The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane

by Katherine Howe

  “Bible, receipt booke,” Connie read aloud.

  Receipt book?

  Connie peered more closely at the paper before her, as if squinting to see the exact quill scratches on the page would clarify the meaning behind the words. Receipt book? Like a ledger? Did Deliverance run a business of some sort? What would she want with receipts? Connie stared, thinking, eyes wide, eyebrows crawling up her forehead, and the imaginary woman still standing in the room in her mind placed her hands on her hips, impatient. Connie rolled the words around in her mouth, feeling the imprecision of language that sometimes results when nonstandard spelling and pronunciation collide. An idea swam though Connie’s thoughts, but she could not quite grasp at it, could not yet make out its form.

  Receipt.

  Recipt.

  Recipe.

  In an instant the idea dropped, crisp and perfect, squarely into the forefront of her mind. Connie gasped, her head bolting upright just as the archivist snapped out the lights.

  Interlude

  Salem Town, Massachusetts

  Mid-July

  1682

  This tree is exceeding comfortable today, the little girl reflected. She settled herself against its bark, wedging more firmly into the groove between the fat branch where she was sitting and the knobby trunk against which her back was pressed. She dangled her feet idly off one side of the branch, enjoying the sensation of her ankles flopping loose in the breeze. It was cooler up in the tree, and the summer air gathered and dispersed around the girl, lifting loose wisps of hair off her forehead and sneaking up her sleeves and under her coif. She giggled, but then quieted herself.

  The ground slanted away several feet below her, and within the sheltering grasp of leaves and twigs, the girl enjoyed sitting hidden and safe. Her high vantage point gave her the delicious feeling of being able to spy on others without their knowing that she could see them—afar down the lane already she could see Goody James in a straw hat, bending in her garden, and well beyond, at the bend in the road, Goodman James driving his mule in the direction of the wharves. Goody James leaned up from her work and pressed her hands into her back, and the little girl smiled.

  In the yard below her, the girl could hear the rhythmic whistle and thunk of her father chopping firewood. Thud, whistle, thunk! And then the dull clatter of a freshly split log thrown onto the growing heap behind him. Thud, whistle, thunk! She knew the leaves screened her from his sight, and she tried to hold very still lest she be discovered. Since the minister had said those things about idle children in meeting that week, the townsfolk had turned a sharper eye to their offspring. The little girl knocked her head against the tree trunk behind her, wrinkling her nose.

  Her stomach gurgled, and she pressed her hands to her belly to silence it. Twisting a length of her hair around one finger, the girl peered at the eye-level branches, thinking about food. Though most of the flowers had fallen weeks ago, the apples in the tree were still just tight little buds. She pulled a leafy bud-cluster toward her and cupped it in her hands. Already some of her mother’s friends had spoken with approval of her “way” with plants, and the girl thought shamefacedly about these words of praise as she narrowed her gaze on the little apple-knots just forming on the branch. ’ Tis a sin to be so proud, she scolded herself. But her stomach rumbled again, and she stared hard at the leaf cluster, feeling her will seep through her hands and drain into the tree branch. Under her eyes the biggest apple bud seemed to stir and bubble, distending like a blister, straining against its own skin and gradually darkening from pale green to a deep russeted red. It pressed and swelled in her hands, burbling until it was the size of the girl’s fist, then her two fists together, then all of a sudden it had twisted off of its stem and dropped in a sickening moment through the air, only to burst open in a pulpy mess on the ground.

  “Mahcy!” she heard her father call out, the swinging of the ax suddenly suspended. The girl’s lower lip extended, and she knew she was caught.

  “Mahcy Dane, you come down now,” he said, nearer the base of the tree. The little girl, Mercy, pouted for a moment until her father’s sunburned face finally appeared through the leaves directly below her. Mercy looked worriedly down, expecting to find him wrathful. But the face was smiling, deep creases forming on either side of his eyes. She smiled back. He beckoned to her, and Mercy obeyed, grasping the branch with two hands and swinging down in a tangle of skirts and apron, finally dropping to the ground not far from the dissolving remains of the fallen apple.

  “Peas want shelling, an’ you loafing in the tree all day,” he said, shaking his head, arms folded. She hung her head, saying nothing, hands hidden under her apron. “What if I should be sogerin’, and us not having any wood to cook with? What then?”

