Hour of the Witch(34)

Sometimes when Thomas disciplined Mary (his word, not hers), he suggested it was because he was saving her. She recalled his speech before he tried to impale her hand on the table with the Devil’s tines: Thou hast a soul that is much imperiled by pride. Thou believest too much in thine intellect as a woman. Perhaps Thomas treated his first wife similarly. “He was quick to anger in love?” she asked. “Was Anne Drury but a child to him in need of scolding?”

“The book of Revelation does not specify children in the third chapter,” Peregrine said.

“I know the verse: ‘As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten.’ But is that not the prerogative of parents and the Lord?”

“And of husbands,” Jonathan corrected Mary.

“Yes, certainly. And how did he discipline thy mother, Peregrine? With words or the rod? With education or the back of his hand?”

Jonathan reached over and rested his fingers gently on Mary’s shoulder. “Prithee, now. We did not come here to challenge thee. We did not come here to unleash hard feelings.”

She looked at his long, slender fingers near her collarbone, and when she did, he removed them. But the weight lingered. Her mouth felt dry and she wanted another sip of beer, but she didn’t dare move. Peregrine’s eyes were unblinking as she watched her husband and Mary. The small room went quiet.

“No. I understand that,” Mary said carefully, breaking the silence because she had to. She quite literally had to. She thought of the trial—a literal one, but also a cross—that awaited her next week, and it was paramount that she learn what she could while she had this chance. “But, Peregrine, thou hast avoided my question. Were thy father’s words, even if spoken in love, ever too harsh for a man to speak to his wife?”

    “I can tell thee, Mary, that never once did I see him strike her.”

Surely at least once, Thomas’s anger—unreasonable and fueled by too much hard cider or beer—had flared up when Peregrine had been a child. After all, how many times could Mary recall him striking her or hurling her into bricks or coat pegs? Thomas had lived with Anne Drury considerably longer. Still, it would not help to challenge Peregrine directly or accuse her of a falsehood. It was possible that just as Thomas shielded the worst of his temper from Catherine, he had managed to hide it from his daughter. And so Mary said simply, “But that does not mean it never happened.”

“I never saw such a thing, and our servants never saw such a thing,” she replied.

Jonathan shook his head. “Mary, he shot the horse that broke his wife’s neck. He shot it. He loved Anne. He was devastated when she died.”

“I understand,” she said.

“And remember,” he continued, “the house in which Peregrine grew up was no castle. She would have known.” He seemed increasingly troubled with the direction the conversation was taking and began to fiddle with the fastener of his breeches along his right knee. The women said nothing. He looked up at them and asked, “Mary, dost thou realize what thou art risking? Thou art challenging all that we are trying to build here. Thou art defying God’s natural order and risking the disapprobation of the Lord.”

“I have heard now twice what thou hast said about a natural order. But a woman is not a serpent to be crushed under her husband’s foot,” she answered. She hoped her tone had not gone shrill. “No, I cannot go back,” she said more softly. “I cannot.”

“Dost thou know what Catherine will say?” Peregrine asked, and Mary understood that her daughter-in-law had hoped not to bring this up. This was their last resort.

    “I have my suspicions,” she answered. “There is no truth to her wild and unschooled accusations.”

“They may be wild,” said Jonathan, “but the world is awash in wildness. It is why we have both Bibles and sentinels.” He took a breath, wanting desperately to broker peace. “Prithee, Mary, heed our warning. Thomas wants thee back, as do we. We are a family.”

Peregrine put her hand protectively on her husband’s, and the meaning was not lost on Mary. We want thee back, that small gesture said, but make no mistake: this man is mine.

“And Jonathan?” Mary replied. “I hope with all my heart that the three of us and thy girls—and the babe in thy womb, Peregrine—can remain family. Or, at least, on friendly terms. But I will appear before the Court of Assistants, and when it is my turn to speak, I will tell my story.”

“Thou art resolved,” said Jonathan, wistful and resigned.

“I am.”

For a moment they sat in silence, and Mary heard the great squawks of seagulls outside. Then the other woman stood, pressing her palms onto the table, and her husband rose with her. He said he would retrieve the children.

“Fare thee well,” Peregrine said to Mary when they were alone, her tone unreadable.

“Pray, remember me,” she said in response.

Peregrine met her eyes. “I will,” she said. “I do.” Then she followed her husband into the yard for their daughters.



* * *





The Reverend John Norton was fifty-six years old, exactly one year older than Mary’s father and three years her mother’s senior. But he seemed considerably older than that. He wasn’t frail, not at all. But his presence was so august. He stood six feet tall, even now, and his beard was an immaculate dapple gray. He’d been in the colony since 1635, but he had traveled to and from England earlier that year with Governor Bradstreet to address King Charles II after the Restoration and confirm the king’s commitment to the colony’s charter. He was an unwavering disciplinarian, eager to see the Quakers punished for their madness and the sinners among his own congregation suitably chastised.