Hour of the Witch(110)

Again, there was a small tumult in the Town House, and it was the last thing that Mary heard before, mercifully, she passed out and collapsed onto the floor.





Thou accused him falsely of plunging the Devil’s tines into thy hand…

    —The Remarks of Magistrate Caleb Adams, from the Records and Files of the Court of Assistants, Boston, Massachusetts, 1663, Volume I





Thirty-Six



The trial paused, but not for long. Mary’s mother and father rushed to her side, and quickly she was sitting up between them, resting against her father and Benjamin Hull, while her mother was looking into her face. She had been unconscious for barely a moment.

“My darling,” her mother was murmuring, “my darling.”

She nodded at Hull that she was fine—or she supposed, as fine as any woman could be who was about to be hanged—but her scrivener nevertheless stood up and asked the magistrates if they might recess the proceedings until after dinner.

Adams leaned over the bench and looked at Mary, his countenance dismissive. “We have just begun, Benjamin. Dinner is hours away. Mary’s eyes seem open and alert.”

Mary took a breath and said, “Yes, we can proceed. I am sorry. Suddenly I felt lightheaded.” She restrained herself from adding that she had been fed little but corn gruel and moldy cheese in the jail, and had subsisted mostly on the bread and meat that her parents had carried in. She stood with her father’s assistance.

“Very well,” said Adams, and he glanced at the men on the bench. “I have no more questions for the girl. Dost thou have any?”

“I do,” said Richard Wilder. “Catherine, tell us, prithee, of specific occasions when thy mistress was cruel to thee.”

The girl seemed surprised. She shook her head and replied, “She was never cruel to me. She was usually kind to me.”

“Very good,” said Wilder.

“And toward her husband?” asked Adams. “I want us to be sure that we have clarity.”

    “My mistress’s evil intentions were directed at her husband, not at me.”

“Didst thou witness her cruelty toward Thomas Deerfield?” Daniel Winslow asked.

“Yes: the witchcraft. The Devil’s tines.”

“Other than that?” pressed Wilder, perhaps Mary’s lone supporter.

Catherine inhaled, and Mary wondered if she were trying to concoct a fabrication or honestly thinking long and hard on her life with the Deerfields. But if she were planning to lie, it seemed that she couldn’t sew one on the spot that would withstand the rigors of reality given Thomas’s size, viciousness, and unwillingness to tolerate insubordination. And so she answered, “Her cruelty, I suppose, was her pact with the Devil.”

“Nothing more?”

“I stand by my words.”

“And those are most powerful,” Adams reassured her. “Thou mayest return to thy home, unless anyone else has additional questions.”

No one did. The court was finished with Catherine, and Mary watched the girl skulk past her as she went to the stairs, but she looked up and their eyes met. Mary saw no shame there. She thought, just maybe, that she had seen sadness and regret that it had come to this, but she couldn’t be sure.



* * *





The constable spoke next while they waited for Goody Howland and Constance Winston. He was a portly man, reminiscent in shape of John Eliot, but he was younger and had a more bulbous nose. His hair was deep brown, but his beard was showing the first flecks of white. His name was Stalwart Thames, and Mary knew that he was aware of her husband’s tippling and did not approve. But he had never brought Thomas home or seen that he was disciplined for being drink-drunk.

“Thou saw the Devil’s mark in the doorframe to the house?” Adams was asking him.

    “I did. It matched the image on the coin,” he replied.

“How dost thou know that Mary Deerfield carved it there?” Wilder asked. “We have neither witness nor confession.”

“I agree. But here is what we do have. We have the fact that Catherine Stileman saw Mary Deerfield last autumn in the night with the Devil’s tines. Mary does not dispute this. Then we have Catherine discovering the Devil’s tines and a Devil’s coin in Mary’s apron. We have the verse from the Bible that Mary seems to have corrupted for her malignant spell. Finally, we have a letter she wrote that suggests she is contemplating self-murder, which suggests madness—which may suggest possession.”

“Thou art a fine constable, Stalwart,” observed Wilder. “But art thou an expert on possession?”

“No. I am grateful that I have seen little of it.”

“I must admit, I am not either. And so here is an inconsistency that baffles me. Why would Mary Deerfield have wanted to summon the Devil to assist in the murder of her husband and wished to take her own life?”

“I am only telling thee what we found, sir.”

Wilder nodded, his point made. Then he asked the constable whether he had ever had reason before to seek discipline for Mary Deerfield, but Mary had never run afoul of the law and so they devoted little time to this line of questioning. Even Adams had nothing to add. And so they dismissed the constable and brought forward Valentine Hill. Her scrivener had told her that he could not predict the old man’s testimony: he did not approve of his nephew and rightfully viewed any relationship he had with Mary as sacrilegious. But he was a great friend of the Burden family, and Hull assured her that her father and Valentine had spoken at length the day before, and James had pleaded on her and Henry’s behalf.