Devil's Mistress

by Heather Graham

  Hathorne conducted the investigation. And he was a fierce questioner. But Sarah Good had something of a swagger about her; she denied all charges with a vigor that pleased Brianna, since Brianna was quite positive that while the old crone had her share of sins, she was not a witch.

  Yet it seemed the “witches” were determined to damn themselves. When asked who did torment the children if it was not she, Sarah Good pointed her finger at her fellow prisoner. “Goody Osbourne doth afflict the children!” she cried—and it was then time for Sarah Osbourne to face Hathorne.

  Sarah Osbourne claimed that she had not been to church because she had been ill. “It is more likely I would be bewitched, than be a witch!” she cried, and went on to say that a black man, possibly an Indian, had visited her in her dreams, viciously pulling her hair and pinching her neck. She denied acquaintance with the devil.

  Tituba came to the stand. The old heavyset dark Carib’s eyes rolled—with fear, Brianna was certain. The room seemed suddenly to go insane, the girls shrieked and screamed and convulsed with such vigor.

  Tituba decided to “confess.”

  She talked of a tall man who carried a book; she said that there had been many witches’ sabbaths, and that the tall man brought her there through the air. Her tale was such a good one, told with such a mystique—with such conviction of a frightened, cornered mind—that the room sat quiet and spellbound. And by the time the session was ended for the day, Brianna knew that the village was in trouble indeed. Everyone knew that it took twelve to have a “coven.” Where, then, were the rest of the witches?

  Outside the meetinghouse the March wind was chill and it seemed to howl about the building. Hushed voices offered greetings to her, but when Brianna did not respond, Robert pinched her hard.

  “We will go to Ingersoll’s for a drink with the others,” Robert told her, and that was when she rebelled.

  “No!” In the middle of the street she wrenched herself from his grasp. There were others about, so she kept her voice low, but she could not go into the tavern room and listen to more accusations.

  “Brianna! Do as I say!”

  She couldn’t help but defy him. She turned, and pressing Michael close to her heart, she ran down the street. She did not know that they had been observed, nor did Robert.

  But the man who watched them from the window of Ingersoll’s tavern did so intently, and he missed nothing. Not the fear—or fury—in her eyes. Or the anger and command in Robert’s tone. Watching from the ordinary, Sloan knew, too, that Robert was very, very frightened—and miserable.

  “Only the wind has power, my friend,” Sloan whispered. “Only the earth and sea can move mountains.”

  He left by the rear, before Robert could enter from the front. Though he longed with a physical agony to go after the woman, he did not. He turned his horse southward, toward Boston.

  His flesh was hot, his heartbeat erratic. He had told himself he only wanted to see the boy—and he had done so. But when he had seen the child, nestled in his mother’s arms, he had felt his resolve crumble like dry leaves. The child was his—beyond doubt. He was very tall for his age, and sturdy. His hair was as dark as the night, but while his hair could be his mother’s, his eyes could not. They were a deep, dark green, with no hint of Brianna’s blue—or Robert’s deep-set brown. They were large eyes, heavily fringed with lashes.

  Damn! Sloan thought, pounding a fist against the pommel of his saddle. How he had yearned to run to her and snatch the boy from her arms. He had never experienced such emotions as now tore through him …

  He frowned then, trying to turn his thoughts from the longing he could not appease. Robert Powell had certainly had good reason to be concerned.

  Sloan himself was quite certain that the place had gone mad. It wasn’t as frightening yet as the European witchhunt. People were not being snatched off the streets to be dragged to nooses or set to the flames, but it was a bad situation nevertheless. So far, it appeared that the Puritan fathers were doing nothing more than conducting examinations. But Sloan had read some of the Puritan literature. He knew the magistrates had carefully been studying such works as Burton’s Kingdom of Darkness and Baxter’s Certainty of the World of Spirits. To judge from the gossip in the tavern, these people believed that the Carib slave Tituba had gone to black sabbaths through the air by the vehicle of a broomstick. He had heard by loud discussion that they had determined that such measures as “swimming” a witch were archaic and unchristian—but that they had resolved that the “witch’s teat” would be considered evidence, and the devil could not take the form of an innocent person to do harm.

