Hour of the Witch(106)

Mary looked back and forth between the two men. She couldn’t bear her mother’s despondent face. “Then what of this,” she suggested. “Perhaps I wrote the note precisely because I was bewitched by someone. Someone planted the forks in the autumn as part of a plot to poison me. Perhaps we argue at the Town House that this person succeeded: this person poisoned my mind and my judgment.”

“And this person is that wicked child, Catherine Stileman?” her mother asked.

“Most likely, it was her,” the scrivener said. “But Mary and I have come up with other names with other grudges and other grievances.”

“All unfounded,” said Mary, as if this mattered. But she wanted her parents to know that the likes of Goody Howland and Isaac Willard had no justifiable complaint with her.

“Dost thou harbor doubts that Catherine has earned such an accusation?” asked Priscilla.

“I do.”

“Why? She is a vile creature!”

Mary took a breath and answered, “She may be. But that does not make her a handmaiden of Satan. But a few ideas dawned on me yesterday. Obviously, I have little to do here but pray and think.”

“Go on,” said her father.

“First of all, we do not know that the spell with the forks and the pestle was meant for me.”

“Of course we do!” her mother insisted.

“No, we don’t. The target could have been the girl herself. It could have been Thomas. It could have been Thomas and me—as man and wife. Tell me something, Benjamin.”

“Prithee, ask.”

“Just as Thomas could be a target, could he not also be the hunter? Why have none of us considered that it is Thomas who has conspired with the Devil? Why is not he a most willing acolyte?”

    Everyone in the cell looked at her, and the room went quiet.

“I’m serious,” said Mary. “Couldn’t he have buried the forks? Couldn’t he have carved the mark of the Devil into the doorframe? Is it not his house?”

“He’s”—and Hull stammered—“he’s a man.”

“Does the Devil discriminate? I had no idea.”

“No, of course, He doesn’t,” Hull said. “I just meant…”

“I know what thou meant. But the four of us know this, too: that man is a terror. If anyone has shown signs of possession, it’s one who will plunge a fork into another’s hand. Thou knowest but a small dollop of his cruelties.”

“Dost thou wish to accuse him—and not Catherine?” her father asked.

“I don’t wish to accuse anyone!”

“But thou must,” said Priscilla.

“We shall see. But Mother? I have thought on this much. Prithee, know that I am prepared to fight. I am. Not because I expect still to be breathing come spring, but because, for better or worse, it is how the Lord hath made me.”

“Continue,” her father said.

“If I fail, which we all know is what we must expect, I will take comfort in the knowledge that our Lord knows my sorrow and feels my grief. He felt the sting of every thorn in His son’s final crown. He felt the bite from every Roman lash. He felt the agony of each and every Roman nail. That is where love and lamentation chance upon one another, and that is where we find God.”

Priscilla sank to the floor, crying, and James and Mary knelt beside her. Mary kissed her mother’s wet cheeks. She whispered into her ear, “I have been tempted by the Devil. But in the end, I resisted. I have faith that God knows what is in my heart and—if it comes to this—will feel the noose and be saddened.”





She lost her baby, the infant taken, in my opinion, due to the spite that exudes like sweat from the skin of Mary Deerfield.

    —The Testimony of Beth Howland, from the Records and Files of the Court of Assistants, Boston, Massachusetts, 1663, Volume I





Thirty-Five



Mary walked with Benjamin Hull down the dark passageway that led to the front door with its imposing iron spikes, allowed outside in public for the first time in days. She was wearing clothes her mother’s girls had cleaned for her, and they didn’t stink of her or the rocks of her prison.

Hull reassured Mary that he had rounded up witnesses who were going to speak well of her goodness and faith, including the Reverend John Eliot, who would speak of her work with the Hawkes. Much of it was going to come down to her word against Catherine Stileman’s, but that supposed, in the end, that Mary was willing to fling charges at the girl that could result in the servant’s death. And Mary was not sure that she was capable of testifying, without proof, that Catherine was possessed and deserved to be executed. She loathed the girl, but she had learned when she had overturned Thomas’s tankard with its poison that she was not capable of murder.

At least Catherine knew nothing about the wolfsbane. No one allied against her did. Not even her scrivener, because she had seen no reason to tell him. The only people who knew were an excommunicant couple in Natick and Constance Winston. And neither, for different reasons, was the sort to share their secrets with a Boston magistrate.



* * *





Despite the fresh clothes, Mary knew how poorly she looked the moment she met her mother at the base of the stairs at the Town House. She could see it in Priscilla’s eyes. Mary tried to calm her with a joke, remarking, “Once I am acquitted, Thomas will want no part of me. He’ll divorce me and I’ll get my wish yet. It simply will have taken a bit longer than we expected.” But her mother didn’t smile, and the captain of the guard did not allow Mary to dawdle with her parents. He pushed her up the steps and her parents followed.