The Strange Death of Mistress Coffin (28 page)

“I remember accusing him,” Browne said, “of lying in deposition to the court. But his only response was that he withheld certain of the truth to save himself, and others, from the vengeance of the law. He said that he was ‘a false man' in those times.” Browne then looked back down at his manuscript and began reading White Robin's words again.

“‘From Coffin's own thirst for revenge, from his arts, his ways, our playacting began to seem an escape. Short of immediate flight alone—or with my confused family deep into the wilds of Maine or some faraway place—I saw no other way out. I confess I hoped that being his victims in our spectacle might slake his desires against us. How else appease, I thought, that awful serpent in his heart? He would not have listened to truth. Was this plan not worth a trial? Of course, I knew I would have to make ready to escape his reach should our performance fail to entertain and satisfy him.

“‘So we went ahead with it. Mistress Coffin alone unaware of what we had staged. I disappeared as planned. While she was at market, Jacob Fletcher connived to meet her after she sought me and offered his services, as he was returning himself and as I had told him that I had to return home for a mishap befalling one of my children. He said I had asked for his help in returning her, and so on in such vein until she finally got into the canoe with him. She knew who he was; her husband had once or twice hired this man who, if his reputation were smirched, worked well when you hired him.

“‘By the time they reached Bailey's Island, I had been bound to an oak tree, dirtied and beaten somewhat, stripped to my breeches, my mouth tied, my clothes strewn about. You see? Henry Fletcher sat below me whetting his knives by the fire.

“‘But even then I began to regret my part in the drama as soon as I saw her face. And they seemed to use her with more force than necessary from the first. You see, as soon as she saw my condition she began to resist. They were hard on her, and when she began to scream for help they tied a rope around her throat, with a slipping knot, and gave her pressure until she ceased. They searched her, taking whatever valuables they found, including the corn and some coin in her purse. They removed her clothing and searched her nakedness. Henry piled her clothes aside carefully. Jacob began to threaten her with what would soon befall us, while Henry acted dumb shows of our waiting agonies.

“‘Jacob stripped my breeches off while Henry continued with Mistress Coffin. I knew they had begun too much to relish their roles. I began to see that they had counted this woman a portion of their booty. We all moved on a knife edge between the true and the staged. At any moment their lusts might spill over, making the show grow real. I almost broke free of my loose bonds to fight, but then I thought better of it—a naked man defenseless against their double weapons.

“‘That is what happened, at the bottom of it. It all went wrong. The final turn came just as Jacob was flourishing before me his heated knives, and Henry ran over to motion that he needed help with the woman. This we had planned. When they turned from me to attend to the struggling woman, I was to flee. But somehow she had loosened the rope and found strength enough to begin screaming again. They became very busy with her. Henry pulled the small canoe up on the land and turned it over. Jacob dragged her by the rope to the canoe, her screams stopped, while she clutched at the rope to relieve its choking.
They pulled her over the canoe on her stomach, tied the end of her rope to a sapling, and then bound each foot to separate trees, so that she lay over the canoe wide before them.

“‘Then it was that Henry started in on her, with less mercy than a butcher's cur toward an ox cheek. He removed his breeches and started to come at her on hands and knees, even though Jacob was calling to him: “Not yet you goddamn fool.” But there was no stopping him; it had all gone wrong. He had come right up to her, grunting in her loins like a calf at the salt. She had been made so helpless by her bonds that she could neither move nor utter a sound now. Her free arms were pulling against the rope to relieve the crush at her throat enough to stay alive.

“‘Henry grabbed his inflamed yard and slammed into her, and then Jacob ceased his complaint and began to laugh as he watched the two of them. It was just as Jacob began to remove his clothes that I finished undoing my own bonds, certain by now that everything had gone awry. As they busied themselves upon her, fore and aft, I ran, grabbing my breeches on my way, and jumped into the water. I swam to the western shore like a demon.

“‘On shore I saw that neither brother had stopped his pleasures of her to pursue me. I was supposed to have escaped, after all. I'm sure they were not worrying whether anyone had thrown out the playbook. I pulled on my wet breeches, and fled barefoot overland to my house.' “Here Browne paused briefly again in his reading. When he looked up his eyes looked distant and glazed.

“I recall somehow,” Browne said to his children, “exactly how he looked just then as he told his story. He briefly shifted his position and then began to slide a strand of beadwork through his thumb and forefinger.” When Browne failed to continue his reading, his son prompted him: “Father? Go on, please.” Browne
seemed to return to the present, shook his head, and looked down at his manuscript. He began reading again.

“‘The upshot is that when they found the poor woman's sorely beaten body in the river, I could neither eat, nor sleep, nor think. I prepared to flee, fearing to tell anyone, even my wife, of my role. Who shall believe me now? I resolved to take their lives, those Fletchers, but before I could make ready, there were hearings. I came under close watch, had to shift as much blame as possible. Then the Fletchers had not, it was said, returned to the town. They managed earlier to get the half part of payment out of Coffin, who was desperate for his vengeance, and by what they took from her purse. When Coffin saw that I had returned whole, he took recourse of the law against me. Under questioning, I began to hint that his own hand was in this and that his wife, as he still believed, was an adulteress. Then he gave up on my punishment by the Courts.

“‘The missing brothers drew scant suspicion. They were believed to be hunting in Maine, using the house of an uncle in Casco Bay as their base. Once suspicion turned from me, I tried to find them, but their trail had turned cold and their distance, by then, too great. It was when I returned from Maine that I discovered what was amiss in my own family. For then it was our own torments began. It was later, after the Fletchers had drifted back into town, and I finally fled, that Mr. Cole—seeing the sufferings of my family—settled with you, Mr. Browne, to look into it.' “

Browne looked up at his children. “There,” he said. “That is all.”

