bad at one time or another?"
"Whose side are you on?" Verily asked testily.
"I'm supposed to build a city," said Alvin. "And if I don't build it on law, what am I going to build it on? Even Napoleon makes laws that bind him, because if you don't then there's no order, it's chaos all the way down."
"So you'd rather hang?"
Alvin sighed and held up the twisted manacle. "I'm not going to hang."
"But someone will," said Verily. "If not this year then next, or the year after. Someone will hang. You said so yourself."
"Let witch trials fade out by themselves," said Alvin.
"The way slavery's fading?" Verily answered mockingly.
The door opened again. People were beginning to return. The bailiff came back to clean up the meal. "You didn't eat much," said the bailiff.
"I did," said Alvin.
Hezekiah and Purity still held hands across the railing separating spectators from the court. "Beg pardon," said the bailiff. "She's a defendant now. I don't want to put her in chains, but she's not allowed to touch folks beyond the rail."
Hezekiah nodded and withdrew his hands.
The bailiff left with the picnic basket. Alvin wrapped the manacle around his wrist again. Purity couldn't resist touching it. It was hard again. As hard as iron.
Quill came back into the courtroom smiling.
Purity turned and whispered to Hezekiah. "You're wrong, you know," she said. "It wasn't you that hanged them."
Hezekiah shook his head.
"I never knew them, but I sit now where they sat, though guiltier, because I'm the one who leveled the charge. And I tell you, they knew who their friends were."
"I was no friend to them."
"They knew who their friends were," said Purity, "and I know who their friends were. All may have been outraged, but they let the hanging take place. You alone followed me or found me here. You alone took care to raise me in safety. You gave years of your life to their child. That is a true friend."
Hezekiah buried his face in his hands. His shoulders shook, unable to bear what she had placed upon them. Absolution was a heavier burden, for the moment, than guilt.
* * *
Quill rose to his feet the moment John Adams called the court to order.
"Your Honor, I have a motion."
"Out of order," said John.
"Your Honor, I think all can be settled when we call Mr. Verily Cooper to the stand! This is ecclesiastical law and there is no - "
John banged the gavel again and again until Quill fell silent.
"I said your motion was out of order."
"There are precedents!" said Quill, seething with fury.
"On the contrary," said John. "Your motion may be in order when we resume the trial of Alvin Smith and Purity Orphan. But at the moment, this is a hearing on a motion, and in this procedure I am the questioner. There are no sides and no attorneys, only my own pursuit of information to allow me to reach a conclusion, So you will take your seat until I call you for questioning. You are the equal of all other persons in this court. You have no standing to make a motion of any kind. Is that clear to you at last, Mr. Quill?"
"You exceed your authority, Your Honor!"
"Bailiff, bring manacles and leg irons. If Mr. Quill speaks again, they are to be placed upon him to remind him that he has no authority in this courtroom during this hearing."
White-faced and trembling, Quill sat down.
The hearing went quite smoothly for quite a while. John questioned Purity first. She described the nature of the charges she originally made, and then told how Quill had deformed them, turning harmless frolicking in the river into an incestuous orgy, and a peaceful conversation on the riverbank into a witches' sabbath. He asked her about the professors from the college, and she affirmed that she had never mentioned them and only found out they were being questioned when Quill demanded that she denounce them, Emerson in particular.
Then the professors were brought forward, one at a time, to recount the experience of being questioned by Quill. Each one stated that he had been led to believe that others had confessed and implicated them, and that their only hope was to confess and repent. All denied being the one who confessed.
Then John turned to Quill.
"Aren't you going to question him first?" Quill said, pointing to Alvin.
"Have you forgotten whose hearing this is?" asked John.
"I just want to hear whether he denies the witchcraft charges!"
"You'll find that out in the trial," said John,