A Measure of Light (12 page)

They came to the square. On one side was the market, with its long porch, women slipping into the shops. Across from it, the meeting house.

“Ah,” Anne breathed. “Do you see, Mary. In this heat. No water, no shelter. No shade.”

A woman was chained to a post. She wore a leather collar with an iron ring. Her dress was black with sweat. She leaned forward to ease the pain in her arms, bound behind her. Her eyes slid and rolled, the whites prominent, their expression shifting between rage and terror.

They hurried across the square. Anne sought a cloth in her basket, moistened it with a tincture. She pressed it to the woman’s cracked lips.

“What was your transgression?” Anne asked.

“I did strike my husband. I did lift my hand to him.”

A jingle of lifted muskets. The woman wrenched her head within her collar to spit at the approaching watchmen.

“There is nothing to be done, Mary,” Anne murmured.

Henry Vane made his plans to return to England. He would leave in August. Until then, he picked through Boston’s filthy streets with a distrait air, plucking at his lace cuffs.

“I am going to investigate the Narragansett Country,” William said. He was carving the design of a stag on an axe helve, having broken the last. He probed with his gouge, forming the horns.

Samuel slept, Sinnie had climbed the ladder to her bed. From their chairs set before the open door, they could smell the smoke of Jurden’s pipe. They listened to the crickets, the crying sea birds. They watched the clouds, smouldering over the islands, drifting, evolving from fire-red to cottony pink.

“ ‘Salvation by works, salvation by grace.’ On the ferry, Josiah and Hugh were nose to nose, the colour of beets. Roaring on the subject. And then there are those who name her …”

He broke off, his lips worked over unspeakable words. Still nothing had been done about the remonstrance that he and the other
men had filed with the court. Still John Wheelwright had not been sentenced. Yet the watchmen were vigilant and there were more public punishments in order that no bad deed should bring down God’s wrath; whippings, hangings, placing cleft sticks on tongues, the imprisonment of both men and women in the stocks. Even children were brought to the elders or magistrates to be questioned about their own parents; and were threatened by the death penalty in case of their own “extraordinary sinfulness.” Neighbours were wary of one another, watching, terrified, for signs and wonders. Boston hissed with hateful words:
sedition, contempt, slander
.

“Witch or whore,” Mary said. Anger had grown in her, fitfully, over the summer. It ebbed and then bloomed larger at each recurrent outrage.

William set down his gouge, considered her. She saw the stubble on his cheeks, pricks of hair reddened by the light.

“Witch or whore,” she repeated, coldly, her voice pitched so that neither Sinnie nor passing neighbour would hear.

She bundled her knitting, leaned to put it into a basket at her feet.

“They will destroy her. They will cast her out.”

It neared the hour. Soon the watchmen would pass by the open door.

“Aye,” William said. His hands clenched. Outside, the gulls carried the light’s last dusting on their wings as they dove and wheeled. “There is no freedom here. Not that I would name as such. They say that we attain freedom by doing God’s will. Then they tell me what I may charge for my goods. They make laws that would not stand in England.”

“If they banish her, I will follow.”

They considered the view framed by their door. The marshes with their bayberry bushes. Fiery clouds over the sea.

He lowered his voice, leaned towards her. The watchmen approached. “We should leave before that comes to pass.”

He pointed southeast, beyond the dark hunch of Fort Hill.

“Providence. If you agree, I will go seek counsel of Roger Williams. I would go on my own volition rather than—”

“I
do
agree,” she said. “Go. See if it be better over there, where a man doth govern who speaks of soul liberty.”

She woke from a dream of grief. William slept beside her; he would leave for the Narragansett Country next month on some pretext. She stared up at the bed’s canopy. She could not understand this pregnancy. The child within did not stretch, urgent as a swelling seed. Rather she felt jolts of change, a jagged momentum accompanied by dread. And although Sinnie was thrilled by the pregnancy, and perceived her mistress to feel the same, Mary did not tell her how her physical distress, oddly, had no commensurate and anticipatory joy. Her morning sickness lasted far longer than normal. She was continuously dizzy, rising from the washtub and reeling, snatching at chair backs or walls, standing with eyes closed against the world’s doubling. Her legs were seized by cramps that woke her, shouting with agony, so that William would waken and knead at her calves with his thumbs. Her belly was but a slight bulge and the movements within her womb were furtive ripplings rather than the bold shoves she remembered from Samuel’s tenancy.

Her lips moved. She whispered into the cold darkness.

To thee, O Lord, I call; my rock, be not deaf to me …

ALL DAY THEY HEARD THE
screaming of pigs.

Slaughter season. William had killed theirs before sailing for Providence two weeks ago. Mary had received no word from him since.

She went to the garden to pick parsley. Samuel followed, carrying a basket. Mary saw how the pouched skin on his hands was sun-browned. He trotted ahead of her between the sunflower stalks. The carrot tops were feathery, turning pale, and the air bore the regretful spice of decay.

“Parsley,” Samuel called, squatting. Milkweed seeds pinwheeled, landed on the child’s head.

