Hour of the Witch(85)

“Yes, I would,” he said, smiling agreeably, and Catherine poured him some cider.

“How is thy family? How is Peregrine feeling?” Mary asked.

He stood by the fire, sipping his drink. “She has had some bad mornings. Either the baby or something she ate. Maybe the change in the weather.”

Mary pondered this. “Is it like when she was carrying thy other daughters?” she pressed.

He shrugged. “A bit. But I heard one of thy parents’ girls—Hannah—had the same thing.”

“As Peregrine?”

“I’m not a physician, but yes,” he said. She considered asking him more, but he continued, “Thou must be relieved thy petition is behind thee—though, I suppose, it did not end the way thou hoped.”

“I am here,” she said. She was surprised he had brought it up.

“Indeed, thou art. Thomas is much blessed. Thou art, too, Catherine.”

The girl looked slightly alarmed that she had been brought into this conversation.

“After all,” he continued, “thy mistress has returned. All is well with the world, right?”

“All is well,” she repeated demurely, but Mary could tell she didn’t believe that.

“No more of this devilishness about forks?” he said, after taking a long swallow of the cider. Mary wasn’t sure to whom he was speaking. His comportment seemed to suggest that he had stopped at an ordinary on the way here.

    “Jonathan, there is nothing devilish about forks that Catherine or I deem worthy of conversation,” she said carefully.

“Thou savest it for public display at the Town House?”

“I never brought it up there,” Mary reminded him.

“No,” he said, and he wagged a finger suggestively at the servant. “She did. Well, today this must be a house that is rich in love and trust and the peace that passeth all understanding.”

“Art thou mocking scripture?”

“No. I am only quoting it, Mary. Only quoting it.”

Outside, she heard her husband’s horse. “That would be Thomas,” she said. She was surprised by how quickly the visit had grown uncomfortable.

He put down his tankard. “I thank thee, Catherine,” he said. “I thank thee both. I need thy husband but a moment, and so I will say good night here.” Then he left them and went into the dooryard to greet Thomas.

When he was gone, neither woman said a word about Jonathan’s behavior. Mary didn’t want to, and Catherine didn’t dare.



* * *





Catherine went out back with the animals after supper, and so Mary had Thomas alone. She asked him whether Jonathan had pressed him again about money.

“He did,” Thomas said, as he pulled on his coat.

“Thou art returning to the tavern?” she asked.

“I am.”

“What didst thou decide?”

“About Jonathan? I told thee: I am going to give him some ground corn and flour.”

“Will that suffice? He seemed much in need when he was here.”

He looked at her, and his face grew dark. “Why art thou harping on this?”

“Thou brought it up to me in bed the other night. I am trying to be a faithful helpmeet.”

His eyes went to the door to be sure that Catherine was not yet returning. “Sometimes, I think he wishes me dead so Peregrine would get her share.”

    “Jonathan?”

He closed his eyes and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “?’Tis not thy concern.”

“I’m sorry.”

“They will be fine. All of them.”

“Peregrine is feeling poorly,” she said.

“She is with child.”

“Unless it was something she ate.”

He shook his head in abhorrence. “Thy mind, Mary, thy mind. One day it’s dull as an infant’s, and the next it is attempting to unravel the mysteries of the humours. I am tired. I am vexed by thee, and I am vexed by the godless peacock that married my daughter. Don’t make me…”

She waited in silence. She knew not to finish the sentence for him or urge him to finish it himself.

“It doesn’t matter what ailed her,” he said finally. “She is mending.” And then he was gone.

For a long moment, until Catherine came back into the house, she was lost in the thought that she had misjudged Jonathan and Peregrine—and, perhaps, Rebeckah—and was seeing plots that were but phantasms and missing the poisons that were real. Once more, the idea came to her that she was, in fact, possessed.





I believe she may have learned things—dark things, evil things—from a woman such as Constance Winston.

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





Twenty-Seven



Mary sat on the pillion behind John Eliot as they passed the last of the fields on the outskirts of the city—quiescent, the ground locking in hard for the winter—and watched geese against the flat gray sky as they flew south. She hadn’t seen a great V of geese in weeks and wondered what it meant to see so large a flock today. From how far north had they come that they were only now flying over Boston? Eliot hadn’t spoken since they had ridden through the Neck, and there he had only observed how far the city’s reach was extending. She found their silence companionable.