A Break with Charity: A Story about the Salem Witch Trials (Great Episodes)

by Ann Rinaldi

  I looked.

  "See ye any sign of alliance with Satan?"

  "No. But I would not know such if it were there."

  "Ye would know it, child. Believe me. Does my touch afflict ye?"

  "No."

  "There are no witches, child. They exist only in the Puritan heart. The ancestors of these people hereabouts came to this land with a vision of a godly society. They came to escape the past. What they quickly discovered is that the nature of man and woman is such that sin can flourish here as well as from whence they came. What they do not yet understand is that the spirit it took to tame this wilderness is so strong it would not bow to the authority of the Puritan covenant and its ministers. So strong that it will always question authority. They see this not as something to celebrate, but as a failure of their vision. So they seek to lay blame."

  Her logic made wonderful sense. Her words sounded like something my father would say. And they lighted the gloomy night around us as much as the glow from Johnathan's lantern.

  "Thank you," I said. "For your wisdom and for coming this night."

  " 'Twas worth the trip, child, to see your heart lifted. Now you may show her the petition, Johnathan."

  He unrolled the parchment. "Here ninety-three neighbors have put their names," he said, "to declare that in half a century in the town of Salisbury, Mary Bradbury has never been known to make trouble, that she is a devout woman, a good wife of Thomas, and mother of eleven upstanding children."

  I let my eyes wander over the petition. When I again raised them to Mary, she smiled at me. Tears slid down my face. I embraced her.

  "Forgive me," I said.

  Her slender arms gripped me in joy and forgiveness. Then we parted. We went down the hill from the hanging tree. Johnathan helped Mary up into the carriage. "The crow's nest, child," she said before they drove away. "When your brother takes you to sea, climb the mast to the crow's nest. Do it for me."

  I promised her I would. Then they drove away. And I was alone in the windy night.

  But the hooting of the owl was friendly as I turned my cart toward home. The rustlings of cornstalks in Dr. Endicott's meadow were murmurings of encouragement. The swaying treetops now seemed to be loving arms guiding me on. And the warm wind dried the tears on my face as I drove away from that long dark road in my soul.

  23. The Time Has Come

  SUN FILTERED through the windows into the Putnam kitchen and shone off the polished wood of the table. There Joseph, Johnathan, and I sat and watched Reverend Richard Pike of Salisbury as he wrote his sweeping sentences on the parchment in front of him.

  Through the open door came the sounds of a cow lowing in a nearby pasture, the calling of crows from a tree, the chirping of insects singing the praises of that hot August day. From another part of the house came the becalming singing of Elizabeth as she put baby Mary down for her nap.

  Reverend Pike halted in his writing to take a sip of cold cider. A bee buzzed around the pitcher on the table. Joseph waved the bee away. The reverend drank the cool liquid, wiped his mouth with a clean square of cloth, then blew his nose.

  "I'm more beset by goldenrod than by the specters of witches," he said.

  Joseph smiled.

  "If the Devil is anywhere in Massachusetts, he's out there in those fields, where grows the cursed weed that makes a man so miserable," Pike went on. He blew his nose again and set back to his task.

  We waited anxiously as the scratching of his quill pen went on and on. When finally he set the pen down, he looked across the table at me. "Susanna English," he said.

  "Yes, Reverend."

  "Stand, child."

  I pushed back my chair and stood.

  "Are ye sure, Susanna English," he intoned in his best preaching voice, "that everything you have told me here, this seventh day of August in the year of our Lord sixteen hundred and ninety-two, is true?"

  "Yes, Reverend, I am sure."

  "Do ye attest to these words of yours as being spoken truly from the heart and the mind, with no intent to do damage to others, but only to speak truth?"

  "Yes, Reverend."

  "And ye will not recant later?"

  "I'll not recant, Reverend."

  "Nor have second thoughts?"

  "I have had all my second thoughts, Reverend. And more. I am done with my doubts now."

  He nodded and waved his hand. "Sit, child, sit." Then he handed the letter to Joseph, who took a few moments to read it while we waited. A furrow appeared on Joseph's brow.

