Crow Hollow (26 page)

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Prudence came quietly up the side street to the Stone household. She kept her head low, her daughter against her breast. It was dusk, the light failing, but she was cautious nonetheless. She couldn’t risk getting recognized by Goody Brockett or one of the other gossips of the Third Church. Word would spread, alerting the enemies already searching for her.

She slipped down the alley between the Stone house and Goodman Upton’s home to its north. The passage was barely wide enough to pull a handcart loaded with firewood, and she took comfort in the deep shadows between the two houses.

Prudence slipped through the gate and into the backyard, where the woodshed and snow-covered vegetable garden lay. It was quiet except for the sound of softly clucking chickens roosting inside their coop, safe for the evening against raccoons and weasels.

The back side of the house had no windows, and when she came up to the door she could hear nothing. Who was inside? The reverend, his family, and their servants? Or Knapp’s men, waiting to seize her? Her heart quickened.

Prudence thought briefly about trying a ruse, perhaps letting the door bang open, as if left ajar and caught by the wind. Then she could see who came to latch it up tight. If it was her sister, Prudence could test the situation, voice her suspicions, see if Anne dismissed them. Could this all be a fantasy spun in her own head?

No, she wouldn’t do it.

She’d hid herself too long under this roof. Writing her narrative, begging her sister and the reverend for aid while they soothed her with meaningless assurances. She’d convinced herself there was no alternative. What more could she have done? She couldn’t venture into the wilderness alone, and she lacked the strength to compel others to assist her.

It was a feeble effort, and it had cost her dearly. The injured child in her arms attested to that: torn between two mothers, two peoples. Only gradually would those wounds heal.

“Find your courage,” she whispered. “Do it now.”

Mary lifted her head from where it was buried against Prudence’s breast. “What, Mama?”

“Shh. You must keep very still.”

Prudence climbed the three steps, her boots loud on the wood. She swung open the door and entered the back pantry. Old John Porter was there, back turned, latching the oatmeal bin and checking the other barrels and boxes containing the dry foodstuffs to make sure they were sealed against mice. The smell of the room—the flour, the corn, the dried sage and thyme on the shelf—sent a wave of longing washing through her. This was her home. Her family, her people. Yet she had come to denounce them.

She tried to sneak past Old John, but he must have caught her movement from the side of his vision, for he turned before she could get through the door.

“Bless, what is this?” he said. “Prudence?” His eyes opened wide when he spotted Mary, and they began to fill with tears as a wide smile broke his face. “Can it be? Praise the Lord, it is!”

As of yet there was no stirring from the rest of the house. Prudence put her hand against Old John’s wrinkled cheek.

“Bless you, John. I always knew you were true.”

“GOODY STONE, REVEREND!” he boomed. “OUR PRUDIE HAS RETURNED! AND SHE CARRIES A MIRACLE!”

Prudence didn’t wait to hear what this shouted pronouncement would bring, instead pushing into the keeping room. A fire crackled in the hearth, where Alice Branch slid a loaf of dough into the brick oven while Anne tended to the soup kettle. The reverend sat at the table, writing, his fingers stained with ink. Several of the children read their primers or mended socks.

For a moment, nobody moved, even as Prudence stood in front of them, holding her daughter, and Old John burst into the room behind her, waving his hands and shouting in excitement.

Anne dropped the ladle into the soup and came running. Her eyes were shining, her face aglow. Yet her tone was disapproving. “Oh, Prudie. What trouble you have caused. What trouble! Is this—is it . . . ?”

“Mary. My daughter. Sit down. Hold her. I have matters to attend to.”

Anne seemed taken aback by Prudence’s hard tone. But she obeyed at once. She stared at Mary, who barely squirmed but looked back with her wide, innocent expression.

By now, the rest of the Stone children had come racing down the stairs to stand gawking. Lucy Branch was there too, her mouth forming a surprised little circle. The reverend rose from the table, blinking, as if still unable to understand what he was looking at. His quill dropped on the paper, where a blotch of ink spread over his letters.

“Children, servants,” he said. “Leave us now.”

“The children, yes,” Prudence said. “But not the servants. They stay.”

Stone’s face darkened. “Hold your tongue, woman. I am the master of this house, not you.”

Prudence hardened her heart, forced herself to stand upright. “You have surrendered your moral authority, Reverend. A terrible and wicked sin has taken place under your roof, and as God is my witness, I will have it out.”

“How dare you?” His voice shook.

“Henry,” Anne said in a quiet voice. “They said Prudie was dead, yet here she is. And she brings her daughter. Something momentous has come to pass. I want to know what.”

Stone opened his mouth, then closed it abruptly. He turned to the others, who were still gawking. “Children, go. Servants, remain.”

Prudence waited until the children had left, then said, “Everyone sit down.”

