Kathleen Kent - The Heretic's Daughter

I looked at him with surprise as he wiped the damp grit from his forehead with his sleeves. The sleeves that had given up their buttons to make the eyes for my poppet, or rather the poppet I had given to Margaret.

He continued in a pinched voice. “You’re not the only one on this farm who can take care of us when Father’s away.”

I started to protest but he cut me off, saying, “It’s the way you look at me. It’s the way you dismiss me and pity me with your eyes. Up there, in the loft, there was not once that you thought to ask for help. But I am just as able as you. I can work as hard as you. And I can take care of us as well as you can.” He looked at me defiantly, his brows knitted together, his dark hair curling around his ears and I thought of the stones stored in his pocket and carried around for who knows how many days and weeks. The ammunition of every boy used in the chasing of birds and for skimming across the smooth surface of a pond. The ammunition he had used with calm assurance to save us from calamity.

“I miss her as much as you,” he said, making knuckles of his hands between his knees, tightening and stiffening his back, forbidding the tears to come. But once he had said the words, I saw the misery that rested in purplish bands like bruises beneath his eyes and that pinched his lips into a perpetual frown. I took my thumb and wiped a small circle of dirt from his cheek that his sleeve had missed.

“I’m the oldest now on the farm when Father’s gone. I can take care of us,” he said, reaching out and tugging at my apron to move me closer. I thought he would hold my hand or put his arm across my back but he didn’t move to touch me save where his knee pressed into mine. Even so, there was a shifting away of something weighty and grasping about my shoulders, and we sat together for a long time, the sun behind us casting furlong shadows across the fields leading to Ladle Meadow.

ON JULY 30TH Aunt Mary was arrested again in Billerica and taken to Salem Village for questioning. She had been released to go home after Mother’s examination but Mary Lacey cried out against her and so she was taken along with Margaret to face the judges. After a lengthy and punishing examination, she finally admitted to afflicting Timothy Swan and others and said that she had attended witches’ meetings with my mother and two brothers. My mother had told her at these black Sabbaths that there were no fewer than 305 witches throughout the countryside and that their work was to pull down the Kingdom of Christ and set up the Kingdom of Satan. She said that the Devil had appeared to her in the shape of a tawny man and had promised to keep her safe from the Indians if she would sign the Devil’s book. When she was asked if she looked to serve Satan, this good and gentle woman answered that, because of her great fear, she would follow him with all her heart if he would deliver her from the Indians. Two days later, on the first day of August, while she and Margaret were in prison, a small party of Wabanaki attacked homes close to theirs in Billerica, killing every man, woman, and child. The Devil had kept his bargain with her and perhaps for this reason Aunt never changed her testimony of guilt, as some would do once the prison doors were locked.

The third session of the Court of Oyer and Terminer began on Tuesday, August 2nd, and would last for four days. Mother’s sentencing lasted the better part of two days. Appearing to give verbal testimony to the court against her were Mary Lacey, brought from her prison cell, Phoebe Chandler, and Allen Toothaker. And even though Richard and Andrew had given sworn statements against her, Cotton Mather moved to strike such admissions as there was so much spectral evidence offered from other sources. This, the one kindness from the man who would later call my mother, the only woman in the colonies to face down and challenge her accusers, a “rampant hag.”

She was condemned to hang on the 19th of August along with the Reverend George Burroughs, formerly of Salem Village, John Proctor, who wrote to the governor of my brothers’ torture, George Jacobs, an old rambling man of Salem, and John Willard, a young man who had nursed one of the girls who was bewitched and who woke one morning to find that the hand that worked to heal was often the first bitten.

ON AUGUST 10TH I woke with a great calmness. The heat of the day was as thick as ever but the evening before had turned suddenly cool. So much so that before retiring I had climbed the stairs to the garret room and pulled an old quilt out of Grandmother’s trunk. Beneath the blanket lay the cross-stitch piece that Margaret had so lovingly made for me and within it was wrapped the ancient shard of pottery. I tucked both into my shift and lay under the quilt with Hannah in my arms, feeling the pottery’s sharpness press like an accusing finger into the skin over my ribs. When I rose from bed, I dressed with great care, tearing out the knots in my hair with my fingers where the comb would not go and tucking the strands neatly into my cap. I put on my stockings, so little worn, and took a rag to my shoes, giving a glimpse of the leather beneath the dirt. I made whatever breakfast I could for the four of us and then I went to stand at the front of the door, my head turned to the north, waiting for my visitor to come. Knowing that he would come today, just as my mother had known when a neighbor was sure to appear for an unannounced visit.

He appeared soon after with a warrant for me and for Tom, and I believe he was more than a little shaken to find such a tiny sentinel poised and at the ready on the threshold of our house. He held the warrants up to Father’s face, but Father’s eyes never let go of the constable’s and soon I could smell the sour essence of fear come off the man in heady waves. He spied the poppet in Hannah’s arms and dragged it from her, saying only, “I am to take any poppets found to the court.” She continued her steady, sharp wailing even as we were led out to the yard and placed in the cart. We had been tied, but loosely, and it would take only a little while before we were free of our bonds and could sit holding each other’s hands.

As the constable was climbing onto the boards and taking up the reins, Father took hold of the horse’s halter and held it so tightly that the horse could not lift his head. “You know me, John Ballard.”

The constable answered beneath his breath, “Aye, I know you.”

“And I know you as well. And my children had best arrive in Salem the way they left.” Father then let go of the halter and stood back, reaching down to grab hold of Hannah’s shift and pull her from the wheels of the cart.

As John Ballard flicked the reins he said, “It’s not me that will harm the children. But once I deliver them it’s out of my hands.”

We pulled away up Boston Way Road, Tom and I sitting close together, Hannah running behind, screaming and calling for us to come back, terrified to be left without us and in the company of Father, who stood in the yard, towering and still.

THERE WERE NINE judges in the meetinghouse-turned-court on that Wednesday, August 10th, along with jurors, plaintiffs, witnesses, and lookers-on, so many in fact that grown men sat upon each other’s laps in order to watch the inquisition of such young children. We were the youngest among the accused, apart from four-year-old Dorcas Good, and every eye, every gesture, every breath was turned in our direction as we were led through the crowds and planted a few feet in front of the assembled magistrates. John Ballard handed to the chief judge my poppet and when his receipt was signed he left us without so much as a backwards glance. There was much rustling and sorting of paper and quiet sober speaking between the judges, and I looked through lowered lashes to the right and to the left of me to see their faces. My heart was a pick hammer in my chest, and dark particles danced in my vision as though the very air were disturbed by its beating. I felt Tom move closer to me and stand with his arm touching mine.