The Strange Death of Mistress Coffin (12 page)

October 9, 1646

This evening as I sat in the milkhouse heavily wrapped and lazily huddled against our milch cow Patience, Goodman Higgins looked around the corner and spoke: “Taste of winter in the air, Mistress Coffin!” I jumped as he spoke, dulled as I was by my fatigue, the cow's warmth, the milky squirtings of the warm teats.

I chided him for such a start. He said he had come to look
after the feed storage, as he had a moment. But he stopped briefly yet to ask about some purchases he had heard of me making at the fair from the merchant Steele. It seems word spreads as quickly as I can buy and sell. I had some commodities for a good price in pipe staves, rye, and cheeses off of a ship from London via the Indies. There was sugar, linen, woolen, stockings, and other goods I procured through trade. Even now the ship is about to return laden with its New World cargoes.

I explained to Higgins that I had merely met with Mr. Steele, a man of previous acquaintance to me, at a propitious moment in the market, several ships at once being just in, some on their way to Boston for materials and foodstuffs in shortage in England.

He said that I seemed to frequent the right times and called me the “closest tradesman” he knew. Then he disappeared about his business, leaving me now fully awake to my duty to Patience. “Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord”!

October 27, 1646

All week Higgins moved cordwood, splitting off kindling, brands, and smaller pieces, sectioning the largest logs for readier burning, and generally arranging for storage the winter's worth of wood. By next month we must begin the long labor of gathering next year's cordwood for curing.

It becomes clearer to me all the time that without his help I would have been put to much greater expense and difficulty, and that Mr. C.'s foresight in hiring Higgins was the one good turn he has done me in the last two years.

November 5, 1646

Yesterday a great tempest at the northeast. Some lost houses, roofs, boats, etc. A ship of 100 tons laden with peas and wheat in bulk, some hundreds of West India hides, beaver, and
plate—all valued at 5,000 pounds—and above sixty persons aboard, was among the lost.

Our losses were not great, thank the Lord. Higgins has spent the whole day, however, and I fear tomorrow, on repairs.

December 29, 1646

The last three days I have taken to my bed. We, Higgins and I, had set aside a day to shift the season's second quantity of firewood from storage to the hall and wood shed against the back of the house. We had devoted some hours to this with good progress when a storm came up out of the south and all was enveloped in rain, fog, and darkness. It was a rain that endured until day's end when it turned a mixture of rain and snow. But when the rains finally began to blow up heavily Higgins said he would need to leave me for a time to attend to his own lot and animals. His family would be needing his help. No one could say to what extremity such winds might heap. He advised me to go indoors until the worst was over. And I agreed to do so.

But upon his leaving I secured some of the sheds as best I could and decided to continue a while longer, until I should be driven indoors, stacking under good cover more of the kindling and some of the manageable chunks which I had already begun to tuck away into tight, dry corners. The storm soon grew so violent, however, that I was within little more than an hour as thoroughly fatigued, as wracked by coughing and tremors, as an unwanted infant exposed to the ravages of the tempest by her sinridden mother.

Once inside and shut away from the storm, I was unable in my feebleness to raise Cook, who had probably, as in previous storms, hidden herself under the bedclothes in her own quarters. I dragged out our great washtub, placed it before the fire, and began filling it with hot water from the two big kettles
hanging on their trammels above the fire, tempering it slightly with colder water from the storage cask. I raised an enormous fire to warm me, to boil more water and, still wracked by violent shaking, quickly stripped all my wet clothing from me before the fire and wrapped myself in a woolen blanket. I could not sufficiently warm myself thus, so I adjusted the water temperature in the tub as hot as I could withstand and struggled in.

With a groan I sank into the water and found salvation. Life, it seemed at that moment, might endure and be good again. Every ligament of my body was loosened, searched, beneficently bathed by the warmth. I must have swooned or fallen asleep. For how long I do not know.

