Читать книгу Peace, My Daughters - Shirley Barker - Страница 3

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Another such night it must have been that the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. Remember Winster thought thus of her Creator as she lifted an iron lanthorn against the white moon that seemed to be driven hither and thither among the clouds like a puff of milkweed down. Then she lowered her arm and blew against the shielding mesh till the candle behind it flickered out. Under her feet, in the moving light and darkness, the valley sloped seaward to the shining rivers that curved and widened into Salem Harbor. All around her, autumn elms and oaks tossed in the harsh wind off the brow of Hathorne's Hill, and she could see them writhing, matted and tangled in the sharp moonlight, all the way down to Salem where the bell of the First Church already rang for nine. Her eyes followed wandering lines of stone wall that marked off the uneven fields, and stopped at the hedge of shadow where alder thickets showed that water ran. Under the peaked roofs and behind the gable ends of the Village, the moonlight struck faint gold on darkened windowpanes. Godly people had betaken themselves to bed--all except the Reverend Samuel Parris, for the window of his study shone like the pillar of fire that led Moses' little band out of Egypt long ago. Mr. Parris must be conning over his sermon for tomorrow, filling it full of the long words like sapientia and scientia that she could never understand. Now a light, dim, reluctant, stirred a few rods further down. That would be at Ingersoll's tavern, and Remember smiled, for everybody in the Village knew that good Deacon Ingersoll, the tavern-keeper, was always forgetting to put the cat out, and his Hannah, though kindly-hearted, disliked to have furry, big-eyed puss bouncing on her bed in the nighttime and clawing the good linen sheets that came from Boston. Then the light vanished. The Deacon had completed his forgotten chore which he would likely forget again tomorrow night.

Remember walked on. How white the sloping lands gleamed, as if the snows of winter were already upon them! Winter in this land, and she had known no other, began when the swamp maples brightened at the touch of early frost, and ended when the same trees shook out their buds irrepressibly in the midst of an April snow-storm. If winter ever ended ... It faded, rather, into an old man ghost that stalked this hill and valley country, bringing a chill wind with him, even in the hot summer noons. And it was not summer now. The maples had blown themselves bare in the rain two weeks ago. The cornstalks that Jonathan had banked around the house wall lay stiff and white every morning when she looked out at them through the cold, red sunrise. No provision you could make against winter was enough, not all the birch and hickory logs piled in the leanter. No cellarful of apples and turnips, cider and rum, no smoked meats and dried herbs hung in plenty from her kitchen rafters, could keep Remember from shuddering when she thought of winter, and that the mellow countryside around her must soon turn into ice and iron, lashed by weathers more relentless than the will of God.

Pulling her rough cloak tighter, she turned from the path, clambered over a stone wall, and started up the slope of plowed land that felt no more uneven under her good leather shoes than the more traveled way behind her. Half a mile over the spur of the great hill and she would be at home. Jonathan must still be awake, for she could sometimes see the light behind the panes in the kitchen window, sometimes the oak boughs with a few brown leaves clinging to them whipped between her and his sign of welcome. Jonathan had told her when she left home that afternoon to be sure and take the rowan walking stick that his father had cut in the Welsh mountains in the old country, and a wise woman had blessed for him in Widdicombe. She would likely be coming home after dark--and on November Eve!

"Witches an' warlocks be about on that night," Jonathan had warned, drawing the shaggy brows down over his bright, old eyes, "and we do have them, even here in the New Jerusalem. I hear they put one in gaol in Newbury two weeks back, and another ran off into Piscataqua Government. But rowan wood's a charm. Take this old stick, Remember, and rap the Devil right smart if so be ye meet him or any of his creatures."

But she had not taken the stick, and for all the old tales of wicked spirits that prowl on November Eve, she had not needed it. Ministers said much of evil powers abroad in the Bay Colony working to destroy it, and this might be so, but at least they were not keeping their autumn Sabbath on Salem Farms tonight. Or perhaps they were, and she not fey enough to know it. Fey you must be, her mother had told her, to witness such unholy revels, and her mother, Jonet Thrale, the Scottish lass from Ayr, had told her too that no Thrale was ever fey.

"Aye, witches wear goats' horns, birdie, an' dance in a ring o' fire blasphemin', but ye'll nae be seeing them, nae more than will yon brown earth crock on the dresser--ye're both made too fast out of clay."

Not all the Ayrshire farmers had been Thrales, and Jonet could spin a tale of lost souls who had signed the Devil's book in their own blood, from Agnes Sampson and Barbara Napier down to the coven in Forfar churchyard, but her tales were all still now, under a slate gravestone up in Rowley.

Remember sighed with more than the grief of a pious daughter, for she had loved her mother, but she feared no evil now. The Lord was with her. She was not of the Elect, but she was still in His protection. Nothing walked abroad more harmful than the autumn wind. Nothing moved but herself and--oh!

