A Measure of Light (9 page)

It was dark when they stepped out into the street. The light of William’s candle lantern was serrated with driving snow, like finely drawn chalk lines. The governor’s house stood directly across from the Hutchinsons’ and as they passed beneath its windows she saw Governor Winthrop peering out, hand on drawn curtain, head turned to look down the street. Half-lit, his pointed beard was etched against the room’s soft glow. She could not see the expression on his face.

The mother had been labouring for twenty hours and still the baby would not come. The room was close with hips, linens, skirts. Women bent over the fire, frying Johnny-cakes, heating water, ladling cider into mugs. Others sat on a bench beneath the window, whispering, giddy with fatigue; they laughed or uttered little shrieks, hands clapped to mouths.

Mary pressed a cup beneath the nipple of a nursing mother.

“Comes hard at first,” the woman breathed, scissoring fingers down her breast. Mary felt a milky mist on her face, watched the
level rise. She went to the bed, drew open the curtains. Anne stood at the bedside, her face masked with visualization as she reached beneath the woman’s shift.

“Drink,” Mary said, holding the milk to the woman’s panting mouth. “’twill help.” She spoke as if it were an ordinary day and an ordinary cup of milk, not one to accelerate a labour that had gone on far too long.

A scream came that blossomed, passed beyond agony. Gut, blood, a choke.

“’Tis turned,” Anne exclaimed. “I have turned the baby! Come, now, come, Mary. Bring me more grease.”

The baby slipped into Anne’s hands. She cut the cord, wrapped the stump with a belly band and handed the tiny girl to Mary, who lowered the child into a basin of warm wine. A chorus of relieved voices rose; the women came forward to see the infant.

“Ellen? Ellen! Ah, no.” Anne’s voice. Sudden, furious. “I cannot feel the heartbeat.” She pressed her ear to the woman’s breast. “No,” she panted. “No, no, no.”

She palmed her hands and looked fiercely towards the rafters. “Lord, in thy steadfast love, in thy wisdom and grace, spare this servant …”

The women joined in prayer, kneeling, crying out. Their cries died away and they prayed silently, hearing, as if for the first time, the blizzard that seized the house, lashing snow in dry specklings against the paper panes, causing the door to rattle on its hinges.

A long, harsh breath came from the bed.

They laid food on the trestle table—Johnny-cakes and the special “groaning” beer prepared for childbirth. They ate by the light of candlewood, a smoky, pitchy flicker; and a candle, guttering on the table. The wind blew like an injured and self-communing beast.

“I wonder,” a woman said. She laughed, but glanced and lowered her voice. “How the Lord could have heard over that racket.”

Anne set down her mug. Mary saw how fatigue dragged at her cheeks and the corners of her mouth.

“Ah, but he did,” she said. She drew a long breath that lifted her striped, blood-stained stomacher.

Mary heard Anne’s next words in her own mind before Anne spoke them.

“God hears those he loves …”

Occasionally, on winter afternoons, Mary visited the Hutchinsons’ home. They sat in Anne’s parlour, close to the fire, and talked of the books they had read—discussed the women in Foxe’s
Actes and Monuments
, especially sixteen-year-old Lady Jane Grey, Queen of England for nine days, held in the Tower and beheaded.

“Which languages did she speak?” Mary asked, wanting to confirm her memory. She held wool-gauntleted hands to the flames.

“Latin,” Anne said, ticking them off on her fingers. “Greek, Spanish, Italian and French. She did believe in justification by faith. She argued with the men, she had no fear.”

Mary had been studying the Book of Esther. She imagined the young Jewish woman—perhaps her own age, married to a king who was unaware of her religion—being asked to intercede with him to save her people from slaughter. She opened her Bible, found the passage and read aloud. Finishing, she closed the book, slowly, and gazed into the fire. She felt yearning, a sense of her life stretching before her. Anne, too, was silent.

“The young queen was so brave,” Mary offered. “So selfless.”

Anne took up the tongs and poked at the logs. “What did you think of my last discourse?”

