by Tanya Chris
Well, there was that. He’d have been married but not happy. Oh hell, he probably would have been happy. Not horny, not sexually satisfied, not getting it on with the kind of gusto he had with me, but happy. Because that was Ezekiel—serving God, caring for his family, doing his best and making do.
And what could I give him?
I pulled him closer and gave him kisses until he fell asleep in my arms, and then I restlessly joined him.
Chapter 15
I was called in to court the next day and lunch time found me sitting behind the meeting house in my usual spot. I had no interest in spending time with Corwin and his sidekicks, so when weather permitted I brought my lunch out back and spent my break replaying highlights from my nights with Ezekiel.
I pulled out my phone and indulged myself by calling up the selfie I’d taken of us the day I’d told him who I really was. My battery was under twenty percent, and it probably took a one percent hit every time I powered it up, but what was there to save it for?
I played back Ezekiel saying “Hi, Luther,” smiling even though his voice on the recording was solemn and scared. He’d said my name much differently last night.
The skies cracked overhead and I got the phone into my pocket just before they opened in a late spring deluge. I dashed into the meeting house, giving Daffy a sympathetic look as I went past her. There wasn’t any kind of cover I could put her under, but horses were probably made to be out in the rain.
I shook myself dry as I stepped over the threshold into the darker confines of the meeting house. I could hear Corwin talking, but didn’t see him. There was a little anteroom off to the side where the speakers prepared themselves before services, and it was there that the three cohorts usually took their lunch.
“I think we must arrest Giles Corey.” Corwin’s voice carried easily through the partially open door.
Shit. Wikipedia had said that Giles would be accused and arrested, but I’d hoped Corwin would be too intimidated by our resistance to follow through. I definitely hadn’t heard his name called out by any of the accusers yet, and I’d been listening for it. I sidled closer to the anteroom, careful to keep out of the line of vision of anyone who might glance through the doorway. My thoughts went to my phone, still powered on in my pocket.
“But why?” Hathorne asked. “There have been no accusations against him.” Damn straight.
I pulled up the voice recorder app and hit the Record button and held it towards the doorway as Corwin said, “He will impede our work if he keep on with his questioning. We can’t allow the agitators to take control or we’ll lose momentum and all our work shall be lost. We must send a firm message that he who is not with us is against us, and those who are against us shall pay. I do promise them that.”
“I suppose,” Hathorne said, “as we are doing God’s work, we must not be delayed in it.”
“Precisely. Even if Corey are not cried out as a witch, still I think we might arrest him, but I’ll see him cried out as a witch yet.”
“Do you think?”
“You may count on it,” Corwin said. “A word in the right ear and ’twill be done. Tituba is most agreeable.”
“But Tituba is a witch herself,” Hathorne argued. “I do worry that we put too much reliance on the word of a witch.”
“Oh, pshaw. Don’t tell me you believe in witches, Hathorne.”
“If there are no witches, then why do we hunt them?” Poor Hathorne. I’d always figured he was more ignorant than evil. His sincere confusion almost made me sorry for him.
“They’re parasites,” Corwin explained. “Blood-sucking leeches. Call them witches if you must, for that’s our game as you say, but they are surely not of the Elite whatever label you choose, or they’d not be dependent upon us for their very sustenance. Our parish cannot survive beneath their crushing weight. If we’re to free ourselves from county government and the tax it do impose, we must first free ourselves from those who would seek out pensions, whether they be sick or old or poor or witches. That’s our aim, Hathorne, and a fine thing this witchcraft business has been to further us in it.”
I could only imagine the expression on Hathorne’s face, because Corwin’s next line came on a roar: “Bloody hell, man, what did you think we were doing?”
“I thought we were hanging witches.”
“And indeed we shall. I’ll be blessed that the trials start tomorrow for I’m sore tired of feeding this ungrateful lot we’ve got locked up. Best to have them hanged, and sooner the better.”
There was another silence during which Hathorne must have continued his slack-jawed surprise.
