Page 115 of In the Pursuit of Haven
When the witch trials came around, it didn’t take a genius to know that Philip and Mary were going to get targeted. I knew exactly how it all went down for poor Mary who’d been left alone with her children while Philip was out to sea trying to make a living as a merchant:
A loud ripping noise woke me from my slumbers. Flames from torches flickered inside my chamber, and I noticed Sheriff Corwin’s fingers tangled into the curtains that surrounded my bed. He’d intruded my home in the still of the night and had thrown them open. “Ye’ll be coming with us, woman. Ye’ve been accused of witchcraft, and now ye will answer the summons of the court.”
I clasped my night rail, pushing it up against my neck. These men dealt in threats and intimidation, and they’d answer to nothing less. “Ye dare to come here in the middle of the night like common thieves?” I cried. “Come back in the morning like decent folk or my husband will hear of your unseemly treatment.” Philip was due to return from his voyage any day. I prayed it would be on the morrow! He would contest these charges against me.
The men did not move.
I straightened, feigning a confidence impossible to feel. “Away with ye, or yer wives will never hear the end of it.”
Corwin’s wild eyes narrowed on me…
Yes, Sheriff Corwin in my imagination bore a strange resemblance to Robert now—I couldn’t help casting him in the role of his evil ancestor… though I made him younger like how he was in those society papers. The sheriff was only twenty-five, after all!
And for a moment, I thought the evil lawman might drag me from my bed. Instead, he let out a sharp snarl and let the curtains fall.
“Watch this house,” he shouted out to his lackeys. “None shall escape ere I return to make my arrest in the morning.”
Jessie reached forward to trace Philip and Mary’s names chiseled into the rock. “Is this—is this actually a clue?”
Unbelievably… it was what we’d been looking for. “Yes!”
Thunder shook the ground beneath us, and suddenly I felt like we’d gone backwards in time to when Jessie told me the story of his pirate ancestor on an island similar to this one. NowIhad a story to tell.
“Corwin tried to arrest Mary in the middle of the night,” I told Jessie, “but she made him wait outside until she’d finished her breakfast the next morning.”
Setting down my fork and knife carefully on my plate, I stood and straightened my gown. I could not let my children see my distress. The poor lambs were frightened and shaking.
“But why must ye go, Momma?” my eldest daughter wailed. She held sweet William, who had not yet seen his second year. “They’ll kill ye as they did the others.”
My lips tightened. “Send word to your father where they have taken me, and they shall not.” I kissed Mary’s cheek as I did the rest of my children—poor, stoic Philip, my darling, weeping Susanna. I left the doors of my home for what felt like the last time.
Corwin did not like to be kept waiting. He snarled at my coming, “At last!”
I tilted my chin. “I am ready to die,” I said, though my accusers’ souls would forever be blackened by the persecution of the innocent.
Could not they see that their sins against me would forever taint this town?
The sheriff took me to the second-floor room at the Cat and Wheel tavern near the meetinghouse, where I answered the complaint of witchcraft.
“She was in prison for six weeks before she was transferred to a Boston prison to await her trial,” I told Jessie. “And she didn’t give in, didn’t confess, didn’t accuse anyone else of witchcraft to save her life. By all accounts her husband adored her.”
Jessie’s hands squeezed mine in answer.
“He visited often,” I said, “proclaimed her innocence to anyone who’d listen—unlike Corey Giles, who was more than happy to call his wife a witch.” Obviously I had my favorites among the accused. “But anyway… Philip even tried to contact the pirate Governor Phips, but tattle-taling to his exalted connections that everybody was a liar over here just got those same liars mad, so it wasn’t too long before Philip was the next to land in prison for also being a witch.”
“So why are their names here?” Jessie asked. “Do you think Philip was rich enough to own this island once?”
“That’s very likely. And he’d been in more litigation battles over land than hardly anybody.” I straightened as I remembered another thing I’d read in Haven’s notes. “One of the men ‘claiming’ to own this island back during Crabb’s time was William Beale, and actually,he—”
Thunder crashed, drowning out the rest of my words.
Jessie squeezed me closer, his lips going to my ear. “Remember the thing I said about me being a rat in Harvard?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I shouted through the blustering wind. It had grown scary strong, but I’d just found an important connection. “Beale lost that battle!” The creep hadn’t gotten Tinker’s by suing, so he’d tried another way. I definitely knew his name from my research on the Salem witch trials.
Our shelter groaned over us.
The rain was puddling against our legs, though some of the water was coming from the raging waves beating against the rocks. We’d better not drown under here just as these clues were starting to get good!
