with us! She lies!”

  Down in the space before the bench, Deliverance seemed to be surveying the faces of the judges and of the crowd at either side of her. Next to her Mercy saw Rebecca Nurse reach a gentle, wrinkled hand up to stroke Deliverance along her arm. Deliverance drew herself up marginally taller, lifting her chin, and even from as far away as she stood, Mercy could see how her mother had grown thin over the past months, and older looking, too. Beneath her eyes were deep purplish circles, and her hair looked more watery and gray. The color drained a little from Deliverance’s eyes, leaving them a cold pale blue, and she began to speak.

  “Lo these ten years ago I were called to the side of Goodman Petford’s daughter, Martha, who was in her fits and much aggrieved,” Deliverance began. The crowd grew silent, listening. “I made to attend to her, thinking she were ill, and so I gave her some physick which I had brought with me, and I prayed o’er her into the night.”

  “But ’tis readily acknowledged that a witch cannot complete her prayers!” cried an unseen person in the gallery.

  “I pray every day,” Deliverance said quietly, and Mercy observed a flutter of doubt passing through the belly of the crowd. She brought her hands out from beneath her apron and clasped them together under her chin, eyes wide, waiting.

  Deliverance paused, looking down at her chained hands, and up again at the waiting bench of judges. Mercy wondered what she was thinking and tried to focus her attention squarely on her mother’s face, listening. She could not perceive it. Her mother swallowed, licked her lips, and then said, “Goodman Petford, he ha’ lost his wife barely some months afore his daughter’s fits, and I ha’ long believed that”—she cast a sidelong glance at Peter Petford, who was seated, staring at her with unconcealed malice—“that his grief like to ha’ colored his thinking of the facts.”

  “And did the child die that night?” asked another of the judges, identified by the whisperer behind Mercy as “Jonathan Corwin, him who ha
’ taken the place of Nathaniel Saltonstall, that war so distraught with the hanging of the Bishop woman.”

  “Alas, so she did,” Deliverance said. “Whilst I held her in my arms.”

  Peter Petford’s jaw was quivering, color creeping up his face.

  The same judge, Corwin, leaned forward on his elbows and leveled his gaze at Deliverance. “And was the gahl ill? Or war she bewitched withal?”

  Deliverance’s eyes shifted left and right, her nostrils quivering, and Mercy felt a sinking dread grip her entrails. “She were bewitched, of a sort,” Deliverance allowed. “I have testified so in court, when I sued to clear my sullied name, and I will not go against it now.”

  “And how came you to know that she war bewitched? Who might the culprit be, if it is not you?” the judge pressed, one wiry eyebrow rising wickedly.

  “That I cannot say, sir,” Deliverance whispered. “I know not the machinations of it. But God in His wisdom and goodness sometimes reveals things to me, if I beseech Him thus, that I may better serve Him.”

  “God?” said Judge Corwin. “You speak to God, Goody Dane?”

  “I believe that all God’s children may speak to Him,” Deliverance said, shifting her eyes to the cluster of ministers who sat observing the proceedings. One or two of them were nodding, but a few sat with their arms folded, glowering.

  “Now, Goodwife Dane,” broke in another of the judges, but the whispering voice did not tell its companion the name of this one, at least not loudly enough for Mercy to overhear. “How can you be sure it is the Almighty God who reveals these things to you?”

  “Sir?” Deliverance asked, voice confused.

  “Him whose machinations you yourself claim not to know. How came you to believe that this is the work of our Savior?” he asked, drawing his hand along his chin, as if stroking an imaginary beard, and gazing at her with the smug face of a man who thinks he is about to win an argument against a child. “Could you not in fact be serving the Devil, who deludes you with promises of wealth or fame, and tells you to pretend that you do the work of God?” The crowd responded with impressed murmurs, heads grouping together, nodding.

  Deliverance appeared to think for a moment, and then raising her voice so that all could hear her clearly, said, “For He created all the Heavens and the Earth. I believe that there is nothing in this world or the next that is not the work of God.”

  The crowd hissed and muttered, casting dubious glances at her, and Mercy heard a bitter whisper behind her say Sacrilege!

  Governor Stoughton, eyebrows raised in surprise, said, “Why, Goodwife Dane, surely you believe in the Devil? And that he has been working his vile sorceries on the innocents in Salem Village, through his loyal servants here on earth?”

  The room paused, waiting. She said nothing. Governor Stoughton continued. “You would not say that this court is deluded in its object, would you, Goodwife Dane?”

  “I am afraid that I would, sir, or else that the Devil achieves his object through the condemnation of the innocent, and not the railings of these wicked, distracted girls,” said Deliverance, closing her eyes as the crowd bellowed and the girls screamed out in rage, surging toward the chained women before the bench, held back only by the crush of several men and ministers who had been seated near the front of the room.

  “I see him!” screamed Ann Putnam, pointing, her face empurpled and bursting with fury. “There! A black demon whispers in Goody Dane’s ear! Cannot you see him? There! He stands just there!”

