Charis in the World of Wonders

by Marly Youmans

  “Fear shows us colorful pictures,” my father once told me. “When we remember that Providence goes with us everywhere, there is no fear. For even what is ill and evil can be turned toward good. But in God’s own time, not ours. Never try to make the divine skip and hop to a tune.”

  But how could this threat against me become a blessing?

  The men conferred in a huddle, but I did not try to hear what they were saying. I was nearly numb with the change that had come over my life in so few minutes. My Samuel was still crying in the background.

  Finally Mr. Barnard came forward with several of the others. “We will escort you to shelter since the justice has been called to Boston and cannot be consulted.”

  “This house is a safe place where nothing ill has ever happened,” I told him.

  “That is as may be,” he said. “But we wish to protect the race of timorous women from those who may be aroused by the news and angered, and we have a duty to shield others who might be harmed. Get your cloak and your child, and let us go. Our elders say that this is the most biting season in their lifetimes, and a judgment sent of God. Sure and certain it is that a visitation of such bleakness means a scourging of the town for mischief.”

  Who might be harmed. By me. What folly. And where is Jotham?

  Slowly I went to the chest in my bedchamber and fetched my cloak, bonnet, and felt hat. I gathered up my pattens, and also the rabbit-skin wrap and my mother’s woven blanket for Samuel. As in a dream, I found myself downstairs again, looking down on my child. My breasts prickled with milk. He would be hungry before we lit down in some other nest, I feared.

  When I lifted him from the cradle, he was warm and damp, and so I cauled him tightly for the outdoors. Already brute winter was upon us, with November more like January, the rivers frozen and snow on the ground. The elders could remember no such year as this, when the sacramental bread rattled sadly in the plates and Goodwife Chandler died upright in the pew on a particularly frigid morning. The ink in the bottle froze when our ministers sat down to write sermons, and that, people whispered, was naught but a devilish prank.

  Mr. Barnard assigned two men to go with me; one of them claimed to know a secure situation until the morrow, when I might be moved to Salem to answer questions. My state was changed so quickly! We walked away from the house, and some of my near neighbors came out of doors and called out to know what was happening, but Mr. Barnard bade them to go back inside. They did not. When I looked back, a knot of people had gathered around him to demand the news.

  It occurred to me as a strangeness that Goodwife Bel Dane had accused me of nothing true, and yet she had forgotten to claim the one guilty matter that I would have assented to—that I was the reason for Mary’s death and hence the cause of the drop of blood on the doll’s face. That I would have admitted freely. Did my guilt not come to me every morning when I woke?

  My appointed guards, Goodman George Abbot and Goodman William Barker, were not unkind to me. Goodman Abbot hardly spoke on the first part of the walk, though he commented on the handsomeness of my child and said that he was sorry for my poor estate. Eventually he admonished his companion for his excess of talk and curiosity. On that occasion, Goodman Abbot became voluble.

  “If she is a witch, William Barker, why do you want to stir her up? She might bewitch your stock until they bounce along the ground. Might put urine in the well and nails in the milk. Rot your cloth, damp your salt and powder. She might fluster you, showing up in the shape of a great feathery owl, whoo-whooing around the door when the four of you are lined up in the bed as neat as four needles in a goody’s pincushion. She might come scotch-hopping along to your bedchamber with the Devil’s black book under her arm, and every name signed with blood. Or maybe with her own head tucked under her arm and a bloody neck-stump poking out of her gown. She might tempt your children to grow so stubborn in mind that they would never again obey you, no matter how stoutly they were reproved or by whom.”

  Goodman Barker looked abashed by this outpouring and only protested mildly, “She is not a batter to be beaten fine. So I shall not stir her. Moreover, we are not four to the bed but five, for there is my wife’s sister who lives with us.”

  Ignoring this remonstrance and correction, Goodman Abbot went on. “And if she is not a witch, why pester and plague her?”

  Seeing that I struggled with the bundle of my son and with walking so far in snow, he offered to carry Samuel, and I gave over the babe, though I did not like to do so. Goodman Abbot carefully adjusted the rabbit-skin wrap and blanket, bending over the child to look him in the face. “Poor little witch-child,” I heard him murmur.

