Kathleen Kent - The Heretic's Daughter

“So, should I now call you Alexander, Uncle?” I asked slyly. He laughed but I could see that it puffed him up. I did not know then that Alexander had been poisoned by his troops.

MOST EVENINGS MARGARET and I sat side by side for many hours repairing torn winter clothing, watching Hannah play with the odd bits of yarn or thread too short for use. Margaret’s fingers were very nimble and at times I pretended to drop a stitch or lose my place on a piece of cloth so that she would fold her hands over my two clumsy ones and guide them into an orderly procession of stitches once more. She never called me to my mistakes but always praised me for my own poor efforts. As we sat together, our heads bent, our lips scarcely moving, we told each other secrets. We thought ourselves clever and undetected, but once Aunt surprised me by saying, “How many times as girls have your mother and I sat as you and Margaret do, telling confidences, whispering our hopes…” She pulled impatiently at a tangled thread caught in Henry’s shirt and smiled.

“My sister could tease out a knot the size of a raisin with more patience than I’ve ever seen.” I mulled over for a moment who she might mean, for I knew she had only one sister: my mother. I could not imagine the gentle seamstress described by Aunt as the same woman who could see from the back of her cap my misdeeds at two hundred paces.

Without thinking, I asked, “Why do we never see you, Aunt?” Her smile faltered, and Margaret tapped at my foot for silence. Aunt called for Henry to come and put back on his mended shirt. He had been sitting at the fire shivering under a blanket, and, as she pulled the cloth over his head, Aunt said softly, “I will only ever say the discord is not between me and your mother. I love her well and would see her more if I could.”

Towards dusk I followed Henry out to the barn and asked him about the chasm dividing our two families. He crossed his arms and sniffed. “ Your father thinks my father cheated him out of some land. But that’s a lie and I’ll knock to ground anyone who says it’s so.” Whatever reticence I may have felt towards my father for his stern and distant parenting, I could not imagine him as dishonest in any way. But it was a charge against Father that would not be answered for many months. I shook my head and asked, “But what has that to do with Aunt and my mother?”

“Where the husband goes, there the wife is bound to follow,” Henry replied with a huff. He said it with all the authority he could gather, but I knew he was quoting some homily he had overheard. “My mother takes her husband’s lead. Something your mother will never do, which makes her trumped-up and loose —” He was greatly surprised when I shoved him backwards into the stalls. He was not stout but he was taller than me by a head and wiry. It was one thing for me to think badly of my family, but another entirely for my cousin to speak ill of them. I left him open-mouthed and swearing, and later, when he came in for supper, I fingered chicken droppings into his stew.

MARGARET AND I traded scandalous stories whenever we could. Whenever she caught us, Aunt would gently remind us that gossiping was a sin, and so our stories were traded with caution. Margaret’s secrets were more interesting than mine, she being two years older and more experienced in the world than I. She seemed to know many unsavory things about her neighbors, but endlessly fascinating to me was her knowledge of the Invisible World. She knew how to tell a witch by the markings on her body. A witch’s teat could be disguised as a mole or any raised pustule on the skin. A witch could not say the Lord’s Prayer in full without stumbling over the words. A witch would not sink if thrown into a body of water but rather float upon the surface as though liquid could not tolerate the pollution of its element. And as I myself would sink like an anvil if thrown into the sea, I did not doubt her wisdom. When I asked her how she came to know such things, she responded that her father, being a man of science, had shared with her this knowledge, for where there are women, there are witches.

“And,” she said, her eyes lost to the lengthening afternoon shadows, “I have felt them flying above the roof when the hawkweed root grows under the moon.”

I wondered aloud if there were witches even now in Billerica. She leaned closer to me and said, “You can be sure of it.”

I told her then what little I had heard in the marketplace or on the streets, and if I expanded upon the truth, it was only to bring piquancy to the tales, like cloves added to meat. I did not want my cousin to think of me as an infant who did not know how the world moved. It was my first taste of sharing and holding secrets with another girl. Through the many years since that time, I have learned that women show their true selves in a different way.

Sharing secrets is the way in which women tie themselves together, for it reveals complicity and trust. Holding secrets shows trustworthiness and a sort of quiet defiance. It is a natural thing for a female to hold secrets within her breast until the time is ripe to release them. Does it not follow the way in which her body is formed? A woman is made with that dark and mysterious recess that can grow a child safely until the child is ready to come out onto the birthing bed. And like birthing, secrets present themselves in many ways. Some slip easily into the world, others must be torn out, if the body is unwilling.

LATE IN JANUARY the snow stopped falling and the very air seemed to freeze around us. The drifts became fortresses of ice and the stream froze solid, so that we had to melt blocks of it in the fire for drinking and cooking. The animals could not be taken outside for long for fear of laming them and so became restive on their tethers. Margaret and I had come in early one morning for feeding but we were careful to stay away from the shuffling feet of the oxen and the cow. Bucephalus rocked to and fro in his stall, shaking his head and rolling his eyes. I had brought a bit of apple from the cellar to quiet him, and, as I drew near, I saw a man cowering in the straw.

I stood for a moment in silence as the man looked fearfully at me from beneath bundles of cloaks and shawls. He was a young man, his face ruddy from the cold. But the flesh under his eyes looked scorched, the fluid pooling in the bottom lids as with a fever. I thought of my brother’s face flushed with sickness, the skin below his eyes gray and unwholesome. The man held his hand up, in supplication or in warning. Margaret had come to stand behind me, and I could hear the sharp sound of her breath. His lips tried to form words but he could not at first speak, as though his tongue were swollen to the roof of his mouth. Finally he said with great difficulty, “I pray thee have pity and give me water and food or I shall die.” He groaned and shivered beneath the straw. We began to pull away and he reached out to us like a man drowning. “Please, I will not harm thee. I will take food and rest awhile and then I will leave.”

Margaret moved closer to the man and said accusingly, “You are a Quaker.” The man lowered his head, panting, but did not speak. “If my father finds you trespassing here, he will turn you over to the constable.”

The man struggled to stand, pulling himself up by the stacked boards in the stall, but sank back down onto his haunches. I tugged on my cousin’s cloak and I whispered, “Should we not bring him food? He looks very bad.” Margaret pulled me away some distance so that we could speak without being heard.

“Father says that Quakers are heretics and are to be shunned. And besides, this one may be poxed.”

“Oh,” I replied, not knowing what a heretic might be. I looked over at the man and pitied his misery. Margaret suddenly grabbed hold of my wrists and, leaning closer in to my ear, said, “We shall help him. It would be our secret. We must not tell Mother or Father, for then we will surely be punished, and harshly, too.” I smiled at her and nodded. I was more pleased by the prospect of sharing this dangerous secret with my cousin than of helping the stranger. “We shall have to be very cunning. Mother keeps a close watch over the larder.”