Six Women of Salem

by Marilynne K. Roach

  ____________________

  Mary Warren feels the dread close in ’til her panic rises as darkness seeps into her field of vision. It becomes harder to breathe, and she hears little shuddering gasps of distress that she knows are her own as she begins to tremble, the motion increasing violently. She half hears Goody Procter’s voice commanding her to stop, half hears the disapproving tone more than the words.

  The room and other inconsequential details fade from her notice as she heeds the shadowy specters that are rushing forward to overwhelm her and . . .

  Suddenly, Mary is back in the Procters’ kitchen. She reels, as if she has just been dropped into this familiar place from somewhere else. The side of her head stings.

  Before her, Goodman Procter stands glaring, clenching his fists. She realizes he has just slapped her—hard—and is ready to hit her harder if necessary.

  She clutches the burning side of her face. It takes her a moment to understand what her master is saying, but the tone of his voice is unmistakable. He is furious and does not believe that her fits are real, does not believe the specters she reports are real, does not believe that the pain she claims these spirits inflict is real. But if it’s pain she wants, he will give it to her.

  Mary tries to explain her fears, but he clouts her again, on the ear this time, his wife just standing there, looking grim and satisfied at the turn of events. Mary cries out at the pain. Procter grabs her arm and drags her across the room. Resistance only hurts the more, and Mary finds herself swung in an arc toward the spinning wheel. She collides with it and feels Procter’s grip on both her shoulders as he shoves her down onto a stool. She nearly topples over, but he does not let go.

  “You will work,” he says, his angry face just inches from hers. “You will end this dangerous foolishness. You will behave and obey the both of us. Understand?”

  Mary nods, unable to speak. She has often wondered what being this close to her master would be like, but this was not the sort of touch she had daydreamed about.

  Procter straightens up. “Work,” he says, kicking a basket of combed flax toward her. “Now.”

  Her hands tremble, but she nonetheless takes a handful of fibers and begins to turn the wheel. Both John and Elizabeth Procter stare at her, making sure she does what she is ordered to do.

  ( 4 )

  March 18 to 31, 1692

  Because her maid as well as her eldest daughter is bewitched, Mistress Ann Putnam has less help and more work. Now she has to tend to them, watch lest they topple too close to the open fire or an uncovered well—and this on top of her other children’s demands, her husband’s needs, the family and the hired men to feed.

  In addition, she feels the familiar sour queasiness come morning, for she is with child again—her eighth—another to bear, to protect from all malevolent influences, both seen and unseen.

  But weary as she is, there is no rest.

  The day before, Ann, worn out by midafternoon, retired to her bed—just for a moment, just for a reprieve—only to have the vengeful specter of the Corey woman attack her. It was not enough that it tormented Annie and Mercy; now it pressed and choked Ann herself, threatening bodily harm if she did not sign away her soul.

  Would the specter return?

  Ann fears it will, for the witches are attacking other grown women now, not just children and maids. Her worries clamor ever closer, and every fear presses on her, one thing after another. She begins to glimpse shadowy forms flicker past the corners of her eyes.

  Was it Corey?

  Her fear surges into panic as the darkness increases, and she finds it harder and harder to breathe. A shadow congeals into the form of a woman—Martha Corey, back again with that red book and black pen, demanding Ann sign away her soul. Beyond the snarling Corey is another specter, an older woman.

  Ann convulses; her scattered wits try to decipher who else would do this to her, who would send such terrors?

  Rebecca Nurse. It must be Rebecca, she thinks. It has to be.

  Amid the assault Ann clings to the strengthening thought that her soul is saved. Why throw away her own salvation and cast herself out of Heaven? How dare the witches think she would do that!

  She cannot tell how long she struggles, but at last the room clears. The specters are gone—for now—and instead she sees Thomas, feels his strong grip on her shoulders, pulling her back, away from the darkness. With a sob of relief she clings to him, and they hold each other close, together a bulwark against witches and all the other unholy forces aligned against them.