Mary did not answer the question, forgetting it in the light of the larger question that framed it.

“Do you believe yourself to be in danger?” Mary asked.

Anne bunched her shawl close across her chest, inching her chair back from the revived fire.

“Perhaps,” she said. “Perhaps. Yet if so, ’tis not me alone. ’Tis half of Boston and some of the outlying places as well, where people think as I do.”

“So many,” Mary said. “You have such influence. Surely they will stop you.”

Anne glanced at Mary. “Do not tempt me with pride. ’Tis not only me, Mary. ’Tis Reverend Cotton, as well, who shares my views, although he keeps them close; and Henry Vane, and other men, too, who have their own reasons for distaste of those who would make the laws without consent and flay the backs of those they call sinners. Do you know, the children wake at night? They scream in terror after some of Reverend Wilson’s sermons.” She imitated the minister’s nasal intonements. “ ‘These are the sins that terribly provoke the wrath of Almighty God against thee …’ I tell the children to attend only to the Holy Spirit within themselves, but ’tis a mishmash for them, I fear.”

She paused, considering.

“I wish only to awaken people’s hearts to the search for grace within themselves, so to maintain the living spirit of our religion. I will argue as does Mr. Cotton, from the truth as given in the Scriptures. For what else did we cross an entire ocean?”

“Yes,” Mary said. Still she felt like an acolyte, unsure. “I do agree with you.”

Anne slid her eyes at Mary, smiled, slightly.

“Then you, too, may be in danger.”

MARY RAISED HER FACE TO
enjoy the warmth of the sun on her face. She looked out over the bay. Sails came into view, passing the outer islands.

“Sinnie,” she cried, rising to her feet. They were kneeling by the front door, sorting beet root. Samuel napped on a bed of wildcat pelts. “The ships! The ships have come!”

The scratch on the windowsill had darkened. Masts and spars rose over the low ridge that rimmed the harbour. By early afternoon, fifteen ships lay at anchor.

Anne Hutchinson’s twelve-year-old daughter arrived with a message.

“Mother sends this,” the girl said, handing Mary a cloth bag. “’Tis tea brought from London by the Wheelwrights. She bids you come for supper to make their acquaintance.”

“Who are they?”

“My uncle, John Wheelwright. He is a minister, married to my father’s sister. They have five children. And with them …” her voice caught, “…  is my
grandmother
!”

“Joy for you, indeed,” Mary said, infected by the spring light and the girl’s excitement. “Surely we will come!”

—

The adults of three families squeezed around one table: Hutchinsons, Wheelwrights and Dyers. Rich, evening light stretched across the floorboards, up the daub wall, onto pussy willows in an earthenware vase.

Anne scooped hasty pudding from an iron pot. Children carried trenchers to the table.

“We shall petition the church that you be co-pastor with Reverend Wilson,” Anne said to her brother-in-law, John Wheelwright.

Mary studied the new faces, impatient to hear news of home. Anne snapped spoonfuls of pudding, squinting in the blue-grey swirls of steam, nodding at the places where the trenchers were to be set. The children, Mary saw, were entirely accustomed to their mother’s bold pronouncements.

“Wilson is our minister, Cotton is our teacher. Whereas they do both believe in the inevitability of God’s will, Reverend Wilson lays undue weight on morality.” She paused, glanced at the children. “He believes that by ‘works,’ a strictly moral life, a person proves that he is saved. There are many who would be glad to set a balance to Reverend Wilson’s views. You would be such a one, brother John.”

John Wheelwright sat with shoulders held back and chin lifted, accentuating his height, drawing down his eyelids. He wore a silk cap; his cheeks were burnished from the crossing.

“I should be happy to do so.” He held one palm upright, his fingertips making minute tremblings. “My views are much like those of Reverend Cotton. Yet I
have
heard talk that he is tainted. Such nonsense. Or is it?” He glanced at Will Hutchinson and William, surprised that the men did not weigh in. “You are as Protestants and Catholics here with your diverging opinions on ‘works’ and ‘grace.’ Indeed, it has been well noted in England.”

