by Tanya Chris
“I’ll see if Abigail has finished mending your breeches.” He stood, bringing his crotch to eye height. There was no mistaking the way his own breeches distended. He looked down at himself with a rueful grimace.
“I’ll not mind it,” I said, recalling the words he’d said to me that first night.
He giggled as he shifted himself inside his pants so his bulge was less obvious then, in a mad dash sort of way, he kissed me once and ran out.
I wrapped myself in the linen sheet that served as a towel. It wasn’t very absorbent, but there was a lot of it so I made it into a toga and went over to the sideboard to admire my newly-shaven face in the mirror. Ezekiel had done a thorough job.
“Your breeches are mended,” Ezekiel said, thrusting them through the curtain, “but Abigail’s having some difficulty with your stockings. You’ll have to go bare-legged for now.”
“That’s not rude?” Showing a naked lower leg in 1692 might be the equivalent of waving my dick around in 2017.
“’Twill be cold, mayhap, but you’ll have a seat by the fire until it’s time for bed.”
Once all my layers, minus my tights, had been reassembled, I went out into the great room to find Abigail waiting for me on a stool by the fireplace, the tights in one hand and a darning needle in the other.
“They’re so fine, Mr. Johnson.” She sounded distraught about it. “I’ve not the thread to mend them proper, nor your breeches either. I’ve never seen fabric so tightly-woven.”
Because it wasn’t woven at all. It was … forged? Gelled? I had no idea how a thin cotton/rayon blend like what they made Halloween costumes out of came to exist.
“I fear I’ve spoilt your breeches and I’ll spoil these worse if I so much as try.”
“You didn’t spoil my breeches. They’re perfect.” I’d noticed the thickness of the seam where she’d joined the rip together, but there wasn’t a draft wafting up my leg anymore, so that was the main thing. “Thank you for mending them for me. Where I come from, very few children your age could’ve done that.”
“I’ve been helping Mother with the mending for a great many years now, Mr. Johnson,” she said solemnly, as though a nine-year-old could have a long history of being a seamstress, “but I’ve never worked on anything so fine. I told Mother I would ruin them—”
“Hush, Abigail,” Mrs. Cheever said from her rocking chair nearby. She had an oil lamp at her elbow and the pants we’d brought from the far barn in her lap. “Mr. Johnson has thanked you for your trouble. What do you say?”
“You’re most welcome. But these stockings, Mother. They’re not made of wool at all. They’re made of spider webs, I think.”
I laughed and gave her hair a quick stroke of assurance. “I’m not picky, Abigail. Do what you can with them.”
Mrs. Cheever reached her hand out and Abigail handed the tights over to her.
“How very odd these are,” she said as she shook them out.
Ezekiel’s stockings stopped at the knees. My tights were … tights. Mrs. Cheever pursed her lips and regarded me as though I were a puzzle she was trying to solve. “I cannot make them so smooth as they were, but I’ll do what I can. Come watch, Abigail. If you can’t do, you can learn.”
I sat down on the hearth to enjoy the heat of the dying fire at my back. Abigail and her mother bent their heads together and Ezekiel took the chair Abigail had vacated. He stretched his feet out towards the fire. Mr. Cheever was across from his wife with the Bible open on his lap, though he looked to be more napping than reading. His spectacles didn’t quite align with his eyes.
Ezekiel’s older sister, Isabel, had her own pile of mending and her own oil lamp on Mr. Cheever’s other side. I’d been making it a point not to get too close to her. I didn’t want anyone imagining I was trying to sex her up. Or court her. Whatever terminology they used. The only one I wanted to sex up was Ezekiel.
“You didn’t sing at church today, Mr. Johnson,” Mrs. Cheever observed. “I was looking forward to hearing your voice.”
“I’m not familiar with your hymns, and there weren’t any hymnals.”
“Do you read music?” Mr. Cheever asked in surprise, pulling himself up from his undignified slump.
“Well enough.”
“He’s a mathematician as well.” Ezekiel said, bragging on me. Mr. Cheever registered disbelief. He set to quizzing me by throwing out arithmetic problems so simple I could easily do them in my head.
