Love's Pursuit

by Siri Mitchell

  Two weeks I spent in worry and restlessness, and then I was placed on trial at the meetinghouse. The building was filled to overflowing with people from Newham and around the edges, stopping up the gaps, were people from Stoneybrooke. Simeon Wright acted as his own lawyer.

  “The death of Captain Daniel Holcombe was unnatural and unexpected. ’Twas done at the hand of Simeon Wright, and yet he claims it was no willful slaughter. But a man is dead. What say you, Simeon Wright?”

  “ ’Tis not what I say. ’Twas what was done to me. I came upon my betrothed fornicating with the captain. And look you to that gown Susannah Phillips was wearing! What man would not be driven to lust by it? When I avenged myself upon him, how could I be expected to control my actions? ’Tis not me to blame. ’Tis her.” Simeon snatched the gown from the clerk and held it up in front of him so that all could see it. The stomacher yawned from the bodice where he had ripped it. Blood had stained the front. But still it shimmered. Still the ribbons and bows fluttered at his movements. Still the lace cascaded from the collar, delicate as a spider’s web.

  A murmur rose up around me as he stood there with it, in front of the pulpit. And then, quite suddenly, he flung it at me.

  It landed in my lap. As he continued to speak, my hands reached out to stroke the fine material. They played with the ribbons. And my thoughts went to remembering that dance I had danced with Daniel. I lost myself in that memory, that thought, until I felt my mother’s hand upon my arm.

  I realized then that my eyes had closed, that I was swaying on the bench. Rocking first forward and then back.

  And all eyes were fixed upon me.

  Until Simeon snapped them all back to himself. “How can a death be willful when a man is driven to madness? How can it be willful when a man is tempted by a harlot beyond what is reasonable? How can he be held accountable for his actions when one such as this parades herself in front of him? Was she not pledged to be my wife? And is not the penalty for adultery, death?”

  He spoke for over an hour, laying out his defense, all the while accusing me. As he spoke, his words grew louder, his gestures more animated. Spittle flew from his lips; his hair grew damp with sweat. He looked like a man who had lost control. But I knew differently. I was looking at something else. I was looking at his eyes. And they were not the eyes of a man who had taken leave of his senses. They were cold. Dispassionate. Calculating.

  After he took his seat, a break was called. And after the break, the selectman called for witnesses to my character. Someone thrust our day-girl from the seated crowd to the front of the meetinghouse.

  “Aye, girl. You have something to say?”

  Her gaze crept back toward the crowd.

  “If you have nothing to say, then remove yourself.”

  “I had been working at the Phillips’s this winter.”

  “Aye?”

  Again, her eyes were drawn toward the benches that crowded the room. Whatever she sought there must have given her courage, for her words came out in a blurt. “Susannah spoiled the family’s small beer and we had naught to drink for a whole week but melted snow and then one week she forgot to make it altogether.”

  Aye, but that had been the week of the child’s illness! How could I be expected to keep up with matters of daily life, when there was a question of death?

  Around me, there were rumblings and mutterings.

  The selectman dismissed the girl. She fled back toward her place as if chased by demons, without a glance at me.

  “Is there anyone else who wishes to speak to the defendant’s character?”

  Goody Baxter appeared at the edge of those gathered.

  “Step forward.”

  She took a visible breath, straightened, and walked toward the front of the pulpit.

  “I am Goody Baxter, a neighbor. From Stoneybrooke Towne.

  One forenoon, long about several months ago, Susannah Phillips came to my door.”

  “And what of it?”

  “She asked me for a coal, since she had let her fires go out.”

  There was a great murmuring at work behind me.

  But had not she put my fears, my humiliation, to rest? Had she not said that all of them, all of the women, had done such things in their youth? Why would she speak now of the blunder she had so readily excused? I closed my eyes against the slight. Bowed my head.

  Goody Hillbrook pushed to the front. She took Goody Baxter’s place.

  “I am Goody Hillbrook. Also from Stoneybrooke Towne. I went to visit the Phillips to check on their welfare and take them a taste of my dinner, since their mother had gone—”

  “Their mother had gone?”

  “To Boston, to wean the babe.”

  “Continue.”

  “The girl received me with some gladness, since she said she had not had time to even think of what to offer, let alone prepare for supper. And there was nothing put to the fires for the meal. At four o’clock in the day!”

  We’d had pottage and a pudding at the ready. With blueberries! And nothing to do to prepare it but steam the pudding. I was simply being polite.

  At Goody Hillbrook’s retreat, my father stepped up to the front.

  Cleared his throat.

  All went silent.

  “I am her father. This is not right. Her mother was gone, kept from us by the snows. How can a girl be expected to keep up? With all that must be done to manage a house?”

  I was grateful for his support, but anyone who looked at me did not see what he did. They saw a woman grown. A woman who should be able to manage a household. A woman who should be ready to become a goodwife. But the truth of it was that I had failed. I was not good. Neither was I fit to be anybody’s wife.

  Father’s place was taken by another. And still another.

  Slattern, sloth, and whore.

  They were right. That is who I had become. Nay, that is who I was. Who I must have always been. As the witnesses kept coming forward, I felt smaller and smaller. And soon I did not feel at all.