  " 'Tis a wonderful letter, Reverend. I especially like the part where you say that proof of witchcraft is dark and uncertain and confession often necessitated. And that under these circumstances it is safer to leave a guilty person alive until further discovery than to put an innocent person to death. But you have mentioned nothing that Susanna told you."

  "The magistrates and ministers have had more than enough observations from young girls," Pike said. "They need no more. But I say this now: I would not have put pen to paper today had this young girl not told me her tale."

  Joseph nodded. "You protect her name. I appreciate this. But you have signed the letter with only your initials."

  "Magistrate Corwin knows from whence it comes. The time is not yet upon us for signing lone names on parchment. This is but a start. Let us pray now that this one letter, written on your gracious board, will give others the courage to speak out."

  Joseph smiled. "One person of courage writing a lone letter on a kitchen table can change the world. Thank you, Reverend."

  Pike nodded and regarded me with his rheumy, red-rimmed eyes. "You've done us all a great service, lass. Thank ye."

  "Thank you," I said.

  Joseph walked him outside to his horse.

  "How fare you now, Susanna English?" Johnathan asked me.

  I smiled up at him. "I fare well, Johnathan, but I didn't think it would be this way. All these months, when I fancied myself telling authorities what I knew, I saw myself standing in a courtroom before men in long robes and white wigs. I saw rain slashing on the windows, and the girls rolling on the floor."

  "How you must have suffered, Susanna." His words were tender, his touch as he drew me toward him equally so. "And I never sensible of what you carried in your heart until you told me yesterday."

  "I couldn't have spoken out today, Johnathan, if you hadn't brought Mary Bradbury to me."

  We stood close together. "I'm glad that I could do something for you. I knew not what troubled you, Susanna. Only that I love you and wanted to help."

  And there in Joseph's kitchen, we kissed. It seemed so natural, kissing in the kitchen like an old married couple. In the next moment came the sound of Joseph clearing his throat. We looked up. He stood in the doorway. We drew apart.

  The golden sun framed Joseph. And as I looked at him, in his breeches and summer shirt with the sleeves rolled up, as I beheld the slender strength of him, I felt a surge of love for this plain and decent man who had fought so hard for all the accused. Who had not pushed or berated me to speak, but waited patiently for me to do so.

  I ran to him and he hugged me. "Thank you," he said.

  "Will the letter help, Joseph?" I asked.

  "It's a beginning." He smiled at us both. "It will take time, but it's a beginning."

  It took time. And it took more lives.

  On August 19, they hanged George Jacobs, Martha Carrier, George Burroughs, John Proctor, and John Willard on Gallows Hill.

  The Reverend Cotton Mather came from Boston for those hangings. Joseph told us, at supper, how Mather rode up on his great dark horse, dressed all in black from head to foot. And he sat there etched against the hard blue August sky like death itself.

  The crowd became disgruntled, Joseph said, because Burroughs recited the Lord's Prayer before he was hanged. It was common knowledge that no witch could recite the Lord's Prayer without making a mistake.

  Cotton Mather raised himself in his stirrups then and told the people that the De
vil sat on Burroughs's shoulder, whispering in his ear. Then he rode away while the mutterings of the crowd continued.

  "What of Reverend Pike's letter?" I asked. "Has he sent it to no one?"

  "To Magistrate Corwin," Joseph said.

  "And does Corwin do nothing?" Elizabeth asked.

  "We have one good sign, wife. No one is arresting Corwin's mother-in-law in Boston, and the girls are constantly crying out on her."

  "So Corwin rushes to save his mother-in-law," I said bitterly, "while others hang."

  "A man speaks out cautiously these days, Susanna. The fact that his mother-in-law has not been arrested weakens the position of the girls. That may be the only contribution Corwin can make right now. But it is a good one. And Pike is showing the letter to others. I cannot name them now. Be patient."

  On September 19, they took Giles Cory into an open field and pressed him to death by setting large stones on a board on his chest. Giles had refused to testify in court. For if he did not testify, if he were not found guilty, they could not seize his worldly goods.

