Hour of the Witch(7)

She is a shameless, impious, and lustful woman. By her sins, she will not only pull down judgment from the Lord upon herself, but also upon the place where she lives.

—The Testimony of Goody Howland, from the Records and Files of the Court of Assistants, Boston, Massachusetts, 1662, Volume III





Three



When Mary and Catherine were done harvesting the last pumpkins and squash from their family garden on Monday morning, the two women went to Peter and Beth Howland’s house to see Catherine’s brother, William. Outside, a group of small children, boys and girls, were playing marbles, and Mary saw little Sara Howland had the most glorious yellow silk ribbon wrapped around her straw hat.

The shutters on the house were drawn, and the inside of the Howlands’ home was dark, even though it was almost midday. Immediately Mary could smell William, despite the fact that Peter’s wife, Beth, was boiling spinach and currants and leeks over the fire.

The physician hadn’t arrived, and while Catherine ventured into the small room in the back in which her brother lay alone with his fever, Mary stood with Beth in the hall and showed the woman what she had brought.

“I have comfrey for his ruptures and sores,” she began, “and dill from our garden.”

“Dill?”

“It sometimes relieves the nausea. And mint to encourage his appetite.”

“It will take more than mint to make him eat. And more than dill to keep him from vomiting,” Beth insisted. She was tall and stout, at least ten years Mary’s senior. She had three children and lost exactly that many more. She had piercing black eyes, beneath which, today, were deep, shadowy bags.

“Be that as it may, we do what we can,” said Mary.

    “Mary, thy simples—”

“My simples have helped others through many a sickness.”

“Thy teacher was a witch.”

“Constance Winston? She was not my teacher and she was not a witch. She is not a witch. She is…” And Mary heard her voice trailing off. She had first ventured out to the Boston Neck, to a side street near Gallows Hill, two years earlier, because she had heard rumors that the old woman there, Constance Winston, had cures for barren women. She and Thomas had been married not quite three years, and never once had her time of the month failed to arrive. Constance had suggested stinging nettles steeped in tea and, when that didn’t succeed, oil of mandrakes. Neither had worked, and the vomiting from the mandrake tincture had briefly given Mary the hope that she was indeed with child, which had exacerbated her disappointment when her blood finally came. Still, Mary had visited the woman six or seven more times and had learned much about other simples. She hadn’t seen Constance in over a year now, and felt a pang of guilt that so much time had passed since her last visit. It wasn’t that Mary was so busy; she wasn’t. It was that the woman’s eccentricities had begun to seem more like cantankerousness. At least that was what Mary usually told herself. She speculated when she was most honest with herself, when she was alone in her bedchamber with her ledger, that she had become unnerved by the comments she had heard about Constance and the woman’s friendship with the hanged witch Ann Hibbens. The gossips had begun to circle, and Mary didn’t want to risk an association because of the dangers it posed, both to her reputation in this life and to her soul in the next.

“She is what?” Beth pressed Mary. “Just an old fool?”

“No, she is not that either. But she is neither my teacher nor my friend.”

Beth waved her hand dismissively and said, “Fine. I care not. Do what thou likest, if it doesn’t make the boy worse.”

“Has he been up at all or does he sleep mostly?” Mary asked.

“Sometimes he mumbles a word or two, but I don’t believe he’s been much awake since before church yesterday morning. I believe that was the last time.”

    Mary took this in. The boy probably was beyond the ministrations of comfrey and dill.

“He still has over five years left on his contract,” Beth continued, shaking her head. “And he’s been sickly for so long.”

“It would be a great loss,” Mary agreed.

“He’s become like a big brother to the children. Especially the boys. They are very, very sad, the whole lot of them.”

“And thou, too, I am sure.”

“I am. I needed his hands. Peter needed his hands. He was—”

“Not was, not yet, prithee.”

The goodwife sighed. “As thou wishest: he is an able servant. A godly man—albeit a sickly one. The cancers are everywhere up his arms now, and his body feels completely aflame. His forehead is like a skillet. I could sear on it.”

“Thou soundest so angry. Thou—”

“I am angry!” she snapped, and Mary was grateful that the other woman was keeping her voice low so Catherine couldn’t hear her. “We will lose good money on William, and much needed help.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Catherine is of the same stock. Thy family will see.”

“Beth!”

“I do not mean to wish ill on thee.”

“Yet thou didst.”

“I did no such thing. I simply spoke a truth.”