Salem's Daughter

by Maggie Osborne

  Calmly Tituba continued to answer questions throughout the afternoon. She freely confessed to being a witch and hinted she’d been one long before coming to New England. She admitted to consorting with witches and the devil himself, to having signed the damning roll call. The detail she offered was convincing. She resisted suggestions that she had or was now hurting the children, but she had no qualms about blaming Goody Osburn or Sarah Good.

  “Who else?” Judge Hathorne demanded. “Do other witches foul the village?”

  Tituba closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “Darkness on the land.”

  In the audience Bristol shivered, and icy bumps rose on her skin. She’d heard those words before.

  “I can’t see anymore. I’m blind now.” Tituba’s grizzled head shook in puzzlement. “I try to look at... like I used to... but I’m blind now. It doesn’t work anymore.”

  “Explain that.”

  Tituba couldn’t. “I’m blind now.”

  The guards led her away.

  And brought old Goody Osburn into the courtroom. Obviously ill and totally baffled at what was happening to her, Goody Osburn blinked at the girls, and her toothless mouth fell open. No one had bothered to tell her about anything like this. They’d lifted her out of her sickbed and brought her here to witness a marvelous event, and seeing the girls, Sarah Osburn decided she wouldn’t have missed it for the world. It was a display, a demonstration of some kind, she thought. Goody Osburn cackled and grinned and tried to clap her hands, but the pain in her chest didn’t allow for much of that. Two men sitting high behind a counter shouted at her, but she paid them no mind. The girls were much too entertaining; Goody Osburn wanted to watch them. Ann Putnam Senior was rolling on the floor and falling over like a hog. Goody Osburn yelled a greeting. She’d helped deliver a couple of Ann’s babies, both dead. Goody Osburn had heard a couple of Ann’s babies lived, and maybe one of those howling mouths belonged to Ann’s daughter. But all the maids looked alike to Sarah Osburn, especially screeching and thrashing around like that. They were sure all having a good time of it. Old Goody Osburn only wished she didn’t feel like she was going to die any minute, or she’d have jumped right in and rolled around with them.

  The guards carried her away, cackling and pointing and smacking her lips over her gums.

  No one spoke as the crowd filed outside and walked toward their wagons. They needed time to sort out what they’d seen and heard. Everyone felt drained and empty, yet tense at the same time.

  John Proctor paused at the Wainwright wagon, where Caleb and Bristol waited for Charity. “It’s a travesty, Wainwright,” John Proctor said in a low voice.

  “I don’t understand why that crazy old woman confessed.” Caleb removed his hat and ran a hand through his sandy hair. He stared at the reins in his fingers, then looked down to meet Proctor’s concerned frown. “Why did she invent all that foolishness?”

  John shrugged. “Who can say?” He glanced at Bristol’s white face, wondering how freely to speak. “Maybe Tituba actually believes she’s a witch. Maybe her nightmares are so vivid she believes them. Maybe she’s making a kind of sacrifice, hoping it will all end here.”

  Bristol drew a cold breath and forced her hands to release clumps of apron. “Then you don’t think this is over?” Inside, she felt pulled in different directions. She’d grown up accepting the reality of evil, of witchcraft, of a devil always on the prowl. What John and Caleb believed sounded dangerously like heresy. Bristol’s mind was keen and open to progressive thought, but this—to doubt where there seemed no doubt—she found this a hard idea to accept. And if they were right, then what did that mean about the courtroom scene she’d just witnessed?

  “No, Goodwife Wainwright, I do not think the witch hunt has ended.” John Proctor spoke quietly, with chilling conviction. “We’ve rid ourselves of a beggar, a sick old woman, and a storyteller who entrances our girls from their chores.” He paused, his eyes straying to the village cemetery. “But how long before someone wishes we could remove other people as easily?” He looked from Bristol to Caleb. “How long before politics enter the issue? How long before someone sees witchcraft, not as the cause of his troubles, but as the solution?”

  Caleb’s face drained of color. “As a way to settle personal animosities,” he added.

  “Exactly.” John’s eyes grew thoughtful as he watched Charity climb into the wagon bed and take her stool on the straw. High excitement glowed on Charity’s cheeks, and she waved gaily to the other girls joining their families. Mary Warren jumped into the back of John Proctor’s wagon and turned her face toward him. “Exactly,” John muttered softly, and walked away.

