Mercy was so surprised that her mouth fell open and she watched wordlessly as Mother swept every bit of greens off the table into my apron.
“Good God, girl, don’t open your mouth to me. I’ve been midwife a dozen times and have seen full well what’s under your skirt. Do you think I’ll give my son up to one such as you without proof you are in the family way?”
Mercy stood rooted to the spot and her eyes searched me out for help, but I was useless against Mother’s fury and could only watch her go to the slaughter. She started to protest by saying forcefully, “I am with child, and Richard must marry me now or I am ruined.”
Mother did not answer but waited ponderously by the table. I could see the thoughts chase themselves across Mercy’s face, some of them cunning and some of them tinged with terror. Perhaps she thought that enough play had gone on with Richard to fool her inquisitor, and so she climbed up on the boards and lay on her back. Mother briskly pulled Mercy’s skirt and shift up over her thighs and pulled her knees apart. I backed away from the table but not so far as to not see what she had between her legs. For everything that Margaret had told me, I had no picture in my mind of what a woman fully formed looked like. I watched with equal parts fascination and horror as my mother quickly examined her and then pulled her skirt back down to her ankles. Mother stood up from the table saying, “Your maidenhead is still intact. It would be a fine trick to pass a child through your birth canal without having had a man pass through it first.”
Mercy sat up, screaming loudly, “I am with child. I am with child.” The last word was said in a long protesting wail, but Mother was unmoved. Mercy sat on the table for a while, crying and whimpering until she saw that there was nothing to be gained by it. She then scrambled off the boards, smoothing out her rumpled skirt and apron. She drew herself up as best she could and said, wiping her streaming nose on her arm, “It’s because I’m indentured that you think I’m not fit for your son. But no matter what you say, he by rights should marry me and buy in earnest what he’s already used. You think I’m nothing now, but my family had better than this in Topsfield. Enough to make this farm look like a dung beetle’s pile.”
I think my mother had begun to pity her until she insulted us.
“You could not help your state. Misfortune has placed you in servitude, but that’s not the reason you’ll not get my son as a husband. It’s because you’re a sneaking thief and a liar that I’ll not have you any longer in my family. I took you in and clothed you and fed you, and you thanked me by stealing the food from my children’s mouths. Don’t think I don’t know about the food you’ve taken, and the bits of wool and the bottoms you’ve shaved off the candles. You’d have stolen the spinning wheel if you could have gotten it up under your skirt. For all that you stole, I might have forgiven you, but worst of all is your lying. I will not abide a liar.”
“You’re the liar,” Mercy screamed, her white skin turning blotchy and liverish. “You and your useless son. He promised to marry me and I gave him a roll to bind the deal, but your son and his puny wick couldn’t find his way into a woman even when it was thrust in his face. If you turn me out without a promise of marriage, I swear I’ll tell the whole village your family is filled with whoresons.” The rising sound of her voice was cut short by Mother slapping her hard across the face. A thin sliver of spit ran down the corner of her mouth while she cradled the reddening cheek with her hand.
“I turned a blind eye while you made moon eyes at Richard and shamelessly chased him about the place. But had I known you were putting yourself out with him under our roof, I would have dragged the rest of your hair out by its roots. At least Richard had enough sense to keep his rod in his pants with a girl so homely and rummy that even the Indians wouldn’t have her.”
I have never since seen the enormity of hate on a woman as that which filled the face of Mercy Williams in that moment. She looked at the both of us, and I was soon clinging to Hannah for comfort. She gathered her few things and walked out the front door, and it was days before we heard that she had been taken in by the Chandlers. They lived close by, across Boston Way Road, and had a travelers inn and were happy to buy from Father the remainder of her indenture. What story she must have told them I do not know, but Father was honest with William Chandler and said that Mercy had been a good worker. After Mother spoke to Father that evening, he beckoned ominously to Richard and they were out in the barn together a good while. When Richard came back into the house, he could barely walk from the welts the strap had left on his legs, but he seemed much lighter in spirit.
