A Measure of Light (13 page)

Anne removed hands from face, drew a long breath. “We must wrap Mary against the child-bed fever.”

“Aye,” Jane said. She was an older woman, Cornish. Her coif had slipped over her forehead, drew a black slash above shrewd eyes. Finished, she pushed herself to her feet, hands to knees, crossed the room to a pile of linens.

“I should wash her,” she said, glancing at Mary, who lay sleeping, blood-soaked shift tangled round her.

“Goody Hawkins. You saw.”

“Aye.”

Experienced midwives, they held one another’s eyes. The fire had died to ashes and the pine splints flickered, at the point of extinction.

“What was it?” Anne whispered. Her hands rose, she gripped Jane’s shoulders.

“The sex. I could see the sex. ’Twas a girl’s.”

“But. The rest. Have you ever …”

“Never. Never in all my days, Mistress Hutchinson.”

“You know how … ’twill …”

“Aye.”

“You must never tell. Never, never, Jane Hawkins. For her sake, as well as ours. Mine. And yours.”

“Aye.”

Mary stirred, her head rolled on the pillow. Even sleeping, her face was distressed.

They heard a scream, so distant they could not tell if it were wolf or wildcat.

“Jane, I must go … out. Do not let anyone come into this room.”

Exhaustion, and what had come to pass, settled in Jane Hawkins’ hips, face, hands. She turned towards the pile of linens, wavered, and then sank onto a chair. She glanced at the wrapped bundle. Then she looked at wine in a pipkin, steaming over the coals.

“I do not fancy being left alone with it,” she whispered.

“Mary is here,” Anne said. Her own voice had dropped and she stepped forward, shook Jane’s shoulder, briskly. “Verily, Goody Hawkins. ’Tis
dead.”

Mary felt warmth on her face, knubbled cotton beneath her cheek.

Awake. Where am I
.

There was no sound. No screaming. No pain.

Baby
.

She opened her eyes. October light sleeked the ceiling joists, the oak mantel. She felt the low cramp in her womb, tried to bring knees to belly and found herself swaddled from the waist down, legs and belly wrapped tight.

Where is Sinnie? My dear …

Sinnie appeared in the doorway, began to speak and then disappeared. A murmur, in the next room. Anne came, her steps swift and sure. She carried a bowl of cornmeal mush, set it on the table, added a log to the fire, poked with the tongs until flames rose against the
granite’s blackened crust. She drew a chair close to the bed, took up the bowl.

“Where is my baby?” Mary said.

“Quiet,” Anne said. Her voice was uneasy beneath its calm. “Eat and I will tell you.”

The spoon pressed into the fine, moist meal, causing a pool of maple syrup. Anne lifted the mush to Mary’s mouth.

“Girl or boy?” Mary whispered, frightened.

“Shhh, you must eat.” She slipped the spoon into Mary’s mouth, watched as she chewed and swallowed. “Mary.” She whispered, laid a hand on Mary’s cheek. “’Twas dead.”

Mary’s eyes stilled, as if life had left them, too. She stared at Anne, the question unspoken.

Anne raised her hand like a shield. “Nay, do not ask me, Mary.” The skin of her forehead pulled back, tightened.

“Do not ask you … what? Where is my baby?”

Cold air came over the windowsill, stirred bunched herbs hanging from the summer beam. Sunlight revealed the room’s plainness: wainscot, mud-daubed walls. Anne’s hand shook, suddenly, violently. She put down the bowl.

“Mary. ’Twas a blessing the child was born lifeless. Truly, you must believe this. Only Jane Hawkins and I saw it—her. She was … disfigured.”

“How so?”

They heard the slapping of Samuel’s bare feet in the next room. Sinnie’s shushing.

“Disfigured, you say,” Mary repeated. “How so? Where is she?”

Anne looked away, and Mary saw her assurance falter, as if sapped by self-doubt, or, oddly, shame.

“There was …” Anne paused, looking at the counterpane. “Mary, the child had no … head. Barely a face. The eyes were oddly …”

She sighed and fell silent.

