by Lara Parker
“It doesn’t cry.”
“It breathes.”
“It’s too small. It will not live.”
“Still, it breathes.”
Miranda, lying in a stupor, took less notice of the child than she did the knife. It had an ivory handle. One shaking hand reached out, her fingers closed around it, and she pulled it under her clothes. The blade was hot against her skin.
TWENTY-TWO
Salem—1692
BARNABAS WOKE TO FIND himself lying on the sand of a small inlet. Two fishermen drew their flat-bottomed skiff, trailing a large net laden with flashing fish, onto the shore, the slapping tide at their feet. Another boat bobbed at anchor in the shallows, and a third appeared abandoned on the beach. The coastline was rocky and, except for the fishermen, deserted, but across the lagoon was a town with some trees and a dozen or so imposing houses, flat-sided, two-storied, with pitched roofs, their neat, unpainted surfaces reflecting the light of dawn. He wondered whether he had come alone.
Hearing a sound behind him, he turned and saw a wagon approaching pulled by an emaciated white ox with curved horns. A scruffy young man sat astride the cart, hunched over, his hands on the reins. He waited until the cart was alongside and it lurched to a stop. The man hollered down to him.
“Going to Salem Town, sir? Come along if you like.” He nodded to the space beside him, and Barnabas reached for the rail. When he bounded up for the platform, Barnabas remembered his wound. He could feel stiffness in his side, but there was no pain.
It was like a dream. Now he sat atop a roughly made wagon, looking down at the muddy back of a bony animal, and beside a man whose hand-sewn garments of coarse woolen cloth and deerskin spoke of another era. The man, whose face was ruddy from the sun, glanced curiously at his elegant cape.
“Come from Boston, have ye? To witness the execution?”
Barnabas nodded, relieved to have found himself in the company of someone both jovial and imperceptive.
“ ’Tis a sorry sight to be sure. Two full days and the poor fellow can but call out, ‘More weight!’ ”
Barnabas frowned and nodded to express some commiseration, although he was helpless to know for what. He hoped to glean some evidence of the news in the town from his companion, so he would not appear to be an intruder in their midst.
“It was I, John de Rich, who gave the damning testimony,” said the driver, sucking at his gums and slapping the reins on the ox’s rickety back. “I knew full well he was entertaining a hoard of them. When he told me he wanted some planters for he was going to have a feast, I followed after. This I told the Court. There appeared a great number of witches in the field, and Giles Cory did give the sacrament to them all in great heresy.”
Barnabas remembered the story of Giles Cory, a farmer falsely accused of witchcraft, and was astonished that he was at this moment facing the man’s accuser. “But did you really see such a thing?” he asked.
“Why he is a wizard!” John cried, his mouth hanging open and revealing but three stained teeth. “I did not partake of his offering though he did torment and affect me grievously!”
“And you remember this day quite clearly. It is not imagined?” said Barnabas again.
“To be certain,” said John.
“Is it his execution we are to witness?”
“Perhaps it is past by now,” said John, shaking his head, but now eyeing Barnabas with some trepidation. “Yesterday I had needs to return to my mowing. But three days he had lasted!”
Barnabas decided the clarifying information would surely be forthcoming and kept silent.
“What is thy surname, good sir?” asked John abruptly. Barnabas hesitated, then thought there could be no harm in telling the truth. “Barnabas Collins.”
“Collins? A family hereabouts. Why Amadeus Collins is a judge of these woeful proceedings, and Benajah Collins is his son. You are a Boston relation, I presume?”
Barnabas nodded once more, hoping that this was a positive position for him to choose. But John sat back in the cart with a look of horror.
“Dost not thee accuse me, for I have not born false witness. Giles Cory urged the girl Mercy Lewis to write in his book, beating her and hurting her!” Becoming extremely agitated, the driver leaned into Barnabas and spoke so close to his face that he could smell the man’s foul breath. “I tell thee, there appeared to her a man in a winding sheet who told her Giles Cory had murdered him by pressing him with his feet. They found the man bruised to death, having dodders of blood about his heart!”
