Children of Salem

by Robert W. Walker

  Little Anne raced into the room, looking ever so much like her mother when she was Little Anne’s age where she lived in Salisbury, the last time Anne Carr Putnam had felt any happiness. She bundled her daughter into her, beside her, holding tight. Both were crying now. Mother Putnam shouted to the morning, “How long? How long do I endure this curse!”

  # # # # #

  Jeremy rode into Salem Town to take the pulse of the harbor people and to hopefully see Reverend Higginson. The town on the ocean bustled with activity and commerce, not unlike Boston. His immediate thought was: you’d never know there was a thing out of kilter or wrong beneath the surface here.

  Jeremy stabled his Dancer as the horse needed grooming, and he walked among the people of Salem Town, cautiously listening to the idle conversation among workmen, fishermen, ladies at market, but no one here was talking about the awful business going on in nearby Salem Village—another similarity to Boston.

  The only unseemly, untoward indication of the “village problems” appeared the jailhouse—filled beyond its capacity as with Boston and any other community that had so much as a holding pen.

  He went across the common where children played at games and climbing trees. No longer wearing the black uniform of the clergy, he was seen as a mere stranger here by most. He crossed the street to Higginson’s church and nearby home, skipping over the trench at mid-street which carried sewage to the ocean.

  Carriages and wagons of commerce passed him by, people waving at one another. There was an airy hospitality about Salem Town that he’d never felt in the village, not even years ago as a child. The village temperament had always been summed up in one word in his mind: somber.

  That much hadn’t changed in all these years.

  At the church, he ran into Reverend Nicholas Noyes, who treated him with cool diffidence, no doubt knowing Jeremiah’s true nature of deceit and deception as summed up by Mr. Parris. “I am in search of Mr. Higginson.”

  “He is in meeting with important men of Boston, and I’m sure you were not invited,” replied Noyes, his eyes narrowing into slits that didn’t hide the fact they were rat’s eyes, beady and skulking.

  “Where is this meeting?”

  “At the Reverend’s home, gathering about his sickbed. The old gentleman is not long for this world.”

  “More’s the pity,” replied Jeremy, thinking, More’s the pity that his passing will leave you in charge of the largest congregation in the area.

  Jeremy left for Higginson’s residence, and once there, he was barred from entering. Inside the Boston visiting judges, Stoughton, Sewell, Addington, and Saltonstall had the old man cornered—not hard to do. No doubt attempting to have him sign something while in a weakened, perhaps delirious state, Jeremy feared. And most certainly hoping for his blessing on the court they intended to operate out of Salem Town and Village—a special session of the Court of Oyer and Terminer: to hear and determine.

  No matter what story he gave, Jeremy could not get past the guard, Sheriff Williard. “Sorry, Mr. Wakely, but I have my orders.”

  “Williard, how can you justify arresting Mother Nurse of all people?”

  “I don’t make the warrants, Mr. Wakely, I only carry them out.”

  “And the warrant against Mother Nurse? Sworn out by whom?”

  “Putnam’s name was on it along with several others. Fiske for one as I recall.”

  “It’s an evil injustice to have that woman sitting in that pigsty you call a jail.”

  “”I agree with you there.”

  “I’ve seen root cellars in better order than these jails in Salem Village and Town.”

  “I’m not talking about the jails,” said Williard.

  Jeremiah looked at the man’s dejected features. “You mean you agree that Mother Nurse is wrongly accused?”

  “I do! From the beginning.”

  “But you arrested her, and old Francis was struck down in the bargain.”

  “I had me orders, and it was Herrick struck the old man.”

  “So that absolves you?”

  “Look you here, I’m not asking for absolution!”

  “You were following orders, and it wasn’t your fault, eh?”

  “I can tell you this, I don’t like any of it, and I fear it’s going to eat us all alive. One thing’s sure they’re right about.”

  “What’s that?” Jeremy studied the man for any sign of guile but found none.

  “That it’s the work of the Antichrist—all of this setting neighbor ’gainst neighbor.”

  “And who among us is cause of that?”

  “For my money?” He inched closer and whispered, “That blackhearted minister in the village and his lackeys.”

