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come. The Lord could compose His frowning countenance from the deaths of babies.
    â€˜
We
are the logs, I think,’ Sewall tells Susan. ‘And grace is the tinder that sets us alight.’
    Susan sighs, reassured. Sewall wonders if his apparent confidence has some hypocrisy in it. But surely God would want him to calm this child’s doubts even if his own must remain?
    Susan stares at the fire like a diminutive squaw by her wigwam’s hearth. Sewall and Hannah try to stay awake so she will not feel alone in the room but he has the odd experience, lying there, of hearing himself snore, and when he opens his eyes she has gone and only the stool remains before the fire, the blanket neatly folded on top of it. He suddenly remembers that Goodman Walker, now long dead, used to take lavender drops in a vain attempt to combat his sleeping sickness. Perhaps his memories of Manchester lavender sprang from
them
?

C HAPTER 3
    E arly in the morning of 27 January, the day arranged for the pirates’ executions, there’s a knock on the door. Sarah comes into the parlour while the family is still at breakfast. ‘Madam Winthrop sends her respects,’ she says, ‘and—’
    â€˜Madam Winthrop?’ asks Hannah, amazed.
    â€˜That’s who she
said
she was,’ Sarah says darkly, as if Madam Winthrop might be an imposter.
    â€˜I’ll see her in my chamber,’ Hannah tells Sewall. She has a separate bedroom where she sleeps in the later stages of pregnancy, and otherwise uses as a sort of study, for reading and writing letters in, and sometimes entertaining women friends.
    Because she hasn’t been spoken to directly, Sarah pretends not to have heard. ‘What shall I tell her, then?’ she asks.
    â€˜Tell her to come to my chamber,’ Hannah replies patiently.
    â€˜She’ll be disappointed.’
    â€˜Why should she be?’
    â€˜She asked to see the master.’
    Hannah rolls her eyes, partly in exasperation at Sarah’s deliberate obtuseness, partly (perhaps) to register surprise that Sewall has dealings of his own with Madam Winthrop.
    Sewall drains off his breakfast beer and rises to his feet. He shakes his head, partly to show his own impatience at Sarah’s obstinacy, partly (perhaps) as a sort of reply to Hannah. ‘Show Madam Winthrop into my study.’ Sarah sighs and leaves the room. Sewall goes up to his study and gives the fire a quick poke.
    â€˜Madam Winthrop,’ announces Sarah.
    â€˜Good day to you, madam.’ He gives her a little bow, poker dangling from his hand. Madam Winthrop makes the merest nod of acknowledgement. ‘You may go, Sarah,’ Sewall tells his housekeeper, waving the poker with unintentional ferocity. Even so, she leaves reluctantly. ‘Madam Sewall sends her regards,’ he continues, putting the poker back on the hearth. Madam Winthrop nods again in response to Madam Sewall’s regards. She is wearing a cloak and hood in Watchet blue (as an importer, Sewall is familiar with all the colours of cloth), with a fur tippet and a muff suspended by ribbons from her neck. To his amazement she raises her right leg and points it at him.
    â€˜Look at what I have waded through.’ She waggles her foot to ensure she has snagged his attention. Her stockings and the hem of her gown are stained with water and mud splashes. She looks as if she is dancing in a particularly provocative fashion. Some words of Increase Mather (referring to the third chapter of Isaiah) come back into Sewall’s head:
It is spoken of as the great sin of the Daughters of
Sion,
that they did walk with stretched-out necks, and with wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet.
These are from a pamphlet entitled
An Arrow Against Sacred and Profane Dancing
, which arrow was to be imagined shooting through the air at the retreating back of a man who tried to set up dancing classes in Boston,