“Now, now,” Corwin said, his voice softer. “Don’t fret yourself, Hathorne. Perhaps I said too much as didn’t need to be said. You pursue your witches and I’ll add a name here and there and it won’t hurt anyone who’s a friend to us.”
“Afternoon, Mr. Johnson!” I jumped at the sound of my name so loud and so close, bobbling the phone in my alarm. Hale had snuck up behind me while I’d been eavesdropping. I hunched my shoulders to cover the phone as I quickly thumbed it to off and slipped it into the pocket farthest away from the man approaching me. I got it concealed just before Corwin, alerted to my presence by Hale’s loud greeting, emerged from the ante-room.
“It was raining,” I offered. “I came inside just now to get out of it.”
Corwin gave me a look to suggest he knew better, but Hale and Hathorne didn’t seem to think anything of my lurking near the doorway to the ante-room. It was always the ones with the most to hide who were the most suspicious.
I wanted to fly straight home, to share what I’d heard with Ezekiel so we could figure out what to do about Giles, but my role in the resistance was to be our ears in these mock-legal proceedings. I recorded what happened for history, but also for Rebecca Nurse and the Coreys and the many who were trapped in Salem’s jail.
Hathorne looked sheepish. During testimony that afternoon, he cut a less imposing figure than he had in the morning session. This was an uncertain Hathorne who orchestrated the shrieks of the mostly-teenaged girls. He didn’t run them through his usual list of suspects, but any names he failed to mention, Corwin suggested for him.
“I do wonder if you see Goody Corey,” he said at one point, to a maelstrom of howls and cries. Martha might have returned home, but she hadn’t left Corwin’s radar as a target. Now he added, “For it seem to me she might be with her husband.”
Tituba, as Corwin had predicted, picked up on his prompt and ran with it. There hadn’t been as many men accused of witchcraft as women, given that women were disproportionately poor and powerless, but by the time Tituba was done with Giles, one could easily imagine he was the Devil himself.
Tituba’s continued willingness to shill for Corwin spoke of my failure in convincing her to cross over to the resistance, but I understood why she’d chosen to side with the accusers. Over the course of her life, she’d been sold from town to town—from country to country even. She’d been used and abused, fed and housed and clothed at her master’s convenience. She’d learned how to work the system, because it was only by working the system that she’d survived. If she weren’t Corwin’s best tool, she’d be the first one hanged, and both she and I knew it.
It was one thing for me, in my pretentious wig and Ezekiel’s grandfather’s breeches, free to come and go as I pleased and even paid a few pennies now and then, with the backing of the Cheever family behind me—not as owners, but as friends—to believe I’d act differently if I were in her position. It was another thing entirely to be in her position.
Once Corwin had what he wanted—Giles Corey’s name in the records—he wrapped up the afternoon session and I made a dash for the door. It was still raining out and five miles on Daffy took a good hour. I couldn’t afford for my phone to get soaked through, not with such great evidence recorded on it, so I yanked the wig off my head and wrapped my phone up in it, and stuffed it down my pants where it made a comically large bulge.
> I’d have liked to race back, both out of a sense of urgency and a desire to come in out of the rain, but Daffy only had one speed. Whether wet or dry, day or night, engaged on a routine chore or embroiled in intrigue, carrying two bodies or one, she plowed along at a speed not much greater than my own.
“There’s supper waiting for you,” I suggested to her.
And Ezekiel waiting for me. But neither enticed her to pick up the pace. We arrived when we arrived.
Ezekiel was in the barn, mending tack. He rose when I led Daffy through the barn door, his eyes dropping rather obviously to my crotch.
“That’s not as fun as it looks,” I told him. I fished the wig, which wasn’t much more than a big ball of fuzz by that point, out of my trousers and unwrapped the phone to find it dry. I played him the recording I’d made while he rubbed Daffy down and fed her supper. Corwin and Hathorne sounded a long way off, but their voices were audible and Corwin’s words, so starkly evil, gave both of us the shivers.
