Her Dear & Loving Husband

by Meredith Allard

  Martha brushed Sarah’s hair back from her forehead. “It’s all right. You’re not by the rocky hill any more. You’ve moved onto somewhere else. Look around. Where are you now?”

  Sarah’s face softened. She was somewhere more pleasant than the gallows on the hill.

  “I’m in my house.”

  “Which house?”

  “This house.”

  “The one we’re in right now?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m over there,” she gestured toward the kitchen, “cooking Indian pudding for my father-in-law. He’s coming over for supper and he loves Indian pudding more than anything. Suddenly he comes in the door.”

  “Who comes in the door?”

  “My husband.”

  “The same man who was by the seaside with you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does he do when he comes in?”

  “The same thing he always does. He lifts me, kisses me, and tells me how seeing me is the best part of his day. He tells me how much he misses me when he’s gone.”

  “And then?”

  “He sits at the table there next to the hearth.” She gestured toward the table where Olivia and Jennifer sat. “He pulls me close and kisses me more, but I’m blushing because our helping-girl is watching, and I need to keep stirring the pudding or it will scald. Indian pudding tastes terrible if the cornmeal or the molasses burn. But even as I’m pulling away he’s pulling me closer, and we’re laughing because it’s funny that he can’t let me go long enough to finish cooking for his father. And then…”

  She stopped, her body tense, her face troubled. Her head turned as she listened for something.

  “And then what?” Martha asked.

  “And then there was angry banging on the door, like the walls would buckle and the gables would crash down. I knew immediately something was wrong. We were expecting my father-in-law, but that was not his knock.”

  “Who was at the door?”

  Sarah cringed in terror, and she saw it all again, being accused and arrested. Being in jail and dying. Knowing all along that no matter how much her husband loved her this chain of events was beyond his control. There was no helping her. No matter how many kisses he gave her he couldn’t stop the madness from consuming her as it consumed so many in Salem then.

  “He was,” Sarah said, her hand over her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see him. “The man who arrested me.” Sarah’s mouth opened in a circle of fear, her body rigid, trying to disappear into empty space so no one could grab her and drag her away to hell.

  “No!” James yelled. “Stop it! It’s hurting her too much.”

  “James,” said Martha, “I know this is hard for you, but she needs to do this. She needs to remember.”

  “She can’t do this,” he said. “It’s too hard.”

  Jennifer spoke softly. “Is it too hard for her, or is it too hard for you?”

  Sarah heard James groan, but he didn’t say anything more. After a moment, Martha said, “Tell me what happened when the man came to arrest you. Tell me everything you remember.”

  Sarah shook her head, her hand on her cheek. “My husband and I gasped in horror when we saw the man we despised for arresting the charged witches standing in front of our home. He grimaced at me with his pockmarked face as though he were wearing a skeleton mask.”

  “‘Are you a witch?’ he asked me.

  “My husband laughed. I laughed. It had to be a joke. Dear God, please, I begged silently, this has to be a joke. Surely no one would speak out evil lies against me. I had no enemies, only friends. But I felt the impending doom in my gut and thought I would vomit.

  “‘Did you sign a pact with the Devil in your own blood?’ the constable asked. ‘How long have you been a witch?’ The man’s eyes blazed with haughty fire. My husband and I weren’t laughing any more. I don’t think I ever laughed again.

  “‘I am no witch, sir,’ I said.

  “‘I can assure you,’ my husband said, ‘my wife is no witch. What proof have you for such groundless accusations against my wife?’

  “‘We know she’s a witch because witnesses have spoken against her.’ Then, to me, ‘Why don’t you confess?’

  “‘I am no witch, sir,’ I said again.

  “Though I tried to be brave for my husband’s sake, I couldn’t hide my fear. It was in my quivering voice. It was in my wide eyes. I held myself still, pressing into my husband, praying that some-how he could protect me. I had seen my friends and neighbors taken away, and now it was happening to me. The pock-faced man wouldn’t be swayed. He showed us the arrest warrant where I was named.

