Crane Pond (36 page)

‘Your honour,' Mr. Melyen says with obvious contempt (reminding Sewall of Mr. Brattle's use of the honorific in the darkest days of the trials), ‘your honour, how can you
not
see Beacon Hill?'

Beacon Hill is the steepest slope in Boston, rising up on the far side of the Common. ‘For heaven's sake, I didn't know you meant Beacon Hill!'

‘I told you it was the biggest thing in Boston.'

‘You might as well have said the sky, or the ocean, or the globe itself.'

‘You will admit there is nothing bigger in the whole town? Even Mount Whoredom is not so large.'

‘Well, yes. But you are simply making reference to geography.'

‘I need you to say,' Mr. Melyen says the words slowly and ominously, ‘that Beacon Hill is the biggest object in the whole of Boston.'

‘All right, I agree,' says Sewall, smiling as if this has been an amicable discussion after all. ‘Beacon Hill
is
the biggest thing in Boston.'

‘Well then.' Mr. Melyen pauses. ‘If I should see a man hoist Beacon Hill on his back, then walk for a while over the Common where we are now, still carrying it, and then return and set it down where it was in the first place, do you know what I would say, Mr. Sewall, your honour?'

‘No, what would you say?'

‘Nothing, that's what I would say. Nothing at all. Mr. Sewall, I would see this man carrying his mighty burden, and I would make nothing of it at all.' With a final glare from those watery eyes of his, Mr. Melyen stumps off.

Sewall watches his receding form in bewilderment. What on earth could he have been driving at? Has the man gone completely mad?

He continues on his way for a few moments, then stops dead as the explanation dawns. Mr. Melyen was referring to George Burroughs, the minister-witch, and those feats of strength of which he was accused by Captain Wormwood: putting a finger into the bunghole of a barrel of molasses and then raising the whole thing, or lifting up a six-foot long musket, again by means of a mere finger inserted in the barrel. What Mr. Melyen was saying is that he would regard any feat of strength, no matter how prodigious, as ultimately explicable in the ordinary way of things, without resort to supernatural solutions.

That's why he was so angry—because it was the judges themselves who had fallen under the spell of the supernatural, not the accused. Mr. Melyen is repeating that old charge: that Sewall himself, and his fellow judges were the true witches.

It is as if the Court of Oyer and Terminer was sitting only yesterday, feelings are so raw. As the province of Massachusetts Bay becomes more and more embattled (the failure of this latest harvest has led to a scarcity of bread; Indian and French attacks are on the rise) a feeling is developing through the community that the trials need some kind of expiation.

He walks on to Mr. Checkley's shop, sidles up to the window and peers in. There in the dim interior stands Mr. Checkley himself, serving a customer. Sewall screws up his eyes (just as he had when trying to spot the largest thing in Boston) but he can't see Sam. Perhaps he's been sent out the back to fetch something the customer has asked for. The customer leaves. Now Mr. Checkley is standing all by himself in his shop.

Fear rises. Daughter Betty is tormented by verses from the Bible. Here is one to torment Sewall himself, from the book of Daniel, chapter 4, verse 5. As the words resound in his head he feels himself grow cold despite the heat of the day.

I saw a dream which made me afraid, and the thoughts upon my bed and the visions of my head troubled me
.

Sam isn't in the shop.

Sewall continues to look in the window. Perhaps it is not just Massachusetts in general that is being punished, but he, Samuel Sewall, in person, for his part in what happened. It takes him some moments of blank staring before he becomes aware that Mr. Checkley is signalling him to come in.

 

‘He hasn't been in the store all morning,' Mr. Checkley explains. He's a tall, broad-shouldered man with a large midriff. No wig but long, thinning hair, turning grey, teeth somewhat long and thinning too and also grey, but kind eyes.

‘What can have happened to him?'

‘The problem, Mr. Sewall, is that he's not suited to the trade. He moons about the shop and is obviously bored and unhappy. I imagine that he's mooning about the streets this morning instead.'

‘I see.'

‘His heart isn't in it, I'm afraid. I think he needs to look for something else. He doesn't want to
be
here. That's why he isn't here now.'