  She shrugged, drawing a little circle in the dust with one toe.

  “Mahcy?” he prodded.

  “I’m sorry, Papa,” she whispered.

  “Well, then,” he said, resting a rough hand on her shoulder. “Get you to it.” He indicated the woven rush basket that she had abandoned at the foot of the tree some hours earlier and turned back to the chopping block, hoisting the ax out of the wood. Presently he was back at work, thud, whistle, thunk! Mercy slunk back to the base of the tree, retrieved the basket, and made her way to the vegetable garden at the rear of the house.

  The day was warm, and her dress felt uncomfortably heavy and hot under the pressure of the sun. She pulled green pea pods off the vine one after the other, dropping them into her basket on the ground, humming a tuneless hymn under her breath. As she neared the end of the garden row, she happened upon a dappled, dirt-colored tail lying in the dust, which proved to be attached to a small dog dozing on his back in the shade under the vine leaves. “Hullo, Dog.” She knelt to greet him, and he responded with a tremendous yawn, stretching his short legs out like a cat. Mercy reflected that she had much rather trade places with Dog; she would sleep naked in the shade while he shelled peas in the hot kitchen with her mother.

  “Meeeercy!” a woman’s voice called from within the house.

  “In the gahden, Livvy!” her father responded from the woodpile. Mercy hurried to her feet, wiped her nose on her sleeve, collected the unwieldy basket, and loped to the back door of the house.

  She edged her way into the hall, heaving the basket of peas up onto the long board in the center of the room. The cooking fire had been going in the big hearth all morning, and the room felt considerably warmer than the summer day outside. The three windows were open, but they were so small that little air made its way in. Mercy blinked her eyes against the smoky, close atmosphere, and climbed into a chair by the board on trestles that served as a table to begin shelling.

  “There you be!” said a woman’s exasperated voice at the door, and her mother entered the room, wiping her hands on her apron. Her usually warm, open face had grown thinner over the past weeks, but Mercy did not know why. Her mouth, normally prone to smiling, now looked sort of pinched, and she was more likely to snap. As a result Mercy had taken to spending more time hidden, up trees and behind cupboards, or in the Jameses’ cornfields with Dog.

  “I’m shelling, Mama!” said the little girl quickly, ripping through a pod with her thumbnail and popping the fresh new peas out with her fingers.

  Her mother watched her for a moment. “So you are.” She sighed, then turned her attention to the bread loaf that was baking in the hive-shaped hollow in the hearth bricks. They worked for a time in silence, broken only by the thud, whistle, thunk of Nathaniel Dane’s chopping in the yard, and by the leisurely appearance of Dog through the back door, who then settled in a heap under the table.

  At length the front door opened, and a broad expanse of woman flowed through the door frame and into the hall where they were working.

  “Aftahnoon to you, Livvy Dane!” boomed the woman, who wore a wide straw hat over her knotted coif. She moved smoothly over to the table and deposited a fabric-wrapped parcel next to Mercy’s basket of pea shells. Delivera
nce turned around from the hearth and smiled at the woman.

  “And to you, Sarah.” Mercy felt her mother’s sharp index finger dig into the space between her shoulder blades.

  “Good noon, Goody Bartlett,” squeaked the little girl. Mercy had always been a little uneasy around Sarah Bartlett, though she knew her to be a kind woman. Her prodigious largeness made Mercy feel very small. The woman smiled down at her, and patted her on the hand.

  “Take some cider?” asked Deliverance, proffering an earthenware mug to the woman, who was settling her bulk on a narrow bench at the wide board worktable. “Frightful hot this day.”

  Sarah waved her off. “Het’s no bother,” she said, unpinning her hat. “But I thank you.”

  “How fares your calf withal?” Deliverance asked. “Brought you his water?”

  “Ach,” said Sarah, reaching into the pocket that was tied around her waist. “I did. He won’t take the teat. Stubborn rogue. Goodman Bahtlett fers we shall lose him. But his strength is good.” She pulled a small, stoppered glass bottle full of yellow liquid from within her pocket and placed it on the table. Deliverance picked up the bottle and held it in the narrow sunbeam leaking through one of the windows. She turned it left and right, brows knitted. The bottle glinted in the sunlight.

