Hour of the Witch(10)
In hindsight, Mary knew, all of those suitors would have been more fitting than a man such as Thomas, and the marriages more advantageous to her and to her family. But she didn’t have so many choices here. They as a family didn’t have so many choices here. Yes, there were more men than women in Boston, but either they had not joined the church or they were adventurers or they lacked the means and social rank to marry the daughter of James Burden.
Her mother stood before her now in her and Thomas’s parlor in the middle of the morning in the middle of the week, days after Thomas had thrown her into the hearth, with a small bolt of the most extraordinary lace Mary had seen here in New England under her arm, and eight silver forks, each the size and rough shape of a spoon, in her hands. She understood instantly that a ship her father had been expecting had docked and that her mother was going to give her some of the lace, but she couldn’t imagine what she was supposed to do with the forks. She and Thomas already had a pair of large, two-pronged carving forks, of course, one of which was silver. But these smaller versions with three prongs? She’d heard of these utensils with three tines and she knew they were tools of the Devil. She was considering saying something to that effect to her mother, when her mother anticipated what she was thinking, put the ivory lace down on the table so her daughter and Catherine could admire it, and said, “Governor Winthrop had a fork himself, my child.”
“What for?”
Her mother raised an eyebrow and smiled. “He may not always have used it, but he didn’t hide it. His son has it now.”
“But why wouldst thou want to try such a thing? Why wouldst thou want me to?”
“Father says they are growing more common back home now.”
“I rather doubt that. Back home now they have better things to do than invite temptation with the Devil’s tines.”
“A small trunk with some was just unloaded in Father’s storehouse. People will use them, Mary, even here.”
Mary was about to scoop up the forks and hand them back to her mother when Catherine put aside the lace and picked up a single one and made motions in the air as if she were spooning stew.
“Like this?” she asked.
“I believe that’s the way,” said Mary’s mother. “It can also spear the meat to hold it in place.”
“So, thou wouldst not put the knife down, then? One would move it to thine other hand for cutting?”
“I think so.”
Mary watched her mother and Catherine grin at the notion. She couldn’t believe it, her father importing forks! This time she didn’t hesitate: she lifted the forks from the table and took the one in her servant girl’s hand. “Thomas won’t abide forks in this house and neither will I,” she said, handing the silverware to her mother.
But her mother smiled at her in a fashion that was almost devilish and put them on the cupboard shelf. “Thou wilt come around, little dove. I promise thee. These are not inducements from Satan; they are but gifts from thy parents.”
* * *
Mary had errands in the city that afternoon, and though she hadn’t a reason to walk as far as the wharves at the town cove, she did. She saw the anchored ship that had arrived with her father’s consignments and stood there, inhaling the salt air and savoring the cool breeze off the ocean. There was a skin of sloke on the surface, and algae was clinging to the beams of the pier. The planks on the dock wobbled beneath her shoes, and like a small girl she allowed herself to rock back and forth on them as if this were a game.
Finally, she walked to the edge of the pier and gazed at the water in the harbor. She knew, because her father had told her, that a mere twenty years ago if she had knelt on this wood and run a net through the sea, she would have caught fish; if she had stood at the shore and bent down, with a single swipe she would have pulled from the sand a mussel or a clam. It took more work now. Not a lot, and certainly the fishing was easier here than in England, but the city was growing fast. Already the lobsters were gone from the salty channels just inside the beaches; a person had to wade out a bit now to catch them.
There was a shallop in the water, the oarsmen rowing the small craft in through the waves from a large schooner moored a quarter mile distant. There was another ship unloading at the next dock, and she—along with some little boys who seemed to have arrived out of nowhere—watched the sailors at work. The men were tanned and young, and though it was autumn and there was wind in the air, the sun was still high and the crates and casks were heavy, and so she could see the sweat on their faces and bare arms. She knew she had come here to watch them: this was the reason she had walked this far. But she didn’t believe this was a sin or the men had been placed here as a temptation. Visiting the wharf was rather, she decided, like watching a hummingbird or a hawk or savoring the roses that grew through the stone wall at the edge of her vegetable garden. These men—the fellow with the blond, wild eyebrows or the one with the shoulders as broad as a barrel and a back that she just knew under his shirt was sleek and muscled and hairless—were made by God, too, and in her mind they were mere objects of beauty on which she might gaze for a moment before resuming her chores. She could admit to herself that what she experienced here was akin to lust, but she also reassured herself that it was not precisely that cancerous or venal.
Still, she understood that if someone ever did inquire why she was here, she would reply that she had come in search of her father or she was on her way to her father’s storehouse. It wasn’t the truth, but she knew that people could be petty and some would try to read more into her occasional forays here than was either accurate or appropriate.