Crane Pond (5 page)

The final insult: Sewall has to send his own man, Bastian, on horseback to the execution ground.

The judges file out, one by one. The prayer has been forgotten. Most contrive to avoid Sewall's gaze as they bid him farewell. Nathaniel Saltonstall, however, heartily shakes him by the hand. He still has the kindly smile. Strangely, even though he has conformed to Saltonstall's wish, Sewall feels shame-faced when looking at that open countenance, as if he has in some complex way let him down, so that Saltonstall's sympathy is an acknowledgement of his own weakness.

 

Boston's place of execution is by the shore south of the harbour, and almost a mile from the Sewalls' house. By some peculiarity of wind or water, the sound of the crowd usually carries over to them on execution days. Today, while they are eating their belated dinner, they hear a sudden distant groan of disappointment. Wife Hannah looks enquiringly at Sewall.

He guesses what it is. Hawkins has been reprieved while on the very ladder itself. There is nothing more dismaying to an eager crowd than the sight of a condemned person climbing back down to the world he has already left.

Only Thomas Johnson will hang today.

I
t's an April day, with a blue sky and puffy white clouds, though there are still fingers of old snow here and there. Sewall is in his orchard, building a new henhouse with the aid of his black servant, Bastian. Or to be more accurate, Bastian is building a new henhouse with help from Sewall, who is holding the little roof in place and has a mouthful of nails, passing one to his servant when required.

The chickens stand around near their old tumbledown residence, watching all this activity with furrowed brows and grumbling gently. Even the family's little black cow is interested and pokes her head over the fence of her pasture. She was let out of her shed for the first time this morning when Bastian decided there were signs of growth in the grass, and Sewall enjoyed watching her frisk about in the winy air as she celebrated the outside world again. The Daughters of Sion had no business to stretch out their necks and tinkle their feet but the Bible does endorse dancing at the end of mourning—as in Jeremiah, for example, when Jacob is redeemed.
Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance, both young men and old together: for I will turn their mourning into joy . . .
If the virgins and the young and old men can dance when released from grief, why not the little cow when escaping the long captivity of winter?

Young Joseph is crouched beside Sewall and Bastian, playing farms with wooden animals. These include toy cows and chickens, and looking down at his play is suddenly like viewing this Boston back garden from a great height, or more particularly looking at the fields round Sewall's childhood home of Newbury, Massachusetts, from the top of Old Town Hill, and seeing the tiny sheep and orchards and rows of Indian corn way below: perceiving the homely and diminutive world from the fastness of heaven.

Bastian asks for another nail and Sewall passes him one. But Bastian is supporting the henhouse with one hand so requires Sewall to hold the nail in place while he strikes it with his hammer. Sewall crouches down, grips the shaft of the nail and waits for the blow. At that very moment comes a call of ‘Good day!'

Sewall twists his head upwards to see who it is but is stunned by a sudden cry of terror. He cries out himself in response, that fear shuttle again, and nails fly from his mouth. Joseph starts bawling too. Bastian grips Sewall's arm. ‘Master, it's only Captain Wing,' he explains.

Sewall stumbles to his feet. Captain Wing is now laughing heartily. He is a big burly good-humoured man, a fellow congregant of the South Church, and runs the Castle Tavern on Mackerel Lane just off Dock Square, where Sewall often dines. He used to have a mop of fair hair, though sadly that has now been buried in a wig. ‘I'm sorry, Captain Wing,' Sewall says, ‘you startled me. I think you startled young Joseph too.' He looks down at his son, who has stopped crying. ‘It's only Captain Wing,' he tells him. Joseph glowers briefly at Captain Wing and resumes his play.

‘It is my place to apologise,' Captain Wing says. ‘When you turned your head towards me, I had the strangest impression. I thought you'd become some sort of monster with iron fangs.' Bastian, still squatting on his haunches, laughs gleefully at this.

‘Ah,' says Sewall. ‘No, my teeth are passably sound and I don't need false ones.' He wonders whether to lead on to a comment about the unnecessariness of false
hair
but decides against it. ‘I was sad to hear of the misfortune that struck Moses Bradford,' he says instead.