Anne looked steadily at Wheelwright, gauging him. “Aye, there is great controversy. Do not underestimate it. Governor Winthrop
would silence me, for he doth believe that my teachings undermine his authority.”

“Is it so? Truly?” Wheelwright’s voice quickened, startled by her rebuke.

Mary watched steam rising from the trencher set between her and William, a fine column that broke and spun into coils before thinning, vanishing.

We talk as we did in England
.

She held Samuel on her lap. He reached for the steaming pudding and she snatched his hand. Spring birdsong was admitted by the half-opened door yet still they wore their unwashed woollens and sat pressed close as if from winter’s cold. She becomes angry, Mary thought, watching her friend. She is right, and knows it. The more they try to silence her, the more steely she will become.

Anne circled the spoon around the bottom of the pot. “I say that those graced by the Holy Spirit do apprehend it within themselves. Therefore they
cannot
be preached to by those who do not evidence such grace. I believe some of our preachers are not graced.”

Wheelwright’s fingers tightened on his spoon. “Indeed.”

“Nor do I believe that perfect behaviour evidences sanctification. The governor says that I undermine both the preachers and the laws that do insist upon righteousness.”

Will Hutchinson watched his wife, and then slid an appeasing glance at Wheelwright, as if making an offering. “My wife hath set fear in some who need a check on their power. The clergy here have set themselves up like the bishops.”

“These are not my motives, Will, and you do know it.” Anne spoke quickly, annoyed. “I speak my mind and there are many who show interest.”

A large pewter mug of ale was passed around the table, finger-warmed. Each person turned it slightly before drinking. Will Hutchinson drank, then caught William Dyer’s eyes as he passed it to him. Mary
saw the two men—both merchants, neither with religious passion—share a look.
Will you speak or shall I?
it said, and her William sat forward on his chair and leaned towards the newcomers.

“The issue of works and grace, do you see, is setting a divide between the people, for it becomes a matter of power—whom the people will trust and whom they will follow. There are the ministers and magistrates on the one hand; the merchants on the other. We merchants support Anne Hutchinson. In recent weeks, the General Court hath seen fit to tell us how much we may pay our workers. How much we may charge for our goods. My profits have dwindled overnight.”

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, passed the mug carefully to the old lady on his right.

“You will find that although there is no clergy on the General Court,
only church members can stand for office
. Do you understand?”

Wheelwright nodded. “Church and state.”

“Aye,” William said. “When we left, Archbishop Laud and King Charles were hand in hand. Sometimes I do wonder what is the difference here. The General Court doth make its own rules, and they are not the rules of England. If unsure as to what constitutes a crime or how to mete punishment, the court asks advice of the church elders. Or of the ministers.”

“And which ministers hold your views, my sister?” Wheelwright asked.

Anne finally took her place at the table. She sat with her hands in her lap looking out the window.

Forty-five years old. And the Lord hath sent her fifteen babies
.

The colony’s unsoftened light picked out silver hairs wisping from beneath Anne’s coif, laid shadows in the spidery lines beside her mouth. Yes, children he had sent, Mary thought—but some he had called home. Susan, Elizabeth, William. Heaven beckoned, heartbreaking in its beauty and its necessity.

“Mr. Cotton,” Anne said, her voice suddenly spent. “Mr. Cotton is my teacher and it is his words I seek to elucidate.” She sighed, reached for a spoon. “As I did at home. As he has asked me to do here. Will, please to say the grace. Our pudding doth grow cold.”

In the late spring dusk, William brought home the news that Henry Vane had been elected governor. They left the front door open to watch the pink light on the water below. The night was alive with clickings and trills—blackbirds, frogs, insects. Mary laughed at William’s exuberance.

“Tonight the merchants will set off fireworks in the harbour,” he said to baby Samuel, holding him up like a package and tilting him from side to side, making him dance like a marionette.