A Break With Charity: A Story About the Salem Witch Trials Read Online Free PDF

Mama, Mary was spotlessly dressed in soft wool with a white collar and apron. But while Mama's dress was gray, Mary's was the color of the sky on a bright June day. I felt ragged beside them.
    "Where have you been?" Mary whispered. "Here I've been sewing all afternoon, and you've been out sporting. You sly fox."
    I heaped my plate with wild venison stew, cornbread, and boiled clams, then filled a small bowl with sallet herbs. "Stitching your dowry again, no doubt," I teased. "I know you love to dream your way through the afternoon, sister. Is Thomas coming to call?"
    She was being courted by Thomas Hitchbourne, son of a well-to-do shipbuilder. Thomas's father was ready to launch a thirty-ton bark to trade for furs along the coast.
    "At least he calls," she said, "not like your Johnathan."
    "He isn't my Johnathan." But I blushed with pleasure at his name. Johnathan Hathorne, son of our local magistrate, was one of the most promising young men hereabouts. He'd made several calls in the fall, but when he came of an evening to sit in our company room, he was shy to the point of being tongue-tied. I had grown impatient with his shyness and had done little to encourage him. So he hadn't been around in over a fortnight.
    "I heard tell he's going to Boston next week when his father hears cases there for the General Court of the colony," she said. "There are pretty girls aplenty in Boston."
    "Enough," my father admonished. "I'll have no bickering at this table."
    "There's plum cake for delicacy," Mary said, nudging me.
    Our table was always graced with such treasures because both my parents were gentry. Nevertheless, they wanted Mary and me always to behave like proper Puritans. They both had their own reasons.
    Father had given up an idyllic childhood at age eighteen to run away from the Isle of Jersey and go to sea. He arrived in Salem without a shilling and started as a country peddler. My mother's family, the Hollingsworths, had been Virginia planters visiting up north.
    Father happened by where Mama and her family were staying. Mama took pity on him and offered him beer in a silver mug. Her father liked young Phillip's enterprising spirit and lent him money to purchase a ship.
    Mama and Father married, and Father's business flourished, but he was ever mindful of his humble beginnings and wanted us to be, also.
    As for Mama, she felt guilty because her husband's prosperity came mostly from shipping and trading with foreign countries during war—from the great Indian War in 1675 to King William's war, which began in I 689 and was still raging in the Mohawk Valley and parts of New England. Father got many contracts from the English navy. So Mama's mind went from enjoying our luxuries to making us do penance for them.
    There were times that Mary and I wore silks and laces and we had figs in wine on our table. But we were not to be lulled by such pleasures. For we knew that Monday could be a silk-and-lace day and Tuesday a day of brown linen skirts and bodices.
    This was a brown linen day. I saw that as soon as I sat down.
    "What kept you, daughter?" Father asked.
    "You know how it is in the village," I said. "Everyone pretends disinterest in Salem Town but would keep me there all night catching up on our news."
    "Did you deliver all my offerings for the poor?" Mama asked.
    She was especially concerned these days about giving to the poor. For she had decided that William's disappearance was God's punishment on us for Father's successes.
    "They are all delivered, Mama." It was no lie. They were.
    "You missed prayers." Father was eyeing me. A clever merchant, he knew when someone was keeping something from him about a damaged cargo of fancy goods. And he knew when a daughter was holding back the truth.
    "I'll make up for it this evening, honored Father."
    He grunted and picked up his sterling silver mug of ale, the same mug Mama served him with that day they met so long ago. He took a hearty gulp and set it down. His gaze penetrated my