Hour of the Witch(3)
She closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of the autumn night. There were still leaves on the trees in the marketplace and the commons that hadn’t been girdled, but soon those leaves, too, would fall, and there would probably be a killing frost as soon as the moon was full. It was well beyond half now. She touched the spot on her face where Thomas had hit her, aware that people might ask what had happened in the morning. Then, while conjuring a reason for the bruise that she could tell them, she fell into a deep sleep.
I know the taverns and ordinaries. That is no secret and nothing for which I need either this court’s or the Lord’s forgiveness. But have I ever been fined for too much drink? No. Hast thou ever lashed me publicly for such offense? Of course not. This court knows me, it knows my mill. And, yes, though there is evil within me and my heart is inclined to sin; though I have reason often to be ashamed before God; the truth is that I have tried always to glorify God in all things. Though I will have many failures to answer for in the end, my comportment toward my wife, Mary Deerfield, will not be among them.
—The Testimony of Thomas Deerfield, from the Records and Files of the Court of Assistants, Boston, Massachusetts, 1662, Volume III
Two
Mary Deerfield knew she was beautiful. Her eyes were delft blue, her skin as pale and smooth as the porcelain on which they occasionally dined back in England when she was a girl, and so there were moments when she worried that her conceit was a sign she should watch. It was not good to be prideful.
Still, as she dressed for church she was relieved to discover that Thomas had struck her just close enough to her ear that she could actually hide the bruise under her coif if she tied it snugly around her face. Early that summer, she’d had to tell her neighbors that she’d walked into a cloak peg in the night, and she had been teased for her clumsiness by everyone but her mother, who, Mary feared, suspected the real source of the black-and-blue mark.
Church today would begin at nine, end at noon, and resume at two. This had been a good summer, with enough rain and sun that the men had gotten in three cuttings of hay for the winter, and the crops in the fields had grown larger than she had ever seen them here in Massachusetts. There were pumpkins nearly the size of butter churns. Today would be a service in which they needed to humble themselves before God and thank Him for their good fortune. The Devil had been noticeably absent, save, perhaps, for the death of the two babies on Marlborough Street and His visit to poor Catherine’s dying brother. In all fairness, the pitiable William lived in a home in which everyone knew the family hadn’t buried an ox bone in the foundation of the house when they had built it, or glazed any of the bricks in the chimney with salt. Some people had suggested that the babies’ deaths were the work of witches, not the Devil, but Mary saw only hysteria in that sort of speculation. Babies died all the time. And there had been no women she had seen or heard about who had manifested possession. If the Devil was recruiting handmaidens that summer, it was to the southwest in Hartford.
The truth was, it had been a lovely summer and a most pleasant September. The mill her husband owned would be grinding flour and cornmeal throughout the autumn and into the winter, and that might keep him in good spirits. When he was busy, he was happy, and he would drink only as much cider and beer as he needed to quench his thirst. Last night, she told herself as she finished dressing for church, would be the last time for a long time. Months. He really didn’t become drunk all that often. Soon enough he would wake, perhaps catch her gazing at her reflection or adjusting her collar or cuffs as they ate, and tease her gently for her vanity. He’d apologize and once more things would be well.
Or, at least, well enough. Tolerable.
Downstairs she heard Catherine uncorking the jug with the molasses and preparing their breakfast. One last time she checked her coif to be sure that it hid her bruise, and then she went down the stairs—a luxury here that she didn’t take for granted, since so many of her neighbors still had mere ladders connecting their first and second floors—and through the parlor, before joining the girl in the kitchen.
“Good Sabbath to thee, Catherine,” she said.
The girl smiled and bowed her head slightly. “I don’t hear Master Deerfield,” she said. “Is he well?”
“We’ll hear him any minute. He’s still asleep.”
She saw that Catherine had already latched her bedstead upright against the wall and set the table for breakfast. The girl didn’t have her own chamber the way that she and Thomas did on the second floor, but slept instead here in the kitchen and hall. The house, Mary knew, was impressive by Boston standards—her husband was a miller, so it was only fitting—but it paled against the home in which she had grown up in England. Here they had six rooms on two floors, not including the cellar but counting the storage room back of the kitchen. (She had to stoop when she went back there, and it had now gotten to the point where Catherine knew that corner of the house better than she did.) There was a nice hall and a parlor and kitchen on the first floor, and two spacious chambers on the second. There was a massive fireplace linking the kitchen and hall, a second, smaller fireplace in the parlor, and even a modest fireplace in the chamber she shared with Thomas. She knew of no more than a dozen other homes with three fireplaces and three chimneys, and one belonged to the governor, one to the reverend at the First Church, and the others to especially wealthy Boston merchants and traders, including her father.