A Measure of Light by Beth Powning Page A

came to the square. On one side was the market, with its long porch, women slipping into the shops. Across from it, the meeting house.
    “Ah,” Anne breathed. “Do you see, Mary. In this heat. No water, no shelter. No shade.”
    A woman was chained to a post. She wore a leather collar with an iron ring. Her dress was black with sweat. She leaned forward to ease the pain in her arms, bound behind her. Her eyes slid and rolled, the whites prominent, their expression shifting between rage and terror.
    They hurried across the square. Anne sought a cloth in her basket, moistened it with a tincture. She pressed it to the woman’s cracked lips.
    “What was your transgression?” Anne asked.
    “I did strike my husband. I did lift my hand to him.”
    A jingle of lifted muskets. The woman wrenched her head within her collar to spit at the approaching watchmen.
    “There is nothing to be done, Mary,” Anne murmured.
    Henry Vane made his plans to return to England. He would leave in August. Until then, he picked through Boston’s filthy streets with a distrait air, plucking at his lace cuffs.
    “I am going to investigate the Narragansett Country,” William said. He was carving the design of a stag on an axe helve, having broken the last. He probed with his gouge, forming the horns.
    Samuel slept, Sinnie had climbed the ladder to her bed. From their chairs set before the open door, they could smell the smoke of Jurden’s pipe. They listened to the crickets, the crying sea birds. They watched the clouds, smouldering over the islands, drifting, evolving from fire-red to cottony pink.
    “ ‘Salvation by works, salvation by grace.’ On the ferry, Josiah and Hugh were nose to nose, the colour of beets. Roaring on the subject. And then there are those who name her …”
    He broke off, his lips worked over unspeakable words. Still nothing had been done about the remonstrance that he and the othermen had filed with the court. Still John Wheelwright had not been sentenced. Yet the watchmen were vigilant and there were more public punishments in order that no bad deed should bring down God’s wrath; whippings, hangings, placing cleft sticks on tongues, the imprisonment of both men and women in the stocks. Even children were brought to the elders or magistrates to be questioned about their own parents; and were threatened by the death penalty in case of their own “extraordinary sinfulness.” Neighbours were wary of one another, watching, terrified, for signs and wonders. Boston hissed with hateful words:
sedition, contempt, slander
.
    “Witch or whore,” Mary said. Anger had grown in her, fitfully, over the summer. It ebbed and then bloomed larger at each recurrent outrage.
    William set down his gouge, considered her. She saw the stubble on his cheeks, pricks of hair reddened by the light.
    “Witch or whore,” she repeated, coldly, her voice pitched so that neither Sinnie nor passing neighbour would hear.
    She bundled her knitting, leaned to put it into a basket at her feet.
    “They will destroy her. They will cast her out.”
    It neared the hour. Soon the watchmen would pass by the open door.
    “Aye,” William said. His hands clenched. Outside, the gulls carried the light’s last dusting on their wings as they dove and wheeled. “There is no freedom here. Not that I would name as such. They say that we attain freedom by doing God’s will. Then they tell me what I may charge for my goods. They make laws that would not stand in England.”
    “If they banish her, I will follow.”
    They considered the view framed by their door. The marshes with their bayberry bushes. Fiery clouds over the sea.
    He lowered his voice, leaned towards her. The watchmen approached. “We should leave before that comes to pass.”
    He pointed southeast, beyond the dark hunch of Fort Hill.
    “Providence. If you agree, I will go seek counsel of Roger Williams. I would go on my own volition rather than—”
    “I
do
agree,” she said. “Go.