by Alex Flinn
I looked to the window. It was dimly lit by the full moon, and I wondered if I could turn myself into a bird and fly out of it. But the crossed bars of the windows were close together, too close even for a crow.
The jailer came to the gate of the cell and poked Martha through it with a stick of some sort.
“Ouch!” she said. “What are you doing, young man?”
“Making sure you do not sleep,” he said. “If you sleep, you can summon your familiars, and they can work their devil’s work.”
“Samuel, this is Martha Corey.” The old woman’s voice was steady, terrifying. “I knew your mother. Would she be proud of what you are doing, if she knew?”
It stopped the jailer for only a second. “Aye. She would be proud that I am doing the Lord’s work.”
But he left right away with a quickened step.
I stared, again, at the window until I heard Martha snoring. My body ached from the examination. Still, I struggled up on my hands and knees, then to my feet. I crossed toward the window, slowly, quietly, hoping not to alert anyone to my movement. I looked out.
I wanted so much to see James.
And then I heard footsteps behind me. I whirled, expecting a guard.
But it was James there, opening the door with a key. Had he just walked past the jailers? He was entering the cell.
Then I saw in the hallway outside, the jailer, Samuel, frozen in midstep. I knew, somehow, that Martha was frozen too, that everyone in the jailhouse, asleep or waking, was.
I collapsed into James’s arms. “Oh, James! James! What should I do?”
“Does she know?” he asked, looking round despite the frozen state. “Do they know what you are?”
“I do not think so. I mean, they call me a witch, but they have no reason. They call Martha that too. They do not know I am different from the others. . . .” I was weeping, so frightened was I feeling. I knew it was improper to touch him so, but I felt like I might fall over if I did not, so I clung to him. “I saw the girl, Ann, in the forest. She was talking to a wolf.”
“A wolf.” His voice was steady.
“Yes. I think she accused me to make me be still.”
“Perhaps. But now what?”
“Might I escape?” I looked out the bars.
“You might,” James said, “but if you do, it would be confirmation that you are a witch, that there are witches. It might make things worse.”
“Worse than what?” And for whom? For if I escaped, I would be gone. “Worse than it is now? Five women have been arrested in a few weeks, all on the hearsay of silly children.”
“Oh, Kendra.” He squeezed me tight. “I have seen so much worse.”
I knew what he meant, the witch burnings in Europe, when hundreds of innocents were killed. And I remembered what he had said about his mother. I did not want that to happen to me. “I am frightened,” I said.
“I will not let them burn you, Kendra.” He kissed the top of my head. “I will not let them burn you.”
“How can you—?”
“I will burn Salem to the ground before I allow that to happen. But you must be strong. You must be strong for me.”
I had lived these decades alone, no family, traveling to a strange country. I had been strong for so long, but I was tired. So tired of being strong with no encouragement.
“What do I say when they question me?” I asked.
“Admit to nothing. Implicate no one, not even Ann Putnam. I must go, but I will be back tomorrow.”
I nodded. I knew he must go, but I wanted him to stay.
For just an instant, his lips were on mine. They felt soft and warm, and all the terror evaporated from my mind. I was not alone.
When he pulled away, he repeated, “I will burn Salem to the ground before I allow them to harm you.”
And then he was gone, but I saw that the jailer remained frozen in his tracks for a moment. Then he walked away in the opposite direction. The sun was soon to rise. I drifted off to sleep.
6
Ann Putnam
A Month Later
Since the night I made my accusation, my pains have worsened. I am told that Martha Corey and Kendra Hilferty are kept up all night in jail. Father says it is necessary, for all our protection. This means, however, that they are conscious at all times, to trick and torment me. That must be what it is.
Though it is April, there is no spring, only bitter cold. Yet I am up past midnight, sweating in my bed, wondering what new horror will befall me. Does Martha make Satan bring flames upon me? Does Kendra have him blow in a cold wind to chill me just as often? And what will Kendra say to them, when she is questioned? Will they believe her?
Father called me over to see him tonight after the evening meal.
“They will be trying Kendra Hilferty soon,” he said. “And Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse after that.”
“Oh.” I nodded, unsure what response was expected.
“These women will not confess to the evils they have committed. They are not like Tituba. Mr. Hathorne and Mr. Corwin have spoken to them. They will insist upon their innocence despite what they have done to you.”
Outside, I heard the wind whipping up, flinging the snow up to our window. My father was saying that he knew how tormented I was, that he believed me.
“Martha, especially, will lie. She will say you are a hysterical child—she already has. They will want you to give testimony.”
“Give testimony.”
“Tell them what these women are doing to you.”
“I have to be in court . . . with them?” My mind was whirling, and I felt that they were tormenting me right then and there. My stomach hurt like daggers, and my head was pounding. At first, when I made my accusation, I was looked upon as a heroine, but now I saw the sidelong glances I received in church. Some did not believe me.
But they feared me, which was better.
“Aye. But as long as you say the good Lord’s truth, that the women have tormented you, that they rip at your flesh, that you have seen them at your bedside with the devil himself, you will be believed. The other girls will be there too.”
