The Heretic's Daughter: A Novel - By Kathleen Kent Page 0,104
families would not come for hours. There were two pairs of footsteps descending, the sheriff’s rapid, heavy steps along with someone else’s, and I wondered if there was to be an early trial. The door to our cell opened, and a woman, short and thick, walked in and started looking around the room as though searching for someone. I heard a whispered hiss, “The sheriff’s wife.” The door remained ajar but Sheriff Corwin’s shadow stayed at the threshold. His wife strode confidently to Goodwife Faulkner and said, pointing to her shawl, “I’ll give you bread for the shawl.”
An old woman from across the room rasped out, “Don’t do it, missus. You’ll need it come September.” She laughed unpleasantly but it ended in a barking cough. Goody Faulkner shook her head and pulled the shawl closer around her shoulders. The sheriff’s wife shrugged and asked several other women, some who looked new to the cell, with clean hands and clean aprons, and a few desperate others who had been there awhile, to barter at a pittance pieces of their clothing. One of the women had been stripped down to her shift, but when she offered up a piece of the hem, Goody Corwin shook her head and moved on. She looked around once more and her eyes fell on me and Tom. She walked over and said, not unkindly, “Stand up and let me see you.”
I stood up and she pulled me to her as though she would embrace me. Her right hand held my shoulder while the left hand came to rest palm down on my head. She then pulled me back again and looked down at her left hand to see exactly where the top of my head had come to rest on her chest. She had been measuring me to see how tall I was, but I did not know the reason until someone called out with outrage, “For the love of Jesus. Leave them their clothes. Do you want to kill them with the damp?”
Goody Corwin did not acknowledge the speaker but said to me, “When you get hungry enough, we’ll talk again.” She gave my chin a squeeze and left us so that Sheriff Corwin could fasten the locks once more. When she had gone, I whispered to the woman next to me, “Why did she want our clothes? Is she so poor?”
The woman snorted, “Her? She’s tighter than a tick with money. She’s got more coin than all of us put together. She barters us with food for our clothes and then sells them at market for coin, saying the clothes are from the bodies of the unclaimed dead.” I shivered deeper into my shawl, thinking I would never barter with the sheriff’s wife, no matter how weakened I became from hunger.
The afternoon brought no visit from Father and I was able to get to the bars only a few times to speak to Mother. There was a growing flutter of fear within me as the day passed and the words “seven days, seven more days” ran again and again through my mind. Despite my earlier intentions, I made a promise to myself that when the sheriff’s wife next came I would offer her every bit of clothing in trade for ten minutes in my mother’s cell. When I called across the corridor to the men’s cell, asking Richard about Andrew, there was a long pause before he spoke. Finally he answered, “Andrew is bearing up. But he is worse today than yesterday. I fear his wound is festering and the poison has entered his body. Without proper care. . .” He paused, leaving me to imagine what was to become of Andrew without clean water to wash his wounds or salve to stop the poison from spreading.
NIGHT CAME AND Tom and I ate our hard bits of bread and finished the water in the skin. The air was warmer than it had been and despite all my worries I fell quickly into a dreamless sleep. Sometime during the darkest hours before dawn I heard loud shouts from the men’s cell for the sheriff to come. The shouting went on and on but it was hours before we heard his footsteps lumbering down the stairs. He lived with his wife in the upper floors but would never come down before morning unless the cells had caught fire and smoke was rising from his floorboards.
I heard the men’s cell being opened and pleading voices asking for