I awoke only at the sound of Higgins' voice and the pressure of his hands shaking my face. He had risked returning in the storm later to insure my own security. When he found me as I was, he later told me, he had feared my life at first, until he perceived my shallow breathing. He asked if I had met with some accident, and I slowly explained what I could recall to him. He stoked the fire and heated rum as I spoke. He had warned me, he said, to take greater care, to seek shelter. Yes, I agreed. He spread and hung my wet clothes (which I had dropped on the floor) about the fire. He replenished the tub, whose waters had somewhat cooled, with hot water. Then he offered to place the blanket beside me over the top of the tub to cover me, but I said it was not necessary now. I felt no shame, for there was no force or vitality in my body then. I had grown, however, warm at last. He handed me the hot, sugared rum.

We said nothing while he adjusted the logs in the fireplace and refilled the water pots. He roused Cook and had her place a light supper on the table board for me, and then made ready to return to his family. I thanked him, but my voice betrayed my weakness and he grew concerned again. I managed to assure him that I was restored enough to get along on my own with old Cook, Goody Hastings, though secretly I did not know
how it was to be done. We agreed, once he explained his own obligations, that he should return in two days to finish the wood for me. In leaving he added only that he would have his wife look in on me tomorrow to be sure I had regained good estate of body.

After he left, I lay back in the hot water for some time. How long I cannot say. It was only after finally leaving my bath that I suddenly grew weaker and chilled again. I barely made my way to my bed, with Cook's help, fell immediately into the deepest sleep, and have lain here three days. It was Goody Higgins who kept me alive during my illness with her oat cakes, broths, decoctions of root and herb, and directions to old Cook as to the necessities of my welfare. Tomorrow I shall walk a little, thanks to her ministrations. But she does not turn a friendly countenance upon me. I rather think she performs what is a duty to another of God's suffering creatures.

January 5, 1647

Higgins himself stopped in today to see how I was getting on. I had been walking again; he asked me about my strength, which, as I assured him, I was regaining. He asked me to walk for him and to see if I could carry implements from the fire-place to the table. I was improving, but slowly, when for some reason I stumbled and he immediately caught me up. “Not well enough to be unattended yet, I think, Mistress Coffin,” he said, helping me to a chair. My sensations upon this event were strange to me. I had lived so long without the caring touch of a man that a ripple of unfamiliar pleasure and sympathy for another spread through me like the stirring of fish suddenly feeding in deep pools.

He seemed not to notice. He said that he would ask his eldest daughter to attend me twice a day until my strength completely returned. I protested that there was no need, that she was too
much needed by her mother. Then it was that I began to think about hiring a servant again, as Mr. C. had recommended. I mentioned this to Higgins, and he thought it a good idea, said he would look about for a prospect himself.

February 6, 1647

Today Higgins repaired a hole in the roof of the cow shed where heavy snow brought down a large hickory limb. I am sure it was a frightful labor in such snow. But he approached the task, as is his wont, undaunted by the practical difficulties.

When he entered the house, unwrapping his coat and shaking the snow from it, he said that he had managed it. He laid his coat on the hearth, stood before the fire, and took the refreshment I offered. I was offering my gratitude for this most recent assistance in my need and had fully launched into an expatiation upon all he had done these past months for me, when he looked at me a little strangely. I continued, saying how far he had surpassed his agreement with my absent husband. For a moment he looked away into the fire as I spoke rapidly, trying to express all the gratitude I felt. But he turned his face back to me, looking up from the fire through the damp fall of his hair. The odor of warm wet wool rose from his coat on the hearth between us. But now the look in his eyes arrested me. It was as if some unmistakable flash of recognition passed between us, some bond of sympathy, a momentary but certain intensity of passion. I cannot now say whether I soon spoke or whether we stayed for some interval in silence. But I felt as if I had been cast away near an island in a burning sea. I beat back and forth between that island world and the world of all my fellow creatures. I could not choose. I knew only that if he were to touch me I would be tossed upon that island with him in the violent gale.