“And where is this infamous Giles Cory?” asked Barnabas, although he was afraid that now he had guessed.
John nodded and urged his poor beast forward. “He lies ahead—suffering greatly from”—he was careful in his pronunciation—“Peine forte et dure.”
“Hanging?”
For the first time the driver looked at him in puzzlement. “Why no, sir. He cannot be hanged, if he be not tried. And he cannot be tried, if he do not plead. He pleadeth not, and suffers to be pressed for standing mute.”
“But you said there was to be a trial.” Was he now taking a chance appearing so ignorant?
“Aye. As soon as Cory pleads, or dies, the girl is to be sentenced. Miranda du Val. She has delivered her child and will be hanged.”
Barnabas was startled by the name. So that was why he was here. And where was Antoinette?
As they drew near the town Barnabas looked towards the houses. They were two-storied, square in shape, and he remembered the architectural style was called saltbox, with few leaded windows, stone foundations, and a slight overhang. The roofs met the walls precisely, without frivolous embellishment, as was the nature of the Puritans. Beyond the town was a wide expanse of what must have been meadow, and past that he saw a forest that touched the sky. Never had he known there were such trees in the world. Some of them were fifty, a hundred, two hundred feet tall with great branches that arched to the heavens, or stretched far out over the earth.
Then from beyond the houses he heard a cry of such heartrending anguish his muscles seized. He thanked the driver, and they both disembarked from the wagon. Walking in that direction, he saw yards with chickens, a cow or goat, and small gardens. Through the gray buildings he could make out what seemed to be an open square where a few trees had been left standing, lindens with pale yellow leaves.
A crowd was gathered, and Barnabas hastened to pull his cape about him so as to appear unobtrusive, but he need not have bothered. The attention of the crowd was focused on a pile of stones heaped upon a flat wooden platform, and beneath that was stretched the suffering prisoner. His face was swollen, and as red as a tomato, and his eyes were protruding from his head like boiled eggs. It was he who was screaming.
Surrounded by the people of Salem Town, Barnabas felt slighty ill. Their heavy clothes reeked of wood-smoke, barnyard manure, and sweat. Each person was dulled by a patina of filth, an unwashed grayness on the hands and face. He noticed that ragged bits of linen served as collars, and mended tears and missing buttons were the rule. Hair was long and untidy, scarcely combed. A palpable stench of suspicion hung in the atmosphere, as though a storm approached, and obliterated all conscious awareness. The crowd pressed against him in a stupor of prayerful devotion, subjugated to God’s angry and inexorable will; and Barnabas knew he was confronting the grim forces of intolerance.
Red-faced and ballooned, the suffering man spat the grimy water back into the cup and gurgled in a voice more filled with grit than air, “More weight!” When another stone was added to the pile, the poor man’s tongue burst from his mouth. A constable in a helmet stepped up upon the boards, and with the tip of his cane, forced the man’s tongue back between the parched lips. The victim’s two exposed hands, thick with the last of the pumped blood, opened and clawed the air, his eyes bulged as if they would leap from his face, and he cried, “Damn you! Damn you all! I curse you, Salem!” and died.
The populace surrounding Barnabas seemed to sigh as one, and mut-
terings could be heard over the general hum. The townsfolk, moving within their dark cloud of prayer, drifted toward a small frame building facing the square. There, gray-branched lindens towered and swayed over pools of yellow leaves. Barnabas turned back to see the stones being rolled off the dead man’s body, which had been flattened to half its thickness. He shivered with the thought of the bones and organs joined together. He smelled the stench of death.
Swept along by the mass of townspeople, Barnabas was shoved into a building and up a narrow stairway to a wooden balcony. From there he could look down into the courtroom. It was as though he were in the midst of a pack of wolves, starved for some scrap of meat laid out before them. Two women leaned out over the railing, their matted hair creeping from their caps. A man with a stovepipe hat stood on the bench to peer over his neighbors, and a strong youth in a leather jerkin raised a child to his shoulders. Barnabas found a seat with a long line of women on either side of him, their hands folded primly on dark wool skirts, nodding in their winged caps like pigeons with red-rimmed eyes.