‘He was very upset this morning. His sister—'

‘But it's not just this morning. It's every morning. And afternoon. He
never
wants to be here.'

‘I see.

‘Mr. Sewall, I like the lad. It isn't everyone who is cut out for this business.' He turns to look around at his large, almost haphazard stock.

‘I suppose not,' Sewall agrees. ‘You have to be interested in . . . ' He can't think what would describe an interest in Mr. Checkley's supply of general goods. ‘In the variousness of things,' he concludes.

‘Exactly!' Mr. Checkley is pleased with the phrase and repeats it: ‘The variousness of things. Mr. Sewall, it's a matter of finding out where young Sam will be happy.'

Indeed it is, agrees Sewall, as he makes his way back home. The whereabouts of happiness is a fraught matter, and not just for poor Sam. None of his older children seem to have located it yet, and perhaps the smaller ones are cheerful simply because of their innocence. It's a long time since Sewall himself felt any spark of happiness. The last he can remember was when he heard of his appointment to the Superior Court, was reconciled with Mr. Brattle, and greeted his brother Stephen on his recovery from that terrible illness, all in the same afternoon. For a moment it had seemed as though the witchcraft tragedy was already being dispelled, but the years since then have shown the hollowness of that hope.

A figure is running towards him across the Common—it's Bastian, approaching fast. ‘Master!' he pants out. ‘I've been looking for you everywhere! You weren't at the warehouse.'

‘What is it, Bastian?' Sewall's heart contracts.
Who
is it? would have been a more appropriate question, but he couldn't quite ask it. Not Sam, please Lord, nor Betty, nor Hannah, not those children he lost in last night's dream! Some chilling words of Cotton Mather's come into his head:
Sudden death brings night before sunset
.

‘It's madam, sir. She's in labour.'

‘What, already?'

‘Well on the way, according to Sarah.'

‘You must hurry to Goody Weeden's, the midwife.'

‘I already have. She's with madam now. I fetched Nurse Hurd too.'

‘Ah, good, good.' It's been taken care of, for the moment. He sighs with relief. ‘I will be sorry to lose you, Bastian.' Several years ago Sewall wed Bastian to his Jane, the first black couple to be married in Boston. But she is still a slave to Madam Thayer, and the couple live there together, with Bastian walking the two miles to the Sewalls' house every morning. The agreement is that when Jane has a baby, Bastian will work mainly for Madam Thayer as compensation until Jane's period of servitude expires in a couple of years' time—and Jane has now become pregnant.

‘And me, sir,' Bastian agrees.

 

The house has that upside-down feeling it always does at times of birth, with much scurrying around and conversation
up
stairs, and peace and quiet below, where Sewall finds himself sitting for a few minutes, then pacing for the same amount of time, then standing, as if trying to establish which of these actions and inactions provides the most effective strategy for coping with anxiety (all are equally
in
effective, as he already knows).

Joseph and Mary are at school; Hannah and Betty have taken baby Sarah off to the Torreys' house in order to eat strawberries in their garden (saving some, Sewall hopes, for their mother). He wonders if he should go off in search of Sam, but fears missing the crisis. He should read a sermon or consult the Bible, but is unable to concentrate his mind. Even his silent prayers have a way of petering out, his brain being too distracted to pursue them to the conclusion. So he sits, paces, stands, in regular sequence; he listens to the ticking of his longcase clock.

The hands of which are almost at three in the afternoon when finally Susan gives a little tap on the hall door and enters. He looks up at her (he is in seated mode); she looks down at him. Her eyes seem to grow larger. For a second he is puzzled by this; then understands they're filling with tears.

He is up and running before he has time to think, as if he only has to travel fast enough and he'll be able to prevent whatever catastrophe has in fact already taken place. Up the stairs, along the landing—and there is the door to Hannah's chamber shut fast against him.

For a moment he glares in fury at its wooden impertinence. Though this is his own house he can't enter the room without permission. Then the substantial form of Goody Weeden is standing there, a smear of blood on her apron. ‘Madam Sewall?' he gasps out.

