Hour of the Witch(13)

“What sort of behavior? What was I doing?”

“I saw thee with that boy,” she said, and she waved her hand dismissively at the servant with the apples, already across the street and on his way down the road. “How well dost thou know him?”

“I only just learned his name!”

“Thy relations seemed overly familiar.”

“He was worried I’d been hit by a cart.”

Beth sighed and stared out at the ocean. “It appeared to be something quite different.”

“A pool of water will bend a straight stick. Thou knowest that. What thou saw—”

“I’m sure what thou art saying is true,” Beth continued, interrupting her, and it was clear that Beth did not believe a word she had said. “I’m just peeved because of William. But I can give thee my guarantee: people will babble if thou dost continue to behave in such ways. We know what we have seen of thee of late. Dallying with the likes of that lad? I urge thee to be careful. Thou dost not want to dishonor thy Lord, thy husband, or thy family.”

“My family—”

“Thomas, then. Will Catherine be by later?” she asked, changing the subject both because she didn’t want to discuss this any longer and because she wanted to know what kind of help she could expect with her dying servant.

“She will, yes. I’ll see to it,” Mary answered.

“I thank thee,” Beth said.

“Art thou going home? If so, we can walk together.”

“I’m not. I have things to do,” she said. “Good day.” Then she turned and continued on her way without offering another word.





Cruelty may be defined as violence without provocation and discipline that is excessive.

    —The Remarks of Magistrate Richard Wilder, from the Records and Files of the Court of Assistants, Boston, Massachusetts, 1662, Volume III





Five



Mary’s daughter-in-law, Peregrine, was friendly with Rebeckah Cooper, but she wasn’t quite as close to the young goodwife as Mary was. Mary considered Rebeckah her best friend. Still, the other two women had something in common Mary was unlikely to share with either: children. They each had two. And so Mary was not surprised when she visited Rebeckah and found Peregrine already there. The small yard in the front of the Cooper house was a chaotic and rather happy frenzy: four small children who, that moment, could not be corralled by their mothers. One of the women had made a circle from a vine and dangled it from a low tree branch, and the young ones were trying (and largely failing) to toss through it rags filled with dirt and tied into balls. Mostly they were running around the vine and tossing the rags at one another, shrieking with laughter.

“Mary,” Rebeckah said when she saw her, “this is a treat!”

“I hope thou meant this pumpkin,” she replied, and she handed her friend the gourd, which she had needed both arms to carry. She guessed it weighed easily twenty pounds. “I also have a recipe that one of my mother’s servant girls invented. It was delicious.”

“One of the girls? Abigail?” asked Peregrine.

Mary nodded. Then Peregrine looked at her, her eyes intense and narrow, and embraced her. “Thy bruise hast healed nicely,” she said softly when their faces were close.

“What was that?” asked Rebeckah. “Didst thou have a bruise?”

Peregrine released her and took a step back, and Mary felt the other woman surveying her—all of her—in a fashion she could not decipher.

    “Thomas was trying to help a few Saturdays distant and accidentally hit me with the spider,” Mary told Rebeckah. “It was nothing.”

“Where?”

“Thou canst not see it anymore. I’m fine.”

Rebeckah pointed at her older child, her five-year-old son, who was holding one of the balls just beyond the reach of the three girls, as each of them kept jumping to try and snag it. “That lad? Conked me in the mouth with one of his father’s tankards when he was carrying it to the bucket and I was bending down to get a spoon. I thought he had knocked out a tooth. Men and boys are a hazard in the kitchen,” she said, and she laughed.

“They are,” Mary agreed. She looked toward Peregrine, assuming that she would be laughing, too, but she wasn’t. Maybe she hadn’t heard Rebeckah or maybe she was focused solely on her older daughter, who couldn’t reach that homemade ball and seemed to be on the verge of tears. But, still, Mary was surprised that the other woman wasn’t even chuckling.



* * *





The next day, Catherine was on the stone steps just outside their house with a bucket of ashes in her hands, and so she heard the noise before Mary. Mary was inside, using the afternoon to get Thomas’s clean clothes mended.

“They’re lashing a Quaker,” she said to Mary, “come quick!”

As so she did. She stood at the edge of their yard and looked down the street with her servant. They watched as an older man—a fellow Thomas’s age, Mary guessed—walked behind a cart pulled by an ox, his hands bound, a rope around his neck that linked him like a leash to the rear of the wagon. Behind him, one of the tithingmen whipped his bare back periodically.

“Look,” Catherine continued, “they’ve let this one keep on his breeches and his shoes.”