  “My sentiments exactly, but he’s now gained the ear of the judges, and they’re now whispering in Mr. Higginson’s ear. I tell you, I must see the judges. I have evidence against Parris.”

  “A bit late in the day. All right, Mr. Wakely, what have you?”

  Jeremy mentioned the land squabbles, the map, and the Parris sermon.

  “Is that it?” Williard was skeptical. “See here, sir, the climate is bad for any man who does not go along with the river that’s plunging forward now in the direction that the judges and—”

  “So it is foul, the climate in Salem, don’t I know as does Francis and John Proctor.”

  “John Proctor needs follow Nurse’s calm, else isn’t long he’ll lose his freedom.”

  “You’ve taken the man’s wife in custody. What do you expect?”

  Williard gritted his teeth and whispered, “I tell ya, Proctor’ll be next if he doesn’t stop talking against the ministers and the magistrates. You, too, if you don’t step lightly.”

  “Is that a threat, Sheriff?”

  “No, ‘’tis the nature of the beast at the moment. Take the advice or ignore it at your peril, sir. Now truly, you should leave these premises.”

  “We’re all of us called freemen, citizens of the Crown,” persisted Jeremy, “yet we’re to hold our tongues and to watch where we step?”

  “That is the way of it, sir, for now.”

  “So you will go on serving warrants?”

  Williard looked Jeremy in the eye. “I have little choice. Don’t judge me, Mr. Wakely.”

  “I stand in judgment on no man, Mr. Williard. I have had great respect for the law all my days, but not what I see unfolding in Salem. Now as I am going nowhere, will you let me pass?” Jeremy could see movement at one window, which he guessed to be Higginson’s bedroom—else the old man had earlier employed men to remove his bed to a front room.

  Williard stood straight and raised his withered arm. “You know I cannot allow you inside.”

  “Yes, orders. I see.” Jeremy raised his hands in the universal gesture of surrender. He turned on his heels and marched off, going for the stables to fetch Dancer. He’d gotten all the answers he expected in Salem Town. He wondered if he dared go into the village.

  # # # # #

  Jeremiah did indeed ride into the village on his white horse, tethering Dancer outside Ingersoll’s two-story Inn across from the meetinghouse. The numbers of people in the village and inside Ingersoll’s astounded him, as on entering, he saw a jovial-faced Ingersoll too busy pouring ale from kegs for his patrons to notice the arrival of any one man, including the now infamous Jeremiah Wakely. Every table was filled with twosomes and foursomes. “How’s business?” Jeremy asked, stepping to the bar.

  Jeremy overheard snippets of conversations in the room.

  “A doll in the wall?”

  “Stuck full with nails, they say.”

  “I heard it was pins.”

  “Thank God she’s under lock and key now.”

  To Jeremiah’s inquiry about business, Ingersoll laughed loud and raucously and waved a free hand as he poured Jeremy a pint. “You’re not blind. It’s wonderful.”

  “Never seen the place so full. Looks downright small in here.”

  “Been this way for days.�
��

  Jeremy didn’t recognize all the faces. Obviously, people were flocking into the village and to Ingersoll’s in hope of seeing the bewitched and enchanted children, who could be attacked by any object at any time thanks to the invisible enemy. Then he saw Mercy Lewis darting about from table to table, telling tales of torture and suffering. He overheard the words ghost, spirit, Betty Parris, suffering, and torture repeatedly. Then he saw Mercy lift a man’s pewter cup and drain it in one fell swoop.

  “Lil’ scamps got me ale!” shouted the man, whose fellows at the table with him laughed. “Child’s got no right to it, and no manners!”

  Still, no one else took Mercy to task for it. In fact, she repeated this at another table between tales of how she’d led authorities to the voodoo doll found behind the brick wall in Bishop’s Inn, and tales of how the dead brothers and sisters of Little Anne Putnam cried out for vengeance.

  Ingersoll noticed that Jeremy was taking an interest in this newfound freedom that Mercy Lewis had discovered since her bewitchment. “She’s one of the seers now, Jeremy.”

