Children of Salem

by Robert W. Walker

  Rebecca has not left the jail cell for over a month. Her arrest and excommunication remains in her mind as if yesterday. She sometimes visits the courtroom where Corwin and Hathorne have been joined by three strangers from Boston, calling themselves magistrates—all in black with powdered wigs. She is again humiliated and here again the crowd scorns her, and the tightly knit, highly organized cadre of children spit pins from their mouths, fall and grovel and swear that Rebecca’s invisible shape, though she herself is in the room! These sad children claim that she has placed the pins in their mouths and into their armpits. Some are stabbed with knitting needles, blood discoloring their petticoats. Again Rebecca’s other self—which they claim to see but is invisible—does the stabbing.

  Every day of her incarceration, Rebecca replays these ugly moments in her mind in an attempt to read the hidden meaning, to understand what Christ and God want from her. Each time she hears the same words in her ear—Be my instrument; act as Christ himself when he was attacked and condemned.

  “No easy thing to do,” she says aloud to the consternation of other prisoners tired of the old woman’s ongoing conversation with God.

  She blinks back the pain and anguish, ignores the sweat and horrid odors of her cell and the blank stares of cellmates. At times, she sees her beloved children and their children gathered around her but not here. No, all are at the gathering place around the tables at the great oak. She sees her beloved Francis, his face and eyes pleading with her to come home—to confess and come home. Others have confessed their sins before the court and have been released, she hears him clearly say in her ear.

  “Remain out of it, Francis; stay above and apart from the madness descending on Salem. Be patient, and let nothing wrest your faith from me or God.” Others in the cell think she is hearing voices because she has quietly gone mad.

  In her daydream, Francis understands and does as she asks. In her nightmare, Francis comes after her with Ben and her other sons, all armed to the teeth with guns, and they are all killed, and their land is forfeit, and their grandchildren leave their home in a sad parade with only what they carry on their backs.

  She pleads daily with Francis, but sometimes her words are not argumentative but loving words. “Francis, you are all that I love, you and our family. But now, at this time, I must do this alone and be left to it. Have faith we will be reunited one day.”

  But the croup, a cough that racks her body so terribly that it leaves her in pain, interrupts her dreams and nightmares; the keys rattle and the door creaks open and in come the dogs of the court to again shackle her, to take her to yet another humiliation.

  Gatter makes his falsetto apologies that are as meaningless as those from Herrick and his men, all of whom treat her with deference. Some think her deserving of respect, while most think her out of her mind.

  Herrick reads from a list. The names of each prisoner to be shackled, hand and foot.

  “Oh, it’s a vacation,” jokes Wardwell, one of today’s chosen. “Stay close by my side, Mother Nurse.”

  Each is led out into the blinding light and led into the prisoner cart, a horrid little rolling cell that tells anyone looking on that those inside are guilty.

  Meanwhile more arrests are made daily as the madness in the village grows like a cancer, spreading out, seeking more victims like some sort of satanic root that touches them all. Each person arrested as a witch or wizard is made to implicate others, the disease metastasizes.

  # # # # #

  June 11th 1692

  Francis Nurse cornered Jeremy in the barn. Alone, the old man spoke his mind. “I fear I can no longer control the men, especially Ben and Tarbell, Jeremy. Not since this execution yesterday of that innkeeper, Bridget Bishop.”

  “Bishop was executed?”

  “Aye, yesterday, the 10th day of June. Some say to test the taste of the public for blood. Otherwise, why hang only one of the recalcitrant guilty as they call those who refuse to indict others and to confess the sin of witchcraft and murder?”

  “I’d heard they meant to hang her but—”

  “Bishop never broke.”

  “—but I didn’t think they’d go through with it. May God have mercy on her soul, and God forgive me for saying so, Francis—it could work in Mother Nurse’s favor.”

  “Work in our favor? How?”

  “I’ve seen this sort of hysteria to hang witches break out in other parishes, in particular during my time in Connecticut, where the fear from pagan Indians runs even higher than here.”

  “What’re you saying, son?”

