Chapter 15 #3
But the man who watched them from the window of Ingersoll’s tavern did so intently, and he missed nothing. Not the fear—or fury—in her eyes. Or the anger and command in Robert’s tone. Watching from the ordinary, Sloan knew, too, that Robert was very, very frightened—and miserable.
“Only the wind has power, my friend,” Sloan whispered. “Only the earth and sea can move mountains.”
He left by the rear, before Robert could enter from the front. Though he longed with a physical agony to go after the woman, he did not. He turned his horse southward, toward Boston.
His flesh was hot, his heartbeat erratic.
He had told himself he only wanted to see the boy—and he had done so.
But when he had seen the child, nestled in his mother’s arms, he had felt his resolve crumble like dry leaves.
The child was his—beyond doubt. He was very tall for his age, and sturdy.
His hair was as dark as the night, but while his hair could be his mother’s, his eyes could not.
They were a deep, dark green, with no hint of Brianna’s blue—or Robert’s deep-set brown.
They were large eyes, heavily fringed with lashes.
Damn! Sloan thought, pounding a fist against the pommel of his saddle. How he had yearned to run to her and snatch the boy from her arms. He had never experienced such emotions as now tore through him.…
He frowned then, trying to turn his thoughts from the longing he could not appease. Robert Powell had certainly had good reason to be concerned.
Sloan himself was quite certain that the place had gone mad.
It wasn’t as frightening yet as the European witchhunt.
People were not being snatched off the streets to be dragged to nooses or set to the flames, but it was a bad situation nevertheless.
So far, it appeared that the Puritan fathers were doing nothing more than conducting examinations.
But Sloan had read some of the Puritan literature.
He knew the magistrates had carefully been studying such works as Burton’s Kingdom of Darkness and Baxter’s Certainty of the World of Spirits.
To judge from the gossip in the tavern, these people believed that the Carib slave Tituba had gone to black sabbaths through the air by the vehicle of a broomstick.
He had heard by loud discussion that they had determined that such measures as “swimming” a witch were archaic and unchristian—but that they had resolved that the “witch’s teat” would be considered evidence, and the devil could not take the form of an innocent person to do harm.
It was not going to be a good place for Brianna. Even if none of her neighbors knew of her past history, it seemed unlikely that she would hold her tongue.
Was there anything that he could do? he wondered in frustration.
In Glasgow he had readily kidnapped her and never regretted the decision, but this was different.
She was married now to a man that Sloan could not despise.
If Robert Powell beat his wife, if he were cruel, such action could be justified.
But under the present circumstances it could not. Even if Sloan could forget the man entirely, Brianna would never come to him. He knew that as surely as he felt that he still knew her. No passage of time could change that.
He sighed deeply. He would have to play for time, and hover in the background. He would be there if she needed him. And, he thought bitterly, this time there would be no payments. No services bought or rendered. He would just be there—because he could not leave.
Suddenly as he rode, he was angry. As angry with her as he had ever been.
She should have come to him already. Surely she was aware that he was in Salem.
If she’d ever cared at all for him, she should have known how very badly he wanted to see his child, and she should have offered him the joy of holding the boy, if nothing else.
Damn her—damn her, a thousand times over! He groaned aloud and his body shook. How could she have left him? How could she have married?
Because he’d had a wife. The answer was so simple, and yet so bitter. And all the more ironic because he knew what it was like to love one woman—and owe his name and protection to another.
In her simple woolen garb she was more beautiful than ever.
She had matured in the more than two years that had passed.
Her face had sharpened, but beautifully so.
Her figure was fuller, yet she still moved as though sailing from place to place.
She seemed quieter, perhaps wiser—but still her eyes could snap with blue fire, and she would fight heaven and hell to have her way.
He fed on his anger. It was good, if only because it helped to assuage the pain of knowing he could not touch her. She owed him—she owed him the courtesy of seeing his child. If he had only known …
He never would have left her, Alwyn or no; Robert Powell or no. Neither the devil nor God himself could have convinced him to leave her—not even when she had begged him herself.
He laughed aloud suddenly, and spoke to the wet and frigid March air. “She is a witch, friends! The kind to beguile a man beyond reason, to taunt and torment him to the end of his days, no matter where he goes, or what he does!”