  “Last time I saw the young lady, Sam Parris wrung her neck to get the devil out of her, and now this, and you allow minors your ale?”

  Without saying another word to him, Jeremy made Ingersoll uncomfortable, the innkeeper erupting with, “The ale helps them see into the secrets of the witches. It’s a proven fact, it is.”

  “Ah, I see, and you believe that? A spirit for a spirit, eh?”

  Ingersoll tried to match him with his own lame joke. “They’re not called spirits for nothing. Drink up.”

  He frowned at Ingersoll before taking a sip.

  “Mr. Parris says a little Canary Island wine simmers the girls, too. Says give ’em what they want.”

  “Says that does he?”

  “Says it’s for the good of us all that they see clearly and make no false accusations, you see.”

  This is like being inside a nightmare, Jeremy thought. “And you believe whatever Sam Parris says?”

  Ingersoll gritted his teeth, cracked as they were.

  Jeremy raised his voice for others to hear as well, saying, “Tell me, Deacon Ingersoll, how is it the poor little children of the village still suffer attacks from witches who are behind bars and in chains?”

  Thomas Putnam, at the bar, shouted, “I’ll tell you, Mr. Wakely, neither bars nor chains stop a witch’s flight if she is in her witch’s attitude.”

  “You are telling me that Bridgett Bishop or Tituba Indian all the way from Boston, or Goody Goode can go out of their chains from behind bars and continue to torment children?”

  “We all know that they can and they have, repeatedly, while you, sir, have abandoned these parts.”

  “Goode, and Osborne are no longer in Salem jail,” said Ingersoll to Jeremy.

  “Where then?”

  “Removed to Boston after being found guilty by Hathorne and Corwin.”

  “Why move them to Boston?”

  “The jails here are overfull.”

  “Ah, yes, and that doesn’t tell you people something?” Jeremy tried to decipher the real reason the first three accused were sent off to another venue, why not Rebecca and Mrs. Proctor? And other more deserving and recently arrested villagers? Then it dawned on him. Room was being made in order of who had been excommunicated first, second, and so on. Ministers and magistrates working in tandem. He could imagine the bargain struck by Parris: “I excommunicate them first, your honors, and you’ll gain their confessions far easier, and should they remain recalcitrant—a judgment will be that much easier for the people to swallow.” Or something to that effect. Guilty until proven innocent—it was the law.

  Some at the bar talked of taking bets on which of the accused found guilty would remain stonehearted and unrepentant, and so be the first to hang.”

  Ingersoll belatedly added to what Putnam had earlier said. “The very witches sittin’ in Gatter’s jail, Jeremy, they come each night and torment Betty Parris and some of our other children. They can go invisible, slip from their bodies, and make havoc. They’ve Satan on their side.”

  “I had a toad in my house other night with the eyes of woman staring up at me,” added Putnam. This statement sent up a gasp among the others, and it ignited a litany of such eyewitness accounts.

  “I saw the ugliest spider that’d built the largest web I’ve ever seen in my barn.”

  “We had a mouse in our cellar.”

  “We were visited by a centipede, the biggest I ever laid eyes on.”

  “Are you men serious?” asked Jeremy. “Do you hear what you say?”

  This silenced the others.

  Jeremy knew he was stepping dangerously over thin ice. “Look, gentlemen, if a witch is capable of going outside her body, escaping bars and chains, and just as capable of possessing say your body, Mr. Ingersoll—“this made the man visibly tremble –“then why on earth would this same witch return to Gatter’s stink hole?”

  It was too logical for them.

  Everyone at the bar took another long dram from his pint, and Jeremy thought at least he may’ve gotten one among them thinking more clearly when Thom Putnam shouted, “They must have to return to their own bodies is all—for, for nourishment.”

  That settled it for anyone wanting to believe in the seer children and invisible evidence.

  The enchanted children, as they were also called, had become little celebrities, scryers with the power everyone else lacked, the eyes to see into the Invisible World of Satan. “People’ve traveled all the way from Boston, Jeremy,” muttered Ingersoll in a near whisper. “It’s rather amazing.”