  The hubbub in the meetinghouse rose to a furious level, and for a time Mercy, huddled against the support of the church wall, could not hear what was being said. She saw her mother standing quiet and still, with Rebecca Nurse whispering something into her ear, as the other accused women crowded up against them, cringing away from the rushing, screaming, grasping bodies all around them. The judges had bent their heads together, hands gesticulating, fingers jabbing into one another’s chests. There seemed to be some sort of disagreement amongst them, but within a few moments the discord had passed, and they regained their seats. Governor Stoughton banged his gavel to signal that the crowd must get ahold of itself long enough for him to pronounce judgment.

  “Susannah Martin,” he intoned as the crowd simmered, “Sarah Wildes, Rebecca Nurse, Sarah Good, Elizabeth Howe, and Deliverance Dane. Pursuant to the evidence presented here against you, that your specters have come to these girls in the dead of night, besieging them and demanding that they serve the Devil, that diverse ones of you are found by trustworthy examination to have unnatural teats whereby to give suck to hideous imps, that several of you have been seen to quarrel with your neighbors and then cause damage to their persons or their property through invisible means, and that you have been observed here in congress with devils and yet deny the truth of that statement, we hereby find you guilty of the crime of witchcraft and so sentence you to be hanged by the neck until dead.”

  Mercy screamed out in horror. Governor Stoughton banged the gavel down on the library table as the meetinghouse exploded in cries of relief and dismay, several onlookers wailing, “God be praised! We shall be delivered!” as the afflicted girls trembled and shook.

  “See how she comes!” cried Ann Putnam. “Goody Dane sends her spirit out to strike me! It is not I, Goody Dane, who condemns you! It is not I!” She huddled down, hands held over her head as if to fend off a blow. Mercy threw her gaze at the cowering girl, and without thought hurled a ball of pure intention in the direction of the sniveling wretch, whose head rocked back as if she had been slapped. A bright scarlet welt rose across her face, and Ann Putnam started to cry.

  Mercy looked up from the hysterical girl and met her mother’s cool eyes. To her surprise Deliverance did not look angry or afraid. As the warden led the chained and weeping women to the waiting cart outside, Mercy reflected that if anything, her mother seemed only sad.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Salem, Massachusetts

  Early September

  1991

  CONNIE EASED THE HANDLE OF THE HOSPITAL ROOM DOOR DOWNWARD, feeling the click of the bolt withdrawing through the metal, and slipped silently into the room. The bed nearest the door was empty, its mattress folded back on itself, naked pillows stacked at the foot. She crept toward the farther bed, careful not to disturb the sleeping occupant within. He had so little opportunity to sleep.

  In the bed lay a muscular young man, one leg still encased in plaster from the knee down. He lay on his back, mouth just open, breath moving over his lips with a gentle whisper. His hair was swept back from his brow, and even in sleep his eyes were bracketed by lines etched by years of smiling. Connie rolled up the doctor’s examining chair so that it was positioned by the bed. She rested her chin in her hands, watching him. His eyelids twitched in a dream, and his mouth fell open with a quiet snore. The doctors had taken out his nose ring, and without it he looked younger, less dangerous.

  She allowed her eyes to travel down his body, tracing the pattern of a stark black Celtic tattoo that ringed his upper arm—a college indiscretion, he had called it—and roving to his chest, down his muscled arms, until they took in the soft straps that bound his wrists to the metal frame of the bed.

  Oh, Sam, she thought.

  “Connie, I want you to know that we would understand,” his mother had said over coffee the previous week.

  “Understand?” Connie had asked, confused. “Understand what?”

  Linda Hartley turned her coffee mug between her hands, not meeting Connie’s eyes. “Sam’s father and I—we would understand if this was all a little…much for you,” she said.

  She’s giving me permission to break up with him, Connie realized. Not that she had any intention of doing so.

  “It’s not,” Connie responded, meeting Linda’s gaze.

  Now she listened to the silence in the hospital room, broken only by the occasional muffled announcement of the loudspeaker system in the hallway. Sam’s chest rose with a sigh, shifting the thin sheet, and C
onnie reached forward with two fingers to ease it back into place. He did not stir.

  Though she longed to talk to him, it was probably fortuitous that he was asleep, at least for now. Connie opened her shoulder bag, sliding out the small glass bottle that she had carried up with her from the Milk Street house, together with one of the note cards from Granna’s recipe collection. The one with no title.

  If anyone catches me at this, they will think I’ve lost my mind, Connie reflected, her mouth flattening into a grim line. And that goes for Sam, too.

  She looked back to his sleeping face. He was scowling now. A bad dream. Flurries of tension moved across his eyelids, and Connie told herself that she should act quickly.

  She pushed the long sleeves of her T-shirt up over her elbows and rolled a length of paper towel out of the dispenser on the wall. Spreading the paper out on the windowsill behind her, Connie set the dusty bottle on the paper and removed its stopper. She padded back to the door of the hospital room, easing it open and looking up and down the corridor, checking for nurses, doctors, Sam’s parents—anyone who might happen upon her. A knot of teenage candy stripers giggled together at the far end of the hallway, but otherwise it was deserted, fluorescent lights reflecting on the scrubbed linoleum floor. Connie clicked the door closed.

  She sneaked back to the bed where Sam slept, his arms straining momentarily against the restraints. In the back of her mind Connie wondered when Sam’s rest would break apart; at any moment his body could seize up, rocking into muscle spasms and dragging him up out of his sleep. Her heartbeat tripped a little faster, sending adrenaline tingling down her arms and legs as she got to her knees under the metal bed.