  It was not going to be a good place for Brianna. Even if none of her neighbors knew of her past history, it seemed unlikely that she would hold her tongue.

  Was there anything that he could do? he wondered in frustration. In Glasgow he had readily kidnapped her and never regretted the decision, but this was different. She was married now to a man that Sloan could not despise. If Robert Powell beat his wife, if he were cruel, such action could be justified.

  But under the present circumstances it could not. Even if Sloan could forget the man entirely, Brianna would never come to him. He knew that as surely as he felt that he still knew her. No passage of time could change that.

  He sighed deeply. He would have to play for time, and hover in the background. He would be there if she needed him. And, he thought bitterly, this time there would be no payments. No services bought or rendered. He would just be there—because he could not leave.

  Suddenly as he rode, he was angry. As angry with her as he had ever been. She should have come to him already. Surely she was aware that he was in Salem. If she’d ever cared at all for him, she should have known how very badly he wanted to see his child, and she should have offered him the joy of holding the boy, if nothing else.

  Damn her—damn her, a thousand times over! He groaned aloud and his body shook. How could she have left him? How could she have married?

  Because he’d had a wife. The answer was so simple, and yet so bitter. And all the more ironic because he knew what it was like to love one woman—and owe his name and protection to another.

  In her simple woolen garb she was more beautiful than ever. She had matured in the more than two years that had passed. Her face had sharpened, but beautifully so. Her figure was fuller, yet she still moved as though sailing from place to place. She seemed quieter, perhaps wiser—but still her eyes could snap with blue fire, and she would fight heaven and hell to have her way.

  He fed on his anger. It was good, if only because it helped to assuage the pain of knowing he could not touch her. She owed him—she owed him the courtesy of seeing his child. If he had only known …

  He never would have left her, Alwyn or no; Robert Powell or no. Neither the devil nor God himself could have convinced him to leave her—not even when she had begged him herself.

  He laughed aloud suddenly, and spoke to the wet and frigid March air. “She is a witch, friends! The kind to beguile a man beyond reason, to taunt and torment him to the end of his days, no matter where he goes, or what he does!”

  His horse pricked up its ears and Sloan laughed again, dryly, as he patted its neck. “Sorry, old boy. Ah, perhaps it is best that she does not come near me. I would want to beat her senseless for keeping him away from me. For leaving me …”

  He sighed deeply. He was a fool. He was going to stay around here—torturing himself—while his crew spent all their profit in Boston. Letting his anger and desire simmer and brew until it was a powderkeg just waiting for a spark. He was going to stay and hope that she’d come to him—before he went mad and burst into her sanctified little Puritan household.

  Brianna was baking bread again when Robert returned to the house. From the way she pounded into the dough, Robert knew that she longed to pound into the magistrates—probably Hathorne.

  “Well,” she demanded tartly, “what did you learn in the ordinary?”

  Robert ign
ored her and went to Michael, who was sitting on the floor playing with pewter tins. “Want to come for a walk with Papa, Michael? A thaw seems to be truly setting in, and we’ll start plowing up the fields soon. Perhaps your Mama has a carrot or two we might spare for the mules.”

  Michael happily lifted his arms to Robert. Brianna glanced up and bit her lip, then quickly looked back to her work. Michael was getting too heavy for Robert to hold. And Robert did not look well. She believed that the things going on were disturbing him perhaps even more than her.

  Robert walked by Brianna. “You will see; things will return to normal. Seems we have found our scapegoats,” he said bitterly. “After Tituba’s story the other two would do best to admit their guilt—so that our good people can start saving their souls—and let them live out their mortal lives!”

  “A confession will save them?” Brianna demanded.

