They lapse into silence. Nicholas yawns, unworried now: his secret kept, his lost little self found. Perhaps he never really worried at all. He's a brash, brazen boy, and more than a little foolhardy -- the firstborn son of an important man, who day by day grows more cognizant of his own privilege and status.
--
It is nearing dawn when they emerge from the forest. Shoots have begun to sprout across their small farm, tender in the grey light. The house is dark, its windows shuttered. Nicholas lets her hand go and runs ahead, opening the gate with a clatter that startles the sleeping chickens. From the coop, a loud rustle of feathers.
Then the front door slams open. Haggard-faced and unshaven, Samuel Noyes steps out. He stares at his son. He crosses the small yard, sweeps the boy up in a tight, wordless hug, turning his back so that the witch cannot see his face. She is ignored as she enters the gate. She is ignored as she passes the henhouse, the pen where the livestock are kept. She is ignored until she is nearly upon the threshold of the house.
Then Samuel sets his son down. Gives him a little push inside, murmuring a terse word. Nicholas glances over his shoulder at her once -- guiltily -- and then dashes up the narrow and creaking stairs to the attic room he shares with his sister.
Samuel turns. He fills the doorframe, blocking her way, his eyes hard.
"Where did you find him?"
DevonAll the way back to the little farm, Devon holds Nicholas's hand like the child he is. He is not a man yet, though he will be seen as one soon enough. He's still young enough for her to hold onto while they walk in a dark wood; he is still young enough for her to not hold it against him when he lets go of her and dashes ahead, glad to be home. She doesn't call out; Faith, she knows from the memories of Mercy she still holds, sleeps deeply and heavily like so many other innocents are able to.
Samuel Noyes shoves himself out, and Devon does not hitch her stride. She pauses a few paces away while Samuel hugs his son, her head tipped curiously. Surely the woods aren't that dangerous. Surely the boy was not gone so terribly long to explain this level of terror.
But what does she know. She's no parent.
--
Nicholas is ushered inside. She wants to call after him to get right in bed with Faith and warm up before he gets sick, but she doesn't. She meets his eyes and just holds them for a moment, taking in his guilt, as he runs off. Then her eyes slide, slowly and perhaps even a bit defiantly, back to her uncle.
"Asleep," she says calmly, evenly, "under a tree. Perhaps two miles hence," she adds, loosely pointing in the direction they came from. Her arm falls again, and her eyes continue to hold her uncle's. The livid scratch on her cheek from a branch has swollen slightly into a bright red weal. "He said he wanted to hunt rabbits for tomorrow's supper, which is why he roamed so far, and then he got lost and tired, like any child would."
She takes two steps forward, closer.
newburyThere's something there in her uncle's eyes as she advances through the dim blue dawn. Something flickering through the hard grey, there and gone so quick that she might've mistaken it for a mere shadow had she not seen it so often before. In the eyes of the villagers of this time as they whispered about a woman accused. In the eyes of the wolves of her own time as they stared at her, scentless and strange.
"Two miles hence," repeats Samuel Noyes, "and yet he never once heard me when I called? Two miles hence, in the dark woods, and yet you found him when I could not? Two miles hence, and yet you look as though you've walked all the night; returning loose-haired and with a beastly mark upon your cheek?
"Where were you, girl? How did you find him? Who aided you, and who accompanied you?"
DevonDevon just frowns at him, which is far too bold for this hour. "The woods are dark an deep," she says to him, her voice low. "I walked back and forth through them many times, uncle, searching the ground but also the tree branches. Could you see a small boy hidden in shadows in the woods, just with a glance? I almost tripped over him when I finally found him. He could not hear you because he was asleep, and you had gone the opposite direction that he ran when he went after the rabbits. Think for a moment, and the answers will appear to you without dragging my good nature through the muck of your suspicion."
