Where was she? Was she heading for distant parts to hide in another jurisdiction? Or was she lurking nearby, unseen, waiting to take revenge on those who opposed her?
She was gone, simply gone, spirited out of the jail by . . . what? Spirits? The Devil?
By bribery, more likely. Gold could buy anything, it seemed. Ann, counting herself a reasonable woman, could understand the venality of men. So the Putnams could not let down their guard in this righteous, necessary cause. Ann could not relax yet.
Other prisoners escaped as well. By mid-September John Alden managed to flee the Boston jail, first to his family in Plymouth County, so descendants would say, then further to the province of New York, following Mrs. Cary and the Englishes.
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With Giles Corey still stubbornly uncooperative, the Putnams learn, the court has ordered him subjected to peine forte et dure to make him agree to be tried—to be pressed to death if he would not answer how he would be tried. The evening before this happens witch-specters yet again assail Annie Putnam.
At the end of the torture Annie seems to be listening to some other entity. It is the ghost of a man in a winding sheet, the girl says. Corey killed him—“Pressing him to Death with his Feet”—and then the old man sold his soul to the Devil to escape the murder charge.
Ann and Thomas remember the death and the ensuing trial. It is quite true that Corey was tried for the murder of his hired man Jacob Goodall, a neighbor’s slow-witted son (“almost a Natural Fool” in Thomas’s opinion, for the man had been born that way), and it was true that Corey had beaten the man severely. Yet no one had mentioned this during the trials, and it happened well before Annie’s birth.
Annie relays the ghost’s message: It must be done to him as he has done to me.
This is indeed significant. Thomas composes a letter to Judge Samuel Sewall relating the vision and what he remembers of the old court case. “[I]t cost him a great deal of Mony to get off,” in addition to collaborating with the Devil, Thomas writes. He forgets—or prefers to forget—that Corey beat Jacob with a stout staff rather than his feet and that as other impatient people had struck the man as well from time to time, the coroner’s jury’s opinion was inconclusive. Joining with the Devil makes more sense. This way the Putnams need not feel sorrow for Corey or guilt for themselves when he faces the morrow’s torture.
Rebecca Nurse’s family, meanwhile, continued their lives, journeying to Topsfield for Sabbath services, avoiding the neighbors. Francis, a widower now, had begun to lose her months before in March, when she was first taken away. The house may have seemed empty then, but since her death a profound absence pervaded it—the silence when a voice should answer and cannot, her familiar footsteps gone along with the little disregarded sounds of everyday life as she went about her tasks—all ended, leaving a hollowness in life itself. Absence filled the house, the farm, the world—but not his heart, for all its wounds, or his resolve.
Her sisters still needed help, and her good name must be cleared. The Lord knew her true worth, of that Francis was certain, but the world and her neighbors who inhabited it must be made to understand the truth of what had happened, the travesty of justice and the treachery of men and young girls who cared not whether the blood they shed was guilty or innocent.
With Giles Corey still stubbornly uncooperative, the court ordered the peine forte et dure. He remained silent and died under the torture on September 19. Because Giles still owed jail fees, Sheriff Corwin and his men went to the Corey farm to seize goods in payment. Giles’s daughter Elizabeth Moulton and her husband, John, who had already gone to months of trouble and expense providing for both Giles and Martha in prison, scraped together £11:6:0 to prevent this. In the rush, the “personal Estate” Martha had been caring for as inheritance for her son Thomas Rich was lost as well.
Yet again the procession formed on September 22, yet again a crowd of spectators gathered near the prison’s gate to see the condemned led out. Mary Warren joined the little knot of afflicted witnesses. Behind them two more of the recently condemned remained, their deaths postponed. Dorcas Hoar confessed at last, after so many protestations of innocence, after she was found guilty and pleaded for time to settle her soul before she died and faced God’s judgment. Unlike John Procter’s plea for time, however, hers was granted—the confession seeming, to the court, like honesty. Abigail Faulkner also stayed behind until her next child was born—she and Elizabeth Procter having at least that in common. Old Mrs. Bradbury was absent from the procession as well; the sheriff and deputies kept an embarrassed silence about that.
