Within a week, she was equally grateful to accept Increase Woodstock’s offer of marriage. She was certain that she was pregnant. Her child would need a name, and should be born in wedlock. If the baby were a daughter, Moll dreamed that she would grow up and become a duchess; if a son, that he would grow up to wed one.
In the meantime, Moll would have to make do with a cobbler.
Increase was trusting by nature. He had never known a woman and, when Moll had cried out on their wedding night, he honestly believed that he had pierced her maidenhead. He was good to Moll and he worked hard. His health was fragile, though, which was why he had remained in England when his older brother Jason and his sister Temperance’s family had gone to the Massachusetts Colony some years before.
The man was overjoyed when Moll offered him her small store of wealth. With it, he moved them back into London and into a new cobbler’s shop that had living quarters above it. By that time, Moll had learned that her “fortune” was small indeed by London standards, and she congratulated herself on having had the foresight to marry such an indulgent, hardworking husband. In her way, she loved Increase, and she was ever faithful to him.
Moll, now a “lady” by her own lights, was determined never to serve a flagon of anything outside her own house or empty anyone else’s chamber pot again. She worked with driving energy to keep their house spotless and comfortable. Increase was an avid reader of the Word of God from a well-thumbed Bible. At her insistence, he taught Moll to read and write.
It was to change her life.
When Moll went into labor “prematurely” and gave birth to a lovely daughter, whom they named Charity, Increase was immensely proud. He never doubted that Charity was his own daughter. Cheerfully, he set about trying to keep up with the few demands his small family made on him.
Happy though he was, his health did not improve. In fact, marriage to a lusty young woman who made constant demands on his failing strength, and long hours at his trade, caused him to grow quite frail. He began to cough more often and was a partial invalid before little Charity could toddle about on her own.
Three years later, Increase died of consumption aggravated by the climate, leaving a tiny shop with living quarters, some cobbler’s tools, a handful of coins, a scheming wife, and a daughter who had inherited her real father’s brilliant topaz eyes and her mother’s thick shimmering hair—although it was pale gold instead of red.
When Moll’s own robust health began to fail, she started thinking uneasily about her daughter’s future. She sold the shop and the cobbler’s tools, forgot she’d ever been wed to a Puritan, left London attired in a rose-pink mock-velvet dress, and bought a tiny house in Torquay on Devon’s lovely south coast. Her health would improve in the sea air, she told herself, and once she got her strength back, she’d see about Charity’s future.
But her health continued to be poor, and somehow she’d lost her taste for men and good times. She stayed at home, trying to survive in genteel poverty. Their small house was set into the tiers of houses that climbed up the waterside streets, almost overwhelmed by a subtropical profusion of flowers, with gay mimosas and fuchias and flowering palms.
There in those narrow streets, her glowing blonde hair blown about by the sea wind, little Charity had scampered, playing with a favorite kitten, delighting her mother. But as she grew older and the lads began to cast admiring glances at the ripening figure of this slender beauty, her mother had jealously kept her away from fairs and public gatherings. Moll frowned away any local lads who might have shown interest, fearing her pretty daughter would marry “down,” as she put it—blithely ignoring the fact that she herself had started life as a chambermaid and would end it as a cobbler’s near-impoverished widow.
But everything changed by chance one day when Moll, who never lacked for courage, heard a scream on the way to market and saw, hurtling down the hill toward her, a runaway team (whose driver, she later learned, had pitched off senseless from a heart attack). Leaning out of the driverless carriage, was its sole occupant, a white-faced, velvet-clad woman clutching a plumed hat.
Moll dropped her market basket and sprang into the street. She managed to seize the reins—to the accompaniment of a wild scream from the carriage—and brought the horses to a gradual halt.
Moll herself had collapsed in a coughing fit when the lady in velvet made her shaky exit from the carriage and reached for her smelling salts.
“Are you all right, chérie?” inquired the woman solicitously, as others sorted out the nervous horses, the injured driver. “Perhaps we could find somewhere a glass of wine?”
In this way, Moll made the acquaintance of Countess Stéphanie de la Croix, an impoverished French aristocrat. The countess confided, over that glass of wine, which was served in Moll’s small spotless sitting room, that she had recently left Paris to live in Bath. Through her wealthy connections, she supported herself by teaching French and deportment and other useful things to four orphaned girls whose guardians wished to be rid of them for long periods of time.
Moll thoughtfully considered the fashion plate in her living room, noting with interest the countess’s long-waisted gown with its low décolletage, its sleeves full to the elbow opening widely with a fall of lace, and its voluminous lavender velvet skirt. She was delighted when Charity came flying in the door, the sun behind her turning her fair hair to sunlight itself, and the countess drew in her breath and said, “Mon Dieu, what a lovely child!”
Moll bridled proudly, asserting that she expected Charity to grow into a great beauty, with which Stéphanie instantly agreed.
Stéphanie, her gaze still following Moll’s unexpectedly gorgeous daughter in some amazement, thanked Moll effusively for saving her life. She insisted on taking them to dinner at the inn where she was staying. Over a tasty joint of mutton, she poured out the story of her various pupils’ problems with their guardians, to Moll’s utter fascination. Finally, Stéphanie asked again how she could repay Moll for stopping the carriage.