  “‘I have a warrant for your arrest, Goody Wentworth, and you must come with me.’

  “My husband tried to stop him from taking me, but the man was already well practiced at getting his prisoners away. Then my father-in-law arrived. My husband ran to him, shaking him. My father-in-law was an important man, I thought. Surely he must have the influence to do something.

  “‘Father, please,’ my husband said, ‘we have to help Lizzie.’

  “‘What is it, Son?’ he asked.

  “But I could see the torment in my father-in-law’s eyes, and as he looked at me he knew the worst had already happened. I didn’t want to seem weak, but I couldn’t stop the tears from spilling down my cheeks. The constable bound me in chains. Horrible, hard, heavy chains, as if I were a dangerous criminal, as if I had done anything to deserve this. I felt suffocated by them, as if the leaden links were reaching around my neck and strangling me, slowly taking my breath, and my life away. Some-how I knew I would never escape the chains.

  “My father-in-law was not only kind but brave. He could have been named as a wizard himself for speaking out, but he walked to the constable and roared in the man’s face.

  “‘What business have you with Goody Wentworth?’ he yelled.

  “‘I have a warrant for her.’

  “My father-in-law grabbed the paper and read it, and in that moment I knew there was nothing he could do. My husband became enraged.

  “‘You dare take an innocent woman away on false charges?’ he yelled. ‘Ask her to recite the Lord’s Prayer. Ask her to recite the Ten Commandments. You think witches can’t speak them because the devil won’t allow it. Test her! If you knew the Commandments yourself you’d know the ninth—thou shalt not bear false witness!’

  “The constable smiled in a self-important way. ‘If you know the Bible so well then you also know First Peter 5:8,’ he said. He continued smiling as he waited for my husband’s response. My husband said nothing. My father-in-law put his hand on my husband’s shoulder.

  “‘Be sober, be vigilant,’ my father-in-law quoted, ‘because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.’

  “‘And from Exodus?’ asked the constable.

  “My father-in-law winced. ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,’ he said.

  “‘My wife is no witch,’ my husband said. ‘She’s an innocent woman. Please, let her go and we shall leave here and never return.’

  “‘If she’s innocent then it shall come out at her trial,’ the constable said.

  “That’s when I knew all was lost. I would receive the same kind of trial Rebecca had, which was no real trial at all. Then I was driven away and left to rot in a dungeon, still in chains. Always in chains. I never did escape them. Suddenly, I was gone…”

  Without warning, everything, the loss, the helplessness, the terror, the unfairness of it all, jumped like tremors inside her. Sarah shuddered and she wept and she wept and she shud-dered, alternating between the two chasms for some time, cleansing herself out from the inside of every lamentable thing that happened then. Without opening her eyes she knew that James knelt close to her. He wiped her tears away with his fingertips and stroked the sweat-soaked hair from her eyes.

  “It’s all right, Elizabeth,” he whispered in her ear. “I’m her
e now. No one will ever hurt you again.”

  “Very good,” Martha said. “Now Sarah, you are ready to come back. You will remember everything that happened here, and you will know that the spirit of Elizabeth Wentworth has been reborn in you. Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” Sarah said. She felt herself there but not all together, lingering on the cusp of consciousness. She felt her eyes darting from side to side, seeing something, some image teasing her like a connect the dots puzzle, but she couldn’t make it out no matter how hard she tried.

  “Sarah?” said Martha. “You’re awake now, Sarah.”

  But Sarah couldn’t respond. The words were trapped inside.

  “What’s wrong with her?” James asked, the panic cracking his voice.

  “I don’t know,” Martha said. “I’ve never seen this before.” She patted Sarah’s face. “Sarah? It’s time to wake up.”

  Martha called to Jennifer for some water, but Sarah couldn’t drink. James stayed close to Sarah, stroking her hair, rubbing her hand, trying to spark some movement in her somewhere.

