He discovered that Charity’s ability to read was remarkable, though what she had read was naturally limited—the Bible from cover to cover, Pilgrim’s Progress, several essays and two of Shakespeare’s plays. Encouraged by a schoolmaster who must have been an able and dedicated man, she had read and reread everything permitted to her. Her quite respectable vocabulary was gleaned from these sources and may have equaled Peter’s own in size. In addition she possessed an uncanny word sense which helped her greatly in understanding Peter’s jargon.
She learned the taste of bananas and frankfurters, chocolate ice cream and Coke, and displayed such an addiction to these delicacies that Peter rapidly put on some of the pounds he had lost. One day she asked him what he looked like.
“Well, I told you I am sixteen, and I’m sort of thin.”
“Does thee possess a mirror?” she asked.
“Yes, of course.”
At her urging and with some embarrassment he went and stood before a mirrored door in his mother’s bedroom.
“Marry,” she said after a dubious pause, “I doubt not thee is comely. But folk have changed.”
“Now let me look at you,” he demanded.
“Nay, we have no mirror.”
“Then go and look in the brook. There’s a quiet spot below the rock where the water is dark.”
He was delighted with her appearance, having remembered Hogarth’s unkind representations of a not much later period and being prepared for disappointment. She was in fact very much prettier by Peter’s standards than by those of her own time, which favored plumpness and smaller mouths. He told her she was a beauty, and her tentative fondness for him turned instantly to adulation.
Previously Peter had had fleeting glimpses of her slim, smoothly muscled body, as she had bathed or dressed. Now, having seen each other face to face they were overcome by embarrassment and both of them, when not fully clothed, stared resolutely into the corners of the room.
For a time Charity believed that Peter was a dreadful liar. The sight and sound of planes in the sky were not enough to convince her of the fact of flying, so he persuaded his father to take him along on a business flight to Washington. After she had recovered from the marvels of airplane travel, he took her on a walking tour of the Capitol. Now she would believe anything, even that the American Revolution had been a success. They joined his father for lunch at an elegant French restaurant and she experienced, vicariously, the pleasures of half of a half bottle of white wine and a chocolate eclair. Charity was by way of getting spoiled.
Fully recovered and with school only a week away, Peter decided to brush up his tennis. When reading or doing nothing in particular, he was always dimly aware of Charity and her immediate surroundings, and by sharpening his attention he could bring her clearly to the forefront of his mind. Tennis displaced her completely and for an hour or two each day he was unaware of her doings.
Had he been a few years older and a little more knowledgeable and realistic about the world, he might have guessed the peril into which he was leading her. Fictional villainy abounded, of course, and many items in the news didn’t bear thinking about, but by his own firsthand experience, people were well intentioned and kindly, and for the most part they reacted to events with reasonable intelligence. It was what he expected instinctively.
A first hint of possible consequences reached him as he walked home from one of his tennis sessions.
“Ursula Miller said an ill thing to me today.”
“Oh?” His answer was abstracted since, in all truth, he was beginning to run out of interest in the village gossip which was all the news she had to offer.
“Yesterday she said it was an untruth about the thirteen states. Today she avowed that I was devil ridden. And Ursula has been my best friend.”
“I warned you that people wouldn’t believe you and you might get yourself laughed at,” he said. Then suddenly he caught up in his thinking. “Good Lord—Salem.”
“Please, Peter, thee must stop taking thy Maker’s name.”
“I’ll try to remember. Listen, Charity, how many people have you been talking to about our—about what’s been happening?”
“As I have said. At first to Father and Aunt Beulah.
They did believe I was still addled from the fever.”
“And to Ursula.”
“Aye, but she vowed to keep it secret.”
“Do you believe she will, now that she’s started name calling?”
A lengthy pause.
“I fear she may have told the lad who keeps her company.”
“I should have warned you. Damn it, I should have laid it on the line.”
“Peter!”
“Sorry. Charity, not another word to anybody. Tell Ursula you’ve been fooling—telling stories to amuse her.”
“ ’Twould not be right.”
“So what. Charity, don’t be scared, but listen. People might get to thinking you’re a witch.”
“Oh, they couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because I am not one. Witches are—oh, no, Peter.”
He could sense her growing alarm.
“Go tell Ursula it was a pack of lies. Do it now.”
“I must milk the cow.”
“Do it now.”
“Nay, the cow must be milked.”
“Then milk her faster than she’s ever been milked before.”
On the Sabbath, three little boys threw stones at Charity as she and her father left the church. Obadiah Payne caught one of them and caned him, and then would have had to fight the lad’s father save that the pastor intervened.
It was on the Wednesday that calamity befell. Two tight-lipped men approached Obadiah in the fields.
“Squire wants to see thy daughter Charity.”
“Squire?”
“Aye. Squire Hacker. He would talk with her at once.”
“Squire can talk to me if so be he would have her reprimanded. What has she been up to?”
