Hour of the Witch(20)

But then, where in the Commandments did the Lord God forbid a man from stabbing his wife? Murder was a sin; sticking a fork in one’s wife was…what? Thomas claimed it was discipline. She wasn’t even sure what the colony’s law was when it came to a man’s cruelty toward his wife.

She considered warming the spider and offering to make him breakfast. But the idea passed. It had been a reflex born of years of duty. She wondered if he expected her to start work on his meal.

Apparently, he didn’t. “If Catherine is not back by dinner, come by the mill,” he said. “I will go fetch her. I doubt Peter wants to feed her or buy her from me. She has, it would seem—rather like thee—a brain that is sorely addled.” He shook his head and smirked. “Thou art many things, Mary. But I would not put witch upon thy ledger.” Then he turned and left the house. Outside she heard him saddling his horse, and then he was gone.



* * *





Mary considered going by the Howlands’ herself that morning and seeing what nonsense the servant girl was spewing, but she experienced daggers of pain up her arm when she forced her hand through the sleeve of her waistcoat and pulled on her stockings. And so instead she walked directly to her parents’ home. She would see her mother and then together they would approach her father. James Burden was friends with the governor and the magistrates, and would know precisely what to do to begin the process of divorcing Thomas Deerfield.



* * *





“What has happened to thee?” her mother asked, her alarm evident when Mary removed the cloth that wound around her hand.

They were standing in the parlor, her parents’ house among the most sumptuous in the colony. There was a tapestry on the wall of the English countryside—a meadow that was part of the family estate on which Mary’s uncle still lived—and it was a reminder of how mannered even the wilds were in the Old World compared to this one. The stairway to the chambers on the second floor was wide and had a window along the steps. The cupboard was almost the length of a wall and decorated with fine plates, as was the lintel along the top of the hearth. On another wall there was a portrait of Mary’s grandfather—an aristocrat Mary met when she was a child, but who had died before she had gotten to know him well—by William Dobson. There was a framed map of Boston and a second one of the New World. They even had two upholstered chairs that James had imported earlier that year; another six had been sold to the governor, an elder, and one of the magistrates.

Before Mary answered her mother’s question, she asked where the servants were. Her parents had two, Abigail Gathers and Hannah Dow. The girls had arrived together the year before last, though they were nothing alike. Abigail was eighteen, tall and slender and talkative, and likely to find a suitor among the indentured soon; Hannah was seventeen, short and shy, and painfully uncomfortable around men. Abigail’s intellect was manifest in the concoctions she created in the kitchen, such as the spices she had begun adding to the stewed pumpkin—the recipe that Mary had shared with Rebeckah Cooper.

“They are out back. Abigail is milking and Hannah is tending to the pigs,” her mother told her. “Thou canst speak freely.”

    Mary took a deep breath and answered: “My husband took one of those forks thou brought to my house and tried to spear my hand to the table.”

“He what?”

“He has been hitting me, too, Mother. I have told no one until now. But I can live with him no longer. I cannot live with a man who will take the Devil’s tines to his wife.”

“The bruise on thy face…”

“Yes. That bruise. And others.”

They sat down at the table in the kitchen, and Priscilla Burden examined her daughter’s hand clinically. “Let us put some wine on it. Then we’ll make a poultice. We’ve ash in the hearth and some fat from last night’s dinner.”

“I believe the bone is broken.”

“Thou canst not splint a hand. At least I can’t. We’ll visit the physician.”

Mary nodded.

“How bad does it hurt?” her mother asked.

“Less than last night. But it pains me.”

“I have valerian.”

“Mother?”

Priscilla waited.

“When I told thee that I can no longer live with Thomas, I meant it.”

Her mother stood and reached for a pewter bowl on the cupboard. She placed it on the table and uncorked a jug of red wine. “That wound is fresh. This might sting,” she said, placing her daughter’s hand in the bowl.

“I intend to divorce him,” Mary continued.

“I don’t know the law, little dove.”

“Father will.”

“But I do know that Joan Halsell tried to divorce George Halsell and lives with him still.”

“Are they members of the church?”

“No. Neither’s a saint. But I urge thee to think carefully. The Lord—” her mother started to say, but stopped when her daughter flinched against the pain of the alcohol on the wound.

    Mary exhaled and said, “This will be an issue for the magistrates, Mother, not the church elders.”

“Perhaps. But there are still the gossips.”

“Wouldst thou rather thy daughter was beaten by a brute or spoken of poorly by gossips? I tend to believe it is the latter.”