Children of Salem

by Robert W. Walker

  “Ah-yes.”

  “The stork knows her appointed time; the turtle and the crane and the swallow,” she continued, rocking lightly. “They all know the time of their coming.”

  “I think there is more?” he asked, setting his pipe aside, working to recall the words. “Oh, yes, ‘but my people know not the judgment of the Lord’.”

  She snorted. “I think Reverend Parris knows not the judgment of the Lord, but he will one day. One day, we all will.”

  “Aye to that indeed.” Francis stood and straightened the shawl about her shoulders and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

  “I confess one worldly vanity I cannot escape, Goodman Nurse.”

  “And what might that be, Goodwife?”

  She hesitated a moment, “Aside from my affection for you, old man, I feel deeply for my children and grandchildren, and I have too much loved Sabbath Days.”

  “Not the worst of worldly vanities,” he said and chuckled. He had spent time aboard ships at sea before settling down as a young man, and he had seen true cruelty and true vanity side by side.

  “I mean that I care so much for the word, and I wish we’d never left Salem Town sometimes; that we had made our lives there—for the reason I would have seen more of Mr. Higginson’s preaching and less of Parris.”

  “Tsk-tskk-tskkk, such a horrible sinner you are!” he joked. “A small vanity, Mother,” he repeated.

  “Spring. I truly did not expect to see another spring.”

  He put his arm about her from behind, shaking her a bit. “Those nightmares you’d had, eh?”

  “Wasting away all winter in my bedchamber, I thought my heart would break, and how you and Serena waited on me! As if a child, urgh! I am no child.”

  “You were under an affliction but praise God, now you’re cured.”

  “By what magic, I know not, save prayer.”

  “And time, the healing of night and day.”

  “Now I’m tired of letting my ailments dictate. Pain or no, I choose to live. Besides . . . ”

  “Besides?” He squeezed her arms.

  “I hold conversation with God, Francis, in my heart.”

  “I am quite aware of that!”

  She shushed him, wishing not to be interrupted.

  He came around and faced her.

  “I hear no booming voice in my ear or head, Francis . . . nor am I called by name by Him, but I am moved by Him. Do you understand?”

  “Of course, I do.”

  “Of course? Then will you accept my word when I confide this.”

  “What? What is it?”

  “I am convinced that I was spared from dying in that little room upstairs for . . . for some coming ordeal?”

  “Coming ordeal? You mean this business of an indictment against you and your sisters as witches? Hold on!” He paced the porch now, hands going through what little hair he had left. “You can’t think God wishes this on you, that your neighbors shun you, excommunicate you, cheer and clap at the idea of you in chains and treated like-like . . . well, no better than Sarah Goode?”

  She took a long, deep breath. “All I know for certain, Francis, is that I’m spared the one ignoble death for perhaps—”

  “Ignoble?”

  “There is nothing noble in dying broken-spirited. I once believed there were things in my life . . . things I valued beyond all measure, which, no matter what, could never be taken from me. But I was wrong; vain in the extreme. Francis, there is nothing in this life that cannot be taken from us.”

  “To think thus is melancholia, dear. That is all.”

  “If God wishes to humble us,” she paused in a long sigh, “then it is by taking the very gifts he’s bestowed.”

  “Our land, our home?”

  “Francis, no! There are many more precious things than this house. Francis, our best traits He can rob us of—as he robbed Job—to turn us against ourselves. We already see it with our loved ones not coming today.”

  “That’s not God’s doing but Parris’.”

  “Even Parris is His instrument, as are we, Francis, and still you don’t understand.”

  “Understand what?”

  She worked to stand and he helped her to her feet. When fully erect, she snatched his now unlit pipe from his mouth and held it to his eyes. “Imagine this is your integrity, Francis, and not a piece of clay!”

  “All right.”

  “Now imagine me God.”

  He chuckled at this.

