Hour of the Witch(73)
“May I see thee again, Constance?”
The woman looked into her eyes and said, “Thou mayest. I am grateful that thou hast chosen to rekindle our fellowship, even if the embers were billowed by questions and need. I like thee and respect thee, Mary: I am always pleased to see thee. But thou were wary before. Thou should be wary now.”
“Because?”
“Because the hatefulness in Hartford may soon travel here, and I may yet become a particularly dangerous person with whom to socialize—unless one wants to leave Boston via the hanging platform. Already there are aspersions upon thy character that should give thee pause.”
“I used to have more fears than I have now. After what I have endured this autumn? Now I have but few. And the principal one, at least while I am breathing still? It is the prospect of a life lived only with a man thou dost rightly call a beast. And Constance?”
“Go on.”
“There comes a time when resistance is not zealotry, but sanity.”
“Even if it leads to a noose?”
“I shall move with caution.”
“Thou hast become a brave girl. Less tamed than thy facade, thy countenance a cloak. I approve.”
“I thank thee.”
There Constance patted her shoulder, smiled, and went inside to see the cabinet maker.
* * *
If thou believest in Me, Mary thought, walking back toward the center of the city.
If thou believest in Me…
John, chapter 11, verse 26: “Whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.” Such were Jesus’s words to Martha.
Those who doubted were among the damned. As they should be. As were those who believed and yet still sided with Lucifer.
She wasn’t sure what and how much her husband believed. How could he treat her the way that he did if he wanted to follow his Lord and Savior with all his heart and with all his soul? Did he honestly suppose that his violence toward her was remediation? Nevertheless, he went to church and read the Psalter and prayed before they ate. How many others in the church lived with such hypocrisy? Feigning a future among the elect when in fact they were damned?
Perhaps Thomas really did believe, as he’d suggested that night after her divorce petition had been decided, that she had planted the forks and pestle in their dooryard. Maybe it was his opinion—and the opinion of her parents—that he was protecting her.
Equally as likely, however, it was mere justification for his calumny and lies.
Either way, it didn’t matter. Someday he might kill her.
Mary removed her snowshoes when she got home. Catherine asked her where she had been, the question no more than a pleasantry. Mary responded that she had walked to the brazier, but he hadn’t any ladles today and so they would need to make do with the one they had.
“But the one we have is fine,” said Catherine.
“Good,” said Mary. “I thought it was starting to show its age. I am relieved I was mistaken.”
* * *
In the night, she read her Bible until the candle was small and the words had become hazy blurs. She ran her finger down page after page, her mind searching for one word and that one word in a context that might make sense to someone who has given his soul to the Devil: serpent. At some moments, she was utterly oblivious to the sentences and stories as she scanned the chapters, and would find herself flipping back the pages to read the passages again.
In the morning, both Catherine and Thomas noticed her commitment the night before and expressed their approval over breakfast.
The Old Testament was so big, she thought, and the New Testament so rich with parable and revelation. It seemed that the task was beyond her ken. To find one word in one context that might solve the riddle? It would demand the finest minds in the colony.
But still, she vowed, she would soldier on.
* * *
Even now, sometimes, Thomas could confound her.
They were in bed, the candle was extinguished, and the room was dark. It had been out for a while, and she presumed he was asleep, a little surprised that he wasn’t snoring. But then he spoke.
“Mary,” he said, rolling over onto his back. “I am troubled by something.”
His tone was pensive, not angry. This wasn’t about something she had done or failed to do.
“Prithee,” she murmured. “Tell me.”
“Jonathan Cooke,” he said, and instantly she grew alarmed. Perhaps she was mistaken and somehow he had sensed—or even witnessed—the way she had looked at the man, her eyes wanton.
“Go on.”
“He has asked me for money. ’Tis not the first time, but this time he asked with desperation. He came to the mill, his hat in his hand, but his attitude fierce.”
“Fierce?” She had known neither that Jonathan and Peregrine were in need, nor that the man previously had approached her husband. She thought of what her scrivener had whispered to her during Jonathan’s testimony: he gambles and plays cards.
“Entitled. Angry that so far I have not opened my purse.”
“The dowry thou gave to Peregrine was munificent.”
“And long gone.”
“Did Jonathan put it into the construction of the house?” she asked. She didn’t tell Thomas what Benjamin Hull had alleged, because she did not want to bring up the trial now or suggest that she knew the things he was keeping from her.