She stood stock-still, gazing at him. Love came as if from the drifting seeds, the sun-warmed tufts of goldenrod, the scent of mint. She wondered why it came pouring upon her just now. Perhaps because Samuel had himself chosen to leave Sinnie’s side. Perhaps it was the way his deer-hide slippers had patted so confidently over the path. Or because he was a boy now, not a baby. His lips would not turn white.

She came up beside him, knelt. The green lacy leaves were crisp to the touch, as if already dried.

“Parsley,” she agreed. She took a breath to tell him a story from her childhood—how once she had found a robin’s egg in the midst of a parsley plant—and was struck with pain so intense that she fell forward, her face in the leaves.

Samuel screamed. “Sinnie! Sinnie! Sinnie!”

A crash, pan to floor. Sinnie came running, her voice jouncing with the thud of her shoes.

“Mistress! I’m coming.”

Mary felt Sinnie’s small body pressed close, arms circling her.

“Stand, you must stand.”

Mary cried out as she came to her feet. The pain augered her belly, her back. “I am only seven months,” she panted. “’Tis too soon. Too soon. William is away …”

Mary bent forward over Sinnie’s arms, face in her hands. Everything rushed up and dwindled away into specks. Anne Hutchinson and her meetings. The Puritan ministers, pontificating. Pigs. Children picking bayberries in the autumn marshes. While she went down into a dark slippery place with translucent walls. Fire. Black flicker. The cadence of her heart pounding, blood so thick in her veins that hearing reduced, swooped away, became only a rushing. Now her feet were moving over the path, Sinnie was talking, a stream of words.

She was on her knees again, clasping the pain with both arms.

Ah. Hold it, appease it
.

Swimming towards mahogany light.

Mary opened her eyes. Afternoon had faded into dusk. The familiar bedchamber—her bedchamber—was made strange by the presence of several bustling women; and by Sinnie at the doorway, peering in, Samuel at her skirts; by a kettle set over the coals; by Anne, at the hearth within a cloud of basil-scented steam.

Pain seized her womb, a spiralling craze. Despair swept over her. She squeezed the hand of the young woman at her side. Mercy Talford, mother of three. Nutmeg freckles on her nose, widely spaced brown eyes. She held a Bible in her lap.

“Read,” said Anne, glancing up from the infusion. “Read to her, Mercy.”

Pain.

“ ‘Praise the name of the Lord … whatever the Lord pleases he does, in heaven and on earth …’ ”

Pain.

“ ‘Sent signs and wonders / against Pharaoh and all his …’ ”

Pain.

“ ‘Will vindicate his people … have compassion …’ ”

They had slid her from the bed, held her sitting upright. She felt sudden humiliation that she should be so reduced, she who often worked at Anne’s side—swift, competent. Anne put an arm around her waist.

“Take her other arm, Mercy,” Anne said.

She was standing.

“Walk, Mary,” Anne said. “You must walk.”

The pain came again and she crumpled forward. Anne’s voice was like a rope, pulling.

“Walk, even in the pain, Mary. Walk.”

“Will I die?”

“Nay, Mary, you will not die.”

“But ’tis too soon. And if the baby comes, Anne, and should die, and should take me, too, I have not prepared. I have not prepared my soul.”

“If it comes to such a pass, we will see that you are prepared. But you are young and strong, do not think that you shall die.
I will not let you die, Mary.”

Mary paced.

Back and forth between bedstead and wall, chest and hearth, her eyes on the pine floor that she and Sinnie had scrubbed yesterday. Sand prickled her bare feet. The wind rose, a white mutter. Wind,
Mary thought, with sudden anger. Always wind, fretting the Shawmut Peninsula.

In the next room, Samuel began to cry.

Anne went to the door.

“Sinnie, take the child to my house for the night.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Do not return till I send for you.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

Mary arched backwards, hands to belly. Screamed.

The waters broke.

They tipped her onto the bed, soothed her until she could roll onto her back. Anne pressed Mary’s knees apart, slid a lard-greased hand inside.

Mary heard a sharp intake of breath. She lifted her head, opened her eyes. She saw Anne’s gaze become fixed as her fingers probed, her lips compressing into a grim line.

“What …” Mary began, but fell back, panting.

Anne withdrew her hand and gently pressed Mary’s knees together as if closing a book upon learning its ending.

The women rubbed her belly with warm oil, held a mug of caudle to her lips. They spoke in low voices edged with panic.

“Hold her shoulders.”

Aunt Urith, Aunt Urith. Dust spinning from red wheels. Mother
.

“Mother!”

Her cries rose like flames, consuming walls, ceiling, house.

“Feet.”

A hand inside her, working. Mary fought. Fought to rise from the bed, to leave her body, to tear herself from the women’s hands. She
twisted her spine, bit, panted, screamed. Her body was shaken with spasms. Froth at her mouth. Convulsions.

The neighbour women covered their faces. One ran from the room.

“Go then,” Anne panted. Her voice rose to a shout. “Go. All of you. There is nothing you can do. Jane, stay by me.”

Mary’s last scream rose, split.

Darkness came upon her.

Anne stood in the centre of the room, fingers against ears, mouth pressed into the heels of her hands. Jane Hawkins knelt in a dark corner lifting a blanket with one hand. Down, the fabric. Around, up, down. Twisting. Swaddling.