She takes another step, her brow still deeply furrowed. She points at her cheek. "If the loss of my bonnet and this beastly mark are my only rewards for finding your only son lost in the woods on a moonless night, unharmed and healthy, then leave me be and let me sleep."
newburyAnother step.
And another.
And when there is but an arm's reach between them, Samuel Noyes takes a half-step back. Just one foot retreating behind the other, and a sliver of room for her to enter the house -- it was never and never will be her home -- past him.
"Get thee upstairs," he mutters, "and make thyself presentable. We've church in but two hours."
DevonDevon walks past him. And she does not answer him, or look past her shoulder at him. She goes to whatever corner she's been given a bed, dropping into it immediately.
Fuck him. Fuck his church.
newburyThough the house is unfamiliar to her, she seems to know where to go by muscle memory. Her feet carry her up the stairs. There are two rooms up there, one the master's and one the children's. In between, sheltered by a coarse curtain, there is a pallet; there are a few stubby candles and meager pile of belongings.
She sleeps.
--
She wakes, suddenly and rudely: her uncle's footsteps storming up the stairs. With no room to call her own, no walls to protect her, instinct shrieks danger at her, danger, intrusion, terror. She is upright before she knows it. Then the curtain whisks open.
Samuel throws a headcover at her. "Quickly," he barks. "The bells are tolling. We must go."
Little Faith's voice from below: "Why are the bells ringing, Nicholas?"
And Nicholas: "I don't know. Hush."
DevonIt's nearly dawn. The sky is already lightening. She must have walked forever. She wonders how much time actually passed when she was with those... women... in the woods. Devon cannot see the light anymore when she goes in, though. She goes up the stairs and ducks behind a curtain, not even taking in her surroundings. She hits the pallet roughly, goes to sleep instantly. Her entire body tremors just before she slips into unconsciousness; stress. Soreness. Who knows.
She misses Rafael.
--
And then bells. Sharp sunlight. Footsteps, an angry male coming towards her. Devon jerks upward, back to the wall, her eyes flashing. She's ready to scratch, bite, kick, but it's just Samuel Noyes.
Devon is not afraid of Samuel Noyes. A part of her, which she thinks is Mercy, is afraid of him. Devon is in charge now, though. And she is reasonably sure she could throw him across a room without laying a hand on him.
He throws a bonnet her way and she scowls at him. But he turns away, stalking down the stairs again. Faith and Nicholas are below, and she sees them as she comes down, rapidly and blindly braiding her hair to tuck it up under one of these stupid bonnets. She has no mirror, cannot see her face, but she can feel a faint scab on her cheek. The swelling is down but the mark is still evident.
Whisking between them, Devon grabs one child's hand in each of her own and walks them out the door, without so much as looking at Samuel Noyes again. Her mouth tastes foul, her skin feels gross, and she wants a shower.
She also wants to tell Samuel to fuck his bonnet and hang his bells, but instead she just watches his feet as they walk, willing him to catch a toe and trip.
newburyScarcely three steps later an unlucky rock catches the soft toe of Samuel's boot. He stubs it. And also trips. And goes sprawling, satisfyingly, a small cloud of dust wafting up.
Faith gasps, shocked. Nicholas doesn't quite hold in a laugh. Samuel, cursing, lurches back to his feet and fairly hobbles his way toward the village commons.
--
Long before they're in full sight of the church, she knows something is wrong. The bells ring for morning sermons each day, but not like this: not urgently, continuously, harshly. She's not the only one to sense danger. All the small town is hurrying toward the commons -- voices hushed, feet quick. The nearer they draw the louder the bells, until the very air seems filled with their clanging, clanging, clanging.
It is still not enough to disguise the sound of wailing, thin and wild and grieving. It comes from the church. She can see fear in the faces of the villagers; an unnerved and wide-eyed look that borders on panic. There's a small crowd at the doors, which hang ajar; people are reluctant to enter. They block her line of sight. Samuel pushes forward -- she hears him gasp, sees him cross himself.
