I watched from a distance her graceful form moving under the trees into shadow and light and shadow and light. There for an instant and then swallowed up by the darkness, seemingly disappeared from the world. My tongue swam in my mouth as I thought of scraping and licking the pudding bowl, and I decided to give some to Tom for a share of my chores. A jay called out from a lower branch, jittering and fluttering, his tail close enough to touch with my finger. The branch shifted and swayed with a breeze, veiling my face from the sun, and a feeling of dread touched the crown of my head. It poured itself down my brow, my neck, and shoulders, into my chest. My heart beat out fearful humors, enough to lift a tonnage of grain or scale a stone wall, and yet I could not move or call out.
The day had been so very lovely, the summering shades of plant and rock and sky showing the goodness, the reasonability of order, from the Master’s hand. And yet with a shifting of sunlight, I had seen, as though looking into a killing pond, that beyond the restive landscape of the living, the Master stood poised, razor in hand, to cut and scrape away our delicate flesh, leaving only bone and weathered shell. My mother, as strong and hard as any young pine, was suddenly smaller and immensely more fragile. She walked purposefully onward, her forceful nature entwined with her very ribs. But what was that to the awesome power of a God who would at year’s end slaughter off multitudes of the living to begin anew in the spring. And with that thought came the certainty that Mother would soon present herself to Samuel Preston and demand recompense. They would cross words, as the man was mean-spirited and argumentative, and she would give no quarter until she was paid in full, in barter, or in pieces of Goodman Preston’s hide. And as certain as I was of my own name, I knew that he would somehow exact the final payment.
I beat the flanks of the jolting calf so it would move ahead more quickly. Remembering the biscuit in my apron, I thrust it out to her and said, “Mother, here. I brought this for you.”
She looked at me with surprise but took the biscuit. She brought it to her lips but paused and, breaking it into two pieces, handed me half.
“I am not hungry,” I said. “You must stay and eat. Please, can you not sit awhile?”
She shook her head and moved on, saying, “That was kind of you, Sarah, to remember me. But I can eat a biscuit and walk.” She smiled and tossed over her shoulder, “Just as you have done this morning. Now, brush the crumbs from your face or our neighbor will think us unruly.”
Goodman Preston refused to make good the ruined corn, saying that he was no fool and that our crops were already harvested. His wife came to the open door of the house to listen, and I could see that her right eye had been blackened and was swollen, so that the lids were shut together. His children stood about, all white of hair, all dirty and wild-looking. Mother called him “a mean, tightfisted badger who would try to pass a Dutch pound of grain for a hundredweight and who would melt down the lead cover to his well to make a profit even if it meant all five of his children were to fall in.” Having never before encountered my mother’s play with words, he was made speechless for a time.
But he soon recovered and called her “a black-faced waspish harpy in the shape of a woman whose breast must be filled with bile to flail an honest yeoman so and who would just as soon fry up and eat a man’s liver as stay at home and eat maple sugar.”
When he saw he could not drive her away with the sound of his voice, he clenched his fist as though to strike her. Mother then raised over her head the long thorny stick she had used to prod the cow. I don’t think, until that moment, a woman had ever met his anger without a bowed head and a curved back. It so disturbed his expectations that he took a few steps backwards. I reached down to pick up a stone and, judging the distance to his head, stood nearer to Mother. She simply waited until he had paused to breathe and then said sharply, “Samuel Preston, the next cow that wanders onto our land will be ours in recompense. And from the look of things, we won’t have to wait long before you lose another one.” She gazed into the one good eye of his wife, still standing at the door, and said, “Take heed to take better care of what’s yours or what’s yours will sicken and die.”
She turned and walked away, leaving the cow and her calf standing in the yard. I carried the stone the whole of Boston Way Road and would have carried it into the house but for Mother barring the door. She reached out for my fingers and saw the stone clenched within. Placing one hand beneath mine, she bounced it slightly as though measuring the strength of it. Then, with her other hand, she gently closed my fingers back over the glittering weight of the stone.