  William Barker had been thinking hard as he trudged and now burst out. “Whoever heard of any such whoo-whooing witch, Goodman Abbot? An owl, you say! A witch comes as a crow or a raven in all the accounts I heard tell. Or a wolf whispering along in the shadows.”

  Too stunned by cold to cry, Samuel stared at the unfamiliar features and then turned his eyes toward me.

  “Pah! Most of them are ancient poor widows with no comeliness or sense remaining,” Goodman Abbot said. “I saw one hanged in Boston two years back, a pitiful rag of a woman who was so Irish that she couldn’t speak English. How the judges understood what she answered when she spoke in the foreign tongue called Gaelic, I do not know. I believe they did not, as at the Tower of Babel.”

  “Not this one,” Goodman Barker said. “She is not old, nor lacking in English words or comeliness.”

  “Perhaps she is no rampant hag and witch.”

  “She has the hair,” Goodman Barker said, giving me a sidelong glance. “It is a devilish sign, some say.”

  “There is that,” Goodman Abbot agreed. “Would you say there is a lick of red on the child’s hair?”

  At this, we three must stop and stand in a huddle to inspect the wisp of hair that was visible below the biggen and cap.

  In the late afternoon sunlight, the silks of Samuel’s hair did seem to have a faint new color that I had not seen before. I was sorry for it, knowing that he would be, sometime or other, blamed for his hair.

  “I think not,” Goodman Barker pronounced.

  “And I think so,” Goodman Abbot said, shifting Samuel so he lay against his chest.

  “Perhaps,” I whispered.

  Despite the caution against curiosity by his friend, Goodman Barker went on asking me many questions about my journey from Falmouth, and how I had come to be in the Town of Andover, though I was sure he already knew much of my story. The tales of newcomers were generally regarded as village property. He listened closely as I told why I kept Mary’s doll as a memento.

  “And now I suppose it will be lost to me forever,” I said. “And I have so little to remind me of my mother and sister.”

  “Maybe the justices will dismiss the case after the questioning,” Goodman Barker said. “When you tell the story, it seems reasonable and shows affection.”

  Goodman Abbot sighed as if he were in doubt. “In court with the questioners, everything is different,” he said. “They make things seem otherwise.” He thumped on the rabbit-skin wrap for emphasis, and Samuel gave out a small, mournful cry.

  “You would think so, having lost your case in the matter of a cow,” Goodman Barker said.

  “I was that tongue-tied, I could hardly string my words together, and the other man glib as a brook in spring spate.” At this, Goodman Abbot stopped dead and stared down as if forgetting his errand and minutely concerned with his feet.

  I reached to draw a corner of wrapping over Samuel’s head. Startled, Goodman Abbot looked at me before setting off again.

  “That might well have made the difference,” Goodman Barker called to him, “though they say the truth will hatch from the egg of a lie.”

  “Such a short time ago I was content and pleased, and glad to have a family once more,” I said.

  We hurried to catch up with Goodman Abbot and walked on in silence. I listened hard to the sounds of breathing and
the craunch-craunch of the snow under our feet because I did not wish to brood. But Goodman Barker must have been dwelling on my words because he soon offered a piece of solace. “At least we do not burn witches in this country. Our witch-women are made to ride the wooden horse, as it is called. And wear the bridle, too.”

  “The scaffold and the rope? That is no consoling thought,” Goodman Abbot said. “Why, the foolishness of it makes me wroth to think you meant it so.”

  To my surprise, I laughed, afterward assuring the men that I had taken no offense. “Hanging by the neck is undoubtedly less fierce and awful than being roasted alive,” I said, imagining the weight of rope at my throat—surely I had felt a sort of weight there already, ever since I heard Bel Dane’s accusation. “And at the end, I should be like my mother and father, my sister and brothers, and all my kin. And perhaps that would be a turn toward the good.” The words were not what I expected to hear myself saying, but I was oddly comforted by them, despite having been oppressed by apprehensions only moments before.

