Children of Salem

by Robert W. Walker

  Mrs. Fahey, a stubbornly curious and naturally observant Boston lady had determined a great deal about Jeremy, Serena, and their situation. If Jeremy weren’t sure of her good nature and open heart, he might have believed the woman a spy if not a witch! Conniving busybody she was, yes, but as it turned out in a good way, he’d determined, so he long before now had settled on the term meddler to cover her interest in the newlyweds.

  She did not appear to be reporting back to anyone save her small dog, Harry, she called him, after her late husband, who’d died at sea some years before. At breakfast this morning, Mrs. Fahey insisted that the two of them—newly minted husband and wife—go down to the piers and do her marketing for her, claiming that she must make beds and that she felt nauseous and unlike herself, ending with, “Certainly can’t ’spect me to suck in all them fishy odors at the pier? I’d likely vomit in public, a thing a lady must never do, correct, Serena? They take you for a witch, a lady losing her godly graced food.”

  The notion was that if the food was graced, then a true witch’s stomach couldn’t abide it and must hurl it back.

  “Daft fools that they are!” Mrs. Fahey said of the belief. “Now a man, he might throw up in public all he wants, anytime he wants—and who’s to blame? A witch-man’s entrails? No, indeed! Must be other spirits—Rum!” She cackled with an infectious laugh, Serena and Jeremy joining in while a gruff fellow with the stern look of a good Puritan, a banker by trade, also boarding at Fahey’s, sat stiff and not in the least amused.

  Mrs. Fahey lit into the Mr. Stone-gruff-Puritan, saying, “You don’t find that strange or peculiar in the least, Mr. Davenport, eh? Not so much as a snicker or a frown outta ye? Come now, why should a vomitin’ woman not’ve gotten into the rum! Haaa!”

  The banker pushed back his chair, stood, said not a word, but disappeared with hat and cane in hand, going on his rounds.

  “He goes about saying he’s a banker, but what he truly is? He’s a collector for a banker.”

  “He’s got the nature for it,” suggested Serena.

  Mrs. Fahey burst into laughter at this. Jeremy didn’t think it so funny, but Mrs. Fahey’s laughter was, and so he joined in again.

  “I didn’t mean to disparage the man,” added Serena.

  This only made the house owner laugh more.

  “Whatever did I say?” Serena looked to Jeremy for help.

  “You’ve precisely summed the man up, dear Goodwife.” Jeremy reached across the table and took her hand in his.

  “So will the two of you collect up the produce and catch I require for the day?” Mrs. Fahey laid several silver coins on the table—this to make the purchases, and anything left over . . . “ she pulled forth a Boston bill, money minted for city use only.

  “We can most certainly do your shopping for you, Mrs. Fahey,” began Serena.

  “But we’ll not take your charity,” added Jeremy.

  “Charity? Charity is it? To pay an honest wage for honest work?”

  “Picking out vegetables, fruits, and fish is hardly work,” countered Jeremy.

  “You men!” Mrs. Fahey folded the bill around the coins and pushed it all into Serena’s hand and closed her fist around it. “Show Goodman Wakely here what is work, Serena, and you hold the coin.”

  “How shall I determine how much you need from the market?” she asked.

  Mrs. Fahey rushed out and returned in an instant with two wicker baskets. “Fill these with enough for dinner and breakfast tomorrow.”

  “Consider it done.”

  Jeremy and Serena made their way out into a brilliant, lovely morning. Carts, both horse drawn and pulled by men, rattled over cobblestone—many on their way to the seaport marketplace. Life here appeared so much more on kilter than in Salem Village. The sound of horse hooves on stone was joined by the shouting of butchers and fishermen a block away at the piers that extended like giant fingers along the shallows—just as in Salem Town. Here ships from England, Portugal, the Orient, the West Indies, Spain, and France stood creaking about the docks—each under its own flag.

  As they entered the crowds going toward the marketplace, Serena asked, “Jeremy, have you had any headway with Mr. Mather and the magistrates?”

  “They’ve not entertained me at court, no, and I fear one or more of them behind shutting my column down at the newspaper.”

