Children of Salem

by Robert W. Walker

  For some time the crowd had fallen silent, as they’d been watching Rebecca’s considerably slower death throes. None of them had ever seen five witches hung all in a row, nor anyone take so long to die in this manner as Mother Nurse. Some thought she may have escaped death somehow.

  Herrick, Putnam, and a small army of armed men had also moved in on Ben when they saw the knife and understood his intentions. Others held back Tarbell and Joseph at gunpoint. By this time Jeremy had leapt into what was building to a fight.

  “The magistrates have ordered the condemned remain here!” Herrick challenged Ben below the gallows, holding a smooth bore gun on him, the men within two feet of one another.

  “What do you mean, remain here?”

  “They’ll swing here until nightfall. It’s my orders.”

  “You filthy barbarians!” he shouted loud enough for all to hear.

  “It’s a matter of example,” replied Herrick. “An example to anyone who turns to the dark arts and—”

  “My mother is no witch and never was!”

  Jeremy had somehow managed to meander and zigzag through the crowed to get to Ben. He stepped between Ben, brandishing the knife while Herrick pointed his deadly weapon on one side, and Ptunam—itchy finger at the ready—on the other side. Jeremy had no weapon and he held both hands in the air. “No one need get hurt here.”

  “Tell your kinsman here, Mr. Wakely,” began Herrick, never taking his eyes off Ben, “the bodies of the hanged witches remain swingin’ on the rope the rest of the day.”

  “But these are mothers, sisters, aunts here,” Jeremy pleaded. “Haven’t you taken enough of this man’s dignity and soul?” Jeremy pointed to Ben.

  “We’ve orders—until dusk.”

  “At which time, we can take Mother Nurse’s remains home, Ben,” Jeremy said, trying to defuse this situation.

  “Don’t misunderstand me, Mr. Wakely,” countered Herrick.

  “What? What’re you saying?”

  “We cut them down at dusk, but the bodies remain here—as with Bishop’s body.”

  Jeremy saw now that a huge, communal hole had been dug back of the scaffolding—a common grave. In fact, he saw the decayed forearm and hand of Bridget Bishop looking at first like the exposed root of a tree. “You can’t be serious!”

  “It’s our orders, man!” shouted Putnam from behind Jeremy, making Jeremy wheel around to face Thomas.

  “Have you men no heart left?”

  “This is not up to us. We just take orders.” Putnam looked as if he might fire at the least provocation. “Now if you two are bent on standing in the way of official business, we in the militia and Mr. Herrick’s office, we cut the ropes, and we guard against the witches coming back to life or being carried off and buried in consecrated ground.”

  “What is the point of not turning over the dead to their families?” Jeremy persisted.

  “Example,” Herrick repeated.

  “A condemned witch—which is what these five are,” added Putnam, “go to Hell together, right here at the foot of Watch Hill.”

  “Look, it’s not anything we wanted; it’s what the judges and the ministers have said.”

  “Left in shallow graves? You know there’re wolves hereabout, pigs, vultures.”

  “Forget about trying any reason with these Christians,” Ben said to Jeremy. He threw the knife with such speed no one realized it until it twanged inches from Putnam’s eyes where it had dug deep into the post beside him. “Come on, Jeremy.” Ben charged from beneath the gallows, climbed behind the reins on the wagon with Jeremy beside him, and pulled away. Joseph caught up and leapt onto the back and extended a hand to Tarbell who, in turn, followed suit.

  “The bastards!” Ben shouted, tears freely flowing as they rushed from the throng.

  # # # # #

  Serena stood far back on a hill watching the charade, her heart crushed by the events, glad only that she’d managed to talk many of her nephews and nieces to stay away from the executions. Francis leaned against her as if he might faint; seeing his beloved executed in this manner was unbearable, and she had done all she could to keep him away even to the extent that she would stay back with him. However, her father insisted as he still held onto the belief that at the last moment, those who had set his wife up in this false business would simply be unable to follow through—not with Rebecca. The others maybe, but not Rebecca.

