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Alice told her. When she finished, the widow fixed her eyes on the floor and didn’t lift them until Alice said, “Madam?”

The widow looked up. “I’ve long ago stopped blaming or thanking God for the workings of a man’s heart. I’ll not squander the remainder of my time in further pondering the workings of this one. The woman’s, I’m ashamed to say, I understand well enough. Right now I’ve but one question for you, Alice. Why on earth could you not tell me this before, if not when first you came, then later, when you’d come to know me something better?”

“I was afraid you’d send me away.”

“For a sin not your own?”

“I’d heard it put the other way, madam.”

The widow peered at her. Alice knew the widow’s quiet rage by now and watched it as it grew, but just as she’d learned to grasp the difference between similar words as a child, she now grasped that she was not the object of this anger. The widow said, “How differently disguised our courage comes. Yours has my admiration. Now I must speak with Mr. Freeman,” and she banged for the gaoler.

FREEMAN CAME. ALICE
had been so afraid of how he might look at her, and indeed, his face appeared less open than it had before, but he spoke gently. “I must hear it for myself, Alice.”

So she told him. He didn’t interrupt her, despite her many stops and starts, but when she was finished he bade her tell it again, and that time he interrupted often. When Alice had finished with that telling, he picked up her hand and said, “Hard as it may be for you to believe, Alice, this Verley is the saving of you.”

Yes, it was hard for Alice to believe, for without Verley there would have been no dead babe and no charge of murdering a bastard in the first place, but she looked at Freeman’s face, opened to her once again, and decided that perhaps she could trust him after all.

M
ay came, and along with it a splash of pink on the single branch Alice could observe through her small barred window. She might have described a greater light and fresher air in the box as well, but she had some trouble deciding if the improvement in the light and air were real or imagined, as Freeman’s mood had lifted so markedly she suspected that alone accounted for the difference. He came in smiling and left smiling; he brought frivolous gifts like a doll on a string that danced when you pulled it, and candied plums, and a new hair ribbon. Indeed, he seemed to have forgiven Alice every transgression against him. He didn’t come every day, but he came often enough that Alice doubted he’d taken time of late to travel to Satucket, and she wondered if her saying the word
shame
out loud had made him think another thing about his relation with the widow.

During each of Freeman’s visits he talked to Alice of her upcoming trial. He spoke, always, with a soaring confidence in its outcome, but Alice believed she could recognize the places that troubled him, and one in particular. He asked her if there was anyone in Satucket besides the widow that might speak to her character, and at first Alice said no. Freeman expressed no dismay at her answer, but she saw that it troubled him; she gave it greater thought, and the next time he came she said, “I wonder if Shipmaster Hopkins might speak well of me, sir. He came to the widow’s more than most, and he never made such remarks as the others.”

Freeman’s face brightened so markedly that Alice tried to think some more. “And perhaps someone at the frolick.”

“No.”

“They might say they saw me do my share of work, that I didn’t run about wild like—”

“No, Alice. Not the frolick.”

Alice couldn’t think why not, and then of course she remembered. They might also say they’d seen her walk off into the dark with a boy.

No, not the frolick.

IN THE MIDDLE
of May a Spanish pirate captured off a ship wrecked on Truro’s outer bars was pushed into the cell in manacles. Freeman arrived soon after to find him leaning over Alice and jabbering at her in a foreign tongue; Freeman roared as Alice had never heard him roar, not at the Spaniard but at the gaoler, and not long afterward the same two men who had fetched Alice from Satucket came and carted the Spaniard off. To anyone else the Spaniard might have seemed of little significance, but to Alice it meant all. Freeman might have wished to save Nate from Alice, but so too did he wish to save Alice from the Spaniard.

Five days after the Spaniard’s short stay Alice fell ill. She got the first idea of it when the cold and damp stopped troubling her; the fever was well in command by the time she understood that a sickness had fallen on her. Next came a flaming throat that thickened her speech, and there Freeman sent for the doctor. Alice was still sensible when the doctor arrived and heard him label her affliction the putrid malignant sore throat, adding that it had killed many children in the village. He seemed quite sure she would die of it too, and the gaoler seemed so satisfied with the idea that Alice determined not to. She gargled with the cold water root tincture the doctor had left for her, applied the onion poultice Freeman’s housekeeper sent, and lulled herself into healing sleep with an old song about a bird on a cradle that she remembered from nowhere.

Somewhere in the height of her fever the sheriff returned and read her a passage from a paper that seemed to do nothing but restate the old charge, until Freeman explained to her that she was now charged as Alice Cole, not Alice Baker. After the reading of the charge the sheriff and Freeman stood in the box and had some words back and forth about another case to be judged at another county court; their long, measured words lulled Alice to sleep even better than the old song had.