  “Aye—from the rumor that I hear.”

  She smacked the bread soundly. Maybe there would be justice here—if it was true. She knew these people, and the truly pious would rather die than “belie” themselves, for they believed that God would eternally damn them for a lie. Yet she did not want to trust Robert’s words, because it was quite customary anywhere to execute a confessed witch.

  He touched her hair then, and bent to kiss her forehead. “I do not think that we have anything to fear.” He smiled wanly. “Ingersoll’s was most interesting. John Proctor was there, quite disgusted. ‘Come to fetch his jade,’ he said. Mary Warren is his servant, you know. Her fits did cease, he said, when he thrashed her. He is a man of good standing in the community and he is sick of the nonsense. ‘Spectral evidence!’ he snorted to me. And old George Jacobs calls the girls ‘bitch witches.’ It will end, Brianna.” He turned away from her, cradling Michael’s little face close to his shoulder. “Brianna, do not run from me again. I cannot help but be afraid. None know of you but Eleanor, and she would never harm you. But if someone did hear something, they could so easily accuse you!”

  Brianna swallowed miserably. “I’m sorry, Robert.”

  “I know how you feel,” he murmured. “Well, young Michael, we shall go for our walk. Where has Mama put your coat?”

  “I’ll get it!” Michael cried happily, shinnying from Robert’s arms. He took his coat from the deacon’s pew, and Robert helped him into it. Then Robert rose and his dark-brown gaze caught hers again, opaque and troubled.

  “There was other talk at the ordinary,” he told her, pausing a second. “Lord Treveryan was there right before I came.”

  “Oh?” The single word caught in her throat. She tried to keep her eyes level with Robert’s; they refused to stay so.

  “He sailed in a week ago.”

  “I had heard.”

  “Had you?” Robert seemed surprised. “Why do you suppose that he has come?”

  She shrugged, feeling half blinded as she started to pound into the dough again, trying to reply blithely. “He is a sailor. He captains his own ship. Such men must sail the seas, or so I suppose.”

  She waited for Robert’s answer. It was slow in coming.

  “We will talk later, when Michael sleeps.”

  Brianna nodded and Robert and Michael went out.

  The rabbit she cooked that night was tough and stringy, and improperly seasoned. Her bread burned. When she attempted to set the table, she dropped the forks and knives.

  Each time she felt her husband’s eyes upon her, she wanted so badly to be able to pretend with assurance and bravado that Sloan’s being near meant nothing to her at all.

  And yet when Michael was at last in bed asleep, Robert’s stand regarding the situation was not what she had expected at all.

  “One of us must bring Michael to see him,” Robert told her. Again he stood at the mantel gravely surveying her.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Brianna,” he said very softly, “the child is his, and he will know it when he sees Michael, if he does not suspect so now.”

  “How can you say that?” Brianna cried, rising from her chair. “Who is to say that he knows we are here or even that there is a child at all?”

  “He knows,” Robert said. Then he sighed. “His presence here does not make me happy, yet it cannot be denied. He is no fool, we both know that.”

  “No, Robert! I do not want him to see him! Michael is our son. There is no reason—”

  “There is every reason. By the law Michael is mine. But by blood he is Treveryan’s. We must trust him—”

  “Trust Sloan Treveryan!”

  Robert paused, shocked by her outburst. Each word he uttered cost him dearly, and yet he knew that he was right.

  “He does not deserve that. He saved your life not once but twice, and for that I am eternally grateful. When he came for you in England, he could have taken you. You told him that you wanted to be with us—and he respected your desires, rather than his own. There is no reason to believe he would harm you now in any way. But for all that he did for you, he deserves to be shown his son.”

  Brianna stood, shaking her head, her mouth going dry. “Robert,” she said at last, and the sound took great effort, “he cannot care. Our lives have gone separate ways.”

  “If you choose not to see him, then I will do so.”

  “No! If we leave it alone, he will sail away again!”

