Mystery Writers of America Presents the Prosecution Rests

by Inc. Mystery Writers of America

  “I let her grow up and decide for herself, Sadie, to wait on her own conscience.

  “And I wasn’t going to be the one to destroy your father’s good name. That’s what will happen if the case is ever reopened. You won’t do it either.”

  ____

  SHE WAS RIGHT. I never did. I settled quietly into my job at the Cook County Public Defender’s Office, which was formed soon after “Rags” Keresztnévz’s trial. And I stayed there until the scandal of 2000, when the convictions of several men we’d inadequately represented were overturned, causing the governor to put a moratorium on the death penalty. They did a clean sweep of ancient warhorses like me then, even though lack of funding was to blame—or so I told myself.

  Much as I loved him, I was never quite able to forgive my father for risking my future, my mother’s happiness, and even justice for Rags Keresztnévz. It’s only now that I’m old and have my own doubts and regrets to contend with that I think I might have done the same thing. Because in those days, when almost everyone lived on the edge of poverty, we could all see a little of ourselves in a frightened, indigent defendant like Rags.

  SPECTRAL EVIDENCE

  BY KATE GALLISON

  Waitstill Winthrop smoothed his cravat and adjusted his wig, preparing to enter the courtroom, which doubled as Salem Village’s meetinghouse, and take his place with the other judges who were to preside over Governor Phipps’s first court of Oyer and Terminer in the case of the accused witches. Some of the nine judges were the same Salem magistrates who had first brought the witchcraft cases forward, Judge John Hathorne for one. But the other jurists had been chosen by Governor Phipps from among the most illustrious men of the Massachusetts Bay Colony: Nathaniel Saltonstall, Lieutenant Governor William Stoughton, and of course Winthrop himself. Men of Boston, Harvard men, men who had been educated as Christian gentlemen, men well prepared to deal with an assault on the Bay Colony by no less an adversary than the Devil himself. Nathaniel Saltonstall slid over and made room for Winthrop on the bench.

  A great throng of spectators had come to Salem Village the morning of Goodwife Rebecca Nurse’s trial. They were afoot and on horseback, so many that the proceedings had been moved to the meetinghouse from a room in Nathaniel Ingersoll’s inn. As far away as Topsfield the farmers left their ploughs and the goodwives their spindles to ride into town and watch the witch’s trial. Boston merchants came to the village in carriages, bringing their ladies, dressed in their best. Many found seats in the meetinghouse, where they sat murmuring until Judge Stoughton brought them to order. The jurors, farmers and merchants for the most part, waited in respectful silence.

  Ten seats in the front had been kept open for the afflicted girls. Winthrop was eager to see them. He had heard all about them, of course—who in Massachusetts had not?—young victims of satanic persecution who fell into fits, sometimes to be tortured by witches, sometimes to have their spirits dragged away to the infamous Witches’ Sabbath, where they were forced to observe their neighbors committing sacrilege and murder.

  Winthrop was well prepared for the trying of this case. Legal precedents abounded. All the judges had studied these with care and attention, in particular Reverend Richard Bernard’s Guide to Grand-Jury Men and the writings of Cotton Mather, for how else were they to know the procedure for trying a case of witchcraft? The Bay Colony was nothing if not subject to the rational rule of law.

  But before the girls came into the courtroom, the bailiffs had to bring in the prisoner. Judge Stoughton commanded, and it was done.

  Winthrop could not but marvel that such a broken heap of bones as this person could threaten the welfare of the entire Massachusetts Bay Colony. Goody Rebecca Nurse had lain in gaol for months. She smelled like an old woman in need of a bath. In a pitiful last-minute attempt to appear respectable, she had combed her few wisps of white hair and tucked them under a fresh white cap. Her clothing at least appeared to be clean, probably brought to her by one of her many daughters, sitting together with the rest of her family in the first few rows of seats. Still, the dark blue dress failed to give the old woman the dignity she sought, since it no longer fit her but hung on her as though draped over a bare tree branch.

  “Goody Rebecca Nurse, you are charged with the crime of witchcraft,” Judge Stoughton intoned. “How do you plead?” As was customary in witchcraft trials, Goody Nurse was not invited to take an oath before her testimony. No witch was suffered to place her hand on the Holy Book, nor would any oath of truthfulness necessarily bind her, as the Devil, her master, was well known to be the father of lies.