I
N EARLY AUTUMN,
there came a cooling at night. The fireflies, their mating done, danced crazily about the fields, much as people will do during the bonfire nights of the Plague, knowing that a black wind is soon to come to kiss them with an unremembered death. There was ample rain, and at dawn the garden mists yielded crops of pumpkins, turnips, and onions. The lentil pods swelled and spilled their seeds over the ground. Bunches of purslane grew close by, their reddish stems and yellow flowers showing like the sun against the drab gray of the house. The wild game were so plentiful, they seemed to throw themselves into the pot. Father would often return from hunting with his belt heavy with quail or heath hens. Once he dragged into the yard a turkey as big as Tom, and it took Mother and me an afternoon to pluck him naked. Within one week Father brought down two deer. The meat was cut thin and salted over a slow fire to cure. And during the long winter months, the strips would be soaked in water with berries and cornmeal and made fit for the tongue with savories gathered from the woods.
Father warned us never to go on our gathering walks without Richard following behind with the flintlock. But I often found ways to escape through the surrounding meadows and woods alone or with Tom, if I could persuade him to come. The safety offered by Richard’s aim was a poor exchange for his dull talk and surly looks. He had no patience for our adventures and made us keep to the path.
We picked Queen Anne’s lace along the banks of the Skug River and traveled farther east to gather apples from an old orchard. The apples were little and dry, and Mother called them Blaxton’s yellow sweetings after the man who had brought them from England many years before. There were a dozen pips in every core and Richard told us if we swallowed any of them, an apple tree would sprout from our heads. Poor Andrew, who since his illness believed everything he was told, would always, if he swallowed a pip, spend hours feeling the hollows of his ears for branches. All through October the animals wild and tame grew fat and sleek as did we from our stores of food. The bounty of our larder, the clement weather, the surplus for barter should have given me peace. Yet I could not rid myself of pestering violent thoughts. The wind would blow down our roof, or the well would turn to poison, or one of us would slip and fall on the axe. And I could not forget the blanket of doom that had fallen over me the day we returned the cow to the Preston farm. It was with no satisfaction that I met my brutal expectations in the person of Mercy Williams.
I had seen her every Sabbath at the meetinghouse. She now sat with Phoebe Chandler, the innkeeper’s daughter, but she never looked at us or acknowledged us in any way. Phoebe was eleven years old and comely in a bland sort of way. Her sight was weak, though, and she often lifted her chin and squinted her eyes to better see. Her two top teeth stuck out past her lips, causing her to look like a beaver crossing a high creek with a stick in its mouth. One Sunday the Reverend Dane gave us the
19
th psalm, “The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul.” His kind eyes took in every face seated before him, no doubt believing in the goodness of his congregation. Upon the closing prayers we poured out into a day made perfect with honeyed light and a brisk wind tempering the heat of morning. I was closed in among the press of women when I felt a sharp little jab in my back and then again quickly in my right buttock. I cried out and turned to see Mercy, her hands crossed in front of her stomach, her face an empty page. Phoebe standing next to her stifled a fit of laughter with one hand held over her mouth. I wanted to wrestle Mercy to the ground and pry from her fingers the stolen needle she had used to stab me. I gave her an evil look and pushed my way rudely past the women in front of me, then stood outside waiting for Tom and Andrew, as Mother walked ahead with a crying Hannah, to climb into the cart.
Soon Mercy and Phoebe came into the yard, whispering and casting me glances. I moved away from them and into the shade of the trees growing around the burying grounds, which fronted the meetinghouse. They followed me into the shade and came close enough that I would not miss their words.
Mercy said, “Don’t you think red hair an ugly color on a girl?” Phoebe hiccupped a small bit of laughter, and Mercy continued. “I’ve always thought it so. The Indians would kill outright a redheaded girl, so ugly did they think the color.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and pretended not to hear, but something in her tone made my heart beat faster. At that moment Mary Lacey appeared next to Mercy and knew in an instant who was predator and who was prey, like a hound that late joins a chase.
Mercy turned to Mary and said, “I have only just said to Phoebe that redheaded girls are too ugly to live.”
“You would know ugly, Mercy, as you have lived in that house all your life.” I said the words carelessly but knew at that instant I should have better governed my tongue.