Even so, the cart held eight today: Martha Corey, Mary Esty, Alice Parker, Mary Parker, Ann Pudeator, Wilmot Read, Margaret Scott, and Samuel Wardwell, who, after confessing at his hearing and accusing others in court, had, at his own trial, repudiated his confession when he saw that it would not save him. Of the ten more condemned prisoners, nine waited behind for another session of executions.
The weather was cooler now, with the fall colors in the leaves hastened by a dry summer as the drought continued.
Down the road they passed, kicking up dust that gritted the eyes and dried the breath as it coated yellowing roadside weeds and scarlet vines, ghost-like, beneath a skin of dust. The crowd turned downhill to the causeway in the marsh, bunching up as the way narrowed at the bridge over the stream. The prisoners and officers preceded the rest, and as the loaded cart turned up the further hill, its wheels became stuck in the soft earth. Some of the afflicted and others took up the cry that the Devil was trying to hold back the cart. Mary Warren joined in, but for all of Satan’s boasted power, the delay was only temporary. The deputies heaved against the cart, the wheels soon lurched free, and the procession continued on up to the gallows.
The condemned, given their chance to speak last words, remained calm and solemn. Two in particular impressed Robert Calef. As he later reported the incidents:
Mary Esty, Sister also to Rebecca Nurse, when she took her last farewell of her Husband, Children and Friends, was, as is reported by them present, as Serious, Religious, Distinct, and Affectionate as could well be exprest, drawing Tears from the Eyes of almost all present.
Martha Corey, Gospel woman to the last, “concluded her Life with an Eminent Prayer upon the Ladder.”
Samuel Wardwell, who had had so much to say about his own fortune-telling abilities in the past and even more when he blamed other suspects of committing witchcraft, was, according to Calef, less successful.
At Execution while he was speaking to the People, protesting his Innocency, the Executioner being at the same time smoaking Tobacco, the smoake coming in his Face, interrupted his Discourse, those Accusers said, the Devil hindered him with the smoake.
But if he were the only one silenced, then even Alice Parker, Mary Warren’s enemy, made an appropriate statement.
Hands and feet tied, one by one they were turned off the ladder, and one by one they died with the usual painful messy contortions. Then there was nothing left but to let the workmen bury the dead, with the corpses hanging there long enough to warn and deter other evildoers.
As Mary and the rest began to turn back toward town and relatives of some of the dead waited at the edges to claim their kin home for burial, Reverend Noyes regarded the eight bodies swaying at rope’s end from the gallows and commented, “What a sad thing it is to see Eight Firebrands of Hell hanging there.”
Before the afternoon was out, clouds gathered and began to rain on the parched dry land. Then it rained harder. People could hope that the long summer’s drought had ended, but there was still the next court sitting to contemplate. What the courts might do was even more uncertain than New England’s weather.
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Tituba thinks she hears a light rain pattering outside on dust too dry to absorb it yet. She is preoccupied, however, with the knowledge that eight more are dead, hanged like the rest. But not Giles Corey, who refused to cooperate and was pressed to dea
th. Tituba shudders at the thought. The jail had been quieter that day, after old Corey was taken out and not brought back. Some of the deputies working that detail returned ashen and haggard, as though they had been sick. Tituba had overheard some of what they said.
“But that stubborn old man kept refusing to cooperate. He even said, ‘More weight,’ as if he was directing the job.”
“Oh, how do you know what he said? I hear you were puking your guts out.”
“That was later . . . and you didn’t hear his ribs crack.”
A third guard chimed in as the voices receded down the corridor: “I hear that after Corey finally died the sheriff had to poke the man’s tongue back into his mouth with the tip of his cane.”
