I flipped to the last page. Near the end of the book was another writing in the old script that I could not read. I expected it was the final entry she had made, and turned back a few pages. There I read:
Abigail has grown up in the fairyland & escaped after all the leaves I have burnt for her. She came home and knew me but for the sake of townfolk pretended not. I have made her to stay in the old house. If she stay in this house where fairies live in the shadows, she will be tak again and I will have to put her in the fire again. Abigail asked me to stay home from the storm but for her sake I ran fast eno to keep her safe & not burn her.
I tore the page from the book. The paper was yellowed with age though the ink bright. Leafing backward, I found again the other pages where she had confessed to murders of her husband and child. I tried to tear them out. I creased them with my scissor and worked them out, stirred up the coals in my fireplace, and laid the three papers upon them. I said a prayer, then sat watching the smoke rise to the chimney, remembering Goody Carnegie’s kindness to me, and yet feeling sure that the brown ink had once been red blood, and that some darkness had filled the old stone house where she had lived, now home to James. I looked down at the book in my hand. I had always known books, could not remember not being able to read. For me, to destroy a book was a crime. Was this volume I held a book of spells, or the ramblings of a madwoman? Was it a priceless volume of antiquity, or the habitation of Satan, able to unleash charms and spells from a time long past that should never see daylight again? I said another prayer, this time Memorare, and in English, Our Father. Feeling as if I knew not the right thing to do, I opened the tragic old book and made ready to lay it in the ashes.
It burst into flame, ripples of color dancing above the thing. I dropped it into the fire as I said, “If, just if, there is magic in this book of a kind I know not, if there is power beyond this earth, send this fire to keep Eadan warm. Take this smoke to keep him full. Bind away all pain from him and bring him home to me.” Then I was filled with fear and dread that I had brought Satan himself into my life by my own selfish longing. I prayed on my knees through a Rosary, and sat up the night through, begging forgiveness.
*
Though I wrote letter after letter to the magistrate in Nova Scotia, I heard nothing. I sent a cloak to “the prisoner, Eadan Lamont,” though feeling uncertain to use his real name even as I did so. I sent a coat, too, made from his pattern. I stayed at my loom until my back felt as if it were growing a crook in it.
At times, I could sell nothing, for the searches and the soldiers questioning everyone who went down the roads either to Lexington or to Concord. Boston was all but emptied of commerce. Battleships were said to be anchored in the harbors to ward off smugglers and to keep the peace by intimidating any colonists who remained. The Crown passed new duties on paper, paint, lead, glass, and tea. They sent soldiers to count our trees and handed me a tax bill for every one of them that still had apples or pears clinging to it. I put the bill into the fireplace and warmed our cider with it. I told Alice I was not flaunting the king’s authority, as much as I was in need of kindling. She gave me a look that frightened me, for I knew not whether she mutely approved of it.
Our friends began to organize groups and meet in the woods, in houses. I let them use our barn for meetings and even drilling in formations like soldiers, but I allowed no firing of muskets.
*
At the end of January 1769, on a bitterly cold day, Alice sat sewing while I spun fine linen I meant to weave into a cloth of silk tracing, and Dolly read aloud to us from a sermon at one of the Boston churches. It was another leaflet that had been smuggled in and out of that town, for Boston was by then completely occupied by the army. The fire in the grate crackled while snow drifted down in light flurries that moved about as if they were living things, dancing across the fields.
The sound of wheels of a light carriage interrupted our talk and I stood from my work, pressing my hand against the wheel to slow it. I stopped at the door. No one had knocked from outside but the carriage had stopped. I waited. The others watched me. I inclined my head toward the door and felt an agony awaited the opening of it. At last, a hand rapped upon the wood and caused me to start.
Dolly said, “Ma? Will you open it? Do you want me to do it?”