Predestination Unknown

by Tanya Chris

  “No sense raising an alarm when ’twill come to nothing. Ain’t no one going to believe Martha Corey is a witch.” He hopped to his feet, eager to get on with whatever hateful chore awaited him next. “Come help me finish up around back, and Daffy and I’ll give you a ride home.” He walked away whistling, his blond hair catching the sun and his face turned up to the light.

  He was adorable, but he was wrong. The accusation against Mrs. Corey would come to something, though whether she’d end up hanged or not, I couldn’t remember. Trying to read the image in my mind of the Salem Wikipedia page was like trying to run in a nightmare. I could go through the motions, but there wasn’t any result. I could see the page. I knew exactly what it looked like. There was a Wikipedia logo at the top and a bunch of blue underlined headlines. Pictures broke up the blocks of text beneath.

  I could scan the page, but I couldn’t read it.

  My hand went to the phone in my pocket. I carried it with me everywhere, though I hadn’t turned it on since that first morning in Salem when I’d realized how useless it was. But it occurred to me now that the page might be cached—that if I called up Chrome, it would load the tabs I’d last had open, and that I might even be able to read them.

  I ducked around the barn in the opposite direction from the way Ezekiel had gone and booted up my phone. Fifteen tabs loaded when I pulled up my browser. Someone needed to learn to shut down a tab now and then. Most of them were YouTube, and there was probably a porn video in there somewhere—something to think about for later—but the Wikipedia entry for the Salem witchcraft trials was the second tab from the top, just behind a weather.com tab which refused to render. That didn’t bode well, but when I clicked the Wikipedia header bar, the page popped up looking exactly the way I’d remembered it, except now I could read the words.

  I didn’t read all of them—there wasn’t time with Ezekiel waiting for me—but I read enough to confirm my suspicions about Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse. Not only were they both going to be arrested; they were both going to die. Martha’s husband too, just for the sake of completeness, and both of the Sarahs. Lots of people.