  “So why won’t Cotton Mather see you privately? Secretly if need be?”

  “I thought at first simply a matter of his being ill and abed.”

  “But now?”

  “Now . . . I’m not so sure he’s not been dodging me like the magistrates, Stoughton in particular.”

  “But why? If they have your letters and know all that we know, why won’t they look at the sermon you’ve brought?”

  “They asked I release it to them, but I would not let it from my sight. I used it to bargain for an audience, but I’m afraid they’ve called my bluff.”

  Just then Jeremy saw a bailiff of the court, and he shouted across the street for the man to halt as he rushed toward him, Serena following.

  “I’ve missed the magistrates again, haven’t I?” Jeremy asked the thin, frail young man. “What news have you of my petition to see them?”

  “Bad news, I fear.”

  “What? Say it, man!”

  “They are . . .they’ve all gone.”

  “Gone? Gone where? On holiday?” Easter was approaching.

  “No, gone to Salem.”

  “What? They’ve kept me waiting all these many days, only to traipse off to Salem? But why?”

  Serena added, “But if they’re in Salem, how can we appeal to them here ?”

  The bailiff shrugged, his eyeglasses bobbing with the action. “I am sorry. It was, it would seem, a sudden decision and unanimously held that they go to Salem to see the-the witchcraft firsthand. However, I have something for you, Mr. Wakely.” He snatched out a sealed note. “Was on my way to Mrs. Fahey’s to leave it with you, so this chance meeting is fortuitous.”

  “Indeed? What is it, an apology from the magistrates?”

  “Oh, no. A note from Reverend Mather.”

  “Increase Maher?”

  “No, no, no! Reverend Cotton Mather, for your eyes only.” He gave a glance at Serena. “I must make haste now, sir. I’m to join the court in Salem.”

  “But why, man, are they moving on Salem Village?”

  “Oh, no, sir! They are taking up in Salem Town—better accommodations.”

  The bailiff rushed off on seeing Jeremy’s ire rising like a heated poker before him.

  Jeremy and Serena examined the note he held now in his hands as if their fate rested within. “Are you going to open it or hope to stare it open?” she asked.

  They found a bakery that served coffee and tea, and at a table with the morning sun cascading through a window that faced the eastern shore, Jeremy broke the seal. He read the note—three terse sentences commanding him to come along to the North Church at precisely seven that evening to talk of “dire matters escalating in Salem” and Jeremy’s “failure to avert calamity” there.

  Serena read the note and her features became a mask of confusion. “He sounds angry with you.”

  “I get that.”

  “As if you contributed to the madness back home.”

  “He can’t possibly believe that.” Still the cryptic note had him reading between the lines as well. “Nor can you, Serena.”

  “I know, I know, but this is no invitation to church, Jeremy. This is an order.”

  “God how I wish the man’s father had not left us all in this . . . stew.”

  “Do you think his father meant for his son to take on this task? That the elder Mather planned it for his son?”

  “I pray not; the son is not ready for it.”

  “You’re frightening me, Jeremy.”

  He placed his hands over hers and with hot coffee sending up a stream of smoke between them, he said, “I wish I had more foresight. From the beginning, I
worried that Higginson and the younger Mather would fail me and leave me with a knife in my back, and I fear it’s coming to pass.”

  “But Reverend Higginson could mean you no harm.”

  “Not intentionally, perhaps, but through his failing health.”

  “And Mather?”

  “I don’t know. Will know tonight, however.”

  “Let me come with you! I can tell him a thing or two of Parris and the poison he’s spread.”

  “It’s all in my letters, and so far as Mather knows, it’s remained confidential, all of it. No, I must face him alone. He’d take great umbrage if I brought you along.”

  “Umbrage? Am I some sort of baggage now on your back?”

  “I didn’t mean it that way in the least, Serena, please. I must do this alone.”

  “What the deuce could he be angry with you about?” she fired back, drawing a disapproving look from others in the bakery. A Goodwife did not speak in such a tone to a Goodman.