“All?” Apphia asked.

“All that was written,” Browne said. “I remember some things now, of course. Much of it came back to me as I was reading to you. I remember that when White Robin stopped speaking there was only the sound of distant birds and of the river
thrusting beside us. I felt as if I had awakened from an evil dream. I thought I would be ill. I saw again and again Elizabeth Higgins' sealed note to Balthazar Coffin drop out onto my table from among the papers Dr. Sedley had sent. I looked at Shaw, who gave no indication of his belief or disbelief in his old friend's story. The story had felt absolutely true to me as it was told, but in the crush of emotion afterwards I wondered.

“I also recall standing up and trying to shake off a sensation of dizziness, and walked around before I spoke again. I think I said to White Robin: ‘That, however, is all in the past, as dead to us here today as that poor woman, and now her husband. You cannot now act as if your life, your children, your wife back at Robinson's Falls are a story or a dream. You're still responsible for them. No one, least of all I, will bring action against you again in this bloody matter. The Fletchers may have to answer. I can procure agreements with Mr. Cole to keep you clear of any retribution, especially if you testify. I can secure all this and return in two months for you.'

“‘The Fletchers have their punishment coming,' White Robin said to me. ‘What more can it matter now?' How could he have known that they were to be sent into exile before any action would be initiated against them again? At the time I explained that it was for his wife, his family, that I pleaded. But he only answered that his family was here, meaning the Indian camp. Then he asked Shaw and me to leave him. In desperation I tried to get Shaw to agree to bring Higgins' wife and son to see him, but Shaw, correctly no doubt, said simply that he, Higgins, would not be found again. Indeed, he had already, Shaw said, made his farewell to Shaw in the dialect. We left the next morning.”

“When you consider,” Aaron said after a silence, “that Mother suddenly faced not only an adulterous and deserting husband, but one who had likely joined with these ruffians in a conspiracy leading to the torment and death of that poor woman. . . .”

“Oh, Aaron. He had
become
a savage,” Apphia said, her face
still astonished by the news. “And continued bigamous, or rather adulterous, relations there in the wilderness!”

The energy of Apphia's outburst silenced her brother and father momentarily. The two men looked at her kindly.

“Yes,” Browne finally offered, “what we all know now has carried you about as far as it has carried me. Once she faced all these events and doings, you see, your mother awakened, so to speak. At the least her husband had violated her truly as much as if he had beaten her without cause, denied her himself, or failed to care for his family in any of the common ways. And I too was in the process of making arrangements to leave for the Port. My fortunes were increasing comfortably during this time. There was further the prospect of combining our legacies. Your mother finally thought better of striking out alone.”

“Surely your charm and position must have prevailed with her,” Aaron said and clapped his father lightly on the shoulder.

Browne found his heart lightened by the wine and bright evening fire. “As to my charm,” he said, “I cannot attest. But my situation improved daily, that is true enough.

“And one has to know when to move on to other things, especially since one always has responsibilities to others. That, finally, is what we, your mother and I, tried to do. It took time, of course. But for the past twenty years I have given those events and inquiries little thought. That lack of any complete resolution in the case of the Coffins and the Higginses is a fact we soon learned to live with and, as I say, put out of our minds.

“Even now, the principals, the places, the events recede into uncertain historical record. Cole is deceased. All that remains is fragmentary.” Browne paused to adjust the fire with a long iron fork. No one spoke while he did so. Aaron and Apphia merely looked at one another. Mrs. Hawksworth stuck her head into the room and announced supper. The old man straightened up, placed the fork against the hearth and added: “None of it is my affair any longer. This is the world we live in now.”

When their evening meal was over, Browne's children wished to return to their own homes, so he climbed to his study with another dram of mulled wine. He hoped to order, for an easier start the next morning, the papers he and Aaron had spread about on his writing table. But he went to his window over the street first and watched Aaron and Apphia walking towards their dwellings. He saw again how much Apphia reminded him of Elizabeth, just as Apphia's own daughter mirrored her mother. It could have been a young Elizabeth Higgins walking below out of sight. In a whisper, he recited:

A Lillie of a Day,

Is fairer farre, in May,

Although it fall, and die that night;

It was the Plant, and flowre of light.

In small proportions, we just beauties see:

And in short measures, life may perfect bee.

And would they not prosper, his beautiful children and grandchildren? Yes, he thought, prosper they must. Aaron one day—not too far away now surely—would come into all his father's trade and, more importantly, his land. For he, Browne, had turned much profit over the years into that safest and most transferable of investments. Above all, the wealth that tied the ensuing generations together would be land. Moreover,
between them Apphia and Aaron could count in their relations by marriage the wealthiest families in the region—the Champernownes, the Cutts, the Sherburns, among others distant or close. A warmth, like that of red wine reaching an empty stomach on a cold day, spread through his body as he thought how substantial would be the increase unto his children and their children for generations to come.

Apphia had been delighted when he had offered her any of her mother's most costly clothing—a silk hood and sleeves, petticoats, a few silver clasps, combs and such things as Elizabeth had accumulated over the years, some of them gifts he or her children had given her. She might as well have the best of it, he thought. He could not have any of it in the house much longer. He wondered briefly what to do with the rest, the mundane clothes and personal effects, the worst reminders of his loss, these possessions that renewed pain.