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Category:
Literary Fiction
Publisher: Richard French
ISBN-10: 1537466445
Type: Fiction
Pages: 191
Copyright: Nov 13, 2012
ISBN-13: 9781537466446
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
"The Pilhannaw" starts with a case of supposed witchcraft in a North American English colony in the middle of the 17th century. It's about more than witchcraft: fights for social justice and the spiritual health of the people the governor of the colony leads.
March, 1649. A court in Botolph sentences a woman to hang for supposedly trafficking with the devil. The old governor of Sagadac does everything he can to stop an outbreak of hysteria as a wave of accusations of witchcraft washes over the colony.
The story is based on an isolated case of alleged witchcraft that took place in Massachusetts.
"Pilhannaw" is an old native term for a bird of prey like an eagle.
Excerpt
It was March, 1649, a bleak, end-of-winter weekday afternoon. While the rest of the townsfolk were busy at their chores, Judah Bayley drew the bar across the schoolhouse door, where he’d spent the day giving lessons. He paused on the gravel path and pulled his cloak tighter around him, for the east wind was brisk. He looked to the left–at the Botolph marketplace and the wharves a hundred yards beyond it, where a dozen vessels were docked. He felt satisfied. No one would have predicted twenty years before that they would turn a cluster of rude settlements into a permanent colony. Cause for rejoicing, he thought, but there was still a lot to do, many weak spots to repair.
Heading home, Judah turned his thoughts to supper and the calls he would make that evening, for the medical training he received decades before in London was useful in his new home. He never complained about overwork.
Suddenly, however, as if to confirm his impression of imperfection, a figure in a ragged brown cloak and a worn pair of slippers ran toward him from around the corner of the sabbaday house. “Martha!” he exclaimed, both startled and displeased. “What is it now?” The harried woman spoke an angry rush of words that Judah couldn’t understand. He shook his head and made a sign with his hand to let her now he didn’t have time for conversation. She kept on speaking, though, and became increasingly angry and shrill, as if a spirit of lamentation had her in its grip. Unable to end the harangue, Judah Bayley turned his back and walked on with a firm stride. But Martha, even more determined than he, stayed at his heels.
A shoemaker heading home from work noticed the disturbance and hurried to help. But before he could cross the marketplace, Martha Hubbard took hold of Judah’s cloak and began to abuse him in the sort of language that was forbidden in Sagadac in those days – a flow of oaths, threats, and violent curses. Judah raised a hand to free himself from her grasp, but in doing so, he weakened and dropped to his knees. The shoemaker, now abreast of the pair, took Martha by the shoulders and sent her spinning down the road with a shove. He then helped Judah get to his feet and brought him the rest of the way home.
That night, while word of the incident traveled from cottage to cottage, Judah fell into a swoon. He regained consciousness as the watchman passed by at ten o’clock, but slipped off again a few minutes later. He died just before midnight.
The incident upset the townspeople. Deputy Governor Ridley called the magistrates to a meeting. He sent a militiaman to bring home the governor, who’d gone to visit a tribe of Christian Indians called the Sagadacs, whose name and territory the English had long ago taken for their own use. The constable’s men quickly brought Martha from the cabin she shared with her common-law husband and put her under watch in the prison, for they believed she’d cast a spell on Judah and didn’t want her to work another one that would cause even greater damage. [[Magistrate – each large town has one or two magistrates, members of the colonial legislature, who serve as local judges]]
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