Hour of the Witch(38)

He took her arm and his grip was tight. “If thou believest that one-third of my mill and my house will ever be thine, thou art encumbered by the falsest of hopes.”

“My recompense will be a future free of thee: a future that does not hold for me fear and a life in which my husband views me as but an animal he can beat at will.”

“I never beat thee at will. And I told thee: I never wanted to hurt thee. Thou wouldst give me no choice.”

    Did he believe that? She couldn’t decide. But she also didn’t care. She pulled free of him and rested her fingers on the handle to the door. He was as misguided as he was violent. She regretted snapping back at him because one could never win an argument with a person so fundamentally unreasonable. She recalled what Jesus had taught the multitudes on the mountain. “Let us not speak thusly to each other,” she said quietly. “I believe thou loved me once; once I loved thee. Thou hast smited me on the right cheek; I give thee my left.”

He smiled, but it was mean and foreboding. “And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat,” he began, quoting the verse that followed that passage, “let him have thy cloak also.” He pulled off his deep green cloak and threw it on the ground at her feet. “Take it, Mary. But I assure thee as the sun will rise: that is all thou wilt ever get from me.” Then he walked to the post where he had hitched his horse, climbed into the saddle, and rode with uncharacteristic speed down the street.



* * *





The next day there was a letter from her brother Charles. It had arrived the day before on a massive, one-hundred-ton brigantine called the Hopeful Mary, and Priscilla Burden thought it a lovely sign that there was a letter from home on a ship of that name. And the news indeed was all good: no sickness, another child born healthy—this one a daughter—and the right amount of rain and sun. James Burden expressed his thanks to the Lord in his prayer before dinner that afternoon. Then he left for the North End, not his warehouse in the harbor, and when Mary asked her mother where he was going, she said he had a brief errand, but then would be back in his office near the docks. Mary pressed her for details, but her mother said she didn’t have any.

After lunch she considered walking to the wharf. Her father had said that the Hopeful Mary would soon return to London, and she wanted to see it before it departed, if only because of the vessel’s name. Her father was also excited because any day now a sloop was due from Barbados that would be heavy with sugar and salt and dyes. But Mary was aware in her heart that if she went to the docks, it would also be, at least in part, to see Henry Simmons, and that was a temptation she was resolved to avoid. So instead she walked west toward Watch Hill, though just as she was planning to avoid Henry, she would be sure and steer clear of the North End and her husband’s gristmill as well.



* * *





At one point, Mary stood on the top of the prominence and gazed out beyond the city. In one direction there was still forest extending into the distance, a world of animals and Indians and the excommunicated. In others, there was the land they had cleared and the farms where the last of the corn had been harvested earlier that autumn, and she rather doubted that she had anywhere near the bravery of the women and men who lived and worked there. She knew of two widows who lived alone on their small plots, far from family and neighbors and help. Was it any wonder that women like them turned to the Devil for assistance?

She decided she should walk to this section of the city more often. It was different from the marketplace and the harbor: it was quieter. There were birds beyond seagulls. When she started back, she walked briskly past the street where Thomas had his mill.



* * *





She was surprised when she got home to find that the Devil had brought His temptations here: there, chatting amiably with Abigail as she prepared supper, was Henry Simmons. His doublet was green today, his dark hair combed. He was standing beside the kitchen table. When she entered, he helped her with her cloak, a gesture that was chivalrous but still, it seemed to Mary, inappropriately intimate.

“Where is my mother?” she asked Abigail.

“The apothecary, ma’am.”

“And what brings thee here, Henry Simmons?”

    He pointed at a bottle on the table. “A gift of rum from my uncle for his friends, the Burdens—and, of course, for their daughter.”

“I thank thee.”

“All thanks are due only to my Uncle Valentine. I was merely the messenger.”

“Thou dost much for him.”

“And most of it no more demanding than breaking an egg.”

At this Abigail looked up from the cheese and corn flour in the bowl on the table before her and smiled. “I have seen many a man break an egg rather badly,” she said.

“I break them rather well.”

“I have my doubts,” said Abigail. “I suspect thy strength resides in a calling outside the kitchen.”

“Oh, I am unsure precisely what my calling is meant to be.”

“Not egg breaker,” the servant girl said, and while a small part of Mary was jealous at the way Abigail was flirting with Henry, mostly she was interested. She appreciated the girl’s audacity; she was titillated by the exchange.

“Perhaps that is precisely why I came to Boston. The colony is in dire need of men capable of making a most dire mess in the kitchen.”