A Measure of Light (36 page)

He sat at his desk, quill poised.

The last time, he had appealed to their consciences. They had struck a deal—they would take her to the gallows, with no intention of hanging her. It would frighten her so terribly that she would change her ways. They had insisted that it be son, not husband, who begged for her life.

He tossed down his quill and went to the window. He did not see the orchard’s pink-blossomed rows but watched his life unreeling, all his decisions reversed until he arrived at his pew in St. Martin-in-the-Fields and saw a young woman sitting across the stone-flagged aisle.

And lost his heart to her grave, luminous eyes.

His throat tightened.

This time, I will appeal to their hearts
.

He resumed his seat, began to write rapidly, with shaking hand.

Sinnie saw dried tears on William’s face. She stood in the lane before the house. Jurden was running from the barn, dragging an alarmed gelding by the reins.

“Ride with all haste, Jurden, and if you do sight someone who can get there faster, send word that this letter is on its way.”

“Aye.”

“And deliver it straight into Endicott’s hands. See that you do so, Jurden, I pray you.”

The grey’s restrained energy exploded. Pebbles cracked against the house. Horse and rider dwindled down the lane and turned northwards at the gate, Jurden’s whip a streak of silver.

William and Sinnie stood by the hitching post. Hens bustled around the corner of the house, stopping to scratch beneath a catnip plant.

“I can only think that she is mad, Sinnie.”

Sinnie looked down. Her shoes had been wet from the washing and had attracted a layer of dust. She glanced at the house, where Littlemary stood in the door holding a forked stick, her sleeves rolled.

So much work to do. Sunshine, a good day for drying. And the garden to plant
.

“If only I had not allowed her to go to England. If I had …”

Sinnie put a hand to William’s sleeve and he collected himself. He laid his hand over hers, his eyes reddened by tears.

EVERYTHING WAS THE SAME
in shape and substance, yet seemed profoundly changed. The same four-poster bedstead at Fairbanks, in the same room. The same view overlooking the harbour. She sat on a chair.

She stared.

Out the window at the swaying mastheads.

At a shoe, held in her hand.

She remembered Anne’s voice.
Only God’s grace can bring salvation
.

Listened. The watchman, calling out the all’s well. Gulls.

At night, she could not sleep but lay watching the dim square of the window, feeling as if she were a fish swimming through waters in whose shafts of light she drifted and lingered, fluid and free.

Although she had been sighted, she remained in Boston, undetained, for a few days.

They hope I will lose my nerve. They do not wish to hang me
.

Then they came for her.

She was put in a cell with other Quaker women. They said little to one another. They had no energy for one another’s earthly needs. They did not hug, weep or speak of their fears.

Mary did not tell them how she looked forward rather than back. How she felt steady in her faith, certain of the glory to come. How she pictured the fear on Endicott’s face rather than her own. How she was grim, eager for her day.

Darkness. Silence. Five days, six.

The General Court sat. The following day, the marshal came for Mary. He escorted her through the streets of Boston, up the staircase over the market and into the courtroom. He seated her on the same bench where she had sat before with William and Marmaduke. She imagined them at her side. Pictured their faces when she saw them next.

Soon
.

The same Court, smelling of resin and grain dust.

The same men, only with different expressions. Uneasy, solemn. Luminous with terror, as if the presence of death curtailed each of their breaths.

Endicott seemed diminished—thinner, distraught.

“Are you the same Mary Dyer who was here before?” He pretended to be in doubt and she saw that he hoped she would say “no” in order to release him from the conundrum of her arrest.

“I am the same Mary Dyer who was here at the last General Court.” She spoke robustly, remembering William Robinson’s voice—how, at his sentence, he had spoken with such firmness.

“You will own yourself a Quaker?”

“I own myself to be reproachfully so called.” She smiled, her chin crept forward, and she narrowed her eyes at Endicott.

Look at me, man. Remember your deeds
.

Endicott rose, agitated. He motioned for the magistrates to follow him into the consulting chamber.

Mary watched the sunshine on the wall. No leaf or wing interrupted the light’s passage and yet it quivered. The men’s voices were a rumble behind the door. A fly landed on the back of her hand and she made no move to flick it away but felt the padded tickle of its feet, observed the purple-green sheen of its wings.

“…  
he who loses his life for my sake will find it …”

The door opened.

The men filed back to their seats, not looking at her.

Endicott remained standing. His face was whey-coloured. Shadows lay in the deep lines running from his nose to the corners of his mouth. She saw that his neck trembled, shivering the tassels at the corners of his white bib collar.

“You must return to the prison and there remain till tomorrow at nine o’clock; then from there you must go to the gallows and there be hanged until you are dead.”

“This is no more than thee said before.” She allowed her contempt its full voice.

“Aye, aye,” he said. He made a dismissing gesture, looked away from her eyes. “But now it is to be executed. Therefore, prepare yourself for nine o’clock tomorrow.”

No one spoke.

