Hour of the Witch(70)

“We did. And for Peregrine’s too. We just had so many apples this year. Such a blessing.”

“Yes,” Mary agreed. “A blessing.” She told herself that any distrust she had been feeling toward the woman was unfounded. It had to be. Goody Cooper might just be her only real friend left in the world.



* * *





She made one last stop on the way home. She visited her parents’ house to see how Hannah was feeling. The servant girl still felt weak and her color was poor, but she was up and about and assisting Abigail with the chores.

“I checked to see if someone had planted the Devil’s tines in the dooryard,” she told Mary, “but the ground was too hard. I don’t think that was it.”

“No,” Mary said. “I rather doubt it was, too.”



* * *





In the night, the storm continued, but it did not grow worse. This was not the sort of blizzard with icy blasts that shook the windows and blew snow into the house, and made the fire rise and fall in the hearth, the flames at the beck and call of the drafts. But the snow fell silently and relentlessly, an early-season storm that by morning had left six or seven inches of heavy powder in the city by the sea. Mary stood in the bedroom before the glass, a blanket wrapped around her like a shawl, and gazed at the quiet of Boston. It was still overcast, but the snow had ceased. The trees, which thankfully had lost their leaves weeks earlier, still had branches bowing down to the earth beneath great blankets of white, and one slim evergreen near the street looked as if it might snap in two.

But there was not so much snow that the city would grow paralyzed. Soon the sleds would be out, and men would emerge with their shovels. A horse could traverse six or seven inches of snow, and Thomas would go to the mill and expect his men to be there.

Her husband was still asleep in the bedstead, his breathing more a wheeze than a snore. She looked at him and sighed. There was no part of him that she did not detest. Even his beard, scruffy from a night against the pillowbeer, repulsed her. His left hand sat beside his face, the fingers splayed and reminiscent of a spider, and she wondered what it would be like for him to be awakened by a fork being plunged into the back of it. Or by having a pot of boiled salad dumped upon him.

    Somewhere in another part of the city, Henry Simmons was waking, too. In her mind, she saw him swinging his legs over the side of the mattress, grimacing at the pain along the broad swath of his back. Had the Hills tended to him? Had they brought in a physician? Perhaps in the opinion of his aunt and uncle, a part of his punishment was to live with the discomfort until the skin began to heal on its own.

Downstairs she heard Catherine stirring and knew she should join her to warm the house, tend to the animals, and prepare breakfast. But she had thought of the forks, which led her naturally to the pestle, and then once more to Henry Simmons’s back. It was all connected. The world was connected. She thought of the two days she had spent at the Town House and the things that people had said about her. This was connected, too. And it was then that an idea began to form in her mind. It was vague, the details beyond definition. But she was starting to see its contours, like the shore when a ship first spies land on the horizon.

She needed to venture out to the Neck and the street near Gallows Hill to visit with Constance Winston. The woman had no reason to forgive her, but it was clear from when they had met the other day that neither did Constance harbor so much ill will that she would shun her. She understood why Mary had kept her distance. Though Constance had never been formally accused of witchcraft, not even during Ann Hibbens’s trial, there were murmurs in the city that she had a great and particular knowledge of the dark arts.

The truth was, Constance had been kind when their paths had recently crossed.

Well, Mary decided, once more she needed to speak with her, despite the rumors of witchcraft that swirled about her like dead leaves in a September windstorm. After all, if anyone could tell her why someone had planted two forks and a pestle in her dooryard, it was Constance. If anyone could assist her—carefully and with great stealth—with her emancipation, it was likely to be an independent woman with a subversive streak in her soul.

    Today, as soon as she and Catherine had tended to their responsibilities and sent Thomas off to the mill, she would journey to the Neck.





I felt something in the pocket, and when I put my fingers there, I discovered the Devil’s tines.

    —The Testimony of Catherine Stileman, from the Records and Files of the Court of Assistants, Boston, Massachusetts, 1663, Volume I





Twenty-Two



Mary had hoped that Constance would be alone, but when she answered the door that morning her young servant was helping to prepare dinner: there was a chicken descending on the roasting jack and a kettle with boiled squash on the fire. As Mary recalled, the house was suitably modest for a home this far out on the Neck: the walls were unadorned, and the second floor was accessible only by a ladder that looked rather rickety.

Constance had donned that regal scarlet cape and was about to leave, and so Mary offered to return another day. Instead Constance shook her head and said, “I know where thou livest, Mary. I am walking in that direction, too. So, we can walk together—that is, if thou art comfortable walking with me. In public.”