  The old woman raised her head and looked at Judge Stoughton, blinking her eyes, which were the same dark blue as her gown, but red rimmed like the eyes of a pheasant. Winthrop feared for a moment that she would refuse to plead, forcing upon the court the truly unpleasant necessity of applying peine forte et dure, where stones must be piled upon the defendant until he agreed to plead one way or the other to the charge, or until he died. But then she cupped her hand around her ear, indicating a problem hearing the judge’s question. Apparently the Devil, her master, had not included the restoration of Goody Nurse’s failing power of hearing among the rewards he gave her for his service. Judge Stoughton repeated the question loudly.

  “I am not guilty, Your Honors,” she said.

  “Bring in Goody Nurse’s accusers,” Judge Stoughton said.

  The crowd threw open the meetinghouse door and parted to make an aisle for the girls. A gust of spring air preceded them, soft with the smell of new grass. What pretty creatures! Some were young women, some were children trembling on the threshold of womanhood, the rosy kiss of spring upon their cheeks. Judge Saltonstall, as new to the case as Winthrop himself was, murmured to Judge Hathorne, “Do you not find it marvelous that the girls appear so well, given that Goody Nurse and the others are accused of causing their bodies to pine and waste?”

  “Pining and wasting need not have any permanent effect in order to meet the conditions of the law,” Judge Hathorne explained. “The girls pine and waste for as long as they are in their fits, and that is torture enough for the poor things. We need not insist that they pine and waste at other times. See the last one in line? That’s the unhappy Betty Hubbard. The child falls into trances, where she remains for hours, insensible to her surroundings. To see her would melt a heart of stone.” As though to confirm his words, when the girls caught sight of Goody Nurse, they began to scream and writhe most affectingly, all but the Hubbard child, who sank into her seat with glazed eyes and her little mouth agape. Winthrop’s very bowels were wrung with pity.

  “Who’s the big one with the red hands?” Judge Stoughton asked.

  “That’s Mercy Lewis,” Judge Hathorne said. “A maidservant at the Putnams’ house. Her parents were killed in the Indian raids at Falmouth some years ago, when she herself was captured.” The way the girl was howling, Winthrop would have thought she was still in the hands of the savages.

  Judge Stoughton directed the bailiffs to restrain the defendant. He shouted to be heard over the din of the girls. The bailiffs bent over the old woman and held her hands, which she must have been using to work some evil magic upon the helpless creatures. At once they fell silent, got up off the floor, and took their seats.

  “Goody Nurse,” Judge Stoughton said, “why do you hurt these girls?”

  “I do not,” she said.

  “Why do you afflict them?”

  “I do not afflict them.” She shook her head, and the afflicted girls shook their heads in imitation of her, but in such an exaggerated manner that they must surely have hurt their necks. They all cried out in pain.

  “What!” Judge Stoughton said. “You practice witchcraft here in the court, before our faces!”

  “I know not what afflicts the girls. It is not I.”

  “Goody Nurse,” the littlest moaned. The rest of them took it up. “Goody Nurse… Goody Nurse…”

  When order was again established, Sergeant Thomas Putnam of the
Salem militia, upright farmer and churchgoer, read to the court the notes he took at divers times when his wife and daughter were in their fits at his home. All one day and night his wife, Ann, had struggled with the specter of Goody Nurse. The witch had nearly wrenched Goody Putnam’s arms and legs from her body in the effort to get her to sign the Devil’s book.

  “My wife was as stiff as a board,” he said. “I tried to take her on my lap to comfort her, but her body could not be bent. Her screams were pitiful to hear.” He went on to tell how Goody Nurse had assaulted his daughter, also called Ann, in many similar incidents, all duly documented. The smallest girl, she of the red cheek and sparkling eye, Winthrop understood to be Putnam’s daughter. The person sitting between the little girl and Mercy Lewis had to be Putnam’s afflicted wife. An uncommonly handsome woman, almost as fetching as Winthrop’s own wife, whose arms he had left so reluctantly that morning.