His horse pricked up its ears and Sloan laughed again, dryly, as he patted its neck. “Sorry, old boy. Ah, perhaps it is best that she does not come near me. I would want to beat her senseless for keeping him away from me. For leaving me.…”
He sighed deeply. He was a fool. He was going to stay around here—torturing himself—while his crew spent all their profit in Boston.
Letting his anger and desire simmer and brew until it was a powderkeg just waiting for a spark.
He was going to stay and hope that she’d come to him—before he went mad and burst into her sanctified little Puritan household.
Brianna was baking bread again when Robert returned to the house. From the way she pounded into the dough, Robert knew that she longed to pound into the magistrates—probably Hathorne.
“Well,” she demanded tartly, “what did you learn in the ordinary?”
Robert ignored her and went to Michael, who was sitting on the floor playing with pewter tins. “Want to come for a walk with Papa, Michael? A thaw seems to be truly setting in, and we’ll start plowing up the fields soon. Perhaps your Mama has a carrot or two we might spare for the mules.”
Michael happily lifted his arms to Robert. Brianna glanced up and bit her lip, then quickly looked back to her work. Michael was getting too heavy for Robert to hold. And Robert did not look well. She believed that the things going on were disturbing him perhaps even more than her.
Robert walked by Brianna. “You will see; things will return to normal. Seems we have found our scapegoats,” he said bitterly. “After Tituba’s story the other two would do best to admit their guilt—so that our good people can start saving their souls—and let them live out their mortal lives!”
“A confession will save them?” Brianna demanded.
“Aye—from the rumor that I hear.”
She smacked the bread soundly. Maybe there would be justice here—if it was true.
She knew these people, and the truly pious would rather die than “belie” themselves, for they believed that God would eternally damn them for a lie.
Yet she did not want to trust Robert’s words, because it was quite customary anywhere to execute a confessed witch.
He touched her hair then, and bent to kiss her forehead.
“I do not think that we have anything to fear.” He smiled wanly.
“Ingersoll’s was most interesting. John Proctor was there, quite disgusted.
‘Come to fetch his jade,’ he said. Mary Warren is his servant, you know.
Her fits did cease, he said, when he thrashed her.
He is a man of good standing in the community and he is sick of the nonsense.
‘Spectral evidence!’ he snorted to me. And old George Jacobs calls the girls ‘bitch witches.’ It will end, Brianna.
” He turned away from her, cradling Michael’s little face close to his shoulder.
“Brianna, do not run from me again. I cannot help but be afraid. None know of you but Eleanor, and she would never harm you. But if someone did hear something, they could so easily accuse you!”
Brianna swallowed miserably. “I’m sorry, Robert.”
“I know how you feel,” he murmured. “Well, young Michael, we shall go for our walk. Where has Mama put your coat?”
“I’ll get it!” Michael cried happily, shinnying from Robert’s arms. He took his coat from the deacon’s pew, and Robert helped him into it. Then Robert rose and his dark-brown gaze caught hers again, opaque and troubled.
“There was other talk at the ordinary,” he told her, pausing a second. “Lord Treveryan was there right before I came.”
“Oh?” The single word caught in her throat. She tried to keep her eyes level with Robert’s; they refused to stay so.
“He sailed in a week ago.”
“I—I had heard.”
“Had you?” Robert seemed surprised. “Why do you suppose that he has come?”
She shrugged, feeling half blinded as she started to pound into the dough again, trying to reply blithely. “He is a sailor. He captains his own ship. Such men must sail the seas, or so I suppose.”
She waited for Robert’s answer. It was slow in coming.
“We will talk later, when Michael sleeps.”
Brianna nodded and Robert and Michael went out.
The rabbit she cooked that night was tough and stringy, and improperly seasoned. Her bread burned. When she attempted to set the table, she dropped the forks and knives.
Each time she felt her husband’s eyes upon her, she wanted so badly to be able to pretend with assurance and bravado that Sloan’s being near meant nothing to her at all.
And yet when Michael was at last in bed asleep, Robert’s stand regarding the situation was not what she had expected at all.