Moll saw her opportunity. She took a deep breath—which almost set her coughing again—and asked whether her own daughter could hope to become one of Stéphanie’s charges?
Astonished, Stéphanie set down her glass, opened her mouth to say, indeed, no, remembered that but for the woman before her she might have been thrown to the street, her beauty marred forever, and hesitated. After giving the matter a moment’s thought, she replied regretfully that the girl’s background would have to be cloaked, she must have a fine wardrobe and arrive in a coach.
“But had I the means for that,” pursued Moll, “you would accept my daughter and teach her to be a fine lady?”
“Why, then,” said Stéphanie, her voice ringing with the recklessness that had brought her into her present straitened circumstances, “I would gladly accept her and teach her all I could of gentility.”
That night Moll sat down and wrote a letter to America.
BOOK I
Massachusetts 1686
CHAPTER 1
The girl who stood in the dock waiting to be sentenced was barely nineteen years old. She was not dressed in the usual Puritan manner, but wore instead a torn and dirty dress of dark red cambric (the same dress she had been wearing when the authorities had seized her a week ago). Its skirt was full. Its long tight bodice seemed to the eyes of the men in the courtroom, as they feasted on the sight, barely to hold in bounds her firm young breasts, now rising and falling with emotion. Her face, however, was remarkably impassive, considering the fact that she was on trial for her life. She stood with her feet planted firmly on the floor planks, her head held high, her thick pale gold curls a shimmering tumbled confusion (she had not been allowed a comb). Her brilliant topaz eyes, with their dusky dark gold lashes, were fixed on the magistrate who sat above her. She looked like an adventuress. She looked wild.
The magistrate frowned down upon her, taking in the dark red dress, the disheveled, enticing appearance of the girl.
“Charity Woodstock,”
he thundered, and the buzzing voices in the great room of the meeting house, now serving as a courtroom, fell silent. People in the sober garb of Puritans leaned forward tensely, waiting.
As he paused, the girl herself now cast a look about her. There sat her accusers, looking smug: her Aunt Temperance, her Cousin Patience, her Cousin Matthew. Now they would see! the girl thought. After that farce of a trial! Now she would be exonerated and the real culprits punished! Not for witchcraft, as she had been charged, but for rape and false witness! Her gaze passed balefully over her Cousin Matthew’s heavy face, and he shifted his feet and looked away uneasily. Charity gave her head a toss and turned back confidently to face the magistrate.
The magistrate had noticed this digression of attention on the part of the accused. His frown deepened.
“Charity Woodstock,” he began again, “you are found guilty of the crime of witchcraft and this Court hereby sentences you to be burned at the stake on Tuesday next at—”
Charity did not hear the rest. She paled but she did not flinch. She simply stared at the magistrate as if she could not believe she had heard him aright. Her knuckles, gripping the folds of her dirty skirt, whitened and for a moment she swayed. Then somebody in the crowd giggled and her back straightened. She turned and looked coldly around the courtroom as if she wished to remember all their faces. Composed, she turned and let the jailers lead her back toward the filthy jail from whence she had come.
The crowd followed her, goggling, irritated by the prisoner’s cold manner, her defiant gaze.
A little party of horsemen stopped to let them pass. They went streaming across the muddy road, the jailers and the girl and those gawkers who followed them.
The tallest horseman, the one whose hands were tied firmly with rope, one end of which was fastened to the saddle of the man beside him, watched the scene with interest.
“Witch!” cried a ginger-haired woman hoarsely and threw a clod of mud at Charity. It spattered on her already dirty red dress. Charity turned and gave her attacker a look of contemptuous disdain. Enraged by that look, the woman stepped closer. “Be ye gone daft?” she hissed. “Quick, confess ye’re a witch; admit ye lied when ye said yon poor boy raped ye!”
“I’ll not confess I’m a witch!” cried Charity. “Nor did I lie when I said he raped me!”
“Then ye’ll burn,” cackled the woman evilly. “And myself will light the faggots!”
The old woman had stepped too close. Suddenly Charity lunged forward and grasped a handful of ginger hair and tugged. Her jailer gave her arm a rough jerk, but not before the ginger wig came away in her hands and a balding head of sparse gray hair appeared. Her tormentor screeched and ran, while the crowd roared its laughter.
A young boy who had been with the gingerhaired woman leaped forward, livid, fists balled, and Charity swept him away with a backhand blow that stretched him out on the ground. Ugly now, the crowd gathered around, and the jailer, looking uneasy, gave the slender girl a hard cuff on the side of the head that jerked her head back and made her wince.
“That do be too gentle a blow,” bawled someone. “Cuff her ears again!”
Charity stiffened, expecting another blow, but none fell. Her jailer only muttered and gave her another jerk.
“I’d applaud you, m’lady,” called a light-hearted voice, “but as you can see, my hands are tied!”
Charity turned toward this first friendly voice and saw, astride a dark horse, a man with hair of sandy color that cascaded down from a sweeping hat with a broken plume. His audacious smile split a handsome gold mustache and a well-trimmed Van Dyke beard. He sat easily in the saddle with a natural grace that came of strength and well-being, and his pale gray velvet coat was stained with claret and perhaps with blood.
