The Heretic's Daughter: A Novel - By Kathleen Kent Page 0,63
one hip.
“They say you fly there, mistress. On a pole.”
For the second time that morning, there was sharp laughter, and it drew many looks to my mother. Heads came together, hands were raised to mouths to mask the buzzing of voices, and men and women widened their circles away from us, as though to avoid an overflowing cesspool. Elizabeth twisted her body from us, longing to walk away with the others, and her eyes searched about for somewhere to land. When her gaze crossed over mine, it lingered for a moment, and I caught my breath, for I knew that she had heard stories of me as well. The dread that had poured over me on the way to Samuel Preston’s farm returned to lick its way from my eyes to my neck. It congealed and tightened there like an insect caught in an amber necklace.
Mother notched her head over her shoulder towards the parishioners still gathered at the front of the meetinghouse and said, “Just what am I to do with such nonsense? What answer should I make to people who are so foolish as to believe that someone who is of this earth, certainly no angel with wings, can fly on a pole in the dead of night to make sport at Blanchard’s Pond?”
Robert moved closer to the wagon, placing his hands upon the wheel, and when he looked up into her face, I saw a passion that was greater than the sentiments of neighborly concern.
“These days are very harsh, Martha. There are still smallpox and Indian raids not two days’ ride from here. People are very much afraid, and fear makes fools of us all. The best answer is no other answer but calmness and” — here he paused, tightly gripping the wheel — “most of all restraint.”
She looked at him, her mouth twisted into a half smile, and then at Father, who continued to stare at the ground, his brow shadowed by the brim of his hat. Expelling her breath sharply, she pointed her chin in the direction of home and repeated the word “restraint.” But I knew she was dismissing all the talk as easily as she would have dismissed a whaler returned from the sea, recounting tales of monsters from the deep. Mother tapped my shoulder to give Hannah to her and I crawled into the back, finding my place between Tom and Andrew. As Father climbed onto the driving board, she said in parting to Robert, “I hear you have been courting the Widow Frye. I hope that we are to have a wedding soon or people will start their gossiping about you as well.”
He did not answer but only signaled good-bye as we rolled away across the snow. I looked at Mother and saw that she was unmoved by Robert’s words and it lessened my own fears. Father’s face was more difficult to read, for his mouth neither smiled nor frowned, and the flesh surrounding his jaw clenched and unclenched. I turned and waved to Elizabeth, but she did not return the wave.
We had gone only half the distance down Boston Way Road, when the horse came up lame and everyone was forced to walk home except for me and Hannah and Tom. Tom would have walked as well but for the tightening in his chest from the bitter cold. He lay with his head in my lap, pale and gasping, but I pestered him until he gave me, with fits and starts, the story of the massacre of York he had heard from the older boys. And with the retelling of so many missing scalps, so many hacked-off legs and arms, so many captives taken away and traded from Abanaki to Narragansett, we made our way slowly, slowly to the house. The welcoming warmth of our fire was made all the sweeter for the carnage of a massacre left outside our door.
THE OLD WOMEN used to say, “When the days begin to lengthen, the cold begins to strengthen.” But in the first few days of March the glow of the afternoon sun warmed the ice and snow enough to form little rivulets and streams between each embankment, and we watched Father eagerly to give us a sign that it was time to take up our buckets and venture into Billerica Meadow for the mapling. When it was time, we wrapped ourselves in cloaks and shawls, stuffing straw into our shoes, for the ground was still frozen where the shadows lay, and