Hour of the Witch(102)

“Nothing in particular,” he answered vaguely.

“So, thou hast not heard of any vessels that have been lost?”

“I have not,” he replied, and he coughed against the chill in the air.

Thomas, who was walking beside her, glanced at her, his eyes narrow and curious. But he said nothing.

And no one noticed but her when, over dinner, Catherine helped Hannah and Abigail serve, and Catherine seemed to linger over Thomas and his trencher when she brought him more venison. It was as if he were a rose and she wanted to inhale its aroma.



* * *





    That night, when the two of them were upstairs in their bedstead, Thomas asked Mary, “Since when didst thou become so interested in the shipping news?”

“I have always been interested in my father’s calling.”

“I grant thee, it is more interesting than mine. I will try not to take offense.” Then he blew out the lone candle, and Mary thought that would end the matter. But in the dark of the room he murmured, his tone ominous, “And while I believe there is mostly white meat behind thine eyes, I have told thee before that I know there is a sliver of something more. Something dark and serpentine. Something prideful. I have tried to break thee, the way one must a wild horse. But Mary?”

She stared up at the dark, blank ceiling.

“That is the part of thee that may lead thee to the gallows,” he said.

She took this in and remained silent.

“I know thou art awake,” he growled.

“I am.”

“And?”

“Art thou accusing thine own wife of possession? If so, what have I done to earn such disparagement?”

“I know only thou art scheming. But when I know more? When I unearth the wickedness in thy heart? A teakettle will be the least of thy worries.”

She considered asking him why he didn’t just kill her tonight so Catherine could have him to herself, but she restrained herself. First of all, she didn’t know if there was even a twinge of reciprocity, whether he cared for the servant in the slightest; second, she rather hoped that he did like her.

The two of them deserved each other.



* * *





Finally, just before the New Year, the Amity docked. It was a Thursday. The ship arrived in the late afternoon, the sun already descending behind Beacon Hill. No one brought Mary word. She learned because every day after dinner she had walked to the harbor, except for when she and Thomas had supper with her parents and she could ask her father directly what vessels were coming and going, questions she hoped suggested no agenda but avarice.

    But that Thursday she saw a large brigantine tied up at the edge of the wharf, the sails on its two great masts furled, and she asked a sailor its name. He told her, and not caring that she might further worry Valentine Hill if he saw her, she went directly to the older man’s warehouse and tracked down Henry. Valentine had already gone home, but Henry was still there. He told her that it was too late in the day to unload the ship, and so the work would commence in the morning. (This assumed, he added, that the sailors did not become drink-drunk that night to the point where they were incapable of working at sunrise.) The ship would be reloaded with New England exports during the afternoon and set sail on Saturday.

“Art thou having second thoughts?” he asked her, his hands on her arms.

“I have none.”

“I have none, either,” he assured her, smiling broadly and with a confidence that was contagious. “By the time anyone knows thou art alive, we will be living in England, and Thomas will divorce thee for desertion. It won’t matter who is in league with Lucifer. We will have an ocean between us and thy servant girl and the likes of Goody Howland.”

“And, once I am divorced, we will wed.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “We will wed.”



* * *





On Friday morning, she bundled up against the cold and went visiting. She left after breakfast, not caring that she was leaving Catherine with more than her share of the daily chores, and savored the blue sky as she walked. There were no clouds, only plumes of smoke from the chimneys that rose like plumb lines through the still air. She saw her mother, and though her mother was surprised, she did not deduce Mary’s real reason for dropping by: a daughter’s desire to see her mother for what might not be the last time, but with certainty would be the last time for a long time. Then she went to say hello to Rebeckah Cooper. She still wondered about her involvement with the boiled apples and the raisins, and her friendship with Peregrine, but the woman remained the closest thing she had to a real friend. Again, Mary strove not to signal her departure. But when she left the goodwife’s, she found her eyes welling up.

    Finally, she ventured to the Neck to bid farewell to Constance Winston. She did not go inside the home the way she had at her mother’s and Goody Cooper’s, because she needed to be back midday for dinner. But she stood before the front door of the house, and when it was clear to Constance that she was not coming inside, the other woman pulled on a hooded cape and joined her outside.

“Thou art leaving Boston,” she said.

“Why wouldst thou think that?” Mary asked, a little shocked by Constance’s intuition.