Her words had taken an interesting turn, and I hoped to be initiated into a deeper understanding of the bit of business that had come close to making Mercy a shamed woman. She had chosen the time and the place well, for I knew that a mushroom was often likened to a man’s root. I had seen such a root on my brothers and was unimpressed. Tom and Richard were too modest to reveal themselves willingly to me, but tight quarters make for revelations. Andrew had lost his modesty along with his wits and so he did not try to hide himself when he made water in the fields or behind the barn. Upon observing the poor, pale thing, I could not imagine such an organ could bring much pain at all to a woman or hold much interest beyond its ability to provide the spark for growing a babe in her belly.
But what she said, to my great disappointment, was “Life is not what you have or what you can keep. It is what you can bear to lose. You may have no choice but to give her up.”
“No.” I stood up, the tendons in my legs cracking with the tension of wanting to escape her insistent harping. I blinked a few times, waiting for her to continue, but she had fallen silent. The sun shone full on her face, and I could not mistake the look she gave me. More cruel than anger, more terrible than pride, more painful even than regret, it was the look of pity. Without another word she rose to her feet, put on her cap, and started walking. The sun had slipped behind a bank of rolling clouds and the air suddenly chilled and moved the grasses about.
I saw at my feet a lone birdfoot violet quivering in the wind. The violet was a spring flower but would sometimes, if the days were kind, bloom again in the autumn. Soon the flower would wither and die alone in the coming frost, its beauty disappearing under the first snowfall. I hurried after her, not wanting to be left behind so close to the swamp. The next time I would see Gibbet Plain with my mother would be under the dark of a new moon, and the surrounding earth would be in the full bloom of spring. The day would be a Monday, May
30
th,
1692
, and the trout lily, nodding and speckled, would be growing in the forests, and the stargrass, with their winsome yellow blossoms, would be growing on the great meadow. But the day-blooming bloodroot flower, one of my mother’s favorites for its beauty and healing powers, would be shut up tight, as though it feared to hear my mother’s secrets.
N
OVEMBER BLUSTERED IN,
wet and full of gloom. The days had been too warm to force the leaves to brilliant color, and so the world turned to gray. The weather became cool enough for Father to build a large smoking pit to cure the game he had killed. A long trench was dug in the ground for cold storage of late autumn apples and wild berries. Straw would line the pit, then a layer of apples, then more straw, and finally dirt to cover it. Andrew had been charged with planting markers so that when it snowed, the fruit could be easily found. With great care he stuck in a dozen or so crosses until Mother made him replace them all with simple pikes, as she said it made the mound of dirt look like the aftermath of some bloody battle. Andrew cried and carried on, confusing the fruit buried under the dirt with a buried corpse. He had counted and recounted all of us, certain that one of his family was dead until we gently reminded him to count himself, giving him the comforting number of seven living souls. The yearling hog that Mother had bartered for had grown fat and was slaughtered without too much complaining on his part. Indeed, at first I was sorry to watch him butchered, as he had been docile and showed himself to be clever by coming to us when called to be fed. But if truth be told, my mouth watered when I thought of a portion of his fat little hindquarters finding its way to my mouth.
Robert Russell was to come and share with us a meal to honor the end of the autumn fieldwork and the hopeful beginning of a winter without want. He was to bring with him his niece, Elizabeth Sessions. In the ancient manner of things, he had helped us through the plowing and harvesting, and Father had in turn helped Robert with his. It was then that I learned of Richard’s inclinations after he returned one afternoon to the house, dripping water from his hair and skin like a dog from a dousing. When I asked him if he had fallen into the Shawshin, he scowled and told me to go away. Tom whispered that Richard had actually bathed himself, stripping off his shirt and breeches and jumping into the river wearing only his short hose. This was potent ammunition for teasing him about his affections for Elizabeth and worth the bruises I received on both arms.