  She dropped his favorite pipe and stomped it, crushing it into a rock-strewn dust there on the porch. “Now your God has crushed your integrity. Suppose He next destroys your faith—all your faith in Him, Francis? What then?”

  Francis was still staring at his shattered pipe when she added, “Even our faith in Him, Francis, He will test it—and He will do all in his power to tear it from us.”

  “Parris?”

  “No, God. God will try to take it from us. He alone controls all.”

  Francis stared into her eyes, his features a mask of confusion. “What’re you saying, Rebecca?”

  “I am saying that I’ve been returned to my faith.”

  “But you never lost it.”

  “But I did.”

  “I never saw it.”

  “During my illness.”

  “Sure you cursed for your torments, but—”

  “I denied Him; denied it all close to the end when I felt He had brought such suffering and loss on me. Do you recall I didn’t know who you were for a time, didn’t recognize Serena, Ben, no one?”

  “I know but you are well now.”

  “”It was returned to me, Francis. All given back, but it comes now at a price.”

  Francis looked even more confused than before.

  She clenched his hands in hers. “When they come for me, I will prove my faith and love of Him beyond all things. I will never deny My Father. I love Him . . . even beyond you, Francis, and you must allow it. You must not fight me on this.”

  “You are speaking of a divine ordeal, but these fools, liars and thieves--they will come for you with shackles! There is no divinity in this blasphemy of theirs.”

  “The divinity is within me, Francis. It’s a test, don’t you see?—the greatest test of my life, and I shall prevail.”

  Francis went to his knees before her, unable to answer. Taking her in his arms, the two of them rocking under their combined weight.

  “And I will use Him right this time, Francis. I-I have the strength within.”

  “That is not in question, my love.”

  She lifted his face to hers. “Old man, it’s fated—as surely as Christ sacrificed for us ”

  Francis cleared his throat, his voice quaking. “Are you saying you’re somehow chosen? As-as some sort of martyr to this madness in the village?”

  “Call it what you will, but it will come to our door.”

  “No.”

  “We both know it’s true.”

  He could not hold back the tears that came freely to him now. She comforted him and said, “My time is approaching, and you must prepare yourself and hold firm to your faith in both Him and in me. Now hold me tighter.”

  He was mute before her. He shook with the pain of imagining what might happen, but as in all things, he did what she asked, tightening his hold.

  She held him firm for several minutes.

  “Stubbornness has always been your way, woman.”

  “And how has it served us? My father desperately tried to keep us apart, remember?”

  “Stubborn,” he repeated and found a curt laugh.

  “Especially in matters of faith and love,” she agreed. “I was stubborn until father finally accepted the idea of us—and you so fresh from the sea, you smelled of brine.”

  He pulled back and looked her in the eye. “It must’ve been distressing for the old man—marrying you off to a sailor!”

  They laughed together.

  Then he solemnly said, “I’m sorry that you faced a loss
of faith up in that room alone.”

  “It’s a thing a person does alone, but in my heart now, I know I’m never alone. Not completely. At least, that is to say, never again.”

  “I love you beyond all reason.” The rocking chair creaked with his weight over her.

  “And I you, Francis, but promise me one thing now.”

  “Aye and that being?”

  “You will not lose the land in any move to bribe them. I will not have myself saved from this madness only to see our children and our grandchildren turned off our farm. No matter what they promise or barter with, including my life.”

  “I…I don’t know that I can make that promise. You just said yourself that no house, no property is so important as a man’s integrity.”

  “This is true for us, Francis—you and me! And you must do all within reason, within the law, but do not stoop to their level, and do not barter away our children’s futures for what little time I have left in this place, please!”

  “You believe then that Jeremiah Wakely is right? That their true interest is in our holdings?”

  “You knew it before him, Francis. We both did.”

  “That young man is wise beyond his years.”

  “But you knew it all along.” She patted his cheek.

  “Aye…I suppose so. Suppose I didn’t want to believe human greed could be so bloody awful, not here…not in Salem.”

