The Strange Death of Mistress Coffin

by Robert J. Begiebing

  With a groan I sank into the water and found salvation. Life, it seemed at that moment, might endure and be good again. Every ligament of my body was loosened, searched, beneficently bathed by the warmth. I must have swooned or fallen asleep. For how long I do not know.

  I awoke only at the sound of Higgins’ voice and the pressure of his hands shaking my face. He had risked returning in the storm later to insure my own security. When he found me as I was, he later told me, he had feared my life at first, until he perceived my shallow breathing. He asked if I had met with some accident, and I slowly explained what I could recall to him. He stoked the fire and heated rum as I spoke. He had warned me, he said, to take greater care, to seek shelter. Yes, I agreed. He spread and hung my wet clothes (which I had dropped on the floor) about the fire. He replenished the tub, whose waters had somewhat cooled, with hot water. Then he offered to place the blanket beside me over the top of the tub to cover me, but I said it was not necessary now. I felt no shame, for there was no force or vitality in my body then. I had grown, however, warm at last. He handed me the hot, sugared rum.

  We said nothing while he adjusted the logs in the fireplace and refilled the water pots. He roused Cook and had her place a light supper on the table board for me, and then made ready to return to his family. I thanked him, but my voice betrayed my weakness and he grew concerned again. I managed to assure him that I was restored enough to get along on my own with old Cook, Goody Hastings, though secretly I did not know how it was to be done. We agreed, once he explained his own obligations, that he should return in two days to finish the wood for me. In leaving he added only that he would have his wife look in on me tomorrow to be sure I had regained good estate of body.

  After he left, I lay back in the hot water for some time. How long I cannot say. It was only after finally leaving my bath that I suddenly grew weaker and chilled again. I barely made my way to my bed, with Cook’s help, fell immediately into the deepest sleep, and have lain here three days. It was Goody Higgins who kept me alive during my illness with her oat cakes, broths, decoctions of root and herb, and directions to old Cook as to the necessities of my welfare. Tomorrow I shall walk a little, thanks to her ministrations. But she does not turn a friendly countenance upon me. I rather think she performs what is a duty to another of God’s suffering creatures.

  January 5, 1647

  Higgins himself stopped in today to see how I was getting on. I had been walking again; he asked me about my strength, which, as I assured him, I was regaining. He asked me to walk for him and to see if I could carry implements from the fire-place to the table. I was improving, but slowly, when for some reason I stumbled and he immediately caught me up. “Not well enough to be unattended yet, I think, Mistress Coffin,” he said, helping me to a chair. My sensations upon this event were strange to me. I had lived so long without the caring touch of a man that a ripple of unfamiliar pleasure and sympathy for another spread through me like the stirring of fish suddenly feeding in deep pools.

  He seemed not to notice. He said that he would ask his eldest daughter to attend me twice a day until my strength completely returned. I protested that there was no need, that she was too much needed by her mother. Then it was that I began to think about hiring a servant again, as Mr. C. had recommended. I mentioned this to Higgins, and he thought it a good idea, said he would look about for a prospect himself.

  February 6, 1647

  Today Higgins repaired a hole in the roof of the cow shed where heavy snow brought down a large hickory limb. I am sure it was a frightful labor in such snow. But he approached the task, as is his wont, undaunted by the practical difficulties.

  When he entered the house, unwrapping his coat and shaking the snow from it, he said that he had managed it. He laid his coat on the hearth, stood before the fire, and took the refreshment I offered. I was offering my gratitude for this most recent assistance in my need and had fully launched into an expatiation upon all he had done these past months for me, when he looked at me a little strangely. I continued, saying how far he had surpassed his agreement with my absent husband. For a moment he looked away into the fire as I spoke rapidly, trying to express all the gratitude I felt. But he turned his face back to me, looking up from the fire through the damp fall of his hair. The odor of warm wet wool rose from his coat on the hearth between us. But now the look in his eyes arrested me. It was as if some unmistakable flash of recognition passed between us, some bond of sympathy, a momentary but certain intensity of passion. I cannot now say whether I soon spoke or whether we stayed for some interval in silence. But I felt as if I had been cast away near an island in a burning sea. I beat back and forth between that island world and the world of all my fellow creatures. I could not choose. I knew only that if he were to touch me I would be tossed upon that island with him in the violent gale.