  Now I knew, but how did knowing help? That, I didn’t know.

  ~~~

  “You ride her,” Ezekiel said when we’d finished for the day. He handed me Daffy’s reins and waited for me to mount.

  “What about you?” I asked when I was safely up on top of the gentle beast. I patted her neck to thank her for not making me look stupid by dancing away like a smartass horse in a cartoon.

  “I can walk.”

  “Nuh uh. I want you behind me like I rode behind you. Let me be in charge today.”

  He chuckled at that and swung himself gracefully up into the saddle behind me as if that wasn’t a hard thing to do. I shifted forward to make some space for his ass to settle into, but there was no creating any real distance. He put his arm around me and made a grab for Daffy’s reins and I jerked them out of his reach. Daffy turned around and gave us a look like her patience was running thin so I elbowed him into submission and did my best to take the wheel—er, the reins—with confidence.

  His hand rested lightly on my hip. His breath tickled along the back of my neck. For a moment, I expected to feel his lips there, gliding along my throat, or his tongue tracing the outer shell of my ear. I shivered.

  “Cold?” he asked. “I wish we could find you a coat to fit.” He took the edges of his cloak and wrapped them forward, so it encased us both.

  “It’ll get warmer.”

  I meant the weather, but it was already a lot warmer with the two of us inside this cloth cocoon. My hands held the reins, but his? His were sheltered in the dark privacy of the cloak that covered us. I could think of a hundred things they could be doing in there, but they only rested on the points of my hip bones. They didn’t slide down to cup my groin, for instance, or around to tease the planes of my abs. They didn’t fondle my balls or tweak my nipples. But they could.

  When he shifted behind me, the hard ridge of his erection became apparent against my ass. My dick was just as hard if he’d cared to check on it.

  “The motion of the horse?” I asked, my voice low and teasing.

  He giggled, the sound unexpectedly high and undeniably happy. “’Tis a fine motion,” he said. “Makes a man glad to have a horse.”

  “And someone to share it with.” I leaned back and let his hands settle onto my hips and my back settle against his chest. Just a man and a man and their horse.

  The ride home ended, unfortunately. We hadn’t done more than wash up before Giles Corey banged on the front door. Mr. Cheever let him in and Mrs. Cheever offered to set him a plate for dinner, but he wasn’t there to socialize. He was there to tell us that his wife had been arrested.

  Ezekiel shot me a glance, and I shot one back that said “I told you so.” Mr. Cheever was at first incredulous, but he worked his way around to blaming the victim quick enough.

  “Your wife is a woman with a lot of opinions,” he told Giles.

  “And all good ones,” Giles retorted. “She’s a fully-confirmed member of the church.”

  “And as such, I do stand by her. This will not go to trial, mark my words, but it may be that she should look to herself as the reason for her arrest. He who sticks out his neck do sometimes find his head cut off.”

  “In other words, this has naught to do with her being a witch.” Bingo! Giles got it. “She’s arrested for speaking out, not for any witchcraft, and if she ain’t arrested for witchcraft, are any of them?”

  I shook my head, but the only one paying attention to me was Ezekiel. His leg brushed mine under the table and I saw an uncommon frown of concern flash across his face. I slipped my foot out of my shoe and rubbed my toe along his calf. That changed his frown to a grin, but only briefly. The conversation at the head of the table had gotten more heated.

  “You’ll not help then?” Giles asked Mr. Cheever.

  “What is it you’d have me do? Storm the jailhouse in the dead of night? ’Twill all be resolved on the morrow or thereabout. There cannot be strong evidence against her. Go home, Giles. Or better yet, sit and sup with us. You’ll not help your wife this night.”

  “We’ll see about that.” Giles plunked his hat onto his head hard enough to flatten it. He let himself out the door faster than Mrs. Cheever could open it for him. She latched it behind him and turned to her husband.

  “There’s nothing we can do, Ezekiel?”

  “I’ll seek out Hathorne in the morning,” Mr. Cheever assured her.

  “I wish you would, for I cannot abide the thought of Martha in that jail.”

  “She’s a confirmed member of the church,” Isabel said. “There must be a mistake made. If they could come for Goody Corey, they might come for any of us.”

  “We must trust our elected officials,” Mr. Cheever said. “Now that’s enough talk of it. You’re frightening the children.”

  Tom looked more excited than frightened, probably already counting the demons he’d slay tonight in his dreams, but Abigail had her head down and no one at the table had taken more than a bite since Giles walked in.

  “Eat your dinner,” Mrs. Cheever ordered the table at large, but she didn’t pick up her own fork. Instead she took Abraham from his basket on the floor and carried him to the rocking chair at the hearth as though he needed soothing, even though he’d been perfectly quiet. Maybe she was the one who needed soothing.

  “There was another witch called out today,” I said.

  “You knew Martha Corey was called out?” Mr. Cheever asked.

  “I was there. And another one. Rebecca Nurse.”

  “Not Rebecca Nurse,” Mrs. Cheever said. She rose sharply to her feet and came back to the table.

  “But you said the second girl did not agree to Goody Nurse being called out,” Ezekiel reminded me.

  “Not yet.”

  “Nor not ever,” Mrs. Cheever said. She came around to the front of the table and looked down at her husb
and over the top of Abraham’s head. “You’ll speak to Mr. Hathorne.”

  “I’ll speak to Mr. Hathorne. Nothing will happen to Rebecca Nurse, nor Martha Corey neither. This is all a lot of nonsense. Maybe Martha had the right of it.”

  Mrs. Cheever was satisfied enough by her husband’s response to take her place at the foot of the table again. She ate one-handed with the baby in her arms in that way experienced parents had.

  “Speaking of Goody Nurse,” she said. “She has some skeins of wool she can’t use as her eyesight no longer permits that she should knit. Abigail could make a fine pair of stockings for Mr. Johnson from that yarn. It’s time she learned to turn a heel.”

  “Mr. Johnson might like his stockings better made,” Abigail suggested.

  “I’d like my stockings best if they were made by you,” I assured her, excited at the prospect of getting a pair of wool stockings however they were made.

  “I’ll make them as good as mother would make,” she promised me. “I don’t care how many times I have to rip out the stitches.”

  “Mr. Johnson,” her mother said, interrupting our fan-fest. “I offered as you would read the Bible to Goody Nurse in exchange for her wool, for she has not the eyesight even for that, nor the strength to make it to church on a Sunday.”

  “I’d be happy to, but she doesn’t have to bribe me. I’d read to her without the wool.”

  “That’s how we do in Salem,” Mr. Cheever said. “One neighbor helps another.”

  “I’ll make myself useful to her as well,” Ezekiel said. “For I am sure there are chores to be done.”

  Mrs. Cheever nodded her approval. “She’ll be quite safe with two strapping young men about her, and we shall have a warmer pair of stockings for Mr. Johnson. Meantime, I laid those breeches of Grandfather’s on your bed.”

  I smiled my thanks. My initial welcome to the Cheever house had been dubious, but I’d found that Ezekiel wasn’t the only kind soul in it.

  “When shall I have a new pair of stockings?” Tom asked.

  “You’ve two pair already, little man. What ever could you need a third for?”

  I smiled to myself. What a world these Cheevers lived in where two pairs of stockings was all a person needed.

