Hour of the Witch(56)

    Caleb Adams sat up straight and tried to focus the discussion once more on the case before them. To the other magistrates, he said, “Here is but a part of the puzzle I cannot parse. Thomas Deerfield is adamant that he never struck his wife. Yet the First Church—as we all know—recently excommunicated Mary Wharton for her abominable curses against her husband and for hitting him most violently. Likewise, the church excommunicated Marcy Verin for similar offenses. It cast out James Mattock for denying his wife a conjugal relationship, and William Franklin for the cruelty he evidenced toward his servants and his helpmeet. But the First Church has contemplated no such action against Thomas Deerfield—nor has there even been a mediation.”

“Go on, Caleb,” said the governor. Mary glanced at her scrivener, curious where this was leading, but Hull discreetly shook his head. He had no idea.

Adams stared gravely at Thomas. “So, we have before us no logical reason for her to leave thee—unless…”

“Unless what?” asked Thomas, and Mary finished the magistrate’s thought in her mind and grew relieved: Unless thou art lying and in fact plunged the Devil’s tines into thy poor helpmeet’s hand.

But that wasn’t what Adams was thinking. Not at all. “Unless,” said Adams, his voice stern, “she is behaving erratically because Mary Deerfield has indeed been possessed by the Devil.”

It took the crowd on the second floor of the Town House a moment to absorb the reality that Adams once more had brought the petition back to witchcraft. Mary felt a rush of nausea and dizziness and took her father’s elbow for support, aware of the way that everyone around her suddenly was murmuring. He gazed down at her, his face reassuring, and brought one finger to his lips, but her mother looked frightfully scared. The constable struck the floor twice and then a third time with his pike, and the crowd went quiet.

    Wilder looked at Adams and then at the governor and said, “I would like to remind everyone on the bench beside me that this is a petition for divorce. We are not adjudicating on witchcraft.”

“She is barren,” said Adams. “Do I need to remind thee that a witness saw her planting the Devil’s tines in the dooryard? Is that not maleficium?”

“Mary Deerfield is most certainly not possessed,” said Thomas loudly, forcefully, and with a protectiveness she would not have expected of him. “Mary Deerfield is not a witch. I can assure the Court of Assistants that she loves our Lord and Savior with all her heart. I pray that deep inside she loves me, too, with a love second only to her love of Jesus Christ. And I pray that whatever melancholy led her to leave me will pass and we will resume our lives together as man and wife.”

“I thank thee, Thomas,” said the governor. He looked at the magistrates. “Dost any of thee have any further questions?”

When there was silence from the bench, even from Caleb Adams, he said to Thomas, “Hast thou anything more to add?”

“I do not.”

“Then go meet thy farmer from Salem. But be back quick. There are only a few more witnesses from whom we will hear. I hope we can render our verdict by dinner or just after dinner.”

Mary watched Thomas bow to the magistrates. Then he nodded at her and her parents, but he gave them a wide berth as he approached the stairs. It sounded to her as if he took them quickly, with the speed and agility of a much younger man.

A man—and she thought of him with a guilt that unnerved her, because how could she possibly think of him now?—such as Henry Simmons.





I never saw my father strike my mother.

    —The Testimony of Peregrine Deerfield Cooke, from the Records and Files of the Court of Assistants, Boston, Massachusetts, 1662, Volume III





Eighteen



A small parade of witnesses spoke briefly after Thomas had left. Mary’s friend Rebeckah Cooper informed the magistrates that she had noticed bruises on the side of Mary’s face three times that she could recall, reiterating what she had told the scrivener.

“And did Mary tell thee that Thomas had hit her?” asked Caleb Adams.

“No.”

“Did thee ask?”

“No. But I—”

“But clearly thou were not alarmed,” observed the magistrate.

It was painfully reminiscent of Jonathan’s testimony, and when Rebeckah was leaving the Town House, Mary tried to imagine what she and Peregrine discussed when they were together. Was it their children? Their chores? Recipes for boiled apples and raisins? Or was there more to their friendship than Mary had ever conceived?

The tavern keeper, Ward Hollingsworth, followed, and said there were nights when Thomas Deerfield drank more alcohol than was needed to quench his thirst, but he never behaved badly. His voice might grow loud and boisterous, but Hollingsworth insisted that he had worse customers.

“And so thou managed him,” said Wilder, and Mary viewed it as an innocuous statement from the magistrate until she heard Hollingsworth’s response. Only then did she understand Wilder’s cleverness.

“Oh, there were nights when I chose not to refill his mug,” said Hollingsworth, and he said it proudly, and the damage he had inadvertently inflicted on Thomas Deerfield was evident on the faces of some of the men on the bench.

    Next came her neighbor Isaac Willard, and Mary had no idea why he had been summoned. Her scrivener had not approached him. But when Caleb Adams initiated the questioning, she understood: this was yet more character assassination. Adams wanted details about that afternoon when she had stopped Goody Howland’s children from adding to the misery of an old man as he was lashed behind a wagon.