Hour of the Witch(22)

    The magistrate was a tall man, thin to the point of being gaunt, and he was bald but for a band of white stubble above his ears and along the back of his head. He was approaching sixty and had been in the colony almost from the beginning. He’d arrived in 1634, only four years after the first boats had come to Boston. Friends with both the governor and the deputy governor, Wilder had served on the Court of Assistants since 1650. He had a long face that seemed a match for the length of his body, and it was further accentuated by the fact he had neither a mustache nor a beard. He murmured that it was growing chilly and took his cloak from a peg on the wall and climbed inside it.

James Burden motioned at Mary’s hand and asked her to tell Richard what Thomas had done to her. The magistrate listened, occasionally asking a question or requesting a clarification. When she was finished, Wilder turned to her father and said, “Forks? Three-tined forks? Why, James?”

“Thou must know that Governor Winthrop used one himself. There is nothing in the Bible forbidding them,” he said. “Hast thou tried one?”

“I’ve not.”

“I will send thee a set. My gift.”

Mary felt her hand pulsating and growing warm, and wished there was a chair on which she could sit. Boston was nowhere near the size of London and she strolled its cobblestone streets all the time, but the walk to her parents’ home and then the walk here had exhausted her. She wanted at the very least to lean against the wall with the pegs. She wasn’t sure what to make of the idea that the magistrate’s initial inquiries had been about her father’s decision to import three-tined forks into Boston.

“We’ll talk to the minister first,” Wilder said. “My wife would not be pleased to have such a thing as a three-tined implement in our house without Reverend Norton’s blessing.”

“Yes, do,” her father suggested. “He is a most godly and reasonable man.”

    “Tell me: who was the magistrate who married Thomas and thee?” Wilder asked Mary.

“Samuel Prower. He passed two years ago.”

“I miss him. A good fellow.”

“He was that,” Mary agreed.

“A divorce is no easy task. I have seen but a handful in all my years here.”

“And what were the circumstances?” her father asked.

Wilder took a long breath and rubbed his eyes. “The first was Elizabeth Luxford. That was in 1638, I believe. No, 1639. The year of the drought. Her husband, whose name escapes me, already had a wife back in England. The court granted Elizabeth her divorce, put her husband in the stocks, and fined him mightily. Then they sent him away. In 1644, the court granted Anne Clarke her request for divorce when her husband ran off—left the colony—to live in sin with another woman.”

“And the others?” Mary asked.

“Since I’ve been on the court, we’ve ruled in the petitioner’s case on the grounds of desertion or adultery: Margery Norman. Dorothy Peter. Dorcas Hall. And then there was that recent madness.”

“George and Joan Halsell,” Mary’s mother said knowingly.

“Yes,” he said. “Hast thou met them, Priscilla?”

“I have not. I know only what people say.”

Wilder nodded. “I would have been surprised if thou kept company with the likes of them.”

“Prithee, tell me,” Mary said.

“A few years ago, Goody Halsell claimed her husband had been abusing himself with Hester Lug and being unclean with the woman. I, for one, believed her accusation. But the court ruled that George should continue to have and enjoy his wife, despite whatever sins he may have committed. They live together still.”

“She must be miserable,” her mother said.

“Most likely. The trial was quite a spectacle.” The magistrate turned his gaze on Mary. “I presume thou knowest that thy trial in the Court of Assistants would be public as well.”

    “I do.”

“But, it seems to me, thou hast grounds. Since I serve on that court, it would be improper for me to provide counsel, but I certainly see reason for such a petition. Thomas has beaten thee considerably. He has attacked thee, it would seem, without cause.”

“Yes,” Mary said, her tone growing adamant despite her weakness and pain, “I have never given him cause.”

Her father looked at her, his eyes moving between her wounded hand and her face. Until this meeting with the magistrate, she had never told him the source of the bruise that had lived so long beneath her coif. She had only that morning confessed the truth to her mother. But had he intuited now what really had caused it? Had both her parents known all along? “Tell me, Richard,” her father said. “Thou hast granted divorces for desertion and adultery. What of cruelty?”

“No. But that does not mean that thy daughter hast not motivation for such an extreme measure. A man may not lawfully strike his wife. The court will need proof of marital fault, but thy hand, Mary, and all who have seen it, suggests thou hast motivation for such a dire petition.”

She nodded. She took comfort in the fact that Thomas had savaged her left hand and not her right. The magistrate must have noticed the way she had just glanced at the wrap on it. He smiled at her in a fashion that was reassuring. “Mary, thy father and mother are both reputable people and saints”—he said, and then winked at her father—“even if thy father is now trying to introduce a little deviltry into our dinners.”