Hour of the Witch(42)

    And then, almost the way a thundercloud can appear from nowhere on a summer day, it was her turn. She heard one of the magistrates, Daniel Winslow, summon her by name. For a moment she stood there, frozen, but then her father murmured into her ear, “It is time, Mary. Stand tall. The Lord is with thee.”





I simply observed that if Thomas Deerfield had meant to murder thee, he would not have targeted thy hand.

    —The Remarks of Magistrate Caleb Adams, from the Records and Files of the Court of Assistants, Boston, Massachusetts, 1662, Volume III





Fourteen



“Cruelty,” said Richard Wilder, “may be defined as violence without provocation and discipline that is excessive. We have before us a wife who seeks separation from her husband because, her petition alleges, he has treated her with needless and consistent wickedness. He has struck her, and he has physically abused her, ignoring the fact that a woman is a weaker, more fragile vessel.” Mary nodded, though it seemed as if the magistrate was speaking more to the other men than to her. “Mary Deerfield is asking for a divorce from Thomas Deerfield. Will the petitioner come forward?”

And Mary did. She stood before the bench, feeling naked and exposed. She had tied her lace collar and cuffs with blue ribbons, ones that she thought matched nicely with her bodice and skirt, which were made of green wool. Her hair was pulled tightly back beneath a pristine white coif. Her cloak was black.

“Good day,” said the magistrate.

“Good day,” she replied. She viewed him as an ally, but her father and Benjamin Hull had been clear that they had no idea how the others would rule. It would depend on the testimony, at least some of which was going to be—and this was the word Hull had used—perilous. She grew self-conscious as she was sworn in, wanting to smile to show that she was pretty and kind, but fearful that smiling would suggest she was frivolous: oblivious to the stakes before her.

“We have read thy petition. Thou sayest that Thomas Deerfield would call thee a whore and concoct wild stories about thee. Thou sayest that he would strike thee often, sometimes even on the face. Occasionally, he said it was discipline, but often it was because he had consumed too much cider or beer. Is this accurate?”

    “Yes.”

“How many years hast thou been married?” asked John Endicott.

“Five.”

“And how many times dost thou claim that Thomas has hit thee?”

She knew not the precise answer, but she knew the proper response for this court. Hull had coached her. Nevertheless, the truth hurt: she stood tall against the humiliation of what she was about to say, but she could feel her face growing red. This was the sort of public spectacle she had never expected would center around her; and while she understood that this was not her fault, still she felt shame. “I cannot tell thee an exact number,” she replied. “But he has hit me no fewer than a dozen times, often on the side of my head where the bruise would be hidden by my hair or my coif. He chose the spots with a deliberation that belied the violence: he knew the wrongness of the blows and wanted not for others to see the evidence of his barbarity. One time, he hurled me into the hearth. He poured the remains of our boiled supper on me. It was when he stabbed me with a fork that I knew I could abide this level of woefulness no longer and began to fear for my life. It was time to divorce him.”

“Tell us precisely: why would he strike thee?” asked Richard Wilder.

She could feel Thomas watching her, but she dared not turn. This was hard enough as it was. “There was never a good reason. He was tipsy from too much cider or beer. He wanted his supper served on pewter, and I had used the wooden trencher. He was unhappy with the dinner I had prepared. Something had happened at the gristmill, and he was just cantankerous.”

“Thou didst nothing to encourage the beatings?”

“Never.”

Caleb Adams, the youngest of the magistrates—he was only thirty, but well known for his piety and intellect—sat up in his seat. He had a Flemish beard that was impeccably trimmed, and now he rubbed his jaw through it in a needlessly dramatic sort of way. “Did thy husband view his discipline as a form of guidance?”

    She thought to herself, A primer on how to be cruel? It certainly was that. But she restrained herself because she knew no good could come from such impudence. And so instead she replied with a question to see if it might compel the magistrate to replace the vagueness of discipline with the specificity of violence or beatings. “By discipline, sir, dost thou mean his anger and his aggression?” she asked.

“Let me be more clear,” continued Adams, and she felt a small flutter of pride at the possible success of her tactic. “If it seemed to thee that his discipline was excessive, is it nevertheless possible that he administered it rather as a husband might to a recalcitrant or unschooled wife?”

“No,” she replied, though she recalled her exchange with Thomas in the dooryard of her parents’ home, and how he might have convinced himself that his cruelty was in her best interests: he beat her for the sake of her soul. And this knowledge caused her to worry that her dissembling at least hinted at the possibility that she was as damned as her husband.

The magistrate Daniel Winslow was sitting with his hands together on the bench. “How violent was Thomas?” he asked. “Didst thou honestly fear for thy life?”