Hour of the Witch(97)

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Mary was sewing when Catherine returned. It was possible that the girl had just gone to the Howlands’ for a visit: she had lived there while Mary’s petition was being heard and it was where her late brother had been indentured. Perhaps the pair merely gossiped about what a foul and barren woman she was, and how sad it was that Catherine had to live with the likes of her. It was also possible that they chatted about a great many things, and Mary Deerfield’s name never even came up.

But Mary didn’t believe that.

She said that her left hand was throbbing and asked the girl to tend to the chickens and bring in some wood. The girl put down her satchel and obliged. Instantly Mary bolted from the chair and examined the contents of the bag. There were three new spoons and there was the remaining change from the money that Mary had given her to buy the silverware, and there was a handkerchief and her gloves. But that was it, there was nothing more.

Had she expected to find forks? Three-tined forks? A pestle? A wooden mark with a five-pointed star that might fit into one’s palm? Maybe. But there was nothing incriminating. The tinker didn’t sell three-tined forks, but in her mind, Mary had seen Goody Howland surreptitiously handing Catherine a pair.

Clearly, she was mistaken—though not about the girl. Mary remained confident of her convictions.

She returned all of the items to the bag and resumed her sewing. Fine, she thought. Fine. It would have been too easy to have found proof of the girl’s duplicity—of her collaboration with Goody Howland and Satan—in the bag. That didn’t mean that Mary was not surrounded by a swamp of snakes. She still believed that Catherine was behind the forks in the dooryard and that Catherine had carved the Devil’s mark into the wood in this very house. She still thought it likely that the girl wished her ill, either because she saw in her mistress the cause of her brother’s death or she saw in Thomas something that Mary herself did not—if only as a way up from her station.

    So be it. Let that pestiferous child try and destroy her with fiendish spells and pretend poisons. Mary had a real one. And soon enough she was going to use it.





Tell us, prithee, what thou knowest of Mary Deerfield and her penchant for evil.

    —The Remarks of Magistrate Caleb Adams, from the Records and Files of the Court of Assistants, Boston, Massachusetts, 1663, Volume I





Thirty-One



It was unpleasant to walk during her course, and Mary had walked much the day before when she had trailed Catherine from the tinker’s to Goody Howland’s. But still that afternoon Mary walked to her parents’ house. Her father was at the warehouse, but she had a lovely visit with her mother.

And when she left, she had with her two of the three-tined forks that her father had imported but her parents never again were likely to use. She had taken them from the highboy when Abigail and her mother were preparing tea and Hannah was outside emptying chamber pots. No one saw her slip them into her satchel.

Then she went home and waited. She waited with a peace and contentment that she supposed was felt usually by the elect.



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The timing was going to matter. She feared that Henry might fret when he did not hear from her, and so she asked Catherine to bring Eleanor Hill a linen apron she had made to thank the older woman for the basket of treasures—the oranges and figs and tea. She encouraged Catherine to please mention that she would be up and about by the end of the week, which was all that was necessary to convey to another woman that it was her time. Eleanor would likely say something about the gift of the apron to her nephew, and he would know that Mary was well.

Now she stood before the looking glass and, as strange as it seemed to her, tried out different presentations of sickness. She recalled what Constance had told her were the manifestations of wolfsbane poisoning, and opened her mouth into a rictus of pain. It looked fake. There was a reason why acting was shameful to God. It was childish. But she recalled what it had felt like to have a fork breaking the bones of her hand and then those very bones slammed into the corner of her nightstand; she remembered what it felt like to have boiled salad dumped upon her. And she grimaced. She practiced gagging. She put spittle upon her lips. She brought her hands to her neck.

    She could do this.

She found it ironic that a widow received the same portion of a husband’s estate as a woman who divorced him: one-third. She wiped the saliva from her lips and from the waistcoat where, in a most unseemly fashion, some had dripped. She shook her head and wondered at the time and the effort she had wasted with the men of the Town House. One-third of Thomas’s estate. It would all come out the same in the end.

At least in this world.

And in the next? It seemed likely, based on her thoughts, that she was already destined for Hell, so a crime on her ledger mattered little. In fact, at this point, it mattered not at all.



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That afternoon, Reverend John Norton stopped by. He was in the neighborhood, and Mary was embarrassed that her hands were unclean from having just been out back with the animals. But, as if he could read her mind, he reassured her that the Lord had not likely ever chastised a shepherd for dirt under his fingernails. He apologized for interrupting her.

“What is the reason for thy visit?” she asked. She felt a pang of trepidation. She knew what she was plotting, and sometimes, it seemed, all of Boston had its eyes on her.