They had only a moment to consider one another before Charity was hurried on.
“Faith, she’s a beauty,” he muttered as the crowd straggled across the path. “What’s her crime?” he shouted after them.
“Witchcraft!” an excited young lad in buckled shoes turned to shout back. “She’ll burn on Tuesday next!”
“Will she now?” he murmured, and turned with a genial smile toward the big fellow whose saddle held the rope that bound him. “But they won’t be burning me along with her, I take it?”
The big fellow nudged his horse with his heel.
“Thou wilt hang,” he said expressionlessly. “Like all highwaymen.”
The highwayman, whose name was Thomas Blade and who was known in the trade as Lucky Tom, shrugged. “We’ll see,” he murmured. “We’ll see. Could be I’ll cheat the hangman yet.”
The big fellow snorted. “Not this time! This time we’ve got you dead to rights! You’ll swing, all right.”
They moved on, and ahead of them, Charity had already forgotten the highwayman in the nightmare of catcalls and thrown clods of earth that surrounded her. She heard a nasty laugh and a rip and felt the material of her bodice pull outwards. She closed her eyes and prayed they would not strip her here in the street, prayed she might reach the comparative safety of the jail fully clothed. Pelted and humiliated, she was jerked along, often stumbling in the mud of the street, sinking once to her knees only to be yanked up with a curse.
The fact that she was going to die didn’t really sink in until she was back in her dirt-floored cell and the jailers had left her. She had been too occupied with facing down the cruel crowd. But once she was alone, she looked at the dank slimy walls hopelessly. She was only nineteen, alone in a strange land and convicted of a crime she did not even understand. Witchcraft! To be burned as a witch. She imagined herself raised high on a pole so that all could mock her, imagined the wood piled in a heap below her as they set about making the fire burn, imagined the searing orange flames rise up around her as the black smoke blotted out the sky.
It could not be true. It was a nightmare. She was going to wake up!
As she sat with her head in her hands, seeing her young life slipping away from her, she heard the noise of feet, clanking keys, excited voices.
“Tis said they’ve caught the highwayman,” came an awed voice from a nearby cell. “They’ve caught Tom Blade at last!”
“He’ll swing for sure,” said another avid voice. “Think ye they’ll bring him by this way so we’ll get a look at him?”
“Nay, they be putting him next to that young witch,” sighed the first speaker.
Charity looked up to see men peering in at her as they opened the neighboring cell. She straightened at once and lifted her head. They wouldn’t see her cry!
After a lot of loud talk and coarse jokes and scuffling of feet the men left and a voice she remembered as the horseman’s said, “Is that you next door, little witch?”
“I’m not a witch,” snapped Charity, glaring at the wall between them.
He chuckled. “Spoken with spirit,” he approved. “What’s your name?”
Charity was silent.
“Come, come,” he wheedled. “You may as well talk to me. Remember you won’t have much of anything to say after next Tuesday.”
She grimaced. What he said was true.
“Charity Woodstock,” she said. “I’m from Devon.”
“Ah, I thought I knew the sound of that voice. A Fair Maid of Devon . . . How long have you been in America, Charity?”
“About a fortnight.”
He whistled. “A fine reception you’ve had then, being thrown in jail and branded a witch.”
“You’re in jail too,” she reminded him tartly.
“Ah, but for crimes I committed. There’s the difference.”
“How,” she asked curiously, “do you know I’m not a witch?”
He laughed. “Bewitching, yes—witch, no. I don’t believe in witches or ghouls or goblins, fair Charity.”
“What are your crimes?” she challenged.
“Like Robin Hood, I rob the rich and feed the poor,” he said in a bantering tone.
“And what will happen to you?” she asked.
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“They say I’ll hang,” he said in a bored voice.
“It’s better than burning,” she said morosely.
There was a little silence.
“Yes,” he said softly, “it’s better than burning. . . .”
And once again Charity seemed to see the flames rise, to feel the heat, to smell her own flesh burning.
“Perhaps,” he mused, “we’ll live to dance a jig on all their graves.”
It was too much, this note of unwarranted optimism. As his voice came around the wall and through the bars. Charity dropped her head on her hands and dry sobs wracked her body.
CHAPTER 2
Charity Woodstock had come a long way in the few months since she had left England bound for a new life in the Colonies. She had stood eagerly at the ship’s rail and felt the strong wind blowing over the Atlantic, making her cheeks pink and her eyes sparkle. The voyage had been planned at school, where word had come to her of her Uncle Jason’s death in America. A communication from a lawyer in Boston informed her that she was the sole recipient of her uncle’s estate, and that it would be in order for her to journey across the water to claim the property, which was considerable.
Just how considerable it was, he had not informed her, but her mother had said that it was Uncle Jason’s money that was keeping her in her fancy school.
Moll, her beautiful, tawny-haired mother, full of dreams. . . . Charity leaned pensively on the ship’s rail, her feet resting on the swaying deck, with its planking of Norway pine, and remembered her mother, dead these twelve months.
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