The scene below could have been a performance at any theater, the stage set for drama, the dour judges behind the bench with their glossy wigs, starched collars, and black robes. There was a chorus of young girls, perhaps twelve of them, crowded on a bench to one side, who were crying piteously and grabbing at their necks and faces as though pierced by instruments of torture.
The girl in the witness stand was filthy. Barnabas imagined she must have been dragged from some dungeon, for her clothes were rags, her face covered with soot, and only her eyes, white with defiance, stared out. She held a small package in her lap, wrapped in a blue shawl he thought was oddly familiar. He saw a tiny fist protrude from the folds and realized it was an infant.
She lifted a corner of her hem and wiped her cheeks. Then she sat straight and held herself in such a way Barnabas had a fleeting sense that she was not an unfortunate, but a queen. She projected a guileless truth, earnestness and purity of heart, and beauty of spirit. To think she could be called a witch, even by such a misguided populace as this, was incomprehensible. When the girls cried out there was a bird in the rafters, she never flinched, but looked up with the congregation with a kindred curiosity, and Barnabas saw her face for the first time, her unforgettable silver blue eyes, as pale as the dawn sky. The locks of hair that hung at her neck, darkened with grime, were raven, the fragile features shone forth, and he was astonished to see that the girl was identical in all her features to David’s beloved, Jacqueline.
At that moment a blond-haired woman rose from the bench of chained prisoners. “I want to speak for the accused,” she said in a clear voice that sent a shiver through him. It was Antoinette. She wore her sky blue cloak, that seemed to fit the style of early New England, and it brightened her azure eyes. Her face was flushed and her hair a tangled fall of golden curls. Never had she looked so beautiful. A hush fell, and even the terrorized girls grew still. Barnabas could feel the awe in the room.
“Woman, your place is in the prisoners’ box,” cried the judge. “You have not been called. You stand before the Court of Oyer and Terminer, and you stand in contempt.”
“I only want you to consider my offer.”
“What gives you a claim on our attentions?” he said. “Who are you?”
“I am the girl’s mother,” said Antoinette. The crowd gasped as if with one breath.
“Surely you are mad. Take the woman away,” said another, more pompous judge, with a wave of his hand. “Place her in the dungeon until we can question her further.” Antoinette raised her finger and pointed at Miranda.
“I’m telling you that the girl is my daughter.” Not a bench creaked or a cricket chirped, so silent was the room. But after a stunned moment the judge said sternly, “Nonsense. Her mother is dead, killed long ago. She is an orphan raised by Indians until Benajah and Esther Collins provided her keep. And she has proven most ungrateful, I might add.”
“I wish to take her place.” Barnabas felt his heart lurch. There was a tremor in the room as the words she had spoken were repeated over and over, and the judges stared down at her with absolute incredulity.
“Impossible.”
Now the murmuring rose in pitch and several in the congregation tried to obtain a better view of the speaker. Whispers of “Who can she be?” were audible, and the girls began to moan. Bewildered, Barnabas pushed past the other seated parishioners, and hurried down the stair. How had she managed to get herself imprisoned? What Antoinette was intent on doing was dangerous. A séance allowed one to tread the pages of history, but it was foolish to meddle with what was written there. He entered the lower chamber in time to see one of the judges questioning the prisoner.
“Miranda du Val, you are accused by six of the bewitched as the author of their miseries, and you are accused by eight of the confessing witches for monstrous deeds, the least of which is flying, which could not be done without diabolical assistance, and which irrefutably fixes the character of a witch. Evidence and argument, as well as credible eyewitnesses, have attested to thy satanism in this debauched town. What say you?”
The girl spoke in a sure voice. “I have given you the identity of the Satan you seek. And you have turned my testimony against me.”
