When we got back to Boston where she could get access to genealogical records, Rebecca then traced this unfortunate woman’s lineage back another half-century, to Muddy River, a settlement just inland from Boston. We could not, of course, know if Goody Fitch was a witch, even if we could be sure that her granddaughter Mary Estey had been. Erszebet was cavalier and vague about the hereditary nature of magic, but when pressed by Tristan to give it serious thought, said she supposed it was a matrilineal affair, although she knew plenty of instances of a woman receiving the ability through a paternal ancestress. Goody Fitch being Goody Estey’s maternal grandmother, we had a good chance—but no certainty—of success.
And for the burying site of the book, that too had been Rebecca’s call. As steward of the oldest house in the area, she was well versed in local history going back to the founding of Cambridge, when it was still the small, wooden-walled village that Goody Fitch had just mocked. Rebecca’s present-day backyard included a large boulder, the only unadulterated topographic detail for blocks in all directions. In the colonial era there was a creek running near the eastern side of it, but that bed would dry up in a year or two, when a mill was built on the Watertown Road and the creek was diverted to power it. We determined I would bury the book, in 1640, against the western side of this boulder, at a distance of my arm’s length and to the depth of my arm’s reach.
Rebecca and I then researched what I would need to do to “pass” as chronologically local—the manner of dress, of speech, of courtesy—while Tristan established how to best protect the book from the elements during its long rest. He determined that of the resources available at the time, a small watertight barrel filled with flour or dry sand for “packaging” was our best bet.
I consigned all we had learned to memory, and then prepared to be the first DOer (Diachronic Operative) going back to do the first Deed (or as we spelled it, DEDE—“Direct Engagement for Diachronic Effect”) under the banner of the Department of Diachronic Operations.
HAVING FINISHED THE maize (which sat like a cannonball in my sterilized belly), I rose, and Goody Fitch beckoned me to follow her to the small barn that was a moment’s walk downwind from the house. As a few sheep and one sullen cow stared at us incuriously from the pen, she examined the row of neat farm tools and handed me a long-handled shovel with a pointy tip.
“My husband and son are out with the oxcart to check the fields, but Goodman Griggs is on his way to the ferry landing this hour,” she said. “I’ll ask him to convey you on the cart. It will save you an hour of walking.”
Goodman Griggs was dressed like he was right out of Central Casting, in dark doublet and breeches with a wide-brimmed felt hat and a barber’s bib of a collar. He was a farmer, as anyone in this settlement must be, and a bit grizzled. He seemed to do a double take when he saw me, before turning his head sharply away. For a moment I feared I had been detected as a poser, but he said nothing. He radiated the sort of pompous complacency that suggested fundamentalism, so I ran through all my memorized scriptural passages in case I needed to demonstrate my affected faith. But he was not one to speak. He nodded gruffly when I was presented to him, as if he did not approve of me but could not say no; he made no gesture to help me up into the cart, which was filled with barrels of corn and squash.
A seventeenth-century rustic cart is no BMW convertible. It is not even a carriage, for it has no springs, is purely utilitarian, and bumps one fiendishly with no regard for dignity or comfort. The ox that drew it was flatulent. Being grass-fed (not because it was environmentally correct but because grass was then the cheapest and easiest way to feed an ox in summer), its gas was less odorous than I’d expected, but still was nothing pleasant, and with the fine film of sweat that covered me, I was to feel the putrid scent molecules clinging to my skin all the rest of the day.
Shortly, we had come through the woods and arrived at the Charles. No clean-cut banks as I knew it, however: across the river was an enormous marsh, broader by half than the river itself. A narrow channel had been hacked and dredged through it so that the ferry could reach the landing. Beyond that, shimmering in the heat, I could see a palisade of vertical logs. This barrier, I assumed, was to protect the town’s most valuable commodity—four-year-old Harvard College—from marauding Indians. There had recently been a war between the Pequot and Mohegan tribes, won by the latter with help from the settlers. But now the Mohegans were quarreling with the Narragansetts. I had not educated myself as to where that feud would lead, lest I inadvertently say something too prescient for 1640. (I was pretty sure it didn’t turn out well for anyone, though.)
The ferry service was very new, and at present comprised just a dock on either bank plus a flat-bottomed boat, a raft with skeletal bulkheads, really. Standing beside it were two young rowers who looked like brothers. Despite the unflattering Puritan uniform, they had the agreeable build of a crew team, but I knew better than to stare, and averted my eyes.
“I do not know her, she came from Goody Fitch,” Goodman Griggs said to them in a grumpy tone as he pulled up the ox. The two younger ones gave me a quizzical look, then turned their attention to their work: the three men, forming a line, began to unload the barrels of vegetables into the ferry. I waited until they had finished, then took from the drawstring bag at my belt the little musket shot. I presented it to the nearer ferryman (the younger one) as casually as I could, as if I was accustomed to such barter. The fellow looked at me oddly, and again I feared I was about to be unmasked. He examined the musket shot to make sure it wasn’t scant—lead is such an easy metal to carve off bits of. He put it in his own satchel, wiped his brow with the back of his arm, and paid me no further heed. I took that as allowance to board the ferry.
The older brother, stabilizing the last of Griggs’s open barrels, glanced at me and . . . smiled. His teeth were grey but well-shaped.
He caught himself smiling, blushed, and looked away.
They were strong and fast, those two rowers, for such an unwieldy boat cutting across the current. The older brother was nearer to me, avoiding my gaze; I found my eyes straying from the water to him, and enjoyed watching his movements, sure and confident and smooth despite the oppressive heat and his heavy clothes. He must have felt my stare, for at one moment, between strokes, he turned slightly to look at me, and—as if despite himself—he smiled shyly. I smiled back. He blushed again and looked away. I had not expected Puritan flirtation!