Suddenly, Endicott leaned forward and put both hands on the table.

“Why do you think this sentence should not be executed?” he asked. He peered at her, squinting, as if he could not quite make her out, though she sat so close.

“I came in obedience to the will of God to the last General Court, praying thee to repeal thy laws; and that is my same work now, and earnest request, although I told thee that if thee refused to repeal them, the Lord would send others of his servants to witness against them.”

“Are you a prophetess, then?” Endicott mocked.

“I spoke the words which the Lord spoke to me,” she said, evenly. Her eyes did not leave his, and he looked down. She felt them in the room—all the brutalized Friends, robust and warm-hearted—and imagined it was their presence that caused the men to shrink back in their seats and made Endicott look sideways. “And now the thing has come to pass.”

She paused and took a breath to speak again, but Endicott had begun gathering his papers, fumbling, sending some across the table, others flying to the floor.

“Away with her,” he snapped to the marshal. “Away with her.”

—

This time, she was placed in a solitary cell. She watched as the familiar lines of light in the window’s pine planks slowly passed from yellow to grey, and then vanished.

She sat upright against the dank wall, hands on her Bible, not seeking sleep.

Muted by the thick walls, a wolf’s quavering call.

Then, far off, a reply.

The marshal came for her at seven-thirty the next morning.

“Wait one moment,” she said. She sought his eyes. “I shall be ready presently.”

“I’ll not wait upon you, you shall wait upon me.
Get up with ye
.”

She pushed herself to her feet. He propelled her before him. Down the hall, through the door.

She stepped out into the spring morning. Salt air.

A phalanx of drummers and soldiers waited, closed around her.

As before, people lined the streets.

One mile, the walk to Boston Neck.

Drums. Hands, important on wooden sticks. Faces, pressing. Cries.

Up. Look. Up
.

The clouds, silvery, wisping. Pulling apart and drawing together again.

Her hands, clasped before her and the cobbles beneath her shoes.

Up. Look. Up
.

The cobbles turned to dirt, they left behind the houses and came out onto the ridge. The town fell back and below. Beyond, to the east, was the sea. Before her, the marshes where birds burst from nests, soaring.

She stood where she had stood with William Robinson and Marmaduke Stephenson. People called out to her. Some voices were
derisive, others were kind. Reverend Wilson asked her to repent. She searched his eyes.
That of God in every man
 … She turned from him without speaking, settled in the moment, a perfect balance. Her rage, disseminated, was in the soil, on the sea wind, in the smell of spring grass.

She mounted the ladder. The executioner climbed the second ladder beside her. She saw the marshes darken with cloud shadow, then brighten again.

One, grip. Another, grip. The rungs were sun-warmed.

The executioner tied a rope around her skirt. She watched the grasses blowing, blowing. A white handkerchief came over her eyes and still she kept them open. Then nothing more happened. No hands on her skirts, no adjustment of the halter around her neck. No sound from the crowd. Only the sweet, oblivious birdcall.

And in her head, her own voice steadily whispering George Fox’s words.

Walk in the light, walk in the truth, with which light, that never changeth, come to see that which was in the beginning, before the world was, where there is not shadow or …

ON THE MORNING OF JUNE SECOND
, William did not go to his office but dressed in his working clothes and left the house at dawn. Sinnie could see him speaking with the men by the barn; behind them, fenceposts loomed in the white mist, like flotsam. Sun broke over the sea. She turned from the window and went through the room where every tankard and bowl and silver spoon bore a flush of red. She opened the back door. Blackbirds, robins and song sparrows trilled, whistled.

Such wee things, to be so proud. Proud of a new day
.

The house rose around and above her, like her own ribcage and beating heart: in the bedsteads, the sleeping boys and Littlemary; in the chests of drawers, shirts and caps and breeches and William’s trousers and garters and stockings and waistcoats; in the cupboards, candles, soap, linen; in the buttery and pantry, cheeses and hams; and all of it her purview, even if Mary should come home.

Still Jurden had not returned.

Sinnie walked down a gravel path towards the garden. Onion sets sprouted grassy stems in neat rows, rhubarb bore flowering stalks, and asparagus thrust up fat, scaled spears. She stopped at the herb garden, walled with fieldstones. The grey-green leaves of last-year’s plants were half-buried in dead leaves.
Let me care for the herb garden
.

She stopped at the wrought-iron gate.

Where is she now?

She was accustomed to holding Mary in her mind’s eye. She saw her small and cape-swirled on the English moors, or making purchases in London’s markets, or sitting in darkness in a jail cell, or walking through the forests, or knocking on the doors of taverns. She had pictured her sailing across Long Island Sound.

Where is she now? Oh, my Mary
.

The sun began its swift climb. The bird chorus reached its peak, notes colliding and streaming into one sustained exuberance of sound.

They were not little children anymore. The baby, Charles, was ten. Henry was thirteen. Littlemary had her flowers and her shifts were too tight across the bosom.