A rush of darkness beat across the air before her, brushing by in clammy folds for one horrible moment. Then a great, black bat recovered itself and flapped drunkenly off into the woodland west of the cleared field around her.

She gave a weak cry of relief. The musty odor of bat's wings smelling like stale cheese still clung in the air behind the swooping creature. Black bats lived in the dead oak in John Putnam's pasture. She had seen baby bats hanging head down--soft, webbed creatures. She was not afraid of a bat! Still, it would do no harm to think godly thoughts to protect her during the few moments left before she reached her own door. She did not want to think about the hours just behind her that she had spent working with the midwife in Dame Constance Craniver's bedroom. She would not think of blood on clean linen, nor the sweat on Constance's brow, nor of the pink, crumpled thing, now safe in the new cradle built soundly and with all of Richard Craniver's pride in the building and the filling of it. She had no need for cradles in Jonathan Winster's house, and his children that she was rearing belonged to a dead woman. No, she would not think of that. She would think of the Gospel and how Mr. Parris had preached from it last Lecture Day. His text had been--why, it had been--she stopped, startled.

"Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee!"

Suppose her soul were required of her this night? What would the Lord say to her at His bar of judgment? And how would she answer Him? He must know her already--all she had done, of good or evil. Everything, surely! It was all written down in a book just as real as the old black Bible on her oak chest or the church book of Samuel Parris. How would it read, she wondered, stooping to disentangle her cloak from the small horns of a thorn tree, her fingers moving swiftly in the chilling moonlight.

The book would read: "Remember Winster, goodwife, of the church at Salem Village; daughter of Dan Wicom the weaver of Rowley and his wife Jonet, born in Ayr; eleven years married to Jonathan Winster, planter of Salem Farms, in this year, 1691. She has her father's loom and can weave cloth as well as he could in his days. She keeps her house and is a Gospel woman--"

"Yes," spoke a laughing, masculine voice from the shadows beyond the thorn tree, "but she is sinful proud, is Mrs. Remember. Proud of her white flesh when she bares it in her chamber, and her ruddy hair when she lets it down in the candlelight. Her husband is an old man, and she still remembers Tom Purchas when the wind blows east out of England over the salt sea."

Remember did not start at the sound of the voice, for she did not realize that it was speaking from without, and was not a challenge from her own mind which she was accustomed to examine constantly for evidence of ungodliness. She replied to it hotly, answering what seemed at first to be her own question.

"Tom Purchas' ship went down near twelve years ago--the spring before my wedding--and no one was saved from it. The deacons can set no scarlet 'A' on me for mourning the dead."

"Dealing with God is not dealing with deacons, Remember."

Then she looked up into the face of a young man who stood taller than the little, gnarled tree. The moonlight showed him as plainly as a thousand candles could have done--his bright, dark eyes, wide-spaced, his curving mouth, cleft chin. He wore a gray coat and breeches, a broad-brimmed hat and square shoes like any good Salem man. He was smiling. She felt angry rather than frightened. Then it seemed as if all the spirit went out of her like blown mist, leaving her body standing by, alone and empty. It was the mist that answered him.

"Who are you, and how do you know what I think in my chamber?"

"You think what every woman thinks in her chamber: that she is still fair and the man with her is not worthy of her. My name? I have answered to many. Can you guess it?"

Remember looked him up and down coldly. He reminded her of a picture she had seen on the wall of a tavern in Boston when her father had taken her there to sell their winter's weaving in the springtime, the picture of a gay, bold man, with fine clothes and a little dog--the late King Charles, of gracious memory.

"Is it Charles?" she asked the stranger.

"Charles is a fine name, well thought of in my country. But I do not answer to it."

Now that she was mist, Remember felt a wit and courage she had not known when she was dust of the ground like the brown earth crock, so she sneered at him.

"Perhaps you would like me to believe that you are Lucifer, Great Prince of Darkness?"

He seemed to meditate.

"No. Nothing so high-sounding for these sparse hills and niggard valleys. Too popish a name for Massachusetts Bay. There have been many who believed my name was Charles, just as there will be those who believe my name is Frank--but I shall be John to you. John--John--John Horne! A good yeoman's name!"

"We had an elder of that name in Salem Town. He died lately, full of good works."

"And I am not he nor any of his stock. I say that, here and now, that we may have no cries of libel from his kindred."

"If you are not his kin, you must come on other business to Salem Village."

John Horne laughed, a laugh that echoed.

"Do you want to know that business for yourself, or so that you may tell it to the gossips on Sabbath noon between sermons? God's blood, I thought the women of the Bay would be different! But no! Let a strange mouse scurry across the beams of the Meeting House, and their ears flap forward for news of its passage, just as our maids-in-waiting prick up their ears when a new girl goes in to the King."

"We have no mice in our Meeting House. If you will stand out of my way, John Horne, I will go home to my husband."

"Your husband is asleep and will not miss you, and the hands of the brass clock he is so proud of are locked tight and still. I am a stranger in Salem Village, but I heard much of it afar off--"

"If you heard the truth of it, you heard that the land is taken and we have no need of strangers here."

