The Heretic's Daughter: A Novel - By Kathleen Kent Page 0,100

up as if to catch rain or the sound of my voice. The wrist was strong and supple like the neck of a powerful mare, and on it were a manacle and chain.

“Mother, Mother, Mother, Mother . . . ,” I must have said a hundred times and she, answering me. And so we called back and forth to each other until the sheriff shouted out from the top of the stairwell, “I’ll have quiet or you’ll know why.” We lowered our voices to whispers and then I heard the sound of Richard’s voice coming to me from directly across the corridor. He was with Andrew in the nearer small cell, the men’s cell, and the three of us talked in whispers of small things: that Tom was with me, that we were for the time being safe. Richard told us of the wounds on Andrew’s wrists, received during the torture ten days before. But he did not say that Andrew had begun to fever from the poison festering in the torn flesh. We did not speak of the trials or the sentencing or what was to come, but when Mother asked about Hannah I had no answer to give her. I had not given my sister a thought from the time I approached the Salem meetinghouse. Soon the women against the wall reclaimed their places and I was forced back towards the center of the cell, where Tom sat in wretched silence waiting for me.

A woman crept her way slowly towards Tom and me, her dress dirty and worn and rust-stained from the chains that rested against her apron, and said softly, “Children, come sit with me. You are in the good cell. Not the other one. Come and find a place with me and rest easy.” Her face was very kind and her hands gentle as they found my resisting fingers. I looked around at the women, unbathed, unfed, and all of them manacled, even the youngest of them, and wondered what she could mean by the “good” cell. I did not know that most of the women in the far cell were condemned to die and that my mother had found fellowship with fifteen other martyrs in a cell made to hold six or seven.

We sat with the kind woman for a few hours, until the blacksmith came and fitted us with manacles, manacles that Father would have to repay the sheriff for. The man was curt and brusque but he knew his craft and did not miss his mark when the hammer came down for the final closure. Many an arm or ankle could be shattered with a careless blow. Some of the women, the women who had been longest in the prison, had their chains passed through a ring bolt attached to the floor or the wall, but because we were so young, our chains were left free. Soon after came the time for the sheriff to let into the corridor, one by one, the families of the imprisoned to pass food or clothing through the bars. The time spent in the corridor was only as long as the number of coins or barter that could be slipped into the hands of the jailer. Most everyone had no coins and so were given only a few moments for comfort or prayers or for saying good-bye.

The doors to the cells were rarely opened for visitors, except for a minister or the few attending doctors who came out of charity. Or to remove the body of someone who had died during the night. It was late afternoon before Tom and I saw the corridor darken from the shadow of our father’s crouching figure appearing at the bars to our cell. The ceiling was no more than six feet high, three feet down into the rocky ground, making a half cellar, and three feet built up with a stone foundation for the house resting above the cells.

He wrapped his hands around the bars and called to us. When he saw we were manacled he bowed his head and said, “Dear God . . . ,” but there was no time to linger, for he had to deliver food to Richard, Andrew, and Mother before he was forced to leave. He handed me a small loaf of bread, a leather water skin, a shawl for me, and a coat for Tom, and said hurriedly, “Sarah, listen to what I say. Drink what’s in the skin first and only from