  ____________________

  By now perceived spectral threats had spread across the Village and beyond, attacking not only the girls and young women but matrons as well, for besides Ann Putnam, Mrs. Bethshua Pope had been struck blind for a time by specters, and Sarah Bibber, a laborer’s wife, also suffered fits along with an “ancient woman named Goodall.”

  Matters in the Putnam household now looked severe enough for the family to resort to the law once again. Thomas’s brother Edward along with Henry Kenny journeyed to town and made their complaint before Magistrates Hathorne and Corwin against Martha Corey. They named the suspect’s supposed victims: Mrs. Ann Putnam Sr. and her daughter Ann Jr., Kenney’s kinswoman Mercy Lewis, Dr. Grigg’s niece Elizabeth Hubbard, and Reverend Parris’s niece Abigail Williams. Parris’s daughter Betty was not named and would not appear in any more complaints. (Her father may have sent her away from the turmoil to another household. She was certainly at Stephen Sewall’s home in Salem town March 25, though it is only an informed guess that she stayed away.)

  Because the following day was a Sabbath, Martha Corey remained free and probably attended services with the rest of the Village and the afflicted. Rebecca Nurse, feeling ill, remained at home. Reverend Deodat Lawson was a guest preacher this day, having come up from Boston after learning of Tituba’s assertion that witchcraft had killed his first wife and their daughter. Some of the afflicted, including Ann’s maid, Mercy Lewis, and Mrs. Pope, interrupted his sermon with loud comments; others in the congregation tried to calm the afflicted and keep their interruptions to a minimum. However, some of the afflicted reported Goody Corey’s specter lurking up in the beams. After the service the real Martha Corey commented that the ministers and magistrates acted as if they were blind to what was going on but that she could open their eyes to the truth; after all, neither the girls nor the Devil could stand before a Gospel woman like herself.

  It was another trying day for Mrs. Putnam, yet because it was the Sabbath, she found some solace in leafing through her Bible, dipping randomly into scripture. In Isaiah 40:1 she read, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God,” and she applied that to her own situation. Reading further and skimming the chapter headings, she found Isaiah 49:1: “Listen, O isles unto me; and hearken ye people, from far; The LORD hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of me.” This she applied to the state of her own soul, for, despite her continuing doubts, surely she was among the elect, called to God from even before her birth. Considering her new pregnancy, the metaphor may have given her hope about her child to come and certainly reminded her of this additional responsibility.

  When she reached Isaiah 50:1 she applied that verse to the souls of Rebecca Nurse and Martha Corey: “Thus saith the Lord, Where is the bill of your mother’s divorcement, whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves, and for your transgressions is your mother put away.”

  Divorced, disowned, cast away by God—that was what happened to witches, to those cruel and foolish people who purchased the power to harm, with their souls as the price.

  Now when neighbors came to pray with them for Annie’s sake, the girl saw the shapes of her family’s enemies among them: Goody Corey and Goody Nurse pretending to pray to God but actually praying to the Devil.

  From the packed audience the next day Ann watched as her daughter and the ot
her victims confronted Martha Corey, who had been arrested at last. The girls, shrieking in pain, crumpled at the sight of the woman, yet Corey insisted on her innocence as well as delivering a prayer before the assembly even though Reverend Noyse had opened the proceedings with prayer. Corey’s forwardness (as others saw it)—her attempt to usurp a man’s prerogative to deliver the public prayer—didn’t impress Ann or the magistrates, Hathorne and Corwin. Instead, they noted her inability to answer how she had known ahead of time that the deputation would ask about her clothes.

