Love's Pursuit (26 page)

40

THE INQUIRY INTO DANIEL’S death had fastened upon Simeon Wright as the defendant. There was no surprise about that, for he justly admitted he had done the killing. But what was unexpected was his defense. He claimed that it was my fault that he had done it. That he had come upon me with Daniel and that he had been driven beyond reason by the immodesty of my gown. Because he could not be held responsible for his actions, I would be. And so the case would be tried at the quarterly court in Newham when it met in two weeks’ time. It was there that I would plead for my life.

I was taken to Newham that day by oxcart. It was Goodman Blake, the deputy, who took me. I wish I could say that the ride to Newham was the luxury of which I had dreamt that fall day I had accompanied my father to market, but in truth, I very much wished I were walking. And that my destination was not a cell but the victualler’s or the milliner’s.

Once in Newham, I was removed from the cart and placed into confinement at the house of Selectman Miller. His wife, the woman I had met at the milliner’s shop, recognized me at first sight. I could see it by the flare of recognition in her eyes. I knew it in her sudden intake of breath when she looked upon me. But she said nothing. Not one word until the selectman had dismissed Goodman Blake and seen me secured into his own cell at the side of his house. Not one word until he had bid his wife adieu and left on other business.

It was then Mistress Miller sent her servants on some errand and dragged a chair over to the door that separated us.

“I place myself here with my mending so that we can speak. But be warned, if any shall ask, I never spoke to you.”

“Nor I to you.”

I could almost imagine her nod. “Were you not betrothed to Simeon Wright?”

I knelt before the door and put my mouth to the keyhole so that no one passing the lean-to would overhear us. “Aye.”

“And now you are being tried for the death of Captain Holcombe?”

“Aye.”

“I must tell you that I knew Captain Holcombe. We journeyed across the sea together. And if his life was lost at your hand, then I bid you good riddance straight to hell.”

“I did not do it.” How could I have done it?

There was silence for a time. And then she spoke again. “Nay.I thought not. You do not have the look of a murderess about you.But Mister Wright’s defense is your guilt in the incident. Or is it not true what I have heard?”

“ ’Tis true.”

“So what have you to do with it?”

“I was wearing . . . a gown.”

“Don’t we all? So ’tis a gown you were wearing . . .”

“Aye, when Simeon Wright tried to stop us on our way from town.”

“And where were you going?”

“Away. Anywhere. To Virginia. I could not marry Simeon Wright.

Even though I was pledged. He is not a man . . . he is a monster.”

“Aye. ’Tis that which I had heard. So you were off to Virginia?

’Tis where we had all hoped to land at the first. And you were wearing this gown.”

“A lovely gown. A gown of satin. Of ribbons and bows, with lace in abundance.”

“It sounds beautiful in the way of gowns.”

“It was. But not very . . . modest.”

“So it was no gown for a Puritan to be caught wearing.”

“Nay. It is said I incited Simeon Wright to lust.”

“I do not understand you people! Clothes are weapon and armor both. I have seen more corruption and more vice hidden beneath a sober, sad-colored frock in this colony than I ever saw in England. Modest dress covers a multitude of sin here. And the laws to do with them! One must not wear this sort of ribbon or that kind of lace. And beware the boot too great or the collar too long!”

“But you wear one . . . a gown very much like the one I wore. And none molest you.”

“None but my husband. But I am used to it. He takes me half in greed, half in shame at his own want and need. Nay, do not think that all is well for me. ’Tis only because I am the selectman’s wife none will accuse me to him. And he will hear no complaint. He parades me for all to see, but be sure that I answer for it. In private, where none can see.”

“Then there is no hope for me.”

“Who can say there is hope? Or no hope? You must pray. ’Tis what they have taught me.”

“I have little to say to God.”

“ ’Tis what I thought as well . . . at first.”

“But . . . I
was
at fault. In a fashion. ’Tis me, the reason for Daniel’s death. If I had not loved him . . . if he had not loved me.”

She
tsk
ed. And when she spoke once more, her voice sounded hollow. “I cannot believe that he still does not exist somewhere on this earth.”

Then she had not seen the body and all the blood that had ushered forth from his mortal wound.

“He was such a man for amusement. And for laughter. I always felt safe when he was near. Believe me, you do not want to discover yourself alone with sailors.” She stitched on in silence for a while. I heard the prick of her needle and the pull of yarn through canvas.“He made you feel safe as well.”

“Aye. He did.”

“He must have loved you to have run away with you. He was always one for a gallant gesture, but very rarely did it ever come at risk of reputation. I suppose you all thought he was some sort of heathen cavalier with those great boots and curling hair and drooping hat.”