  Joseph had tears in his eyes as he dismounted his horse and told me about Giles. "All he said was, 'More weight,' as they piled the stones on." Joseph looked around the yard. "It is difficult to believe such things are happening in this peaceful land. Giles fought them to the end. Now his family gets his land and his goods."

  "My speaking out was for naught," I said sadly.

  "No," Joseph said. "We must go to Boston within the week to see Thomas Brattle. He wrote to me that he was much moved by Reverend Pike's letter. You see, Susanna, Pike has been showing it to others."

  "I have heard this Thomas Brattle's name before," I recollected.

  "He is held in great esteem," Joseph said. "He is about to become treasurer of Harvard College. And he would meet with you to hear from your own lips what you told Pike. You must tell your story again, Susanna. This is a man who will sign his full name to any document he writes. Where is Elizabeth?"

  "Bathing the baby."

  "I must tell her to get ready for the trip."

  From the windows of Thomas Brattle's parlor, one could look out to the Charles River, where the masts of tall ships floated past red, gold, and russet trees along the banks. The sky was a cloudless blue. When I pulled my gaze from the scene, I could fill my eyes with Brattle's richly furnished room.

  Carpets imported from Turkey covered polished wood floors. Heavy wood wainscoting decorated the walls. Beautifully bound books were lined neatly on shelves. Velvet draperies hung from the windows. Next to a glowing hearth, Elizabeth and I took tea served from a silver pot by a maidservant.

  At his intricately carved desk, Brattle poured his best Madeira. One crystal glass for Joseph, one for himself.

  All around the room was evidence of this man's full life. There were curios from around the world, astronomy equipment, leather-bound ledgers, a jade chess set, and silver candlesticks in profusion. Brattle himself wore a brocaded waistcoat and breeches of soft material. He seemed to know Joseph well. And he'd taken Elizabeth's hand and kissed it in the European manner, then mine.

  "It is so good to meet the daughter of Phillip English, a friend and fellow merchant," he said. "Bring your teacup to my desk, child. Have another cake. Don't be anxious. I shall honor your confidence. I long to hear what you have to tell me now."

  And so I told my tale once again, to that kind and learned man. At first I was anxious. After all, he was a world-traveled merchant, astronomer, and mathematician.

  And when I started to talk, my words seemed so out of place in this well-appointed room. I felt my tale had no merit, that my words were the ramblings of one from some backwater place bereft of civilization.

  But his interest never waned. He took notes as I spoke. And I took heart from the sight of Elizabeth and Joseph and baby Mary sitting across the room from me.

  Even as I told my story on that day, September 22, back in Salem they were taking Martha Cory, Margaret Scot, Mary Esty, Alice Park, Ann Pudeator, Wilmott Red, Sam Ward-well, and Mary Parker to Gallows Hill, where they hanged them until they were dead.

  "I will write a letter," Thomas Brattle said when I stopped talking. He got up and paced before the windows. "I have wanted to write such a letter for weeks now. The trials are a sham. Oh, shameful, shameful, what has transpired in Salem! The evidence is based on common gossip! I scorn these magistrates and these lying she-brats. I sensed the girls were pretending from the outset. Now that I hear what this child tells me, I know my instincts are right."

  "To whom will you send such a letter?" Joseph asked.

  "I shall address it, 'Dear Sir.'"

  "Will you publish it?" Joseph asked.

  "No, I shall have copies passed from hand to hand, in lieu of publication. Let us pray that enough men of goodwill have the brains to come forth now and speak out."

  We went home to Salem and waited. We resumed our lives. In the fortnight that followed, I looked back to my visit to Boston as if it were a dream.

  I did not know anymore what was real and what I had dreamed. I felt as if I were a ship without anchor, floating toward some distant harbor, not knowing what to expect when I got there.

  I woke every night when everyone was asleep, afraid. I found myself afraid most of the time. It was as if a hand was put upon me to wake me from my dreams, which were always bad and had nothing to do with anything I recognized, except in the feelings of terror that pervaded them.

