Hour of the Witch(16)
She did not pray for a child because she feared that, without one, in her dotage she’d become a crone in a cottage: a woman such as Constance Winston. She did not pray for a child for Thomas: he was old and she wasn’t even sure that he desired another baby. No, she prayed for a newborn because she wanted now to love a child the way that Thomas’s first wife, Anne Drury, had loved Peregrine, and the way that child, now a woman, in turn loved her offspring.
All of her prayers, all her entreaties…
All they had brought forth from her was blood on the twenty-third or the twenty-fourth day instead of the twenty-eighth or the twenty-ninth. Blood sometimes twice between full moons—those nights in the month when they needed fewer candles because the sky was so light, and one could travel the evening streets before curfew without a lantern.
And now there were those forks. A small thing, yes, but the world was rich with small things that in truth were signs of great importance.
Without finishing, she pulled her shift back down over the tops of her legs and considered asking the Lord for something smaller than a child: to disclose, perhaps, who had left those forks in the dooryard, and why. But she didn’t pray to God. She didn’t pray to anyone or anything, at least not with a literal appeal. Instead she simply opened her eyes and her mind wide, allowing her desire to know who had planted the forks to waft from inside her into the night air, where soon enough it might settle like a dandelion seed upon the source. One never knew. And if, she decided, that origin was evil, so be it. Thy will be done. At least she would know.
But what if someone had planted the forks in the ground because that individual—whether witch or saint—knew something of the magic of conception and was answering her deepest cravings? What if the forks were part of a spell to give her the child she desired?
Yes, that was dabbling in something dangerous, too, but was it evil?
She made a decision: to further encourage the culprit—whether it was man or beast or Devil or witch—to reveal himself, she would return the forks to the dooryard. To their exact spot. She would do that as soon as Thomas had left for the mill in the morning.
Her last thought before sleep was that once the forks were back in the ground, she would look carefully at everyone around her, and she would remain at all times as alert as the sentries who stood watch atop Beacon Hill.
…which is why I know a fork can be a weapon most terrible.
—The Testimony of Mary Deerfield, from the Records and Files of the Court of Assistants, Boston, Massachusetts, 1662, Volume III
Six
It was young Edward Howland, the ten-year-old boy, who knocked on their door in the rain while she and Catherine were preparing breakfast and Thomas was upstairs getting dressed. The boy was nervous, and briefly Mary attributed his apprehension to the small spanking she had administered the other day. The child was breathless, rocking from one leg to the other, and his eyes were fixed on the ground. And while that might have been a factor in the boy’s evident unease—he didn’t have Squire Willard to serve as his protector now—she realized soon enough why Beth had sent him. William, Catherine’s brother, either had died in the night or was going to pass before dinner, and Catherine should attend to him right away.
“Prithee, Catherine should come now,” said the boy, after he had shared his mother’s belief that no one was sure William would even be alive after breakfast.
Mary sent the boy home and informed Catherine that it was time and she would accompany her. Then she pulled on her cloak and told Thomas that she and Catherine were going to Peter Howland’s and his breakfast was simmering in the spider. It was only out of habit and hope, but she also brought with her a basket of simples. One never knew what miracles the Lord might yet feel disposed to offer.
* * *
In addition to the herbs that Mary herself had administered and the prayers of the church, she knew what had been done to try and save William’s life over the past month. He had been given a drink made of lemons—so very precious in Boston in autumn—and wormwood ground into salt in the hope that his vomiting could be stopped, and he had the ashes of an owl (feathers and all) blown down his throat to salve the burning there. He had the juice of a crayfish rubbed on his tongue. The physician, Dr. Roger Pickering, administered a drink made of eggs and fennel and rum, and gave him nutmeg and cardamom to try and ease the pain. Then he bled and cupped William. And when William began to bleed from inside his nose, the physician tied up spiders and toads in a rag and insisted the ailing patient inhale the fumes. After the toads had been boiled and dried and ground into dust, the healer took the fine powder and with a length of straw thrust it up William’s nostrils. The bleeding stopped, and so he was purged and cupped once again.
And still the man grew weaker. The sores spread across his body from his neck and his arms, and his mind became addled.
Mary had continued to visit, one day bringing hops and another bearing sorrel, twice offering valerian for the pain (on both occasions the old rhyme came to her, Valerian and dill will hinder a witch from her will), but her remedies offered no more comfort than the doctor’s. Prayer made Catherine feel better, and it probably would have made the rest of William’s family feel better, too, but Catherine was the only family present here in Boston.