  The magistrates were insulted when the defendant sought to advise them, offended by her earlier boast that she would open their eyes to the truth. Her remark that her accusers could not stand before her now seemed like a threat to knock them down, as the afflicted fell if she even looked at them. Corey began to deny not only any guilt but also having said certain things that more than one witness had heard, having a familiar or seeing the yellow bird that her victims reported flying about the meeting house, and knowing anything about the Devil’s book or about witches in the area. By then the afflicted were so susceptible to her every motion that they felt pain if she leaned against her chair or bit her own lip. Suddenly Mrs. Pope, feeling her bowels cramp, threw her muff at Martha Corey. The soft thing fell far short of the intended target, so the woman pulled off a shoe and hurled it at the defendant, striking the side of her head. Now the afflicted repeated every motion Martha made, moving when she moved, stamping their feet if she as much as shifted hers. To Ann and most of the rest of the audience she appeared to be magically manipulating the afflicted like puppets while everyone watched.

  Finally the magistrates assigned Martha Corey to Salem jail to await trial, even as she continued to insist that she was a Gospel woman. Ann Putnam felt some relief that Corey would be in jail, and though she had suffered fewer seizures herself that day, Ann was exhausted, worn out by the ordeal.

  But the next morning she was worse. Just at daybreak, as Ann later reported, Rebecca Nurse’s specter appeared before Ann’s bedside, clad at that early hour in a night cap and shift, threatening terrible tortures if Ann did not sign away her soul in the Devil’s book. The specter held out a small, red bound volume, but Ann quoted scripture to counter the witch’s threats, perhaps Isaiah 50:1: “Behold, for your iniquities have ye sold yourselves . . .”

  Neither God nor Christ could save Ann’s soul, the specter sneered, and then it threatened to rip that soul from her body. The spectral Rebecca may have brought the Devil himself to cajole and threaten, for at some point around this time, as Ann later described it, her enemy brought the dark, shadowy Fiend to persuade her to defy God. This battle for Ann’s soul lasted two hours.

  This is how Ann remembered the incident. What it appeared like to Thomas is not stated, but he believed his wife’s interpretation of the vision.

  The real Rebecca Nurse knew nothing of this. She had been ill and housebound for about a week as well as being frail and hard of hearing. Rumor hinted that she was actually recovering from wounds dealt to her specter, gossip that her family did not repeat to her. Toward the end of March four neighbors arrived to visit: Rebecca’s brother-in-law Peter Cloyce, his neighbor Daniel Andrews, Andrew’s brother-in-law Israel Porter (Joseph Putnam’s father-in-law), and Porter’s wife, Elizabeth. Elizabeth Porter was Magistrate John Hathorne’s sister, but the four came as Rebecca’s friends—not just to comfort but also to allow a fellow church member to explain her side of a controversy. They would later say that they were “desiered to goe,” probably asked by the Nurse family, but did not immediately introduce the purpose of their mission.

  Noticing that she was in “A weak and Lowe condition in body,” they asked how she was otherwise. As Porter wrote of the visit: “shee said shee blest god for it shee had more of his presents in this sicknes then somtime shee have had but not soe much as shee desiered but shee would with the Apostle pres forward to the mark.” She cited other Scriptural encouragements, “and then of her owne Acord,” she brought up the topic of the afflicted, especially Reverend Parris’s daughter and his niece. She had heard the fits were “Awfull to behold.” She grieved for them, she said, “pittied them with all her harte” and prayed for them all. But, she reported, she dared not visit any of them, for in the past she too had suffered fits and feared a reoccurrence. Nevertheless, she had “heard that there was persons spoke of that wear as Innocent as shee was shee belived.”

  At that, the guests told her that some people did indeed suspect her.

  This news took Rebecca completely by surprise, and she needed a few moments to take it in.

  “[W]ell,” said Rebecca. “[I]f it be soe the will of the Lord [be] done.” She sat still for a space looking, her visitors thought, amazed. Clearly the information was unexpected.

  “[W]ell,” she repeated, “as to this thing I am as Innocent as the child unborne but seurly,” she added,” “what sine hath god found out in me unrepented of that he should Lay such an Affliction upon me In my old Age.”

