Hour of the Witch(116)

“And so thou art accusing her of witchcraft?” asked Daniel Winslow.

“I am simply observing that this is not as clear as glass. Likewise, my husband has a history of violence that suggests a heart most susceptible to the temptations of Satan.”

“According to thee. We have seen no proof,” said Adams.

She held up her left hand, but the magistrates as one stared at her blankly.

“My point,” she said, “is that thou believest the worst of me, but seem not to consider the other possibilities. Catherine and Thomas may both be as innocent as baby lambs. Perhaps there is a third disciple of the Dark One we have not considered with appropriate gravity. But dost thou really want to have upon thy ledger the hanging death of an innocent woman?”

    “That is thy sole defense?” inquired Adams. “A threat?”

“Hast thou been listening? Of course not. It is but one small part of my defense.”

“?’Tis not small to accuse others of witchcraft, Mary,” the governor reminded her.

“I do not make such charges lightly. And I am not charging them, let us be clear. I am only asking that the possibility be entertained. Is it not conceivable that I am the target? Thou dost view me as the raptor, when, it seems, I am far more likely the field mouse in its talons.”

“Thou art no field mouse,” Adams chastised her. “And Catherine Stileman is not on trial. Nor is Thomas Deerfield. Thou art. Defend thyself. Do not suppose thou canst deflect attention away from thy crimes.”

The moment was moving too fast. She was unaccustomed to this sort of attention, but there was an idea dangling just beyond her reach, and she needed to grasp it. She stood there in silence for a long moment, concentrating.

“Mary?”

It was the voice of the governor.

“May I have but a minute, prithee?”

Her scrivener and her father came up beside her and started to speak, but she waved them aside.

“Mary Deerfield, hast thou anything more to say?” asked Endicott, ignoring her question.

She nodded. “I do,” she answered. The gist was close, so very close. And so she resumed her defense. “There also is this. I have said that I am not the hunter, but, arguably, the hunted. I have said that Thomas or Catherine should also be asked whether they may have been seduced by the Devil. But there is still another possibility that none of thee has considered. It is one I am only considering now.”

“Go on,” said Wilder.

    “Thou hast suggested that Thomas or Catherine was my target. I have suggested that I might be one of theirs…”

She paused briefly, because the puzzle was missing pieces. Still, she had to forge ahead. “But what if Thomas or Catherine was the target of someone—someone other than me? What if I am irrelevant, but a bystander, as is one of those two?”

“Thou art suggesting someone has a grievance with Catherine Stileman or Thomas Deerfield so profound that they have gone to the Devil?”

“I am. Again, it is speculation—”

“And groundless!” Adams snapped at her. “Canst thou give us one reason why someone would do such a thing? What in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ has either done to be subject to such venom from thy tongue?”

She could give no reason for Catherine. But certainly Thomas had behaved so abysmally around her that it was possible he had behaved equally badly around others. In the end, she had been unable to murder him. But might not someone else have been willing to try? A farmer he had wronged? A fellow he had met in a tavern? Someone else he had beaten?

And that was when she knew.

She knew.

It was the word beaten.

Yes, she was positive. The boiled apples and raisins. Perhaps Thomas had beaten his own daughter. Or maybe Peregrine had witnessed him beating her mother. Both prospects saddened Mary. They suggested that she herself was but the continuation of Thomas Deerfield’s violence. A legacy.

She considered raising up Peregrine’s name to try and save herself, but she couldn’t. She wouldn’t. No. Not after all that woman had likely endured.

“I have committed no crimes,” she said instead, rallying, her voice strong, no longer trying to hide her exasperation. It was over. So be it. She was going to die, and her fear and fury began to morph into resignation. “Sit on thy perch, gentlemen. Scowl at me and this world. I care for this life the Lord has given me, but Christ died at the hands of the unseeing, too.”

    “Art thou now adding heresy to thy crimes?” Adams asked, but Wilder gently touched the other magistrate’s sleeve and told him, “Caleb, she has done no such thing.”

“No,” Mary continued. “There was no room for Christ when He first came into our world and there was no room for Him when He died. He was scorned by authority and He was crucified because He demanded that the poor and the sinful and the children and the women be”—and she took a breath as she sought and found the correct word—“respected. Respected. The lowly for whom, just like Him, there was neither esteem nor hope. We separated and came here to this wilderness, and so far we have shown only that we are as flawed and mortal here as we were across the ocean. There is no act of horror or violence of which man is not capable. My husband stuck a fork in me and thou demandeth I live with him still. Hast thou seen the idea of charity we bestow upon the heathen? Hast thou examined the accounting ledgers of how and what we trade with them? We are scoundrels. We—”