What a mystery is the heart inflamed with desire! Are not our passions our greatest affliction and severest test? The Creator has filled our cups beyond their rims, a far greater draft than mere necessity would require. My thoughts have grown so curious now. They switch and snap in all and opposite directions. One moment we are humbled, in another we cry out that an angry God has left us in his outrage to swill and grovel like beasts until the night of utter death visits each of us alone. I do not begin to express the turbulence of my thoughts.

Now that he has gone, I cannot conceive how we shall act or speak to one another at next meeting. Sleep forsakes me once again. And wakefulness is filled with night and torment. Am I not a deserted wife, a woman stripped of her carnal life in the very morning of her second marriage? What is this man to her now whom she married in the sorrow of early widowhood and the sweet freshness of love?

In wakeful hours I recall not only so many events of my life, but I find my mind wandering over cases of adultery and brutality between man and woman. Moreover, is it not indeed evil even to be capable of evil?
malum est, posse malum!
We are so readily humbled, stricken neither more nor less than any of these other lost and troubled creatures beneath the sun. Where are we but in God's cauldron, there to be tried and wrung of every vanity and compulsion of the flesh that grips our earth-bound spirit.

February 10, 1647

Returning to me today, H. revealed no hint of what had passed between us. He went about his work without so much as a questioning glance. I soon saw the wisdom of such deportment. This innocence of silence left with me the choice of our future conduct, and the time to consider wisely in my turn.
Any pursuit, I now see with a renewed clarity, of the direction begun facing one another before the fire, if it would not by some twist of precedence or circumstance cost us our lives, might at the least cost us much in the way of public humiliation and stripes. Moreover, I should never be permitted to maintain my authority over that portion of Mr. C.'s estate that he had so assiduously arranged for my management.

Was it not only three years ago that a man and woman were turned off the ladder in Boston? A young maid, on a dare, vowed to marry the next man to come down the road. She made good her vow. But the man was old and infirm, and she comely. Keeping true cost her dearly, for it was not long before she sought some lusty young fellow. These two were caught in the most shameful of circumstances. It was their misfortune to be discovered by the magistrates at just such a time as to be made an example against wantonness. If a certain leniency of law had been applied toward others, these two now were made to feel the full weight of retribution. This and other examples of wretches in similar circumstances return to me frequently now.

February 23, 1647

Might I not plead that the spiritual and material bonds of my marriage to Mr. C. had long since dissolved, by his frenzied will and action? Was it not he who abdicated all responsibilities and ties, save one last pecuniary debt, to me his wife, while I, on the other hand, had fulfilled every duty toward him, my husband? Would not the just favor my cause over Mr. C.'s, in
foro rectae rationis?

Why should not a woman in my circumstances unwive herself?

H. speaks of journeys in the spring for the fur trade. He brought to me today one Martha, to be considered for a servant
woman. He saw the need, as I did, for this addition to my household. Newly arrived, unmarried, more mature than that previous jade, she may do well enough.

March 10, 1647

There is another tale of much sorrow about a maiden lately in Boston. I first heard of it on market day, the fifth day of the week now being set aside for such, but the woeful tale is generally about. At 22 this maiden was the eldest of two daughters to a widower, one Martin, of Casco Bay. He had returned to England on some business for a time, and left his daughters, both known as modest, Godly maidens, to make their own ways. The older daughter, Mary, went to work in the house of a certain Mitten, a married man, who became much taken with her, solicited her chastity, and gained his desire of her for some months. Perhaps because she was so shamed by the circumstances of her life, or for some other reason, she removed to Boston and entered the service of Mrs. Bourne.

Discovering herself with child, this maid concealed her shame, even though finally others came to suspect her. Her mistress, however, so admired this young woman's modesty and faithful service that she would give no credit to any reports of the maid's condition, but thought them merely malicious.

But when this young woman's time came on a December night, she withdrew secretly into a back room, gave birth by herself to a woman child, and attempted to extinguish the child's life by kneeling upon its head. The child being strong, however, it recovered and began to cry, so that this Mary used some greater violence to stifle the life. What suffering and horror she passed through alone that night, one shrinks to envision.