Mary lay back on the bolster, looked down at her hands. Curled and empty, like all the beautiful, finished vessels that rattled in the autumn wind: pods, husks. She looked through a blur of tears at the front window, saw waves upon the bay lifting the morning light as if no great change had come in the world; equally oblivious, the hillsides burned in the rising glow of morning, filtering sunshine through the red grasses.

William, in Providence. He had begun his day not knowing.

“The women could not bear your screams and I bade them leave,” Anne said, her voice strengthening. “Only Jane Hawkins saw the poor thing come into my hands. When I saw it, I knew, then, that …”

Mary could barely speak for the thickening in her throat. Her words came in rushes, separated by struggles for breath. “Should the truth of my birth be spread about, the people will say that I have been punished by God. Or that you have been punished by God.”

Anne seized Mary’s hand, stroked it as she would stroke a child’s head. Grey hair escaped from the confines of her coif. She laid Mary’s hand back on the counterpane and clasped her own hands in her lap.

“I went to Mr. Cotton,” she said. “I told him what had come to pass and asked his counsel. I begged his confidence. He thought upon it.”

“But—”

Anne’s eyes snapped to Mary’s, shifty with repressed doubt. “Who else was I to ask?”

He avoids her, Anne told me. He is no longer welcoming, she said
.

They listened to milling gulls, a confusion of sound.

“I will tell you what he said,” Anne said, finally, drawing a breath. “He said God intended only the instruction of the parents.”

Mary started up from the bolster. “No. No. Not William.”

“Nay, listen. He spoke kindly, Mary. He said if it were his, he would bury it in secret. I protested. I reminded him that in England, midwives may bury a baby in private, but here the council hath
forbidden it so that they may ascertain if the child was illegitimate, or murdered, or bore signs of witchcraft. He said: ‘You shall register the birth and say that you came to me and that I gave you dispensation.’ We are safe, then, as long as Jane Hawkins does not speak. And she will not, for as I reminded her, she hath been called a cunning woman, even a witch, more than once.”

She leaned close to whisper in Mary’s ear.

“I returned and bade Jane Hawkins fetch Sinnie to watch over you. Then she and I took the child. The child is buried where she shall not be found.”

A daughter, Mary thought. Buried. Alone in the wind and the black night. Where the wolves might find her.

“So what should I … what does Mr. Cotton wish us to say?”

“Your labour came early, Mary, ’twill be seen as a simple miscarriage. You must tell no one. For it will …”

Give the men cause for triumph. Vilify both of us. Even Reverend Cotton wishes to hide the truth, for it will damage him, since Anne, still, is his acolyte
.

“Oh, Anne,” she said. She began to weep, a simpler weeping, a mother’s grief. “Oh, Anne. The wolves will dig …”

“Nay,” Anne said, quickly, positive. “She is buried deep.” She leaned over Mary, busy with covers and bolster. “She is buried deep.”

IN EARLY NOVEMBER
, snowflakes fell, large as shillings, drifting from a white sky. Sinnie stopped to watch them.

Like those wee marks in books, she thought. Each one different, making words that Mary can read.

Sinnie was playing fox and geese with Samuel. The little red-capped fox came running down the path marked in the snow, and Sinnie shrieked and ran.

“A fox, a fox!”

She clapped hand to mouth, darted a glance up the street, but no one loomed from the snow to bid her cease such childishness.

Tis a shame to be happy when Mary be sae pitiful sad. And William still away and not knowing
.

Ever since the birth, Mary’s silence had burdened the house. Sinnie sang under her breath, aiming the sound towards Samuel. Even Jurden spoke up at meals, for the sake of the child. He told of seeing steam holes in snow, “a sign of sleeping bears”; he told of giving chase to a wolf upon the sands.

Mary could not help her lips’ sweet upward curl but her eyes were haggard and she did not eat.

Will make an apple pandowdy. Tempt her … poor thing
.

She clapped her mittens at Samuel.