  The old man had taken to calling him son since his and Serena’s return with a wedding band on his daughter’s hand. He’d also expressed sadness that there’d been no proper wedding and party. “Rebecca would have loved to see it, sure,” he’d finished on the day of their return from Boston.

  “Often with a witch hung, the bloodlust of the mob is quenched.”

  “We can only hope.”

  “But as to Ben and Tarbell, I doubt they’d listen to me any more than they’re hearing you, these days, sir.” Jeremy groomed Dancer as they spoke.

  “I want you to take Mather up on that land in Connecticut, Jeremy, and to take Serena away from here—out of harm’s way. And do so quickly before . . . before either of you are called out by those awful children.”

  “Parris’ puppets, yes. I couldn’t agree with you more, sir.”

  “Then will you do it? She’s sure to be the next accused, if not Ben.”

  “I want desperately to find a new life for Serena and myself.”

  “Then we’re in agreement?”

  “We are, up to a point.”

  “Up to a point?”

  “Serena must come to the same conclusion. If I try to force her, she’ll fight me on it. Sir, not to change the subject, but something nags at me to return to Boston for a talk with—”

  “Boston? Talk with whom? Who is left to take our petition to?”

  “No one, I’m afraid, but I saw Parris’ Barbados woman in the jail there, and I believe she has a story in her that may bring Samuel Parris down so far that no one here will ever be influenced by him again.”

  “Whatever are you talking about? Tituba? What can she possibly—”

  “I have no solid proof, but I believe she had a child by Parris.”

  “A child? A bastard child?”

  “In Barbados, yes—and to protect his good name and reputation, and that of his wife, this child was disposed of.”

  “Disposed of how?”

  “I suspect in the worst way.”

  “You can’t mean killed?”

  “Shortly after birth the baby expires or was given away. As for the mother, Tituba, she never once saw the child—alive or dead.”

  Serena had been listening at the barn door, and now she said, “That snake of a man! He concocted the entire scenario for how the Putnams’ children died based on a murder he’d himself committed in Barbados before coming here?”

  “It’s a theory I have. Not sure he jammed a needle into the child’s brain or heart, but who knows?” Jeremy went to her and wrapped an arm about her.

  She pulled away and paced the length of he barn. “He’s put Mother and so many away on the altar of his own bloody hands—and now one woman has been hung to death on the allegations begun in his parish, and my mother is next!”

  “It’s why I need to talk directly with Tituba. To confirm my suspicions.”

  “But can you be sure she is still in Boston?” asked Serena.

  “I fear Parris arranged for her incarceration in Boston in hope of seeing her aboard a ship to leave the colonies altogether.”

  “She’s being called an accuser rather than a witch these days. An innocent who tried to save the minister’s daughter.” Serena laughed at the distinction.

  “Part of her deal with Parris, perhaps, for pointing the way.”

  “Bastards all!” Francis’ fingers turned white with the grip he had round a pitchfork.
“Just interested in seeing forfeits of property going back into the commonwealth so’s they can divvy it all anew.”

  “I’ve no doubt of it,” replied Jeremy. “Behind the scenes, large properties are being prepared to go to the ‘heroes’ of this debacle—Corwin, Hathorne, Porter, Putnam, Wilkins, perhaps Ingersoll, and most assuredly the Boston magistrates and Reverends Noyes and Cotton Mather.”

  Serena sighed heavily and nodded. “Ample incentive for getting confessions from the accused.”

  “And paying no heed to your fact-finding, Jeremy, with respect to the Martin woman and Anne Putnam.” Francis jammed the pitchfork into a bale of hay.

  “Nor petition after petition.”

  Jeremiah stopped Serena’s pacing and stared long into her eyes. “Serena, I know you two are as devastated by the failure of the Boston authorities to alleviate the situation as I am. I’ve one final appeal in writing to Major David Saltonstall, the most rational judge on the Court of Oyer & Terminer, and the last man on the court who appears to have doubts over the use of spectral evidence.”