The Branch sisters took seats at the table, together with Old John Porter, who looked confused. He cupped his hands to his ears. The reverend came past Prudence, studied her face, and sat in the double-wide bench next to his wife, who still held Mary. Only Prudence remained standing.

“Anne, who said I was dead?”

“Samuel Knapp.” Anne licked her lips. “Truth, it was Goodman Walker, but Knapp sent him.”

“Walker, hmm? Of the General Court?”

“Aye.” Anne frowned. “What is this about? What happened? And why did you leave with those men? Where are they now?”

Prudence ignored the questions. She turned to the reverend. “Where is my money?”

“Money?”

“My inheritance. Have you spent it?”

“Of course not. You think I have robbed you?” He sounded shocked. “I have been keeping it in trust to give your husband when you remarry.”

“Prove your words.”

“Why, I scarcely think that now—”

“Prove them,” Prudence interrupted, her tone sharp.

Stone rose to his feet and went to the chest on the far side of the room where he kept his papers. He opened it with a brass key taken from a pocket of his jerkin, and after rummaging around for a minute came up with a piece of parchment with figures scratched on it, together with names and transactions, filed in double columns.

Prudence studied it for a moment, trying to make sense of the names and figures. “You sold six hundred acres to Knapp for thirty-seven pounds?”

“Poor land, rocky soil. It needs to be cleared of trees, manured for many years before it can give forth a good yield.”

“That is a lie. This land is rich soil, with a stream and a mill.”

Stone blinked. “But I saw Knapp’s appraisal. It was only worth thirty-nine. He offered to buy it at a small discount to save me the discomfort of becoming embroiled in land speculation. Now, I confess that I did not see the land myself, but—”

“You trusted Knapp’s appraisal of land he wished to buy himself?”

“He is a Godly man. And the appraisal was countersigned by the deputy governor.”

“He is no Godly man,” Prudence spat. “He is a murderer. And William Fitz-Simmons is his confederate in wickedness.”

She paced back and forth across the room, while the others stared. Old John Porter asked for clarification, but the others hushed him.

Some of her anger was at herself. In her grief, she had abrogated the settling of Benjamin’s estate to Reverend Stone, thinking he could be trusted. According to the paper held in her hand, the sum total of her possessions amounted to a shade under three hundred pounds, less than a third of what she had supposed.

Still, three hundred was no small sum, when a handsomely paid minister like Stone maintained a fine house and family on the hundred and twenty a year paid by the congregation. That was, if her brother-in-law truly was living on his salary, and not her own inheritance.

“Do you swear before God that you made these transactions in all good faith?”

“What reason have you to doubt it?”

“Answer the question, Henry,” Anne said quietly.

He turned to her with a hurt look. “Surely, you don’t think—”

“Henry, for the love of God,” Anne said.

“Yes, I did in good faith. Perhaps I was overly hasty to settle matters, that I freely confess. But I swear before my Father in Heaven that I did not cheat Prudence. I have not spent a tuppence of her wealth, and have not sent it pursuing foolish, speculative ventures. It is safely concealed along with our own modest savings. When she remarries, I will turn it over with all good pleasure to her new husband.”

“You will surrender the money when I tell you to,” Prudence said coldly. “That is the law, if not the custom.”

The reverend blinked, opened his mouth, and shut it again.

“Knapp is a murderer, you say?” Anne asked.

“She is speaking of how he put down the savages,” Stone said. His tone was dismissive, and he seemed to have recovered from his surprise at Prudence’s defiance. “You know her sympathies.”

“No, I am not,” Prudence said. “Though certainly Knapp is guilty enough of wicked crimes against those people as well. But Knapp’s murders disturb the king’s peace as well.”

Briefly, she told of what had happened on the road to Winton, starting with her desperate meeting with James and Peter on the road near the Common. Peter had been poisoned and would later die at Knapp’s hands. Here, the reverend interrupted to point out that Prudence didn’t know this, couldn’t know it, since the highwaymen had been masked. He dropped this objection when she told of their escape from Winton and the hunt and narrow escape in the woods. She had seen the man’s uncovered face with her own eyes. Stone’s own face settled into a look of deep despair.

She told them what she’d learned from the Nipmuk. Knapp and Fitz-Simmons had murdered one Nipmuk woman and committed an outrage against Mikmonto’s wife, whom they left free to return to her people. Then Knapp had tricked Benjamin and the other English into returning to the supposed safety of Winton, where so many were then slaughtered by the enraged, formerly peaceable Nipmuk of Sachusett.

The reverend buried his face in his hands. Anne sat stiffly, her mouth a line. Lucy and Alice Branch looked dumbstruck, casting their glances to the door as if they wished to be sent away from this madness. Old John Porter wore a look of deep confusion; he had apparently followed none of it.