  What a mystery is the heart inflamed with desire! Are not our passions our greatest affliction and severest test? The Creator has filled our cups beyond their rims, a far greater draft than mere necessity would require. My thoughts have grown so curious now. They switch and snap in all and opposite directions. One moment we are humbled, in another we cry out that an angry God has left us in his outrage to swill and grovel like beasts until the night of utter death visits each of us alone. I do not begin to express the turbulence of my thoughts.

  Now that he has gone, I cannot conceive how we shall act or speak to one another at next meeting. Sleep forsakes me once again. And wakefulness is filled with night and torment. Am I not a deserted wife, a woman stripped of her carnal life in the very morning of her second marriage? What is this man to her now whom she married in the sorrow of early widowhood and the sweet freshness of love?

  In wakeful hours I recall not only so many events of my life, but I find my mind wandering over cases of adultery and brutality between man and woman. Moreover, is it not indeed evil even to be capable of evil? malum est, posse malum! We are so readily humbled, stricken neither more nor less than any of these other lost and troubled creatures beneath the sun. Where are we but in God’s cauldron, there to be tried and wrung of every vanity and compulsion of the flesh that grips our earth-bound spirit.

  February 10, 1647

  Returning to me today, H. revealed no hint of what had passed between us. He went about his work without so much as a questioning glance. I soon saw the wisdom of such deportment. This innocence of silence left with me the choice of our future conduct, and the time to consider wisely in my turn. Any pursuit, I now see with a renewed clarity, of the direction begun facing one another before the fire, if it would not by some twist of precedence or circumstance cost us our lives, might at the least cost us much in the way of public humiliation and stripes. Moreover, I should never be permitted to maintain my authority over that portion of Mr. C.’s estate that he had so assiduously arranged for my management.

  Was it not only three years ago that a man and woman were turned off the ladder in Boston? A young maid, on a dare, vowed to marry the next man to come down the road. She made good her vow. But the man was old and infirm, and she comely. Keeping true cost her dearly, for it was not long before she sought some lusty young fellow. These two were caught in the most shameful of circumstances. It was their misfortune to be discovered by the magistrates at just such a time as to be made an example against wantonness. If a certain leniency of law had been applied toward others, these two now were made to feel the full weight of retribution. This and other examples of wretches in similar circumstances return to me frequently now.

  February 23, 1647

  Might I not plead that the spiritual and material bonds of my marriage to Mr. C. had long since dissolved, by his frenzied will and action? Was it not he who abdicated all responsibilities and ties, save one last pecuniary debt, to me his wife, while I, on the other hand, had fulfilled every duty toward him, my husband? Would not the just favor my cause over Mr. C.’s, in foro rectae rationis?

  Why should not a woman in my circumstances unwive h
erself?

  H. speaks of journeys in the spring for the fur trade. He brought to me today one Martha, to be considered for a servant woman. He saw the need, as I did, for this addition to my household. Newly arrived, unmarried, more mature than that previous jade, she may do well enough.

  March 10, 1647

  There is another tale of much sorrow about a maiden lately in Boston. I first heard of it on market day, the fifth day of the week now being set aside for such, but the woeful tale is generally about. At 22 this maiden was the eldest of two daughters to a widower, one Martin, of Casco Bay. He had returned to England on some business for a time, and left his daughters, both known as modest, Godly maidens, to make their own ways. The older daughter, Mary, went to work in the house of a certain Mitten, a married man, who became much taken with her, solicited her chastity, and gained his desire of her for some months. Perhaps because she was so shamed by the circumstances of her life, or for some other reason, she removed to Boston and entered the service of Mrs. Bourne.