On the morning of the feast day Mother sent us all from the house so she could sweep and scrub the dirt from the floor. Tom had fashioned a bow out of pine bough and catgut, the arrows from stripling hardwood, and feathers from an eider duck. We hid behind the barn, not because his bow was forbidden but because the bow’s objects surely would be. He had mastered the primitive targets we had drawn on a wooden plank and all of the smaller animals had long since found a nesting place underground. What was left for us to practice on came in the persons of Hannah and Andrew, who would wear on their heads a kind of straw tower, tall enough to draw the aim of the arrow away from the top wearer’s head. I counseled Tom to imagine the tower as the neck of a deer raising its head to test the wind. A well-placed arrow in the neck could bring down a buck of any size better than a wound at the ribs or rump. We quickly discounted Hannah as she could not hold herself quiet and kept stooping down or moving away from her place, toppling the tower to the ground. Andrew proved much more cooperative and even willing to stand very still and straight, patiently waiting for Tom to take aim. Tom nocked his arrow and pulled back a bit, saying to Andrew, “Now for pity’s sake, don’t dare move ’til after I have hit the target or you’ll be wearing that tower for all eternity.”
At that moment Mother called for us to come back to the house, and I think Andrew would be standing there even now had I not taken his hand and told him it was time to go in. In the kitchen Mother gave me a bucket and bid me go to Chandler’s Inn for small beer. She tied a few precious coins in a little bag and knotted it tight to my apron. William Chandler would take barter for his room and board but not for his spirits. He had to pay coin to the shipper in Boston and so demanded payment in kind at his door. Most times it was Father who went to the inn for the beer, but he had left before dawn to check his traps at the river, and if we were fortunate, we would have fried beaver tails with pork for our supper.
As I walked the short distance down the main road to the inn, I remembered hearing Richard say to Father that in Boston, there was a new drink from the Caribee sold in the taverns to sailors who made port there. It was called “rum” and was wickedly stronger than beer. Father then told Richard that the surest way to awaken on a ship far out to sea was to drink this rum until you were made senseless, easy pickings for the impress men. I matched my steps to the little marching tempo I sang, “rum, rum, rum, rum . . . rum, rum, rum, rum.”
Within a short while I entered the yard at the inn and saw Phoebe Chandler struggling to lift a full bucket of water just drawn from the well. I stood by for a time, enjoying the wrestling and jerking about of the heavy ropes, hoping she would fall in before she cleared the bucket over the lip of the well. She was resting on the edge of the stones, catching her breath, when she looked up and saw me. It must have seemed that I appeared from out of thin air and she started with fright. With an ugly look she ran to the inn, slamming a side door as she entered. I followed, entering by the front door as if I were queen of the world. Inside all was dark, the smell of roasting meat feathering my nose as well as the fruity ripeness of a tripe gone over, or a fish poorly smoked. Goody Chandler was a thrifty cook and would throw back into the pot any entrails or head soup left on a patron’s plate. In this way she would ensure enough food to feed her visitors from Sabbath to Sabbath.
The common room was like a small cavern, smogged and musty, with a generous fire burning in the hearth. Men sat about the few tables, eating their noonday meal, and seated closest to the hearth was a figure I knew well. His face was in profile, the high domed forehead etched in sharp relief by the glow of the fire. And leaning over him to give drink was Mercy Williams. As she poured beer from a pitcher into Uncle’s cup, one of his fingers brushed lightly over her bodice where her nipple would be. The gesture could have been accidental, the chance collision of flesh against wool. But I saw the crooked smile on Mercy’s face and knew that she had invited it. Phoebe slipped into the room from her mother’s kitchen and looked about with eyes squinted against the murky light. As Mercy straightened to stand, she tucked the pitcher onto her hip and looked directly at me, as though she had known all along I had been standing in the shadows. Goody Chandler came into the room with a rag in her hands, and from the way her lips pursed and her eyes narrowed, I could see that Mercy had been making batches of her own fermenting noisome brew.
Men are always the last to ken what women know by sniffing the air. That’s why God gave bodily might to Adam, to balance the inequities in strength. For if Eve had been given the power to serve her cunning and cruelty, there would have been a terrible reckoning for all mankind, and the archangel would have trod on Adam’s heels to escape paradise unsinged. The three of them stared me down for a time, until one of the men remembered his empty belly and called for more food. Uncle turned to me, his face red from drink and the heat of the fire, and his smile disappeared. He raised a finger and pointed at me, jabbing the air like a sword, and said, “I am watching you. I am watching you all.”