  Serena had watched the incident with Ben racing in for their mother’s body, and she’d feared they might lose Ben as well, and perhaps even Jeremy when she watched him rush down toward the gallows along with Joseph and Tarbell and other Nurse men who’d come to see this horrid injustice unfold. She now breathed a sigh of relief on seeing Ben, Jeremy, and the others race off in the wagon, unharmed and not arrested.

  Serena wrapped a blanket around her father, who, despite the heat, was shivering as if with chilled, and sitting him beside her, she tore off in the wagon, rushing from this place and wishing to put the ugly images behind them, but also anxious to reunite with Jeremy and her brothers. They soon did reunite on the road back to Francis’ home, what had been Rebecca’s home. When Jeremy saw Serena racing her team to catch up, he told Ben to slow his horses. In a moment, the two wagons were alongside one another on the wide Ipswich Road.

  “Tonight,” Jeremy shouted to the others and stood to shift his weight, and then to leap from the one wagon to the other to rejoin Serena and Francis. “Tonight at first dark, we go in and get our Mother Nurse.”

  “You do that, but we’re taking Father home,” Serena told the brothers in the other wagon.

  Jeremy kissed and hugged her and said, “I’m going, too.”

  “There are three of them, and they hardly need your help.”

  “I need to do this, Serena.”

  She kissed him. “You frightened me once already today. I thought sure Putnam was going to shoot you.”

  “He hadn’t the nerve.”

  “If you must do this, Jeremy, and I think you must—come back to me safe, and keep the others safe.”

  Jeremy nodded and leapt back onto the other wagon. Without a word, every man aboard knew what they wanted and how they would go about it.”

  # # # # #

  They waited in a nearby wood for nightfall. When it came, they waited longer still. When they determined everyone was gone from Watch Hill and the gallows, the brothers crept back to that awful place where they had seen their mother perish so horribly for no other reason than her abiding piety.

  Without benefit of torches or light beyond the half moon going in and out of clouds like a galleon at sea, they came upon the bodies sprawled and stiff, limbs akimbo in the pitted, stony hole dug below the gallows and poorly covered over. At some point, someone in official authority was supposed to have come along and thrown dirt over the pit, to give the condemned a semblance of a burial. But so far that hadn’t happened. Instead, a handful of shovels had worked here and that was that.

  Jeremiah and Serena’s brothers, going amid the bodies, saw first the ungainly, monstrous, gaping, toothless mouth of Sarah Goode as if shouting into eternity. Jeremy practically tripped over her in the dark. Recalling that Goode was first to fall, they followed the trail of body parts and clothing and soon located the others, all easier to pass, as their faces remained obliterated by the grain sack hoods. They made their way over the rocks and the exposed roots, stumbling until all stood over the remains of Rebecca Nurse—horribly contorted.

  Shakily, tentatively each man found a hold on Rebecca while Jeremy tore off the remainder of the noose still round her neck like a fallen halo. A distant sound of thunder like drums rose at that moment, and in the sky over the too distant ocean, they watched lightning strikes.

  In a solemn, silent processional, the men hefted the surprisingly light Mother Nurse overhead. One of her arms was erect and stiff, her fingers reaching skyward for as if grasping at her eternity. Anyone who saw these four men carrying the silhouetted figure against the light
ning strikes must think it strange.

  The four brothers took her homeward to be buried in a private plot of land prepared for her in a place they believed no one would ever find, and yet a perfect place for Rebecca. It’d been Serena’s idea as to where to bury their mother—at Rebecca’s favorite tree, her circle. It would become her final resting place, and until the upturned earth offered no clue to outsiders, the grave would be placed under the largest of the picnic tables.

  When they arrived at Francis and Rebecca’s home, Francis and Serena raced out to meet Rebecca in her homecoming. Her extremities had relaxed, and she no longer seemed quite so contorted. Francis only concentrated on her features, and with a handkerchief he wiped away dirt from her gray head. Serena dabbed at her face with a wet cloth, and soon the gentle and familiar features returned, and she appeared in a deep and peaceful slumber.