  “I-I suspect but can’t be sure that it’s my poor handling of the Salem business, the way I walked out of there that night. Like the magistrates, he’s likely heard reports by now from Corwin and Hathorne on how things went . . .perhaps even how I sort of ran down Mr. Parris with my horse. I don’t know, but it’s likely he’s upset that others learned of my association with him and his father. Maybe he blames me for the flurry of arrests in the village, who knows?”

  “Then he’s a fool!”

  “Unfortunately, he’s not his father, but not for lack of trying.” Jeremy smiled wanly. “God, how I wish Increase Mather hadn’t left us at such an hour,” he reiterated.

  “It could be months before he returns from England.”

  “Yes, and by then . . .”

  “I am so worried about Mother and Father.”

  He stood and came around to her, put an arm around her, and immediately drew stares from some who took offense at the show of affection in public. Even so, the shroud of such opinion here in Boston was relaxed compared to that in Salem.

  # # # # #

  To get to the docks, they could take several avenues; in fact, there was more than a single marketplace. Rather, every dock had a fish market, and around each fish market, a farmer’s stand, as farm families from the surrounding regions brought produce for barter at each pier.

  “From atop those trees,” Jeremy began, pointing, “this place must look like a gaggle of geese descended to fight.”

  Serena laughed. “But the noise, Jere, it’d chase off any goose.”

  They chose a street named Pawtucket where once a park had flourished but had now become a jail site for the indigent and criminal. It was a large facility with windows overlooking the street and from which prisoners reached out for alms from anyone passing by.

  Serena hesitated on seeing this sight. “Why’re we here, Jeremy?”

  “You read my mind.”

  “What motive have you?”

  “I’ve read that some of those accused in Salem, due to the overcrowding in the jails there, are here housed until their trials should be called.”

  “I see. And you hope to have a word with one or more of the accused before seeing Mather?”

  “You have me, yes.”

  As they neared the jailhouse, they saw a strange sight—a lady dressed in beautiful clothes, a manservant with her, doling out bread and biscuits to those housed in the jail.

  A crowd outside the jail had gathered around the lady, whose hat alone, might feed all the prisoners if cashed in for its florals. Some in the crowd jeered the lady’s Christian gesture of feeding those accused inside the jail, while others cheered her on; however, the nays began to drown out the yeas. The biscuits and breads at an end, the lady and her man returned to a wide carriage draped in black, where the beautifully clothed woman climbed inside and disappeared behind the drapes. The man lifted the stepstool, stowed it, and climbed into the driver’s seat. In a moment, the carriage was parting the crowd.

  “Who is she, I wonder?” asked Serena.

  “Who is she?” asked Jeremy a bit too sarcastically. “I mean, the Governor’s wife.”

  “She shows mercy on the imprisoned. Shows a kind heart.”

  “Even toward those accused of witchcraft.”

  “A true gentle woman, caring. How much more we need of such people.”

  “Wish her husband was as caring. I’ve had no luck seeing him either.”

  “You’ve tried to see Governor Phipps?”

  “It’s possibly why Mather is upset. I mean if he learned of my going over his head.”

  The crowd about the jail dissipated. Jeremy and Serena walked closely by the barred windows, arms outstretched, men, women, and children shouting for a crust of bread, a two pence to pay their jailer, any number of other wishes. One woman called out to ask Serena to post a letter. This while Jeremy studied the grimy faces and disheveled heads behind the bars and in shadow, searching for anyone recognizable. There were thieves, possible cutthroats locked away here with those accused of witchcraft from not only Salem but other towns around Salem as well. It seemed every town touching on Salem had gotten the contagion, and so the number of warrants followed by arrests had increased exponentially.

  Serena stepped close to accept the letter the one prisoner extended through the bars, seeing the address had been written on the folded note. As she did so, Jeremy gasped on seeing back of this woman the eyes of Tituba Indian.

  Jeremy called out to her. “Is it you, Tituba?”

  The jailer, a man in tatters himself who might be more suited inside rather than outside the bars, came around the corner, his arms filled with firewood. “Here now! No audience with the accused, sir, not without paying me first.”

