The Heretic's Daughter: A Novel - By Kathleen Kent Page 0,127

together when I lived with her family, and I expected her to tell me something pleasantly distracting.

“Hush, now. Don’t cry. I have seen her only yesterday and she is well.” She nodded and looked off to a far corner of the cell.

The well of my mouth dried to dust and I whispered, “Who?”

She seemed not to hear me and continued on as she deftly plaited strands of my hair. “If I gather your hair so, it will not pull and we will not have to fever-cut it to the scalp. But you have knots that will never come out. That’s the thing about knots. They are easier tied than untied.”

I grabbed her hand and asked again, “Margaret, who did you see yesterday?”

“Why, I saw Aunt Martha. She came into the cell while you were sleeping. She was quite sorry you have been ill and will be all the more sad if you do not mend. I asked her to stay but she would not. D’ye know what she told me to tell you?”

I shook my head, my eyes huge and staring, my bowels turning to water. She cocked her head and her gaze became suddenly clear and reflective.

“She said, ‘Hold fast the stone. . .’ ”

I shut my eyes and remembered the touch of my mother’s hand as she closed my fingers around the stone I had carried from Preston’s farm. How Margaret could have known about it I cannot say. I could have, in the tossing of my fevered brain, spoken of it to her. Or perhaps the thread of knowingness had been passed to her as well and her tangled mind had caught some bit of message from the shaded world like a moth caught in a net. Margaret had resumed plaiting my hair and she sang a little song I had heard Aunt sing as she moved about the hearth. It was one that my own mother had hummed when she was unguarded and thought herself to be alone, and I wept again, not from the press of my guilt but from the easing of it. And from that moment on I began to get better.

ON A DAY close to the end of September, the door was opened by the sheriff and a tall, stately man in a flowing cape and large-brimmed hat walked into the cells and stood looking over us. He entered with a prim disdain, bringing the edge of his cloak up to cover his mouth and nose from the stench. He resisted the movement of his legs backwards and planted his feet as though enduring gale winds. The play of emotions upon his face, though, was remarkable and would stay with me through all my life. It was as though he held up to us the mirrored image of our slide from decent modesty, grace, and dignity to the degeneracy of fear and self-recrimination and sickness. His features, which were large, quivered and melted like wax held too close to the heat. His eyes, at first narrowed in righteous condemnation to view so many accused witches, widened and brimmed over with tears, which he dashed away as though they scalded his skin. His lips, pressed tightly together, a cage against speaking idly of profane things, opened to a sharp intake of breath. He put his fist up and covered the quivering mouth that muttered over and over again “My God, my God, my God. . .” There were no entreaties or pleas of mercy from the women. There were no moans of distress or even tears. They sat or lay mute, letting their bodies be the book of revelation.

Increase Mather, famed clergyman, friend to the King and the Governor alike, would work from that moment to cast doubt upon the accusers, and though he would never find fault outright with the judges or his son, Cotton Mather, this doubt would be a mighty blow to the Court of Oyer and Terminer. He would return again to the prison on October 19th to take statements from women who said they had been pressed into giving false witness against themselves, but I would not be in Salem to see him.

On Saturday, the first day of October, Dr. Ames came into our cell and told us that our bail had been collected and that within a very short time many of the youngest prisoners would be released. Coins had been raised from the towns of Andover and Boston and even faraway Gloucester. It gave proof, he