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

and clever with a good head for figures. He would be found acceptable.
    In the dim light, Mary bent to the Bible, turned the thin paper, felt herself repelling anger. Anne, herself, so clearly one of God’s elect—graced with a fertile body and a keen mind—had not been taken into the church without an extra week of examination.
Offensive
, the ministers had called her.
In your words and behaviour
. They had questioned her more keenly than her husband, yet had been unable to find any reason to deny her admission to the church.
    Mary looked up from the Bible. Just yesterday they had been slicing apples when Anne told her the story of her offence.
    “’Twas because on the voyage over I argued vehemently with one of the ministers. People below decks heard our shouts.” Anne had flicked a long, curling apple skin onto the floor. “When I objected to his doctrine, he dared to tell me I had no right to question him.” Anne laid her knife on the table and spread her arms. She made her voice pompous, furious. “ ‘For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man!’ And I said, ‘God revealed tome the date of our arrival. Can you predict on what date the ship shall arrive?’ He said I could have had no such revelation. ‘How dare you say such a thing?’ I answered. I advised the women to ignore him for the rest of the voyage. And do you know? The ship arrived on my predicted date.”
    Mary pictured the night sky as she had seen it minutes ago as she returned from the outhouse. Stars spread in coruscating clouds against the wet-slate blackness. She had heard the distant boom of surf and the rustle of dried blueberry leaves. She had seen the lights of houses. One, here. Far off, another.
    Wind moaned in the flue, an updraft so strong that it stretched the flames and wakened the coals.
    She picked up the Bible and cradled it against her breast. In such a place, a person’s smallest act would be laid bare to God—and thus, she thought, one’s existence could become a matter of terror. Or ecstasy.
    Three sour-faced men sat at a table, scratching words on linen parchment with turkey feather quills. Their woollen doublets smelled of lard and pancakes.
    “And did you see that you were without Christ?”
    “Aye.”
    “And who was it who hath opened thine eyes?”
    “I attended to the words of Reverend Everard. ’Twas his sermon on suffering. Romans 8:17. ‘If so be that we suffer with him, that we may also be glorified together.’ ”
    “Will you tell us of this sermon and how it gave you new birth?”
    “He speaks of self-ends and the dangers therein. He asks us to consider this text: ‘Wide is the Gate, and broad is the Way, that leads to Destruction, and many go in thereat: but strait is the Gate, and narrow is the Way, that leadeth to Life, and few there be that find it.’ ”
    “And how thinketh you to find it?”
    She bowed her head, knowing she must choose her answer carefully. The child surged in her womb and she could not repress a sigh.
    “Sit, Mistress Dyer,” said Reverend Cotton. He rose and carried a chair around to the place where she stood.
    “How thinketh you to find it?” he repeated, resuming his seat. His voice was not without kindness.
    “I will not eschew suffering,” she said. “I will heed the words of John. ‘He who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been wrought in God.’ ”
    Outside, the gulls mewed as they soared on the winter wind. This morning she had wakened in a room so icy that urine was solid in the chamber pot. She had clung to sleep, drenched in a dream of her mother’s garden. Within the garden walls, she might have been bird, bee, zephyr—drifting in essence of summer, the sun-softened petals of blue delphinium or white rose, the pollen-laden sweetness.
    She straightened her back, lifted her chin and saw not the men crouched over the table but her dream, its beauty. The awe of it, the wonder. At this