Page 81 of The Frozen River

“Very well, Mrs. Foster,” Wood said. “Please clarify for the court exactly what you said to Mistress Ballard that day.”

Rebecca stands. “It is exactly as Martha said. I told her that I hoped my husband killed Joshua Burgess. That I wasn’t sad to hear he’d died. And I do not regret a word of it”—and then she gives Sally a withering look—“because it is true.”

Judge James Parker leans forward, his great hawk nose jutting out. “Thank you, Mrs. Foster. Your testimony will be recorded by the clerk, and we will now move on to the other matter at hand. Will you please tell the court what occurred on the evening of August tenth?”

I can tell that Rebecca is frightened in a way that she had not been in Vassalboro. Her body seems to curl in on itself, making her look smaller than she really is. She steps into the open area before the table.

“My husband was in Boston, and I was at home, alone, with our two sons. It was close to midnight, but I was awake, reading, when someone began pounding on the door.”

“And did you open it willingly?” Parker asks.

“No, I did not.”

“Had you bothered to turn the lock before retiring for the evening?”

“Yes,” she says, and I hear a note of acid in her voice. “Though most people in this village don’t bother doing so. The Hook is known to be safe. Or so I am told. But I was not raised in these parts, and I have long been in the habit of locking my doors at night, even when my husband is home. I happened to be standing in front of it when they kicked it in.”

“Did you sustain any injuries?”

“A bruised cheek and a split lip. The door hit me here.” She lays a palm against her cheek where the ghastly bruises had marred her skin. It is a wonder the impact didn’t shatter half the bones in her face. “That’s how I ended up on the floor.”

Obadiah Wood asks, “Are you saying that it was Joseph North who entered your house that evening?”

“Yes. And also Joshua Burgess. I have not forgotten him simply because he is dead.”

He nods. “Continue, please.”

The entire tavern listens, breathless, as she goes on with her account. The two of them had disagreed at that point about the noise and whether she was, in fact, to be harmed. In the end, Burgess helped her to her feet since she couldn’t manage that herself. Black spots floated in front of her eyes, and she couldn’t carry her own weight. They were happy to do the carrying. Straight to the bedroom.

Halfway blind, nauseous, dizzy from the impact, Rebecca hadn’t made much sense of the questions they threw at her.

When will your husband be home?

Stop that noise. You don’t want to wake the children, do you?

Where’s the lantern?

Rebecca had explained to them, as well as she could, that Isaac wasn’t home. Wouldn’t be home for weeks most likely. They needed to go away. They needed to come back later. She didn’t understand what was happening. She didn’t understand why they were pulling her slippers off. Why they were pulling her stockings off. Of course she didn’t want the children to wake. Why would she? It had taken nearly two hours to get them to sleep in the first place. The lantern? Did she own a lantern? She couldn’t remember. Her head throbbed. Her vision spun.

It is gut-wrenching to listen to her. The way her voice catches in her throat. To see her wipe snot on the sleeve of her blouse. I hate every one of these judges for making her do this. But she doesn’t back down. She withholds nothing as she continues her story.

Rebecca began to fight when they tossed her to the bed. Lying down made everything hurt worse. Only when they’d gotten her stripped to her shift did she begin to understand what was happening. And by that time, it was far, far too late.

Rebecca’s voice grows calmer the closer she gets to the end of her horrible tale. “It was Joshua Burgess who went first,” she says.

Burgess had been reserved up to that point. Keeping a few steps behind as North dragged her to the bedroom, quietly watching from the shadows as North stripped off her clothing. He was the one who’d forced her legs open. And North had pinned her there, spread-eagle and trembling while Burgess slowly, methodically peeled away his own clothing. Boots. Woolen socks. Then he ripped off the lace hem of her shift so that he could tie his hair back. What had happened to her shift after that she didn’t remember, but it was gone when he climbed on top of her.

I have never seen a courtroom so quiet in my entire life. The testimony is horrifying. Rebecca spares no detail. She doesn’t bother with modest speech or her own reputation. She has decided to shock and scandalize the neighbors who have insisted on being present to witness this public humiliation. She means to punish their curiosity. And I wonder if this isn’t the first time that Isaac has fully heard her account, for he alternately seizes with rage and weeps openly beside her.

“It hurt.” Rebecca’s voice finally breaks.

I want to reach for Rebecca, to scoop her up and hold her the way I hold my own daughters when they are sick or hurt. I want to shield her from this awful exposure.

Rebecca’s eyes find a safe spot on the wall behind Obadiah Wood, and she stares at it. Her voice slips into a monotone, devoid of all shock, all pain. She sounds like she is in another room, in another country, as she continues.

While Burgess made relatively quick work of his assault, grunting into the pillow beside her head, then rolling off her body, North meant to punish her. He was not content with resignation. After the blinding pain in her head subsided, after she stopped thrashing on the bed, after she stopped begging for them to leave, and grew quiet, he went to work. And he systematically dismantled her composure. Left her trying to escape the confines of her own skin.

Traitor. Whore. Indian lover. Jezebel. Temptress. Wanton. He accused her of being all these things and more.