“Why, he could work at your school, Father,” Ezekiel exclaimed after I’d answered a half dozen of Mr. Cheever’s challenges without hesitation. “Mathematics, music, reading and writing. He’s as learned as any of your teachers.”
Teaching could be a good career for me here, if it were possible to get past the prejudice. I didn’t like the idea of being a farmhand on someone else’s farm, not unless it was Ezekiel’s, and I would never amass the kind of money it would take to buy my own farm, not at a penny per day. Maybe I could be whatever Bob Cratchit was in A Christmas Carol—something to do with money and a quill. Arithmetic and penmanship weren’t considered specialized skills in 2017, but they might be enough for a career in 1692. Not that Bob Cratchit looked like he was having a good time.
I’d been enjoying the warmth of the fire and the homey chit-chat, but now a fresh wave of homesickness washed over me. My practical side told me I needed to take charge of my future, but my heart only wanted to be home and if I couldn’t get there by going through that mirror, I didn’t know how I could.
Tom came up and leaned against my chair. “Sing me the song about ABC again,” he demanded.
“What does a young gentleman say, Tom?” his mother prompted.
“Please?” Tom wheedled. His please was more manipulative than polite but I was happy for the distraction. At his insistence, I sang the song through so many times that everyone in the room must have been sick of it.
“Teach me a song you know,” I suggested when I saw that he might never get tired of it.
“I only know hymns.” He launched into one. “For this I know and am right sure, the Lord is very great.” He had a lilting voice, high and pure. He faked his way through some of the words, but he did it with enough assurance that he carried it off. In another era, Tom would’ve been a YouTube star.
“Sing it again from the top,” I asked when he’d finished. “I didn’t get all those words.”
“I’ll tell them to you,” Abigail said, abandoning her mother to join us. At some point Tom had found his way into my lap and now Abigail took his spot by my side. “Tom doesn’t know them.”
“I know most of them,” Tom asserted. As proof, he launched into the ABC song, making it all the way through without missing a single letter.
Ezekiel laughed and said, “I think we could all sing it now,” which spurred a group round of ABCDEFG. Ezekiel sang along, and Tom and I and Abigail, of course. Mrs. Cheever joined in for the LMNOP slide, and even Isabel sang under her breath. I’d never imagined singing the alphabet could be such a good team-building exercise.
Abigail wasn’t to be deterred though. She set me to learning the words to the hymn Tom had sung for me until I could fumble my way through it at least as well as Tom did.
“There, now you’ll be able to join us on Sunday,” Mrs. Cheever said. “And your stockings are mended. Abigail, bring these to Mr. Johnson so I can get on with those breeches of Grandfather’s. They won’t be tailored properly, Mr. Johnson, I warn you.”
I took my stockings from Abigail. I knew they’d sprout new runs in a matter of days—they just weren’t made for the rigors of Colonial life—but Mrs. Cheever had done an admirable job of restoring them to a working condition. I thanked her, but she laughed me off, saying that a mended pair of stockings was a fair trade for teaching a little boy his letters.
A knock sounded at the front door, surprising us all. Mr. Cheever opened it to admit a man and woman in heavy outerwear. A cold breeze swept in with them, disturbing the remaining warmth from the d
ying fire.
Mrs. Cheever put a kettle on to boil and Ezekiel introduced me to Giles and Martha Corey, their near neighbors. The grownups—a group I was happy to leave myself out of—gathered around the table where Isabel helped Mrs. Cheever serve tea. I still had Tom in my lap. He sang to himself, alternating between the alphabet and a mixed-up version of the hymn I’d been learning, half asleep.
“We’ve come about the witches,” Martha Corey said preemptively once Mrs. Cheever had taken her spot at the foot of the table.
“Seen some, have you?” Mr. Cheever asked.
“We most certainly haven’t, and neither has anyone else, if you ask me. Nonsense, that’s what it is. I don’t say as Betty Parris weren’t sick. I saw her sick myself. But it’s a fair jump from sick to bewitched and I know just who made that jump for her.”
“What do you mean?” Mr. Cheever put down his mug of tea with a frown.