The widow came again, this time bringing honey cake, brandy, and a flannel soaked in hyssop tea to wrap her neck in. The widow stayed at Barnstable some days; Alice wondered if she stayed at Freeman’s house, and if she did, in which chamber she slept, and what Freeman’s housekeeper thought of the arrangement. The widow busied herself at her visits by repacking the onion poultice on Alice’s feet or rewrapping her neck in the flannel, and while the widow visited, Freeman stayed away, which caused Alice to wonder if she’d been correct in supposing a change in their relation.

The widow returned to Satucket. Alice began to feel better. As her health improved, Freeman secured permission for a daily walk in the yard, and he took her walking himself, clamping her hand tight in the crook of his arm. On these walks Alice saw the things she’d seen on her first days in Satucket: the plum blossoms, the pinking oaks, the pine pollen that had scraped so at her eyes and throat. She’d come full circle through an entire year, but the idea of the circle made her uneasy, like a bad sign. Like a rope.

Alice began to dream of circles, being trapped inside a circle of towering, angry, strange men; she dreamed of being strangled by ropes instead of hands. She woke almost every night sweating and trembling, in misery because of her fear, in misery because she feared, but in the very depths of it, at the absolute bottom of it, she sometimes came to a place of peace. If they hanged her, she would be rid of it all: the dreams, the sweats, the shakes. The fear.

As Freeman walked with her he began to fill the conversational space with talk of politics, much the way he’d filled his talk with the widow, and Alice thrilled at this change in their relation. He told her of Otis’s reelection after his enemies published a lampoon of him in the
Gazette
, which proved to the townspeople he’d not been bought by them after all. Freeman also told her of the Virginia colony passing their own resolves denying the authority of Parliament to tax the colonies, a thing Alice imagined would have pleased Freeman, but he took on a look and tone she could only call something akin to jealousy. Virginia forged ahead while Massachusetts sat silent! While Otis stayed silent! Worse than silent! Otis had been overheard on the street calling the Virginia resolves an act of treason!

ALICE GREW STRONGER.
She counted the days in the yellowing, and, finally, the greening of the tree branch outside her window, wondering what the view from her window at Satucket would look like now, and then stopped counting the days altogether, knowing too well where they ended.

One day Freeman came in the highest of spirits and didn’t wait till they’d left on their walk to tell her what had caused it: Otis was back. He’d presented a resolution to the House of Representatives to form a committee of correspondence with the other provinces, to assemble representatives of each colony at a special congress to consult together over the late acts of Parliament. The committee had in fact been formed; Otis had been named to it, he was further named as representative to the new congress. Freeman then led Alice out into the day and told her how fine she looked and how strong she grew and how she needn’t worry about what lay ahead. They walked long and far, Freeman securing her hand to his elbow with his own palm, and Alice couldn’t think of a time when she’d felt happier. But that night the dreams were the worst they’d been, with nothing at the bottom of the fear but a new fear. What if she never saw such a day again?

Sometime after the tree branch had buried itself in solid green Freeman announced three days remaining to the trial; over the next days he came to Alice’s cell and talked to her of anything he could find to talk of besides the trial. He told her of his housekeeper’s distress over a hole he’d burned in his breeches, of a sloop aground in the harbor, of a fuss in town over who owned a tree that had dropped a branch through the meetinghouse window.

The day of the trial the widow appeared with clean clothes and a bucket of fresh water; she set to work scrubbing Alice down. Once Alice was washed to the widow’s satisfaction she pulled a simple gown of sky blue linen over Alice’s head, combed out her hair, tied it in a clean white ribbon, stood away from her, and said, “You look as you should, child. You look your own lovely self. Now I have no advice for you; you’ll have got all you need of that from Mr. Freeman. You must take from me nothing but my honest belief that you’re none of the things they’ll call you in that courtroom; you must wear your innocence around you as you wear this fine cloth, as if it were your suit of armor,” and she brushed her fingers over the new gown made of thread Alice had spun herself that past summer.

The widow left. Freeman came. He picked up Alice’s trembling hand and said, “All will be well, Alice. Do you know why? Because we meet fabrication with fact. With truth. With truth we will win. And after we win, the widow and I will take you home.”

The gaoler opened the door. Alice stood up and smoothed her skirt over her knees.
Armor
, the widow might call it, but it couldn’t disguise the pudding that lurked beneath it in the place of knees. Freeman went out first; the gaoler gripped Alice’s elbow and led her after. She walked out of the stinking box into the soft, sweet air, Freeman’s last words ringing in her head above any others.
The widow and I will take you home.

T
he minute Alice entered the courtroom she felt the weight of it: the long tables, the solid boxes, the heavy rail that divided the principals from the crowd jamming the room from wall to door in anticipation of some fine entertainment. Freeman pointed and whispered in low tones so Alice might know who was who—the five justices seated behind the longest table in front of the fireplace, the twelve members of the jury in their boxes ranged at either side, the clerk at his table, the lawyers at theirs, the witness box, the prisoner’s box.

Alice’s box.

The first row of seats behind the rail contained the witnesses, ready and waiting to be called before the bar; among them Alice spied the widow, the midwife Hall, Mrs. Sears, Mrs. Winslow, and Shipmaster Hopkins. Alice might have guessed what some would say of her, but not all.