The prisoners kept an appalled silence. Would the court order pressing for any of the others? No one knew.
Martha Corey, widowed by this nastiness, had long before dismissed Tituba, Good, and Osborn as “idle slothful persons,” easy prey for prowling devils. But Tituba has to admit that she admires how the woman faced her death. By all report, she had said her piece from the gallows, another one of her public prayers that shocked the men so. And the week before that, Reverend Parris and the deacons from the Salem Village Church had arrived at the jail to excommunicate Goody Corey—her, the Gospel woman herself. Tituba heard only snatches from down the hallway and overheard more from jail yard gossip. Goody Corey had refused Reverend Parris’s prayers, boldly and right to his face—not that that stopped him—and talked back to his comments, something Tituba had never dared to do. Yes, she has to admire the woman for that.
Mistress Bradbury’s escape is likewise encouraging, though Tituba, as she hears the rain increase, does not imagine anyone is working to help her break out. She thought she heard some furtive noises that night, of people moving around, the grate of a key in a lock, hushed voices and the shuffle of an old woman too long in chains. Looking back, Tituba thinks that the escape must explain those sounds—as well as the angry voices the following morning.
Outside, rain drips from the eves.
Not so encouraging is Samuel Wardwell’s swift trial and condemnation. He confessed as Tituba has. He accused others also and was far more vigorous about it than she ever was. Yet he was not kept alive as a future witness but instead put before the grand jury within days when he gave up the pretense, admitted his innocence, and was tried and condemned. Now he is dead, hanged with the latest batch of eight.
How does this affect her own future? Tituba can only guess.
The sound of the rain increases to a hiss, and a damp breeze wanders through the small window.
( 16 )
October 1692
Mary English, shivering in the sea wind, draws her cloak closer about her.
Her new maid is busy watching the boats maneuver among the wharves and a larger ship tacking along the channel. It seems strange to look south into the harbor instead of east, but New York City lies at the southern tip of Manhattan Island. The buildings are different too—Dutch architecture and Dutch speech instead of English for the most part. Her maid’s native Dutch is more fluent than her English. Sometimes it is a trial to communicate with her new servants. Mary is used to the French she heard in the streets of Salem and at home, but here there are more tongues and peoples. It is a good enough place, though, and they have found helpful people, but it is not home. Philip is more comfortable here than Mary is—her husband has traveled so much and so far, so this is hardly surprising. Mary finds herself comparing everything to Salem—the harbor, the houses. Salem is deadly to them as things stand, but she is homesick and Philip’s talk of locating here permanently vexes her.
She calls to her maid, and they begin the walk home from the market. As the wind picks up she feels a tightening in her chest, fumbles for the handkerchief in her pocket, and presses it to her mouth to muffle a cough—and another cough. On the flight south or here in this alien city she has caught something she cannot shake.
Philip is home before them, full of fresh air and news from the marketplace.
“Finally!” he says in a triumphant tone. “The fools in Massachusetts are admitting doubts, consulting New York ministers for their advice in handling the witch accusations.” Philip knows how the accusers ought to have been treated from the beginning. “Liars all of them,” he has said often enough. “Fools. Maybe someone will listen this time,” though he has his doubts about Will Stoughton. “That obstinate cochon never changes his mind.”
He goes on about this and about how the province of New York is the place in which he should have settled years ago. The news is hopeful, but it makes Mary all the more homesick. Although New York was unlikely to prosecute witch suspicions, the politics here can be savage: the leaders in the government that took over after Andros’s fall were drawn and quartered as traitors when the new royal governor arrived.
And the children—how are they faring? Sooner or later the witch scare has to end, but will Philip let her return? She longs to be in her own home among her own things, though many of their goods were confiscated after their escape became known. She thinks of her girlhood sampler. Where is it now? Things like that are not just possessions, earthly goods as opposed to treasures in Heaven. They hold her history and maintain ties to her past, to her mother.