  An unexpected prayer drifted like a single, starry flake of snow: My dear Christ, let me be pleased with life, whether short or long, and let me see thy salvation.

  “Are you so certain? What if they were bound to the other place, and not in paradise? Or you in the one and they in the other?” Goodman Barker peered at me anxiously. “For truly, we do not know what Judgment Day will bring, and all is a darkness and a wondering except in hours of assurance. And those do not stay with us for always.”

  Goodman Abbot halted once again and stared at his friend. “You are a queer sort of a man and no mistake! A regular Job’s comforter. How long did you have to puzzle before you found another such soothing thought?”

  “I meant it kindly,” Goodman Barker protested.

  Goodman Abbot adjusted another bit of the covering to shield Samuel’s face from the fine sparks of ice that had begun to fall and walked on.

  “It is a mercy that we are almost there, or you might have her ready to call for a carpenter and be measured for a coffin with all your pleasant cheer and kindliness,” he said.

  “The snow grows deeper,” I said, wishing that we had never left the house. My feet ached with the cold. I feared that my Samuel would be lucky to escape the blight of frost marks on his face. And that would be the fault of my accuser if he did, I reflected. We would each have a marked child in that case—one by “fire,” one by ice.

  I had hardly thought of where we were going, so much else pressed upon me, but I now gazed about and took my bearings. The last houses were behind us, and the abandoned Wardwell place lay ahead. Might it be our destination? As far as I knew, my remaining stay in Andover would be only the one night. I would be removed elsewhere, and the whole weary matter of questioning would begin.

  Perhaps I would be searched. I had heard how women were stripped and inspected, down to their privy parts, for any sore push or mole that might be a devil’s teat. The mind being whimsical and whirligig in nature, I now wondered why a diabolical creature would not suck on a woman’s breast like a child. Why did a demon have to create its own way into her body, so that shivery tales were told of evil rustlings under petticoats?

  “My liking is not to bide in a house where a woman has made away with herself and her babe,” Goodman Barker said. “No, indeed. I do not care for it.”

  So it would be the Wardwell house.

  “The goody did not make away with herself in the house but in the well,” Goodman Abbot pointed out.

  “I doubt a ghost would bide for long in a well,” Goodman Barker said. “Stands to reason that she would come inside with the ghost-babe to warm herself.”

  “Well, I disbelieve that there is any hot or cold to a ghost, so perhaps she would just stay put. Flitter round and round in the well-water like a fish.” Goodman Abbot checked Samuel’s face, and I moved closer and saw his features pinched up against the cold.

  Goodman Barker considered this proposition and finally asked, “Would you drink that water?”

  Goodman Abbot made an exclamation that might have been irritation. “A woman is not a tea leaf to tint the water,” he said. “Nor is she poison. Unless she stays too long in summer.”

  Goodman Barker nodded. “The water would not be fit to drink, and the well would have to be sealed.”

  “ ’Tis not summer,” Goodman Abbot said. “And she didn’t bide too long. Why do you think such foolish things?”

  The house, which had been but a bump in the distance, had come near as I listened to the men, marveling at how they were able to speak so blithely of my future and Goodwife Phoebe Wardwell’s past. I noticed a smudge of smoke going up from the stalk of the main chimbley that was the most substantial thing about the little house that had once been and was meant to be a full-size house but now would probably never grow larger.

  “You are an interesting pair,” I said.

  “No pair at all,” retorted Goodman Abbot. “Or at any rate, not a matched pair.”

  “We are no horses to jog on in harness,” Goodman Barker said.

  Goodman Abbot lifted the rabbit skin from Samuel’s face. “An ox and an ass,” he whispered. “I’ll be the ox.”

  Samuel’s tongue tasted the air and jots of ice, and he blinked.

  Another day I might have replied to Goodman Abbot’s jest; another day I might have raised my hand to hide a smile. But not now, on this day of fled freedom.

  “Look there,” I said. Ahead of us, I could see a man with a fowling-piece leaning against the house. Was I so monstrous that he needed a weapon? As we came closer, he stepped away from the wall and shouldered the gun.