“These evildoers will be brought to justice,” Anne said. Her voice shook.

“Perhaps,” Prudence said. “They have powerful friends.” She cast a hard look at Stone, who was raising his slack face from his hands. “And many who would sooner see the problem disappear.”

“There is one thing that troubles me, that cannot be true,” Anne said. “This conjecture about the Praying Indian. You say he was poisoned?”

“I do. Master Bailey is certain of it. And when Peter was beyond the gates of Boston, he began to recover at once.”

“But Henry led the two men directly to our house,” Anne said. “They ate nowhere else before the three of you fled into the wilderness.”

“Yes, so you see. It was food or drink consumed under this very roof.”

“Impossible,” Stone said. “It simply cannot be. Neither Knapp nor Fitz-Simmons, nor any other man in this supposed conspiracy, had any access to the Quaker’s meals.”

“No, they did not,” Prudence said. “But they didn’t need to, either. That is because the poisoner lives under this roof. And I know who it is.”

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Prudence let those words float in the air, thick and pungent as pipe smoke. The room was quiet except for the crackle of the fire and Mary squirming in Anne’s arms.

The power Prudence held left her almost giddy. Here she stood, standing over them, ready to pronounce judgment while they waited in fear and anticipation.

This was what Reverend Stone must feel every Sabbath while his deacons called sinners to repentance. This man would get flogged, this woman put in the pillories. At one time she herself had waited, trembling in the pews, afraid that the men of God could stare into her soul and grasp the secret, wicked thoughts there: envy, doubt, and, of course, lust. That same fear was in the faces of the others now. Enjoying their fear was a wicked, unholy feeling, and she put it down. This was for justice.

“Prudie,” Anne said quietly. “For the love of all that is holy. It is torment.”

Prudence turned to the servants. She fixed on Lucy Branch. “Tell us, Lucy. What did you do on the evening our two guests arrived from England?”

“Nothing untoward, Goody Cotton. We spoke of the two men, of course. It isn’t often we have strangers under our roof. But we didn’t gossip!” Lucy cast an anxious glance at her sister.

“That be truth,” Alice agreed with a vigorous nod of the head. “We didn’t gossip.”

“I am not speaking of gossip, Lucy. You warmed Master Bailey’s bed.”

Her eyes widened. “With the pan, mistress,” she squeaked. “With the pan!”

“Don’t tell me lies, Lucy. Your soul is in jeopardy. And your life.”

“My life?”

“What are you driving at?” the reverend asked. “Are you accusing this girl of fornication?”

Prudence gave him another look, and he fell silent. She turned back to Lucy.

“Tell me what happened. I know it already from Master Bailey’s own lips. If you lie to me, I will see that you are hanged.”

Lucy was trembling, and if Prudence weren’t very nearly certain of the girl’s crimes, she would have felt sorry for her. Lustful behavior toward a handsome single man was not the issue—if so, Prudence herself would stand condemned by her own behavior.

“I—I didn’t resist. Not as I should have. But I didn’t lie with him, I swear it. We kissed, he put his hands on my body, then he opened the door and sent me on my way. I wouldn’t have given myself to him, and he didn’t ask. I had hoped . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“Hoped what?” Prudence said.

“I had hoped he would speak to Goody Stone,” Lucy said, “and she would ask permission of the reverend.”

Anne and her husband exchanged scowls at this. “You had scarcely met the man,” Anne said. “And you would marry him?”

Lucy stuttered, then shook her head and closed her mouth.

“You are anxious to marry, is that right?” Prudence asked.

Lucy looked more frightened than ever, though the reverend seemed more annoyed than angry at the revelation that there had been light sinning taking place under his roof. Were this the extent of Lucy’s crimes, he would no doubt scold the girl but would hardly put her name in front of the congregation, or worse, turn her out into the street.

“Answer the question,” Prudence said. “Are you anxious to marry?”

“I have four more years of indentured servitude. But I am nineteen, and old enough to marry. If a man of means, like Master Bailey, were to take my hand, he could buy my freedom.”

“Is your life so hard, child?” Reverend Stone asked. “Do we not feed you and keep you clothed?”

Lucy turned to him, her eyes flashing. “Would you trade places with me, Reverend?”

“John Porter serves, and willingly, though his indenturehood is over these twenty years.” He gestured at the old man, who still looked bewildered.

“He serves for money, Reverend. For money. And where would he go, anyway?” Lucy clenched her fists in her lap. “I am young. I have a life to live. And I don’t want to spend it here. I am not like my sister. I do not take to slavery.”

Stone looked aghast. “It is not slavery! Alice, tell her, explain.”

The conversation was running away from Prudence, so she jumped in before either Lucy or Alice could respond. “How many other men have you attempted to seduce?”