  “Look you, Mahcy,” said Sarah while Deliverance was at the window. “What do you think I ha’ brought your mother?”

  The little girl shrugged her shoulders. Sarah untied the parcel on the table and lifted a corner for her to peek under.

  “Blueberries!” cried Mercy, clapping her hands together and wiggling in her chair. Sometimes she found blueberry shrubs on her rambles with Dog, but usually the crows had stripped them clean. Now she regretted her initial wariness, deciding that Sarah Bartlett must rather be one of the nicest women in the town, even if she was louder than most.

  Deliverance placed the bottle of calf urine back on the table and smiled at her daughter. “Ah, Sarah. Blueberries are a great favorite of hers. Thank you kindly. And for your calf,” she continued, “let us try some other physick.”

  She pulled a large, heavy book from the bottom shelf of the cupboard and opened it before her on the table. She leaned over on one slender arm and paged through the tome, running her finger down each page and reading silently.

  “My son gathered ’em,” Sarah said. “Sends greetins for you, and for Nathaniel.” The room fell quiet again while Deliverance hunted through the book. Mercy kicked her heels against the legs of her chair and shelled another few peas. Sarah cast her gaze around the hall, groping for conversation.

  “Nasty, all this Petfahd business,” ventured Sarah. Mercy saw a wave of tension run up her mother’s spine, and when she turned again to the table a black cloud had collected in her mother’s blue eyes. “Goodman Bahtlett never ha’ no use for half them jurymen. Mary Oliver, well,” she snorted in a manner indicating that one always knew what one was likely to get from the Mary Olivers of the world. “And that Peter Petfahd, he is shah desput and distracted.” Sarah waved a thick finger in the air to show her seriousness.

  Deliverance stood and folded her arms. “He hath lost his only daughter,” she said quietly. “We are all bewildered by God’s providences.” She dropped a few metal pins into the glass bottle, restoppered it, and tossed it into the hearth fire. Then she hunted in the dried herbs that hung overhead, plucked down the bunch she was looking for, and cast it into the fire as well. It exploded in a smoking, crackling flame, filling the room with a sour, pungent odor, like the underside of a rotted log. As she did this, she murmured some inaudible words under her breath. Mercy felt a charge of excitement surge through her stomach, the same charge that she always felt when she watched her mother do her work. She did not yet know what herb her mother had chosen, but she would ask when Goody Bartlett had left.

  “You knew not that poor Mahther Petfahd, did you, Mahcy?” Sarah started to ask before Deliverance shot her a look and shook her head once.

  “Ah,” Sarah stammered. “Indeed, that physick smells most foul, Livvy. Then ’tis shah to work, ain’t it?” She laughed weakly.

  Deliverance smiled a tight smile and wrapped more of the same dried herb in the cloth that Sarah had brought to cover the blueberries. “Grind this to powder with a raw egg and some water and boil it over the fire ’til it forms a paste. Spread the liniment on the cow’s teat, and the calf should take it well.”

  Sarah’s round face filled with relief as she took the package from Deliverance and stuffed it into her pocket. “Indeed,” she said, “I knew you’d ha’ the solution. I said to Goodman Bahtlett, I did, of all cunning folk in the county that Livvy Dane knows her way wi’ the physick above all.” She chuckled uncomfortably again, and stopped when she saw the anxiety on Deliverance’s face.

  Sarah reached again for her hat and started moving toward the door. “Why, all folks know it. They do.”

  She paused, then placed an uncertain hand on Deliverance’s shoulder. “Look you, Livvy, don’t you harrer up your feelins. None can believe you’d hahm a child. All this evil talk, ’tis bound to settle soon enow.” Sarah squeezed Deliverance’s shoulder with her big reassuring fingers, nodded at Mercy, and withdrew into the day.

  In her place in the doorway appeared Nathaniel Dane, linen shirt soaked through with sweat, arms and face streaked with dirt and splinters of wood. He carried a heap of freshly split logs and moved around the table to deposit them near the fire. Mercy felt a wave of nervousness that he would tell her mother that she had been shirking her work. She could see by the lines in her mother’s face and the whiteness between her knuckles that a misbehaving girl might get the worst of it. She hastily shelled another few peas, making a great show of her industry and diligence.

