Mrs. Ann Putnam showed no doubts of that sort of testimony, not with her family so busy for the cause, as she saw it, of right. Thomas was often in Salem town working with the magistrates or over in Andover with Annie. Sometimes the afflicted families in Andover sent people with horses to accommodate her daughter and Mercy. Not that these trips were without danger, however. Annie fell from her horse once and said that one of the witches had pulled her off. The Putnams saw Andover as infested by witches—whole families of them gone over to Satan, like weeds among God’s wheat, blighting the crop. But Ann could take comfort in the thought that those witches had lost the advantage of surprise now that their plans were known.
And that Bradbury woman was also revealed for what she was, as far as Ann was concerned. Yet, like Goody Nurse, Bradbury had her supporters, some no doubt deluded, others probably collaborators. That husband of hers had collected a long list of names on a petition, just as the Nurse family had. Even a gentleman in Salisbury had written to question the court’s methods, to question the judges’ wisdom in believing the accusations. But the conclusion would no doubt end the same as the Nurse case had.
Ann prayed fervently that it would.
Rebecca Nurse’s still-grieving family faced similar fears far differently motivated from Ann’s. If witchcraft was thought to run in families, as in Andover, what did the neighbors think of them?
But this legitimate concern for their own welfare did not keep them from trying to help their kin, the two aunts, Sarah Cloyce and Mary Esty, who were currently jailed.
Still, most of the family no longer felt comfortable—or safe—attending services at the Village meeting house. What were services now but Parris’s offensive views and the afflicted’s interruptions? They fully expected to be accused—if not now, then soon enough. So they mostly attended services elsewhere, probably in Topsfield, as Reverend Capen had not assumed that the accused were necessarily guilty.
Thinking “it our most safe and peaceable way to withdraw,” they avoided their neighbors. But they did not give up resisting but rather only waited for an opportunity to do something that might help.
More suspects came in from Andover on August 11—some of Martha Carrier’s younger children, and a daughter and granddaughter of Andover’s senior minister. (But then again, Reverend Francis Dane was also Martha Carrier’s uncle, no less.) The children had confessed in Andover at their initial questioning the previous day, though the local magistrate Dudley Bradstreet had his doubts about the whole matter, “being,” as he said, “unadvisedly entered upon [a] service I am wholly unfit for.” Annie Putnam and Mercy Lewis did not doubt, and the Salem magistrates accepted the confessions readily. Now two Andover girls witnessed among the afflicted: Martha Sprague and Sarah Phelps—local girls, not just the Salem Village experts.
The Carrier children, aged eight and ten, confessed even more about their witchly activities, about how their own mother had recruited them to the Devil’s cause. Betty Johnson was twenty-two, but as her grandfather Reverend Dane would say, she was “but Simplish at the best.” She, like others, had also formed the hope that the court would spare confessors rather than merely postpone their cases, as was the reality. “I feare the common speech that was frequently spread among us, of their liberty, if they would confesse,” Reverend Dane would soon write, was what tempted many into false confessions.
Unlike her niece, Goodwife Abigail Faulkner refused to lie, stating, “I know nothing of it.” Perhaps, she said, “it is the devill dos it in my shape.” But she would not confess, not even when her niece urged her to do so “for the creddit of her Town.”
Goody Faulkner’s gaze and the fact that she nervously twisted a handkerchief as she spoke set off convulsions among the afflicted. Mary Warren’s fits were so severe that she ended up under the table as if dragged, but Goody Faulkner’s touch broke the cycle and relieved the girl, though doing so brought no relief to Goody Faulkner.
____________________
Mary English sits by the window of their small room in the jailer’s house to catch the daylight. She knots the silk in her needle with a deft twist of one index finger and draws the strand through the strip of hooped linen in her lap. She has obtained, along with clean clothes, something to embroider with, although there is less and less contact with their servants in Salem now, and Philip’s friend Mr. Hollard provides their meals.
“Now watch, Susanna,” she says to the six-year-old girl beside her. But her father’s pacing back and forth across the cramped space distracts the child. He acts like a caged wolf even though they do get to walk about the town from time to time as long as they pay for the guard who accompanies them.
“Watch.”
Outside, the street sounds of Boston compete with conversations in the prison yard and the clamor of gulls.
Mary slides the needle back through the cloth. “See? This is called a running stitch.” She repeats the design. “Now you try.”
Philip, muttering curses in French, progresses to fuller complaints about the courts. “The fools, to believe the lying wenches who accuse me, who accuse both of us of witchcraft! Fools and liars to accuse and more fools to believe them!”
His harangue, not the first since their arrival here, is making the girl uneasy and offers no comfort to Mary either, but there is no use in asking him to calm down.
“Stitch them closer next time. Try again.”
Philip moves on, with his voice becoming more defiant, to his disgust over the new governor. He had never liked Phips, even before their arrests. “Sir Edmund was the better governor,” he fumes. “But no, these imbeciles would have a local man regardless of whether he could govern. That Phips—practically a pirate—may do well enough on a quarter deck, but can he lead gentlemen? Not bloody likely.” Philip has learned to curse in English as well.
