Hour of the Witch

by Chris Bohjalian

Sanctification followed justification.

It was a violent world, but still you weren’t supposed to strike your spouse. At least not without provocation.

…and so infidel-like he would call me a whore and concoct the most wild stories as to my behavior, and then he would strike me in the name of discipline as if I were an untutored child. —Petition for Divorce filed by Mary Deerfield, from the Records and Files of the Court of Assistants, Boston, Massachusetts, 1662, Volume III

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

I am a raft of secrets, she thought, and she imagined herself on timbers from a shipwreck, the water around her endless in all directions.

We expect a man’s government of his wife to be easy and gentle, and, when it is not, something is amiss. —The Testimony of the Reverend John Norton, from the Records and Files of the Court of Assistants, Boston, Massachusetts, 1662, Volume III

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.

“I never thought thy marriage to Thomas Deerfield was a perfect arrangement. Thou wouldst have found a more suitable spouse had we remained in England. But I never thought him a brute. He wasn’t known for striking Anne.” “Well,” Mary said, “he is about to be known for striking me.”

She was envious of Peregrine, she knew that, and she felt waves of both shame and desire, though she couldn’t have said which had a more pronounced undertow.

“God applauds toil. I think He rather expects it.” There it was again: a sentiment that on the surface would be at home in one of Reverend Norton’s sermons at the First Church but sounded peculiarly sacrilegious when it came from the mouth of this Henry Simmons.

“I prayed for years for a child and I have none. I prayed for months for William Stileman to get well and he died. Since my childhood I have prayed for the living and the dead, and—” “And thou hast seen no prayers answered.” “It is not that,” she corrected him. “It is my acceptance, finally, that our Lord has His plan for us and it is not for me to try and influence His vision. We cannot—and so it has come to me of late that there is no reason to appeal.” “I have heard it argued that prayer does not change God’s mind; rather, it changes us.” “The act.” “Yes, the act.” “I will ponder that idea.” He nodded. “And thou wilt be an agent of thine own destiny by divorcing Thomas Deerfield.” “Just as I was my own agent when I married him. We are flawed; we make mistakes. We try our best to correct them.”

A husband who strikes his wife or is peevish with her puts to lie his profession of faith and has smashed soundly divine law and dishonored our Lord and Savior.

“I have heard now twice what thou hast said about a natural order. But a woman is not a serpent to be crushed under her husband’s foot,”

Mary’s petition was about divorce, and yet somehow it kept blowing like a dead leaf back toward Satan.

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

“My knees exist but to bend?”

“I am not sure that either of us can be so presumptuous as to read the mind of God.”

She regretted snapping back at him because one could never win an argument with a person so fundamentally unreasonable.

Mary had to take a deep, slow breath to contain her frustration at his lies. If he lied a third time, would she hear a cock crow?

God loves a mortal, despite his foolishness and sin, just as a man should love his wife—despite her foolishness and sin. God loves a mortal, despite his weaknesses and craven impulses, just as a man should love his wife—despite her weaknesses and craven impulses.

we see in this world with a vision obscured by transgression.”

I wish the men in their black robes had risen to the majesty of their clothing. Timid little creatures they are.”

there is nothing that frightens that man more than a woman who does not live happily under a man’s thumb.”

Men call bright women dim whenever they are threatened.

And if the minister was but an instrument, was the musician God or the Devil?

I do not countenance murder—only furthering the speed with which those already deserving of Hell make their way there.”

Mary smiled and looked into the sanctuary, her eyes moving beyond the elder to the pew where she had sat for years beside her mother. Was it a worse sin to lie inside these walls than outside them?

“I may not succeed. But is a missionary worse for failing or failing to try?”

Justice and retribution are not dark,”

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

Esther pointed at the book in Mary’s hands. “All of thee dost speak much of lambs and love, but thy actions…” She stopped and shook her head, the repugnance unmistakable. “Prithee, continue.” She sighed. “Thy actions? Thou art wolves, Mary. All of thee who shunned us: thou art wolves.” Mary didn’t defend herself. She didn’t defend her people. If Esther was mistaken, it was only in that she was comparing them to wolves instead of snakes.

’Tis God’s will,” said Peregrine, her words stoic but her tone despondent. “I know. And there is comfort in that knowledge. But, still, thy ache is real.”

Am I a harlot or a witch? —The Testimony of Mary Deerfield, from the Records and Files of the Court of Assistants, Boston, Massachusetts, 1663, Volume I

“Serpents shed their skins. Apparently, some replace them with masks that are comely.

“He’s”—and Hull stammered—“he’s a man.” “Does the Devil discriminate? I had no idea.”

I will take comfort in the knowledge that our Lord knows my sorrow and feels my grief. He felt the sting of every thorn in His son’s final crown. He felt the bite from every Roman lash. He felt the agony of each and every Roman nail. That is where love and lamentation chance upon one another, and that is where we find God.”

She had learned the hard way that this was a world in which a woman such as Constance hadn’t a chance at having a reputation unsullied by slander and meanness.

I may not spend much time here in the center of this great city, but neither am I cavorting with Satan in the woods.”

Thou believest the worst of me, but seem not to consider other possibilities.

“Sit on thy perch, gentlemen. Scowl at me and this world. I care for this life the Lord has given me, but Christ died at the hands of the unseeing, too.”

I cannot open the minds of men whose brains have doors locked shut.

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 because they were mortal. And her Lord? Peregrine’s Lord? He knew it all and had known it all and always would know it all. But the deliberations of His creations? Meaningless. Absolutely meaningless. Still, there was one thing of which she was certain. “Oh, I think we do know,” Mary said finally. “Yes, this may be the hour of the witch. But the Devil? He most definitely wears breeches. The Devil can only be a man.”