The Long Shadow
Thinking about how the shadow of an evil time can travel down through the generations. The historic facts are true, this family story is imagined.
Palm Sunday 1731, Providence, Rhode Island
I need but half a dozen of the little blue forget-me-nots around the border and it will be done, my sampler. Double rows of intertwining hearts and ribbons, the year, in red cross stitching and our names, Matthew and Elizabeth in the centre. I, Elizabeth Styles, but eighteen years of age, and still not believing it has come to pass, to marry Matthew Bartlett, son of our Minister no less. Oh, This is to be my time, my happy time, and I am resolved to keep a journal from this day so that I may look back when I am a grandmother, and remember it.
In all my eighteen lonely years I never dreamed that I would find my chosen one so easily, so soon. Shy and clever, tall like his father but with none of his forbidding looks. Why do I say my life was a lonely one? I am no orphan, I have had good parents, though my father is dead these ten years. I remember his warm love and his cheery ways. My mother, I think has had little time for mirth, bringing up my brother and me on the farm with no help to speak of. Why did we have no help? Was it my mother’s pride and independence? No other person must come round here snooping and looking into our business. What business? What is there in our simple life to be of interest to anybody?
And why do no kin come visiting us? Why are there no family celebrations in this house? My grandma and grandpa Styles, while they lived, sure, would come to us. But I could tell, even with my child’s eyes that there was a distance between them and her, cracks that they tried to smooth over. And uncle John, why did he come no more to the house? I remember the last time, soon after father died; I heard them from my bed and peeped down into the kitchen. They were facing each other, angry and frightening, and between them on the table was an old iron box that I had never seen before. I see the anger in his face even now, and the bitterness as he turned away from her and from our house.
My mother has never talked of her folk. She was a Daniels, mother, Elizabeth, like her and me, she has told me that much, father Richard. They were long dead, God rest their souls, is all my mother will ever say. But there’s no books or papers relating to them as I can see, and the family Bible on the dresser is my father’s. The names in it are all the Styles’s.
No, my mother, always as long as I can remember, must keep ourselves to ourselves. When I played with other children it was at their house not mine, and with their toys not mine. We wasn’t badly off, I knew that. We always had good food on our table, clothes, shoes for our feet, but she couldn’t abide toys, wouldn’t have them in the house. Toys were a foolish distraction to lead children into the ways of sin, and once, when I did so well at school I was given this pretty doll to take home I thought she would go near mad. She would not have the thing in the house, she said, and made me take it right back to the teacher. I didn’t. I couldn’t bear to seem so foolish, so I threw it in the pond, and said nothing to nobody.
But I am too full of my own happiness to pay much attention to my mother’s ways. We rub along pretty well, her and me. We’re used to each other, and she loves me, I know it, in her hard way.
My Bride dress is made and is lying even now in the press, laid with lavender flowers and sprigs of rosemary. I do steal in to take a look at it every day, oh yes, and more often than once if I can. It is so beautiful. I am too young to have much in my hope chest yet, so we are kept busy sewing and making. The village women would help us more, I know it, but she will have none of that, though she has allowed for the quilt to be made. Not at our house, of course, no gossiping women to be encouraged here, but people wish to do things for love of the Minister, him being a widower, with no wife to provide such womanly things. There is a deal of spinning and weaving and stitching going on, and my mother is pleased, beneath the gruff ways. I can see it.
Easter Sunday.
There has been a visitor in the village, kin of Jack Seccome. A minister, all the way from Massachusetts. He is a young man, with fair curly hair, very eager to make hiself agreeable to all the congregation. He was invited to the Reverend Bartlett’s house for supper and naturally, I was asked to eat with them, and also my mother and my brother John. She was ill though, and could not go. I do believe that I had never known my mother to be ill for one single day in my whole life. I thought I should stay with her, but she says no, I was to go and not be uncivil. I did enjoy my evening greatly, and was so proud that Matthew’s father deferred to me as though I was the woman of the house already. Rev. Seccome had brought tea with him, which was a rare treat, but mother had taught me how to make it right, so I was quite the lady I can tell you.
So mother never saw the Reverend Seccome before he was gone away, which was a pity, as I was sure I had once heard my father mention that there was some connection on my mother’s side with that region. From what the Reverend Seccome told us it sounded very fine. Just like England, it had been settled so much longer than this place. My mother showed no interest when I tried to tell her all about it, but said quite sudden as I should invite Rev. Bartlett and Matthew here to tea next Sunday. I couldn’t be more happy, I shall make Grandma Styles apple and cinnamon cake, which though I say it myself is pretty fine.