Everyone knows he dislikes Governor Phips. One of the so-called afflicted girls, they have heard, reported Philip’s specter hurrying off from Salem to Boston to deal with “his great enemy the governor.” Philip never did hide his emotions, Mary thinks.
“All that misguided hope placed in this new governor,” Phillip goes on. “All this talk of a change and see what they get. The lout couldn’t even read until he was over twenty!”
Mary has heard that too. Taught by his wife, people say. Philip English and William Phips certainly do not socialize, but their wives are clearly of equal rank and do. She has heard the rumors that some prisoners have escaped. It had to be possible.
Mary makes a few more running stitches as examples and hands the hoop to Susanna. “Practice,” she says.
( 14 )
August 12 to 31, 1692
The remaining Procter brothers, mucking out the cow yard, hear the creaking wagon before they see it. If this is a customer, then they can use the business, though supplies are low and, with their stepmother in jail, there is no one to brew more beer. John Procter Jr., at twenty-three, is the eldest remaining son. He squints down the sloping road under the sun’s glare.
Too much dust for just one cart, he thinks, men on horseback too. The younger half-siblings are in the house—or are supposed to be. Three-year-old Abigail darts outside, asking, “Papa? Is it Papa come home?”
Her brother Samuel follows, trying to exert his six-year-old authority. They tussle as the other children watch from the doorway.
The cavalcade is closer now, and John discerns a bristle of black staffs. No, this is not their father returning. This is the law—again. Hot from the day and his work a moment before, John realizes he is drenched in cold sweat.
Dear God, who are they arresting now?
Part of him wants to run away. Part of him wants to fight back.
Instead, he stands by the gate.
Abby breaks away and stumbles toward the road.
John clamps a hand on her shoulder as she tries to pass and calls to his other sister: “Mary, get them back in the house. Now.”
I should have sent them to our older married s
ister, he thinks. I should have insisted she take them in.
The procession turns into the farmyard. A gentleman at the fore halts his mount and surveys the area. His men fan out. Sheriff Corwin, only a few years older than John, holds the reins in one hand and rests the other lightly on the polished hilt of his sword.
“John Procter Junior?”
Clutching the dung fork in one hand and restraining the struggling child with the other, John is all too aware how his grimy work clothes and the cow shit on his boots undermines any attempt at dignity. Even so, he draws himself up, trying to act as he feels their absent father would. “I am.”
Abigail begins to cry: “Mama? Did they bring Mama back?”
Finally Mary scoops up the child and carries her away. Sheriff Corwin produces a paper from his pocket and reads it through, but something about it is different. John hears the name of their father and the names of the monarchs but no name for the accused.
“What?” It is not another an arrest warrant. Nearly dizzy with relief, he cannot hear what the sheriff says next. Corwin looks annoyed and repeats himself.
“Take the felons’ goods into custody. I trust no one will interfere with my men.”
“Goods?” What is he talking about?
Corwin nods to his deputies, who split into groups and head for the barn and the house.
“Wait! What goods do you mean?”
Some of the men start herding the cows from the nearby pasture and, to judge from the squealing, try to drive the pigs from their pen.
Thank heaven some swine are loose in the wood lot.
Abby’s wail from the house sends John running inside. The deputies—one looks almost apologetic, one sneering—haul boxes and sacks of supplies from the root cellar.
“You’re frightening the children,” says John, but the men keep working, piling the Procters’ supplies and possessions into the center of the room. Someone clumps across the floor above.
One of the deputies rolls a sloshing barrel from its corner—the last of the beer supply.
“Get rid of it,” one of the men orders. “And I don’t mean drink it.”
They heave the barrel over, sending the beer foaming onto the hearth, then begin packing brass and iron kitchen gear. Everything else—anything of value—vanishes into sacks.
“Wait!” says Mary. “That’s our dinner.”
The sneering deputy doesn’t reply but instead lifts the pot from its hook and slops its contents onto the small cook fire beneath. The thin broth hisses as it quenches the frail flame and sends a small twist of smoke up from the wet ashes.
“What are we supposed to live on?” John demands. “When do we get any of this back?”
Corwin still sits upon his horse, directing the operation from on high and, thus, keeping his hands clean. John Procter seethes and dares to do nothing, as his relief at not being arrested turns to anger. It seems to take hours, but eventually the procession forms again. The loaded wagons creak forward back down the road toward town, followed by a ragged drove of cattle lowing their unease at the change of routine. The pigs give more trouble, but they too are prodded along with the rest.
Dear Lord, what will happen next?
John slumps against the sundial’s post and watches the thieves recede.
How have they missed taking the brass sundial? he wonders. First their father and his wife are taken, then Benjamin and William, then Sarah. We should be grateful no one was arrested this time, but still—what are we to live on?
His younger brothers and sisters are watching him, waiting to be told what to do. He straightens up. “Mary, see what’s left in the house. Thorndike, come with me. We must find the rest of the cows—and hide them.”