  “Alleviate it, ha! The Boston judges of the high and mighty General Court?” Serena seemed to have stopped listening to Jeremy. “Those swine have made it exponentially worse. Have you not heard? Bridget Bishop was hung yesterday.”

  “Yes, we’ve all heard, and it’s terrible news,” began Francis, “but Jeremy says there may be a silver lining to it.”

  “Silver lining, indeed? Where? At Watch Hill, at the gallows they’ve built there to accommodate six hangings at once?”

  Everyone fell silent; the only sound that of the patient breath of horses and cows in the stalls. Jeremy finally broke the silence. “Rather sudden on the part of the judges to hang Bishop now. Their first arrests came in late February or was it early March. Tituba, Goode, followed by Osborne and only then Bishop whom they released for lack of evidence only to make a re-arrest on the say-so of Mercy Lewis who likely planted the so-called Bishop doll in the woman’s basement.”

  Serena shoved him. “So tell me, Mr. Expert, why just one of all the accused hung? What’s behind this mystery.” Serena looked into his eyes. “It’s prelude to more hangings, isn’t it?”

  “Perhaps not.”

  “How can you say that? Are you gone blind, Jeremy?”

  “Often a single public display of this nature, as I told your father . . . well it can have a dampening effect on those making the allegations and adding to the fire. One thing to accuse your neighbor, have her jailed, excommunicated even. Quite another to kill her in some sanctimonious public execution.”

  “So Jeremy’s told me this was the case in Connecticut,” Francis said to Serena. “One hanging appeased the mob.”

  “Aye, true it was.”

  “Pray that Bishop as the sacrificial goat fills their need for blood, eh?” Serena shook her head. “Else this bloodlust continues.”

  “It may be the best we can do at this point.” The moment he said it, Jeremy realized how lame it sounded.

  “The best we can do? The best we can do?” came her mocking chant. “We should get Mother free of their clutches before she is hung next!”

  Jeremy watched her march away from him. The strain of events had taken a horrible toll on Francis, on Serena, and on their relations. He feared Bridget Bishop’s hanging would not be enough for the likes of Parris and Putnam or others who stood to gain property, position, and reputation as witch hunters in Salem. That this situation was far, far different than the one he’d faced in the provinces. Still, he held out a glimmer of hope that the key to ending the mayhem and officially sanctioned murder was locked away in a cell in Boston, and the name of that key was Ti’shuba.

  BOOK THREE

  Chapter One

  Circumstances in Salem and its environs moved rapidly during June, far too fast for Jeremy or anyone to make any further proper appeals. Twenty days after the hanging of Bridget Bishop, the cantankerous innkeeper with as foul a mouth as any sailor in Salem Harbor, five more accused, arrested women were judged guilty in the Court of Oyer & Terminer—among them, Rebecca Nurse.

  The others on the June 30th list of recalcitrant guilty were Sarah Goode, to no one’s surprise, Susannah Martin of Amesbury, the vixen who’d caused Henry Carr to hang himself twenty years before—or so Anne Carr Putnam said; Elizabeth How of Ipswich, and Sarah Wilde of Topsfield. Along with the accusations of the Salem seers against her, Goode had been condemned on the word of her eight-year-old, mentally distracted child Dorcas. All of the other accused had stood adamant against the court as had Goode—most of them cursing the court, the judges, and their accusers in no uncertain terms.

  Rebecca Nurse alone had maintained her calm resolve, and she’d even blessed her accusers and the judges. She had insisted that “This court and the magistrates and ministers, including Mr. Parris, are all misguided, and your deliberations are not guided by the hand of God but those of Satan himself, who, in my opinion, has orchestrated the entire delusion fallen on Salem.”

  The judges pounded their gavels and held firm to their seemingly honest values and well-intentioned viewpoints, and superstitious beliefs, and entrenched customs which masked their hidden motives from the mob. At the same time, the official attitude that’d become so entrenched in Salem could not be so well hidden from those Parris called the ‘dissenting brethren’.