  “Watch that saucy tongue!” She ran her fingers gingerly through his thin hair. “I too denied my intuition.”

  “Bastards.” He got to his feet, paced the porch.

  “Aye, they are that!” She managed a hearty laugh. “Francis, we may well be dealing with the worst thing ever created in God’s image—a cunning minister.”

  In another time and context, this would have made Francis laugh. But he didn’t laugh. Nothing to do with the minister in the village seemed funny anymore.

  Chapter Four

  On the cow paths between Salem Village and Andover

  Thomas Putnam meant to do his duty.

  He was the first man in the village to again wear his military uniform about, his cutlass dusted off and dangling from his belt, his flintlock on his arm. Furthermore, he’d contracted with a known cunning man in Andover—a notorious blacksmith with the gift of sight into the invisible world of Satan, a man with ample knowledge and perhaps truck with Witches. It might be risky business in such times as these, seeing a fortuneteller and seer, but Putnam meant to protect himself, his wife, and his child along with Mercy to whom he’d come to care for in the best sense of it. In fact, since her affliction—so similar to his daughter’s suffering—Thomas wished to nurture Mercy as if she were his own.

  He certainly wanted nothing more to befall his accursed house. But he must learn the truth. He must have concrete evidence, not merely conjecture on the part of his wife, or his child, or the supposed ghosts who’d informed them that all his previous children had been victims of murder. Not even the faith in these matters held by his relative, Reverend Samuel Parris was enough for a man whose feet were solidly in this world alone.

  This errand without benefit of moon or star, below a black sky and a raging wind forcing him to tie down his hat and hold firm to his cape, pressed like an intolerable weight. Thomas breathed deeply. He’d traversed the hills on horseback, his stiff, sore leg still aching whenever mounted. But he would see Samuel Wardwell, who some called the Wizard of Andover, for a second time.

  His first visit had netted nothing of substance, only a slew of innuendos and sly nods and agreements from Wardwell, who had a knack for getting a man to relax his tongue. On their first meeting, the blacksmith and cunning man had asked Putnam many questions, and then suddenly ordered him away, telling him to return in seven nights hence, muttering that at the toll of the seventh night that all answers sought would be revealed to him.

  Tonight was the seventh, and so here he was on a fool’s errand or a wise man’s journey? He hoped to soon know which it might be.

  The wind chilled his bones, making him believe the old texts that declared Satan the Prince of the Power of Air. That God had offered Satan power over one element, and that the Archangel, being a cunning one indeed, selected the wind over water, earth, and even fire. No doubt old Beelzebub had enough of fire already. The thought made him chuckle and then immediately regret it as it felt like a taking of the Devil’s name in vain, a more fearsome error than taking the Lord’s name in vain, for the Lord had pity from time to time, whereas Satan had none. This fearful worry came as accompaniment to a gust of air so strong it threatened to unseat him from his old mare. Then the eerie coincidence of this happening at just this moment raised the hair on the back of his neck.

  Even his horse seemed to shiver beneath him at the precise moment as if it sensed the same. Animals know these things. Putnam shivered at both the gust and the thought of the power behind it; shivered for being alone with it . . . alone with the Devil. How long had he been blind to such subtleties as this? For how long had he remained blind to the old fiend’s straddling his rooftop? Cursed all me bloody, blimey life.

  How his and Bray’s and Samuel’s business had become a curse began to make sense with all the other areas of his life, all the failure and death following in his wake. The Salem Iron and Copperworks Mine had seemed so very marvelous when he’d first hatched the idea. So certain was he that the scheme would pay in a year, and if not one then two. For a time, everyone connected with it agreed to the point of investing, and none more enthusiastically than Samuel.

  Thomas had several other influential backers with ties to mills in England by way of the West Indies thanks to Parris. These included his cousin John Wolcott, Judge Corwin, Judge Hathorne, and more recently young Nicholas Noyes, clergyman at the First Church of Salem Harbor soon to be. Soon as Old Higginson kicks off. All enthusiastic, true enough, until the cave-in. More failure plaguing my house..

