Hour of the Witch

by Chris Bohjalian

Never did they ask the question Why me? In truth, they never even asked the more reasonable question Why anyone?

How is it I am humiliated when I am alone? Does not humiliation demand an audience?

Signs, after all, were everywhere; it was just a question of knowing how to read them.

Did other men treat their wives the way Thomas treated her? She knew they did not.

First, what did it mean that, on the one hand, Thomas often berated her for being dim and slow, but on the other could chastise her for reading? Second—and this was an enigma of far more consequence—what did it say about her soul that a few bits of fashionable silk or cotton cloth and some interesting books could make her content?

She really didn’t like Thomas Deerfield. She didn’t like anything about him. Some days, in fact, she loathed him.

Cruelty may be defined as violence without provocation and discipline that is excessive.

Valerian and dill will hinder a witch from her will),

I hope this lesson is a seed that takes root. Because it is discipline applied as a lesson. It is pain applied with reason.

And while envy was a mortal sin, it grew rampant in everyone’s soul; it was but a dandelion, a weed that was unstoppable here and one learned to live with.

where in the Commandments did the Lord God forbid a man from stabbing his wife?

“Dames such as those wound, too; it is with a slower poison, but one equally as hurtful in the end.”

“And always better a scrivener than an attorney. I know more and more people are resorting to those appalling advocates who twist and trick, but many of the magistrates still view them with justifiable disdain.”

she was many things, but she was most certainly not a witch.

“I have heard it argued that prayer does not change God’s mind; rather, it changes us.”

But a woman is not a serpent to be crushed under her husband’s foot,”

She obeyed the scriptures as best she could. But it seemed that her best was not good enough.

Hell was awash in flame. This Mary knew. And God would not justify the wicked.

We expect a man’s government of his wife to be easy and gentle, and, when it is not, something is amiss. Something needs to be remedied.

How was it that so much of the testimony that afternoon had been about her and not about him? How had it centered so much on her behavior and so little on his?

She had done nothing to be hurled into a hearth or beaten about the face or have her hand speared by a silver fork.

By a man shooting his horse,

She told herself it was just the cold, but in her heart she feared it was something more: it was a sign. Because, if one looked around carefully, wasn’t everything?

Yes, she thought, revenge belongs to God. But justice? That will be mine.

Yes, Mary had lost; but so, it seemed, had Catherine.

Instead she was a—and the word came to her and she thought it not melodramatic—prisoner.

“And perhaps it is that, more than anything, that frightens me most when I contemplate where, once more, I am living.”

“She was sent to the scaffold because she had a sharper tongue and a shrewder mind than her accusers. It is always the case when men hang women.

How many others in the church lived with such hypocrisy? Feigning a future among the elect when in fact they were damned?

If, in the end, anyone was going to feel the pain of Hell, it was him. Unless, of course, she made sure that he felt it here first.

the Hell that awaits most sinners is but sunshine and spring compared to the Hell I will rain down upon thee and that pathetic runt of the litter that darest to kiss thee.

“No. Thou art interested in murder. That, my young friend, is what has its hooks in thee.”

“I would say I know the impropriety of it. But, Henry, there is an ocean between an impropriety and a danger.”

“I am comfortable putting my trust in a goddess.”

have no desire to meet [the Devil]. Not ever. I have seen too much of His likeness here in Boston, even among the saints.

wolfsbane is a river and, once crossed, there is no returning.”

If Esther was mistaken, it was only in that she was comparing them to wolves instead of snakes.

“But thou wouldst know the Devil’s mark if thou saw it.” She nodded. “And I would be scared. I have no desire to meet Him. Not ever. I have seen too much of His likeness here in Boston, even among the saints.”

She was a woman who hadn’t gotten her way and had contracted with the Devil.

“We really don’t know whether the Devil wears breeches or a skirt, now do we?”

There were people in the world who were good and people who were evil, but most of them were some mixture of both and did what they did simply

She wasn’t barren. She just wasn’t meant to bear a child with Thomas.