A Measure of Light

by Beth Powning

  “Christ did prove and show that it was not for disciples to fast,” he began. The deacons glanced at one another, startled.

  “Those that are the least acquainted with the Lord Jesus are given most of all to fasting. The papists are given much to fasting. If Christ be present with his people, then they have no cause to fast.”

  Mary glanced at Anne, who was watching her brother-in-law with an expression of amazed approbation. Mr. Wilson moved as if to rise and knock Wheelwright to the floor. The minister at his side caught his arm, forced him down. Mr. Cotton laid a shaking hand over his eyes and bent forward to stare at the floor.

  From the inviolacy of the lectern, Wheelwright gave a lengthy sermon on the evils of fasting, on the spiritual barrenness of those who would so advise, and then asked: “What will be the end and issue, do you think, if people so set themselves against the ways of grace and the Lord Jesus Christ?”

  He pointed at Reverend Wilson.

  “Why do you resist the Holy Spirit?”

  He savours his chance to preach in the place from whence he hath been shunned.

  “Brethren, those under a covenant of works—the more holy they are, the greater enemies they are to Christ. If men do not know the work of grace and ways of God, they shall die, sayeth the Lord.”

  His voice rose, a flush swept up his neck and bloated his face.

  “Enemies of Christ!” He swept his gaze along the front row. “We must kill them with the work of the Lord! We must prepare for a spiritual combat! We must put on the whole arms of God. We must be ready to fight. We must all prepare for battle and come against our enemy!”

  He returned to his seat.

  The deacons rose at once and strode down the aisle. The door opened.

  Cold evening air blew in.

  February 1637

  My beloved Aunt Urith,

  We pass our days in apprehension, since there is trouble afoot in our small colony. My friend Anne hath set the place buzzing, as when a foot is stept upon a ground-hive. She is a woman of great learning and hath cast aspersions upon the teachings of the ministers, save two, her brother-in-law John Wheelwright and her own teacher, the Reverend Cotton. Wheelwright gave a Fast Day sermon in which he did terribly admonish the ministers. The General Court did meet and judged him guilty of sedition and contempt. One man wrote a remonstrance, which seventy-five signed, including my William. They think him neither guilty, nor seditious. Were I a man, I, too, would have signed. So far, nothing has come of it, but I fear more repression will come before long. When we arrived here, the place ran smooth as a mill, every piece in place and perfectly working, and we received assurance of God’s approval thereby. Now I do not know what to think as it seems there are many unravellings.

  Too, there is trouble with the Pequot of Connecticut which commenced last summer when a pinnace filled with Indians was found to contain the body of an Englishman. Our men went to the mouth of the Pequot River and demanded a sachem, who did not come, and so they did burn the Indian towns and spoiled their canoes. I pray there will be no war, yet all are feared it will come to pass and so we have made alliance with the Narragansett of Rhode Island …

  Strange words they would be to Aunt Urith, Mary thought, putting away her quill, tucking the paper back into the drawer. Pequot, Narragansett, sachem, pinnace. These things were as familiar to her, now, as walls pearled with frozen pitch; the raw smell of boiling cornmeal; or the moan of wind.

  On a cold day in January, Mary and Anne were returning from a childbirth when they saw Governor Henry Vane outside the tavern. He spotted them and seemed on the point of turning away but then changed his bearing. They met under an icicle-speared overhang.

  He was red-faced, puffy-eyed.

  “I am coming from the General Court,” he said. He looked past the women, out over the harbour, brooding. “They blamed me for the dissension. I …”

  Burst into tears, Mary thought. Ah, dear. He is but a boy.

  “I announced my resignation. I said I would go home to England on the next ship.”

  “And?” Anne said.

  “They chided me and so I agreed to stay until the May election to …” He tugged at a long, curled lock.

  “Keep the colony from utter chaos,” she snapped.

  He met her eye, miserable. “Aye.”

  January passed, and February, and once again a head-high drift built on the seaward side of the house, its lip teased by the wind into a fragile curl.

  Report came from Connecticut that an Englishman had been set upon by Pequot. He had been tortured for three days, fingers, toes, hands and feet cut off, skin flayed, hot embers placed between flesh and skin.