  ~~~

  That night, in our bed, I turned to face Ezekiel and waited until he turned to face me. We generally slept back-to-back, as it seemed the safest way to keep our hands and mouths to ourselves, but even so our bodies found each other in the night and I sometimes woke to his arm across my chest or mine across his. It’d been much too long since I’d kissed him, but tonight I wanted to talk to him.

  “What does it mean to be a confirmed member of the church?” I asked. “Why does it make your father so certain that Martha Corey will be treated differently?”

  I’d come to know Mr. Cheever better in the days I’d been living in his house, and the simple fact of my continuing to live there without paying rent or having any means or plans to ever leave was testament to his basic decency, but he had that inertia that good people in privileged positions sometimes had. He trusted the system. Even without the foresight of future knowledge, I knew better than to trust the system. The system was fallible—easily manipulated and heavily slanted towards the wealthy.

  Martha wasn’t poor. She was white-skinned and respected and married to a man who was white-skinned and respected, which was more than either of the Sarahs or Tituba had going for them—but I didn’t understand the part about her being a fully-confirmed member of the church. They were all members of the church as far as I knew—Sarah Good, Sarah Osborn. Even Tituba. What made Martha different?

  “It means she’s one of the Elect,” Ezekiel explained. “God has predestined her for heaven. She cannot be Elect and a witch both.”

  “Can she be unelected?”

  Ezekiel gave me a confused look.

  “Who made her an Elect?” I tried.

  “Why, God did.”

  “But—” Argh. “How do you know God made her Elect? Who decides that?”

  “She knew she was Elect and so declared it and was confirmed into the church as a full member. One can feel God’s grace, so I am told, to know they are chosen, and others can see it is so by how they model right Christian behavior.”

  “OK, so I don’t understand why you’re not Elect then. You’re so full of God’s grace you’re bursting with it and no one’s a better model of Christian behavior.”

  Ezekiel ducked his head. “You know why.”

  “Because you’re gay?” I wanted to shake him. It didn’t seem like this super-special Elect status was keeping anyone out of witch-jail, so maybe it was all semantics anyway, but it pissed me off. If anyone got to be elected, it was going to be Ezekiel, damn it.

  “What about Abigail?” I asked him.

  “Abigail?”

  “Does she get to be Elect? Or does her disability mean she’s not chosen either?”

  “I think ….” He hesitated. “I think God would not visit such an affliction on one of his chosen.”

  “See, that’s fucked up.” I pushed him away from me and rolled onto my back. I couldn’t touch him right then. “Do you love Abigail any less because of her leg?”

  “You know that I do not.” He scrambled into a seated position and leaned over me. “Luther, you know that I couldn’t love her any more than I do, however many good legs she might have. She’s brave and kind and never flinches from her duty. I would wish to be as good as Abigail. I would give my own leg to be as good as Abigail.”

  There were tears in his voice. As angry as his stupid Elect philosophy made me, I couldn’t have that.