  Ann Putnam, meanwhile, continued to suffer convulsions. On Wednesday, March 23, as Ann, attended by concerned kin and neighbors, rested on the bed recovering from her latest seizure, her former pastor Deodat Lawson paid a call on the ailing household. The tormenting specter, Ann and Thomas told Lawson, had boasted earlier that the minister would not pray for Ann—or would not be allowed to. Nevertheless, they asked Lawson to defy the specter and pray with Ann while she was still conscious. As Lawson later wrote,

  At the first beginning she attended; but after a little time, was taken with a fit yet continued silent, and seemed to be Asleep; when Prayer was done, her Husband going to her, found her in a Fit; he took her off the Bed, to set her on his Knees; but at first she was so stiff, she could not be bended; but she afterwards set down; but quickly began to strive violently with her Arms and Leggs; she then began to Complain of, and as it were to Converse personally with, Goodw[ife] N[urse].

  Lawson must have been scribbling notes as Ann argued.

  Goodw[ife] N[urse]. Be gone! Be gone! Be gone! are you not ashamed, a Woman of your Profession to afflict a poor Creature so? [for Rebecca was a professed Christian and thus considered elect.] what hurt did I ever do you in my life! you have but two years to live, and then the Devil will torment your Soul, for this your Name is blotted out of Gods Book, and it shall never be put in Gods Book again. be gone for shame, are you not afraid of that which is coming upon you? I Know, I know, what will make you afraid; the wrath of an Angry God. I am sure that will make you afraid; be gone, do not torment me, I know what you would have (we judged she meant her Soul) but it is out of your reach; it is Clothed with the white Robes of Christ’s Righteousness.

  Lawson and the others watched while Ann, her eyes “fast closed all this time,” disputed with the specter over the existence of a certain passage of Scripture. Evidently the spectral Rebecca denied its existence yet tried to prevent Ann from citing it. Ann insisted that there was such a passage and that it would vanquish the specter, at least for the time being.

  “I am sure you cannot stand before that Text!” Ann exclaimed, but she was immediately “sorely Afflicted; her mouth drawn on one side, and her body strained for about a minute.

  “I will tell, I will tell,” she managed at last. Then she repeated, “it is, it is, it is!” before being choked off again. At last she pulled free. “It is the third Chapter of the Revelations.”

  Lawson hesitated, for the Devil might mean to use the scripture against them by encouraging its use as a superstitious charm. He agreed, however, as an experiment, presumably using a Geneva translation of the Bible favored by Puritans rather than the Church of England King James version.

  Before he finished the first verse, which ended, “I know thy works; for thou hast a name that thou livest, but thou art dead,” Ann opened her eyes and relaxed as Lawson continued: “Be awake, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to dye, for I have not found thy works perfect before God. Remember theref
ore, how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou wilt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.”

  And this comforted Ann, who assumed that Rebecca did not know what well-deserved punishment was in store for her or when it would happen.

  Lawson continued to the section about the triumphant soul that Ann had referred to in her fit as concerning her own: “He that overcometh, shall be clothed in white array, and I will not put out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his Angels”—unlike Rebecca’s name, which, according to Ann’s remark, was blotted out of God’s Book forever.

  When Lawson finished, Ann addressed the specter triumphantly: “Did I not say he should go to Prayer?”

  This particular fit took half an hour, Lawson noted: “Her Husband and the Spectators told me, she had often been so relieved by reading Texts that she named, something pertinent to her Case; as Isa. 40. 1, Isa 49. 1, Isa. 50. 1, and several others”—including the Book of Revelation, it seems.

  Revelation is a highly symbolic work traditionally ascribed to the disciple John; it is framed as a vision the writer experienced and addressed to seven early Christian churches in the Near East. Its meaning is still debated, with interpretations ranging from a literal description of the world’s eventual end to first-century comments on Nero’s regime that were too risky to discuss openly. In seventeenth-century Massachusetts the book especially intrigued Reverend Nicholas Noyes of Salem, who was hardly the only one who found it fascinating. If the Devil were actually making an organized assault on their churches and communities, this possibility too closely matched the action in Revelation.