Hour of the Witch(75)

And yet people daily made pacts with the Dark One. His seductions were smooth, a vortex from which, once enticed, there was no escape.

“Remember,” Norton said when he resumed, “this is thy God. There are those of us present—our sisters, our brothers, our children—who already are condemned. And rightly condemned. Justly condemned. Oh, they flatter themselves. I shall not face those flames. I am here in church. I know the Commandments and I read my Psalter. But God is mindful of their wickedness. Men who crave darkness are the objects of a wrath that no mortal mind can imagine. They will see their skin seared from their arms and their bones blackened, they will watch the flames turn their legs to charred logs and their feet to ash. And they will see it and feel it every single day for eternity. Every single day. Every minute and every hour, their eyelids burned away so they cannot close them to their deformity and torture and shame. Yes, shame. The shame of the sinner, the worst shame there can be. They will live always with the smell of burnt hair and burnt flesh, with flames on their skin that cannot be smothered by their sweat or their humours or even an ocean as wide as the one that separates our world from the one we left. But their eyes will never melt—not first, not last, not ever—so they can see always what Satan can and what Satan will do. Their screams will be shrieks that will make thunder quail.

    “But their condemnation is not merely theirs and theirs alone. It will be our condemnation, too, if we do not strive with greater zeal to live the life that God wants for us. His anger is justified, and it is that very justification that so vexes Him, since all He desires from us is to hear His words and love Him as we should: to not reject the remarkable gift that He has offered us. Life. And, yes, a life here. He has given us a new world, a chance for a new England. But we must not be deluded: His patience with us will be short. After all, He did not give us this new earth to serve Satan; He will not tolerate our poisoning it the way we did Eden and Israel and France and England and everyplace else where man has walked and everyplace else where man has disappointed him,” Norton said, and Mary’s mind coiled itself like a snake around the word poisoning. Here was yet another sign.

She could reread the Bible as meticulously as John Norton and not find a more apt biblical verse to explain what had occurred in her very dooryard.

She would never dabble with spells like a witch; but was she capable of replicating the fine art of an apothecary and creating a potion? A poison?

If Peregrine could, she could.

She would.

She tried to push the idea from her mind for now because she was in the Lord’s house, but it was a boulder lodged well in a river; the currents would be parted by it for centuries before they might be capable of moving it even an inch.

    She glanced across the church at her husband and his head was bowed, though she could see it was not because he was in prayer or he was heeding the words of the pastor. His head was bowed because he was unmoved and he was sleepy. He was bored.

If, in the end, anyone was going to feel the pain of Hell, it was him.

Unless, of course, she made sure that he felt it here first.



* * *





Much of the snow had melted, but there were still piles along fences and beside dooryards, some of it still pristine but most of it black with ash or brown with animal excrement. The streets were clear and the walking easy. Mary stared up into the sun as she and Thomas and Catherine were leaving church for the dinner break, and she enjoyed the feel of it on her face. But her mind was occupied by what the minister had said—and, thus, what the Lord had said. So often she felt that the Sunday message was directed at her, and given her notoriety of late, it would have been reasonable to suppose that the minister was thinking of her. She wasn’t pondering this idea because of her usually avid desire to understand the meaning of the sermon as a Christian, however, but because of the sudden and profound confluence of forks and adders and poison: yes, it seemed as if John Norton was speaking to her, but not because of what she had done, but rather because of what she might do. Was it possible today that the reverend had been a conduit to inspire her? And if the minister was but an instrument, was the musician God or the Devil? Inside the First Church, she had been quite sure it was God. Outside, she was less sure.

They hadn’t walked far when she felt Thomas taking her elbow and pulling her close. It might have been construed as a chivalrous gesture—or one of affection—by someone who did not know how his mind worked, but Mary did, and she understood that something was about to happen and it would not be pleasant. When she turned from the sun to the street she saw that Henry Simmons was walking beside them.

    “Good Sabbath,” he said, his tone absolutely without guile. He was like a cheerful puppy, though she knew that in truth he was not. She knew how dark his thoughts could run from the exchanges they had shared.

Thomas was walking briskly now, pulling her along with him, and he glared at Henry, seething. He said nothing, and so she remained silent, too.

“Thomas, I owe thee an apology,” Henry continued, and it was then that Thomas stopped. This was unexpected, and Mary was unsure what she thought of Henry expressing contrition to her husband. She would have preferred that he had kept his distance and said nothing, both because she saw no possible good emerging from their confrontation, and because she didn’t like to imagine Henry bowing before a cad like her husband.