For those of you that have sensitive hearts, rest assured that despite the sad way this story begins, there IS a happy ending. :) And for those of you who do not know me and might wander into the blog, despite my writing style, which can sometimes seem harsh and in-your-face, please know that I also am one who has a very sensitive heart. It is just that I do not believe in shying away from reality in terms of its emotions and the truth of how cruel it can sometimes be. I won't allow myself to sugar-coat my sins or the sins of others and hide from the facts. And the fact of the matter is that while this story and the portrayal of the characters are fictitious, the witch trials/persecutions were VERY real and are historically documented. Many times women were arrested, tried and/or killed on far less evidence than this story suggests. I am part of the Christian church, but as such I must admit myself to some of the cruelty and abuse countless others have suffered in the name of Christianity. Whether I myself perpetuated these acts or not is beside the point. There are VALID reasons why people feel as they do about Christianity.
My encouragement therefore, to Christians and non-Christians alike is to focus on the historical Christ - the author and originator of our faith - and not weak, all-too-evil prone humanity and remember His example and His love and decide for yourself which you would rather embrace.
That said - not all Christians exemplify the cruelty the people and clergy of Salem did or the church did during the Inquisition or any of the other examples throughout history you might like to relate. In this story, Reverend John Hale and his wife are the example of the radical, infinitely wise Christ and the contrite, forgiving heart He so portrayed when He walked the earth. They are the ones here who, like Christ, offer redemption to a little girl all too scarred by the realities of the world around her. So if you are distrustful or against the Christian church (and I once counted myself among you), I can promise you from personal experience that there ARE places out there who DO exemplify Christ's true message of love, forgiveness, and acceptance. And hey, if you happen to be in the PA area, I can even direct you to a few them. ;)
As always, this is a rough draft and will be further edited with time.
* * *
Reverend Frost's voice rang out over the pond's placid waters with all the gentleness of a rapped gavel. "Lilly Shiva you have been accused by members of this community in good standing of the crime of witchcraft. You have thrice denied these allegations, but evidence found at your residence speaks against you in this matter. Your own explanation of said evidence condemns you further." The wind howled past the grim assembled stirring the flat water into rippling sheets and caused men and women alike to hold tight to hat and bonnet. It was the wind before the storm. The small girl watching in horror from the bulrushes on the opposite shore was nearly blown over, but she set her bare feet bravely heedless of the long wheat-blonde hair that flew around her in ribbons.
The condemned stood across the water bound between two deacons her very lovely face pale and pained but surprisingly unafraid. Her eyes scanned the far bank until she found the silver gleam of sunlight off the girl's dancing tendrils and her expression softened. The only difference between her own face and the little face staring back at her from the reeds was the age and the lighter colored hair. Her own honeyed locks were being pinched where they waved down her back by the rope that bound her hands together behind her back. Her thin wrists were discolored by bracelets of bruising. Her legs also were bound and she barely managed to balance herself in the gusting wind. She tried to smile encouragingly to her daughter and there was an immediate angry murmur from the crowd who, having no knowledge of the little girl across the way, assumed she smiled in some perverse sense of pleasure at the mention of her crimes. What else could there possibly be to smile about on such a black occasion?
"Therefore," The reverend continued in a voice of such authority that it instantly silenced the crowd. "As you are unwilling to admit your own guilt in parlaying with Satan or reveal the whereabouts of your child's father so he could give good testimony, you are now bound hand and foot and to be thrown into this the pond on your own land so that we may see for ourselves the truth of your crimes against God as the waters reject your body." He fell silent for a good long moment as though expecting Lilly to protest and plea for her life. She did not. Unwilling to draw more attention to the girl across the water or cause her more fear, she simply lowered her eyes to a blooming lily-flower near her bank. The lovely bloom had been the inspiration for her name. Reverend Frost's deeply lined face sank and his frown deepened. "Have you no sense of shame?" He asked, but his derisive tone made the question pointless. "Have you anything to say before this trial begins?"
Lilly's eyes lifted slowly to the sky where a break in the cloud cover sent down a wide beam of sunlight that fanned like a gold pleated gown from heaven to the earth below. In a sweet, almost melodic voice she said, "God knows my sins and my failures. Ever has He been faithful to love me despite them. But He also sees the purity of my heart to these accusations." Her voice suddenly hardened and she leveled her gaze directly at Reverend Frost. "He sees also the gravity of the church's guilt in these matters condemning innocents to -- " The rest of her words were completely drowned out by the uproar from the crowd. After a moment, she stopped trying to speak at all and cooly watched the deacons fighting to restore order.
When at last order was restored, the people's face etched with self-righteous fury, Reverend Frost spoke again his tone heavy and cold as stone. "We have been merciful already to stay your execution and indeed to grant this trial at all, and yet you mock. Know you Lilly Shiva that the Lord's church has been blessed and appointed as the highest authority in this land and that no evil may govern His ordained leaders or covenanted members either."
