Hour of the Witch(41)

Today there were eleven magistrates present, including the Burdens’ friend Richard Wilder, when Mary and her parents and Benjamin Hull arrived on the second floor of the Town House. Governor John Endicott was in attendance on the bench, too. He was nearing seventy-five and struck Mary as frail as he limped toward the front of the great room. There was a large crowd of petitioners and witnesses milling about, easily thirty or thirty-five people, and she saw Thomas. He was standing against a wall with his hands clasped before him, his attorney beside him. She nodded at Thomas, bowing deferentially, and then cursed herself inside for her reflexive subservience. His eyes looked strangely soft, his countenance kind. She presumed this was a strategy.

    The other magistrates were seated behind a long, polished oak bar, their benches imposing and high, and they were in their black judicial robes. Mary scanned the room to see who else she knew in the throng, but she saw no one she recognized. This caused her no relief, however, because she knew that her parents’ servant girl Abigail had been summoned, and Goody Howland was planning to speak as well. They—all those who would be testifying—were likely milling about the marketplace or the Town House and would appear when requested.

“They have no more than three or four petitions to hear before thine, Mary,” Hull told her. “None are especially complicated and I expect they will be disposed of quickly. But one never knows. Sometimes even the most obvious decisions can be rendered with a fastidiousness that borders on the pedantic.” She nodded but said nothing. Soon she would speak on her behalf. She had not risked the wrath of the magistrates by employing a lawyer; Thomas had chosen the opposite tack, but she presumed he himself would still have to answer questions. She was nervous, but her anxiety was not debilitating. She had rehearsed carefully over the previous week, working in much the same way that she had as a girl back in England, when she had been given an assignment by her tutor. Her father had ensured that she had a proper education, bringing in teachers in language and music. Other girls were also given lessons in dance and grace, even some of the girls among those families who were planning eventually on emigrating to New England. After all, the Bible had no prohibitions on dancing. She remembered being jealous of those girls, but her father had stood fast in his decision: dancing could lead to lasciviousness. Mary had taken her preparation for today far more seriously, however, working with a ferocity of purpose that she had never felt as a child.

Her mind was focusing on what she would say and how she would respond to the questions of the magistrates when a constable who worked for the Court of Assistants rapped on the wooden floor with a pike and asked for quiet. The crowd went silent and turned as one toward the magistrates. The governor had just finished slipping his arms into the sleeves of his robe.

    Then the constable announced that there were no petitions to be heard this afternoon that warranted the impaneling of a jury, but there would be tomorrow. He announced that the first petition involved the collision of two shallops in the harbor, and the broken leg incurred by a fellow named Knight. The fisherman lost his boat, too, the craft sinking unceremoniously to the bottom of the harbor. Witnesses said the defendant, Lewis Farrington, whose boat was damaged but did not sink, had been drunk and piloting the craft recklessly. For a time, Mary watched the back-and-forth with interest; neither Knight nor Farrington had retained a lawyer, but Knight had used a scrivener and, though hobbled by crutches, was bringing forth sheaths of paper: the testimonies the scrivener had taken, including the sailors who had fished the poor man from the water. But the outcome of the case seemed so clear that Mary grew bored. In the end, it was just as she had predicted: Farrington was guilty. He had to pay Knight the cost of building a replacement shallop, plus twenty pounds; in addition, he was fined five more pounds for drunkenness and had to spend the day after next in the stocks.

He was followed by an Indian who was sentenced to thirty lashes for breaking into a house and accidentally overturning a cider barrel while drink-drunk. In this case, the verdict—the whole process—left her strangely unmoored. The Indian was no more than sixteen or seventeen years old, and it was unclear to her how much English he spoke and how much he understood. He had been dressed in pants and a shirt much too big for his slender frame. His eyes were dark, and she could see the fear in them. No one spoke in his defense. The owner of the cider barrel, a handsome man with golden hair, expressed his indignation that he was not to be paid treble the cost of the barrel of cider, but Wilder sat back and asked the petitioner precisely how he expected the savage to pay him a single penny. When the Indian was led away, Mary’s heart broke a little for the young man. He was all alone and soon to be whipped only because he was unschooled in the ways of the Lord.

Finally, there was an appeal from the county court in Ipswich, something about a fence obstructing a right of way. The matter was dull, and Mary whispered to Benjamin Hull, “Does the court often hear matters this mundane?” Hull smiled and corrected her in a quiet voice, “It is only mundane if the fence does not impede thine animals from grazing on land thou ownest.” The magistrates reviewed what the lower court had decided and discussed the written testimonies they had received. They heard from the plaintiff and the defendant and from witnesses who could speak about the character of the men in question. It was all taking forever: the sun was descending in the sky and the room was beginning to grow dark. Someone lit the candles in the ceiling fixtures and along the sconces on the west wall. In the end, the magistrates overturned the county court and ordered that the fence be disassembled.