"God Almighty. Lord forgive us."
DevonDevon does not laugh. Devon doesn't gasp. She smirks to herself, watching Samuel's back. She hopes his toe is bleeding.
--
The bells get louder and louder as they grow closer until the nonstop clanging threatens to give her a headache. She feels a buzzing in her ears as they get nearer, and she holds tighter to Faith and Nicholas lest they run off in the crowd. She frowns as they get closer, tucking the children behind her as she narrows their path and comes up alongside Samuel.
She looks inside.
newburyThe inside of the church is a horror. A sparse and simple structure of raw timber and bare surfaces, its only decor was the great wooden cross that hung front and center, Christless, idoless, a faceless and ominous reminder of the judgment of God already rendered. It hangs there no longer. That cross lies shattered into pieces, scattered down the nave. Strewn across the chancel amidst the debris and the splinters are bodies -- six -- stripped, bloodied, dead. A tide of humanity laps at the shores of the atrocious tableau; those in the back pushing to see out of horror or horrible curiosity; those at the front pushing to get away. Someone vomits. The wailing woman is still wailing, a name, Robert, oh Robert, and someone is trying to pull her away, or comfort her, or silence her, or --
Suddenly someone is beside the witch. Grasping fingers at her sleeve, pulling her to the side and away from Samuel. Turn and she might recognize the face: dark eyes, a strong beaked nose; one of the women who danced 'round the fire last night. She is barely recognizable now, her hair tucked away, her collar laced to her throat.
"Come away!" she whispers, urgent. "Do not stand here. They shall be casting blame. Best not be near when it happens."
DevonDevon has seen some frightening things. But not many. Not often. She is not a battle-hardened and psychologically scarred kinfolk. That night in the alley when Rafael saved her life was the most scared she'd ever been, the most violence she'd ever seen up-close. It was also the worst she's ever been injured. So she does not step forward and look upon the slaughterhouse that the church has become with stoic, unassailable coldness.
She flinches away, her entire body recoiling. She stumbles backwards so quick that she nearly steps on the children, which reminds her that she is guiding two children. So she turns around, quickly, grabbing both of them by the shoulders and forcibly turning their backs to the church, pushing them together in front of her so they can't even see if they crane their necks to look past their shoulders. She is already trying to get away, the smell of dead bodies making her gorge rise. She hears people throwing up; it makes her want to throw up, too. She can't blame them.
Someone grabs her. She gasps, her reflexes on edge, looking at the woman. Barely recognizes her, but Mercy does. Mercy recognized her at the fire last night. Devon just stares. She just nods, quick and sharp, and starts herding Faith and Nicholas away.
As she does, she wonders if she saw faces she knew. She wonders if she saw claw marks.
Her first thought is that Rafael did it.
At least there's this: her first thought involves all those dead bodies being bad, bad, bad people, wicked and wrong and Wyrm-touched. Rafael would kill them if they were. She knows he would. He protects a church in his real life in the modern era, why wouldn't it be the same here.
She begins to look for him in the crowd, her eyes anxious.
newburyShe sees him in the crowd. It is easy enough; there is a certain look about him that stands apart from the rest -- his wolfsblood or his kingsblood or the simple fact that they are linked, two souls wandering through time. He is looking right at her, and he looks as though he wants to reach her, but there's a crowd between them. Already fear and shock are turning to anger and vengeance. There are calls for justice, or what these days passes for justice: a rope, a noose, a stack of kindling and a stake.
"Call for the magistrate!" someone shouts.
"Send for the court!" -- another.
"We must stamp out Satan wherever he reareth his head!"
"Aye! Aye!"
"Come," the woman at her side hisses. "Come away." Mercy knows her: it's the cobbler's wife, or rather -- as of three months past -- the cobbler's widow. Mary Goffe is her name. There are rumors about what went on in the home she shared with her late husband; that he mistreated her, and that in the end, she mistreated him right back with a dose of hemlock in his supper. Good, godfearing girls like Mercy -- afraid of her own burgeoning strangeness, terrified of proving herself doomed after all -- must have avoided her like the plague itself.