“Aye, Father.” I did not recall having said anything about seeing the women at my bedside, or seeing the devil, but perhaps I had, when I was in the throes of pain.
“Run along to bed now,” Father said.
Hours later, I was still lying there listening to the untroubled breathing of my sisters against the howling wind, the snow pounding at the window. The winter was trying to get in, to invade our house and freeze us all. Then I heard another kind of howling. A wolf.
Was it my wolf?
I stumbled over my sisters to the window and peered outside.
It took me a moment to make the shape out through the snow-covered window, but finally, I saw him. Against the whiteness of snow was a large, white wolf. My wolf, shadowed in the light of the full moon. He raised his head and howled again, as if calling to me.
Although I was barefoot, I grabbed at the first coat I could find, Elizabeth’s red cape. I stumbled to the door and went outside.
“Why are you here?” I said. “If Father sees—”
“Your father sees little. It has been days since I have encountered you.”
“I am ill. I seldom leave the house.”
’Twas true. In the time since my first convulsion, I had been nearly always in bed, forgiven from my chores, for who would expect one as tormented as I to work? Through it all, Mary and Mercy had stayed at my side, feeding me cookies and laying a compress upon my brow. Mercy was charged with much of my work, also.
“Ill, are you?”
“Aye.” A cold wind blew through me, and I clutched the cloak more tightly around me. “Father says I will have to give testimony against Martha and Kendra. I do not know what I will say.”
“What did your father tell you?” the wolf asked.
“He said to tell the truth.” I remembered what else he had said, about seeing them with the devil, but it
was the same thing, I supposed. I shivered again, and then the wolf was at my side, rubbing against me, warming me.
“What is the truth?” the wolf asked.
“I have had . . . aches . . . chills. I feel hot and like I cannot breathe.”
“And these women, they cause that?”
“Of course!” I said. “Kendra Hilferty, she hates me. She torments me all the time now. I cannot sleep for it.”
“And this only just started,” the wolf asked. “Have these women not lived in Salem for many years?”
I thought about that, stroking the wolf’s soft fur. I tried to think of when I first encountered Kendra Hilferty. She was not from a Salem family, but must have come here seeking work. Still, I had seen her for a year or more in church or in the store, as I had on the day I accused her.
Martha Corey had lived in Salem my entire life. Nay, longer. I had often looked over from gossiping with Mary or trying to discipline my younger siblings and seen her scowl. I tried to avoid her eyes, and I had always a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach when I saw her. I had thought it to be merely nerves. Now I knew better.
“Martha Corey has long given me chills,” I told the wolf.
“And Kendra?” the wolf encouraged. “What will you say about her?”
It was cold, so cold, and my fingers felt stiff with it. I dug them into the wolf’s fur, and I remembered. The memory was on the tip of my mind, where it seemed like it had happened to someone else. Yet I knew it was me.
“Once, we were leaving church on a fine summer day. There was a bird singing in the oak tree. I looked up at it and saw that it was a mother mockingbird, sitting on her nest. I bent down to lift up Deliverance, that she could see it more clearly, see the eggs. She was only three then.”
“You are a wonderful sister,” the wolf said.
“Yes. But as I did this, the bird swooped down on Deliverance and me, squawking and angry, and it made as if to peck at our eyes. It was at this exact moment that I saw Kendra Hilferty, staring at us.”
I remembered it now, as though it had just happened. Kendra stood there, as if frozen when the bird swooped down on us. Then she saw me seeing her, and only then she ran toward me, swinging her arms and yelling at the bird to stop. At the time, I had thought her kind. Now I realized that it was she who had sent the bird to torment me. She had only chased it away to keep others from recognizing her trickery.
“She sent a bird to peck at my sister, to attack me. I know it was her.”
“Indeed, she is evil,” the wolf said, calmly. “Thank the Lord you were there to protect Deliverance.”
“Yes.” So many times, I had been impatient or annoyed with Deliverance. If only I had realized that she, like I, had been victimized by a witch. Who knew what she was suffering?
“Yes, you are such a good girl,” the wolf said.
And then I remembered other instances, so many other instances, when I had tripped in town and twisted my ankle just as Kendra Hilferty turned the corner, or when I had a headache or heard a bump in the night and knew Martha Corey was behind it. Indeed, I was fortunate to be alive.
I told the wolf all of it, and he walked round and round me, his coat warming me until, finally, I was able to slip into untormented sleep for the first time in a week.
It was Mother who found me in the morning, alone and half frozen in our yard.
“What happened?” she asked, summoning my father to carry me in. “Why are you out here?”
As my father scooped me up in his arms and carried me inside, I whispered, “Witches.”
7
Kendra
Every night since my arrest, I had been tormented, poked, and pecked at with questions, questions about why I tortured children, why I consorted with the devil, and whether I had seen anyone else while I was doing so. To all, I answered simply no. Or I did not know. Another woman had been arrested, added to our cell. Rebecca Nurse was old, at least seventy, an esteemed member of the church, a grandmother. She was not harsh, like Martha, but kind and dear, and when she saw me, she walked over and caressed my cheek, saying, “It will end. The Lord will keep us safe.” She said that to me every day. She believed it, believed that if she was good, no evil would come to her. I hoped so. If a woman of such dignity and godliness could be found guilty, what chance was there for someone like me, someone who actually was a witch?
