The Strange Death of Mistress Coffin (19 page)

Although I have left certain useful books to the London Philosophical Society, as well as the detailed history of my investigations of the earth and the heavens, in twenty-four journal volumes, I have burned the unfinished manuscript of my treatise on the history of magic, as I now believe it more likely to cause greater harm than good. Likewise, I have dispatched to the flames those of my philosophical tracts in which I have dabbled over the years. I now understand them to be riddled with human folly, to the history of which I once aspired to contribute as one more of the
Cymini sectores. Quos vult perdere Deus, dementat prius.

—B
ALTHAZAR
C
OFFIN

“Sic ego componi versus in ossa velim,”
Browne murmured as he put down the letters and lifted a fair copy of the will, which Sedley had also enclosed. But what shocked Browne most, what opened upon new corridors of darkness and suggested new interconnections, was a note, painstakingly scrawled, that fell out among these other papers.

S
IR

Your wife has not been true. She has taken your absence as leave to satisfy her carnal lusts. Watch her close, and see if she does not prove false. These be appearances only, Sir, as you may soon see.

And how should I know but that it is my own husband turned her paramour. I intend soon to make him true. For he belongs not to her, but is my own, only this once strayed.

Yours faithfully
E
LIZABETH
H
IGGINS

In the will itself, Browne found that he was named for the sum of £450. He was staggered by it. His first thought was that the man must have gone truly mad. Then, as he thought about it further, Coffin's whole scheme in taking his own life and leaving such a will began to make a certain kind of penitential sense. Furthermore, his own labors might have benefited Coffin's understanding of events, and he was probably expected to continue helping Goody Higgins whom, perhaps, Coffin had tormented (or at least he might have been unfair to her). He would visit Cole for advice. He felt that he must tell someone of this sum left to him. Would it not seem somehow unclean if anyone were to discover later that he had taken it quietly, as if it were an act worthy of hiding?

“You have responsibilities to yourself, your family, and your associates,” Cole advised. “You've lost much time better spent developing your forest trade.” He seemed almost jolly as he sat before his fire smoking his pipe at the end of day. “And in this country especially must a man have his helpmeet.” He smiled at Browne. “Few men improve themselves in this wilderness, Richard, without a good wife. Quite the contrary!” He took a long draw on the pipe. “Your instinct to get on with it seems
right to me, Richard. Pursue the present course of your investigations to their end as quickly as you can. You have done the job well, as well as anyone could hope or expect in these strange entanglements. Yes, that legacy is an exorbitancy, but consider it genuinely tendered and, on your part, earned.”

“Were I to collect the sum, I could not in good conscience do less than share it equally with Goody Higgins. And I suspect that any other arrangement would raise her suspicions and warrant complicated explanations.”

“Ah, yes! I see. You may be right. Very good, Richard. But say nothing to anyone of this or there will be talk of collecting from her for the town coffers. The poor woman, with those children, will be needing help. You are right there. She may marry again, but there seems some pain in her that prevents it. And in any event, should she not be given something now, she'll end up on the poorlists anyway, collecting from
us.”

“She would receive some relief from her condition, would she not, if her husband were declared dead?”

“Yes. Some. At least she would know just where she stands. But then too if we could prove desertion, her circumstances might become settled.”

“Not necessarily to her advantage, I imagine.”

“True. Not necessarily to any advantage under current practices.” He relit his pipe, drew deeply, looking steadily at Browne.

“Then I should help.”

“Indeed, Richard.”

“I find much relief in your advice, Mr. Cole.”

“Ah!' he said, the smoke rising between their faces. “You've done well, ferreted out certain of our vermin. We may never know all that has happened. But think too of the relief you've brought Goody Higgins. Jared Higgins, guilty or not, is gone from us forever, as near as I can fathom. Coffin's role, his instigations, you yourself have said we've discovered in this diary. Or so it seems. I'm anxious for you to tell me more of it
some day. And in any case, whatever his guilt, he is dead now. I doubt we shall uncover sufficient evidence to turn off the ladder whatever rogue squeezed the life from that poor woman.” He pulled on his pipe. “And those Fletchers are to be sent from our shores as soon as you deem them useless to any further inquiry.”

“You say you have no reason to suspect my husband's where-abouts?” Elizabeth Higgins asked Browne.

“I have none,” he answered. He loathed lying to her, but there was more truth in this now than in some of the things he had told her. After more than a year in the wilderness, what might not have befallen Jared Higgins? He might be with the savages still, or he might not. He might have left for England, the Indies, or one of the southern colonies. Might he as possibly be dead by now, a white man living as he had? He tried an explanation: “I have only the sense that I have not hunted for him sufficiently. Darby Shaw has agreed to guide me once again.”

“No,” she said. “It is hopeless.” She looked at the floor. “I'm sure of it now, these two years. The loss of my husband is but one of my torments that began since Mr. Coffin hired him. That past is gone now.” She looked up at him. “With much thanks to you, Mr. Browne.”

“You credit me with too much, Goody Higgins. Now I merely want to see this final matter through, as I believe it's all I can do.”