Sunday 8th April
I shall sit late tonight. There is much to tell, and perhaps I shall not write again. It is cold for Easter time, and this afternoon the fire was lit, and we sat about it, with the great black kettle singing on its hook above the fire. Of a sudden mother left the room, and when she came back she had beneath her arm the ugly black iron box, the same box as had stood between her and Uncle John on that night, so many years ago. She put it down on the rug between us, and kneeling beside it, unlocked it and tipped out the contents , Some papers spilled out, and then such a sight, gold coins, too many to count, gold coins came tumbling out in a torrent. We all gasped, but in the firelight I could see my mother’s face as she looked at Revered Bartlett with defiance and that bitterness, that same bitterness as I had seen in Uncle John that had frightened me so.
“No doubt”, she said, and her voice was hard and cold. “No doubt the Reverend Seccome will have told you of my history, and it is right that you should know, that you should all know the truth”.
I looked at my future father in law, but he gazed steadfastly at my mother, his expression unchanging. “Here is my marriage lines, Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Daniels, but in truth he was my stepfather, my mother’s second husband. Her first husband, my true father, was named John Proctor, a farmer and a publican in the village of Salem, in the County of Essex, Massachussets. That same John Proctor as was hanged for the crime of witchcraft. My mother, Elizabeth was also condemned, but because she was with child – my brother John, born in prison – her sentence was never carried out, and she lived and was finally returned to us.
The fire crackled, and the kettle hissed in the silence. I understood nothing. What was she saying? Her voice sounded far away, and a cold stone in my stomach was dragging me down and freezing me into stillness. I did not dare look at Matthew. But I knew that everything in my life was changing with her words, and all I could think of in my foolish girl’s heart was my bride dress lying there in the press, and the bright quilt in Goodie Henderson’s parlour. How was I to think of these other things, horrible things outside my world and outside my knowledge? I did not want to hear them. I would have given anything to have gone back just five short minutes, and kept closed that awful box.
“That gold that lies there is my share of the price of their lives. It was given, finally, one hundred and fifty sovereigns by the Commission that sat in judgement on the terrible things that were done in Salem in the name of God’s justice. My father never relented, and declared his innocence to the end. He would make no false confession, worse, he showed his contempt for the court, and for the evidence of crazed children. And they hanged him, and threw his body into a common pit.
She reached up for my hand, but I was unwilling to give it. I wanted what was happening to stop. I wanted to have no part in it.
“My mother made me dolls, child, beautiful dolls, she dressed them and embroidered their pretty faces all herself, just for me, and they took them, and called them poppets, things made to bring down curses on others. My dolls. If only she had not loved me so to make them for me.” Tears ran down her face unheeded. My mother. My mother was crying. “I knew nothing of it all, I saw nothing, except that my mother and father were gone and the town was empty silent and afraid.” My Stepbrother Benjamin took care of us, but he was not free of suspicion, and was arrested and examined as were my eldest sister and brother. Age and good character were no protection against these girls and their mad accusations. It spread like flames in dry tinder. Nobody was safe, a minister was named and tried, a little child, four years old, four years and accused of witchcraft. Imprisoned and ill-treated until her wits were gone, my mother said.
My brother Peter, who was a good few years older than me saw and heard more. It left its mark on him. He never thrived, moved from place to place and in the end took his own life. John too has led a wild life. I tried to help him, but he would not stay here, he took his share of the money and never came back since. My mother never touched it, nor have I touched my share. It would burn me. It is for my children to do with as they will.
I had hoped that none of this would ever touch my children, but I should have known that the curse must follow me here. And now you know the truth of my life. The documents are there, sir, you may take them and read them.”
All this time my mother had knelt on the rug before the fire beside the yawning black box. Reverend Bartlett lifted her up and sat her in his chair. He towered above us in his black suit, his dark eyes fixed on my mother under his shaggy eyebrows. If I had a picture of the wrath of God, then he would be it. But his voice was gentle to her. “You need lay no blame on brother Seccome, sister”, he said “He is only lately come out from England, and knows little of these histories. I have known it these ten years. Your good man, before he died, told me of it all, and required me to take mind of his wife and children. I have known it, sister. Take up the gold again and put it in the box. Gold has no blame, it is but metal, let it be used for good, and not hidden away.”
He turned to me “ And now daughter, the kettle boils and spits on the fire, and I can smell apple and cinnamon, and he took my arm and the hard black eyes were kindly and warm. I took his arm thankfully, but I was dumb and lost, and alone, for as the evil history was released from that box by my mother’s voice, I had felt Matthew’s hand pull away from mine.