Philip has lived in so many places—it isn’t the same for him. He does not long to see Salem again, the light on the sea, the blue and distant islands, the long back of Marblehead across the harbor, beyond the bristle of Salem’s masts and spars—home.
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The September hangings marked a turning point in the witch trials. Enough people harboring uncertainty had joined those who opposed the trials that officials allowed a month’s pause until the next session on November 2 so the legislature might convene in Boston to rewrite the laws of Massachusetts. This created a breathing space as well as an excuse to pull back. It gave the Nurse family time to plan and hope.
But not everyone thought the court had been mistaken.
Neighbors in Lynn, Boston, Reading, and Gloucester still feared—and accused—their neighbors. A girl in Andover thought a certain dog was an imp, so someone shot the creature dead. Another dog acting strangely in Salem Village was thought to be the victim of witchcraft, ridden by the specter of John Bradstreet (the Andover magistrate’s brother), but someone killed this animal anyway. Critics of the court’s methods remarked acidly that this was the only afflicted victim who was punished; clearly they thought the human afflicted needed punishment. Mary Warren must have heard this view expressed, must have seen disapproving glares directed at her, which now replaced the approval that had encouraged her deadly antics all summer. Nevertheless, for the time being both Dudley and John Bradstreet as well as John’s wife fled to New Hampshire.
At some point the afflicted in Salem named a gentleman in Boston who, instead of fleeing, immediately informed his accusers that they were liable to an expensive lawsuit if they continued. The accusers backed down, abruptly and conveniently unsure of their identification.
Another unidentified Boston man “of no small note,” convinced that his ailing child was bewitched, brought the child all the way to Salem for spectral diagnosis and received the names of two Boston-area women whom he already suspected: Mrs. Mary Obinson and Mrs. Elizabeth Cary. Yet when he returned home and made his complaint before Boston magistrates, they refused to have any part of it; Mrs. Cary was in New York by then anyway, but Mrs. Obinson, a quarrelsome woman in a turbulent marriage, was spared arrest.
Reverend Increase Mather gave the man a severe dressing-down. Was there not a God in Boston, Mather snapped, that he felt he had to go to the Devil in Salem for advice? Mather had recently finished writing a lengthy essay, Cases of Conscience, that marshaled the reasons why spectral evidence should not be used in court. Increase made it clear that he believed in the reality of witches but did not trust the court’s present methods of discerning them. Spectral evidence, he argued, had its source in the
Devil and therefore could not be trusted. On October 3 his son Cotton Mather had read the piece to the monthly meeting of Boston-area ministers in Cambridge for its first public presentation.
Suspects were still being arrested, however, for on the same day as the reading of Cases of Conscience, Sarah Cole of Lynn faced the Salem magistrates, her very presence sending Mary Warren into the usual fits. Mary recounted the names of other suspects’ specters consorting with the defendant, but Sarah Cole was convinced that specters besieged her, blaming her own sister-in-law. The most self-incriminating information she admitted now was, when she was a girl, using a Venus Glass and egg “to see what trade their sweethearts would be of”—folk magic that some of the afflicted girls had tried themselves.
By October 6 the court had already begun releasing prisoners on bail, beginning with the children and young people from Andover—even Mary Lacey, who had accused her own mother and grandmother. Bail was high, far higher than Reverend Parris’s £60 yearly salary—when he was paid, as he had not been—and would be forfeited if the defendants were not produced for trial when called. Neighborhood men joined forces to assemble the required sums: £500 sterling each for Mary Lacey Jr. and John Sawdey; somewhat less for five others, including Martha Carrier’s daughter Sarah. At least twelve more would be released before the year ended.
Other prisoners managed to break jail instead, although escapees were subject to fines. On October 7, the day after the Andover releases, Sheriff George Corwin nearly confiscated the goods and chattels belonging to fugitives Edward and Sarah Bishop, but their son Samuel managed to borrow and pay the £10 fine, for which he received a receipt.
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