It had rained every night for a week, thunder and lightning, which bothered me even though I could not see the sun. My trial was in a week’s time. James visited me every night telling me news of the town.
“It will end,” he said last night, as every night. “I believe it will end.”
“How can you be so certain after what happened in . . . with your mother?”
“It was . . . different. My mother, she was a good woman, good to me, but one who always lurked about the outskirts of society. The women accused here at first, they were the same, women like Tituba and . . .”
“Me?” The rain pounded upon the roof above.
“Yes. You are a stranger. You are no one’s daughter, no one’s grandmother. People know little of you. But now they are accusing women like Rebecca Nurse, fine, God-fearing women.”
“I am not God-fearing?” I asked.
“Are you?” he asked back with a smile.
I considered it. I knew I was unlikely to die. Therefore, I never feared hell. There were other sorts of hells for me, but not one with a horned man with a pitchfork, not one with flames. Since my parents’ deaths, I had not even been sure if God existed, but if he did, he had no dominion over me. That is what it was to have nothing to lose. “No.”
He nodded. “And there is something else,” he said. “Mary Warren.”
It took me a second to remember who Mary Warren was. There were so many Marys—several among the accused, at least two involved in the accusations, Mary Walcott, who was Ann’s cousin, and Mary Warren, who was a servant at John and Elizabeth Proctor’s home. She and I had been friends. Or, at least, friendly. And she had been there the day I had spoken to Ann, the day she accused me. “What of Mary Warren?”
“Silly girl. She posted a note at the church, asking for prayers of thanks, that her affliction had ended.”
“Ended?”
“She had stopped having fits. She said it was not real.”
“She did?” Mary Warren had never been the smartest creature. I was not sure if this statement rather confirmed or contradicted my thinking that.
“Not in so many words,” James said.
“In what words then?”
“She said that her visions might have been her imagination. She all but accused the girls of lying.”
I saw the flash of a lightning bolt, then after it, the echo of thunder.
All but? “And then what happened?” For I suspected I knew.
“Well . . . ah . . .”
“Tell me.” I looked at Rebecca, frozen asleep. I had helped her with the pains of her arthritis that day. My healing powers were of some use here, though sleeping on a feather bed would have done her more good. This madness had to end! I did not care so much for myself. I had time, nothing but time. But I wanted her to be released, to be allowed to return to her family. And Martha too. Of course, Martha.
“The girls accused her of being a witch, and she changed her mind. She said that the Proctors had tricked her into saying that.”
“Oh no.” It was as I had feared.
“But it made people suspicious. Don’t you see?”
“I see that everyone who becomes suspicious gets accused of being a witch themselves.”
He sighed and stroked my arm. “Perhaps I should become suspicious then.”
Alarmed, I said, “Why would you do that?”
“So I could be here. With you. So you would not have to go through this alone.”
“No!” My mind was whirling, spinning in the light of the lightning and rain. I wanted him to be safe, but I knew I could not say that. He was a strong man,
a man who would not stay safe at my command, nor at my expense. So, instead, I said, “I need you to be out there, to report back to me.”
He nodded. “Just so you know I would do it.”
“I know.”
He took me in his arms. “I love you.” He kissed my neck, my throat. “When this cruelty is over, I want to—”
“Shh.” I put my hand to his lips, stopping his words. I knew what he was going to say, that he wanted to marry me. But I did not know if I would ever be free, or even if that was what I wanted. It seemed safer to be alone. There was no one to disappoint.
“I love you too,” I said. “But we must not speak of the future. We must only concentrate on the present until this is past.”
Still, he kissed me again before he left.
A week passed. Then it was the day of my trial before Judge Hathorne. The weather had gone from being bitterly cold to hot, and as they led me into the meetinghouse, which had been made into a courtroom, I was already sweating. The room was filled with what looked to be half Salem’s population. Though it was a Monday and near summer, no one in Salem was planting beans or shoeing a horse or chopping lumber that day. They were all there to see. I was only the second to be tried, and the first had been convicted. I saw Goody Harwood with her daughter and son. She had a basket with her, and I wondered if it was a picnic lunch. In the front row sat Thomas Putnam and his wife, with their oldest boy and Ann. I wanted to wipe the sweat from my brow, but my hands were shackled. I could have done it with magic, but perhaps it was better for me to look as uncomfortable as the others.
The only sounds in the room were my footsteps and the jailer’s and the clinking of my chains. All eyes were upon us. I scanned the room for James. I did not see him for a long while, and I thought perhaps he was not there, perhaps he did not wish to see me prosecuted. But then I found him in a corner in the back of the room. I looked away, lest he make some motion, some gesture, some look that would tell people he knew me, tell people that he did not believe I had done it. Any such indication might cause him to be suspected as a wizard.