“Witchcraft, that’s what,” said the second man, sounding as if he were savoring the dread news. “Croft’s old ewe delivered a monstrous lamb. Pointy pinched-up face and an extra eye.” He crossed himself.
“Great God!”
“ ’Twill do ye no good to blaspheme, Obadiah. She’s to come with us now.”
“I’ll not have it. Charity’s no witch, as ye well know, and I’ll not have her converse with Squire. Ye mind the Squire’s lecherous ways.”
“That’s not here nor there. Witchcraft is afoot again and all are saying ’tis your Charity at bottom of it.”
“She shall not go.”
First one, then the other displayed the stout truncheons they had held concealed behind their backs.
“ ’Twas of our own good will we told thee first. Come now and instruct thy daughter to go with us featly. Else take a clout on the head and sleep tonight in the gaol house.”
They left Obie Payne gripping a broken wrist and staring in numbed bewilderment from his door stoop, and escorted Charity, not touching her, walking at a cautious distance to either side, to Squire Hacker’s big house on the hill. In the village proper, little groups of people watched from doorways and, though some had always been her good friends, none had the courage now to speak a word of comfort.
Peter went with her each reluctant step of the way, counting himself responsible for her plight and helpless to do the least thing about it. He sat alone in the living room of his home, eyes closed to sharpen his reading of her surroundings. She offered no response to his whispered reassurances and perhaps did not hear them.
At the door her guards halted and stood aside, leaving her face to face with the grim-visaged squire. He moved backward step by step, and she followed him, as if hypnotized, into the shadowed room.
The squire lowered himself into a high-backed chair.
“Look at me.”
Unwillingly she raised her head and stared into his face.
Squire Hacker was a man of mediu
m height, very broad in the shoulder and heavily muscled. His face was disfigured by deep pock marks and the scar of a knife cut across the jaw, souvenirs of his earlier years in the Carib Islands. From the Islands he had also brought some wealth which he had since increased manyfold by the buying of land, share cropping and money lending.
“Charity Payne,” he said sternly, “take off thy frock.”
“No. No, please.”
“I command it. Take off thy garments for I must search thee for witch marks.”
He leaned forward, seized her arm and pulled her to him. “If thee would avoid public trial and condemnation, thee will do as I say,” His hands began to explore her body.
Even by the standards of the time, Charity regularly spent extraordinary hours at hard physical labor and she possessed a strength which would have done credit to many young men. Squire Hacker should have been more cautious.
“Nay,” she shouted and drawing back her arm, hit him in the nose with all the force she could muster. He released her with a roar of rage, then, while he was mopping away blood and tears with the sleeve of his ruffled shirt and shouting imprecations, she turned and shot out the door. The guards, converging, nearly grabbed her as she passed but, once she was away, they stood no chance of catching her and for a wonder none of the villagers took up the chase.
She was well on the way home and covering the empty road at a fast trot before Peter was able to gain her attention.
“Charity,” he said, “Charity, you mustn’t go home. If that s.o.b. of a squire has any influence with the court, you just fixed yourself.”
She was beginning to think again and could even translate Peter’s strange language.
“Influence!” she said. “Marry, he is the court. He is the judge.”
“Ouch!”
“I wot well I must not be found at home. I am trying to think where to hide. I might have had trial by water. Now they will burn me for a surety. I do remember what folk said about the last witch trials.”
“Could you make your way to Boston and then maybe to New York—New Amsterdam?”
“Leave my home forever! Nay. And I would not dare the trip.”
“Then take to the woods. Where can you go?”
“Take to—? Oh. To the cave, mayhap.”
“Don’t too many people know about it?”
“Aye. But there is another across the brook and beyond Tom Carter’s freehold. I do believe none know of it but me. ’Tis very small. We must ford the brook just yonder, then walk that fallen tree. There is a trail which at sundown will be tromped by a herd of deer.”
“You’re thinking about dogs?”
“Aye, on the morrow. There is no good pack in Annes Towne.”
“You live in a savage age, Charity.”
“Aye,” she said wryly. “ ’Tis fortunate we have not invented the bomb.”
“Damn it,” Peter said, “I wish we’d never met. I wish I hadn’t taken you on that plane trip. I wish I’d warned you to keep quiet about it.”
“Ye could not guess I would be so foolish.”
“What can you do out here without food?”
“I’d liefer starve than be in the stocks, but there is food to be had in the forest, some sorts of roots and toadstools and autumn berries. I shall hide myself for three days, I thinks, then seek out my father by night and do as he tells me.”
When she was safely hidden in the cave, which was small indeed but well concealed by a thicket of young sassafras, she said:
“Now we can think. First, I would have an answer from thy superior wisdom. Can one be truly a witch and have no knowledge of it?”
“Don’t be foolish. There’s no such thing as a witch.”
“Ah well, ’tis a matter for debate by scholars. I do feel in my heart that I am not a witch, if there be such creatures. That book, Peter, of which ye told me, which recounts the history of these colonies.”