  Sergeant Putnam’s deposition was followed by that of the Reverend Mr. Samuel Parris of the Salem Village Church, who stood up and confirmed everything Putnam had said, reading from notes of his own. He named the neighbors who had come into Sergeant Putnam’s house and seen these events, in case the honorable judges wished to call them as witnesses. Goody Nurse stared at him reproachfully the whole time he was reading, but the minister never returned her gaze.

  Then a man in the group of Nurse relatives approached the judges. “That’s Goody Nurse’s son-in-law,” Judge Hathorne muttered. “Be advised.”

  “Your Honors, I wish to place in evidence a petition from Goody Rebecca Nurse’s supporters,” the man said, showing a sheaf of paper several pages thick to Judge Stoughton.

  “Your name, sir?”

  “Thomas Preston.”

  “You are the husband of Goody Nurse’s daughter?”

  “One of her six daughters, yes. This godly woman—”

  “Read your petition,” Judge Stoughton said.

  Goodman Preston read it out. The petition droned on and on about Goody Nurse’s qualities, how long she had been a member of the church, how blameless among her fellows, in what a Christian manner she had raised her family. Her proud daughters raised their chins. The afflicted girls began to murmur.

  “They say that witchcraft is passed from mother to daughter,” Judge Hathorne said. “Was not Goody Nurse born a Towne? I’ve heard it said that her mother was a witch also.” Judge Saltonstall frowned at him.

  Betty Hubbard came out of her trance, blinking. “Goody Nurse’s mother was a witch! Her sisters, Goody Easty and Goody Cloyse, too. Foul witches, all of them,” she muttered, and drifted away again. A bead of drool formed on her chin.

  Goodman Preston looked at the afflicted child, sideways and slightingly, and returned his eyes to the petition. He went on to read a list of the names of those of Goody Nurse’s supporters who had appended their signatures to it. They were legion and included not only the Nurse kinsfolk but also many others, respectable churchgoing people, as he averred, one of them a Boston minister. When Preston was finished, Judge Saltonstall looked doubtful again.

  “We’ll soon clear this up,” Judge Stoughton said. “Call the confessors.”

  The bailiffs brought them from the gaol, Tituba, the black Indian woman who was the Reverend Mr. Parris’s slave, and the bold wench Abigail Hobbs. Judge Hathorne explained that the girls had identified these women at previous examinations, at which time the two had confessed to being witches and described the famous Sabbath held in Mr. Parris’s pasture. “If any further proof were needed,” Judge Hathorne said, “they cried out on a number of other people whom they saw there at the Witches’ Sabbath. We are holding those men and women now in Salem gaol, of course.”

  “Of course,” Judge Stoughton said.

  Goody Nurse stared at the confessors. “These used to be among us. Are they come now to speak against me?”

  Judge Stoughton gave her a curious look. “Among you at the Witches’ Sabbath?”

  “Among us in the gaol,” she said.

  “Tituba Indian. Give your testimony,” Judge Stoughton said. “Tell us how you saw Goody Nurse at the Witches’ Sabbath.”

  Trembling, the young slave approached the judges’ bench. For a long time she stood staring at her feet. When she spoke, it was in the soft accents of the West Indian islands.

  “I know nothing about any Witches’ Sabbath. Mr. Parris, he beat me and make me say I am a witch.”

  “What?” Judge Saltonstall said. A sound like an intake of breath came from the afflicted girls. Betty Hubbard, deep in her trance, stirred a little.

  Judge Stoughton flew into a rage. “Give your testimony, I say. Or can it be that you are back in the Devil’s snare? We have a rope for unrepentant witches.”

  Tituba looked from one to the other of the nine judges’ faces, sighed deeply, scuffed her toe, and hung her head. “Yes, sir. The witches meet in Mr. Parris’s pasture. The king of the witches, he blow a trumpet, and all the witches they come from…” She glanced at Mr. Parris. He nodded slightly. “… from Salem Town, and Topsfield, also Andover and Boston and such places.”

  “Goody Nurse?”

  “Goody Nurse with them. She ride on a pole.”

  “And?”

  “Oh, the others… the king of the witches, he wear a high-crowned hat—”

  “The Devil, you mean?” Judge Stoughton asked.

  “No, Your Honor, a minister.” She glanced again at the stony faces of Sergeant Putnam and the Reverend Mr. Parris as if for confirmation, but they gave no sign of approval or disapproval.

