The Ones Left Behind
a Crucible fanfic by Mana Angel
Well-wishers have long since ceased to interrupt the Proctors' lives, and Elizabeth likes it that way. It lets her seed and plow and reap without censure from her neighbors, or horrified gasps that farming was ne'er meant to be woman's work. Tis' true that she has had no need to learn the art of the sickle and plow, for John has always kept their fields in check by his own hand.
But John is hanged, now, and it shall be a cold day in Hell before Elizabeth takes another man to her bed.
Elizabeth is not certain she believes in Hell these days, not anymore than she believes in God. It has been many a month since her knees last warmed a church pew, but for the first few weeks after the trials are at last denounced, she spends hours prostrate at the bedside in Goody Nurse's home, silent as stone and just as hard.
Her children begin to fear for her, barely begun her seventh month of pregnancy, when she sighs and stirs, coming to her feet, telling them simply that they must all be ready to farm come spring.
Elizabeth has said enough prayer for a lifetime, those lonely nights, and now she needs prayer no more.
The fourth child, a son, is quietly born in the middle of winter. Elizabeth does not bring him to be baptised in Parris' church, does not give him a name at all, and instead takes his birth as a sign to move her family back into their true home.
Spring takes forever to wake the earth, it seems, and someone has set the cattle and hogs loose in their absence. Elizabeth directs her sons to gather the pathetically thin creatures together, frown deepening as she counts the thinned, shivering herds. There is enough foliage to feed them, but not enough to fatten them. A woman of practicality, if occasionally sentimental, Elizabeth sells off most of Proctor's clothing - shirts, trousers, boots and hats - to make ends meet.
It is still not quite enough. At last, swallowing her pride, she pries up the floorboards under her(their) bed, picking out the small, jealously hidden trinkets Proctor had obtained for her at whimsy over the years. A ring. A locket. A brooch.
Elizabeth sells it all, thinking, not without a small pang in her heart, that it's just as well she's never worn them.
Pouring her sweat and toil into the earth gives her a new insight into John's life. The first days of labor, even anxiously supported by her sons, leave her almost too exhausted to eat dinner, much less give a thought to the state of her soul. She almost hacks a foot off the third day with the hoe, and she can barely touch wood for the blisters in her hands. But necessity proves to be the best teacher and, slowly and gradually, she builds her strength up.
By the time the summer sun rolls into the sky, Elizabeth has taken to wearing John's trousers and rucking up her skirt to her waist while she methodically plants, her fingers becoming stained a brown that never seems to wash off. Her second-youngest, Jacob, tends his tiny brother inside the house, peering through the windows warily, and rushing him to her side when he squalls for milk. Elizabeth would take him on her back whilst she farms, as she's heard the Indians do, but she has no wish to bear any more resemblance to the savages than she already must, all mud-streaked and red-skinned and wiry.
Elizabeth works because, when the sweat runs down her arms and the plow is heavy in her grasp, she is too tired to think of John. Poor, noble John whom she'd midjudged until the last. It's a kind of dishonor to his memory, she supposes, but it's so very hard to remember him on top of making sure that the crops come in and the animals are kept well-tended. She wants to save thoughts of him for a quieter time.
It is when she wakes up near-screaming from a dream of him reaching down towards her from heaven while she burns in fire, that she decides that the time has come to drop the last pretense.
Her children are the only witnesses when she wades into the creek at the crack of dawn, their baby brother swaddled in her arms as she scoops water over his forehead, lips moving in silent baptism.
Elizabeth christens her youngest son John, after his father, and prays that he does well by his name.
(Written for the LJ community 31days theme: Dante in hell. If you've actually read through this whole thing, do the courtesy of not 'borrowing' it for a school project of some kind or another, because I'm sure you can come up with better material.
That aside, this is partly based on the historical fact that Elizabeth actually was pregnant during the Witch Trials. I've taken liberties with when she carries the kid to full term, of course.
Puritans frowned on jewelry. Proctor's purchase of them seems to fit in with the easygoing, doting husband I strangely imagine he must have been. Puritan women take a much more significant role in the running of a household moneywise, too, though they wouldn't've done actual labor. >>
Dante reference so vague you'd never draw it: Elizabeth performed one of the great betrayals (the kind that gets you pitched to the lowest circle of hell): betrayal of a guest. Technically speaking, Abigail wasn't a guest, buuut. >> STRETCHING HEER
Who was it that said 'Hell is never getting to say you're sorry'?)