  Discovering herself with child, this maid concealed her shame, even though finally others came to suspect her. Her mistress, however, so admired this young woman’s modesty and faithful service that she would give no credit to any reports of the maid’s condition, but thought them merely malicious.

  But when this young woman’s time came on a December night, she withdrew secretly into a back room, gave birth by herself to a woman child, and attempted to extinguish the child’s life by kneeling upon its head. The child being strong, however, it recovered and began to cry, so that this Mary used some greater violence to stifle the life. What suffering and horror she passed through alone that night, one shrinks to envision.

  She might have kept her dark acts hidden had not her master and mistress left for England, causing Mary to remove to another house into the service of a woman, a midwife, who had suspected her condition previously. Upon examining the young woman, her new mistress found her to have been delivered with trial, which the young woman then admitted, saying however that the child had been still-born and that she had placed the tiny corpse in the fire. But a search being made of her former house, the child’s corpse was found in a chest where she had hidden it. During the trial, the jury caused her to touch the face of the corpse, and the blood came newly into it. Hence she admitted all the truth, including the further prostitution of her body with another man since coming to Boston. She was shamed and penitent, but they condemned her to death.

  She complained of her heart’s hardness even at her death. Likewise she prayed for pardon, then for Christ’s mercy, until she was finally turned off. But hanging some time, she met not death, and she asked what they meant to do. Whereupon two men stepped up, one turning the knot of the rope backward, and she quickly died.

  There is much that men and women do outside the laws and strictures of the magistrates and the teachers. I mean not only black arts but fornication, passing a babe before its time, and the curses and assaults that crowd the courts. But to kill one’s own newborn with one’s own hand? To bash out its brains or deny it care for months and turn like a stone against its agonies? Some have pleaded they would prevent their coming into public shame. And though that may be sufficient motivation for a few, must not there be also greater desperation for many others in this departure from all natural sentiment? Must not there be some wrenching of mind from heart to turn the bowels to such darkness? What must be our circumstances and afflictions to act thus? “Who can understand his errors? Cleanse thou me from secret faults.”

  Worse, who among us might not be sufficiently scourged to allow such evil to come into her that she become the instrument of affliction against the innocent of the world? Are we not all of the same nature and kept from like evils not by our own hearts, but through the pleasure of that Greater Power alone? “Also in thy skirts is found the blood of the souls of the poor innocents: I have not found it by secret search, but upon all these.”

  The frightful story has caused me anguish. We are tempted and fall, abandoned, moving toward life or death, passing our time upon the earth in strange joys and travails, amidst awful signs.

  “Thou hast set our iniquities before thee: our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.

  “Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us: and the years wherein we have seen evil.”

  March 12, 1647

  H. makes final preparations to go up into the country. He speaks of a fortnight or three weeks. That is as he arranged with Mr. C. But I doubt he will return before April is out, perhaps even May. I, Martha, and Cook are prepared to manage. It is only strange to me how I fear I shall miss his quiet company as much as his help.

  May 13, 1647

  “Run ye to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem . . . and seek in the broad places thereof, if ye can find a man, if there be any that executeth judgment, that seeketh the truth; and I will pardon it.”

  This spring I saw again the inconstancy of a man. And am I stricken, humbled by my own failure to free myself of corruption and withstand God’s trying of me?

  It was mid-morning. I had been searching for Patience in the wood near my house where she likes to forage. She never ventures far nor stumbles into trouble there, being an old homebody herself and always returning punctually. But this winter, and deep into spring, there had been many wolves about, so I was apprehensive for her on that account even this late into the season.

  The men had organized hunting parties with dogs and set a good reward on wolfskins. But the creatures are so prolific that their constant menace to domestic animals was hardly reduced until their worst season abated with the fish spawnings. As Mr. Surrey remarked, there is so much wolf dung about that we need not hear from colicky babes for years to come. In the bleakest time of winter, I had seen them by the house at odd hours. They arrive in divers colors—shades of sand, black, grizzled, white. Some are quite huge. These marauders have been quiet of late, but, Higgins being still away so far as I knew, about mid-morning—the first moment I had been free to look for her since missing her at milking hour—I took an axe along and stepped into the woods, calling to Patience.