She rose and walked to the open doorway, where she stood looking out. He rose from his rude chair, which Higgins had made immediately after building his house, and stood three feet behind her.

“I don't want you to waste your time,” she said. “Why not stay here and attend your trade?”

“It's a matter of curiosity at this point. Don't feel in any way responsible yourself. I'm being more selfish than you think.”

“Curiosity?” She turned toward him.

“Yes. A hard taskmaster.”

“Why so curious?”

“Once one enters a maze, one desires the secret of it. Even if one knows he will not live long enough or maintain the strength of purpose to emerge.”

“You sacrifice much for curiosity.”

He pulled a purse out of the large pocket he had worn over his shoulder and set the purse on the nearby table.

“You must accept this. It is half of the legacy I told you Mr. Coffin left to us both upon his death. I don't know whether it is merely guilt money or not. But it's left to you, as to me, so you might as well take it.”

She stared at the purse, seeming for an instant both angry and pleased. When she looked directly at him, her pale eyes searched his as if to test his truthfulness.

Browne turned away, and she again looked at the purse on the table. He said nothing but began to pace, his hands folded behind him, his eyes on the floor, his mind reasoning with itself. Certainly he owed her nothing, and Coffin had left the complete sum to himself. He had been through all such reasonings before. One hundred and twelve pounds was a lot of money. It was a gift that would change her life entirely.

He had been forced to retain better than half himself, well over £300. He had been growing troubled lately by the discovery that men from Massachusetts—Hutchinson, Broughton, Hull, others—were buying up timberland and sawmills of the Piscataqua watershed to insure a flow of timber products in their own trade. In his first surprise at Coffin's legacy and his impulse toward generosity he had briefly forgotten how
worrisome such competitors had become. In his reasonings, he had convinced himself that Elizabeth would refuse any sum unless she believed the legacy left to both of them. Therefore, he had, before traveling to the probate clerk, paid her a visit to smooth the way, telling her of Coffin's death and of an as yet uncertain sum that had been left to them equally. There had never been a question in Browne's mind of giving Elizabeth Higgins a substantial gift, but, he told himself, he had to concoct this further untruth to make her
accept
his gift. The more than £330 that he had kept he used to purchase nearby sawmills and timberland ahead of his competitors to the south. It seemed an obvious solution. He simply could not afford to lose timberland—the very lifeblood of his accelerating trade.

Finally, she stepped over to the table briefly, opened the purse and looked in, then after a little start returned to the doorway, looked out, and finally turned toward him.

“One hundred and twelve pounds,” he said.

“One day, I don't remember when, it became clear to me that I won't see him, Jared, again,” she said. “I was sure of his death. Like someone diverting water from a mill. The wheel simply stopped. There would be no more water. And that was that.”

Browne walked back to his chair, leaning on it rather than sitting. He watched her as she rubbed her chin with a finger and turned back to look out the doorway. If Higgins were only dead, he thought, it would all be much more simple. He would have no journey before him. Cole might simply dispose of the Fletcher brothers according to their sentence. He would be able to return to his trade. And why might they not then become more than neighbors? He wanted to protect her from further torment. Her life had been plain, even humble. But she had none of that coarseness he had found so often in those of her station. Yes, she was without learning. But she was quick, and capable of learning, and she was wise in womanly craft. And
she was so alive with her fair skin and hair, the very abundant hair he had once seen for himself and which even now strayed from her cap as if nothing were equal to containing it. What, come to think of it, had he before him as things now stood? Years of living and laboring in the wilderness alone?

She turned to look at him, still silent. And suddenly he saw himself a fool, a fool and a liar. Who was this Jared Higgins to him that he should keep his oath of secrecy now? He would have to tell her eventually. Yes, he would tell her when he got back, whatever he found. And that would be the end of it. He would be completely his own again, without ties or interests other than his own. There would be no more oaths sworn to.

She came over to him now and began to speak about the legacy. She stood close and he caught a scent of her and felt the rough tongue of desire lick his loins. He felt his own throat swell and ache pleasurably, and he had to turn away from her that he might not be discovered with the beast whimpering and mocking at his feet.

He felt a certain terror that he was about to express his feelings to her, which feelings he told himself were the result merely of physical deprivation. He would have to count in years the time since he had felt the touch of a woman who loved him. He would count in many months the time since he had felt the touch of any woman at all. He told himself that he was feeling only the
contre-coup
of celibacy—those assertions of the baser mechanisms. It was all at its most simple level hydraulic, pressure and release, he told himself.

“It will be a shame to have you away so long,” she was saying now. “We shall miss you, Mr. Browne, our neighbor who never stays.”

“This shall be my last absence for some time, I believe,” he said. “I must tread other paths very soon. Whatever I discover this time out.”

“You'll not find him, Mr. Browne. He is dead. Or as far removed as one dead. I know that now; I have felt it.”

The beast had departed. “I'm not so certain.”

“He is dead to me,” she said. “But God go with you, Richard Browne.”