The Strange Death of Mistress Coffin Read online

  June 1, 1646

  What is this coldness of heart that comes to separate husband and wife? I cannot believe it to be the effluent of transgressions alone. There are many tributaries to the widening stream. If Mr. C. and I are not without smoother moments of conversation now, there remains a turbulence and a distance between shores that create an unfordable gap. I have known instances of true companionship and compatibility, as between my first husband and me, as well as instances of convenience or settlement, where man and woman still become one flesh, one mind. Yet even in such instances there are, eventually, degrees of misunderstanding and the bland acceptance of one another that arises out of sharing another being’s life.

  How much the weaker must be the connubial ties between those who live aloof, whose relations are all duty without love, or all passion without tenderness? And once passion dies?

  I find myself still concerned for Mr. C. His connections to the life of this community grow tenuous as well. He performs that which is undeniably essential to maintain ties of duty. But his whole life begins to take on that unwholesome cast one associates with the mad. Not that he lacks wit; indeed his whole mind is sharpened, at the expense of every other passion and sentiment. Were I occupied with children might I not be so sensible of his condition? The other evening when he repaired to his library, as is his wont after a light meal, I thought that the time had come for us to subject the circumstances of our marriage to honest examination. I believed I could no longer continue with such distance between us. Why should we suffer this emptiness, like death, at the core of our lives a day longer?

  I therefore went into Mr. C.’s study. He did not look at me as I entered. The floor and writing table were strewn with papers and books. His chair was turned away from the table toward the window. He sat in near darkness staring out the window whose casement was open to the summery air. It was the first such evening of the season. Unaware of the insects that had stumbled in, his face was rigid and strangely illuminated. Then it was I realized that the moon was directly above his window.

  I spoke his name. He neither turned nor spoke nor made a single movement of his face or body. I stepped closer to him, leaned across the writing table, and said: “Balthazar Coffin. I must speak with you. How have we come to live apart?”

  Again, he neither spoke nor turned to look at me. I stood looking at him dumbly. I was dead to him, as if his very life had taken flight to some other world. Yet he breathed, slowly and deeply, I now saw.

  I became distraught and ran from the room. I wept; I then ran outside to hide in the cow shed, praying and pleading for the guidance of God’s hand. The thought kept returning to me that I must somehow leave this man.

  Finally a strange peace came over me and my afflicted heart came to rest. The sounds and odors of the animals, the contented stirrings of nearby fowl, the warm soft air of the moonlit evening seemed to bathe my soul in peace. And I said out loud, remembering the tribulations of others, their holy filial hearts: “If I am bereaved, I am bereaved,” and, “Shall we receive good at the hand of the Lord, and shall we not receive evil?” Then I asked: “What then is man? What are all our dearest connections and creature comforts? How fading and uncertain! How unwise and unsafe it must be to set our hearts on such enjoyments.” And though I longed for the overthrow of Satan’s Kingdom, I was at that moment suddenly at peace with the trials set before me.

  I would it had turned out otherwise, but now we live in remote quiescence in the same house. He no longer comes to our bed, but sits up and sleeps by fits. I become more and more occupied with household affairs, and with trade and village life. Even as Mr. C. grows in his distraction, it is my duty to get our living and my delight to increase our means. In another time, I might have fled to the family and the friends of England, my homeland. But it is my lot to bear my circumstances in this less strife-torn corner of the world.

  June 24, 1646

  This week has been a time of infernal heat, the like of which England never knows. Even men who could no more swim than stones bathed in the river. Our animals wandered into the flood up to their bellies and shoulders when they came to drink. A goodly number of fowl have died, and four marauding cattle enclosed in the pound took ill and seem near death. Only today has relief come upon a terrible storm that might have been Doomsday’s onslaught.

  There are days when I am overwrought, but such feelings have no object. They are formless, and futile. I am sure I will learn to live without a husband, for so I must live though I am but in my twenty-sixth year. I have learned by my trials to judge less the excesses of my fellows, especially those in false marriages. How poorly equipped are we to persevere in this our condition of Sin. “What is man that thou shouldest visit him every morning, and try him every moment.” Though I pray for perseverance, I believe I can no longer hope for the renewal of my marriage.

  Yesterday at market they told of a shoemaker and a cooper’s wife elsewhere on the Pascataqua. One might think us, as the ministers and magistrates of Boston have said, become a haven for lewd persons fleeing Zion. Yet this is but an instance of such widespread events throughout the colony, to say nothing of the Province of Maine. More notorious still!

  A captain, known as a rake, was sent some time ago out of Boston for living up to his fame with a certain wife who was young and comely and the most jovial of spirits. Word got about that they were sequestered behind locked doors frequently of mornings or afternoons while her husband, a sawyer, was away at the saw pits. They were brought to a hearing and she maintained they prayed together. That seemed doubtful, but there not being two witnesses to certain adultery, they paid ten stripes for their pleasures, and their indiscretion.

  July 18, 1646

  In this month of our great plague of caterpillars Mr. C. announced that for the sake of certain studies and investigations he must travel to the American tropics. Indeed, he explained, he planned to gain passage by the return voyage of a ship already lying and unloading at the Isles of Shoals bound for the Indies. As he spoke of these far-off investigations, my astonishment distracted me from any comprehension of his words. Now it seemed to me that the black worm’s destruction of our wheat and barley was the herald of Mr. C.’s final destruction of that gracile living we had created out of wilderness. Whence come such afflictions? Many said of the caterpillars that they fell to earth from the heavens during a great thunderstorm. For where none were seen before suddenly, after the torrent, the bare ground and grassy places were completely covered with them. After the ministers and people throughout Massachusetts and Connecticut kept a day of humiliation against the pests, the worms vanished. Just as the devoured tassels and withered ears, so is my green hold upon the New World to be blasted by a husband besotted by his ambitions.

