made me immovable. I threatened to throw myself under the wheels if he did not take Hannah and me, so he finally relented and lifted us up to sit with him on the driving board. The way to the mill was as to the center of town but for the sharp turn west on Newbury Road before reaching the burying grounds. The mill sat on the western side of the Shawshin River, and the morning we pulled over the little bridge to approach the ironworks, there were four or five wagons with men coming to repair, sharpen, or buy new tools for the harvesting that was fast approaching.
The men had been standing about in small groups as we pulled up, no doubt trading village news and waiting for their turn at the forge, but when Father climbed down from the wagon they stopped all their talking. They stared at us for a moment and then turned away as though from a chilly wind come off the water. They stood awkwardly hunching their shoulders, making dust motes in the air and islands in the dirt with the toes of their boots. Now, Father never ambled or shuffled and rarely slowed his gait through furrow or field, and when he was in his full loping stride I had to go at a dead run to keep to his heels. He pulled his large harvesting scythe from the wagon and walked towards the men at such a pace that the wind from his swinging arms could have filled a small sail. A ripple went through the small group, and they looked at first to stand firm and make him go around them. But as the rusted and sharply upturned blade of the scythe swung its way ever closer, the group parted wide and Father passed through them unmolested.
Once he had entered the forge, the men came into a group again, like flesh cleaving together after a sharp wound. They turned to Hannah and me to steal a look now and then, but I met each eye with a straightaway stare, which I think made them bold. After a time one of them, a man I had seen only in passing on the Boston Way Road, said loud enough for me to hear, “So the mother goes, there the children will follow.” Another man laughed and said, “By the looks of the older one, they’d better send for the constable quick before we’re struck down with black looks.” My fists tightened, bunching up my skirt into twin hillocks on my thighs. The other men had turned and were looking at me speculatively, their eyes wary, amused, hostile. Hannah crawled beneath the driving board and went silent, like an animal run to ground.
Then another man said, “They say there is one true test for a witch. You throw ’em in the river. If they drown, their innocence is proved. If they float, they’re a witch and you take ’em out and hang ’em.”
They made a great show at being at their ease but they edged closer, inch by inch, to Father’s wagon. I think had I been alone, they might have drowned me in the river and been done with it. But at that moment a deeply resonant voice rumbled out from the forge, saying, “Who’ll be next at the fire?”
The men wheeled around as if one body and I saw Father standing in the shadow of the forge, his old scythe blade sharpened and polished, and as he passed into the sunlight, the blade winked wickedly at the men. He stood a full foot and a half taller than the tallest of them, and when the sun struck his face his eyes were black and obsidian-like. The heated sweat from the forge had soaked through his coarse-woven shirt, his long hair looked lank and oiled, and a fire-smudge banded his nose. He must have looked to the men standing in the yard as the lime-washed druids looked to the Roman soldiers standing on the other side of a Welsh river.
Father called out, “Who, then, is next? Is it you, Granger, who lives on New Meadow?” His arm made a slight swinging motion, bringing the scythe along with its arc. “Or is it you, Hagget, that lives on Blanchard’s Pond? Or maybe it’s you, Farnum, who lives at Boston Hill?” And so he went, calling to the eight or so men that stood in the yard, naming their names and their farms, harvesting the air