A conduit in the tavern's courtyard brings water in for brewing and last week a small boy tumbled into it. Moses leapt in to rescue him. The boy was quickly fished out by other customers of the ordinary but Moses was too bulky and awkward (perhaps too full of beer) to be saved. Captain Wing's face falls. ‘He was a brave man,' he says, then adds, ‘and a good customer.' His expression becomes more regretful than ever.

‘He died doing a good deed. He has gone straight to heaven.'

‘Yes.' Captain Wing looks doubtful. Perhaps he's reflecting that not everything in Bradford's past life might have suggested that destination. Still, Sewall is confident that what you are at the moment of death is the key. Not that you can
earn
salvation at that (or any other) moment. But you can show that it is justified—that God elected you to be one of His saints before you were even born—by the manner of your passing. He senses that Captain Wing has come about some other matter, however. He raises an eyebrow inquiringly. He has a suspicion he knows the gist of it.

‘Mr. Sewall,' Captain Wing says, ‘I've come to ask your advice.'

‘I see. Would this business have to do with chairs?'

‘Chairs?'

‘There was talk at the meeting house that you have a room fitted with seats.'

‘You can't expect customers to eat and drink standing up.'

Bang, bang. Bastian has resumed work on the henhouse. He's being tactful, Sewall suspects. ‘These are seats in rows, as I understand it, not seats around tables.'

‘Ah,' says Captain Wing, looking a little sheepish. ‘They are in the back room of the tavern. It's scarcely used. The truth of the matter is that an acquaintance of mine was looking for a room in which . . .' his voice tails off a little, necessitating a clearing of the throat, ‘ . . .to do magic tricks.'

Sewall saw magic tricks himself when he was in London, performed in the street. He remembers one in particular, involving a dried pea and three walnut shells. The practitioner was clearly a rogue, with quick fingers and deft hands perfectly suited to picking pockets when they were not whizzing his shells about. To Sewall's astonishment, after his trick the sharper demanded the sum of five shillings, claiming that this was the amount he had wagered. Sewall had no recollection of wagering any amount at all, and it wasn't something he would do in any case, for the simple reason that gambling is a sin. But while he tried to explain that there was no
contractus ludi
, the pea-man's cronies began crowding around. They were a villainous crew, ragged and grimy, some bearing scars and others lacking limbs (one an eye), so Sewall handed over the extortionate amount they demanded to an accompaniment of jeering huzzas, and quickly fled while his own person remained intact. ‘When miracles are not performed by God,' he says, ‘they are a kind of persecution of the people.'

‘I just wanted a little income from letting that room,' Wing replies. ‘It's hardly used.'

‘Since the man's practice is unlawful, involving deception, then giving him accommodation would be unlawful too.'

‘I was just hoping to amuse my customers,' Wing explains, ‘but as it is offensive I will remedy it.' He nods his acceptance, though his big honest face looks glum.

Bastian has stopped hammering. There's an awkward pause in the conversation. Sewall casts about in his mind for something to say that will make things easier again between himself and Captain Wing. Before he can come up with anything, little Joseph suddenly cries: ‘News from heaven!'

Sewall looks down at him in astonishment. Joseph is absorbed in his farm toys as if he hasn't spoken at all. ‘Joseph my love, what did you say?'

Still busy pushing a cow along on the grass, Joseph repeats, ‘News from heaven.' Since only the back of his bowed head is visible, the voice seems to be coming from nowhere, from heaven itself.

‘What news, Joseph?'

‘The bad people are coming.'

Captain Wing and Sewall exchange glances. ‘And where are these bad people coming from?' Sewall asks.

‘Everywhere,' Joseph replies.

Captain Wing lays a hand on Sewall's arm. ‘It's hardly surprising,' he says. ‘People talk of nothing else but the French and the Indians, and attacks, and massacres.' That's true, of course. Only two weeks previously there was a horrible massacre at Salmon Falls in Maine, with almost a hundred murdered and even small children of Joseph's age tortured to death. But Sewall and wife Hannah shield the children from news of the war, Joseph most of all.