Lying in bed alone that night, I hummed the French trapper’s song but soon gave it up as I had already begun to forget the words. I held Margaret’s poppet close to my lips, but, not feeling the needle within, I lifted the skirt and found it to be gone. I sincerely hoped that it would soon break in Mercy’s thieving fingers, giving her lockjaw and a slow, painful death. Sometime during the night, Hannah crawled into my bed, and, as I pulled her round little body to me, I whispered, “Mercy is gone now. And as you are two years old, and a big grown girl, you shall sleep with me in my bed from now on.” I could smell the rosemary still clinging to my fingers and was grateful for its fragrance covering over Mercy’s musky odor, which had sweated into the sheets: an odor of hidden thoughts and furtive womanly desires. I fell asleep thinking of swift-burning fires and forested paths that traveled nowhere but north.
CHAPTER FOUR
September 1691–December 1691
OFTEN DURING THOSE first days of September I would hide myself away in the cool and rustling stalks of corn growing in the house garden. The beans and squash had begun to ripen and I took time filling my apron, knowing that other less pleasant tasks waited for me in the torpid heat of the house and barn. We had nearly eighty bushels of corn from the harvesting of the outer field, and there was hardly a meal that didn’t have the hard little kernels ground or mashed or soaked into the game Father had shot. We had them as roasting ears pulled from the embers, as hominy soaked to mash in wood-ash lye and baked with beans and squash. Later, in the new year, when the sap rose in the maples, we would have cornmeal mixed with syrup and flour to make Indian pudding. It would take a goodly amount of the syrup to disguise the gritty taste of corn that had been stored in bushel baskets for many months.
I moved deeper into the shade and came upon the scarecrow, his head and shoulders peeking above the corn’s silken tassels waving in the wind like citizens hailing their protecting king. He was in fact a lengthy baking paddle with a hickory branch lashed to the pole to make two arms. We clothed him with a pair of Father’s aging breeches and coat, so ancient they had been worn on the crossing from old England. The jacket was a faded red woolen with turned-back cuffs of blue and a mended tear across the sleeve. Weeks before, I had come upon Father staring at the stick man as though at one long thought dead. The day had entered the long-shadow time that Father loved best, and, as he was at his ease, I braved asking him what he was thinking. Unmoving, he had answered, “I am remembering what I would forget. But a man’s past is like his own shadow.” After a time he felt my wondering gaze on him and nodded. “Go on, Sarah, ask your question.”
“Is it a soldier’s coat?” I asked.
“Aye,” he answered quietly.
“Where did you fight that you received such a tear in it?” I asked, moving closer.
“Ireland.” His answer surprised me, for I had thought him only a soldier in old England. “I went with Cromwell to fight Catholics.”
I had heard enough in the meetinghouse to know that Catholics were idolaters and blood drinkers and were as evil as Lucifer himself. With a growing excitement I asked, “And did an Irish soldier give you that wound?” I pointed to his arm where I had seen the raised, puckered scar running like a snake from his elbow to wrist.
He shook his head, saying, “No. He was only a man defending his hearth and family.”
Disappointed at the homeliness of his answer, I frowned and considere
d what else to ask him. When I raised my head to speak, he had already turned away, moving into the corn. The green stalks swished and crackled as they first parted, and then came together again behind his retreating form.
Strings of rattling shells hanging from the scarecrow’s arms moved with the breeze and brought me back to the moment. Mother called the scarecrow a murmet, which had a more secretive sound. A scarecrow was a thing of bold-faced tactics, out in the full light of day. A “murmet,” the “r” softly rolling against the tongue, spoke of murmuring stealth, as though it hunted marauding crows in the darkening twilight. It was the name that people who came from the south of England used. Places such as Devon, Basing, and Ramsey, where the old tongue was spoken.
