She held the book On the Investigation of Witchcraft, Wizardry, and Other Satanic Practices but could not bring herself to open it. She heard that they used to torture the accused. But that must not be the way of it today. The laws were strict that a person could not be forced to incriminate himself. Ever since the United States were formed from the middle colonies and put that rule into their Bill of Rights, the same principle had been given force of law in New England as well. There would be no torture.

The book fell open in her hands. Could she help it? It fell open to a particular place which had been well-thumbed and much underlined. How to put the question to a witch who is with child.

Was my mother pregnant with me when she was arrested and tried?

The child is innocent before the law, being unborn and thus untouched by original sin. Original sin inheres to the child only upon birth, and therefore to take any action which might harm the unborn infant would be like punishing Adam and Eve in the garden before the fall: an injustice and an affront to God.

I gave my mother a little longer life. I saved her by being—yes, my very name—by being pure, unstained, untouched by original sin. How many weeks, how many months did I give to her?

Or did she think of this as torture, too? Had my father already been hanged as she languished in prison, awaiting her own trial as she grieved for him and for the child in her womb, doomed to be an orphan? Would she rather have died? Did she wish she didn’t have a child?

She should have thought of that before she partook of forbidden practices. “Knacks” they called them in the wicked parts of the land. God-given gifts, that journeyman blacksmith called them, as he attempted to deceive her. But the true nature of Satan’s false gifts would soon come clear. The “knacks” these witches use, they come from Satan. And because I know I have never had truck with Satan, then the small talents I have can’t possibly be a hidden power. I’m just observant, that’s all. I don’t turn iron into a golden plow, like the one Arthur Stuart told about—a plow that dances around because it’s possessed by evil spirits like the Gadarene swine.

She trembled with uncontainable excitement. Fear is what it felt like, though she had nothing to fear. It also felt like relief, like she was receiving something long waited for. Then she realized why: Her mother named her Purity to help her keep herself unstained by sin. Today she had faced the temptation of Satan in the form of that wandering blacksmith and his troupe of lesser witches, and for a moment she felt such terrible desires. The barrister was so attractive to her, that half-Black imp was so endearing, and Alvin himself now seemed sufficiently modest and self-effacing, and his dream of the City of God so real and desirable, that she longed to join with them.