Goody Weeden steps to one side to allow him in. ‘She's sleeping,' she warns.

Sewall stands beside the bed, looking down at his wife's white face. He suspects she is sleeping deliberately, so to speak, as a way of deferring the sadness and weeping that lie ahead, her own grief as well as that of her husband and their living children. A family is an instrument for sharing life's sorrows, but by its very nature it also multiplies them. He bends over and kisses her brow, strokes her hair.

Widow Hurd has stepped over to his side. ‘Was the child a boy?' he whispers. She nods another solemn nod. As always when a baby is lost a great guilt sweeps over him. If he had been more attentive, more alert, above all if he had concentrated more on spiritual matters rather than on the dailiness of daily life, this child might have lived. He didn't even pray properly while Hannah was in labour.

Perhaps his dream of the loss of his children was a true prophecy after all, and this baby has been taken away from him as punishment because he has as yet failed to undertake sufficient penance for the witch trials.

The child conceived through his evil lust on the day of that meeting to defend the Court of Oyer and Terminer (that day on which the last batch of witches was hanged, and brother Stephen, having seen those hangings, was drenched to the skin, so beginning his long illness, and Justice Stoughton was washed off his horse and drenched to his skin and beyond), that poor little misconceived infant (who though guiltless himself was the offspring of a guilty father) inevitably died. But baby Sarah was born subsequent to that bereavement, and she still lives, so Sewall was able to comfort himself with the thought that the tragedy was behind him. However she is subject to fits and perhaps this disability was a warning of the approaching wrath of God, like distant thunder.

And now the storm has struck.

‘Please show me my son,' he asks Goody Weeden.

Without saying a word she turns and leads him out of the bedroom to his own study. The baby is in the cradle that was made ready for him, covered by a little sheet. Sewall lifts it. The little boy is lying stretched out, unencumbered by clothing. He looks perfect in every way except for not being alive.

Sewall gets down on his knees beside the cot and begins to pray for forgiveness for the sins and the lack of attentiveness that let this child die. He is there for an hour. At the end of that time he replaces the sheet, leaves the room and tiptoes down the stairs. To his surprise, waiting for him in the hall is young Sam.

‘I'm so sorry, father,' Sam says at once.

‘It's not your fault, my son.'

‘Isn't it?' Sam looks astounded.

‘It is my responsibility, as the parent.'

Sam looks mightily relieved for a moment, and then his face clouds over.

‘No, father, that can't be true. I have to take the blame. It's just that—everything is different. There's not one thing the same as another.'

‘That's why we must always be vigilant,' Sewall tells him. ‘Each thing and each person in this world is itself, and not another. That's why we have to make space for each one. And the only way for a father to do that is to examine himself, and pray, and do all he can to remove the sin that poisons the ground and chokes the air and stifles the life out of the new little one before he even lives. Alas—'

‘And every one has a different price, and yet none of them are marked.'

Sewall looks at his son in bewilderment. ‘How so?' he asks.

‘Well, I asked Mr. Checkley, and he says that in the case of books you can write the price on the flyleaf, but with
things
it would be necessary to attach a tag to each one and that would be more labour than it's worth. But, father, I could never learn them all.'

‘Sam, your little brother is dead.'

Sam is horror-struck. His mouth sags open and his eyes fill with tears. ‘Joseph?' he asks finally.

‘No, no, not Joseph. The new boy that your mother was carrying in her womb.'

Sam stays exactly as he is for a few moments. ‘I thought you meant Joseph,' he says finally in a small and shaky voice. ‘I thought he had died because I didn't go to work today. Because I choked his ground. And poisoned his air.'

 

Later that afternoon Mr. Willard arrives. Hannah is still sleeping. Goodwife Weeden has gone, leaving Nurse Hurd in attendance. Betty and young Hannah have come home, and are weeping together in their bedroom while Sarah attends to little Sarah. Sam is helping Bastian with some chore in the garden, assisted by young Joseph. ‘Mr. Willard,' says Sewall. ‘Thank you for coming.'

Mr. Willard looks nonplussed for a moment. ‘I came to ask for your opinion—'