  “Just a word, sir.”

  “Not without you pay first!”

  “Damn it, man, I am an officer of the court!” Jeremy looked to Serena for one of the silver coins, but Serena, seeing Tituba, rushed off ahead of Jeremy, who pursued her.

  “I just want a word with her, Serena.”

  “It’s not our coin, Jeremy.”

  “But Mrs. Fahey said whatever might be left over is our payment.”

  “Yes, so she might give us payment for her own rent, don’t you see?”

  “That woman’s secrets could help me tonight when I see Mather, if I can get her to talk.”

  “You’re not even sure you will see Mather tonight. He has dangled you out this long!”

  He took her firmly in hand, turning her to face him. Their eyes met. “Your grip, Jeremy. You’re hurting me.”

  “Sorry. Ha, our first fight.”

  “Disagreement,” she corrected, “and sad that it has to be over this?”

  She rushed on, going for the marketplace, the wicker baskets in each hand. She’d tucked the letter from the prisoner in a pocket in her dress.

  “If that jailer had seen you take that letter, he’d’ve fined you. Would you’ve paid him?”

  “These confounded jailers are given too much power,” she countered.

  “You’ll get no argument from me on that. Now, would you’ve paid him from the money in hand?”

  “That’s different. This poor woman locked away. All she wants is to send word to a loved one. It’s evil to think she must pay her jailer to send a note.”

  “It’s the law. How else is the man paid but by those jailed—and those who take pity on them?”

  “It’s a bad law, and you know it. It gives a jailer the same power over people as-as, well as a captain on a slave ship.”

  “Hmmm . . . interesting comparison.”

  “It’s true! There’s so much in our laws and customs that are so very unchristian and yet we call ourselves followers of Christ.”

  They’d arrived at the marketplace, and Serena began to haggle with a man and a woman selling greens. Serena’s voice became part of the lively babble of the market. Soon, Serena had one basket filled, and still she had most of the money Mrs. Fahey had fronted them. In the next instan
t, Serena was talking with rough, foul-mouthed sailors who’d shouted down one another on her approach to get her business. She asked the price of a mackerel. She made them laugh as she haggled down the price.

  But the entire time, Jeremy kept looking over his shoulder at the habits of the jailer, and he saw that Tituba Indian aka L’englesian, sent here from Salem for her terrible indiscretions stood at the window now, hands wrapped about the bars, staring back at Jeremiah Wakely and his bride.

  Forget about the Barbados witch, one part of Jeremy’s brain said. Forget about all the sad, superstition-riddled accusations, ordeals, and court sessions going on in the courts there with Corwin and Hathorne at the helm. Make a life here in Boston with Serena; a life far from that damnable, dark, cursed village. Never go back there. First step in never going back, don’t talk to that Barbados witch.

  “Whatever is on your mind, Jeremiah?” asked Serena, breaking his reverie.

  He turned to see that she’d filled both baskets, and she held up two silver coins. “We can pay our rent now!”

  “I was just giving thought to perhaps staying here in Boston.”

  “Staying?”

  “Finding gainful employment and living here, yes.”

  She shook her head as if the gesture might empty her head of what he’d said. “I don’t think so, Jere.”

  “Look around you, Serena. This is the modern world. Boston will one day rival London. This is where American civilization grows, not like . . . ”

  “Not like Salem? Where squabbling and vileness thrive?”

  “That place, the village in particular, it’s as if . . . as if its very roots are bloody and vile. Here we could flourish if I set up as a barrister.”

  “And a fine one you’d make, Jere, but there’re people I love back in Salem, people I want to see again. You speak as if you never want to return for any reason, but we’re here only so as to help those we left behind.”

  “I fear the place; I fear your ever going back there.”

  “My home is there.”

  “Your home may not be there ever again after this.”

  “My father and brothers will not allow them to take our lands.”

  “That’s not what I mean, and you know it. You can go back tomorrow or a year from now, but the place of your childhood—the face of it—has already changed to the degree you won’t recognize it or the people in it.”