“Pearl, wake now.”
“I don’t care for him,” I murmured. “He tried to keep you from me.”
“Forgive him now, Pearl. We must forgive if we are to be forgiven. And besides, the messenger said it is Governor Winthrop who strives tonight for Heaven, not Governor Bellingham.”
“No,” I pouted, and resisted her efforts to roll me back toward her.
“Up, naughty girl, or I will leave you here alone in the dark for the Indians.”
That got me, and I sat with a sigh and let her rattle me. My forehead against her warm neck, I went limp and breathed my mother’s familiar scent. I felt the relief of her slowing heart. Languid as a little girl, I let her pull a dress on over my shift, tug and crimp and impatiently adjust me as if I were a piece of her embroidery. Entertaining a drowsy memory of my latest sampler, I remembered my promise to complete it before the Sabbath.
As she brushed my hair and pinned it back, I marveled at how my eyes adjusted to utter darkness. There seemed no moon tonight whatever, yet when Mother bent to wipe my face with her handkerchief I saw before me the scarlet letter that was my own birthmark, and floating above it Mother’s pale moonlike face.
“Aren’t you afraid?” I asked.
“No, Pearl.”
“Will the witches be out flying? Will Mistress Tibbins in her headdress watch us from the trees?” Mother smiled a distant smile and took my hand. She lifted her small sewing basket and we set out into the night.
“Why do you bring the basket?”
“To take his measure for a robe.”
I roamed ahead, though not far. It was the blackest night I had ever seen, with clouds thick above and fog ahead of me. I felt a strange thrill at the way the weather held the world in a damp embrace. How easily, I thought, the familiar might bleed into that other, olden faery world. Mother took back my hand as we moved through the sleeping streets, perhaps to calm herself. Though it was hard to see beyond the nearest dwelling or fencepost, I made Mother pause as we passed the scaffold, but she only yanked me forward.
“Tell me again—”
“No,” she hissed, and we kept going. “No, Pearl. I am weary of sad stories. Ask me for a happy one.”
I thought and thought about her command as we passed the residence of Governor Bellingham, who was not dying. His gabled house was dark and still, like most others, though for a moment I thought I saw a flicker of light beyond the casements. We spoke not another word as we traveled through fog and silence to Governor Winthrop’s stately home, where a servant let us in and took our cloaks. Looking at me, she raised her forefinger to her lips and with stern gaze gestured to a high-backed chair by the door. Mother nodded and bowed her head, and I sat down.
Wide awake now, I could scarce keep still in the dark as they went upstairs with the lantern. I sat on that chair surrounded by the shadowy objects of a powerful magistrate. I sat on my hands, listening hard to myriad footfalls and murmuring above.
As it often did, my mind wandered to Simon, who would be asleep now under the gaze of his carved figures. I imagined those sentinels springing to life one by one, stretching their crooked little limbs and stooping to peer on his sleep. Movement on the creaking wooden stairs startled me out of my reverie, and the servant appeared again, guiding the venerable Reverend Mr. Wilson, who must have been watching with the others at the sick man’s bed. While the girl went for the minister’s cloak, he tipped his hat to me, a dim smile flickering on his grave old face with its white beard, which seemed to register too well my presence, and I struggled to keep my feet still under the chair. I hardly drew breath until the servant returned with the cloak and a second lighted lantern.
Then a terrible shriek cut the night, a strange half-human sound unlike any I had heard before, not wolf or even the din I imagined witches making deep in the forest where they danced for the prince’s pleasure. It was far distant, but all three in the room stiffened, wild-eyed a moment, and looked to each other for assurance.
“Is it the fiend?” I asked sincerely, and the reverend with pinched lips squeezed my shoulder to silence me.
“Pray not, child.” He ducked out the door, bowing his head, his monstrous shadow flickering with the moving lantern. The serving girl leaned full against the wood when he’d gone and met my eyes. We shared a nervous, fleeting smile, and then she disappeared into a far room.
And did not return. Nor did Mother, though I heard from time to time the grating of chair legs on the floor upstairs. At length I slid off my own chair and paced the hearth room. I paced and let fear tempt me to the door. I went through it, out into the cool mist, easing the door softly shut behind, padding off with pounding heart in the direction whence the noise had issued, not because I wasn’t afraid but because I was and would know to whom the devil beckoned. I would see them sign his book, glimpse the bloody bread he would lay on tongues as black and bloated as eels. I would know who they were, which goodmen and women all of whom reviled me would answer his call, coming to him through the night, leaving behind their beds and Bibles.
Compelled onward by the horror of my thoughts, I became gradually conscious of the strange sensation of blindness. I even closed my eyes to block out the dim red-gray glow of the sky and to feel completely what Simon felt always. I let my ears guide me, fascinated by the story they and my other senses told me. My own heartbeat was louder than all else. I’d never pitied Simon and didn’t now, but I knew perhaps for the first time why the pace of his world must be slower than my own.
As I neared the scaffold—I knew the sharp slant downhill into the clearing beyond Governor Bellingham’s house—I heard the eerie, muffled sound of male laughter. It was furtive and cold and cut me out of my shallow blindness. I opened my eyes to a shock of red sky, to what I would later learn was the glow of a meteor. Freezing on my feet, I saw in the faint light a figure looming on the scaffold. It babbled and lurched, and soundless though I was, it turned and looked right at me.
“Pearl,” it said in rapt surprise, “did you hear me calling in your thoughts?”
I neither spoke nor nodded but stared. Had I heard him in my thoughts? And what could such a summons mean? Shame fogged my vision.
How quick he was. Before I could commence blubbering, he was at my side and kneeling; his arm, the one that didn’t have a bottle affixed to its end, had braced my slight shoulders. He smelled of spirits and tobacco and leathery male sweat, but also, faintly, lemon verbena or some other sweet herb. He hauled me close so I was smothered in his shirt, the same white linen, now soiled, he had worn on the day he gifted me with a feather in the field. “There, there, pip. Don’t squeak so. You’ll wake the town, and I’ll be slapped in the stocks come Sabbath day with every unruly servant, wife beater, blasphemer, ballad singer, and hedge tearer from here to Salem Town.”
“Sir,” I gasped, “you’re squeezing me.”
He pushed me lightly away with his free palm and took a drink that dribbled down his collar. “What business have you here in the black of night—” He tipped gamely toward me but righted himself—“with the devil for company?”
My feet would back away, but I forbade them. “Are you the devil—truly?”
“I am one soul in the world that knows you.”
“Are you the prince of Hell?” Persisting was a thing I did exceedingly well.
“Would that I knew the truth, Pearl, so that I could lie to you. No, not a prince—just a man.”
“A drunkard?”
Little impressed with youthful insight, Dr. Devlin took another swig, and the lines deepened round his eyes. “Is your mother there, Pearl?” His black brow peaked. “Hidden in your palm or under your bonnet? Is she there?” He caught me again and tried to steal a look under my cap,