Hour of the Witch(50)

“May I ask thee one thing, Mary?”

“Yes, ask me anything.”

“I fear little in this world.”

“I have always suspected that.”

Peregrine wasn’t wearing gloves and blew on her fingers, and Mary could see the other woman’s breath in the night air.

“I know thou art formidable. I know the things people say about thee and that thou hast consorted with Constance Winston.”

“What art thou implying?”

“Be more scared, Mary.”

“I hope thou dost not believe that nonsense that I am in league with the Dark One.”

“Prithee,” Peregrine said. “I have seen the way that my husband looks at thee. I know thy body has been unchanged by childbirth. Do what thou must in regard to my father. But be wary of my husband. He, too, has frailties.”

“I have no designs on thy husband! Why wouldst thou think such a thing?”

“He speaks most highly of thee.”

“Bury that fear. It is ridiculous,” Mary said. She recalled what Benjamin Hull had said about the fellow at the Town House.

“The world is awash in sin.”

“But, Peregrine—”

“Fine, I will speak no more of this. We were friends once, as well as family. And so what I am about to say, I say with reverence for the person I once knew well.”

“Thou knowest me still. I have not changed.”

Her voice was keen and low, the agitation clear. “Be careful. The worst is yet to come. Thou knowest those men; but so do I. I may know them better than thee. There are dangers I doubt thou hast ever contemplated.”

    Was Peregrine about to say more? Mary thought so. But they heard Hannah outside now, and it sounded as if she were by the coop with the chickens.

“I just…I just hope thou dost enjoy the apples.” She shook her head, smiled sadly, and turned to go. Mary considered calling after her, but knew in her heart that Peregrine had already said more than she had planned. A part of her was grateful.

But another part? She wasn’t sure whether she should be more offended by the idea that the woman considered her an adulteress or frightened by the possibility she might be hanged as a witch.



* * *





They ate supper that night later than usual because Hannah had been alone at the house. She had worked with characteristic efficiency, but she was accustomed to having Abigail and Mary’s mother—and lately Mary herself—to share the labor. But Mary and Priscilla had been upstairs at the Town House all afternoon, and Abigail had been pacing nervously there on the first floor, waiting to be summoned. The five of them—Mary and her parents and their two servants—ate their beans in molasses and pork largely in silence after James’s prayer, dining off their most casual trenchers. They spoke not at all while eating the dessert that Peregrine had brought. Mary thought the boiled apples, though a well-intended gift, were more tart than she liked and ate but one bite. Only Hannah seemed to enjoy them and finished her serving. There wasn’t a fork to be seen among the utensils, but there hadn’t been since Mary had returned home to her parents.

Her left hand was aching tonight more than it had the day before, and so she had a second and then a third mug of beer. She was confident it was healing and attributed the pain entirely to the cold that was settling in for the gray season: the days when the leaves are gone but the snow has not yet arrived, and the skies are endless and ashen and flat.



* * *





    As Abigail was rinsing the cutlery and the bowls in a water bucket and Hannah was bringing the remnants from the trenchers to the animals, Mary heard a horse’s hooves and feared it was Thomas. She had been about to go upstairs to her bedchamber, and when she heard the sound she looked anxiously at her mother and father. Clearly, they suspected the same thing. Her father went to the door and opened it, and there indeed, tying his horse to the post, was her husband. When the animal was hitched, he came to the doorway.

“Hello, Thomas,” her father said, his tone flat.

Thomas saw Priscilla and Mary standing behind him and took off his cap. “James,” he began. “Ladies.”

“Why hast thou come?” her father asked.

Mary noted the way that Thomas had planted his boots hard in the dooryard and locked his knees. She knew that posture. He was trying to hide how much he had drunk. It was, perhaps, a greater miracle that he hadn’t ever fallen off Sugar in this state and broken his neck than that he had managed to avoid the stocks all these years.

“Nothing has happened, other, of course, than the continued diminishment of my reputation this afternoon at the Town House,” he said, his voice gravelly, speaking slowly and with the precision he used when he was in this condition. “And so, given what looms tomorrow, I have come to discuss thy daughter’s petition.”

Her father started to speak, and Mary rested her hand on his arm, cutting him off, and said, “?’Tis my petition, Father.” Then to Thomas she continued, “Peregrine suggested thou might visit.”

“Did she? She knows her father, that one does,” he said, and he sounded rather proud. “She brought me some boiled apples and raisins tonight. Delicious, they were.”

Mary waited for him to continue, saying nothing.