  “Zeke.” I pulled him down into my arms and cradled his head against my shoulder. I kissed his forehead and listened to his muffled sobs soak the cotton of my nightdress. “Zeke, if you can love Abigail that much, don’t you think God can too? What kind of God do you have who can’t love Abigail as much even as you? This idea of a God who only loves some of us scares me.”

  The moon was waning, which meant the night was dark in a way I never knew night could be and quiet like there was no one in the universe except him and me. I wished that were true. I wished also that there wasn’t his time and my time—that there was a single time where we could come together, that there were truths we could share.

  “I’ve always been taught so,” he said, his voice weak and nasal through the tears. “Can the elders be wrong?”

  “They can be very wrong.” Best to not even get me started about elders. “Let God talk to you directly,” I suggested. “Don’t let other people tell you what He’s saying.”

  “God do love Abigail,” he agreed. “No one can say me otherwise.”

  “And you,” I told him. “God loves you too.”

  It took him a moment, but he nodded against my shoulder.

  That seemed like enough epiphanies for one night, so I let the way my arms held him tight against me explain the rest of what I felt. We fell asleep that way, with his head nestled into my chest, and when we woke the next morning, still plastered against each other, there was no mad scramble to separate. His eyes were a little red in the crisp light of dawn, but his smile held only joy and his “good morning” spoke of a good night.

  Chapter 12

  “Ezekiel!” I pounded out the back door of Rebecca Nurse’s house towards the barn. “Ezekiel!”

  He emerged from the barn, his eyes wide in reaction to my yelling.

  “They’re taking her.” I tugged on his arm, pulling him towards the house. “Mrs. Nurse. They’ve come to arrest her. Corwin and two big guys. I think one of them is the guard from the jail house.” I continued pulling on him, dragging him forward, trying to communicate the urgency. “Right now!” I said, since it didn’t seem to be coming across. “They’re in there right now!”

  “Luther.” He dug in his heels. “I’ll not interfere with their duties.”

  “Do you not get what I’m saying? They’re arresting Rebecca Nurse. They’r
e taking her to jail. They’re going to try her as a witch and they’re going to hang her.”

  “She’ll not be hanged.”

  “She will!”

  I gave up on trying to get Ezekiel to help me. I’d have to rescue Mrs. Nurse myself. I could hold my own against two guys. No way Corwin would condescend to do his own dirty work. He’d fold as soon as I called his bluff.

  “Luther!”

  Now Ezekiel was chasing me, following me around the house to the front yard where the jailer and his sidekick were loading Mrs. Nurse into their wagon. They were at least handing her up onto the bench seat, not just chucking her into the back, but I refused to stand by and let them take her, gently or not.

  “Luther!”

  Ezekiel grabbed me and spun me. “You cannot. You cannot, Luther.” He had his hands on my upper arms, holding on hard enough that I couldn’t break free. “Please, don’t. Don’t. They’ll take you too.”

  Behind me I heard horses nicker and then the rumble of rolling wheels.

  “’Tis only temporary they take her. She’ll be freed soon enough.”

  “She won’t be,” I told him.

  “If she’s innocent of these charges, she will be. Let there be a trial. Let justice run its course. That is how a civilized society does, and I’ll not interfere with the process, no matter how I fear the outcome to be.”

  “The outcome is she dies.”

  He released me. “You assume the worst of us, Luther.”

  “I’m not assuming. I know.”

  He turned and walked with heavy footsteps back towards the barn.

  “Ezekiel.” It was my turn to chase him.

  “And you think so ill of us, you should not stay.”

  “Ezekiel.” I spun him to face me. “I think no ill of you, not of you. I’ve never known anyone like you.” I raised my hand to touch his face, but he jerked away from me.

  Fine. Fuck him. Fuck them all. He was right—why should I stay? I might be trapped in 1692, but I wasn’t trapped in Salem. Rebecca Nurse was going to die. They wouldn’t even have to hang her, most likely. A few days in that pestilential prison ought to do it. Did I really imagine I could change history single-handedly?