  “And what was done there, at the Sabbath in Mr. Parris’s pasture?” Judge Richards asked.

  “They eat red bread, drink red wine. The Devil promise us things and make us sign the book.”

  “The book,” Judge Saltonstall said.

  “Little red book.”

  “And so Goody Nurse was there, and she…,” Judge Stoughton prompted.

  “Goody Nurse was there,” Tituba said. “And she say, Make your mark in the book or else I hurt you. Choke you, or stick you with pins. So I—”

  “Tell us about the man in the hat,” Judge Hathorne said. “The minister you spoke of. What was his name?”

  “Don’t know his name. He have black hair.”

  “Was he tall or short?”

  Tituba glanced at the six-foot Reverend Mr. Parris and said, “Short.”

  This was a strange thing, and terrible if true, that a minister of the Gospel should be in league with the Devil. The men of the jury stared at the wench as if they expected her to sprout horns and a tail. “No wonder our poor colony is in such straits,” Winthrop murmured. “A minister.”

  “This is not to the present case,” Judge Saltonstall pointed out.

  “True,” Judge Stoughton said. “We will pursue it later. Abigail Hobbs, your testimony, please. Tell us about Goody Nurse and the red book.”

  Young Abigail came swaggering up to the bench with her fists on her hips and an insolent sneer on her face, hardly the deportment one would have expected from a well-behaved Puritan maid. Of course, it was the influence of the Devil, plain as daylight. Winthrop could almost smell the brimstone on her. “She made me sign it,” she said, pointing at Goody Nurse. The old woman sat with her hands in her lap.

  “Goody Nurse made you sign the red book?” Judge Stoughton said.

  “Yes. She said, Here, sign this, the Old Boy gave it to me to sign, and you must sign it as well or else I will hurt you, choke you, stick you with pins, tear off your arms and legs. Would Your Honors like to see my witch mark?”

  “The Old Boy,” Judge Stoughton said. “You mean the black man?”

  “I mean the Devil.”

  “So on the Devil’s behalf she gave you the book?”

  “It was a little red book. She caused me to prick my finger and make my mark in it in blood.”

  “You signed your name?”

  “I cannot write, Your Honor. But I saw many names in the book.”

  “I
ndeed.” A murmur went around the courtroom. Was she going to reel off the names? Whom would she name? “Whose name did you see?”

  “Goody Nurse’s name, sir. And Tituba, and Mr. Burroughs, and Goodman Proctor…”

  Judge Saltonstall said, “Can you read, Abigail?”

  “No, Your Honor.”

  “But then how—”

  If ever a scream could have actually curdled blood, the scream uttered by Mercy Lewis at that moment would have done it. Under his wig, Waitstill Winthrop felt his back hairs rise. The girl was on her feet, pointing at the ceiling.

  “See!” she shouted. “See where she sits on the beam!” Every eye flew to the roof beam. “There she sits with the black man talking to her and a little yellow bird sucking between her fingers. Come down, Goody Nurse! Come down!” It was so dark overhead that seventy devils might have been perching on the beam without being seen. Still, Winthrop almost thought he saw them himself, the witch, the Devil, the yellow bird, and all. He looked away, at Goody Nurse’s face. A single tear trickled down her withered cheek.

  “See!” Mercy Lewis shouted. “See where the black man speaks in her ear!”

  “The black man!” the girls all moaned. “The black man! Oh! He speaks in her ear!” The judges all fixed their gazes on Goody Nurse. She rolled her eyes upward, and shortly the girls did too, clear up into their poor young heads, so that only the whites were showing. Out of their chairs and onto the floor they tumbled, jerking their limbs and screaming.

  “What does this black man say to you?” Judge Stoughton roared at the old woman. “Who is he?” The girls fell silent.

  “I know nothing of it. There is no black man. How can I be sitting on the beam? You see that I am here before you.”

  “Impudence,” Judge Hathorne muttered.

  “You are bewitching these girls,” Judge Stoughton said. “Can you deny it?”

  “I do deny it. I am as clear as the child unborn. I am a Christian woman, Your Honors. I have been a good churchgoing woman my whole life long.”

  “How do you account, then, for the sufferings of these girls?”