One man rose from a chair beside the judge’s bench and looked at the girl. Barnabas wondered whether he was the famous Cotton Mather, renowned for his writings on religion and witchcraft. He wore a monstrous, curly white wig, square in shape, as if it had been kept in a box when it was not on the head of its owner, and it protruded from the sides of his face.
“Judah Zachery has been beheaded, as you well know, after your testimony,” he said in a reasonable tone, as though he had the right to question the prisoner. “His head hangs in Plymouth, along with the head of King Phillip, and his body is buried in a tomb many miles from here. Thus should all traitors to the commonwealth be exposed and shamed for the terrorized and devout to gaze upon with wonder. With his head so far frorn his body, can his power still be at work?”
“I cannot say. But I would not be amazed, for he was the Devil.”
At this moment the girls began to moan, and one rose to her feet and pointed at Miranda, her eyes blazing, “Hang her!” she screamed. A fairly large girl with an ample bosom began to crawl about the floor and bark like a dog, making a spectacle of herself. Many in the meeting stood to see the performance. Two young girls fell to the floor and writhed, twisting their bodies into contortions that seemed impossible without their backs breaking, as though they were tied neck to heels. An older girl with curly hair clawed at her face until it was streaked with blood, and another dark-haired child screamed while staring at Miranda, “A black pig! Why dost thou plague me?” All the girls were writhing in fits, gnashing their teeth and rending their hair in a veritable display of lunacy, all the time making the most piteous cries and saying they were struck with blows, their bellies were cracked, they were cut with knives, and they could bear it no longer.
The congregation watched spellbound, as did Barnabas, who could never have imagined such a display of playacting. But just as he was feeling the severest contempt, a girl vomited up a ball of green slime which turned out to be a living rat. Another drew out her tongue until it was a foot in length. And a third stepped forwards and with a cry of “Witch! Thou shan’t choke me!” grabbed for her own throat, and, as her eyes fell back, her head twisted on her neck, and he thought it spun around and around in a blur like a top.
Many of the parishioners fell to their knees in prayer. Others screeched in hysteria. The judge cried out over the din, “Do you not see these that thou bedevilist? I beg you stop at once, before they are destroyed.”
Miranda, who had been watching impassively, turned to the board of judges and said simply, “Why do you not fall down in fits when I look at you?”
The judge’s face grew red. “Do you not hurt these children?”
“I do not.”
“Who doth?”
&
nbsp; “Why, Judah Zachery.”
“And did you sign his book?”
She sighed with a gesture of resignation. “We all signed a book as we were forced to do, as we were tortured to do, a false book we believed was his record of attendance. Know ye not who he was? He was the schoolteacher.” She turned and looked at the girls writhing on the floor. “Think on it. These were all his unhappy pupils, as was I.”
“And you are saying it was he who bewitched them? And still doth bewitch them?”
“I do. And, if he is the Devil, he has surely confounded you all. He could not have asked for a greater victory, for he has set you all on your perverted business in these trials. You who struggle to drive him out, only draw him in with greater fury.”
The judges huddled into a conference, and now Barnabas was convinced that the acting interrogator was the famous philosopher from Boston. They spoke among themselves, the racket made by the girls now somewhat diminished, and several times they looked over at Miranda. Unable at this point not to be concerned about her future, he wondered whether her artless defense had won her pardon. Finally, the judge spoke to her again.
“If we find thee innocent and set thee free, where wilt thou go? Thy time with the Collins family has been severely undermined by thy actions.”
“I ask only that you let me live on my farm. The house is the one built by my father.”
Another judge rose rapidly to his feet. He possessed a stern visage, cold blue eyes, and a patrician manner. He reminded him of someone but Barnabas could not remember who, until he realized the man bore an uncanny resemblance to his own cousin, Roger Collins.
“Miranda du Val,” he said, “answer now before this court and these proceedings. Art thou a witch? Confess now, and you will be spared.”
