Hour of the Witch(104)
* * *
On the second day of her imprisonment, despite the blistering cold, she was forced to undress for a panel of three women, including the midwife Susanna Downing, so they could search her body for the mark of the Devil. Susanna was a saint in good standing in her midforties, with silver hair and an aquiline nose. Mary had helped her bring into the world one of Peregrine’s two children. She was efficient, hardworking, and much respected, which was why the court had enlisted her to inspect Mary’s body. They studied her left leg and then her right, her back and her buttocks, her breasts, lifting them without ceremony, and then went to her arms and her hands.
One of the women with the midwife gasped when she saw the scar on the back of Mary’s left hand. “This may be a mark,” she said. Mary did not know her name, and Susanna had not introduced them. The midwife looked at the newer bruise and the older cicatrix and remarked, “No. This is but the work of the teakettle.”
Mary considered correcting her, but saw no point. She was shivering in her nakedness and didn’t want to prolong the humiliation. The other women accepted Susanna’s explanation.
When the examination was complete, the midwife offered the slightest of encouragements. “There’s nothing here,” she said, both to Mary and to her attendants. “I see no sign of the mark.”
Mary thanked her and got dressed. Her clothing, it seemed to her, stunk of stone and mildew already.
* * *
After four days, including the Sabbath, spent inside the jail on Prison Lane, Mary ached to see the world through more than the unglazed, barred window in her cell. In addition to the midwives sent to canvass her body for a sign of Satan, her visitors had included her parents every day and her scrivener, Benjamin Hull, every day but Sunday.
Thomas, it seemed, had had enough. The court had said that he, too, was allowed to see her but he had chosen not to. Mary was not in the least saddened by his absence. Nor was she surprised.
She prayed every day. Sometimes she prayed for forgiveness, other moments for guidance. Sometimes she prayed simply for help.
Her mother brought food and news, and would try to present her tales of the city with the same equanimity as if they were sewing together at one of their homes, but eventually she would break down and Mary would reassure her that all, in the end, would be well. The news was never about Henry Simmons, but Priscilla shared stories of the ships that were coming, new construction she had noticed, and people they had in common. Goody Cooper. The Hills. Peregrine and her children, whom Priscilla had seen in the marketplace, and how Jonathan had been spotted consorting in the night with sailors, and one of these days was sure to wind up in the stocks.
“They are an awful pair,” Priscilla said. “I know I demean myself when I discuss them, but thou needest to see that the apple fell not far from the tree: Peregrine is as vile as her father, and she married a man whose face, handsome as it is, hides a soul that is weak.”
“Why, Mother,” Mary said, unable to resist teasing her, “thou findest Jonathan Cooke fetching? I never knew.”
Priscilla scoffed. “Serpents shed their skins. Apparently, some replace them with masks that are comely. Jonathan. Peregrine. Thomas. I wish I had seen they were a nest of vipers before thou were wed into that family of snakes.”
“Peregrine and Jonathan’s children are sweet.”
“And the Lord God saw to it that the brood did not expand further.”
“Mother!”
She shook her head. “I feel no remorse. The world will be better off without another demon from that woman’s womb.”
And so, as Mary did often when her mother visited, she changed the subject. “What dost thou think of my jailer?” she asked.
“Spencer?” repeated Priscilla. “He is a quiet man. He is known for being fair with the prisoners who have to spend time here.”
She nodded. She considered pressing further, but the man was such an absolute cipher that she couldn’t even decide what to ask.
* * *
When Benjamin Hull would come to the prison, they would discuss her defense and how to save her life when she was brought, once again, before the Court of Assistants. But it seemed to Mary that she had been outplayed brilliantly by the servant girl. Mary supposed it was Catherine who had planted the forks and the coin in the pocket of her apron. Catherine was unaware that she had gone to Constance Winston’s on the morning she was arrested, but the servant girl had followed her one of the other times she had gone there, and told this, too, to the constable when she rushed to see him upon her supposed discovery of the forks and the coin. She had pointed out to them the matching Devil’s mark on the house’s doorframe. It was inevitable the constable would then search the house and find the note and her satchel.
This was a lot of evidence to overcome; Hull had been clear.
And, alas, Mary knew things she would never tell anyone, secrets that Constance and Esther Hawke knew, but nobody else. She had planned to murder her husband. She had planned that Catherine be tried for the crime. The fact that she had come to her senses and changed her mind in no way diminished the possibility that the Devil had His claws inside her and she was possessed—that she deserved to be hanged and hope, for reasons that were inscrutable, that God would spare her the flames that most likely loomed.