Mary and Phoebe turned first to look at Mercy and then, without a trace of pity, turned to me to wait for the gathering storm. Mercy glanced briefly over her shoulder and saw that most of the congregation had returned to their wagons. The four of us were a good distance from where my family waited. She then moved towards me and, remembering her ability to toss Richard to the ground, I stepped backwards. I did not see anger in her face; only a calm deadness that made me want to turn and run and signaled more danger than any amount of scowling or puffing about. I began to walk quickly around them but Mercy grabbed me viciously by the back of the neck and pulled me down onto her lap, holding me tightly about the arms so that I could not move to stand. Her broad back rested against a burial stone for leverage and Mary and Phoebe came to stand behind us, spreading their skirts much as a curtain is drawn to hide something unpleasant. Mercy bent close and bit my ear, not enough to bring blood but enough to hurt.
She whispered to me, “Cry out and I will bite it off in earnest.” I had no doubt that she would not only bite it off but swallow it whole.
I said loudly, “You smell like a sump hole.”
She tightened her grip on me and said to the others, “Best be careful of this one. The Indians say a redheaded girl is a witch. Her mother is a witch. It’s true. I heard her conjuring down lightning. And she changed the course of the wind carrying fire from her fields and onto Henry Holt’s fields. And she cured a cow’s festering udder faster than you can say ‘teat.’ ”
“The only witch in Andover is you,” I said, trying to free myself. Her arms squeezed harder, bruising my ribs, making it difficult to draw a breath.
Mary spoke up eagerly, “Timothy Swan says he was given a foul look by Martha Carrier upon her first visit to the meetinghouse and has not been well since.”
Phoebe put her toe in the water by saying, “My father says that Roger Toothaker has been to the inn many times and that Goody Carrier has cheated him out of the house meant for his son. He says that she cursed at him and has since had an old scar on his belly open up and fester.”
The words stung me as though I had fallen into a field of nettles. Mary leaned farther over the stone to whisper loudly, “I have spoken with Allen Toothaker about this very thing. He lives now with Timothy Swan as he has no place to call his own. Allen says that his aunt is the foulest woman to draw a breath.”
Now Phoebe had the course of the stream and she jumped in with both legs. “I heard my father just these weeks past talk of Benjamin Abbot. He has a house on the far side of the Shawshin. Well, Goodman Abbot crossed words with Goody Carrier. He was putting up a stone fence, minding his own business, when she assaulted him, saying he would soon wish he had not meddled with that land so near her house. She shook her fist at him and said she would stick as close to him as bark on a tree and that he would repent of it before seven years came to an end. Furthermore, she said she hoped he would fall so ill that Dr. Prescott could never cure him.” One would have thought her tongue was licking honey off a stick the way it waggled about.
“What should we do with this one, do you think?” Mercy craned her neck up at the girls hanging over the gravestone like a pair of gargoyles.
“I say we stuff her mouth with dirt,” Mary offered, all but jumping up and down and clapping her hands.
“Tie her fast to the stone first,” said Phoebe.
Mercy dug her nails into my shoulders, drawing blisters, and said calmly, “I say we bury her in one of the graves.”
I heard my name being called from the meetinghouse yard. Mary hissed to Mercy, “Here comes the Reverend Dane. Best let her go.”
My name was called again, closer this time. Mary called out, “She is here, Reverend Dane. She is with us.” And then to Mercy, “For heaven’s sake, let her go.”
Mercy bent to my ear again and whispered into it as softly as any lover, “Remember the story of Robert Rogers and the Indians who skinned him? How they tied him to the stake after he had died? I lied. Robert Rogers was alive when they burned him. Speak one word of this and I will come to you some night and burn you alive in your bed.” Then she pushed me roughly off her lap and stood brushing the leaves from her skirt. She faced the Reverend and smiled, saying, “Sarah fell running through the stones. We were helping her upright.”
She extended her hand to me, which I ignored, but I did not miss the look that followed like a fiery tail trailing a comet. The Reverend walked back with me to the waiting cart and stood waving to us until we had passed beyond the bending oaks gating the old burial ground. Behind him at a distance were three skirted figures who did not wave but stood close together, impassive and watchful.