Kathleen Kent - The Heretic's Daughter

IN 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 19th 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.