I wear your knitted favours about my neck and shoulders as cold Winter sets in, which lets me forget you not, though this is but meager remembrance and in no way makes up for your painful absence. Dear Sarah, I received thy tender lines long since I lay in. Several things prevented me from answering thee sooner, which I hope thou will pass by. I was very weak a long time and it hath pleased the Lord to take away my little one when it was but two weeks old. It was near dead when it was born and ne’er recovered. Then came over me a sore melancholy with a fit of black tears and much sadness, though it pleased the Lord to take me up again, and though I am not wholly come to strength yet.
Mr. Bonham hast not took the loss of our child so well as I, and he is an old man, near enough the hour of his own return to the Lord, so it may be so accounted. My own neighbors, the minister Mr. Parris and his wife, abiding next door have been especially generous, sending their own Maid, an Indian woman named Tituba to be my care for the household during my laying in. I have not before been in such close quarters with such a woman, and she speaks with the music of the Spanish islands whence she was brought with her man, John Indian. They do amuse and deflect all care with their fancies and songs and stories, though I suspect them not true Christians, but heathen beneath all else. Perhaps God has some especial place for the innocent and ignorant, though I vouchsafe I know not where or what that may be. The Parrises’ Maid is a Godsend to me, not only in the care and feeding of Mr. Bonham, but for the two children she oft brings with her, Betty Parris who is the daughter and all of eight years and her kinswoman Abigail who is but ten, for they fill the empty house with their childish games and laughter, a merrymaking that remedies the loss of mine own infant girl, which I had named for thee. Write to me and tell me of thine son, and I shall take thy example unto my breast and rely upon the Lord to one day bless me again with what thou now enjoy. I keep thee and thy family in my prayers.
Your loving sister,
Alice At the conclusion of her recitation, Jane clasped Dolly’s hand and together they stepped over the lip of the bathtub and then threw their arms around Alice. They huddled in the middle of the room, sharing empathy over the sad loss of the Bonham child, and I was struck by their gesture of solidarity. Three sisters under the skin, they excluded from their bonds both me and the old man. We were interlopers on this scene, a couple of Peeping Toms, and could only stand by, hands in our pockets, till the moment passed. The women enjoyed a kind of natural affinity and felicity for emotional solace that men rarely express, as we are put off from public demonstrations of our inner feelings and must endure sorrows on our own private islands. I felt bad about the child stolen so soon from her, but could not bring myself to say anything, and when I looked to the old man for some sign of fellow feeling, he merely waggled his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders as if this, too, was beyond understanding.
They broke from their huddle like a football team, and I wondered immediately what play had been called. Alice took from the box a small, hand-sewn book marked with red tape flags. Handing it to the old man, she indicated that he, too, had a role in relating her story. He opened the cover and read the words penned on the flyleaf: “The Journall of Nathan Bonham, being an Account of the Troubles and Tryal of His Wife.” Quickly scanning the first few pages, he flipped to the first marked passage:
13 Nov. 1691
I am beginning to wonder if I have done dear Alice harm, for she is, these long months after loss, still in mourning for it, though we know God’s will and trust in His judgment and mercies. I have not pressed her on another Child, for her spirit is still sour and mean on it. Perhaps, however, the fault goes deeper that I have took her from her family and brought a convert unto the Faith. They are much addicted to Popery and to Papistical fancies, and she often speaks of feeling unlucky and other strange unheard-of superstitions. Oft I question whether she truly believes or only says so out of duty to me and to commodious marriage. That is to ask, would she be happier still had she not said yes when I pressed the case? I worry that she will ne’er be well again.
He flipped to the next red bookmark and continued:
4 Dec. 1691
Came home this even and espied thru the window, the Servant Tituba and four more besides, the Parris girl, her cousin, and two older girls, near my wife’s age, gathered round the table. One had brought a round green glass and layd it down upon a letter and rubbed the glass upon it, and held it up against the firelight and bid Alice come see, apparent some magick by which to divine the future. When I announced my presence, they quick hid their fortune-telling charms. Retired in sore distress. Alice was late in comming to the bed.
25 Dec. 1691