  “Sarah,” he said, “please wake up. Everything is all right now. I’m here.”

  Then, like a paint-by-numbers drawing where colors were layered one-by-one, the blurred image Sarah had been struggling to see fell into focus, as if someone adjusted the lens on a pro-jector. She was looking at a man. A faceless man. He was tall, strong looking. With gold hair, blue eyes, and a smile that could wipe away the most hefty nor’easter storm. He was walking up to her as she stood outside that very house, puttting his arms around her, and she gasped aloud as he hovered just a breath above her lips and his features became clear. Finally, she saw his face. And he was beautiful. As soon as she knew who she was looking at she came back to herself. She turned her head and saw James sitting next to her, stroking her hair, his face still beautiful but now very worried, and she smiled. She couldn’t take her eyes from him.

  “Jamie,” she said. “I never saw his face until now, it was always in the shadows, but he stepped into the light and I saw him and it’s you. You’re the man I’ve been dreaming about. You’re my dear and loving husband. That’s how I knew the poem. You used to read it to me.”

  He took her into his arms, cradling her head against his shoulder. “That’s right, Sarah. I was your dear and loving husband then, and I love you now.”

  How long they stayed like that, with Sarah pressed against his chest, her tears soaking them through, his lips touching the top of her hair, she didn’t know. He could have held her there forever and it still wouldn’t have been enough. She didn’t pull back until she heard Martha, Jennifer, and Olivia slipping away.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “I was happy to do it,” said Martha. “Now listen to me, Sarah, because this is important. There’s going to be a period of adjustment. It could be hard, getting used to having Elizabeth’s memories as well as your own. Call me if you need anything.”

  “Yes,” Sarah said. “I will.”

  “There’s still one thing I don’t understand,” James said. “She’s Elizabeth reborn as Sarah, yet I knew her the moment I saw her. How can she look the same?”

  Martha shrugged as if the answer were obvious. “We look like what we look like, James, whether it’s today, three hundred years ago, or six hundred years from now. Souls are drawn to bodies that resemble themselves. It makes perfect sense that you would recognize her when you saw her again.”

  James laughed. “A vampire recognizing his long-dead wife. Perfect sense.”

  “Your souls are intertwined, James. You and Sarah will always be together, whenever, wherever. It’s your destiny.”

  He looked back at Sarah.

  “I know,” he said.

  James stood by the side of the road, waving once as the ladies drove away. He lingered outside and thought he should have been more eager to join Sarah, but he was nervous at the thought of facing her again. He had been married to Elizabeth years ago, but he didn’t know what Sarah’s reaction would be to him now. There were no guarantees that she would want to be with him, perhaps for no other reason than he was not the same as he was when he was married to Elizabeth. He wondered how well Eliza-beth would recognize the man she loved in his preternatural body. He looked through the window, and when he saw Sarah in the trembling candlelight all time stopped. There were no days, months, or years. No decades or centuries. There was only now, as in the seventeenth century, before the witch trials brought madness to Salem, and now as in now, in the twenty-first century when everything was different.

  Time had passed. Things had changed. The woman sitting there was not entirely Elizabeth, but she was entirely Sarah. Where would the past end and the present begin, he wondered? He didn’t know. At that moment all he knew was that he was willing. No matter what the sacrifice, no matter what the cost, he was willing. As he looked at Sarah huddled with her knees pulled to her chin, her eyes gazing, perhaps not quite seeing, the fire that had dwindled to an occasional spark in the hearth, he knew the decision about their future was in her hands.

  He hadn’t offered a prayer since before he was turned, but looking at Sarah, spent and unmoving, he thought it couldn’t hurt to try. Please, God, he thought, let her want me again. Even as I am, let her want me again.

  And he walked inside.