  In March, the people of Boston flocked to the gallows, set on a rise overlooking the isthmus.

  A man had copulated with a cow. He stood on a ladder with a noose around his neck. Militia approached the gallows, leading the cow, a little heifer the colour of deerskin with large brown eyes, curved horns and a dished face. She shambled down the icy path, stepping delicately with a patient, hopeful expression.

  The hangman swung a maul up over his head and brought it down between the heifer’s horns. Her knees buckled, a bawl came deep and desperate. Again and again the maul landed—on the cow’s head, her neck, her cheekbone.

  Men, women and children stood in the snow, not daring to look away. The deacons held their Bibles.

  When the snow bore a shawl of red blood and the cow was still, they knocked the ladder from beneath the man’s feet.

  Do I love God?

  On the way home, Mary tried to erase the thought and the outrage that accompanied it; for although God was watching England, his wrath quivering at the transgressions so rampant in those desecrated churches, here in the New Jerusalem he loomed much closer. She felt his face behind the thin gauze that evolved across the charcoal clouds. She felt his mind in the fretful waves that broke upon ice-glazed rocks. His wrath—in the gales, the blizzards, the harsh light.

  Whose will, whose rules, whose God?

  She stumbled on a stone, pressed fist to mouth and whispered into it.

  “I am sorry for my doubting thoughts, they do come unbidden, try as I do to banish them. I am sorry. I am grateful. I will obey.”

  Her mind filled with the little cow. Her hopeful eyes.

  Mary went to the outhouse carrying a pail of ashes, chicken bones and a broken clay pipe. Afterwards, she stood with pail in mittened hand. Smoke rose from chimneys, white against a leaden sky. The path to the house was a tramped coil between diminishing snow banks. She stood, listening. No bird cried, no gate creaked.

  Her flowers had not come. For a week or more, she had been expecting blood.

  Another child? Have you sent me a child, my Lord?

  She set down the ash pail and placed both hands on her belly. She looked at the clustered houses, their lisping chimneys. She thought of the women within, stirring pottage, sewing, scrubbing. The men—splitting wood at chopping blocks. Girls, stitching samplers. Boys, plaiting broom corn or sharpening knives.

  She heard Wilson’s pitiless voice.

  God is watching. God is watching us.

  Sinnie was washing clothes in a bucket outside the house. Before coming outside, she had opened all the windows and doors. The chime of frogs rose from the swamp, gurnippers swarmed from the heating soil. Blankets and linens made an exultant snapping, tied to a line. Samuel toddled away from her down the dirt lane with his arms wide.

  I did teach him!

  She watched, kneeling by the washtub. Dandelions, fuzzy-topped. She picked one, rubbed it on her cheeks. Mary, standing in the doorway, laughed.

  “You should see yourself, Sinnie!”

  Sinnie gazed at her mistress. Pregnant! And she did look so happy, now. Going off most days with Mistress Hutchinson, the two of them looking into their baskets, comparing. Tinctures, scissors, linens.

  And I am peaceful, alone with house, hens, bairn. Ah, may they keep me after my indenture is over.


  Sinnie sniffed at the dandelion. Bitter, the smell of life. She rose, shaking soap from her hands. Samuel had wandered off.

  “I’ll go,” Mary offered.

  “Nay, I’ll be after the peevie bairn.”

  Happy, she be happy at last. She ran over the grassy track, leapt a pile of manure, heard Samuel’s delighted squeal as he caught sight of her.

  Anne Hutchinson persuaded Henry Vane to stay and run again for governor.

  He was defeated by John Winthrop, as was every other Hutchinsonian on the General Court, since the vote was deliberately moved to Newtown, too far for some of Anne’s Boston supporters to travel.

  Quickly, Winthrop made a new law—no newcomer might remain in the colony for longer than three weeks without permission of the General Court. For it was the merchants who were arriving in greatest number and who were most likely to side with Anne.

  They will silence us, Mary thought, hearing the news. Decree by decree. Or worse. As Laud did to their own, back home.