  During the next two weeks, Bristol decided John and Caleb were wrong. If the rest of the village was anything like the Wainwright farm, all was quiet. Perhaps too quiet, Bristol thought uneasily, but she didn’t ascribe the lull to witchcraft.

  Caleb worked outside regardless of weather, fixing fences, tending the animals, overseeing the work of the bond servants, repairing harness, chopping wood, and seeing to all the myriad chores required to sustain a large farm. Inside, Bristol had little difficulty keeping up with her work, even when Charity didn’t feel like helping. Which was often lately. Bristol fell behind in spinning and weaving, but New England women were always behind in spinning and weaving.

  What worried Bristol more than the household tasks was her sister. For several days following the examination, Charity had seemed in a state of high exhilaration. Long after everyone was usually asleep, Bristol heard Charity wandering about the house, and Charity had been first to rise. They discovered her dressed and combed and preparing breakfast before the first cock crowed. This lasted nearly a week; then Charity appeared to wind down, and she took on a dull look. Now she seemed at loose ends, unsure what to do with herself.

  “Are you feeling well?” Bristol asked, looking at Charity drooped over a mug of cooling beer. She had to repeat the question.

  “What?” Charity glanced upward, and Bristol noticed dark shadows beneath her pale eyes. “Oh. Aye, I’m fine.”

  Bristol finished gutting the hares she planned to roast for supper and held the carcasses over a candle to singe the hair. Wrinkling her nose at the smell, she slid another glance toward Charity. “You look tired.”

  Charity’s brooding eyes watched Bristol turn the hares. “Did Caleb tell you he’s sending me to England after the trials?” Her voice was harsh and abrupt.

  Carefully Bristol avoided meeting Charity’s eyes. “Aye. He thinks you’ll be happier there.”

  Charity flared. “Who gave Caleb Wainwright the right to decide what will make me happy?” Her voice lashed out. “He hasn’t guessed right about that yet!” Staring into her beer, Charity blinked back sudden tears. “I don’t want to leave here any more than you did! I’m old enough to make my own decisions about my own life!”

  Putting the hares on the table, Bristol wiped her hands on her apron. She searched for the right thing to say. “I think I know how you must feel—” she began.

  “No you don’t!” Charity’s eyes flashed and her lips trembled. “Everybody thinks they know how I feel or what’s best for me or how I should behave. But none of you do! It’s easy for you, Bristol. Now that you’re married, you can come and go as you please. People pay attention when you say something. You have what you want.” She didn’t see the quick spasm of pain shadow Bristol’s face. “But you’ve forgotten how it feels always to be treated like a child. And never, not ever, have you known what it’s like not to have a man waiting for you.”

  “Charity...”

  “You were always the pretty one. You always had a choice. You’ve never had to worry about being a thornbark. But what about me?” Her voice caught on a sob. “There’s no one anxious to court Charity Adams! I do have to worry about being a spinster, because the only man I ever...” Charity stared at Bristol; then her mouth snapped shut. She dropped her head.

  Bristol sank to a chair and leaned her elbows on t
he table, the hares forgotten. “Oh, Charity,” she whispered sadly. “Everything is such a mess, isn’t it?” Tilting back her head, Bristol stared at the ceiling as if she might find some answers there. “You don’t know how I wish things were different. And I can’t begin to explain, because you and I have drifted so far apart. I doubt you’d really hear anything I wanted to tell you.”

  “Nothing you said would change anything, would it?”

  After a moment. Bristol sighed and answered. “No. No, I can’t change anything for you, or for me, or for...” Her voice lapsed into silence.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Charity said bitterly. They sat in a pocket of quiet; then, surprisingly, Charity reached out and touched Bristol’s hand. “I don’t blame you, Brissy,” she said in a low voice, not looking at her sister. “I did at first, and... sometimes I... but deep down, I know it isn’t your fault.” Her voice hardened. “I know whose fault it is. You warned me.”

