Love's Pursuit (27 page)

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 Daniel 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.

As I sat on my bench, however, there rose up another to take my place.

“I saw him.” Small-hope could barely be heard over the noise of the crowd.

“Silence!”

Small-hope barely waited for the meetinghouse to quiet before she continued. “I saw him. Of late I am Goody Smyth from Stoneybrooke Towne. But I was raised here in Newham among you. I was in the wood the day that Simeon Wright shot Daniel Holcombe. He shot the captain willfully.”

The place erupted once more.

“Quiet!” The selectman looked round with a frown. And then he beckoned Small-hope closer.

She would not go. But neither would she remain silent. “Daniel Holcombe was speaking to Simeon Wright, face-to-face.”

“And where was Susannah Phillips?”

“On the ground. Simeon Wright had thrown her down.”

Simeon leapt to his feet. “That is a lie!”

The selectman ignored him. “Did you see him push her?”

Small-hope frowned. “Nay. But she was lying on her back behind Simeon.”

“Was there no sign of fornication?”

“She was clothed and she was protesting . . . something. She took to her feet, but Simeon Wright threw her to the ground again.”

Now the selectman was frowning. “So . . . he and the captain were arguing?”

“They were speaking.”

“And ’twas then the captain moved to take Susannah Phillips?” The words were spoken with the satisfaction of a man who has finally divined the answer to a riddle.

“Nay. He never moved toward Susannah. He was talking to Simeon Wright, and in the middle of their conversation, Simeon Wright killed him.”

“I did not—”

“Enough, Mr. Wright!” The selectman once more turned his attentions to Small-hope. “Susannah Phillips was not ravaged?”

“She was not.”

“But surely Simeon Wright was inflamed by passion.”

Small-hope stepped forward toward the men’s side of the meetinghouse. She stopped three paces from the selectman. She looked him square in the eye. “They were speaking as I am speaking to you, and then Simeon Wright shot the captain dead.”

“But . . . he was not overcome by . . . surely . . . the gown . . . he said he was . . . ?”

“It was never about the gown. I was raised by a man like Simeon Wright, and I never knew when he would beat me. It was about burning bread, or stirring the pottage too quickly or the wash too slowly, but it was never about a gown. It was never about me; it was about him. And this was never about Susannah Phillips. It is about Simeon Wright and his own pride and wrath.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean to say that lust never figured into what my father did or what Simeon Wright did. Their own vanity, their desire to conquer, is what governs them. How can you stand and accuse Susannah Phillips of Simeon Wright’s lust when his own pride and wrath overtake him? By my count, ’tis three of the seven deadly sins that are evidenced in his own actions . . . and none of them in hers.”

“You say the gown did not enflame him to lust, overcoming his actions?”

“Nay. In truth, it probably did enflame him to wrath. But it might as well have been a burnt biscuit. Or the way his horse trotted through the wood.”

“Her father’s behavior has no bearing on mine!”

“Silence, Mister Wright!” The selectman nodded at Small-hope, dismissing her.

But then Thomas raised a hand and stepped up to take her place.

“I have had dealings with Simeon Wright.”

“Speak, then.”

“I am Thomas Smyth, the blacksmith in Stoneybrooke. ’Tis no secret that a blacksmith has need of a nearly endless supply of wood to make his charcoal.” He looked at the men in the jury as he spoke.

They nodded.

“And the town has been generous in offering me what I need, for no charge, from the common.”

Again, they nodded. It was general knowledge and an accepted practice.

“However, access to our common has been denied me, denied us all, due to the threat of savages, and so I approached Simeon Wright about the possibility of providing that need instead. I reckoned that buying it from him would save me time in laying up wood that would be better spent on my work.”

Again, the jury nodded.

“He agreed quite happily to my proposal . . . at the price of four shillings a tree.”

Now the jurymen were frowning. One of them stood. “Four shillings a tree? When the price of a tree from the common is two shillings? But why were we not told of this before?”

“In the interest of Small-hope and her fears of Simeon Wright, I decided that cutting my own wood was a small price to pay to keep the peace.” As I watched Thomas speak, as I saw him stand in the multitude, shoulders squared, I wondered that I had ever thought his eyes were in danger of popping from his head, his cheekbones sharp enough to skin a rabbit. I was shamed to think that I had ever referred to him as “poor.” And it occurred to me then that out of all of the men in Stoneybrooke Towne, he was the only man among them.

“Is that all?”

“Excuse me.” One of the members of the jury was waving his hand in the air. “I would question Thomas Smyth further.”

The selectman nodded.

“You had experience with your wife’s father?”

“Aye.”

“And how is it that Simeon Wright has anything to do with him. And her?”

Thomas turned and looked straight at Small-hope. After a long moment, she gave a slight nod. And then she cast her gaze toward the floor.

“When I first met my wife, her eye was blackened and her hands burnt. It was not uncommon for her to walk among you here in Newham evidencing such signs of abuse. That abuse was meted out by the hand of her father, and it was I, a stranger, who was the first to say or do anything about it.”

The room had gone silent. But still the selectman pressed his question. “But how has this anything to do with Simeon Wright?”

“When I see her cringe in that man’s presence the same way she cringed in her father’s, to my way of thinking, it has everything to do with it.”

“Are there any more questions for this man?”

None replied.

Thomas nodded at the selectman, but as he removed himself from the floor, Goody Metcalf stood to take his place.

“I was up to Wright’s hill once and I heard Simeon Wright yelling. At his mother.”

Goody Hillbrook replaced her. “Their girl servant came to my house once asking for a poultice. For her arm. Said it was an accident, but how does the whole mark of an iron get burned into your arm unless ’tis pressed there?”

Another woman stood to take her place, but the selectman waved his arms for silence. “Goody Metcalf, how do you know ’tis his mother Simeon Wright was addressing?”

“I . . . well . . . who else could it have been?”

“Goody Hillbrook, did the girl tell you Simeon Wright had accosted her?”

“She did not say exactly, but—”

“I cannot see how this has anything to do with the trial of Susan–Love'sPursuit_ nah Phillips!” Simeon had come to his feet and was now glowering at the women.

“I have something to say about the character of Simeon Wright.”

Simeon Wright turned to identify the voice. A look overcame his face that I could not understand. Not until I realized ’twas my own sister who had spoken.