Hour of the Witch(29)

“Then when?” Mary asked again, her voice unashamedly urgent.

Instead of answering, Catherine gathered herself and said in a tone so dignified that Mary would have laughed if the speech had not been so dangerous to her, “I know this, ma’am, and this alone: Thou art barren but desire a child. Thou took the Devil’s tines and a pestle and were using them to perform a kind of dark magic that night. I know what I saw.”

    And with that, she shook herself free from Mary and walked briskly down the street and toward the house where once Mary had thought she herself was going to build a life and start a family.



* * *





On Monday morning, Mary thought she might visit her scrivener for the simple reason that she was anxious and she had found the man’s tidiness and evident attention to detail comforting. She had prayed, but she wanted this compulsive, expert man’s reassurance, too. As she was passing the whipping post and scaffold near the Town House, however, she heard her name. There was Constance Winston emerging from the crowds bustling about the marketplace.

“Mary Deerfield,” she said again, and Mary tried to squash her unease that the person calling out to her was an outcast not numbered among the saints. The fact that Mary had, in essence, shunned her when the woman’s simples and tea had failed to result in a child made her feel even worse: guilty and spineless, too.

“Constance, hello,” Mary replied. She wasn’t sure that she had ever seen the woman here in the center of the city. Whenever she had met with Constance, it had been in her modest house out along the Neck. She would go there surreptitiously, careful not to draw attention to her visits.

“It’s been a long time.”

“It has,” Mary agreed. She heard the judgment in the other woman’s voice. Constance knew that she had been avoiding her. “I have been most busy of late.”

“Of late? Well then, thou hast had a busy year.”

Constance was a head taller than Mary and carried herself with the same aristocratic bearing as Mary’s own mother. She had green eyes and silver hair pulled neatly beneath her coif, and the lines on her face in no way diminished her beauty. Constance was in her fifties and wearing a scarlet cape lined with sarcenet the color of cinnamon. She had assets, not simply because she owned such clothing, but because she would be fined for trying to dress above her station if she did not.

    “I have. I—”

“Thou owest me no explanation,” said Constance. “Thou art under no obligation to me.”

“No. It’s just…”

“It’s just the gossips,” said Constance, and she pointed up at the scaffold. “A quiet day, it seems. No one is being shamed or hanged. How are we to pass our Monday?”

“I think it speaks well of our community that no one has transgressed.”

“Nonsense. It means only that our transgressors either are impenitent or haven’t yet been caught—or, perhaps, the magistrates simply haven’t met lately.”

“Perhaps,” Mary agreed. “They meet next week.”

Constance digested this news. Then: “Yes, of course. They are in thy future, aren’t they? I’ve heard. When we last met, thou were interested in conceiving a child with thy husband. Now thou cravest as much distance from him as the law will allow.”

“As I said: I have been busy.”

“Imagine if the nettle tea had worked its magic. Thou were fortunate.”

Mary held up her left hand, still wrapped in cloth. “I am not sure I agree. If thou hast heard of my design to divorce Thomas Deerfield, then perhaps thou hast heard also of the violence that inspired it.”

“Yes. I had been told there was such a catalyst: a rather vicious ingredient that opened wide thine eyes.”

“May I ask how much thou heard?”

Constance shrugged. “Stories like thine are like geese. They travel far and fast.”

“He is claiming that I fell on a teakettle.”

“Which, I must admit, I presumed was a lie.”

“Thou art astute.”

“How much did thy servant girl see?”

“Nothing.”

The other woman sighed. “Nothing?”

“Alas, not.”

“Mary, I do not know and I do not need to know whether thou pulled me from thy life like a bad tooth because my simples failed thee or because there are those who view my interests as peculiar—because, to be blunt, thou feared an association with someone of my sensibilities.”

    “I told thee,” Mary said quickly, “I have simply had much to tend to.”

“I don’t care. All I want thee to know is this: thou art a woman facing men who would be comfortable to see thee dangling there,” she said, and she pointed up at the scaffold with the hanging platform. “I harbor no ill will and no grudge. I believe we are more alike than thou art willing to admit. If I can ever assist thee, do not hesitate to renew our acquaintance.”

Mary glanced up at the dark wood and then at the imposing walls of the Town House. “I thank thee, Constance,” she said finally. “I do.”

The other woman smiled at her and squeezed her right arm affectionately. Over Constance’s shoulder, she saw a group of women watching them, some of whom she recognized from the church.