“I do not seduce, Goody Cotton. I let known my interest.”

“How many have you fornicated with?”

Lucy thrust out her chin. “How many have you?”

“Mind your tongue,” Anne said sharply. “Prudence is a virtuous woman.”

“One of your lovers will soon have his head in a noose,” Prudence told Lucy quickly, before anyone could see her blush at Anne’s misguided defense. “You had better confess before he blames you to save his own neck.”

“You know the answer already, don’t you?” Lucy was speaking with real fire now. “So why don’t you say it yourself?”

“Prudence, tell us,” Anne said.

“One of her lovers gave her poison, which she placed in Peter Church’s food.”

The others looked at Lucy. The girl refused to answer or confess, but her silence was enough that this allegation was quickly confirmed in the shocked expression on the faces of Anne, Reverend Stone, and even Lucy’s sister, Alice.

“He said ’twould make him sick,” Lucy said at last. “He didn’t say it would kill him. They wished to keep the Indian in Boston. I don’t know why.”

“They meant to kill him,” Prudence said. She walked over to Lucy and stared her in the eye. “They
did
kill him. Cut him down on the road like a diseased dog.”

Lucy stared back. “That’s what he was. A savage. A Quaker.”

Prudence slapped Lucy, hard. The girl cried out and put her hand over her cheek. Her eyes watered and her lips trembled with rage. Prudence turned away.

“Indian lover,” Lucy spat. “We all know what you did with the savages. It’s no wonder you went back. To fornicate with your Indian lovers.”

This brought horrified gasps from the others. Alice begged her sister to hold her tongue, while Anne and the reverend angrily denounced Lucy. Old John Porter seemed almost in tears as he turned from one party to the other, trying to figure out what was happening.

“Enough,” Prudence said. “Tell us why you did it.”

“I told you,” Lucy said. “I didn’t think it would kill him, only make him sick. He gave me a powder—”

“Who gave it to you?”

“You know. Samuel Knapp.”

“Go on.”

“And I put it in Peter Church’s beer. I did it three times.”

“But why?” Prudence asked. “Had Knapp promised to marry you?”

“Aye, he promised to marry me. Then I gave myself to him and he refused to speak to the reverend. When I pressed him, he laughed, goaded me, told me to confess my sins to the reverend. I knew what that meant.”

“Knapp would have been punished too,” Stone said, “if he seduced you and then refused to honorably marry you.”

“No, Reverend,” Lucy said. “Knapp would have accused me. He’d claim that I bewitched
him,
came to him in the night as a succubus. He would have been whipped for giving in to temptation, but I would have been put to death as a witch.” She gave a hard look at Prudence. “That was his threat. That’s why I did it, Goody Cotton. He told me if I didn’t feed his powder to the Indian, I’d be accused of witchcraft.”

Prudence turned away. She walked to her sister and picked up Mary. The girl seemed frightened by all the raised voices, and Prudence kissed her and gently stroked her hair.

There was no absolving Lucy from her sins. She could have made a different choice at every step. Not to lie with Knapp, not to poison Peter even though she did so under duress. And she had suffered little guilt, only admitting it under hard questioning.

But Prudence had made her own mistakes. She had been too weak for too long to hate others for their weaknesses.

“Now you have me,” Lucy said. “My sister is innocent—I swear that much. She knew nothing of any of this. But I confess my own guilt, my own sins. What will you do with me now?”

Stone cleared his throat. He began tentatively. “This is a hard thing. You attempted to poison an agent of the king. If Bailey wants your head, I’m afraid you’ll hang.”

Alice gasped. Lucy hung her head.

“And if he doesn’t?” Prudence asked. “If I speak to him?”

“There is still the matter of fornication,” Stone said. “Although it has been freely confessed, which counts in the ledger. And I, too, have been guilty of poor judgment, so I am loath to cast stones in this matter. Perhaps a light sentence. I’ll make a recommendation to the deacons, let them decide. You live under the reverend’s roof—this matter cannot simply be ignored.”

The talk of ledgers and Stone’s own mistakes gave Prudence an idea.

“How much is the value of Lucy’s indenturehood?”

“Fifteen pounds per annum. Nigh four years remain.”

“I will pay you thirty from my estate,” Prudence said. “The other thirty will erase your debts in the mishandling of Sir Benjamin’s lands.”

“What will you do with a servant?” Anne asked. “You already enjoy her services to the family.”

“I don’t intend to hire her as a servant. I intend to set her free.” Prudence turned to Lucy, who was staring, mouth open. “Is that acceptable to you?”

“Thank you,” Lucy gasped.

“Upon one condition.”

“Anything.”

“You testify against Samuel Knapp and his evil confederates. If you lie, if you try to protect yourself, you will die in this world and burn in the world to come.”