  “Cursed,” he repeated to hear some sound other than the swirling wind. “I was once destined for great things in Salem, but others have stole’ everything from me.”

  He reached for and found his flask of whiskey, gulping deeply. It warmed him. He knew the truth. That his wife had married him after being rebuffed by James Bailey. Marry a Putnam, she was thinking that she’d be marrying a man who’d become a regular squire when he gained his inheritance. But the old man had remarried late in life, and he had left it all to Thomas’ stepmother who in turn had remarried a Tarbell. As a result, Thomas had lost all hope of the property rightfully his.

  The horse whinnied, upset with the rain that began to blanket them. In the distance, Thomas made out the light on the outskirts of Andover, Wardwell’s barn and workshop. As if knowing the rutted path and the destination, the horse continued on without urging.

  Thomas wondered if his money might not be wasted on this man named Wardwell; wondered if the blacksmith could really do as rumor said; wondered if he’d have any answers as promised tonight. As he neared, he saw Wardwell as if he’d never left, right inside that brightly lit double doorway, pounding on a piece of flaming metal, shaping it, sculpting it into anything the ‘wizard with wrought iron’ might want or imagine.

  Wardwell hardly looked up when Putnam, yet astride his horse, came into his view—coming right through the smithy’s door. In fact, the wizard acted as if it weren’t the seventh night since last they met. Still, with that booming voice of his, Wardwell filled the night with a handful of words. “I see you’ve chose to return, Squire Putnam.”

  “Squire? How come you to determine me a squire?” Putnam thought it odd as he’d just been thinking he ought to’ve been a squire and would have if not for circumstances created by his father in the old man’s foolish dotage. “I am Deacon Putnam and Lieutenant, sir but no squire, and now ’tis the seventh day we agreed ’pon, Mr. Wardwell, so why should I not be back?”

  “Many who come seeking answers of me, once they have gone never return.” He shrugged and dropped a pair of burning red t
ongs into water, sending up a cloud of smoke and mist to the ceiling rafters.

  Thomas got down from his horse. “But I am here, so have you information I seek?”

  “I do indeed have information, sir. Indeed I do.”

  “No riddles this time. I want facts, truths. Who are those who would harm me?”

  “Those you most suspect, of course.”

  Putnam thought about this; thought of all those he’d ever suspected of holding grudges or who held him in low esteem. One such man was Sheriff Williard, Bray’s nephew. Another who came immediately to mind was Francis Nurse, followed by John Proctor, but he must remember what Anne and Anne Junior had said of these men’s wives. “How do you know for a certainty, Wardwell? How? Whom do you consult as I consult you?”

  “I consult Endor.”

  “Endor? The Witch of Endor as in the Bible?”

  “No, Endore is she!” He pointed to an old nag in the first stall. After seeing Thomas’ pinched expression, he laughed like a madman. “Come, come, Deacon. I can’t give away my trade secrets, now can I?”

  “All right but tell me, these enemies of mine, can I destroy them? Is there a way? What can I do, Wardwell?”

  “You need do nothing, Deacon”

  “What do you mean, nothing?”

  “It’s all taken care of.”

  “How? How is it taken care of?”

  “Trust me.”

  “Tell me how.”

  Wardwell took a final whack at the red poker of metal he’d been shaping, its tip glowing and smoking. H e held it up to Putnam’s eyes so close that the Salem man feared his eyebrows might singe. “I’ve made a curse for you, Thomas—may I call you Thomas?—made it a general one to guard against all thy enemies.”

  “I paid for a lousy curse? A curse to guard me? I want names and I want to swear out warrants against those who harm my child and have murdered others before her.”

  “I know full-well what you want, Thomas, but this is no ordinary curse. This one has the ear of Satan himself. This curse will loose Satan on your enemies.” He jammed the poker of blazing metal into a water barrel and the resultant noise and smoke cloud steamed about the barn like a mad banshee.