“I was at the Parris house when Mr. Corwin and Mr. Hathorne called on her. Mr. Corwin said it right out, as how it was likely not a doctor they needed but a preacher, for Betty were sure tormented by witches. Then he asked if Sarah Osborn were seen anywhere nearby and ’twere the very next day as Betty accused her.”
I nodded from my place by the fire. Leading the witness. I’d seen it myself.
“That child never thought of witches on her own.” Mrs. Corey thumped the table definitively. “It’s pure suggestion and it’ll spread, mark my words. It’s happened down to Connecticut. Took four lives before the hysteria burned itself out. I’ll not have the same happen in Salem.”
“There have been no new accusations,” Mr. Cheever said. “Likely it’s the three witches and no more.”
“Luther says there are nine now suggested,” Ezekiel put in. “Not named yet, but the number stands to nine.”
“Aye,” Mrs. Corey said. “More will yet be named, you can be sure, unless the sensible people of this parish speak up and put a stop to it. Sarah Osborn is ill, Sarah Good is indigent, Tituba hails from a foreign land, but they are no more witches than am I.”
“They say as Tituba brought witchcraft from her native land,” Mrs. Cheever said.
“Lies. She’s a good Christian woman. Have you not seen her to church on a Sunday?”
“I have,” Mr. Cheever agreed, “but not Sarah Osborn of late.”
“Because she’s been ill, not because she consorts with the Devil.”
“You speak as though there were no witches to be had,” Mr. Cheever said. “Certainly the Devil do send witches to torment us and mayhap these are three. We must trust to our elected officials to protect us. I hear Reverend Hale comes from Boston, and you can be assured he’ll root out this coven from Salem.”
“Will the witches come to our house, Father?” Tom asked from my lap, pushing himself into a more upright position.
“Mind your manners when grown-ups talk,” Mr. Cheever said sternly.
“Little pitchers have big ears,” Mrs. Cheever reminded him. The group at the table hunched forward, lowering their voices as their talk continued, but no one answered Tom’s questions.
“There’s no such thing as witches,” I told him when I was sure no one was paying attention to us anymore. “They’re make believe.”
“I don’t care if there are such things as witches.” He squirmed his way off my lap. “I’m not afraid of them.” He ran over to the wood box and rummaged around in it until he came up with a wooden broadsword about eight inches long with a carved hilt. “I’ve got a sword!” He brandished it at me and I dutifully shrank from it.
“Evil spirits aren’t afraid of swords,” Abigail said. “Evil spirits aren’t afraid of anything because they have no bodies and the witches can come up behind you or from above you or right through the walls into your bedroom even though the door be barred ever so tight. You can’t fight an evil spirit.”
“I can,” Tom insisted.
“You can,” I agreed. What was wrong with parents in the seventeenth century that they filled their kids’ heads with stories of unbeatable evil spirits who swooped into your bedroom through locked doors? “And so can you, Abigail, because you know what kills evil spirits? Kindness.”
“Kindness?” She’d inched closer to my side as the conversation veered towards witches and now she hitched a hip up onto my thigh as though she wanted to crawl onto my lap. It was her bad hip, on the side she dragged as she walked, and the move threw her off balance so I wrapped my arm around her to steady her, then went ahead and drew her into my lap. She settled back against my chest like it was a natural place for her to rest.
“How do you kill an evil spirit with kindness?” she asked.
Tom waited for my answer, and Ezekiel too.
“I watched you kill one once,” I told her. “The night I came here, evil spirits wanted to keep me out in the barn like I was an animal. You remember?”
“That weren’t an evil spirit though. That were Father. Father isn’t evil.”
“Well, no.” I couldn’t go that far. “But I think he must have been possessed by an evil spirit.”
Tom’s eyes widened. He raised his sword, ready to fight. Abigail’s pretty blue eyes squeezed shut and Ezekiel’s prettier brown eyes were shocked. Oops. Who was selling the kids on witchcraft now?