  Governor Winthrop summoned the people of Boston to the meeting house. It was sultry, so humid that Mary felt sweat at the roots of her hair. Mary, Sinnie and Samuel passed the whipping post where bits of frayed rope lay in the new grass. Dandelions lined a path worn along the south side of the building. Mary joined the women. They walked quietly, with bent heads, and Mary, too, lowered her eyes, less with obedience than to hide her lack of it. She followed Anne into the building. The smell of childbirth came from Anne’s clothing, a vinegar-blood brightness. Blue bags beneath her eyes—and her expression was acute, stern, as if examining a wound.

  “Were you …”

  “Aye,” Anne whispered. There were fine hairs on her upper lip; her skin had begun its complex collapse. They were now inside the sanctified room. “A girl. A long labour.”

  Some knew why they had been gathered. Those who did not slid questioning eyes at others, fanning themselves with hats or turkey-feather fans. Governor Winthrop waited until the doors were shut. Then he rose and stood behind the lectern. He was silent until every stir, cough, or boy’s wriggle had ceased.

  “As you know,” he began. “The salvages are instruments of the Devil. He is their commander. You have heard that he hath stirred the salvages up against us English.”

  He glanced at Reverend Cotton. “Our ministers tell us that God hath allowed the Devil to raise his forces in order to awaken us from our slide into sloth and sin. So it is particularly notable that in this time we have been sorely put to the test.”

  He paused.

  “The Lord hath allowed our triumph.”

  Triumph. Mary’s eyes went to her lap, rested upon her own hands, known since childhood, with their daily refinements. Salvages; but she could not picture the imps of Satan he would have them imagine. She remembered, rather, Miantonomi, the Narragansett sachem, accompanied by the son of Chief Canonicus and twenty sanaps, striding down Corn Hill Road, summoned to parley.

  Clasped hands tightened. Her thumbnails flared red, then white.

  “… our English marched in the night to their fort at Mystic, Connecticut, and beset it at the break of day. After two hours’ fight, they did set fire to it. They slew two chief sachems, and one hundred fifty fighting men. They slew one hundred and fifty … people …”

  Her eyes flew up. Winthrop had slurred the words, like spreading softened butter. Her mind shouted them.

  Old people. Sunken of chest, with spotted, gnarled hands.

  Women. Firelight, terrified eyes. Arms around their …

  Children.

  Babies.

  “We shall have a day of thanks kept in June for this victory.”

  At night, every window in the house was swung wide on its hinges to admit the sea air. By breakfast time, the catnip beside the stone doorstep wilted. Sun stretched across the sill and burned the scoured floor. Fire glimmered in the grey coals and Sinnie bent over the hearth, stirring them to life.

  Mary sat by the door, eyes closed, holding to her nose a linen-wrapped package of toasted bread steeped in vinegar to assuage her morning sickness. Sweat slid down her temples as she fought waves of nausea. Sounds became sharp, sudden, senseless: the child’s chatter, Sinnie’s croon, a loud snap from the fire.

  “Mistress.”

  “Yes.”

  “Shall I fetch the oven wood?”

  Ah, ’tis bake day.

  The fire, stoked to ferocity in the domed oven. Coals, scraped out. The table, covered with flour, molasses, vegetables, pans, spoons. Wash, dry, chop, sweat, feed Samuel, walk to the spring. While wanting to curl on her side with her eyes closed and her breathing spare, shallow.

  “Aye.”

  William spent his days at his milliner’s shop in the market. He had bought a share of the new town dock, which included a wharf crane and a warehouse. Jurden had proved as much a godsend to William as Sinnie was to Mary. Patient, uncomplaining, he anticipated William’s needs like a foreman; and along with other men William had hired, made the long daily journey to fields and pastures on Pullen Point where William grew corn and kept cattle and pigs. They set forth before daybreak, rowing up through the inlets and marshes, landing on a sandy beach. Jurden attempted to describe the place; how, veiled in mist, were grasses looped by dewed spider’s webs, and vine-draped fences, and pig pens, and fields of corn. How eagles soared overhead and the cows wandered amongst the trees, grazing in their shade, while the pigs rooted in pens built between the boles of girdled hardwoods.

