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

beside her at the table.
    Sir Henry’s father is privy councillor, Mary thought, advisor, and comptroller of the king’s household. The young man had refused to crop his blonde curls nor would give up his lace cuffs, although he was so ardent a Puritan that he had convinced his father to send him to New England. There was much that Anne told Mary in confidence. How it was the young aristocrat’s presence that had attracted men to her meetings. How Henry Vane planned to run for governor in the spring elections; and if he won, Anne and her followers—so numerous that those opposed to her ideas had coined a phrase, calling them “Hutchinsonians”—would rule the colony.
    Mary folded her hands. They were red from a morning spentwashing the hemmed rags she tied around Samuel’s bottom—first, walking through the snow to the spring, returning with icy fingers and wet cuffs, buckets swinging and sloshing from a neck yoke. Then: the soaked clouts, the filthed water, wringing, rinsing, hanging the cloths on a wooden rack. As Anne began to speak, Mary closed her eyes and drew a deep calming breath.
    “I do not agree with his interpretation of Jeremiah, verses 23 through 33,” Anne resumed, arguing her own understanding of the Scriptures, probing the meanings laid upon them by Reverend Wilson. She sliced the air with her hand, pointing, thumb raised.
    In time, she closed the Bible; her discourse veered from the sermon.
    “The ministers substitute outward form for inward faith. They call themselves ‘Visible Saints’ and believe themselves sanctified by evidence of their good works. They believe, like Abraham, that obedience not only of oneself but enforced upon others is proof of election.
And thus of salvation.”
    The room stilled with the effort of attention, hand-smoothed coifs and men’s hats motionless within the winter light. A fly’s frenzy grew loud against the windowpane.
    This is the crux of the issue that divides Anne Hutchinson from the Bay clergy
.
    “This substitution of form for faith and its imposition upon others is the very reason we left England.”
    A murmur, a growl.
    Yes, Mary thought. ’Tis so clear.
    “Our salvation will come neither from obedience nor ritual but from
the intuition of grace
. Consider the Apostle Paul, Ephesians 2:8–9; ‘For by grace are ye saved, through faith …’ and ‘… not by works, lest any man should boast.’ ”
    Anne paused, watching the fly’s random attack upon the glass. She took breath, resumed.
    “As I do understand it, laws, commands, rules and edicts are for those who have not the light which makes plain the pathway. He who has God’s grace in his heart cannot go astray.”
    The room filled with voices.
    No need of ministers
. As people stood to voice their opinions, Anne sat quietly, watching the uproar, hands flat upon her Bible, an oat straw to mark her page standing upright between two fingers. And Mary saw how Anne Hutchinson caused, controlled, even manipulated the consternation—then evaluated the results keenly, the same way she peered at blood-soaked flesh and the eyes of the dying.
    It was dark when they stepped out into the street. The light of William’s candle lantern was serrated with driving snow, like finely drawn chalk lines. The governor’s house stood directly across from the Hutchinsons’ and as they passed beneath its windows she saw Governor Winthrop peering out, hand on drawn curtain, head turned to look down the street. Half-lit, his pointed beard was etched against the room’s soft glow. She could not see the expression on his face.
    The mother had been labouring for twenty hours and still the baby would not come. The room was close with hips, linens, skirts. Women bent over the fire, frying Johnny-cakes, heating water, ladling cider into mugs. Others sat on a bench beneath the window, whispering, giddy with fatigue; they laughed or uttered little shrieks, hands clapped to mouths.
    Mary pressed a cup beneath the