  It was with some surprise that I saw Abigail step forward. Tears blurred my vision as my friend moved toward the pulpit. She did not have to speak for me. Nothing she could say would turn the tide of words that had preceded her. But it was kind of her to wish to try.

  “I am Goody Clarke. From Stoneybrooke Towne. One morning last month, Susannah Phillips came to my door. She begged me for a bit of my mother dough . . . because she had spent all of hers on bread the day before and had forgotten to keep any aside. She had used it all up.”

  There were audible gasps from the crowd behind me.

  Beside me, my mother recoiled.

  Surely I was doomed. Not only had I been derelict in my duties, but I had also failed to protect the legacy that had been passed down to me. For want of forethought, I had consumed my inheritance without knowledge and without remorse. I had devoured that which gave life.

  I had not been wrong. Abigail’s witness had not turned the tide of words from me. But I had not expected that hers, when added to the others, would threaten to overwhelm me.

  “Do you wish to speak on your behalf, Susannah Phillips?”

  I stared at the selectman for a moment, wondering what he thought I might possibly say. And then I shook my head. There were no words to combat those testimonies. They were right, all of them.

  Perhaps not about the details or the why of what I had done, but their intent in speaking was plain. And I agreed with them.

  I deserved to die.

  As I was led out of the meetinghouse that day, Goody Baxter stepped in front of me. “You must know, Susannah Phillips, that I am bound to tell the truth. Even if I do not like it or wish to do it.”

  I could not bear to look at her. To know that she had felt some secret scorn for me that wanted only opportunity to be told. Certainly she had to tell the truth. But she needn’t have been so hasty in the doing of it.

  The deputy held one of my forearms while another man held the other. They marched me down the s
treet. Along the way a woman gathered her children to her and stood aside as we passed. Far aside.

  Against the wall of a building.

  Another woman, the Millers’ neighbor, cried out as we passed by. “Can she not be kept somewhere else?”

  “ ’Tis the selectman who holds her. Where else should she be kept?”

  “I just . . . ’tis all my children and all my servants living right here beside her. What if . . . she does . . . something to them?”

  “What might she do?”

  “A girl who wore a gown like that? She could do anything!” If the goodwife had meant the words to be whispered, she had not succeeded.

  “And if she does, then let the constable know of it.”

  She addressed herself to me then. “Susannah Phillips? If you work any mischief in this place, know that you will only be the sorrier for it!” She glared at me as I entered the Miller house.

  Mischief? What kind of mischief did she think I might work?

  My mischief had been done. I had enticed a good man to come to my aid and now he was dead. Because of me.

  Only God is good; God is only good.

  God was not good! God had taken the good man and spared the evil man. How could that be good?

  Tell me, Daniel, what to think! You were wrong. God is not good. God does not love me. God does not want me. And what have you to say about it?

  Nothing.

  He had nothing to say because he had been wrong. Entirely and completely wrong about the God he thought he knew. And had I not always suspected? Had his God not always sounded too accepting, too understanding, too loving to be true?

  I stood in the center of my small cell for a long while, cloak wrapped around me, hugging my arms to my sides. And then I sat. And when I tired of looking at the dirt on the floor and boards comprising the walls, I lay down on my pallet and went to sleep.

  It took some two hours to gain Stoneybrooke Towne, but we had walked it with the rest of those returning for the night. Though I was glad to be gone from Newham, my return was not so difficult as I had expected. Not with my father having gone. Aye, I had crept around corners and searched through the crowds for him at first, but by midday, I had been assured of my deliverance.

  I was working to place supper upon the table while Thomas paced the length of the kitchen, muttering. “If Susannah will not speak, then Simeon Wright must be made to perjure himself.”

  “You would do as well to pray for snow in June.”

  “We know that he lies—”

  “Aye. But ’tis a lie couched in truth. He did kill the captain. But he admits to it. What more is there to say? It must be proven willful in order that he be convicted. And how can that be done if ’tis just his word against mine?”

  He stopped. Glanced over at me. Continued his pacing. “ ’Tis true. If Susannah does not speak, then ’tis your word against his.

  If we could just prove something other than willful murder . . . something else for which he might be accused.”

  “He should be judged, then, for his own accusation.”

  “To which he is witness.”

  “A false witness.”

  “False witness . . . aye! If he could be proved to be a false witness, then . . .”

  “He shall be put to death.”

  “According to the laws God gave Moses. And there can be no higher law. If he cannot be accused of willful murder, then perhaps he can be accused of bearing false witness.”

  I placed biscuits upon the table and went to the lean-to for cheese and some butter. Put a trencher of hot pot between us. We ate in silence, Thomas working at his food as if he hoped to discover something of importance within it. But there was nothing there.

  Nothing but corn and meat and beans.

  “Does she wish to die?” Thomas asked the question of me as if he truly wanted to know.

  I shrugged. “I suppose it might not matter to her one way or another.”

  “How could it not matter?”

  “The man she loved is dead. The town she lived in has turned against her. The admiration once shown her is gone. She is a woman alone with none to rescue her. Why would she wish to live?”