  Sarah didn’t seem to notice him as he came into the great room. He saw her shiver so he took the patchwork quilt from the back of the sofa, tucked it around her shoulders, and sat next to her. As soon as he was close enough she leaned against his side. They sat silent for some time, and for a while Sarah looked like she was sleeping. Then, when her eyes were open and she was looking at him, he knew he should say something.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “I feel better than I have in a long time. All of a sudden everything makes sense.” She laughed a beautiful, relieved laugh that sounded like joyful chimes to his ears.

  They lapsed again into an easy silence between people who have secrets together. Then she sat up and looked at him, her eyes troubled.

  “Was I pregnant when I died?” she asked. “I feel so detached from myself referring to Elizabeth as ‘I,’ but that seems to be the only way to speak of her now.”

  “Yes,” he said sadly, “you were.”

  Sarah nodded. He saw her cringe as if the memories were coming back, her bulging belly, the trials of working for two, feeling the life inside her dwindling as her own life ebbed away. “What happened after I died?” She laughed. “What an odd question.”

  “A few weeks later the executions stopped. Increase Mather gave a sermon called Cases of Conscience Concerning Spirits that brought the trials to an end. He said it would be better to set some witches free than to condemn even one innocent person. Then in 1697, the Massachusetts Bay Colony observed a day of atonement, as if one day of fasting and prayer could repent for what they did. One of the judges asked for forgiveness, but I didn’t forgive him.”

  “They were trying to make amends, James. That’s more than most people do when they’ve been wrong.”

  “They were more than wrong, they were cruel. Some of the girls who perpetuated the false accusations confessed on their deathbeds, but their apologies sounded false to me. I thought the only reason they apologized was to appease their own guilt and save their own souls.”

  “Who apologized?”

  “Ann Putnam was one.”

  “I remember Ann Putnam.”

  “‘It was a great delusion of Satan that deceived me in that sad time,’ she said. ‘I did it not out of any anger, malice, or ill will. I desire to lie in the dust and earnestly beg forgiveness of all those I have given just cause of sorrow and offense.’ I would have spat in her face if I could have. Then in 1711, the Massachusetts legislature passed a bill restoring the property and good names of the victims. But none of it meant anything to me. It was too late to bring you back.”

  “Three hundred and nineteen years is a long time. Maybe it’s time you
forgave them.”

  “I will never forgive them. They took so much from so many.”

  Sarah sighed. After more time to reflect, she asked, “What happens now?”

  “You have to decide. I made my decision about you the night I saw you standing in front of this house. I love you as Elizabeth, and I love you as Sarah. My heart has always been yours, and I’m here now, if you want me. If you want me the way I am. I’m not the same as I was then.”

  Sarah grasped her head suddenly, pushing on her temples, as if she were trying to stop her skull from imploding. James took her face between his hands.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “It’s…I don’t know. I can feel Elizabeth’s memories very strongly right now.”

  When Sarah spoke it was as though her voice echoed from far away, as if Elizabeth’s words were channeled through her, telling her what to say. At first she seemed to struggle against them, but finally she must have let Elizabeth have her way.

  “You’re wrong,” Sarah said. “You are the same as you were then. Your thoughtfulness, your kindness, that incessant need you have to analyze every thought you’ve ever had until you think you understand it. Your love. It’s all the same.”

  “Do you really see me that way?”

  “When I look at you, I see the man who has always loved me, even as you are now, turned, as you say. And I love you even as I am now, a ghost from the past come back to find the man I love.”

  “But how can you love me if I let them take you away?”

  “How could you have stopped them? If you had spoken out about my innocence any more than you did you could have been arrested yourself. There was nothing more you could have done. Have you been carrying this around all these years? Guilt that somehow you were responsible for my death?”

  He couldn’t speak. She leaned into him, pressing her head against his shoulder. He put his arms around her and pulled her close, but it wasn’t close enough.

  “Oh James.” She began to stroke the stray gold hair from his eyes. “My poor Jamie. I knew you were outside the jail, there in Boston, trying to set me free. You did as much as you could. Don’t blame yourself.”