  Bristol shrank from the hatred in Charity’s face. “Oh, Charity, don’t do this. Don’t turn your feelings into hate!” Bristol swallowed and hesitated at the expression in her sister’s eyes. “I don’t mean to tell you what to do,” she stammered, “but we both know hatred is wrong. Maybe if you talked with Reverend Parris... maybe he could counsel...”

  Charity laughed, a pained unpleasant sound. “Him? He’d lecture me on how the village has done wrong to him, and then the next day everyone in Salem would know my troubles.” She shook her head, the orange curls too bright against her face. “No, Brissy. I’ll find the answers myself.”

  Sighing, Bristol decided she might as well be talking to a stranger for all the resemblance this young woman had to the Charity she’d known all her life. Wearily Bristol pushed up from the table and began scraping fur off the hares.

  “I’m just... just bored, maybe,” Charity said in an indifferent voice, changing the subject. A little color returned to her cheeks. “For a while life was interesting. All those people coming to the house, all the excitement, and I felt... important!” She looked away from Bristol’s horrified stare. “Well, you know what I mean.”

  “No,” Bristol answered slowly. “No, I don’t think I do.”

  Charity’s thin shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Oh, you know. For a while people listened to me.” Her eyes shone. “Like I mattered. Like someone cared what I thought and felt.”

  “I care what you think and feel, Charity.” But watching her sister, Bristol knew that wasn’t enough. There was only one person Charity wanted to have notice. Bristol’s heart went out to the girl, and with it a feeling of impotence. There was nothing she could do to help ease Charity’s misery. Nothing anyone could do.

  “I know, but...” Charity let the sentence die.

  Bristol threaded a spit through the hares and placed them above the fire. Conscious of Charity hunched over the table, she assembled water, flour, lard, salt, and began mixing pie dough. When the silence became awkward, Bristol looked up and suggested, “Why don’t you take old Brown out for a ride? He could use the exercise, and you might like some fresh air.”

  “There’s no place to go.”

  With Tituba in the Boston jail awaiting trial, the girls had lost their meeting place.

  Bristol searched her mind. Hurriedly she wrapped a wheel of cheese and placed it beside Charity. “Would you take this to Martha Cory, then? I promised it to her.”

  Charity eyed the package, and her lip curled in distaste. “How can you say you care about my feelings and then sentence me to Goody Cory’s? Can’t you guess how she’ll lecture me? Goody Cory would find fault with a saint!”

  But she went. Bristol watched from the window as Charity trotted old Brown past the house. Her emerald eyes darkened. She decided Caleb was right about Charity. The best thing for the girl would be to put her on the first ship for London. But they couldn’t do that until after the trials. And no trial could be held until the new governor arrived from England—sometime in May, the gossips said. Two months distant.

  Dropping the curtain, Bristol returned to her pies. What worried her was Charity’s hatred for Caleb. Charity had allowed a frustrated love to clot into betrayal and loathing. Anyone could see her heart was eaten with black emotion.

  But surely, Bristol thought sadly, surely they could manage to live peaceably for two more months. Caleb did all he could to avoid provoking Charity, and Charity kept to her room. Bristol felt like an uneasy buffer between the two.

  On the one hand, she didn’t want Charity to leave, didn’t relish being alone with Caleb and the changes he’d hinted would occur. But neither did Bristol want Charity to remain with them. She saw what this strain was doing to her sister, turning her from a sweet, loving girl into a hate-filled harpy. In London, Aunt Pru would open her house and her heart to the wounded girl and provide her everything a young woman could wish—dances, pretty gowns, a constant supply of suitable young men. Aunt Pru would build Charity’s confidence, help her see what a pretty girl she was.

  Bristol turned the spit over the hearth and set out trenchers, spoons, condiments. Nodding to herself, she decided to take Charity aside tonight and tell her everything about London. She’d tell Charity all the details no one had asked to hear, all the pleasures and pastimes so frowned upon in Salem Village. Thinking it over carefully, Bristol realized the time was right now; Charity would welcome hearing of these diversions and might even alter her position about leaving Salem when all the new daring experiences were detailed. No one could be bored at Hathaway House. And who could tell what beauty might emerge after Collette and Molly finished with Charity?

  Hathaway House. Bristol stared at the pewter cups on her shelf. With one missing. Then she shook her long hair forcefully. No, there were things about Hathaway House she wouldn’t be able to speak of. The pain.... But she’d tell Charity what she could.

