I shall row, my Love and I.
When Cockle Shells turn Silver bells
And mussels grow on every tree,
When frost and snow shall warm us all,
Then shall my love prove true to me.
The minister heard the tune and came to stand in the doorway of the bedchamber, dismayed by the old folk song as he stood watching the stranger care for his daughter. It was a song sung by the cunning folk, people he held in low esteem. He watched as Maria washed the child’s matted hair in a bowl with warm water and black soap that had a distinctive sweet scent. Rose and rosemary, sage and lavender. Maria had a beautiful, clear voice, and Anneke, who had tossed and turned in the throes of pain, at last lay quietly, taken up by the song. Her improvement was so quick it appeared that magic was at work, had there been such a thing, for the minister didn’t believe in enchantments, only in the ignorance of those who had faith in sorcery. Maria did not leave Anneke’s side, remaining by her bed, where she hemmed the girl’s nightdresses with blue thread.
The minister drew his wife into the hallway. “We don’t know a thing about this woman you’ve brought here. Who’s to say she won’t poison our daughter with her potions?”
Hannah Dekker went to her knees and begged her husband to allow Maria Owens to continue to treat Anneke. When he saw how distraught his wife was, the minister had no choice but to agree. Still, when he returned to the room later that night he found that Maria was burning a white candle onto which she had carved the name of the disease, the name of the child, and the date. He was ill at ease, and insisted on tasting the tea Maria was feeding the child; once he had, the bitterness of the drink worried him. “Will this not make her more ill?” he asked.
“I know breakbone fever and you either will trust me to do my best, or I can assure you, your girl will not live.”
The minister sat beside Maria and watched the candle flicker. He had one child, and Maria knew what that was like. You carried your heart in your hand.
“You can have me thrown in jail if I fail you,” she told him. “You can have me hanged.”
The minister exhaled a soft, brittle laugh. “I prefer not to do so. I prefer that my daughter lives.”
“Then we’re in agreement. That is what I prefer as well.”
* * *
Maria was in the corridor carrying a basin of cool water and vinegar when the minister’s close friend Dr. Joost van der Berg arrived. The doctor was a tall man of huge influence who regularly visited the governors of both New York and Massachusetts and was highly regarded by all. She overheard the doctor speaking with Dekker about the trials in Salem. They were both skeptical that a human being could make contact with the devil, causing death and destruction at that person’s will. The doctor believed there were issues with the accusers rather than the accused. It was clear that both he and Dekker saw the entire process of witch hunts as insanity. Neither believed that any of the accused could hit and bite victims when they had been seen miles or more away at the same exact time as the attacks. It was lunacy to think such acts were possible, with Jonas Dekker stating that the accusers were ill and deprived of their sanity. The two men were not alone in their opinions. There were many who were in power in Massachusetts who had begun to see that the trials were a sort of hysteria, although some would not understand the horror of what had been done until later. Increase Mather, the president of Harvard, had published Cases of Conscience, making an argument against use of spectral evidence in witch trials, in direct opposition to his son Cotton Mather’s The Wonders of the Invisible World, which insisted spectral evidence was valuable in a court of law, with the elder man writing, It is better that ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person be condemned. One man among those in power who had not changed his mind at all, however, was the chief examiner of the witchcraft trials, appointed in 1692, John Hathorne.
He had once been a man who had dived into the water fully clothed, who had stood in the moonlight to pick apples from a