____________________
Confiscations, as the Procters had endured, were a new twist on the treatment of convicted felons, a part of English common law not used before in Massachusetts Bay but used now in the government’s efforts not to violate the charter’s repugnancy clause. The idea was to remove a convicted felon’s material possessions and store them so as to prevent the felon’s family and other supporters from disposing of them before sums due to the Crown (or the Crown’s provincial government) could be paid. After that, the deceased felon’s heirs could be provided for. However, with the escalating number of prisoners being jailed that summer, at least some of the goods were being used to feed them or sold to pay for the court’s many expenses.
The result was even greater resentment among both the families of the accused and the population at large.
John’s sons could, in visits to the jail, have told him the discouraging news—how the sheriff and his men had arrived not to arrest any more of the family this time, a fear foremost in their minds, but instead to take forfeited goods. (Possibly Mary Warren would have overheard or been told what had passed, what her fancies and distractions had caused.) In whispered fury the sons would have told their father the details during a prison visit. The law had “left nothing in the House for the support of the Children,” as they would later report.
The cattle, as they had learned, were either sold at half the price they were worth or slaughtered, with the meat salted for the West India trade. The government had no place to keep livestock, so selling was the only solution. The Procters would be lucky to get the money equivalent back, but the cattle and other possessions were gone for good.
Mary Warren, preparing to leave the jail with the rest of the afflicted to witness the latest hangings on August 19, could not help overhearing her former master arguing with someone—the sheriff, perhaps, and Reverend Noyes.
He was not ready to die, John Procter’s voice carried down the corridor. He needed more time to settle his soul.
Reverend Noyes’s voice carried even more clearly. Because Procter would not confess to what was so obvious, what the court had proven, how could he presume to be able to put his soul to rights under those circumstances?
Procter objected. At least pray with him now, he asked.
But Noyes refused, unwilling to waste compassion on the obviously guilty—what was the point?
Mary could not stop listening. The other prisoners stayed quiet, straining to hear.
They had already heard that Margaret Jacobs, once a confessor-accuser but since recanted, had asked to see Reverend Burroughs the day before to acknowledge personally that she had given “altogether false and untrue” evidence against him, as well as her grandfather George Jacobs and John Willard, and to ask for his forgiveness. Burroughs not only forgave Margaret but also prayed with her. (She may have apologized to her grandfather as well, for he had a line added to his recent will, leaving her £10 in silver.) But neither Mary Warren nor the other confessors were willing to change their stories.
Now Martha Carrier made her farewells to her children. But the youngest of them at least, their shrill voices verging on tears and then dissolving into weeping, begged their mother to confess, to choose life and stay with them. One of them lamented that their own mother had dedicated them to the Devil, but the mother’s impatient harried tones interrupted all of this. Words were hardly distinguishable, the emotions too raw to miss.
So sad, Mary thought, then corrected herself. Her own mother had been taken by witches, bewitched to death, and where was the pity then?
Finally, the five felons were boosted into the waiting cart. The procession assembled, and the gate creaked open. The usual crowd was out there, more along the street—more all told than for any of the previous executions. An influx of gentlemen, including several out-of-town ministers from Boston and elsewhere, had come in to witness the end of their erstwhile colleague, George Burroughs.
Mary trudged on among the afflicted, down the road to the Town Bridge, over the creek that entered the river bend in its little marsh, and up on to the ledges above the tidal pool. The crowd jostled its way onto the more level land, leaving a space around the gallows. The proceedings began as the other executions had, but this time the prisoners in the cart ha
d more to say and turned to one of the visiting ministers, Cotton Mather from Boston—Mary heard the crowd murmur his name—to ask him to pray with them. Unlike Noyes, Mather agreed, and together the five felons and the minister addressed the Lord. They prayed for God to identify the true witches among them; to forgive their accusers, the judges, and the juries for finding them guilty; and to forgive all their sins—their actual sins. The prisoners also repeated their claim of innocence and prayed “that their blood might be the last innocent blood shed upon that account.” Procter and Willard appeared unaccountably dignified and collected. Even old Jacobs seemed to impress some in the crowd. From what Mary had heard, he rarely forgave a slight ordinarily.
But none of this was ordinary despite that it happened so often now.
Reverend George Burroughs had more to add once he stood on the ladder, teetering a little, for his hands were tied behind him. He also offered a prayer, addressed as much to the onlookers as to God, again declaring his innocence. More people in the crowd murmured to hear it, especially when Burroughs ended with the Lord’s Prayer—word perfect. The magistrates had allowed the recitation of this so-familiar prayer as a test for the accused, even though that was a folk test, not a proper use of Scripture. Everyone knew it, but several accused had slipped on the lines, mangling the meaning. Willard certainly had. And a witch sworn to Satan’s cause would hardly express the sentiments of that prayer perfectly. “May Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.” God’s will, Burroughs emphasized—not necessarily man’s will.
Although more people reacted to this delivery, some even moved to tears, and restlessness rippled through the throng, no one stepped forward to do anything about it—yet.
Six Women of Salem Page 35