  The woods were cool and resinous, with hints of blossoms hidden in the sunny corners. I followed the old trail in the wood which, I knew, she often used, and which was gradually leading me around toward the river. I had nearly broken out onto its grassy margin when I heard laughter. Stopping, I determined it to be the laughter of a man and a woman. I ceased calling and moved quietly forward until the trees began to thin into the marshlands. Then I stopped again and, standing behind the thick stem of an old oak, saw the river itself and the hunter’s wigwam upon an elevated stretch of bank. I now recognized my exact position upon the river. The laughter had ceased momentarily, so I stayed still, merely watching the dome of bark and matts in the sunlight. It being warm early in the season, only waterbirds and marsh blackbirds moved about in the open, yet behind me the woods were full of the movement and sound of birds.

  Suddenly a man and woman, naked, ran from the wigwam to the very edge of the riverbank. I could not tell at my distance who the people were, only that the woman had flowers wreathed in her hair. By their white bodies, their voices and laughter I knew that they were English. Had it been a month later, I might have walked in the marsh hay toward them completely hidden, but at this season the grass was still low.

  As I watched the couple I became consumed more by curiosity than common sense. Bending as low as I could, I hurried toward a thicket by a closer tree in one patch of the descending marsh field. Their faces had been turned away from me, and they were too preoccupied with their bodies to notice a foolish woman bettering her position to spy upon them.

  Had they been caught and exposed in their pleasures, punishment would have been grievous indeed, but I had no desire to reveal the dark secrets between them. Had I known what I was about to see, I would have known even more certainly the impossibility of ever relating openly what I witnessed.

&nbs
p; Then it was that I recognized them, as their faces kept turning toward me while they danced in circles holding one another’s hands. The woman was the widow Gage, one of faultless reputation and carriage, whose husband had died in the river during a log drive the previous summer. The man, whose form I had grown almost certain I recognized, I now saw to be Jared Higgins. I was far more stricken by their identities than by coming upon them in such circumstances in the first place. I was too embarrassed to make my presence known and too afraid of being discovered to move away even as I had come. I must, moreover, confess to the strange fascination of observing these two, glorying their flesh in the sunlight, the flowers flapping in her loose hair, a girdle of herbs and leaves bouncing against her waist, her hand at intervals playfully caressing or plucking his taut instrument like the string of a lute.

  It would be impossible for me to write, even here, all that I witnessed between them. For their practices grew more beastly, turning their bodies into a Boggards. Had ever such a lewd and wanton woman hidden behind so chaste and godly an exterior? Is it not awful to contemplate the mysterious chasm between a man or woman’s appearances in the world and the passion roiling beneath. “If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?” They might have been demons inventing in the course of their eternal dalliance all the carnal lusts bequeathed to humanity down the ages.

  Patience I suddenly saw on the other side of the wigwam where Higgins must have tethered her after, perhaps, coming upon her himself in the wood or meadow.

  When, near mid-day, these two had spent their final passions and lay by the river caressing one another, I took my secret leave. I went about my labors avoiding any more than necessary conversation with Higgins upon his return to my house as one who had been away many weeks. He came leading Patience and smiling, as if he had had great success in his trade and was bestowing upon me a gift. I was just able to keep up enough conversation to avoid his suspecting me. I could not then, nor can I now, expunge from my mind the sight of them wrapped like two great blacksnakes, as we find hereabouts, biting and wreathing about one another in their frenzied, sunlit copulations. It was as if a gate had opened upon another world that mocked my own temptations and sentiments; nay, as if all the hopes and aspirations of fragile humanity were mocked, all our small pleasures and all the ancient works of God upon the earth.