Hour of the Witch(27)
Eleanor laughed. “Thou consorts with the savages! How much dost thou trade with them?”
“It is one thing to trade with them,” Valentine corrected her. “It is quite another to misplace them in the Lord’s hierarchy.” He turned to Mary and said to her with the directness he was known for, “Thy father tells us thou dost plan to divorce Thomas.”
“Yes,” she said.
“He’s a rich man. Thou could be a rich woman,” Valentine said. “If the court were to rule in thy favor, thou wouldst receive one-third of his property. Thy estate would grow considerably.”
“That is not why I am proceeding,” she told him. She was offended he would bring up such a thing.
“No, of course not,” he said. “I was only speaking of the law.”
“I cannot imagine expecting Mary to return to a man who will stick a fork in his wife,” Eleanor added, disgusted at the thought.
In truth, Mary could not conceive of such an outcome either. Already she was wondering what she would do when the divorce was official. What she was doing would have consequences; some she could anticipate, some she could not. It was rather like climbing aboard the ship back in England that was going to traverse the ocean. She had stared up at the rigging and the sails from the wharf and felt a mixture of awe at the adventure before her and trepidation when she contemplated the utter uncertainty of her future. She had not been nearly as frightened of the voyage as some—it was the storm on the thirteenth day that first suggested to her that the discomforts of the deceptively small vessel paled before its fragility against waves that crashed down upon the quarterdeck and rocked the ship like a baby’s rattle—but neither had she experienced God’s presence the way others had. Yet this divorce was otherwise very different: first of all, it was a choice she was making. She hadn’t been given a say when she’d been a girl: her parents were going and, thus, so was she. Moreover, no one among her friends or family would judge her ill for following her Lord and accompanying her family to this new, more devout world. People would feel quite differently toward her after she had divorced Thomas Deerfield. That was clear.
But nothing else about her future was. Would she remain in Boston with her parents? Would she live alone nearby? Or, perhaps, would she return to England to live with one of her brothers?
No. Not that. She was but twenty-four. The Lord may not have planned children for her, but there was no reason to presume He had laid out for her a life of lonely spinsterhood. She would remarry and she would remarry here, among the godly and the saints. She would find a good man: she would not make the mistake she had made the first time. And it would not be hard: already the colony was so much larger than it was five years ago. In addition, as Valentine Hill had observed, her assets would be extensive. Her dowry, as it were, would include both her third from Thomas Deerfield and all that came with being a child—albeit, a daughter—of the renowned merchant James Burden.
Once again, her mind roamed to Henry Simmons, and when she thought of him she stopped worrying about tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and what would become of her. She stopped fretting and she even stopped thinking about her hand. The pain disappeared for a long, numinous moment, burned off like morning fog in the harbor.
“Mary?”
She looked at her mother. Everyone was staring at her. “Mary, where was thy mind?”
“I am sorry, Mother. What wast thou saying?”
“Valentine was asking: wouldst thou consider mediation? We have not spoken to the elders.”
She turned to her parents’ friend. “No. Thomas and I are beyond mediation.”
“I could speak to Reverend Norton,” he said. “If thou changest thy mind.”
“So could my parents. So could I. But we shan’t. That is not my desire.”
“I expect, in that case, that he will come speak to thee.”
“So be it. I shall stand my ground.”
“Very well then,” said Valentine Hill, ripping at a piece of the turkey with his fingers and thumb. Then, meeting no one’s eyes, he murmured, “The way thou sometimes drift off, Mary. It is like thou art under a spell.”
She is neither healer nor midwife. Her simples may not be of the Devil, but neither are they healing. Her teacher was that old woman who lives out by the Neck. And I believe no midwife would ever allow so barren a womb to be present at a birth.
—The Testimony of Physician Roger Pickering, from the Records and Files of the Court of Assistants, Boston, Massachusetts, 1662, Volume III
Ten
Mary sat with her mother at church, as she did every week, but Catherine chose this Sunday to sit instead in the furthest reaches of the sanctuary, a pew second from the rear and far from either Mary or Priscilla Burden. Though Catherine was living with the Howlands, she was not sitting with Beth: she was with a group of indentured girls from the city, all of them in their late teens, and Catherine may actually have been the oldest. Mary only spotted her when she happened to stretch her neck and turn around as the third hour of that morning’s service was beginning. The servant girl was gazing at Thomas. Mary had not seen Catherine since she had raced from her house a few nights ago, moments before Thomas would try and impale his wife with a fork. But Mary had heard about Catherine’s activities during the past week: the girl had told Goody Howland how she had seen Mary out in the night in the dooryard with the Devil’s tines, and Beth Howland had told at least one (and probably more than one) of their mutual acquaintances. When Mary saw Rebeckah Cooper at the cobbler where both women were buying fall shoes—though Rebeckah was buying shoes for herself and her two children—her friend told her that Catherine had made some wild accusations to Beth. Beth, her friend insisted, believed the servant was a little hysterical herself, but was still suspicious of Mary. Rebeckah didn’t think that either Beth or Catherine had plans to accuse her of witchcraft, but she speculated that this was only because they feared Mary’s station in the colony and the clout of her family.