  Judge and Major Richard Saltonstall voiced the ruling of the court deciding Mother Nurse’s fate along with her four ‘covenant’ sisters. “All of these women whose hearts are turned to stone against us by the Dark One,” he said after gaveling for silence, “all four are guilty of witchery and murder, offenses punishable by death. Sentence of hanging to be carried out on nineteen July, 1692.”

  The date was set—less than four months since Rebecca’s arrest, She, along with three others found guilty to be hung at Watch Hill—which the common man had dubbed Witch Hill. For Jeremy and the Nurses present at the trial wherein Jeremiah Wakely had tried again to introduce the history of animosity between Sister Putnam and Susannah Martin as well as the animosity of three years between Reverend Parris and the Nurse family, but he was drowned out by the hue and cry of the afflicted children who had now perfected their act.

  An opposing wail and hue and cry against the injustice of it all fell on deaf ears, and it drew the glaring eyes of the seer children, who seemed to be taking names of those who disagreed with the court.

  On leaving the courtroom, the meetinghouse converted into a venue for the Boston authorities, the same venue as Rebecca’s excommunication, Jeremy cautioned the others to remain calm.

  “Calm? Calm?” asked Ben.

  Joseph agreed. “Damn it, man, we have only twenty days between now and Mother Nurse’s being summarily executed by these swine who—a”

  “Keep your voices down,” pleaded Jeremy as the seer children, all smiles, passed from the meetinghouse and down the street, all with a lilt in their step. “Tweny days, which means we’ve got a lot of planning to do.”

  “I say we uncover the weapons back of the wagon and take her now!” Ben looked from Jeremy to the other Nurse men.

  “You’d fail, Ben,” Serena stood with Jeremy.

  “Look round us,” added Jeremy to which the others studied the number of armed guards and militia. “Putnam has seen to it we dare not.”

  Serena nodded. “There’re too many of them right now.”

  The family, Serena and Francis included, watched Mother Nurse being loaded into the jail cart to be returned to her cell. Ben made a move for a weapon, which lay beneath a blanket back of the wagon, but his brother-in-law, John Tarbell, placed his huge paw atop Ben’s. The two stared long into one another’s eyes, and for a moment everyone thought Ben was going to tear the gun from hiding and start firing and making demands, but he hesitated under Tarbell’s firm hand and words: “We all know ’tis time to act, Ben, but Jeremy’s right.”

  Jeremy repeated the litany that he’d preached for days now should the verdict go
against Rebecca, as most on their side never believed she could be found guilty. “We need a plan, we must act as one, and we must act with great caution.”

  “And we do it by cover of night.”

  A hundred sets of eyes in the village watched he Nurse contingent leave peacefully for their farms. The accusations had caused warrants and arrests against many of their clan as it had the Parkers, the Proctors, and others who’d stood by and read into evidence their belief in the piety and true heart of Rebecca Nurse, Goodwives Easty and Cloyse, as well as Elizabeth Proctor and others.

  Some villagers expected retaliation against those who’d sworn out arrests, those who had carried out arrests, and quite possibly the magistrates themselves, if not Reverend Parris and villagers who supported Mr. Parris. Among them Thomas Putnam, who’d surrounded himself with more and more militiamen, recruiting many young boys in his camp as well. Some as young as fifteen and sixteen joined the standing militia. In fact, not since the Indian Wars of that murderous, marauding King Phillip had the colony seen so many militiamen drilling daily on the green and firing off that damnable cannon, which as the Nurses, Eastys, Cloyses, and Tarbells rode in their wagons and on their horses from the village, was fired off as if in jubilation of the verdicts handed down today.

  Jeremy shouted to his new family, “What expedient measures they take—firing cannon and shot at the very invisible enemy they claim no one can see but the children. Next they will have little girls firing muskets and that bloody cannon at flying broomsticks!”

  But no amount of rancor or anger from Jeremy roused a word from the others as each was lost in his and her own thoughts, their attention wrapped about the cursed verdict against Rebecca. Finally, Serena said in so quiet a voice as to seem a butterfly—and yet she was heard by all over the sound of the wagon wheels—“If they can condemn our Mother then no one—no one is safe!”