“They’ll come for Giles tonight,” I warned him. “Trials start tomorrow. They won’t wait to arrest him.”
“Giles is a church member. Once they’ve recorded his plea, they’ll release him per the agreement. I do not like that he should spend a night in jail but he will weather it better than Goody Nurse, I expect.”
“Ezekiel.” I swallowed around the lump of fear in my throat. “Don’t you remember what the Wikipedia article said? Giles doesn’t get hanged. He refuses to enter a plea and so they … they …”
The article hadn’t gone into details about what being pressed to death entailed, but I knew because it was one of the most horrific twists in the Salem story.
“They’re going to put a stone on his chest, and every time he refuses to enter a plea, they’re going to add another. Until the weight crushes him to death. If they arrest him tonight, he’ll be dead by tomorrow.”
“Giles were ever a stubborn man,” Ezekiel said with a sigh.
“And he’s going to stubborn himself to death.”
“We shall tell him that he must enter a plea.”
“What did you just call him?” I asked.
“Stubborn,” Ezekiel admitted.
We both knew Giles wouldn’t enter a plea. The only prisoner who’d died so far was Sarah Osborn, and maybe she’d have died anyway. There was no doubt that living in a dank prison without adequate food or ventilation had hastened her death, but she’d been sick before she was arrested and I didn’t know what from. Giles might be our first real casualty.
I didn’t want to lose him. He reminded me of my father—a taciturn man whose warmth needed no words, a steady friend through any difficulty, and a pig-headed fool. Martha was much the same, though the trouble with her was getting her to shut up rather than to speak. She wouldn’t be kept quiet, even if speaking out would get her killed. Or get him killed. Between the two of them, Giles was sure to die.
“We can’t let them take him,” I said.
Ezekiel nodded. “We’ll summon our friends. You take Daffy and head east. I’ll go west afoot. Tell all to gather at the Coreys’ and we’ll make a stand there.”
He pulled me into a hug, his nose seeking out the side of my neck. We both smelled something fierce this many days out from bath day, but it was funny how I’d come to not mind it. He was warm and human and real and mine. I tipped his head back and kissed him. There was no telling when one of the kids might pop into the barn, but just in case we were going to die that night, I needed him to know I loved him.
“Go on,” he said pushing me away when my hands started to get as friendly as my mouth. He re-saddled Daffy, who was none too pleased by that turn of events, and I rode back out the way I’d come. The rain had stopped but the sun was setting, and my clothes were heavy and damp beneath the rain-soaked cloak.
“This is for Giles,” I told Daffy as we trotted off to summon the resistance, but I didn’t think she cared.
Chapter 16
It was a ragtag bunch we assembled, but Corwin hadn’t been expecting a resistance. He’d brought a wagon for transport, two jailors for muscle, and Hathorne for legitimacy, but no weapons. Hathorne read the complaint by torchlight from just off the edge of the Coreys’ property because Giles had threatened to shoot anyone who stepped foot on it.
When Corwin saw he couldn’t nab Giles out from under us, he tried talking him into turning himself in. I had my fingers on the tail of Giles’s coat so I could drag him to the ground if I saw any sign he might relent, but I needn’t have bothered. Giles didn’t know the meaning of the word relent.
“Don’t think as I can’t see you back there,” Corwin called out to Isabel’s fiancé, John Miller, because making threats was the next obvious move in the asshat playbook. “Might not go so well for you in that issue you have pending with the council when I mention as you prevented the rightful execution of justice.”
“This ain’t justice,” Miller called back. His voice wasn’t as steady as Giles’s, but he held firm, as did the men around him, no matter who Corwin singled out in an attempt to divide us.
“You merely postpone the inevitable,” Corwin told Giles, trying to save face before slinking away empty-handed. “Do you show your face in town, you’ll find yourself in jail fast enough.” Then he looked right at me. “We’ll not have need of your services tomorrow, boy. Might be that you’d do best to stay out of town as well.”
