The Witch and Warlock MEGAPACK ®: 25 Tales of Magic-Users

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “Not at all. Yet if we had to live with their superstitions and fears, who knows what we might do?”

  His eyebrows knitted above his glasses. “But I do write from conviction, not just to sell a book.”

  I thought how like a little boy he looked at the moment. I suppressed a desire to run my fingers through his softly waving blond hair.

  “You know, this is really line sculpture,” I said by way of apology. “Gruesome as they are, those skulls and stylized ribs are a work of art. But why did he carve two skeletons on the stone? Stoughton never married.”

  “I don’t know—I never thought about it,” he replied slowly. “The skull was a common motif on colonial tombstones, but I can’t remember any other instance where two were used. Of course, this was more elaborate and expensive than most.”

  “Look at the way those ribs are intertwined. Was Bered Towne trying to say something? Involve the old boy with a woman?”

  He shrugged. “Could be—if the old curmudgeon could have loved a woman—or any woman him.”

  “What makes you think he was unloved? Do historians say so?” I retorted. “How could they know?”

  “That’s a good question,” he conceded. “He was a bachelor, therefore they conclude he was unloved.”

  “That’s not what I’ve heard about bachelors,” I flung back.

  “Then there’s hope for me?” he said teasingly, reaching out his hand. The response within me died as the hand continued past me to pick up a book with royal blue and red binding. No wonder he’d never married!

  “Here’s an excellent source,” he remarked, “Samuel Sewall’s Diary.”

  “Sounds deadly dull.”

  “Not at all. Sewall was the American Pepys. His courtships of eligible widows and his descriptions of colonial life are delightful.”

  Greg flipped the pages. “He was associate justice at the Salem trials and his notes are invaluable. For instance, see here: ‘August 19th, 1692. This day George Burrough, John Willard, John Proctor, Martha Carrier and George Jacobs were executed at Salem, a very great number of Spectators being present. Mr. Cotton Mather was there, Mr. Sims, Hale, Noyes, Chiever, &c. all of them said they were innocent, Carrier and all. Mr. Mather says they all died by a Righteous Sentence. Mr. Burrough by his Speech, Prayer, protestation of his Innocence, did much move unthinking persons, which occasions their speaking hardly concerning his being executed.’

  “George Burroughs,” Greg explained, “a former minister of Salem Village, nearly saved himself at the last moment by reciting the Lord’s Prayer without a flaw—they believed that no witch could get through it without stumbling.”

  “I notice Sewall called those who were swayed by Burroughs ‘unthinking.’”

  “Yet Sewall was the first judge to recant. Oh, here’s something interesting: ‘About noon, at Salem, Giles Corey was pressed to death for standing mute: much pains was used with him two days, one after another, by the Court and Capt. Gardner of Nantucket who had been of his acquaintance: but all in vain.’”

  “So Giles got his comeuppance after all! After the way he testified against his wife, he deserved it.”

  Greg looked up, surprised. “You read farther than I thought.”

  “Read? Why, everyone’s been talking about it… a voice not mine trailed off. “—uh—what does it mean”—I changed the subject quickly—“to press a person to death?”

  “They placed boards on the victim and loaded rocks onto them. If the poor guy didn’t confess, they’d pile on more until he was crushed to death. Giles died a hero at the last. Refused to plead either guilty or innocent so that his heirs’ property wouldn’t be confiscated. Eighty years old and it took two days to dispatch him!”

  “Poor old man!” I felt a wave of guilt. Looking over Greg’s shoulder, I read aloud: “‘September 20. Now I hear from Salem that about 18 years agoe he was suspected to have stamped and press’d a man to death, but was cleared. Twas not remembered till Ane Putname was told of it by said Corey’s Spectre the Sabbath-day night before the Execution.’ Did Sewall really believe such nonsense?”

  “Not only did he believe it, but that’s the sort of testimony that sent twenty people to their deaths. They called it ‘spectral evidence.’ In other words, Satan could assume the shape of only the guilty—those with whom he had a pact. If you had a grudge against me, all you’d have to do would be to say you saw my shape sitting on the foot of your bed one dark night—”

  “If I saw that, it’s not witchcraft I’d accuse you of.”