He asks Bastian if he has said anything to the child; Bastian shakes his head indignantly. Sewall sends him to fetch Hannah and the household servants. Nobody has put words into the infant's mouth or ideas into his head. Hannah picks Joseph up and hugs him, wanting to protect her child from that world of dark snowy forests, lonely settlements, French attacks and Indian savagery. She's pregnant again, and at such times always especially caring of her living children.

But Sewall is much affected too. He remembers how, in the winter, young Betty retired to her cupboard in despair at reading how the people of God had broken the covenant. Perhaps his children have the gift of prophecy and are foretelling the destruction of the colony. He lies awake for hours that night listening for noises of enemies invading his garden and breaking into his house.

 

A couple of weeks later Sewall accompanies the acting deputy governor, William Stoughton, on a mission to New York. They will attend a congress of the American colonies to coordinate a military response to the French and their Indian allies in the wake of the massacre at Salmon Falls.

Stoughton is a severe unflinching man with a pale face and black rings under his eyes. He doesn't wear a wig but grows his own grey hair long down each side of his head. He tends to hold his mouth a little open as if wishing to have it ready at a moment's notice to rebuke any foolishness you may utter. He's a bachelor of sixty in a fashion that suggests a wife and children would have been an unnecessary frivolity in a life devoted to duty.

They clop south in silence for a time, and then Stoughton says in his dry considering voice, ‘A sad business about the pirates, Mr. Sewall.'

‘The pirates?' Sewall asks, perplexed.

‘I meant to discuss that fiasco with you before, but the opportunity hasn't arisen.'

‘Ah, the pirates.' Sewall has buried that memory over the last few months.

‘I believe justice was mocked on that occasion, with those helter-skelter reprieves.'

Sewall feels himself blushing. He's glad the two escorts are following at a discreet distance. ‘Our governor signed some of those releases before we had even discussed them.'

‘Governor Bradstreet is a good man, but that's neither here nor there. Justice isn't negotiable.'

These words give him a pang—they recall his own assertion to Mr. Winthrop that justice is blind. ‘Maybe not,' he says, ‘but people who knew them well spoke in their favour.'

‘Mr. Winthrop, I take it,' says Stoughton grimly. ‘And Madam, no doubt. Their arguments were telling, I imagine.'

Sewall tries to remember what their arguments actually were but can't. Something about the vicissitudes of the sea. ‘They spoke to the character of some of the men, who are well-known in Salem.'

‘Character isn't the point. It's
doings
that concern us as justices, not how a man might pass himself off in society, not a matter of who his friends and relations might be. As for Madam Winthrop, women have their affections, and often they pass them on to their menfolk. And to others.'

He talks, Sewall realises, as if affections mean the same thing as
in
fections. His detachment must be lonely but no doubt it gives his judgement an impartial accuracy more tangled-up mortals cannot achieve. Mr. Stoughton is looking across at him still. Their road is passing though small fields with the occasional patch of woodland, and sometimes a glimpse of the sea to the left. The sky has a muffled gleam like pewter. Stoughton's eyes are the same shade, and since he's silhouetted against the sky there's an odd sense of looking straight through his head, the perfect image of impartiality: suggesting no taint of the personal in judgements made therein.

That's what Sewall himself professed to believe in, in those arguments with his colleagues. He blushes with shame. He is pink and Stoughton is grey, which sums up the difference between them.

 

Ten days later Sewall arrives home. The congress has agreed to send a pan-colonial force to Albany. As he goes through his own gate a couple of chickens scuttle away from him and he stares at their retreating rear ends in surprise. When he set off on his journey they were ensconced in their new henhouse with a secure run of their own. Someone must have left the little door open.

Before he reaches the front door the family spot him and Betty runs out and into his arms. Next comes his wife, her pregnant stomach preceding her, with Joseph holding her hand and looking up at him shyly as if he has already forgotten who he might be. Then Sam, careful not to hurry in childish enthusiasm, but pleased nevertheless. Stupidly, at this moment when Sewall should feel happy, those renegade chickens are roosting inside his head. ‘The hens have got free,' he complains.