“I said that wrong,” I corrected quickly. “There’s no such thing as evil spirits, and your father’s not evil, but what there is, see, is a sort of … well, sometimes people hurt other people, and sometimes they do it on purpose, but lots of times they don’t, but it hurts either way and that’s a kind of evil. When your father said I should sleep in the barn, that hurt me. And I think … I think God says don’t hurt people, so when your father said that, he wasn’t close to God right then.”
Abigail nodded like she was following me.
“But then you reminded him about God, and so your father was saved and I was saved and God won instead of evil, and that’s how you kill an evil spirit, because evil can’t survive when good people like you speak against it.”
My eyes sought out Ezekiel’s to make sure he was on board with my explanation, but he’d gone over to poke at the fire with his back to me and the room.
“Sometimes people say things that hurt me,” Abigail said, “and I don’t think they mean it ill, but still it do hurt.”
“About your leg?”
She nodded. “They say I’m good for nothing because I’ll never walk right and no one will marry a cripple.”
I wanted to tell her to fuck getting married anyway. She’d just end up with six kids in eight years and spend the rest of her life serving the menfolk. It was a lousy world she’d been born into, but it was the only world she knew and marriage was how it defined success. Isabel had recently become engaged, so wedding planning frequently dominated the dinner conversation.
“If you want to get married, there’s no reason you can’t be married.” I gave her a reassuring hug. “You cook, you clean, you sew. You can read and write. I’d be proud to marry someone like you.”
“You would?”
“I’d fight any evil spirit for you,” I told her.
“And I’d fight them for you,” she pledged in return.
“I’ll fight for you both!” Tom exclaimed. He brandished his sword in demonstration.
“Sir Thomas,” I said, “I hereby proclaim you a Social Justice Warrior.”
“What’s a Social Justice Warrior?”
“Someone who fights on the side of the righteous.”
“Like you?” Ezekiel asked.
Truth was, I wasn’t. I’d been pretty content back in my time to let other people do the fighting. Sometimes I’d even wondered what they were all fighting about. Life was pretty good. Not perfect. I couldn’t deny that prejudice still existed, that my options and my future were somewhat limited by the color of my skin, but I’d figured that was all the more reason to fight for myself—get the grades, get the internship, get the job, get ahead. I’d been living off the equality other peo
ple had secured for me.
“Justice Warrior!” Tom exclaimed, apparently having accepted his knighting. He waved the sword over his head and ran once around the table before his mother snagged him by the waist.
“Thomas! Someone needs to be in bed.”
“We’ve stayed late,” Mr. Corey said. “We’ll say good night.” The Coreys rose and there was a general bustle of putting on cloaks and bonnets as everyone moved towards the door.
“Almost forgot,” Mrs. Corey said, pausing in the doorway. “I stopped in to see Rebecca Nurse yesterday, noticing she wasn’t at church. She’s right poorly. Can’t get about anymore, not even hardly her own front yard.”
Mrs. Cheever tsked.
“There was an item brought up at the town hall about a pension for her,” Mr. Corey said, “but the motion was tabled.”
“After everything she’s given to the town these many years,” Mrs. Corey added with disgust. “I expect the town can spare her a small pension in return. Why else call ourselves Christians?”
“I’ll raise the subject again,” Mr. Cheever offered.
“And I’ll stop in to see her tomorrow,” Mrs. Cheever promised. “I’ll bring her some eggs. The hens have been laying nicely.”
That all sounded great, but the name Rebecca Nurse tickled at something in my brain. I had a presentiment she had trouble coming that no amount of eggs would be able to fix.
Chapter 10
I didn’t have any scribe duties the next day, so I donned my mended stockings and breeches and went with Ezekiel out to the barn. Tom accompanied us, already learning the job that would one day be his, while Abigail gathered eggs in her apron. But the kids left for school once the milking was done and then it was just me and Ezekiel.
There were pigs to feed and stalls to sweep out. I was surprised by how much farming got done in early March. I’d had the idea farmers took winters off, but after a morning spent tending to the animals, Ezekiel broke out the plow.
“’Twill go faster with two of us,” he said.
All afternoon, I trudged in front of Daffy, clearing rocks, while Ezekiel pushed the plow behind her. Back and forth, up and down. I was about to cry uncle when he turned Daffy back towards the barn.