The Heretic's Daughter: A Novel - By Kathleen Kent Page 0,80
on and point their fingers at this one and that one. They’re listened to and believed and another man or woman is thrown into Salem jail. And anyone who stands against them is cried upon as a witch. Sarah, I’ve been to the trials. I saw Bridget Bishop condemned, and it was like being full-blown mad to stand in that meetinghouse and see every eye turn savage.”
“And what about Mother? She is no witch. She must be believed,” I said, my body shaking.
“Goody Bishop protested her innocence even as they were putting the noose around her neck.” He must have taken pity then, for he said, “There is a sort of quiet in Salem now. There are no new arrests. And every mind is turned toward the Indian raid at the fort in Wells. We must hope that one or all of the judges will come to good sense before the next session.”
A soft dousing rain came at that moment, soaking us through, and I said, “They will come for us next. Mother said it would happen. She said we should tell them everything they wish to hear even if it means we are to say we are all witches. If we do, she says they will let us go.”
A small movement over my right shoulder snapped my head around and I saw Tom hunched in the rain, his face pale, his lips a bluish tint, as he struggled to breathe. I don’t know how long he had been listening but it must have been a good while, for he could not have been more panicked had my own fingers pressed hard about his throat. He wheeled around and lurched off into the fields, disappearing into the growing stalks of corn made soft and insubstantial by the warm and rising mists.
THE INCIDENT AT the well moved my two brothers in opposing directions. For Richard, his outburst had loosened some hard wall within his breast and he seemed, if not at peace, not as troubled as he had been. He was reluctant at first to tell me of the conditions in the jail because Mother had made him promise to keep what he had seen to himself. But I pestered him until he described the day-to-day life, the crowding, the filth, and the fear, and he soon took to Salem little scraps of notes I wrote to her. I spent most of a day torturing out the letters for a message that read, “Deare Mother. Wee are all missing you. Wee are all clean, but for Hanah, and are fed well as theire is meete for the pot.” I received back a message from Mother written on the bottom of my parchment with some bit of charcoal. “Dearest Sarah. Practice your letters more. Yours, and ever faithful.”
I pored over the note, disappointed in its brevity, searching for deeper meanings of sentiment within the message. Never once did I think of the cost to my mother, searching through the dark of her cell for the blacking to carefully inscribe the letters she could barely see. There were smudges where her hand marked the paper, and there would be many times I wished I had kept that note. The delicate swirls and ridges of her fingers imprinted in the paper with the filth of her captivity had been her truer message to me.
For Tom, the knowledge he received at the well shriveled and weighed down on him like a cider press until he looked as spent and knobby as a dried pear. His eyes were the worst, and when they lit on you, it was with the pleadings of a drowning boy. He daily struggled to work, but one day out in the fields, his shoulders harnessed to a leather strap wrapped around a stump, he threw off his harness and without a word walked away, climbing the stairs to the attic and lying down on his pallet. He did not answer Father’s calls, he did not come down for supper, and when I climbed the stairs later to feel his head and threaten him with a physic, he would not look at me or talk to me. The next morning after breakfast Father climbed the stairs and was with Tom for a long time before they came down together. And though Tom continued to walk in the shadows, he ate his meals and worked and talked when spoken to and so remained among the living.