Chapter 75
I open my eyes. I expect to be at the old foundation.
But we are somewhere else. I hear the rushing of water and know that we are by the river.
Lydia stands beside me. I cannot look directly at her, but I can feel her beside me.
She seems to tremble in place, but it doesn’t make her seem frail.
On the contrary, it makes her fearsome, like some ancient God awakening.
Part of me wants to touch her, but I’m certain that if I reached out and took her hand, our bodies would meld together and I’m not sure I’d ever be the same.
I can feel her eyes on me. Here’s where we died, she says.
Lydia
David and I were held in a makeshift cell in William’s forge.
We were there for weeks, as the village debated our sentences.
I think it was weeks, it blurs together with all the time that has passed.
But the smell I’ll remember for an eternity.
A smell like no other. Coal and hot metal.
Sulfur. Black soot in the air, coating our bodies.
I thought endlessly of James and our infant son, Elias, how he must have been crying for me.
James never doubted me for a moment. He shouted into the crowd that it wasn’t true, but he might as well have been shouting into an abyss.
David thought endlessly of his wife, Rachel, and unborn child. He would cry at night. We both did.
David died in the cell one night. He’d contracted a sickness that took him swiftly.
I called for William, and he came and dragged David’s body out, cursing the whole time.
William left the door unlocked behind him.
Through the crack, I could see the pale light of the moon in a dark sky.
He didn’t know that my hands were broken and bleeding, the result of me slowly, and agonizingly, pulling them through the heavy metal cuffs that chained me to the wall.
And so, I ran. I ran out the door, through the field, and into the woods.
The trees would hide me. I made my way straight toward my house, plotting all the way.
I would have to wake them quietly. We’d grab just a few items to help us start anew.
My grandmother’s ring, an old silver cup.
We’d make our escape, before William realized I was gone.
But as I neared my house, I noticed a scent in the air.
It was smoke. But not like the blacksmith’s smoke.
Not like hot metal and coal and sulfur. It smelled like a wood fire.
I knew it before I got there. But I crawled and staggered, half suffocated with smoke, to my destination.
I must have moved like some creature from the dead.
Oblivious to physical pain, unrelenting in my mission.
And when I got to the clearing, to the beginning of my property, I saw what I knew already in my heart.
My home, my life, reduced to smoldering ash.
William got to me first. Yelling for the preacher and Levi to run.
But they didn’t need to run. I wasn’t going anywhere.
He grabbed me roughly by the arm, tried to pull me up though I collapsed on the ground.
When he bent over to pull me up, I clawed at him, shouting profanities and curses.
The three men dragged me back to the cell. I asked them where my family was.
“Secure,” the preacher said. It was the first time I’d been so close to him. His skin was sallow, and his hair hung limply around his thin face. My nostrils stung with the foul scent of his breath.
“Why?” I demanded, looking at William and Levi. I knew the answer, but I wanted them to say it. They knew I had committed no crime. They knew what they were after.
William and Levi wouldn’t look at me. For a fleeting moment, I wondered if they’d change their minds.
“Say it.”
But then they shuffled toward the door.
“Say it!” I screamed after them. “Say it!”
They were gone. I howled like a madwoman. If it was a witch they wanted, I’d give them a witch. Say it! Say it! Say it! Fists rattling my prison. Just bloody say it!! Say it, or I’ll curse you all!
When my body was depleted, I clung to the metal bars, panting. Then I felt dark, watchful eyes on me. The preacher had lingered in the corner. He walked toward me now. His eyes cast down his thin face. I wondered briefly, desperately, if perhaps he was a man of God after all. Would he save me?
But all he said was, “May God forgive you.” And before he left, the corner of his lip curled.
The next day was my execution. It was a cool April morning.
They walked me on a path through the woods that ran from Bishop’s forge down to the river.
There was a good tree there for hanging, apparently.
I remember taking in the buds on the trees, the first signs of new life poking through.
Strange to be dying at a time like this.
When we got to the river, I realized the whole village was there.
It was our first execution and quite the spectacle.
I searched my neighbors’ faces for their eyes but could find none.
It was as if the ground held great fascination.
I looked around for James. He’d be there, I was sure of it.
I’d hold his face in my mind as I took my last breaths.
I couldn’t find him. I did not see David’s pregnant widow either.
They led me to a platform, which stood under a limb, on which three nooses were hung.
“Lydia Abington, you have committed the carnal sin. You have lain outside of the marital bed. The good people of Newfield understand that we are all here by the mercy of God. And we know that devils, like hungry lions, await their prey, await the moment God draws back his hand. We know we must purge this town of those who sin most grievously. Therefore, following the ancient traditions, practiced by those with no tolerance of sin, we sentence you, Lydia Abington, the deceased David Clark, and both your families to kinship punishment.”
If you are like I was, you have never heard of this practice, never pondered why it would be used, what evil person could even conceive of such a thing.
But I’ve had centuries to think about it.
The preacher claimed it would be the one punishment that would eliminate all ungodly acts and make us good again.
But I know it wasn’t intended to create good people.
It was intended to create obedient people.
I stood there, stupidly, looking from face to face, waiting for someone to tell me what was happening. But no explanation came. Instead, the crowd parted, and from the back, my husband, James, and David’s pregnant widow were led to the platform. It was then I realized.
I screamed. I thrashed. Hate poured out of me like blood. They slipped the noose around my neck. They slipped the noose around James’s and Rachel’s necks. The rope was rough. I remember that too. James looked at me, imploring me to look back at him.
“Look at me,” he was saying. “Look at me.”
His words sounded like they were from under water.
They sounded far away. For a moment, I thought he was saying it to me for the same reason that I’d searched for him in the crowd.
So that we’d hold each other’s faces in our minds as we left this world.
This thought made me realize that our son would be orphaned. Who would look after him?
“Where’s Elias?” I asked, quietly at first, as though the only person who should know the answer to that was me or James.
James wouldn’t answer.
“Just look at me,” he implored.
“WHERE is Elias?” I asked louder now, eyes scanning the crowd. “Where is my son??”
The whole village was gathered before the three of us at the tree. Four, counting the baby inside Rachel’s belly. Where was Elias?
“Don’t worry, Lydia.” The voice seemed to slither its way around my neck, choking me more than the noose itself.
The preacher stepped forward. He was slightly hunched in his black cassock, leaning over so that he could caress the face of my baby. My Elias.
“Don’t worry, Lydia. Elias will be a child of God now. He’ll forsake the evil ways of his mother and he will be saved.”
“He’ll live with me, Lydia,” said William Bishop, stepping forward as well. “And we’ll make sure he never learns of his wicked origins. He’ll never know his mother was the witch Lydia Abington.”
And then the preacher stroked one pale finger across Elias’s cheek, curled over him like a serpent about to strike, and I felt every nerve in my body explode with rage.
“No. No. NO. Do not let him take my son!”
No one would look up at me. They refused to look at what they had sanctioned to save their own skins.
“Don’t let William Bishop take my boy, or I’ll curse you all. I’ll curse you all!”
And then the preacher nodded, and the noose tightened, and everything went black and those four words echoed through the woods.
I’ll curse you all.