  Tarbell, tears in his eyes, excused himself. “We’ve a coffin to make, Joseph, Ben.” The three of them went for the barn and the tools necessary. Jeremy held Serena close and Francis started a conversation, not with them, but with his beloved, and without having to be told that it was private, Serena led Jeremy away to allow Francis time alone with Rebecca.

  Before they got to the porch, from behind them, they heard only sobbing.

  Before dawn broke, a ceremony over Rebecca’s remains was performed, during which Francis broke down. The same men still fatigued from the previous day’s horrors, and from “robbing” the authorities of one of their murdered ‘witches’, and building a proper coffin sang Rebecca’s favorite three hymns. Serena said the Lord’s Prayer, and with the brothers covering the coffin and arranging the table over it, Serena and Jeremy put Francis to bed. The old man had aged exponentially since this terror had first touched his home.

  # # # # #

  The following morning, and indeed all the previous night, Jeremiah feared for Serena’s safety, feared that she could be accused, feared that she become the subject of a warrant and arrest, and all that followed. They’d all seen the insanity engulf Francis and Rebecca. Poor Francis had become a shell of himself, occasionally shaking a fist at God and condemning Him for the deeds of the men in the village, adding, “Rebecca said it was all due His plan, a plan so inscrutable that not one of us lowly creatures could possibly understand it.” He laughed. “Perhaps in the distant future He will make it clear to generations to come how we allowed children to dictate life and death in Salem Village.”

  It didn’t come as a complete surprise to Serena when Jeremy woke her with bloodshot eyes, with a plea. “Come away with me.”

  “Do you really think Connecticut is far enough, Jeremy? Was Maine far enough for Reverend George Burroughs?”

  It’d become general knowledge that George Burroughs had been returned to Salem in chains, arrested in Casco Bay, Maine, dragged back here, placed on trial, and found guilty, and that he now merely awaited hanging.

  When Jeremy didn’t answer her, Serena climbed from bed and paced their room. “Tell me, Goodman Wakely, where is a safe place?”

  He stuttered, unsure what to say. When he did speak, he chose his words carefully. “All I know is that I see the way those deadly frightful girls in the village stare at you, and I want an end to this madness before it takes—” He stopped short.

  “Before they take me as they did Mother, and my two aunts?”

  “It’s obvious you’re on their death list, and they’ll have to strike me dead to have you the way they got your mother.”

  “We can’t just leave. We’ve got Father to think of.”

  “We must talk him into going with us.”

  She shook her head. “He’ll never leave this land; he’s already told me to be certain to bury him below the same tree as Mother out there. Says after things return to normal that he wanted the boys to build a wrought iron fence around them and to paint that fence white.”

  Jeremy again was at a loss for words. He rubbed his hand into the stubble on his face. He’d not shaved in days and a dark beard had begun to form.

  “There’s no answer for it, Jeremy. None.”

  “Not here, perhaps; perhaps in Boston.”

  “Go back there then, Jeremy. Go and learn what you can from that Barbados witch. I know you believe there’s answers there, and I thought you’d have gone before now to seek those answers.”

  “I couldn’t leave you alone here, Serena. Last time I left and returned, your mother was arrested and locked away.”

  “I will be all right. I’ll stay out of the village.”

  “I’d worry the entire time.”

  “And if you stay here and do nothing? How worried will you be? And you, like Ben, will likely be shot dead if you’re not more careful.”

  “I just don’t feel right leaving you during this awful time.”

  “Jeremy, you’ve wanted to question that woman since you saw her in that Boston jail. I wish now I’d encouraged you back then. Listen to me, now! Go and come back to me safely.”

  “Promise me then that you’ll not leave your father’s house.”