"Your leaders were appointed by man, not by God. And lest you forget Reverend Frost, I am covenanted as well." There was a collective gasp. The crowd was clearly stunned by her boldness in the face of death. But it was not her boldness alone, it was the authority and reason with which she spoke. Lilly Shiva was a simple country girl who'd lived alone with her young daughter the father long since having abandoned them. She did not even know her letters. Her words enraged, but it also sent fear into their hearts for reasons they did not understand. "All men may be tainted by their own desires, even those named to rule over the people."
Mingled rage and an odd hint of sadness warred in his eyes, but the anger was greater. Reverend Frost spoke again. "Once your own family was counted among the righteous." The fleeting sense of sadness disappeared entirely now. "Now you yourself have chosen to forsake the conscionable path of your forebears and our good church to be counted among the damned. Even now as you stand before the water of death you hold to the black allegiance which now gives you this deceptive forked tongue."
He was silent then for so long staring into her calm blue eyes that the people began to grow nervous. A deacon leaned over and whispered anxiously, "Reverand Frost, shall we proceed?" Frost opened his mouth once to speak as though something about the calm, unwavering stare of her eyes conflicted him. Then he hardened again and gestured to put her in.
As the two deacons lifted her, Lilly saw a flicker of compassion in Silas, the man at her feet. She looked at him and his eyes skirted away. "I'm sorry Lilly Shiva." He whispered barely audibly. "If ye just wouldn't have talked this way to Frost, then maybe ye'd have a chance. Now what of your child?"
"God will send His angels to Elsbeth to guard her in all her ways." Lilly told him softly. They were the last words he heard her speak. The men swung, once, twice, thrice for the number of baptism, then released. She entered the water with barely a splash. Lilly was a slight, willowy women and there was little on her form to cause her to rise. She sank quickly. The child across the water began to cry as silence closed over the grounds. There was no cheering. There had been something pure and unsettling about Lilly's last words and the way in which she had not pled for mercy that was affecting the people badly. To add to their feelings, Reverend Frost did not even bother to tell the men to pull her out for far more minutes that it took her to drown....
* * *
Elsbeth was eleven years old when her mother was swum as a witch. Her appearance suggested that she was seven or perhaps eight. Her form was slender and fragile her features still rounded with the softness of toddler-hood. It was her eyes that gave her away. In the days following her mother's execution, she often visited the pond from whence her mother's lifeless body had been dragged and the reflection staring back at her in the water seemed a stranger. The general features had not changed, but the eyes stared at her unfamiliar and dispassionate. There had been a few days where she had laid inconsolable in the fields crying with no thought for food or her own well-being. In colder weather, she would likely have died or grown deathly ill. But summer was blazing and mercilessly sustaining. Then, one misty dawn, she had forced herself to rise and began to function again. She fed the starving animals on their tiny farm, milked the braying goats, collected the eggs, and put bread in to bake just as her mother had shown her. She breathed, and she moved, but it was a hollow existence and not a life for many torturous days. Her mother had been her world and now the one constant she had known was gone from her forever. She left a bitter, hollow tear in Elsbeth's heart that she was certain would never mend. And somehow, as the young so often do, Elsbeth took responsibility for what had happened. She and her mother had found a young robin in the back garden one day and had hand-fed it until it reached adulthood. Elsbeth had named it Ruby. The day the men had come, she had found ruby dead on the windowsill where she'd visited. Lilly had gathered lavender flowers for her distraught daughter to place with the bird in a tiny wicker basket. They had intended to bury Ruby in the garden. But before they had a chance to do so, men from the town had come upon the tiny homestead and found them. As Elsbeth clung to her mother's side, Reverend Frost's unforgiving eyes had searched their little home looking for they did not know what. His gaze had found Ruby laying in her little bed of lavender on the windowsill. Pointing this out to his companions, he had proclaimed that the dead bird and herbs presented irrefutable proof that Lilly was guilty to witch and they had seized her at that very moment. At her mother's desperate urging, she had run away from the men and hid where they could not find her. Things happened very quickly after that. Reverend Frost had delayed only long enough to send a messenger into town to report that a witch trial would be taking place on the Shiva homestead. Within hours, the crowd had congregated to watch.
In this remote countryside, little or no proof was enough to arrest and condemn the accused to a witch test. Apart from a cursory trial performed by Reverand Frost and two deacons, there had been so logical reason given for the arrest. Lilly had told them truthfully the reason the bird had been lying there in the lavender but far from justifying her, Frost had insisted that the behavior was part of a known ritual of witchery, that she had killed the creature in order to inhabit its body and send out her own spirit as a spy. Ridiculous, yes. And there had certainly been some other accusation that had prompted them to enter the home to begin with, but Elsbeth and Lilly never heard them. Elsbeth had sensed resignation in her mother's demeanor, as though somehow she had been expecting this for some time. After her mother's drowning, no one from the village had bothered to return to collect the little girl, though part of Elsbeth wished that they would. She'd rather have been in heaven with ma than left here alone.