I caught a glint of light and turned to see a giant web collecting dew like strung beads along its woven wheel of spider’s silk. It must have taken a very long time to make such an intricate pattern, but though I looked long and hard, I could not find the weaver. Slowly and gracefully the beads of water slid downward along their silken paths, gathering for a moment at the bottommost part of the wheel and then dropping, forever lost, to the earth. It was like some wizard’s hourglass counting off the minutes and hours of my days. For the briefest moment I thought I could catch the drops of water in my hand and stop the passing of time. I could stay in the sanctuary of this garden, my grandmother’s garden, forever safe. I would not have to face days filled only with tasks that were never enlivened by laughter or the quick embrace that a whispered confidence would bring. A red wasp crawled across my hand and I froze lest he bury his stinger in my flesh. He was beautiful and frightful with his soulless black eyes and quivering barb and it came harshly to me that this garden was the world and from the world there could be no hiding.
I heard the striking of hooves on Boston Way Road but could not see the rider over the towering stalks. Following the sound, I picked my way back to the house, my apron sagging and ribbed with squash. When I came to the yard I saw Uncle riding Bucephalus and dropped the squash to the ground to wave to him. He was studying the fields, one hand cupped over his forehead, hiding his eyes against the light. The corners of his mouth pursed and turned downwards, as though he had chewed on something bitter. But when he saw me, he smiled cheerfully and called out, “Here, then, is my other twin.”
I held tight his fingers and led him into the house like a prized captive. Mother had been stripping corn and stood quickly, shedding silk from her skirt in a storm of green and yellow. She did not like work-a-day surprises.
She frowned and asked, “What brings you to Andover, brother?”
Uncle replied, smiling, “Sister, it’s been a long, hot ride. A glass of cool water would be welcome.” When she turned her back for a cup, he winked at me. He drank quickly and said, “It appears you have prospered at your mother’s house. How fares your homestead in Billerica?”
“You would know better than I, brother, as you have probably only just come from there. And as you see, we have been here in Andover working.”
There was silence as they took the measure of each other, and then Uncle said, taking a different tack, as a ship will do when facing an imminent squall, “Mary sends her loving regards and hopes to visit soon . . . when the climate is not so heated.”
“The weather here may stay hot for some time. But my sister is always welcome. It seems, though, that she may be the last one of your family who will come.”
Uncle said, shaking his head, “I fear my son made bad a visit that I had hoped would bring us to greater felicity as a family.”
Mother laughed through her nose. She stood at the table, her arms crossed below her chest, and said nothing.
“I was hoping,” he continued carefully, “that we might come to an . . . agreement. Perhaps some sort of recompense regarding your mother’s property. It was to Mary, and in turn to Allen, that the land was to go.”
“All that has changed. On her deathbed my mother placed in our hands the care of the land. And this house.”
“Be that as it may, as a physician I know full well what delusions may be brought about by a fever of the brain. It may be that your mother was not in her proper mind when she made those promises. Or perhaps her intentions were . . . misunderstood.” He said the last without adding extra weight to the words, but it hit the mark nonetheless.
Mother uncrossed her arms and took on the look of a river mink poised over a trout bed. “It is of note to me that you would recall your claims as a physician. We could have put it to good use during the fourteen days I spent caring for my mother. Wiping the pus from her weeping sores and changing the bedclothes at every hour when she had the bloody flux. In truth, it surprises me you didn’t hear her screams all the way to Billerica.”
“Sarah,” Uncle said, turning suddenly to me, “I have brought something for you from Margaret. Go and fetch it from my saddle.”
I ran from the room into the yard and let Bucephalus sniff at my arm so that he would know me again. I reached into the saddle pack and pulled from it a small square of muslin. It had been cross-stitched in neat rows of letters surrounded by a colorful border. I brought the small bit of cloth to my face and breathed in Margaret’s scent. She had only just touched the muslin, perhaps a few hours before. I read the letters carefully, teasing out the words from Proverbs. “A friend loves at all times.” Of course she had not finished the verse, for it reads in sum, “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.” A remembrance of Allen’s sour face came to mind along with the smell of charring wheat. I sat on the doorstep with Margaret’s sampler tucked into the bodice of my dress and listened to the muffled voices coming from the house. I could not hear the words but I could feel the thrust and weight of them, Uncle’s placating voice countering the more strident tone of my mother. He worked like a potter trying to cool a hot mold of sand and potash into a vessel for use. But sometimes even the most careful of handling will bring the fiery vessel to shatter. I sat with my hands over my ears and waited for the inevitable sound of breaking glass.