  He smiled at her. “Are you afraid to see him?”

  “No! I—I don’t know. Please, Robert, our life is set. We have done well here. I—”

  “Let’s go to bed, shall we? It has been a very long day, full of tumult, and I am very tired.”

  She lowered her eyes and swallowed fiercely at the lump that rose from her heart to her throat. She nodded.

  Hours later she still lay awake. She did not want to see Sloan. She was afraid of him. Not that he would harm her but he might destroy all the resolutions, all the contentment she had at last learned. While awake, she became aware of the sounds around her. The wind tore around the whitewashed frame of their home, howling and moaning, rising and falling.

  She frowned, and twisted in the bed. Robert was sleeping, but was tossing about. She lowered her head to his chest but quickly withdrew with dismay, for it was not just the wind that she heard. His wheeze was terrible and he was gasping with each breath he drew.

  She was worried, and wondered whether to wake him or let him sleep. She gnawed upon her lip with concern, then pulled her own pillow from beneath her and carefully lifted his head to set it higher. He mumbled something, and turned again. His forehead felt feverish, and so she climbed out of bed and hurried to the water basin, squeezing out a cloth to set upon his forehead. She did not go back to bed that night, and did not sleep.

  In the morning she dressed with the first coming of light, bundled Michael into warm clothing, and went out to find the doctor.

  Dr. Griggs came back with her and shut her out of the room while he examined Robert. He came out to the kitchen looking grim.

  “A fever it is, not uncommon with this winter we’ve endured.”

  “But what can we do? He cannot go on wheezing like that!”

  Dr. Griggs sighed—and Brianna remembered that this was the same man who had diagnosed “witchcraft” as the cause of the girls’ illnesses.

  “For a stronger man it would not be so serious. For Robert you must take great care. I’ve a physic to prescribe for him, and keep him still and in bed and never flat—he must be raised upward as he is now. He needs complete rest.”

  “Yes, yes. I will see that he gets it,” she said.

  Griggs wrote out his prescription and left her—anxious to return to the meetinghouse where the magistrates planned to continue their examination of Tituba. That morning Brianna could not be worried about the proceedings. She was too concerned about Robert.

  The days passed slowly and torturously for her. There was Michael to tend to, and now Robert. With Robert in bed all the tasks on their small farm fell to her. The land needed to be readied for the spring p
lanting, and fretting about that made Robert wheeze worse. Brianna had to be a cheerful whirl of energy, convincing him that she wasn’t burdened at all.

  Eleanor came by on the seventh of March to tell her that the examinations seemed to be over, the “witches” had been sent to jail in Boston to await their trials, and with any luck it would all end.

  Brianna breathed a sigh of relief and went back to the task of single-handedly coping with things. She wasn’t sleeping well, for she heard the labored sound of Robert’s breathing all through the night. And when she dozed, she was horrified to discover that she had dreamed of Sloan, and she was almost gladder to live with exhaustion than to endure such dreams.

  The witchcraft tumult had died down; Sloan would sail away, and all would be well.

  Toward the end of March, Robert began to show improvement. When Sunday morning dawned on the twentieth of March, he smiled at her, then gravely suggested that she take Michael and attend church services.

  “I don’t feel right about leaving you alone,” she told him, so glad that he was smiling. But he had lost even more weight, and his cheeks were terribly hollow. His eyes seemed enormous.

  “I want you to go. You haven’t been out at all—and for the both of us, I want you to be there.”

  She promised that she would go to the afternoon meeting.

  Brianna arrived a little late and rushed into a full meetinghouse to find her place upon the bench. Deodat Lawson, from Boston, was at the pulpit. Brianna noticed that the people seemed uneasy, and she wondered what might have occurred during the morning to cause such a thing. But she didn’t think about it long, for she was glad to be at the meeting; never had she felt the need for prayer so deeply in her life.

  She needed to pray that she stop dreaming of Sloan, imagining herself in his arms again.