Hour of the Witch(44)

“May I begin earlier, sir?”

“How much earlier?” the governor asked.

Bristol jumped in and explained, “Only earlier that day. We will not be taking up the court’s time with an exhaustive history.”

“Fine. Begin earlier.”

Catherine nodded deferentially. “During that day,” she started nervously, “while I was carrying eggs into the house, my mistress approached me.”

“Go on.”

“She said she had found the Devil’s tines planted in the dooryard—two of them—and she showed them to me. They still had dirt on them. She accused me of placing them there.”

“In the ground?”

“Yes. I told her that I knew nothing of such a thing and had not planted them.”

“Were thee offended?”

“I was frightened. I was frightened there was witchcraft about.”

The room began to buzz. Bristol held up a single finger and said with gravity, “There is more, governor, there is more. Go on, Catherine.”

The girl continued, “And I was frightened I might be wrongfully accused of such a terrible crime.”

The governor smiled in an almost avuncular fashion. “This petition has nothing to do with thee, Catherine. Thou art here merely as a witness.”

    Catherine clasped her hands before her, entwining her fingers as if she were praying, and said, “Then, that night, I awoke when I heard someone outside the room where I sleep—”

“Outside in the yard,” Bristol added.

“Yes, in the yard. And so I peered out the window, and when I saw Mary Deerfield there, I went to her. I was much perplexed as to why she would be out in the night in her shift.”

“And what didst thou see?”

“I saw my mistress placing the Devil’s tines into the earth, burying them.”

“Re-burying them,” added her lawyer helpfully. “Catherine saw her mistress returning them to the ground. But the tale does not end here.”

“Speak then, Catherine,” ordered Caleb Adams.

“She had a weapon of some sort.”

“I had a pestle,” Mary interjected. “I had just discovered it, too, in the yard. But it was a pestle, not a weapon.”

The governor looked at her crossly. “Thou wilt have a chance to speak again, Mary. Now it is Catherine’s turn.” Then he said to the servant, “Thou art a smart girl. Why dost thou believe she was burying these implements?”

Catherine stood a little taller, emboldened by the compliment. “I feared it was witchcraft,” she said. “I did not know the spell or what deal my mistress might have struck with the Evil One, but I thought of all the time she had spent with my brother and all the simples she had brought him.”

Richard Wilder leaned in. “But what has that to do with the forks? Thy brother by then had already gone to the Lord.”

“May I?” asked the lawyer.

Wilder nodded.

Bristol looked down at one of the papers he was holding and explained, “We are not accusing Mary Deerfield of witchcraft. At least not formally. Catherine Stileman is merely testifying to what she saw that night and what she was thinking. When she saw her mistress with the Devil’s tines, she feared that Mary Deerfield may not have been helping her brother all summer long with her simples, but was in fact exacerbating his illness. Mary is friends with Constance Winston, a strange old woman who lives out along the Neck, and who we know was friends with the hanged witch Ann Hibbens. Constance Winston is the one who taught Mary Deerfield whatever it is she knows about simples.”

    “Yes, I am aware of who Constance Winston is, and I understand her relationship with Ann,” said the governor, and he sounded sad and tired. “Hibbens,” he then added suddenly, the two syllables a strange exclamation, as if by referring to the hanged witch only as Ann he had suggested too much familiarity.

“It seemed possible to Catherine,” Bristol went on, “that Mary Deerfield was trying to make her brother sicker. Mary was ensuring that Satan got Catherine’s brother and—in return—Mary, hitherto barren, would get a child.”

For a long second, the room went utterly silent at the enormity of the accusation, and Mary thought to herself, incredulous, I was bringing but comfrey and dill. But then the throng began to speak so animatedly that the constable pounded his pike on the floor over and over until they began to simmer down. Behind her, she heard among the burble, rising up like whitecaps on the sea, the words witch and witchcraft. She saw her mother was leaning into her father, hiding her face in his shoulder. Her father nodded at her, his gaze firm and comforting amidst the maelstrom.

When the crowd had grown sufficiently quiet for the testimonies to resume, Mary said, her voice filled with a quiver she didn’t like but couldn’t control, “I was only trying to help. I was only bringing William Stileman simples from my garden.”

Richard Wilder heard her and said, “Let me remind everyone that this is a divorce petition, not a trial for witchcraft. We are hearing a civil petition, not weighing evidence in a criminal matter.” Then he smiled ever so slightly and said, “We are gathered in Boston. Not Hartford.”

But his small jibe at the city to the southwest and their recent battle with Satan fell flat. Mary saw both the governor and Caleb Adams glare at him.