“Yes?”
“Will ye look in it and learn if I came to trial and what befell me?”
“There’d be nothing about it. It’s just a small book. But—”
To his parents’ puzzlement, Peter spent the following morning at the Boston Public Library. In the afternoon he shifted his operations to the Historical Society. He found at last a listing of the names of women known to have been tried for witchcraft between the years 1692 and 1697. Thereafter he could locate only an occasional individual name. There was no record of any Charity Payne in 1700 or later.
He started again when the reading room opened next day, interrupting the task only momentarily for brief exchanges with Charity. His lack of success was cheering to her, for she overestimated the completeness of the records.
At close to noon he was scanning the pages of a photostated doctoral thesis when his eye caught a familiar name.
“Jonas Hacker,” it read. “Born Liverpool, England, date uncertain, perhaps 1659, was the principal figure in a curious action of law which has not become a recognized legal precedent in English courts.
“Squire Hacker, a resident of Annes Towne (cf. Anniston), was tried and convicted of willful murder and larceny. The trial was posthumous, several months after his decease from natural causes in 1704. The sentence pronounced was death by hanging which, since it could not be imposed, was commuted to forfeiture of his considerable estate. His land and other possessions reverted to the Crown and were henceforward administered by the Governor of Bay Colony.
“While the motivation and procedure of the court may have been open to question, evidence of Hacker’s guilt was clear cut. The details are these. ...”
“Hey, Charity,” Peter rumbled in his throat.
“Aye?”
“Look at this page. Let me flatten-it out.”
“Read it please, Peter. Is it bad news?”
“No. Good, I think.” He read the paragraphs on Jonas Hacker.
“Oh, Peter, can it be true?”
“It has to be. Can you remember any details?”
“Marry, I remember well when they disappeared, the ship’s captain and a common sailor. They were said to have a great sack of gold for some matter of business with Squire. But it could not be, for they never reached his house.”
“That’s what Hacker said, but the evidence showed that they got there—got there and never got away. Now here’s what you must do. Late tonight, go home.”
“I would fain do so, for I am terrible athirst.”
“No, wait, What’s your parson’s name?”
“John Hix.”
“Can you reach his house tonight without being seen?”
“Aye. It backs on a glen.”
“Go there. He can protect you better than your father can until your trial.”
“Must I be tried?”
“Of course. We want to clear your name. Now let’s do some planning.”
The town hall could seat no more than a score of people, and the day was fair; so it was decided that the trial should be held on the common, in discomforting proximity to the stocks.
Visitors came from as far as twenty miles away, afoot or in carts, and nearly filled the common itself. Squire Hacker’s own armchair was the only seat provided. Others stood or sat on the patchy grass.
The squire came out of the inn presently, fortified with rum, and took his place. He wore a brocaded coat and a wide-rimmed hat and would have been more impressive if it had not been for his still swollen nose, now permanently askew.
A way was made through the crowd then, and Charity, flanked on one side by John Hix, on the other by his tall son, walked to the place where she was to stand. Voices were suddenly stilled. Squire Hacker did not condescend to look directly at the prisoner, but fixed a cold stare on the minister; a warning that his protection of the girl would not be forgiven. He cleared his throat.
“Charity Payne, is thee willing to swear upon the Book?”
“Aye.”
“No mind. We may forgo the swearing. All can see that ye are fearful.”
> “Nay,” John Hix interrupted. “She shall have the opportunity to swear to her word. ’Twould not be legal otherwise.” He extended a Bible to Charity, who placed her fingers on it and said, “I do swear to speak naught but the truth.”
Squire Hacker glowered and lost no time coming to the attack. “Charity Payne, do ye deny being a witch?”
“I do.”
“Ye do be one?”
“Nay, I do deny it.”
“Speak what ye mean. What have ye to say of the monstrous lamb born of Master Croft’s ewe?”
“I know naught of it.”
“Was’t the work of Satan?”
“I know not.”
“Was’t then the work of God?”
“I know not.”
“Thee holds then that He might create such a monster?”
“I know naught about it.”
“In thy own behalf will thee deny saying that this colony and its neighbors will in due course make war against our King?”
“Nay, I do not deny that.”
There was a stir in the crowd and some angry muttering.
“Did ye tell Mistress Ursula Miller that ye had flown a great journey through the air?”
“Nay.”
“Mistress Ursula will confound thee in that lie.”
“I did tell Ursula that someday folk would travel in that wise. I did tell her that I had seen such travel through eyes other than my own.”
Squire Hacker leaned forward. He could not have hoped for a more damning statement. John Hix’ head bowed in prayer.
“Continue.”
“Aye. I am blessed with a sort of second sight.”
“Blessed or cursed?”
“God permits it. It cannot be accursed.”
“Continue. What evil things do ye see by this second sight?”
Young Witches & Warlocks Page 13