  I would lie in bed plunged into depths of fear that I had heretofore never known existed. I would think of my family and yearn for those wonderful days of my past when we were together. I asked myself what had happened to us all and how could such things happen to good people. And why did I never realize how precious those days were that went before. I knew my life would never be the same, and I wondered if we would ever be happy again, any of us in Salem.

  By daylight, however, I was cheered. As autumn colored the landscape with the sun still warm in the afternoons, as I took baby Mary out for a walk or helped Elizabeth make cider from the apples in Joseph's orchard, I knew in my heart that the world would be right again. Autumn has always renewed me. And that year I had the additional good feeling of knowing that if life in Salem were ever to be good again, I had had a part in making it so.

  But side by side with that thought was the guilt I felt at realizing that people might be alive if I had spoken out sooner. I could not enjoy one feeling without suffering the other. And so, when the witch madness ended, finally, like everyone else in Salem I was left with self-recriminations, which stay with me always.

  On October 9, Joseph came racing up the path toward the house, waving a piece of parchment in his hand.

  "Brattle's letter! I have a copy!"

  It had been released the day before, and Brattle had sent one by special messenger to Joseph.

  "A copy has gone to Governor Phips," Joseph told us breathlessly. "It was on his desk when he returned to Boston the other day. Word is that Phips is going to write to the Privy Council in London. He returned from his recent trip to find Boston in an uproar from the impact of Brattle's letter!"

  We hugged each other, Elizabeth and Joseph and I, with baby Mary between us. Tears streamed down my face.

  Three days later, Johnathan dismounted his horse at the front gate and came through the door while we sat at supper.

  He stood there, benumbed. We stared up at him. "Governor Phips has written to the Privy Council in London," he said, "informing them that he is forbidding further imprisonment on the charge of witchcraft."

  Silence in the kitchen. We just stared at him. The only sound was that of baby Mary gurgling in her own little language.

  It was over. I felt a strange floating sensation. Silently, with subdued rejoicing, we hugged each other, and Johnathan sat down with us to eat.

  I cannot speak for the others, but for me there were more guests in that kitchen than Johnathan. They were the spirits of those hanged.

  They numbered
nineteen persons.

  On October 29, two memorable events occurred in my life.

  My brother, William, came home, and Governor Phips dissolved the Court of Oyer and Terminer.

  Over 150 persons still languished in prisons, but Phips had all the children released, as well as those adults jailed only on spectral evidence. And petitions were pouring in to magistrates in Topsfield, Gloucester, Haverhill, Chelmsford, and Andover, from people urging the release of their kinsmen.

  Winter was coming. "There will be more trials," Joseph predicted. "But never again will they be as before. Phips cannot just empty all the prisons. He needs time, but his eyes have been opened. I'll wager that by spring he'll come to his senses completely and pardon all who remain in prison."

  We had been expecting William, for a letter had come the previous week from the captain of a ship put in at Salem Harbor, telling us of the imminent arrival of the schooner William was due to come in on.

  The letter was addressed to our parents. It had gone to Magistrate Hathorne, who had Johnathan deliver it to us.

  The air was cool and crisp as Joseph, Elizabeth, little Mary, Johnathan, and I drove to Salem Harbor. We waited on the wharf, in the midst of people, boxes, crates of goods, carriages, and the usual mayhem, for William's schooner, which was late.

  The masts of several small ships were etched against the fine blue sky. My heart was beating wildly. Johnathan held my hand.

  "You are cold," he said.

  "Yes."

  "And trembling."

  "Will he know me?" I asked. "How do I tell him about our parents? He will expect them to be here. He will find no family here but me."

  "He will find us with you," Joseph said.

  "How can I even begin to explain to him what has happened in Salem in his absence?"

  "After pirates and imprisonment, William will be able to abide it," Joseph predicted.

  I could scarce keep myself from falling apart as the schooner docked. My eyes scanned its decks, the men coming down its gangplank. Where was he?