  Goodman Barker bawled out, “Goodman Peeters, what do you here?”

  The man came forward to meet us, saying that he had been sent to act as a guard and to set fires in the two chimbleys. He gave me a swift glance, did not respond to my courtesies, and seemed to have decided to have little to do with a potential witch.

  “My, you must have been in a rumbunctious hurry,” Goodman Barker said, looking at him with admiration.

  “Did what I was ordered to do. Come in and warm yourselves,” he said, “and take the prisoner upstairs.”

  “She seems a fine sort of young woman,” Goodman Abbot said. “After being in her company, I do not believe she can be a witch. And this is a sturdy boy in my arms.”

  “Thank you for that change of mind,” I said.

  “No tu-whooing at all,” Goodman Barker added.

  Goodman Peeters looked at him steadily.

  “No owls,” Goodman Barker explained.

  “She may look like a ‘fine sort,’ but Satan sometimes appears not as an ordinary rollipoke but as a silken bag,” Goodman Peeters said. “Therein to catch the silly unawares.”

  It occurred to me that he had been talking to Mr. Barnard.

  “I am neither a rollipoke nor a silk bag. Just an ordinary woman who hopes God and men will discern truth and show her mercy.”

  Goodman Peeters paid my words no notice but ushered us inside. We scuffed at the door, leaving behind us a miniature landscape of snow shaken from our shoes. But when we went to the loft, there was nothing at all in the way of furniture in the chamber. I felt some relief, for now surely I would be prisoned on the lower floor. And I deemed it the better place, with some glimmer of hope that I could get out and be free. For was this night’s jail not strangely providential? Could I not hope to say, Oh, wonderful, unspeakable mercies of God who takes care of us when we may take no care of ourselves?

  “Put her in the lean-to room downstairs,” Goodman Abbot suggested. He was still carrying Samuel. “This little babe needs warmth after such a frozen walk, and his mother’s care.”

  “Thank you,” I said again, giving him a bob of respect.

  Heated by a small wooden chimbley, the back room was where a bed had stood in Goodwife Wardwell’s illness, and it was there still, though the coverings and hangings had been stripped away. The big cradle for Phoebe Wardwell’s baby sti
ll hulked by the hearth. Even in the daylight, the chamber with its sloping roof was dark, all win-dowless and sad. Perhaps I thought so because nothing of Phoebe Wardwell remained there except in my memory, and those thoughts were gloomy.

  The hearth was not promising, but Goodman Barker brought in some sticks of wood and coals from the main room in a broken pot.

  “Glad to find that Goodman Wardwell did not tote away the woodpile,” he said to me.

  “Thank you for this kindness,” I said.

  He went out and returned several times with armloads of split oak and maple, and Goodman Peeters gave him unneeded directions about how better to lay the fire. Meanwhile, Goodman Abbot was walking up and down the cramped, slope-roofed bedchamber, singing a dismal-sounding psalm to Samuel, who cried loudly before stopping and staring in what I hoped was not alarm.

  “Helpful that the place was not torched a second time by the Indians,” Goodman Peeters said. “They often fire houses that stand forlorn.”

  “It seems forlorn enough,” I said to no one in particular.

  “The fire will be lively soon,” Goodman Barker said. He seemed about to pat my shoulder, but Goodman Peeters cried out, “Do not handle the witch!”

  “Who says she is bound to be a witch?” Turning his back, Goodman Barker squatted down and fed the flames with more wood.

  Goodman Peeters frowned. “You relish witches?”

  “No—”

  “Then keep quiet.”

  When I sat down on the bed, I heard rustling in the corn husks. Mice. Already they had come in from the cold. I would sleep there in my cloak and be tidy enough. I did not like the thought of mice. Familiars for a witch. Tiny familiars. Witches had hogs or hounds, rabbits, mousers, toads, turtles, and even chimeras as familiars if what was whispered was true. Birds sometimes followed a witch, circling around her head or flying at her back and beck. But all I had was the field mice in Phoebe Wardwell’s shuck mattress.