As Elsbeth went about her daily chores, the one consolation she had indulged was to bring TipTip the baby goat into the farmhouse with her. Her mother would never have allowed it, but Elsbeth loved TipTip and he trotted after her when she moved about and laid contentedly in her arms at dusk. She put him out with his mother to eat and sleep the night. And he was a comfort to her.
* * *
It was three weeks before anything strange happened on the farm. TipTip and his parents Luke and Maggie had run out of feed. The feed-bags were kept up in the loft above the goat pen as anywhere else they'd tried to keep them had been discovered by the goats and eaten within a day. The latch on the pen door had long since broken and the goats chewed threw any temporary fix they attempted, so most of the time they had the run of the tiny barn. The feed sacks were large and very heavy. Elsbeth could remember helping her mother wrestle the bags down the ladder which, fortunately, was at a good low angle. By herself, Elsbeth could see no way of moving the sacks at all much less lowering them down the ladder without dropping it and having the feed spill all over the ground for the goats to gorge on. As she began to grow more anxious about the problem with TipTip nudging her legs and bleating and Luke bellowing much more loudly, grief began to tug at her guts. Grief was strange like that. Sometimes the pain of it was distant from her mind as she successfully moved from one distraction to another. Other times it rose up in her when it was least expected. Slowly, she sank onto the packed dirt floor and began to cry. Sensing her distress, TipTip climbed into her lap, laid down and began to lick her salty face.
But then a light breeze kicked up and whispered into the barn window sifting the dirt on the floor around her. Luke spooked and lept past her braying like mad and Maggie began kicking at the barn door. Elsbeth looked up and was blinded by a ray of sun streaming in through the window. Shielding her eyes from the brightness, she looked down and saw to her astonishment one of the feed bags sitting next to her on the ground. The ray of sun had vanished. Luke and Maggie had recovered remarkably fast and were now at the feed bag nibbling at the tie. Elsbeth paused for onlhy a moment, then told the goats, "Alright, alright. I'm hurrying." She grabbed the scoop and filled their mangers then turned to tie up the sack and realized that it was no longer there. Brow furrowing, she lifted her gaze slowly to the loft above and there it sat in its place above goat-nibbled tie and all. Rather than alarmed, Elsbeth felt an overwhelming sense of peace and comfort wash over her. To her mind, there was only one source for that deep a sense of calm. "Thank you mama." She said aloud to the loft and lifted TipTip to nuzzle his fur.
At times, Elsbeth felt angry, and because she was unaware this was a natural part of the grieving process, she was further angry with herself for feeling the way that she did. She wasn't angry at her ma for dying, that part had clearly been the fault of the minister. She was angry that her mama had not taken her with her to heaven. In its own innocent, damaged way, this too was normal. But Elsbeth had no one to explain this to her either. At night, she often had difficulty falling asleep despite the hard work she'd done all day trying to maintain the farm alone. She missed the way her mother had hummed and rocked by the fire at night as she had lain in bed. A few nights after the feed bag had transported itself from loft to floor and back again, she was laying still lost in memories when a familiar creak came to her ears. Her eyes traveling to the fireplace, she saw her mama's rocking chair rocking slowly back and forth. She smiled and it was not difficult at all to fall asleep after that.
* * *
About three weeks after her mother's death, Elsbeth was carrying water in from the well when she saw a dust cloud on the long lane that eventually led to town. Curious, she put down her water pail and waited. Before too long, she could see that the carriage approaching held several individuals. A middle-aged man in clergy black and a woman and three children. There was a girl only a few years older than herself and a boy her age. With his legs dangling down from the carriage seat, a toddler was firmly fixed between his parents.
The father's eyes were drawn to the pond as it glimmered in the rising dawn like a copper coin. In his mind, he could hear Reverend Frost's voice and the taunting crowd, feel the splash as the mother must've been dropped into the waters. Disquiet rose in him. So much hatred, so much death from what was meant to bring life. He sighed and turned his eyes back to the road. The farm was near and he could see the girl waiting for them there by the chicken pen. When they approached, he got down from the wagon and his wife did the same. Elbeth eyed the two and immediately recognizing the pastoral raiment of the man she stepped back several paces in fear. The man stopped and looked at his wife. She stepped forward and smiled kindly at the girl. "Hello Elsbeth." She said, and her voice was very quiet, like her mama's had been. "My name is Sara Hale." She gestured to her husband who held back, but looked at the child warmly. "This is my husband, John. Its alright, I promise you you're in no trouble. We did not come here to harm you. Just to see how you are faring."
Elsbeth stared at them for a long minute still eyeing the Reverand nervously. But something seemed to quiet her mind and she said finally, "Alright."
No comments:
Post a Comment