  Mr. C. then said that I was to be provided for and to have no complaint or concern. Aside from those funds he would need to prosecute his journey, I was to be, during his temporary absence, administratrix of his estate and all income subsequent to his departure, which means, he reminded me, were not insubstantial considering our combined assets from my first husband’s settlement, Mr. C.’s property and currencies, and whatever modest increase in our fortunes we, and especially I, had managed so well since our arrival here. All this, he added, he had authorized at the cost of considerable effort and expense to himself, due to the lengthy process required to supervene the conventions of Massachusetts in such matters.

  He advised the hiring of another servant girl, in addition to Cook, and, he added, he had hired a man, at a very reasonable rate, to see to the heaviest work and the partial maintenance of our lands and animals. The said man to spend at least half a day, three days each week, in our employ, one Goodman Higgins whom I know by reputation as a capable man of divers abilities and adventures. This news somewhat assuaged my immediate apprehensions, but I am no less troubled by the prospect of being left alone for an indefinite period without preparation and dependent for much on a man I know but on acquaintance. And how can I be certai
n my husband will return? Might he not meet with some accident? Or, given his melancholic ways, might he simply fail to return?

  I was unable to speak at first. Mr. C. continued in the same vein: that he had given much forethought to the necessity of his travel, that he was comforted by my acuteness in the management of all our affairs, that I was indeed better suited to them than he. I found my tongue enough to express my confusion and my belief that I must indeed be nothing to him if I am so little worthy of his confidence in such extensive plans before this hour of his revelations. Should I not be consulted and prepared? Was I more than a dumb stone to receive the wormwood of abandonment for these tropical adventures, these learned fervors and vauntings? Is my usefulness and success in housewifery and trade a sign that I need no helpmeet, that my reward is to be left a lone pilgrim and stranger upon the earth?

  But my protestations he would not heed. He repeated the gist of his assurances. He added only that he would return within the year, that his work was of the utmost importance, and that he thought not so much of his personal gain as of that Elixir his discoveries might provide for his fellow man. For some time he developed these themes, without listening to me, before returning to his study.

  Thus am I left in the summer of 1646. It is true I am adequately provided for in the material way. I had spoken on the eve of Mr. C.’s departure to Goodman Higgins, and discovered that he had been hired just as my husband described. Higgins further understood that he was to be at my disposal beyond certain standing directives left him for the physical maintenance of our properties. He was satisfied with the steady wage and seemed withal to be content in the details of our arrangement. I had but two days between Mr. C.’s revelations and his departure to make what preparations and adjustments I might.

  But the wickedness of my husband in this sudden flight, against my protests, becomes again clear to me and renews my sorrows. In this latest of trials I can but think that “the wicked flee when no man pursueth.” His loss of all husbandly sensibility is, I now fear, but the prelude to total abandonment.

  I can only believe that there might be some mysterious purpose of the Lord in this my trial if He has not forsaken me. And I am reminded and comforted by the admonition: “Be still and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.”

  August 7, 1646

  Goodman Higgins is a great benefit to me. My life and affairs here are faring well. I am in small ways engaged in the business of the town, as well as our property, and have emerged from that shroud of loneliness I wore at first. As I think on it, there is little difference between my actual circumstances now and before Mr. C.’s departure. Was I not completely abandoned already? I feel now an increasing fullness of responsibility and liberty that lightens my burden. I consult with those women with whom I have some business on a particular day and with Jared Higgins. They have proved sufficient to all questions and problems that arise thus far.

  My trials have proved bearable in comparison with others’. There was a maid at Dover who, professing religion and prone to sudden distractions and speaking in tongues, gave monstrous birth to a creature reported to have horny incrustations about its head. This prodigy called her deportment suddenly into question, and she is now rumored to be a witch. She and her family have removed to Maine, to some unknown point, to avoid the investigations of elders and magistrates. Although she may discover that she must flee again to some farther and more congenial place, Rhode Island perhaps, where all—heretics and strangers—may enter with impunity.

  September 24, 1646

  The dryness of the daily air and coolness at night restore us. The whole town is busy with haying, harvesting, and all those first preparations against the coming winter. Goodman Higgins is so busy that I believe he finds it difficult to keep up his responsibilities in my behalf. Sometimes he brings his young son along to quicken his labors. He is a man so different from Mr. C. that one might mistake them for two separate creatures in God’s creation. H. has that noticeable lack of learning and refinement of speech. Yet he seems a worthy man—industrious and indefatigable, capable of any chore, repair, or discovery. He is so full of sound advice about the house, planting fields, or barnyard that we have grown less like mistress and hireling than like true neighbors on good terms. He cares much for his family, I believe, who prosper, and seems the most practically competent and casually daring man I ever met with. He will attempt anything and explore any place or region. His adventures are famous among us.

  There is a roughness and quickness about his movements too that match his devil-may-care attitude of plunging into things. This buoyancy I believe to be a large part of his success at so many undertakings, whether they be familiar or novel to him. He is never melancholic, seems ever in good humor, even if he may be angered momentarily by some recalcitrant beast or immovable object. He accomplishes each day with that cockiness I have seen in youthful soldiers or seamen, but carried, in this instance, into the maturity of manhood.

  If his speech and manner can be sometimes coarse, his aspect is pleasant, his form manly and strong, his natural manner that of all lusty fellows upon the earth. He is neither tall nor stout, but about his limbs, his whole body, there is an animal sinuosity making him more subtle and stronger than one might guess from his size. His sandy hair is generally unkempt yet thick, falling like wet leaves about his face as he labors vigorously. His joy lies in productive activity, resolving some problem or task, especially if others might find the task daunting. Mr. C. could hardly have found a more able or effective man in my necessity.

  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.