DevonAll around her, madness and idiocy. Devon ignores it all, looking for him. Finding him, quicker than she would think possible. He is tall. His shoulders are broad. He is beautiful in a way that few people in this township are. And she knows him. Feels him like she could feel the tug towards Nicholas last night.
And instantly, green eyes meeting blue, all she wants to do is go to him. More to the point, and more disturbingly, she wants to pull him to her. She wants to climb onto him and fuck him there in the commons. Her own desire startles her as much as it did yesterday; it is out of place, it makes no sense at all given the current circumstances. But it's still all she wants. Skin to skin. His cock heavy, hard, and deep inside of her, hips flexing, giving it to her.
Maybe he senses it. Can see it in her eyes, momentarily glassy. Or her cheeks, high with color and heat. Perhaps not: he certainly can see that scratch on her cheek, and see how she quickly looks away from him as someone else demands her attention.
Devon blinks a couple of times. The last thing she should do is go off with this woman, but she's not Mercy. She's a witch, herself.
So she nods quickly to Mary Goffe, turns to Nicholas, and gets down close to his face. "Take Faith and go to your father, right now. Hold her hand. Tight. There you are. Go. Now."
And shoves the children away, wanting to watch to make sure they get to Samuel, but not risking it. She looks glancingly for Rafael again, but then dashes after the widow Goffe.
newburyThere is no telepathic link between them, wolf and witch. They cannot convey meaning; they cannot coordinate movement. Still, as she begins to follow Mary Goffe, she might catch out of the corner of her eye an echoing movement: Rafael, or John as he is known in this age and life, paralleling her movement across the seething and shouting crowd. Already in that noisy babble fingers are pointing; blame is spreading.
No one bars her way. This time, at least. She escapes the crush of the crowd just in time to see Mary Goffe dart around the corner of the church. High grasses rustle in her wake; her path leads away from the church, away from the common green, back out to the edge of the tiny village. She finds the widow Goffe waiting for her behind the potter's shack, her hands twining anxiously together, her eyes darting this way and that, alert as a hunted animal's.
"I saw you last night," she whispers, "and I know you saw me. Yet you have not yet accused me before all the town. Why?"
DevonIt's quieter over here. Their voices lower. Mary Goffe's eyes flicker and flash with wariness.
Devon narrows her eyes, frowns deeply. She is aware that Rafael may be close, may be following her. She is comforted by this.
"I only wanted to dance with you."
newbury"Dance?" The word comes off a scoff, angry and disbelieving. "Is that what you thought we were doing? Dancing, like ... like foolish children in need of a whipping? It was a spell, girl, and you saw the vengeance we called down. Now, are you going to run back to the town elders? Loose the witch-hunting hounds?"
DevonDevon feels it again: the sting of rejection like a lash across her face.
Hell: her heart. Exposing it. Stripping the skin, flaying her to breastbone, leaving her beating raw self out for the elements and the carrion crows. It's a pain she can't conceal, so instant and so intense that it makes her body lurch slightly.
So she turns away. Begins to walk away, her shoulders hunched, tears hot and angry in her eyes, wanting to clutch at herself to protect her ruined heart as she tries to, at very least, put some distance between herself and the source of the hurt.
newburyCouple seconds pass -- couple steps away -- and then a rustle of footsteps and long skirts through longer grass. The widow Goffe hurries after her -- perhaps only because she fears that she truly will be exposed -- and catches her by the hand, tugging her to a stop.
"Wait. Wait. You will not accuse us, will you? You are ... like us, are you not?"
DevonDevon's skirt kicks through the grass as she stalks away, fighting tears again. God, she can't fit in anywhere. She's an outsider everywhere. She shakes, unable to quite regain herself before the widow Goffe catches up, snagging her elbow.