  “But . . . how could one wish to die?”

  “Perhaps the question is why would one wish to live when there is nothing to live for? Perhaps, if God truly does see, if justice truly is done, then she will be acquitted. But what sort of life would she have? Who would marry her? Who would speak to her? She might hope to teach at a dame’s school, but who would send their children to her for teaching? Hers would a fate worse than a leper’s.”

  “So you argue for her death?”

  “Would it not be kinder than to argue for her life?”

  “How could you even say such a thing?”

  “I say it because I used to think it. Every day. Every day, Thomas, before the day you spoke to me. Every day I woke hoping that it might be my last. That perhaps that day might be the day my father would hit me hard enough to kill me. I had nothing else to hope for.”

  His eyes searched mine, tears trembling at the edges. “You wished for death? Truly?”

  “Every day.”

  He placed his hands over his face and wept. “What kind of world, what kind of place do we live in when the best our women can hope for is death? What sort of Zion have we created? We are no City on a Hill, we are only a place of horror. What have we become?”

  I did not know what to do. And so I put my hand upon his shoulder.

  He reached out and pulled me to himself.

  “Do not grieve yourself, Thomas. ’Twas not your fault. I am the least of women . . .”

  “Which makes it worse. ’Tis the least among us who should receive the most compassion, the most protection. And they do not. If we had hoped to build some sort of earthly paradise, then we have failed.”

  42

  THE SECOND DAY WAS the same as the first, taken over by a parade of witnesses vouching for some heinous act that I had done.But when the testimony stretched back to the time I had been a babe, when I had toddled about without knowledge, I knew then that there was no hope. If I could be convicted on the basis of being a child, then there was no doubt I would be convicted for killing the captain too.

  It was interminable, all the talking. All the words. All the truths.Truths that might never have been assembled were it not for the existence of Daniel’s gown. And the fact that I had been caught wearing it. But it was so . . . beautiful. So lovely. If I closed my eyes, I could remember how Daniel looked at me when he had seen me in it. And what was the wrong in that? What was the sin in loving and being loved?

  A gown? They would convict me on the basis of a gown when I could state a dozen, nay, a hundred offenses more grave? Had I not been harboring rebellious thoughts for years? Had I not been pretending to be the good Susannah Phillips even as I knew that inside I was as wretched as the thieves that hung upon the cross beside our Lord? Aye, I was as wretched as they thought me to be, but it had nothing to do with a gown.

  And what about Simeon Wright? What about his offenses, what about his abominations? They would try to convict me on spurious charges and not even for one second pause to turn their eyes upon him?

  They were blinded, these people, by the persons they believed us to be!

  Tears of rage, of impotence, welled up beneath my eyelids, and I let them spill out upon my cheeks into the day. It did not matter. I was responsible for Daniel’s death. If I had not loved him so much. If I had let him leave alone. If I had been able to stop the bleeding.

  If it were not for me, then Daniel might have lived.

  And that was Simeon Wright’s point entirely.

  Simeon Wright. He had taken to staring at whoever was speaking in a grave but impatient manner. As if Daniel’s death were a mere inconvenience that would soon be set aside. I watched him frown. I watched him nod his head. I watched him preen. I watched him fondle the gown with his eyes as he sat there. That such a man should live when Danie
l had died!

  And then he smirked one time too many, held up a finger and spoke. “But the gown—”

  “A pox upon the gown!” The words leapt from my mouth before I could stop them.

  The crowd gasped.

  The selectman tried to restore order. “Susannah Phillips, you wish to speak?”

  I took to my feet, indignant. “This has nothing to do with the gown!”

  The arm of the selectman went up to stay any words Simeon Wright might say.

  “The taking of a man’s life requires an accounting, and yet you quibble over a gown? ’Tis true. I wore it. And what of it? Perhaps I wore the gown, but he killed a man . . . and yet you hold me responsible? That man”—I pointed toward Simeon with a shaking finger—“says that he cannot be held responsible for his actions because of my gown. You, all of you, assume that because I was wearing the gown, I must have been fornicating with Daniel Holcombe.How does a gown give you permission to judge me? How can a gown give you the right to convict me? And how could it possibly matter what I was wearing when Daniel was killed?”

  The selectman cleared his throat.

  “Aye, I wore it. Do you know why? I wore it because it was the only way out. That gown was my only escape. Simeon Wright is a tyrant and an extortionist and a murderer. He published our banns without my father’s permission. And because none in Stoneybrooke Town knew, it was left to a stranger, to Daniel, to save me.”

  I had taken the gown from the clerk and clutched it to my chest.It was soaked with blood and ripped at the seams, but still, it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. “I will confess to the sin of vanity. But who among us has not desired to look beautiful for their beloved? Who among us has not desired to be called lovely?For this, for all of this, I am to be hanged? I am to be hanged because one man could not look on me without lust in his heart? How is that my fault? How is it that the gown made him pull the trigger of his musket?”

  I let go of the gown and it dropped to the floor. I returned to my seat.

  Around me rose up a murmur that reverberated through the meetinghouse.

  I suffered from no delusions. They would still convict me, for it was my statement against his, but at least they would do it with my words on their conscience.