  Bristol didn’t have the opportunity.

  Charity returned as Caleb and Bristol and the two servants were sitting down to eat. She reeled through the buttery door, her eyes wild and rolling in her head. Tearing her hair and frothing at the mouth, Charity crashed to the floor in a violent fit.

  It had started again.

  30

  Martha Cory’s examination took place March 21, 1692. She steadfastly maintained she was a saint, and proved it to her own satisfaction by offering tart comments on the idiocy of the proceedings.

  But Martha’s commentary was far overshadowed by the maelstrom her glance effected on the girls. They screamed in anguish and jerked up their sleeves to show teeth marks where Martha Cory’s shape chewed their flesh and punctured their skin. Faced with conclusive evidence, Judge Hathorne bound Martha Cory for trial and committed her to the Boston prison.

  On March 23, 1692, Dorcas Good, Sarah Good’s five-year-old daughter, was cried out upon and examined. Eager to please, the waif willingly confessed to being a witch. “Aye.” She beamed. “Mama made me sign the book, just like you said.” Careful probing elicited the damning evidence that Dorcas kept a snake as familiar, suckling it from her little finger. She held up her hand, delighted with the sensation she caused. With such a concrete confession, the court had no choice but to send the child to jail.

  Neither Martha nor Dorcas eased the girls’ torments; their agonies continued. And built toward a subtle but conclusive contest. Thus far, all those cried out upon had fit the label of village misfit; now the girls tested the strength of their afflictions. They turned in fury upon old Rebecca Nurse, accusing Rebecca of inflicting fresh pain on their bodies and spirits.

  The community rocked to its foundations. Cheerful, kindhearted Rebecca Nurse, enjoyed the respect and admiration of nearly all villagers regardless of political affiliation or group loyalties.

  An incredulous judge queried the girls individually, a startling departure from previous procedure.

  “Charity Adams? Does this woman torment you?”

  Biting her thumb, Charity glanced at Rebecca’s dried-apple smile and dropped her head. She ga
ve no answer.

  “Ann Putnam Senior?”

  Ann Senior jumped from her stool, wild eyes rolling. Screaming and weeping, Ann Senior swore Rebecca Nurse had appeared in the night and brutally beat Ann as she tried to sleep. Judge Hathorne blinked. “This old woman who uses a cane to stand—she beat you?”

  Ann bent double with pain, panting and gasping. “Aye! Her shape has the strength of ten! See it even now!”

  Judge Hathorne’s jaw knotted. His stare swung to Abigail Williams. “Abigail, are you tortured by Goody Nurse?”

  “Aye!” Abigail cried, covering her eyes. Her blossoming body shuddered in sensual ripples of fear. She pulled her skirt over her head, and a matron rushed forward to tug it back in place.

  Peering desperately at her wailing mother, Ann Junior shouted, “Goody Nurse hurts me too! Oh, the pain, the pain!”

  Helplessly Judge Hathorne shrugged toward Rebecca Nurse, who strained to hear what was said. “You see the accusations? What do you say to it?” he shouted above the noise.

  Ann Senior kicked her heals on the floor and pointed, her face ugly. “You came last night and brought the black man with you and asked me to tempt God and die! You tried to force me to eat and drink of damnation!”

  A matron shouted into Rebecca’s ear; then Rebecca shook her head no, and a quavering smile curved her lips. “You’re mistaken, dear,” her soft voice answered. “I’m sure you mean well here, but you’re mistaken.” She reached a shaking veined hand as if to help Ann to her feet, and all the girls erupted into hideous shrieks and howls.

  “Stop that!” Judge Hathorne thundered.

  Instantly the girls fell silent and gaped up at the judge, their mouths open. They cast uneasy glances among themselves. Never had the judge ordered them to silence. They stole quick peeks at the audience, sensing the sympathy for Rebecca Nurse. And an angry suspicion toward themselves.

  Bristol’s heart surged with sudden hope. Perhaps... please, God... perhaps the cycle would break here. No one could possibly believe little Rebecca Nurse guilty of a single unkind deed. Bristol clutched Caleb’s arm, and she glanced at him, her emerald eyes confident.