Book Title: The
Devil’s Glove
Series: Salem
Author: Lucretia
Grindle
Publication Date: May 1,
2023
Publisher: Casa
Croce Press
Page Length: 346
Genre: Literary
Historical Fiction
Northern New England, summer, 1688.
Salem started here.
A suspicious death. A rumor of war. Whispers of witchcraft.
Perched on the brink of disaster, Resolve Hammond and her mother,
Deliverance, struggle to survive in their isolated coastal village. They're
known as healers taught by the local tribes - and suspected of witchcraft by
the local villagers.
Their precarious existence becomes even more chaotic when summoned to tend
to a poisoned woman. As they uncover a web of dark secrets, rumors of war
engulf the village, forcing the Hammonds to choose between loyalty to their
native friends or the increasingly terrified settler community.
As Resolve is plagued by strange dreams, she questions everything she thought
she knew - about her family, her closest friend, and even herself. If the truth
comes to light, the repercussions will be felt far beyond the confines of this
small settlement.
Based on
meticulous research and inspired by the true story of the fear and suspicion
that led to the Salem Witchcraft Trials, THE DEVIL'S GLOVE is a tale of
betrayal, loyalty, and the power of secrets. Will Resolve be able to uncover
the truth before the town tears itself apart, or will she become the next
victim of the village's dark and mysterious past?
Praise for The Devil’s Glove:
“From its opening
lines this historical novel from Grindle (Villa Triste) grips with its
rare blend of a powerfully evoked past, resonant characters, smart suspense,
and prose touched with shivery poetry.”
~ BookLife Reviews
Editor’s Pick
Excerpt from The Devil’s Glove
The bushes thin. The top of the point is so windy and
salt-blown that not much can grow here. Judah walks beside me. Water is all
around us, below the prow of the rocks, and on either side. She stops and cocks
her head. Strands of hair have come loose from her cap and whip across her
face.
“What is that smell?”
Back at our cove,
it was still. But here the wind has taken up residence, as if this is its true
home. I can smell salt, and sun on the rocks. Then, lifting my nose like a
hound, I realize she is right. There is something. Something rotten.
At the very top of the point enough soil has collected to
let a small stand of sea oaks to sink their roots. Their leaves dance and clatter,
clinging to their twisted arms, which look for all the world as though they are
raised above their heads in alarm. As well they might be. Because as we turn
towards them, we see what lies at the heart of their tiny grove.
At first, I think it is just bunches of wilted flowers
weighed down with stones. Sea roses,
still crimson, their petals curling like babies’ fists. The bruised purple-blue
smudges of monkshood. All laid in a circle inside the small wind-twisted trees.
I do not understand what is at their center. Stepping closer, I see that it is
long and bedraggled, and even in this wind, covered in flies. It is a fish, I
think. Or a dead sea bird. Then I realize I am wrong.
I reach out to stop Judah, but I am too late. She steps
forward, then gasps as she jumps back and we stand, side by side, looking down
at the ravaged body of a small orange cat.
“Percy,” Judah whispers, and I nod.
We all knew that Avis Hobbs’ cat was no better
disciplined, no less given to wandering, than her child. But he was a sweet
thing. Perching on the window sill, he would watch you, then jump down into
your lap if you were spinning or sitting to card wool or mend. He followed me
more than once, when I went to do our milking. I sometimes poured a bowl for
him and left it under the lavender bank in the garden where it would stay cool
even in the mid-day sun. Avis doted on him. She would walk up Broad Street and
around the common and down to the harbor calling for him, then when she found
him, lift him and carry him home like a baby, telling him to mend his wicked
ways.
Some creature has been at him. What is left of his pretty
orange fur is matted horribly, although his little white gloves are still
bright and clean. For some reason, this brings tears to my eyes. It is clear
that Percy has been dead for some time. Some of the flowers are fresher than
others. I am certain the most recent are the ones I saw Abigail carrying yesterday.
***
Judah and I leave
the point quickly, trotting when we can as the track descends and finally
widens. We barely speak until we reach the birch grove. I think both of us know
we are going to fetch my mother. We never consider telling anyone else. I know
that too, because our minds scurry, as we do, side by side. The only choice
would be George Burroughs. Again without speaking of it, I know we both touch
upon the idea - flit across it the way a butterfly flits across warmed stone -
then reject it, and hurry on, heads bowed.
Our hands brush as
we come down off the point into the birches. Our fingertips feel for each
other, as if we are reassuring ourselves that warm live flesh will meet warm
live flesh because, no matter what we have just seen, we are still in the world
of men.
My mother is in the stillroom. Her morning’s work – the
plants she has cut or been given in trade - are laid along the work bench. Some
of the branches and long stalks are already tied, ready to be hung from the
rafter hooks. Sunlight from the single window falls on her hands as she works.
Her head turns at the sound of us, but her fingers keep stripping leaves and
straightening stems. At the sight of our faces, they stop.
***
We brought Percy
back from the point, laid in a basket my mother bedded with mint to mute the
stink. Now, Judah wields the spade. When the hole is deep enough, it is my
mother who bends and places the little cat, shrouded in one of her old aprons,
in the earth. When the soil has been shoveled back and smoothed, she looks from
me to Judah.