A tear slipped down my cheek and dangled from my nose before dropping to my chest. It was joined by dozens of others, which wet my neck with their number. “We did. I did. At first.”

“His looks were deceptive. I tried to turn his head a time or two, and though I could open his mouth in laughter, I could never convince him to open his arms. Not to me.” She sighed. “You won him honestly, then . . . and it does my vanity no good to realize that he preferred you to me.”

“We were to marry. Just as soon as we could leave the colony.

’Twas the reason for the gown.”

“To leave this Puritan life behind.”

“Aye.”

“In a respectable sort of way.”

“Aye.”

“It was a good plan. It would have worked.”

“ ’Tis what he thought.” But then, he had not reckoned on Simeon Wright.

All they that take the sword shall perish by the sword.

It happened just as Daniel had said it would.

But where is your sword, God, when it comes to Simeon Wright?

“You must speak. We will go to Newham for the trial and you must speak.” Thomas had put down his spoon and his knife and trained his gaze upon me.

I quailed under the weight of it and could not look at him. “Do not make me go back there. I cannot.”

“But your father has long been gone from that town. And you were there. You were there when the captain was killed.”

“Aye. But what did I really see?”

“What did you see?”

My eyes faltered when I tried to meet his gaze. “The whole thing.”

“Then you must speak of it.”

“Why? It will not matter. He will win just the same.”

“Not if you speak.”

I lifted my eyes to him. “But if I speak, then he might hurt you. And that would be even worse.”

“If you do not speak, then Susannah Phillips will surely be convicted. And how could that be just?”

Just? Nothing was just. Not one thing in this world. Only blessed, favored people ever looked for justice. The rest of us knew how cruel this world could be. How could it be just for a child to be born to a father like mine? How could it be just for Captain Holcombe to be felled by a monster like Simeon Wright? And how could it be just for Susannah Phillips to be faulted for it? I no longer looked for justice. I wished only to survive. And if survival required silence, then that is the price I would pay.

41

MISTRESS MILLER KEPT ME warm and she kept me fed, but I had nothing to do and time aplenty to spare. I had grievances and they were many, and so I began once more to talk to God. My prayers were halting at first. Supplications whispered through tears. And then, as the days passed, they became treatises on the injuries that had been done to me and the offenses I had suffered. At the hand of God himself.

If He were going to take Daniel from me, the least He could have done is left me something to remember him by. I no longer had the scarf, I no longer had the gown. I had nothing at all. And so I hoped against all hope, I prayed and pleaded for the impossible, for one small miracle. I hoped and prayed for Daniel’s child. God had done it once for his blessed mother; why could He not do it again?

He owed me so much. And I had asked for so little.

Did I not have faith, though it be small as a mustard seed?

Did not my back ache? Were not my breasts growing more tender with every passing day? I was alone, kept in the darkness of the lean-to, and so I began to talk to the child I decided was growing inside me. I spoke to him of his father. I told him the story of when we first met. Of how Daniel had walked into Stoneybrooke from the wood, as wild as any bear. I told him of savages and silk scarves. Of conversations. Of kisses in the moonlight, underneath the stars.

I lived each day for a week in that illusion, and then my dreams were shattered once more. I went to the corner to make water, and after I did, I knew utter desolation. My monthly courses had come and dissolved all of my hopes. I gathered my skirts to my face and keened like some mad she-wolf at my misfortunes.

Later, after Mistress Miller had tried and failed to comfort me, after the neighbor’s shrieks for silence had stopped, my voice grew hoarse and my tears dried up. I spent the night in wakefulness, mired in the thought that Daniel was gone.

Forever.

And I could not escape the knowledge that I was soon to die. How could the trial have any other outcome than my conviction? I was not the woman the gown proclaimed me to be, but I might as well have been.

I had feared that people would discover what I was truly like beneath my pretense of goodness, but they might as well have. Which were worse? The sins I had committed or those I might have, given the chance? I no longer cared what anyone thought. They assumed the worst, and there was no reason not to let them. Not anymore.

I did not fear death. I might have, had I still believed that God loved me, that He took any sort of notice of my life. And I did not fear judgment, for I had just as many things of which to accuse God as He had to accuse me. Neither did I fear my reputation. I had not done the things of which I was accused, but given the opportunity, I might have. Nay, my anxieties were not for myself; there was little to live for with Daniel gone.

I worried most about my family. I worried they might be driven from town. I worried that no one would buy Father’s wares. That Mother would be dropped from her whang. That no one would take Mary to wife . . . and no one give their daughter to Nathaniel in marriage.

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 street. 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.