Angrily, Devon shakes her off, whipping a brilliant-eyed glare at the older woman.
"Fuck you," she spits, choking on the words in her ache. The words sear the landscape, unthinkable in this era. Perhaps not, though, to a true witch. "You would have known that the moment you saw me. If you had so much as looked. If you were not as blind and fearful as the Protestant pricks back in that bloody church."
It's unfair. She knows it when she says it, but she has the agony of an abandoned child about her, the ferocity of a wounded thing carrying itself in her shoulders and teeth and the flash of her eyes. She looks aside, pressing the heel of her hand to her face for a moment, as though to rein the tears back in, yank them back from their quarry: the plea for pity, for acceptance, for comfort. Blinks, several times.
"Tell me what it is you did."
newburyIt is Mary Goffe's turn to flinch. The word is as old as it is obscene, but to the Puritans -- even one who is, in some way shape or form, a witch -- it is nearly foreign, as scalding as a spell. It is what she says after, though, that makes Mary's eyes turn away in shame.
They are silent for a while. The woman has released her, but she does not go. When she speaks again, Mary Goffe looks at her.
"We called to the Ladies of the Wood," she admits. "They are the ones who possess true power. We do not have the reach, nor the might, to do what they did. I can make crops grow faster and fairer; perhaps grind a few herbs into remedies to ease a birth or a passing. Esther has the gift of clearsight. But we could not have made those things befall those evil men." She swallows. "They deserved it. I know it was terrible to look upon, but you must believe me -- they deserved it."
DevonSilence between them.
It gives Devon a few moments to compose herself. To chastise herself for all this drama, even though she knows that's not what it is rightly called. The pain is as real as anything she's ever felt. It's more keen, in a way, than when she broke up with Rafael. When he didn't love her -- when it felt like he didn't love her. That was mind-numbing, distancing her from the world, making it hard to feel anything at all. This is heart-rending, so close she can't escape it, no matter how much shadow she would like to put between herself and the feeling.
So she sniffs, and she wipes at her face, and she tries to calm. Calm brings with it a certain crumpling, a weakness she can only barely abide. She won't look at the Widow Goffe as the woman speaks to her. Listens. Fair crops, herbal work, clairvoyance. She wonders what the others can do. Maybe they are only midwives. Maybe they possess divination and keep a bag of chicken-bones hidden somewhere for castings, for geomancy. There is so much available to witches in Devon's own world; she can only imagine there is more out there for women who were born closer to the land.
Ladies of the Wood, she hears. She sniffs again, looks at Mary Goffe again finally, watching her with a stony expression but her eyes as bright and clear as anything.
"Tell me what the men do," she says, an echo of her last command, a moment ago.
newburyEven in this younger, wilder world, girl's eyes are something else entirely -- catching and refracting the light, sending it back in a shade of blue that exceeds the sea and the sky. Perhaps especially in this younger, wilder world -- three hundred years before lasers, gas flames, afterburners, nuclear fission -- her eyes are extraordinary and captivating, the gaze of a witch.
Mary's eyes are far plainer; a brown that might've been warm before the hardships they'd seen. She grimaces, looking away. "No more than they always do," she says, bitterly. "Nathaniel Hoffe and Benedict Lamb both sought the hand of young Sarah Hawkins. When she spurned them for another, a merchant's boy from Andover, they -- they ravished her, then denounced her for a harlot and trod her name so soundly into the mud that her own father turned her out of his house. She be in Boston now, a fishmonger by day and a slattern for true by night.
"Will Williams, then; he never liked the Pickworths, and when his goat fell ill and would give no milk he accused Mary Pickworth of witching it. She still rots in her cell to this day, awaiting the magistrate, who was too busy in Salem. But mark my words, he'll be coming to Newbury now.