“We will say
nothing of this. Not to anyone. Not a word.”
Both of us nod. We
do not need to be warned. We understand that there is something larger here,
the thing that made us fetch her in the first place. I have found a big, flat
stone. I lay it on the fresh earth so no fox, or ring-tailed coon, or village
dog can dig poor Percy up. It does not hurt that it also disguises the
newly-dug grave.
Judah must return
to work. Our expedition took far longer than it should have, and the Ingersolls
will be looking for her. I walk with her as far as the common, which is empty
now, and stand watching her weave down Broad Street through clumps of militia
men who have finished their marching for the morning and will soon be looking for
beer. I tell myself that I am keeping an eye on her, waiting until she is
safely back at The Ordinary. But in truth, I think I am watching for Abigail
Hobbs, hoping to see that she is still nothing but a child. ***
That evening, my mother lifts the kettle, which has
boiled. The wilted bouquets were not the only things we found up on the point
with Percy. When my mother lifted him, she found several scraps of cloth, old
bits of quilt that looked suspiciously like the one Avis Hobbs was wrapped in
when she died. In the grass beside the little cat’s body, she spotted a stub of
burned tallow, and a small, cracked, wooden bowl. Which she now fills with
boiling water.
My mother replaces
the kettle on its hook and sets the little bowl on the hearth. We watch as the
wood swells and seals. She bends and, without touching it, sniffs. Then she
dabs her finger in what is now cloudy liquid, and raises it to meet the tip of
her tongue.
“Hellebore. Soaked
in milk.” She looks back at the bowl. “I might have thought,” she says slowly,
“still, that Avis’ death could have been an accident. I would have thought so,
if not for this.”
Silence hangs between us. We look to the bowl as if it
might speak. Which, in its way, it has.
“The cat did not die there,” my mother says finally,
“where you found him. He would have been nothing but bones, if scavengers left
anything at all. She brought him, after she used him as a test for the
hellebore. She must have done it at the house and hidden him, then brought him there,
with the bowl, so neither would be found at the death cleaning.”
“But they were. I mean, we found them, on the point.”
“But not in the house. And by accident” my mother says.
The small flames of the fire flicker and dance. Their
shadows finger her face, heightening the gold in her eyes.
“Or fate,” she adds a
moment later. “The turn of the world. God’s will.” She looks at me. “We are all
instruments, intended to do what we must do. A day more, and something would
have taken him. Nothing would have been left but the bowl, which would have
cracked and rotted and returned to the earth. Then no one would have thought a
thing, about the death of Avis Hobbs.”
No one but you, I think. Again, I see my mother
stopping on the threshold of the fetid room. Why did they not use charcoal? She
had asked.
Because, I think
answering her now, Goody Skilling is twisted around her own importance.
But she has no gift. She could not see what was before her, and if she’d had
her way, if George Burroughs had not come for us, Avis Hobbs would have slipped
from life unremarked. And Abigail would be known as nothing but her golden
haired poppet, skipping through the world.
Reading my mind, my
mother nods. Then she picks up the little wooden bowl and throws it on to the fire.
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About the Author:
Author Bio:
Lucretia Grindle grew up and went to school and university in England and the United States. After a brief career in journalism, she worked for The United States Equestrian Team organizing ‘kids and ponies,’ and for the Canadian Equestrian Team. For ten years, she produced and owned Three Day Event horses that competed at The World Games, The European Games and the Atlanta Olympics. In 1997, she packed a five mule train across 250 miles of what is now Grasslands National Park on the Saskatchewan/Montana border tracing the history of her mother’s family who descend from both the Sitting Bull Sioux and the first officers of the Canadian Mounties.
Returning to graduate school as a ‘mature student’, Lucretia completed an MA in Biography and Non-Fiction at The University of East Anglia where her work, FIREFLIES, won the Lorna Sage Prize. Specializing in the 19th century Canadian West, the Plains Tribes, and American Indigenous and Women’s History, she is currently finishing her PhD dissertation at The University of Maine.
Lucretia is the author of the psychological thrillers, THE NIGHTSPINNERS, shortlisted for the Steel Dagger Award, and THE FACES of ANGELS, one of BBC FrontRow’s six best books of the year, shortlisted for the Edgar Award. Her historical fiction includes, THE VILLA TRISTE, a novel of the Italian Partisans in World War II, a finalist for the Gold Dagger Award, and THE LOST DAUGHTER, a fictionalized account of the Aldo Moro kidnapping. She has been fortunate enough to be awarded fellowships at The Hedgebrook Foundation, The Hawthornden Foundation, The Hambidge Foundation, The American Academy in Paris, and to be the Writer in Residence at The Wallace Stegner Foundation. A television drama based on her research and journey across Grasslands is currently in development. THE DEVIL’S GLOVE and the concluding books of THE SALEM TRILOGY are drawn from her research at The University of Maine where Lucretia is grateful to have been a fellow at the Canadian American Foundation.
She and her husband, David Lutyens, live in Shropshire.
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