Hour of the Witch(99)

“It’s a wonder to me that the savages here survived so long amidst such cold. I see their furs and skins, but I am still surprised,” she continued. She ripped off a piece of meat from the bird and saw that her fingers were shaking.

“When wilt thou return to the Hawkes next?” the old man asked her.

“I am not sure. Perhaps the end of this week. It depends entirely on”—and she almost said “John,” but stopped herself—“Reverend Eliot and his schedule.”

Thomas spooned some boiled carrots and turnips from the trencher. Then he washed them down with more beer, and so Mary did, as well.

    “The boots thou brought the Hawkes? That won’t make that family repent,” her husband told her.

“Perhaps. But two little girls—”

“Little beasts,” interrupted Thomas.

“Two children will be warmer this winter than last. And it is not just the warmth that interests me: it is trying to bring them back to the Lord.”

Isaac looked at her, and Mary saw approval in his eyes.

For a moment, Thomas stared at his tankard. She began to wonder if the poison might not work: perhaps wolfsbane was but a myth. Or the potion that Edmund had given to Constance was a fake. For the next few minutes, the four of them ate and drank in affable silence. Catherine and their guest had finished their beer, but Thomas had barely touched his. Two sips. And so she had barely touched hers. She had to be careful not to get ahead of him if the play she planned to enact was that Catherine had attempted to poison them. As soon as Thomas began to grow sick from the poison, she would feign his exact symptoms. She would gag and froth exactly as he did. The only difference? When he fell from the table or collapsed, she would be sure and overturn her beer as she toppled to the floor. Isaac Willard would see it all, noting—because he seemed to observe everything—that unlike Thomas, she had not finished her drink. She had only consumed a third of her tankard, which was why she had only been sickened. Most assuredly it was why she had survived.

Well, apparently two sips was not nearly enough to kill a man. Thomas was showing no signs of the monkshood at all.

“At least,” her husband said, “?’tis not the sort of December weather to slow the commerce that docks in and sets forth from the harbor. Mary, thy father’s warehouse is probably busier than Decembers past.”

“Thy parents are true saints,” said Isaac Willard.

Mary nodded. Was it a sign that for one of the only times in his life Thomas wasn’t guzzling his beer? Was the Lord giving her one last chance to turn away from murder? And it was not just the murder of her husband. No, not at all. She knew that Catherine would swing from a rope when this was done.

    “They are,” Thomas agreed, and he chuckled. “They endure the likes of me in their family.” He smiled at her. She thought of her parents in Heaven without her. Because, surely, she would never see them there if she murdered Thomas and made sure that Catherine was convicted of the crime. She thought she had grown accustomed to this revelation, but clearly she hadn’t. Oh, to kill him might be justice in this world, but it would offer only woe for eternity. And the same might be true for murdering Catherine. She just didn’t know for certain: she might be killing a Devil’s handmaiden, but it was also conceivable that she was slaughtering merely an unschooled and scared girl who had inappropriate feelings for her husband.

Yes, she decided, Thomas’s uncharacteristic restraint was a sign. God was offering her one final opportunity to turn back from this path.

And so she took it.

She did not know in her heart whether this was cowardice or righteousness, but it was tumultuous and uncontainable. In a flash, before she could change her mind, she reached across the table to take her husband’s hand in hers, careful to knock his tankard to the floor, where the beer and the poison stained the wood and seeped through the cracks. Catherine leapt to her feet to clean it up, and Mary was standing, apologizing, and quick to bring her husband a fresh stein and a fresh pour. Thomas did not seem angered by her clumsiness. It was as if he expected this sort of thing from her. And none of the beer had spilled on him.

It surprised her how relieved she felt. She had expected only regret, and wasn’t sure whether this was because her Lord and Savior had walked her away from the precipice to Hell, or whether it was because He had given her a much better idea.

Because He had. It was only beginning to form, but she liked everything about her new plan so much more than her original one.

And that was a gift, too.



* * *





    That night, while Catherine was outside feeding the animals, Mary took the empty bottle and the two forks she had hidden inside the girl’s bedstead and placed them back in her trunk. She would need the bottle in the coming days.

Then, after Catherine had gone to sleep but while Thomas was still at the ordinary, she took her quill and a bottle of ink and wrote a letter. She wrote sitting on the edge of the bedstead, with the paper atop her ledger, leaning in close to the candle on the nightstand.

    Thomas,

By the time thou hast found this, I will be gone.

Whether it is to Heaven or Hell, I know not.

But I drank a poison and it is finished.

My body? Thou needn’t trouble thyself. Thou wilt never find it because I have no desire to see my remains excoriated by the men who wield such awful power in the pulpit and at the Town House. Someday it may be discovered deep in the forest, but by then—if God is willing to show me mercy—it will be but the unrecognizable bones the wolves did not devour.