  “War that Goody Bahtlett I sar waddlin’ down the lane?” he asked his wife, dropping the wood with a clatter and mess and wiping his hands on the seat of his breeches.

  “’Twas,” said Deliverance. “Oh, Nathaniel.” Her voice caught in her throat, and she stifled a sob with the corner of her apron. He wrapped his arms around her and she hid her face in his neck, shoulders trembling. He stroked the back of her coiffed head with one smudged hand.

  “Shhhhhhh, shhhhhh,” the girl’s father soothed, and Mercy looked up at her parents and reflected that she had never before seen her mother cry.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Marblehead, Massachusetts

  Mid-June

  1991

  THE SHOULDER BAG SLIPPED TO THE FLOOR WITH A DULL THUD AS Connie surveyed the first floor of Granna’s house from where she stood in the doorway. Late afternoon sun crept through chinks in the dense ivy overgrowth on the windows, speckling the broad pine floorboards with flecks of light. The house had soaked up the summer heat while she was away at the archive, filtering it through the layers of wood and plaster and horsehair insulation until warmth filled each corner of every room. It seemed especially thick in the entry near the stairs, like a wall; crossing the threshold into the house always gave Connie a measure of pause. But now her hypothesis buzzed in her head, and the tingling heat of the house on her skin melded with the energy in her nerves until her whole being felt alert, watchful. The natural place to begin was with the books in the sitting room. As Connie passed the ladderlike staircase she kicked over the mushroom, enjoying the wet thump of its flesh falling onto the rotted patch on the floor.

  According to Grace’s sporadic accounts, Lemuel Goodwin had been a plain man, unschooled past high school, not given to books. He spent his entire life in Marblehead, the son of shoe factory workers, and his chief pleasure had been lobstering on the weekend in the pots he kept off Cat Island, near the mouth of the harbor. A picture rested on the mantel over the sitting room fireplace, bleached almost white by the passage of time: Lemuel, squinting into the camera, his arm wrapped proudly around Grace’s shoulders under an ornate archway leading into Radcliffe. The white gloves and tidy little hat that Grace wore dated the picture to 1962, the year that she left home.
Connie rubbed her thumb against the photograph frame, wondering why Grace had always said so little about her father. Connie did not even know exactly how he had died, beyond that it had been sudden, accidental. She often wondered if the ignominious end of Grace’s college career was related to Lemuel’s abrupt disappearance from her and Granna’s life. The buffer between them had been drawn away.

  If her understanding of Lemuel was correct, then most of the books on the shelves would have belonged to Granna. Up until this point Connie had given scant consideration to why Deliverance Dane’s name would have appeared in this house; Yankee thrift demands that nothing still remotely usable be discarded, and so detritus accumulates from families of surprising distance and remove. But now Connie entertained the thought—the hope—that if Deliverance’s name could have lodged deep in Granna’s old family Bible, then perhaps some other residue of Deliverance’s life might persist here as well. Perhaps Granna’s Bible was the very one mentioned in Deliverance’s probate record! Connie stood, hands on hips, dragging her gaze over the spines of the books. Arlo appeared at her feet, pawing her leg. She reached down to rub one of his mud-colored ears.

  “Did you ever catch that garden snake like we talked about?” she asked the animal. “It’s disgusting, having reptiles running around all over the house. You really need to start pulling your weight.” He did not respond, instead leaping onto one of the needlepoint armchairs. Connie sighed, exasperated, and decided to begin with the largest books first.

  If the receipt book had been listed together with a Bible, possibly even the very Bible she had already happened upon, then she might conclude that it was roughly the same dimensions as a Bible. The books on the bottom shelf were each tall, dense slabs of text, substantial in their heft, and Connie pulled them out one at a time. The first was the Bible in which she had found the key; it seemed to have been printed in England in 1619, and the edges of some of its pages had been glued together by water damage. In addition, the shelf held two other Bibles, one from 1752 and one from 1866. The inside cover of the nineteenth-century one held a fragmentary map of Lemuel’s ancestors—Marbleheaders all of them. A needlepoint bookmark in a church steeple pattern was wedged into the book of Matthew, its threads eaten away by silverfish.