Yet outside of Boston, the veneer of England vanished like an early frost. Abigail’s girlhood as a minister’s daughter had taught her how primitive were the farms that lay only a few hours’ walk into the countryside, where vessels were still made from the shells of pumpkins or gourds, and families slept all together in lofts above the single “keeping room” downstairs. Where a child might grow to voting age before he ever saw a clock, or a book other than the Bible. Once they reached Salem, and turned westward, this impression deepened, of traversing time as well as distance, as if they had somewhere crossed the line that separated the eighteenth century from the seventeenth. Away from the sea, and the settled lands along the coast, the woods closed in, standing as they had stood since the creation of the continent: gray and black with winter’s coming, fall’s tawny gorgeousness only a fading echo of yellow turning to umber underfoot.
Moreover, once one left the main road, all helpful signposts and milestones ceased. Primordial woods closed around them. The innkeeper in Salem provided an assortment of directions along with more tea, more bread, and more cheese—“You take the Danvers road, m’am, but turn off to your right about two miles past Peabody. You can’t miss the track, for there’s a great oak just a hundred feet down along it, to the left of the way”—but though Abigail jotted what she hoped were the main points on her whale-ivory pocket-tablets, she was disinclined to trust them. “Now, don’t pay no mind to the farm-tracks you’ll pass, but take the bigger way left, after Great Sellars Pond.” “How far?” “Far? Lord, I don’t know—how far would you say it is to the Sellars Pond Road, Jemma?” (This to his wife.) “Two miles?” “Never!—all of four . . .” “Not so far,” protested a one-eyed man at another of the tables near the fire. “Old Sellars used to walk it in half an hour by his watch, and he were a fearful rapid walker. The Sellarses used to have all the land hereabouts, on royal grant. One of ’em married into the Olivers—or was it the Governor’s kin?—that had their holdings all up into Wenham Township and as far as Topsford . . .” “Be sure you don’t take the Topsford Road,” the landlord had agreed. “If you get to the Topsford Farm Road, you’ve gone too far. Old Topsford, he was said to be a warlock, that could raise storms by killing a hare and throwing it in Wenham Pond.”
There followed considerable discussion of whether or not the gentleman in question had actually accomplished this feat of meteorology, but no one present seemed to doubt that he could have, had he wished to do so. Neither could anyone be found headed in that direction, to guide the travelers on their way. It was early yet for dinner, and Abigail elected to press on toward Townsend, a decision she regretted some three hours later, with the threat of rain on the wind, and not the slightest idea of whether the muddy, half-frozen cart-track that disappeared into the fading winter twilight before and behind them was indeed the Topsford Road or some other. She and her companion encountered a number of great oak trees, and several small bodies of water that could have been termed ponds, sloughs, or pools, but few signs of habitation. What they had hoped was a farm-road between rock-walled, stubbled fields petered out and disappeared into woods again. “I think that old deadlight back at Salem witched us,” grumbled Thaxter.
It was close to dark when they finally stumbled into a village optimistically called Gilead, barely a hamlet clustered around a dilapidated log church, and begged shelter for the night. Hospitality was freely offered by the town’s minister, but it had to be paid for, Abigail learned, by attendance at the evening sermon: penance enough to one raised in the dual tradition of old-style predestinarianism and well-written doctrinal argument. The Right Reverend Atonement Bargest was a firm believer in the contention that no one could be Saved who did not tremble before the Altar of the Lord, and Abigail and Thaxter spent three hours on the hard, narrow meetinghouse bench (“The House of Repentance, we call it,” confided the Reverend as he escorted them to the front and center seats) while all around them the two hundred or so souls of the congregation trembled, wept, and cried out in terror at apparitions of devils that the preacher pointed to in the candlelit shadows. Thaxter quite frankly dozed off, but Abigail was sorely tried with the effort not to get to her feet in protest as the Reverend pointed and shrieked at the appearance (visible only to himself) of the Nine Daughters of Eve, emerging from Hell to prey on the souls of Righteous Men: the serpent, the nightmare, the witch, the succubus, the harlot, the Priestess of Idols, Jezebel the Queen, the dishonest handmaiden, and most iniquitous of all, the inquisitive woman whose feet are never still.
Women jauntering about the countryside instead of staying home to care for their husbands and children, he implied, would come to no good end. Shivering in her damp cloak, her feet freezing and her thighs cut by the narrowness of the bench on which she sat, Abigail was much inclined to agree with him.
After the sermon was done—it was now pouring rain—the Reverend Bargest arbitrarily assigned a member of his congregation to offer the travelers hospitality, and released them to supper and a bed. As they followed their host to one of the two dozen or so log-built houses within the town’s old palisade—like disused barracks, most of them, their upper floors shuttered and dark—Abigail could feel the disapproving gazes of the congregation on her back. “Have you not a husband nor a home?” one of the littler girls of her host’s family asked her, as the cold supper of corn pudding and molasses was set on the table—and her elder sister swept her away with a hissed admonition and a glance of sullen dread.
Evidently only the word of “the Hand of the Lord,” as they reverently termed their minister, kept Abigail and her escort from being ejected supperless into the road.
Toward the end of the meal the Hand of the Lord made his reappearance with a glowering young man whom he introduced as Brother Mortify. “He shall guide you to Townsend in the morning. It isn’t far—five miles or so.” He smiled charmingly—he had silky white hair and aston ishingly well-preserved teeth for a man in his sixties—and clapped Brother Mortify on the shoulder. “I shall pray for the lessening of the rain, that you may be sped upon your way.” For a man who forty minutes previously had been in seizures of terror at the sight of invisible demons appearing out of the back of the House of Repentance, he seemed to have made a remarkable recovery. Abigail’s hosts were lavish in their praise for “the Chosen One’s” sermon, and the Chosen One nodded grave acknowledgement. I have only done my duty, his twinkling dark eyes seemed to say. Don’t I do it well?
In fact the rain had ceased when in predawn darkness the family waked to a frugal breakfast of cold corn pudding and skimmed milk, and Brother Mortify presented himself to put Abigail and Thaxter on their way. “Not many take this way,” was his only comment, when they had to dismount and lead their horses over a stream where the bridge had rotted to nothing. “They’re Godless, in Townsend—as in other places.” He cast a meaningful glower at the travelers.
“And they’re the only ones saved and blessed, I suppose,” muttered Thaxter, when their escort finally turned back and the handful of weathered gray buildings that constituted Townsend could be descried through the gray trees. “I wouldn’t have believed it, in this day and age.” He brushed the last fragments of hay out of his hair and scarf-wool. Despite the raw iciness of the night, he’d slept in the barn. Abigail, who had shared a bed with three of the girls of the family in the boarded-up upper floor of the house, wished propriety had permitted her to do so as well.