Read Online A Measure of Light by Beth Powning - Free Book Online Page A

slipped up the ladder to the icy attic.
    “Sir Henry Vane,” Mary whispered. “Anne’s William, of course. John Coggeshall, William Coddington.” These latter three were the colony’s most prosperous merchants.
    William took up his smoking-tongs, pressed tobacco into the bowl of a white clay pipe. His lips made soft poppings as he sipped at the stem. He looked across into the fire and she saw that he probed a new idea.
    “I have noticed a change in you,” he said.
    He handed the pipe to Mary, who filled her mouth with the sweet smoke. She blew it out through pursed lips and smiled at him. “I have noticed a change in you, as well.”
    “What are you thinking? About …” He made a surreptitious motion with his fingers, indicating their circumstances.
    “I find myself questioning,” she murmured. “I am not certain about many things.”
    William’s eyes narrowed against the spiralling smoke.
    “I will come to her meetings,” he said.
    She handed the pipe back across the table. He caressed her wrist with the tips of his fingers.
    “Good,” she whispered, glancing at Jurden. She pressed her own fingers against her lips, smiling, and blew the kiss towards William, like seed from a dandelion.
    —
    In early winter, the Massachusetts Bay Colony sent militia up the coast to Salem in order to seize Roger Williams, for he had not left the colony, as he had been ordered, nor would recant his strewn, profligate words, nor would be silent.
    The captain and his men pounded on the door of Roger Williams’s house. It was opened by his wife, who stood holding a newborn baby.
    “My husband hath been gone these three days,” she said.
    She did not know where he was.
    The pinnace sailed back to Boston carrying the news that the young minister had vanished into the wilderness.
    Sinnie, in her bedchamber, stood on tiptoe to reach down a bunch of savory.
    ’Tis not as they hoped. They wished for freedom but perhaps ’tis not so different here after all
.
    They had told her that they wished to go to the New World because their ministers were being tortured, forced to flee, or thrown into the Tower.
    They be scunnered
. She wanted Mary and William to be as happy as they had been in London, when she had first come to work for them and they had gone out, of an evening, hand in hand.
    She listened to their quiet talk below, the floor cracks so wide she could see their heads. They talked of things that would have them terribly punished should anyone hear—how the ministers were wrong in their thinking, and terrified the children, and were cruel, and told the magistrates how to rule.
    Sinnie could not understand it, for all that was said in the sermons and lectures was as a language utterly incomprehensible and she longed only for them to be over so she could return to eggs, in a bowl, for flour and her small, quick hands, and the sourdough, and the crust, butter-browned, and the joy of watching their faces.
    She glanced at her pallet, considering how sleep came to her easily, for she loved the moment of waking to a life whose tasks were as gifts, whose people were her own.
    Crumbs of dried herbs sprinkled down, smelling of summer. Sprigs in hand, she knelt to slip backwards through the trapdoor, one foot on the first rung, thinking of the garret in London where she had dreaded the Earl’s nightly visits and how she had splayed herself against a window to glimpse the birds flying northwards.
    Oh, I be so lucky. I do wish they could know of it
. She thought of her good parents and her brothers and sisters. How she could stand in the doorway of this little house and watch the birds spilling past and have no envy of them.
    At Anne’s next meeting, Mary sat on a bench beside the fire. Other women perched on low stools or curled on the floor. William and the men stood against the walls, snow-melt dripping from beards and hat brims.
    Anne took a sip of cider and passed the cup to a long-haired young man, Sir Henry Vane, who sat