Mercy took a few steps closer and said, “What do you want here?” A corner of her brown dress had worked its way up, showing the tiniest bit of crimson underskirt. As she walked nearer, I saw that the dress had been pinned up with the needle she had stolen from me. The needle pinned back the darker fabric, holding the overskirt aloft as if it had been raised by some little breeze or some misstep as she paced the common room floor. I had seen the likes of such red drapery on Margaret’s poppet. And I knew then what Uncle had done with the cloth he had taken from his wife.
I held up the bucket and said to Goody Chandler, “I have come for small beer.” She took the bucket and the coins and disappeared into the kitchen. Mercy drew her arm around Phoebe’s shoulders and, whispering into her ear, pulled her to the back of the room, ignoring the men’s calls for service. Goody Chandler soon returned with the bucket filled with a rich soapy broth and held the door for me as I left. Most likely to lock it behind my back.
Low, skittering clouds had started a misting rain and I pulled the lid tight over the bucket, pulling the shawl closer about my head. Passing the yard, I saw Phoebe standing at the side door, Mercy hanging about her neck. I turned my back to them and had walked no more than twenty paces when a piece of the sky fell on the back of my head, knocking me to my knees. The bucket dropped without breaking, and lying next to it was a stone the size of my fist. Had it grazed my naked skull, it would have peeled away part of my skin and with it a braid of hair. They stood motionless next to the well, Phoebe still holding a stone in her hand. I reached behind my ear and felt a tender knot rising beneath my hand. The spiced and gummy air, filled with rain and dust, turned to the flooding coppery tincture of blood. I had bitten my lip and drops of red spackled the ground in gentle wavering patterns. My fingers closed around the soaking leaves littering the yard like remnants from a pagan wedding, and I remembered from Uncle’s stories that every pagan ceremony ended in sacrifice. I also remembered my mother’s words, “If not for my brother, then there is naught but home.” Uncle had given me up for a lathered and slatternly whore, and I felt the hope of seeing Margaret again diminishing to a thing as small and hard as the shard of pottery I had found in the garden.
I heard Mercy say, “Go on . . . go on . . . ,” and Phoebe walked closer, squinting and grimacing to better see, expecting the vague crouching form in front of her to cower and cry, as this was what she would have done. What she did not expect was a raging creature in the guise of a child, shawl flying behind it like the wings of some predatory bird, spitting and foaming. Startled, she dropped her only weapon and had but a moment for a squall of protest before I dragged her to the ground and raked my nails across her bland and milky face. I grabbed at her cap, pulling savagely, and parted her from clumps of her hair before Mercy came from behind and boxed my ears. I threw myself then at Mercy, kicking and biting, inflicting as much damage as I could, knowing she would soon throw me to the ground. I kicked both her shins and bit the web of her hand so deeply that she carried the half-moon scar for the rest of her life. What saved my head was the ample bulk of Goody Chandler tearing us apart as though she would cleft sin from salvation.
She screamed as she pushed me away, “You are a Devil to fight so. Look, see what you have done to my daughter!”
Phoebe lay on the ground, her arms flung over her head, squealing like a titmouse caught in the jaws of a black snake. Some of the men had come to the door to witness the thrashing, and among them was Uncle, holding a cup in his hand.
Picking up my bucket, I said to Mercy, who was sucking on the wound in her hand, “I hope it rots until every finger on your thieving hand falls off.”
I turned to go, but the folds of wool wrapped around my neck were not enough to stop the sound of Mercy’s voice, hard and carrying. “You all heard,” she said. “She cursed me. She has a witching way. But why else? She is her mother’s daughter.”
Before I entered the house, I sat in the yard, rubbing my head. The skin on my skull knocked painfully with the rhythm of my heart, and one shoulder felt bruised and tender. The palms of my hands were scraped from falling and I gently brushed at the dirt in the wounds. Perhaps it was true that I was like my mother, as everyone seemed to think so. Perhaps the very desire to set myself apart from her proved that I, in fact, had her contrary nature. I was not pretty and quick like Margaret or bland and pliable like Phoebe Chandler. There was a glittering hardness about me like mica and I thought of my fingers wrapped around the rock I had carried against Samuel Preston. Camp dogs will fight and tear at one another for days until a stranger comes too close to the fire, and then they will turn as one and attack the intruder. And the world was full of intruders.