  Mary stood and went outside. She gazed out over the marshes, the glittering water, the islands. So peaceful, she thought, while those who looked upon it fought over the proper template for salvation.

  —

  Mary and Anne walked slowly, tired. A cool breeze threaded its welcome way through the July heat. It came up between the close-set houses to their left, smelling of the harbour—tarry wharves, tide wrack. In their baskets, they carried small crocks of goose-grease, knives, pennyroyal, rue, juniper berries. A baby boy had been born after a night of labour.

  “I did not imagine that the New World would be so hot.”

  “Aye, as hot as it is cold,” Anne said. “’Tis a place of extremes.”

  She is stretched, Mary thought, sliding her eyes at Anne’s face. The meetings had grown unwieldy, volatile. Anne had become sharp, dismissive and the women were afraid to ask their questions. For they saw how she had no time for slow minds, and that in the cold art of debate she was without compassion, separating thought from thinker. Even men were careful to consider their words before offering them up for Anne’s pronouncements.

  “Reverend Cotton hath become …” Anne mused.

  She spoke as if the thought had escaped, unwittingly, from fatigue. The sun beat down upon the dusty grass and the burning soil.

  “What?”

  Anne’s footsteps made a pat-pat, her skirt dragged in the dust. Her pace increased.

  “He is no longer so welcoming to me. He seeks excuses to avoid my visits. His child is sick and must have silence. He hath not the time, his sermon is not yet complete … And so on.”

  She shifted her basket to the other arm. An insect made a long trilling that increased in volume until it broke.

  They came to the square. On one side was the market, with its long porch, women slipping into the shops. Across from it, the meeting house.

  “Ah,” Anne breathed. “Do you see, Mary. In this heat. No water, no shelter. No shade.”

  A woman was chained to a post. She wore a leather collar with an iron ring. Her dress was black with sweat. She leaned forward to ease the pain in her arms, bound behind her. Her eyes slid and rolled, the whites prominent, their expression shifting between rage and terror.

  They hurried across the square. Anne sought a cloth in her basket, moistened it with a tincture. She pressed it to the woman’s cracked lips.

  “What was your transgression?” Anne asked.

  “I did strike my husband. I did lift my hand to him.”

  A jingle
of lifted muskets. The woman wrenched her head within her collar to spit at the approaching watchmen.

  “There is nothing to be done, Mary,” Anne murmured.

  Henry Vane made his plans to return to England. He would leave in August. Until then, he picked through Boston’s filthy streets with a distrait air, plucking at his lace cuffs.

  “I am going to investigate the Narragansett Country,” William said. He was carving the design of a stag on an axe helve, having broken the last. He probed with his gouge, forming the horns.

  Samuel slept, Sinnie had climbed the ladder to her bed. From their chairs set before the open door, they could smell the smoke of Jurden’s pipe. They listened to the crickets, the crying sea birds. They watched the clouds, smouldering over the islands, drifting, evolving from fire-red to cottony pink.

  “ ‘Salvation by works, salvation by grace.’ On the ferry, Josiah and Hugh were nose to nose, the colour of beets. Roaring on the subject. And then there are those who name her …”

  He broke off, his lips worked over unspeakable words. Still nothing had been done about the remonstrance that he and the other men had filed with the court. Still John Wheelwright had not been sentenced. Yet the watchmen were vigilant and there were more public punishments in order that no bad deed should bring down God’s wrath; whippings, hangings, placing cleft sticks on tongues, the imprisonment of both men and women in the stocks. Even children were brought to the elders or magistrates to be questioned about their own parents; and were threatened by the death penalty in case of their own “extraordinary sinfulness.” Neighbours were wary of one another, watching, terrified, for signs and wonders. Boston hissed with hateful words: sedition, contempt, slander.

  “Witch or whore,” Mary said. Anger had grown in her, fitfully, over the summer. It ebbed and then bloomed larger at each recurrent outrage.

  William set down his gouge, considered her. She saw the stubble on his cheeks, pricks of hair reddened by the light.

  “Witch or whore,” she repeated, coldly, her voice pitched so that neither Sinnie nor passing neighbour would hear.