  “I promise! Now it’s early. Go while you have the light. If you get there early enough, you could bribe the guard, have your interrogation, and be back here by morning tomorrow. No one even need know you’re gone.”

  “I imagine you’re right.”

  “I am generally right, yes. Now go before I change my mind.”

  “Or mine.”

  “Go, saddle up, Jeremy; I’ll make you a breakfast. Send you off with some biscuits for Dancer.”

  Despite the fact her back was to him, Jeremy saw that she was crying. He had held her the entire night. He knew it would take a long time for her wounds to heal.

  She was right on one item. Jeremiah had so wanted to have a face-to-face with Tituba Indian. But he wanted to tell Serena that everything was going to be all right, that sensible minds would eventually prevail, but he did not believe it any longer himself. He had no answers. And he doubted he’d find any in Boston either.

  Still he wanted to try.

  He walked out into the early, busy morning: birds chasing about, squirrels playing tag, butterflies seeking flowers, the sun reflecting off the dewy grass. He went straight for the barn, and once there, alone with Dancer, he allowed himself a wailing moan that came from his gut. Tears followed. He wiped his eyes and bridled Dancer and cinched the saddle, tugging hard. “To Boston then in search of truth,” he spoke to Dancer, who whinnied. “If there be any. Certainly, justice is gone.”

  “You’ll find none of it here,” came a voice from behind him. It was Ben in the next stall. He’d been drinking, heavily.

  Jeremy went to Ben, recalling him as a tadpole, so much smaller than him and Joseph ten years ago, and now he was bigger than both. Jeremy didn’t know what could be said to soothe how hurt young Ben felt.

  Jeremy explained that he needed Ben to look after Serena.”

  “Why? Where’re you rushing off to on that charger of yours.”

  “She’s a mare, no charger.”

  “Where to?”

  “Boston.”

  “Alone? Why not take Serena with you.”

  “She won’t leave your father right now.”

  “You’re her husband, man! Just tell her what’s what.”

  “Tell me what?” It was Serena with a basket of biscuits and apples in hand.

  Chapter Four

  In Boston by dusk, Jeremiah tried to find lodgings. The town seemed to have become swollen with people, and he could not find a room with Mrs. Fahey. However, she told him he was welcome to sleep in the barn until he could find something else.

  “Why’s it so crowded?”

  “Everyone for miles around passing through on the way to Salem.”

  “To Salem?”

  “To see the trials and executions! Haven’t ye heard? Hey, I thought you and the missus was from those parts.”

  “Most awful business for our colonial leaders to have to deal with atop all else,” he replied.
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  “Wouldn’t you say.”

  “Yes, yes! Awful business. And my horse and I, we’ll take that stall in your barn.”

  “So where is your lovely wife?”

  “I am here on business, and she had to stay behind.”

  “I see.”

  Leaving for the barn, Jeremy felt badly that he could not feel safe even with a wonderful person as Mrs. Fahey. The colony had become a place where no one could trust anyone it seemed—and for good reason.

  Jeremy bedded his horse down, and after a bite to eat, he wandered to the jail. When he neared the place where he had last seen Tituba, he found the jailer. “My name is Wakely, and I take it you are the man in charge here.”

  “I am guv’nar. What can I do for ye?”

  “You’ve a prisoner inside—”

  He burst out laughing. “Aye, I have a few!”

  “Ah . . . yes, well,” began Jeremy showing a wide smile to convince the man he actually thought him humorous. “I am interested in one prisoner in particular named Tituba? Tituba Indian? She is a Barbados black.”

  “I may have such a prisoner, but tell me, young fella, what business have ye with me prisoner?”

  The man looked like a sailor who’d become too old to work aboard a ship any longer; he even had a peg leg. His breath was rum, hair gnarled like hemp. His eyes shone in the dark like those of a younger man, blue-gray with a dancing light there. He was a far cry from Gatter or Gwinn back in Salem.

  “I wish to pay her jailer.” This got his attention well. “That is make a payment against what is owed.”