The sheriff led Alice to her box and shut her inside. She watched Freeman walk to his table and settle himself; the space between them seemed as long as the Boston road. It might have been the heavy tread of the king’s attorney as he entered, or it might have been the pounding of Alice’s heart that so rattled the floorboards, for he stared hard at Alice, twisting something of disgust into his mouth as he walked by. How could a stranger wish so desperately to see her hang?

Alice removed her eye from the king’s attorney and looked at the men on the jury, determined not to be fooled by their surfaces. She hoped she had learned at least that one lesson by now: to look through the skin for a sense of the core, taking eyes and mouth as the doors that would let out the inner warmth or chill. Some of the men were young, some old, some fine, some ugly, some richly clothed, some roughly so, but they all sat grim-faced, either staring at Alice fixedly or casting their eyes up and down, up and down; she understood they looked at her in just the way she looked at them, trying to take her measure, but beyond that she saw the king’s attorney twelve times over. Oh, that twelve strangers could look at her so!

The sheriff ’s
oyez
brought silence, his
hear ye
the attention of all as the charge was read aloud: that on the twenty-seventh day of February in the fifth year of His Majesty King George III’s reign seventeen hundred and sixty-five the spinster Alice Cole of Satucket in the county of Barnstable brought forth of her body a living male child, which child being a bastard, the said Alice Cole, not having God before her eyes, did on the twenty-seventh day of February aforesaid at Satucket with force and arms feloniously and willfully and of her malice aforethought assault the said living male child in the presence of God with both her hands, wrapping said living child in a blanket and laying said living child down upon its face, and the said Alice Cole feloniously and willfully with malice aforethought neglecting to relieve or sustain said living child, said child there and then died.

The courtroom hummed as if full of a swarm of bees, and then fell silent. Alice sat in the stillness that followed and wondered how in all the world she had somehow become the “spinster of Satucket.” After a time the fantastical in the situation began to die down in her, and Alice considered each thing as it had been charged, keeping the faces of the jury before her. Had she had God before her eyes? Had she done something with both her hands that morning that could be called willful or malicious? Had it been done with forethought? And was it not a child of her body, that thing that had lain on the blanket between her legs, that intruder on her life? Its coming had been nothing of her doing, but what of its going?

The chief justice spoke. “How does the prisoner plead?”

As Alice debated it within herself Freeman’s voice rang out, “The prisoner pleads not guilty, Your Honors.”

The chief justice motioned to the king’s attorney, who rose from his table, stepped into the small space beside, and looked around him at the justices, the jury, Alice. His voice rang out louder than Freeman’s. A sign?

“May it please Your Honors, and you, the gentlemen of the jury, the charge before the court, to which the defendant Alice Cole has pleaded not guilty, is a charge of willfully and with malice aforethought causing the death of an infant. Her infant. A child born of her own body. There can be no doubt that you, the gentlemen of the jury, must sit in the same horror in which I stand before you at the thought of so selfish, so ungodly, so monstrous an act. Now I understand that you may look at this pretty young woman in the prime of her life, cloaked as she is in the raiment of innocence, and disbelieve that she could commit such a crime, but before this trial is over you will have another opinion of Alice Cole, for we shall have proved beyond all doubt that Alice Cole is not innocent, gentlemen of the jury; she is not innocent of the sin of fornication, which needs no further proof, nor is she innocent of the sin of concealing her fornication, for which the evidence will be shown to be most bountiful; nor is she innocent of the sin of causing the death of her own infant, the guilt of which the king’s witnesses, as well as the defendant’s own shame, demonstrated by her efforts at concealment and denial, will prove beyond all question. In short, gentlemen, what you may now perceive to be a young and innocent girl will prove to be a deceitful, devious, morally devoid young woman who has put herself before her child, who has put herself before her God, who has put herself before her king, and has willfully and in full understanding, that understanding proven time and again by her attempts at denial and concealment, committed the most abominable of all crimes against a child of her own body.”

At first as Alice listened she wondered who the king’s attorney spoke of, because it certainly wasn’t Alice, but then she saw the men of the jury take the king’s attorney’s words from his mouth and carry them back to her face. She saw the Alice Cole the king’s attorney proclaimed her to be mirrored in their faces. So, no doubt, would she see that same Alice Cole mirrored by every person in the courtroom, if she dared to look. She braced herself to search out Freeman’s face, or as much of it as she could see in the one side so exposed; he sat as still as a log on a forest floor, looking hard at the king’s attorney without a single glance at Alice, as if he couldn’t bring his gaze to rest there. Alice thought again of how little reason she had given that man to wish her well, thought again of all the kindnesses he had showered on her during her period of imprisonment. Perhaps Freeman never truly believed he would win her case; perhaps his kindness was only an attempt to march her to her death in happy ignorance. But how much greater the shocked misery when that ignorance got knocked to the floor! And how fast a fragile, newborn trust could die with it!