Well, damn, I’d been fired. Which was actually kind of a shame. Sure, my boss was a first-rate prick, but a) it was the only job in town and b) I’d been the eyes and the ears of the resistance, our inside look at what Corwin was up to. So far I’d flown beneath his radar, despite Ezekiel being a known agitator, because Mr. Cheever hadn’t committed himself and because I was useful, but I topped Corwin’s shit list now. Ah, well. It wasn’t like he could’ve failed to notice the one Black guy in a group that white.
We all trooped into the house where Martha served us coffee while we strategized. Preventing Corwin from arresting Giles was only a stopgap measure. With trials scheduled to start that week, the plot was about to thicken from simple arrests to outright deaths.
“So Hathorne’s not an active part of Corwin’s plan,” Martha said in summary when I’d recounted the conversation I’d overhead that afternoon.
“He’s not active,” I agreed, “but he’s too passive to help any.”
Corwin didn’t have the numbers on his side, not if it came down to a face-off like today, but there were too many townspeople like Hathorne, like Mr. Cheever—good men willing to be passive—and there were others who were worse, who, when we spoke to them, muttered about people getting what they deserved, be they witches or not, town folk who applauded how “clean” their town had become since Corwin’s pogrom had cleared the street of undesirables. Corwin was the prickish tip of an iceberg of prejudice floating on a sea of indifference.
“Hale’s probably our best bet,” I suggested.
“He’s an outsider,” Ezekiel agreed. “No interest in local politics, no loyalty to Corwin. Mayhaps it’s time we approached him directly.”
“I’ll do it,” I offered. “I’m the one with the first-hand information, and he knows me. I’ll try to catch him after court tomorrow.”
“’Tis our best option,” Giles agreed. “’Less we send someone to Boston.”
“Boston’ll not intervene,” Miller said. “They’ve a mind to let the parishes run their own business.”
“Then I’ll see Hale,” I confirmed.
Ezekiel and I shared Daffy on the way home. I rode behind him, letting him take the reins, one arm wrapped comfortably around his torso and the other hand copping a feel here and there. Daffy got her second rubdown of the day, though she’d probably rather have had the evening off. She didn’t know she’d played an important role in saving a man from being crushed to death.
In the house, we found the kids already in bed and only Mr. and Mrs. Cheever waiting up for us. Mrs. Cheever set out plates she’d kept warmin
g on the stove, but Mr. Cheever’s expression was anything but welcoming.
“What would you have had us do, Father?” Ezekiel asked, but what Mr. Cheever thought we should have done was obvious, because it was exactly what he’d done himself: nothing.
“When you put your will above the church, you put your will above God’s, Ezekiel.”
“What if the church is wrong?”
Ezekiel might as well have asked “what if we could fly to the moon?” He was right, but Mr. Cheever’s narrow understanding would never recognize the possibility. He glared at Ezekiel, then turned that glare to me. I’d been identified as the instigator once again.
“The church cannot be wrong.”
“Misguided, then,” Ezekiel hedged. “Led by the wrong men.”
“Led by the Elect.”
“Who be self-selected.”
I was proud, because I’d taught Ezekiel that term, but I was also concerned, because Mr. Cheever looked like he was on the verge of a heart attack. I wondered if CPR counted as witchcraft.
“The Elect are selected by God,” Mr. Cheever thundered.
“I wish to go to seminary.” Ezekiel dropped that in there, out of nowhere, his voice low and sure. It was a surprise to Mr. Cheever and a surprise to me too. He’d said before that God didn’t call him, but now he said otherwise. “God calls me to preach a different word.”
“If this is your word—this defiance—I’ll not allow it.”
“I do not need your permission to preach God’s word, Father.”
“You’ll not have my funding either.”
“Then I shall do without.” Ezekiel rose with his plate in hand. I’d taught him that too. Mrs. Cheever scrambled to take it from him, but Ezekiel moved resolutely towards the stove with her trailing behind him.
“Ezekiel,” she said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “I am certain as you do not mean to anger your Father, for God do command that you respect him.”