—

Mary stepped outside and stood holding a bucket in each hand. Sinnie and Samuel’s red knitted caps were vivid against new shuttered houses with their dark timbers. Seeing their happy play, Mary wondered at her lack of jealousy.

I was not meant to be a mother
.

Since the birth, Samuel had absorbed Mary’s mood. He was querulous—wept and screamed until Sinnie bundled him up and took him into the frigid air. Mary watched Sinnie’s small, quick fingers tying ribbons, tucking hair, lacing shoes; listened to her Nornish croon. She felt no ease with the child, since she could think of no songs or fairytales, could not smile or play silly games. At bedtime, when she said her prayers—on her knees, murmuring obedience and begging redemption—a furious whisper seeped into her mind, like air beneath a sill, saying that she and William did not deserve their punishment. She tried to stop it, knowing that the Lord was listening. Her hands went to her temples, she collapsed against the bed and pressed her face to the coverlet.

I shall go mad. I shall go mad. Oh, that I ever came to this accursed place
.

Sinnie—kneeling, arms out for Samuel, eyelashes laden with snowflakes—looked up as Mary came down the path from the house.

“Mistress, I will fetch the water. You stay and play with the bairn.”

“Nay, I will fetch it, Sinnie.”

Mary needed to walk, smell the ordinary goodness of lobster pie on the metallic air. She hung the buckets on the yoke, picked her way over the street’s hummocked detritus: half-frozen spoiled beets, peelings thrown out for pigs, a staved barrel. There was not a breath of wind, as if the snowflakes in their density had quieted the air.

In the square, women in hooded capes or broad-brimmed leather hats were gathered at the well.

If I avoid their eyes, they will see that I hide something. If I return their look, they will see my suffering. And become curious
.

She knelt, pretended to disengage a bit of her cape that had caught in the bucket’s bale. She attached her bucket to the rope and sent it plummeting downwards.

At the whipping post, a punishment was in progress—three armed men stood by, while another knotted a man’s wrists and lifted his shirt. The whip whistled.

Out-of-doors, her despair did not rise, spread and diminish—she found herself containing it, with fear, like all the other goodwives. They drew closer at the man’s cries and did not look at one another.

Returning with the water, Mary saw William turn the corner and come striding down Mylne Street. She knelt, set down the yoke and buckets, and ran to meet him. They threw their arms around one another, stood without speaking. Then his lips moved against her cap.

“I met Anne Hutchinson in the street. She told me.”

Mary nodded, face on his shoulder.

“Are you well, Mary?”

“In body, yes, I am well. In mind, greatly disturbed.”

Sinnie came to the door, Samuel at her skirts.

“Papa!” The little boy ran through the falling snow.

William shrugged from his pack as he went down on one knee, spreading his arms. Samuel went limp in his father’s embrace and Mary, too, felt a crumpling within herself, a desire for safety and a place to hide.

“There are some islands in the bay where Roger Williams thinks we might settle,” William said. “The land is good, with grazing grounds and trees.”

He laid down his spoon, reached for the water jug.

About the baby, they held their words—all through supper, and prayers, and Samuel’s nightly routines, and the household’s settling. They waited until they had closed the door to their bedchamber.

Mary pulled the quilts to her chin. William sat at the fire with iron tongs, lifting and resettling the blazing logs.

“I do not remember the moment of birth,” she said. She drew a long breath. “So terrible it was that I was rendered unconscious.”

“Girl or boy? Anne did not tell me.”

“William …” Hands covering her face.

He looked up at the sound of her voice. He set down the tongs, went to the bed and drew away her hands, but she would not meet his eyes.

“What?” he said. “Tell me.”

Her eyes filled with tears.

“’Twas a girl. But Anne told me she was … disfigured.”

“How disfigured?”

“She … she told me there was no … head.”

“No head? How could there …”

“A face, yes, but no …” She drew a breath. “Head. She told me no more than that. Although something about … the eyes being …” She covered her face again, spoke into her hands. “But in any case, William …” Her voice broke. “The child was dead.”

“My love.”