"Robert Clough, and his sister Mary Royse -- they brought poor Anna Benham from Old England, told her they'd free her to live as she please when seven-year were up. Yet it's been well on eleven years, and they mistreat her frightfully; never are they satisfied with her work, and for every mistake they claim to see they add another day or week or month to her service. These past two years, Robert Clough has taken ever greater liberties with her.
"And these are but our tales of woe. The others -- the Negro women, the Pennacook women -- we do not understand their tongue, but we hear the pain and the hatred in their voices. We hear the whispers of what has been done to them. We see the unspeakable marks and scars, and sometimes -- once or twice -- I have seen the bodies; carcasses left to rot in the woods.
"Perhaps you think us over-cruel. Perhaps you do not think the slights and injuries we have witnessed are reason enough for the ... the horror in the church." There's a hint of quaver in Mary Goffe's voice; then it firms, defiant. "But what other recourse have we? The church will do nothing. The town elders will do nothing. The Ladies of the Wood are hard and savage, but it is an old and harsh justice they serve."
DevonThe litany of pain and degradation inflicted on the women in this township is almost too much for Devon to bear, with her heart so secretly but preternaturally tender. She stares at Mary for as long as she can, but even before she knows that Sarah Hawkins was raped, body violated and character assassinated, she has to look away. Listens to all of it. The lives ruined. The lives stolen. She stares blankly at the earth, sun on grass, dew turning dirt to mud.
Devon has not eaten since whatever little she supped on last night before Nicholas ran off and Faith fell asleep on her lap. If she had, she would throw up now. She blinks a few times; looks up with a small frown on her small features when Mary says that perhaps Devon thinks their retribution was too cruel.
Mercy knows she is supposed to say vengeance is mine, thus say the lord or something. The words flicker and flinch in her mind, translated from Mercy's half-asleep mind.
She just shakes her head. "I wasn't going to say that," she says, barely more than a whisper.
But she doesn't know what else she might say. Is silent for a while, before she comes to this:
"I wish you would let me help."
newburyPerhaps she surprises Mary Goffe. Perhaps Mary Goffe expected blame, shock, horror, chastisement -- perhaps, to some degree, she even wanted it. She too was raised in this village, this continent, this time, this culture of shame and guilt. She too was raised knowing that vengeance and judgment were the Lord's domain, and none other's.
There is a brief silence. Then:
"The deed is done. The spell is cast. You can help by staying alive and by avoiding suspicion. The witch-hunters will come sure as rain now, and all the town will be out for blood. Don't give them a reason to point their fingers at you.
"And that means," her tone sharpens again, "don't dally and stare when you see the bitter work the Ladies bring upon those who deserve it. Women have burned for far less than a glance askance."
DevonDevon narrows her eyes. "I neither dallied nor stared, Widow Goffe," she snaps. "I looked, and then I hid the children who are in my care. Cease your biting words with me, woman. I am not your enemy and I will not inform against thee to the bastards who run this township. And were I to do so, it is far too late for a sharp word to dissuade me or protect thee. You are resigned: you must trust me, or you must kill me."
Her feathers settle again. She quiets. "We had both best be getting back."
newburyMary is taken aback. She blinks. Then she lowers her eyes; purses her lips.
"Forgive me, Mercy," she murmurs. "It is not easy to trust in a village like ours. But you speak true, and I shall heed thee." A brief hesitation -- "If -- if we meet again in the woods, I shall be sure you receive word.
"But for now, let's away. You should return first; it would not do for us to be seen together."
DevonWell, now she just feels like an ass.
Devon takes a step over to Mary Goffe and -- with hesitance, sure, but then with firmity -- grasps the older woman's arm. She looks at her with whatever empathy she can muster. It feels awkward and incorrect and strange and for all this, because of all this, the look is intimately vulnerable.
She squeezes. And then she lets go. And then she turns away, lifts her skirts slightly, and hikes her way back to the commons.
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