  “Amazing? Really?” Jeremy shook his head in disbelief.

  “Whatever do you mean, Jeremiah?”

  “You have excommunications each night at the meetinghouse, I am told.”

  “We do, yes, to punish the wicked among us.”

  “One by one, you take the accused before Parris, correct?”

  “Well,” Ingersoll raised his hands as if they were clean.

  “So that your minister can banish each alleged witch from the congregation by night, and—”

  “The sheriff and his men do the takin’.”

  “—and by day, the mad play of these supposed bewitched children, yet you’re surprised it draws people like flies to dung?”

  “Hold on, now Jeremy. What else are we to do with witches in our midst but to excommunicate them?”

  “This presupposes their guilt, sir.”

  “Yes, as the law says, guilty—”

  “Until proven innocent. I know the law, Deacon.” The innkeeper was right. English law prevailed on these shores. Jeremy gritted his teeth.

  Ingersoll launched in again. “Look here, the judges are convening a Court of Oyer and Terminer right here in Salem.”

  Jeremy considered this aloud. “So I’ve heard.; meanwhile, the accused are ridiculed and humiliated through the streets and in ceremony in the meetinghouse.” He imagined how bad it’d gone for Mother Nurse. Her worst nightmare, no doubt, to be banished from the church and shunned by all—the worst ordeal of all.”

  “They’re only excommunicated after the ecumenical court finds them guilty, Jeremiah.” Ingersoll looked across his bar at Jeremy as if he were mad.

  “These arrested are tried then by Parris in the church assize; they go through this barbarous ritual of banishment. Don’t you have any compunction about putting your neighbors through this hell and—”

  “Hold on!” shouted Putnam, suddenly at Jeremy’s side. “These witches killed my progeny.”

  Jeremy curtailed his anger. Still, he felt a deep pang of spite and hatred for these backwoods villagers—the same as had excommunicated his father for the sin of love and idealism. “Above all else, gentlemen, I hate to see ignorance flourish, stupidity prevail, and injustice the rule of the day.”

  The Inn fell silent and Mercy Lewis sidled up to Jeremy, her beady eyes glaring ratlike at him. “You sound upset with us poor villag
e folk, you false prophet!” The girl then pirouetted away from him as if in a dance and alone in her mind.

  Jeremy turned back to the bar and finished his drink, wondering how he’d ever tell Serena about what they’d already put her mother through, and how she’d react. “Gentlemen,” began Jeremy, turning again and raising his empty ale cup overhead. “A toast to Mercy here, and all the afflicted children of Salem Village that they may sober up long enough to point fingers at the truly guilty.”

  “Watch yourself, Jeremy,” Ingersoll whispered in his ear.

  But Jeremy went on: “A rather unusual and smart generation of children here in the village, them who have found a way to punish their elders.”

  The others had lifted their drinks at the first half of his toast, but they lowered their drinks by time the toast was made.

  “These poor folk sitting as accused witches,” Jeremy continued with his diatribe, these are your neighbors! Accused and not yet tried, and you’re having them brought in chains and humiliated in your meetinghouse? And worse than you are the ministers and magistrates calling together an illegally appointed court.”

  “Illegal!” shouted Thomas Putnam, spewing. “That’s a scandalous assertion!”

  Ingersoll came half way over the bar despite his girth. “Careful what you say, here, Jeremy!”

  “Without a charter—the charter Increase Mather has gone to secure for us, a Court of Oyer and Terminer cannot be called. That’s the law, and those who disobey it are outside the law.”

  “That’s nonsense,” countered Putnam. “The judges know the law better’n all of us together. They know what they’re doing.”

  “This is the King’s highest court, and I say again, we are without a charter, and therefore it is illegal for Sir William Stoughton—or even Governor Phipps—to call any such court together, as any result will have no appeal.” Finally, Jeremy was able to speak the language he knew, the law.

  Behind him at one table, Jeremy heard a hearty, “Here, here! I guess the King’s permission is too much technicality for a Boston judge.” It was the tall, gaunt John Proctor surrounded by consolers, each with empty ale cup at hand as they’d completed the toast with Jeremiah Wakely.