Father then came from the fields, a large axe carried over one shoulder. He had been stockpiling wood, and his shirt was soaked through with sweat, his hair hanging damp and limp around his neck. He saw Uncle’s horse and hurried his pace to the house. He gave me a glance but did not pause to set down the axe at the door frame as was his habit. As he passed through the door, the head of the axe caught the wood, cutting a deep gash in the frame. He had been inside for the span of a few breaths when all talking within ceased. Soon Uncle rushed out the door, stumbling over me in his haste to leave.
I followed him, calling out, “Uncle, please stay awhile. Uncle, please don’t go,” but he did not turn to answer me. I had had no time to gather up a present for Margaret. What would she think of me when her father returned to her empty-handed? I had not plied my fingers to sewing as I had promised, for the needle she had given me was gone, stolen by Mercy, and I could do no patching without it. The only needle left to me was a coarse one made of bone that was used to mend our woolens. Uncle mounted Bucephalus and snapped sharply at the reins. I ran at his boot heel, panting out, “Tell Margaret . . . tell Margaret. . .” But soon he outpaced me, and as I reached for the stirrup, I cried, “I am not like my mother . . . I am not like her!”
I watched him on the road until Mother called for me, but I dragged my heels until she appeared at the door, her eyebrows forming a line of warning beneath the furrows in her brow. When I came into the kitchen I saw Father’s axe lying heavily on the table, the sharpened edge of the head pointing to the place where Uncle had stood.
THERE CAME A morning in September when Andrew, Tom, and I were together in the barn. I had been house-bound, smoking and drying meat for the winter, and had spent hour upon hour turning the spit. I became careless and singed the bottom of my skirt on the embers and could have within the span of a thought become a burning brand. Mother snatched me from the hearth, saying, “God’s apron, Sarah, will you smoke us all out!??
?
She sent me to the barn with Hannah to set out a tray of milk for the mice that were eating our precious store of grain. The mice would come to drink and the cats that lived in the loft would have a breakfast of fur, teeth, and tail. I amused myself by watching both the tray of milk, hoping to see a bloody battle in miniature, and my sister’s struggling form. I told myself I had tied Hannah to a post to save her from being kicked by the horse, but closer to the truth was my impatience with her clinging to me and the endless calling of my name. She thrashed against her tether but I drew a hard line and ignored her pleas to be lifted up and held once more. I could hear Tom working in the stalls, laying down new straw. With every forkful lifted, minions of dust Devils spread through the air, making him sneeze in rapid pulses. He bent over double, hands on his knees, spewing spittle in cascading waterfalls. I numbered each successive fit, counting to nine, before hearing the outraged sound of my mother’s voice coming from the edges of the cornfield. Andrew had just finished the milking and almost dropped the bucket from fright. Most times such vocal fury meant that someone was to get a beating.
The three of us ran from the barn, Tom carrying with him his pitchfork, sure that Mother was being set upon by Indians. As we followed her voice, we could not see at first what had angered her so. Her back was to us and she stood with her hands knotted on her hips. Then she turned and we saw a fawn-colored cow in the corn, calmly trampling down the stalks to get to the kernels. Behind her, looking shyly from large liquid eyes, was her calf. They had been in the field a good while, perhaps most of the morning, for they had broken down the remaining ears. The cow looked at Mother contentedly, the little brass bell on her ear tinkling faintly, and continued her chewing despite Mother’s shouting and hand clapping. On the bell were carved the letters “S.P.” Over the sound of the gently threshing hooves came the sounds of Hannah crying. Mother turned with pinched lips and a raised brow and said, “Sarah, go back to the barn and, after you have untied your sister, bring me the tether. And be fast. We will be paying a visit to Goodman Preston this morning.”