Hour of the Witch(88)

    “Esther, what dost thou want most for thy children? What…things?”

“Thou hast brought us books with woodcuts of people being cooked,” she replied. “What more could we possibly desire?”

“Perhaps we could begin with better boots for thy girls. Dost thou want very warm boots? Better cloaks?” Mary looked toward the doorway to the room in which the family slept. “Pillowbeers?” she continued. “New comforters?”

“Thou needest trade me nothing for medicine,” said Esther. “I was not censured because I was cruel. We were censured because we called out the crooks among the elders and the fiends who hanged Ann Hibbens.”

“I appreciate that,” Mary said, and she understood she would have to reveal more. “Wilt thou keep a secret as a mother? Wilt thou tell no one of our words?”

Esther waved at the air around them. “There are throngs who hang on all that I say.”

Mary nodded. “I thank thee. I want to trade for something else, and I will give thee much, if it can be a secret.”

“Boots and cloaks,” said this mother definitively.

“Yes! I will return with boots and cloaks, plenty of each. I promise.”

“If I tell no one.”

Mary knew she would deny these girls nothing, regardless of how Esther answered. She would return with better clothing against the cold, no matter what. That was the charitable thing to do and thus would not be part of the negotiations. But she could sense that she had hooked Esther as surely as if she caught her in a grapnel, and so it was easy to respond, “My father has been much blessed and he brings many things to Boston from England, as well as Jamaica. I will bring thy family gifts because thou needest them. And because I can.”

“But I have something thou cravest that is not in this bottle?”

“Yes.”

Esther checked the swaddling on her baby, who had started to doze. “Thou cravest something dark. Is that thy secret?”

“Justice and retribution are not dark,” Mary replied.

    “Thou art panting after something no Boston apothecary will concoct. I understand now. I will have to speak to my husband. Edmund and I will decide together.”

“I respect that. I can return.” She gazed at the girls. “I want to return.”

“And if Edmund wants to know thy target, art thou willing to share that, too?”

“No. I would not wish to implicate thee.”

Esther smiled knowingly, almost conspiratorially, and Mary was at once agitated and exhilarated when she imagined the forces she was about to unleash.





I answered thy question: we had tea.

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





Twenty-Eight



“Esther Hawke mostly was occupied, and so I was blessed to spend time with two of her girls,” Mary told Thomas and Catherine that night over supper. “The children were sweet.”

“Except likely they’re damned,” Thomas said. His tankard of beer was nearly full. In her mind, Mary saw herself emptying the entirety of a small bottle of monkshood into the pewter. She wondered if a nearly full tankard would be sufficient to mask the taste of the poison.

She shook her head, trying to will the vision away; though determining the specifics was critical, they distressed her. It was still but the abstract notion that prodded her forward.

“And the boys and their father were hunting?” Catherine was asking.

“Yes,” Mary said, and she told them about her plan to return with gifts of boots and cloaks, though Thomas did not seem especially interested. As she spoke, she realized just how exhausted she was: almost five hours atop a pillion on a horse, more than two more with the Hawkes, the air always chilly. Then there was the stress of her negotiation with Esther—and the reality that now both this other woman and Constance Winston knew she was interested in a recipe for poison. As soon as she had returned home, she had thanked Catherine copiously for preparing Thomas’s dinner and their supper on her own, and managing the daily chores and the animals without any help. And yet now it was she herself who almost lacked the energy to tell the two of them of her day. But she owed it to them.

And, of course, sharing what she had seen and how she might help bring the Hawkes back to church was self-preservation. One never knew if someday she might need this dislikable young woman with whom she was eating to testify on her behalf.



* * *





In the morning, Thomas read from the Psalter before breakfast, and when he was done, he ripped off a piece of bread and sliced himself a piece of cheese. As he chewed, he asked Mary, “And today: the Hawkes again?”

“No. John Eliot is not returning to the praying Indians until next week.”

“That is probably well. Thy leaving? ’Tis a burden on Catherine.”

Mary turned to the girl and said, “I thank thee, as do the Hawke girls.”

“It is good the work thou art doing,” Catherine said. She might have said more, but a log collapsed in the hearth. Quickly Catherine went out back to retrieve an armful of wood.

When she was gone, Thomas lifted the block of cheese from the board and stared at it. Then he said, his tone strangely ruminative, “White meat. Thy brain, Mary. ’Tis not like eating the bread and body of our Savior. But still indicative. When my teeth mash the white meat, I think of thee and of thy brain.”