"Still, a village can always use one more"--he seemed to consider, then finished decisively--"one more shoemaker."

When Jonet Thrale was a girl in Ayr she had drawn a plow yoked with her father's mule, and something mulish had entered into her spirit. It was out of that mulishness that her daughter now spoke.

"You did not come to Salem to make shoes?"

"No." His voice came through the darkness, taut and sober. "I have a great work to do, and it may be done here. But I could not have come if certain brethren of your church had not sent for me. I am not a god. When men call me, I come to them."

"I doubt your name is in the parish book as being summoned."

"Does everything that goes on in this parish go into the parish book?"

Remember's cheeks tingled with more than the cold. She put out her fingers and gripped the little thorn tree, then drew back sharply as its barbs pierced her flesh in a dozen places. When she looked up at her companion she found him silent, his gaze fixed on the stains welling in the palm of her hand. In his hand he was holding something. It seemed to be a square, leather book with wrought-iron corners.

"You have hurt your hand," he muttered, the laughter gone from about him, "and your blood is dripping down--"

He held the book. He watched the dark drops of blood plunge and lose themselves in the dark grass at her feet. She stepped back, stood with her head lifted, like a deer ready to run.

"The Book!" she found herself murmuring. "The Book--and the blood!"

The light that had kindled hot in his eyes died down. He thrust the book under his cloak that swayed about him in the wind.

"Ah well. You may prick your fingers another evening. But perhaps I shall cobble your shoes before that. Look for me tomorrow at the Meeting House."

Mockingly he swung off his high-crowned hat, bowed, and turned down the valley.

If he vanishes, thought Remember, huddling against the thorn tree, if he fades away in air or is caught up in a burst of flame, I shall know he was a devil or the King of Devils, and what he meant with the book--for me to sign it and be one of them. But John Horne did not vanish. He walked with long strides, whistling, across the straight furrows of Winster Farm. Down the hill he walked, past the Training Ground and Captain Walcott's house. The walnut tree at the north side of the parsonage cast a shadow, and if he stepped into this shadow, either man or devil, he must disappear. Finally she lost sight of him among the young trees of the orchard. She stood quite still for a moment and then his voice came back, blown on the wind along with a breath of salt air from the marshes of Endicott River.

"Lodging! Lodging for a stranger this day out of Boston and benighted on the road!"

After a moment a dim light appeared again in an upper window of the tavern. The deacon might just as well have waited to put the cat out. Remember drew a long breath. Strange as this man might be, it did not seem likely that an evil spirit would ask for a bed at Deacon Ingersoll's, even on November Eve. The air was cold enough for snow. The warmth that had filled her while the young man stood there had died out. She stumbled, shivering, across the strip of plowed land that separated her from her own door, half fell over the threshold and into the quiet of the long room. Jonathan nodded in the wainscot chair by the fireplace, a tired old man who had helped clear Orchard Farm for the Governor, and built good land out of wilderness, tough as the roots of the Essex oak trees. The betty lamp burned low, sputtered before going out. His wife's dragging steps awoke him and he stood up yawning, a little bent as always.

"Got back without the rowan stick, did ye? Old Serpent's not what he was in my days o' sinful youth, I doubt not. Was it a lad for Craniver?"

"Yes," murmured Remember, keeping her back to him as she took off her hood, "a fine boy."

"She's young enough to have many such, an' so be ye. Come, can't go to bed without prayer Sabbath Eve! Set ye there, Remember."

Remember sat and bowed her head but she did not listen to Jonathan's prayer. After all, had it really happened? She had torn her hand on the thorn tree, fainted at the pain, been mazed like one taken with the falling sickness, and dreamed this evil of a wandering shoemaker who talked of Tom Purchas and brought a devil's book with him. Yes, that had been the way of it. Tomorrow there would be Mr. Parris' sermoning to purge her soul of this adventure, and after the cold dinner--for Jonathan was too pious to allow her to keep a bake-fire on Sunday--she would walk out to Martha Corey's and take the good soul a cutting from that new bolt of checked linen in her loom room, borrow a pattern for Briony's tiffany hood, maybe. Tomorrow would be like any other day in Salem Village; this year like any other year, God willing. Why, what was Jonathan doing? He had finished prayers and stood by the mantel shaking the new brass clock one of Philip English's captains had bought for him in London.

"'Tis not worth a farthing, this clock, and I am out of pocket what I paid for it."

"But why? I can hear it ticking."

"Aye, now you can. But it was not--till I shook it. Stopped at nine, it had, and First Church bell rang for nine sometime back."

"Yes," said Remember, "I heard it as I crossed the field--I--"

"Locked tight and still," John Horne had said of the brass clock. How had he known there was such a clock and that Jonathan took such pride in it?

"Ah well. Upstairs to bed with us." He lifted the betty lamp off its hook by the fireplace and swung it in his shaking hand. "Devil take the clock!"