  The cleft in his chin deepened, but he continued—“and during witchcraft hysteria, that was the most damning type of evidence.”

  “If a specter appeared today, they’d call it a mistrial.” My quip was lost on him. He’d gotten up and was watching the rain cascade down the great glass walls. Eerie light from a drowned sun trying in vain to penetrate the clouds filled the room. Suddenly he spun around. “Do you know what day this is?”

  “—uh—September twenty-second. So?”

  “It’s the autumnal equinox,” he said. “The witches are supposed to hold a sabbath tonight.”

  I thought of Dylan and his coven out at Aunt Bo’s old farm and wondered if they’d be celebrating—inside, I hoped.

  “And,” he went on, “nearly three hundred years ago today, the last of the Salem executions were carried out, which may or may not have been a coincidence—that is, if an upper class coven were offering sacrifices to their god.”

  “Oh, Greg, that’s way out in left field.”

  “I know, but it’s an intriguing speculation.” He turned towards the window again. “Strange—it rained later that same day—Sewall made a note of that.”

  “Was she among them?”

  “Who?”

  “Your ancestor’s sister—Mary Eastick.”

  He started. “Where did you get that name?”

  “Why, from you, Greg, don’t you remember? You told me about her the day you gave me the script.”

  “I’m sure I used the name ‘Esty’—not ‘Eastick’! None of the reference books you have here use that version. So where did you get it?”

  From the family Bible, I almost told him. But that had been a dream and he wouldn’t understand that. Already he looked at me as if I were some sort of spectral evidence.

  “You must have used the old form unconsciously.”

  “Didn’t you say it was Mary’s ghost who prevented more executions?” I asked. “What did you mean by that?”

  “It’s in the record,” he replied, letting himself be sidetracked. “A Wenham girl reported to the Reverend John Hale on November fourteenth that for nearly two months since Mary’s execution she’d been afflicted by her ‘shape’ crying out for vengeance. Mary, it seems, had first visited the girl in spectral form just hours before her execution. ‘I am going upon the ladder to be hanged for a witch, but I am innocent, and before a twelve-month be past you shall believe it.’ Mary Esty kept her appointment on November twelfth, bringing along the shape of another woman—Hale’s own wife, who was still alive and of unimpeachable reputation. At last Hale was convinced that devil could take the shape of an innocent person and that ‘spectral evidence’ was a fallacy. The girl reported that Mary Esty swore she’d been put to death wrongfully and she’d come to vindicate herself, crying ‘Vengeance! Vengeance!’”

  “That last doesn’t sound like Mary Esty, does it?” I observed.

  “No, it doesn’t, but the purge was stopped. What was begun by discarnate beings was ended by one. Spectral evidence was now suspect, and people lost their taste for witch-hunting. The governor put an end to the executions in spite of vigorous protests by Stoughton and his clique. But tragically, it was years before many of the accused were freed. Some died in prison. In those days, prisoners had to pay for their bo
ard. If they or their families had no money, they were held as debtors even though innocent.” He glanced at his watch. “I’d better go.”

  “Why don’t you stay for dinner?”

  “I wish I could, but I have to cover a special council meeting tonight. They’re drafting a petition to the governor for state aid to keep the river from chomping away at Peacehaven. How about a rain check?” He kissed me lightly on the forehead and was out the door. Oh well, who could fight city hall?

  I picked up the diary, wondering what besides rain had been worthy of Sewall’s note on that fatal autumn equinox when eight persons, including Mary Esty, had been hanged. Surely he would have something to say about that!

  No, apparently he hadn’t found it important. More urgent matters were afoot: “Thursday, Sept. 22, 1692. William Stoughton, Esqr., Mr. Cotton Mather, and Capt. John Higginson with my brother St., were at our house, speaking about publishing some Trials of the Witches… Oho! So they were sensitive about PR in those days, too! I read on, “Mr. Stoughton went away and left us, it began to rain and was very dark, so that getting some way beyond the fortification was fain to come back again… and farther on: “Lieut. Governour coming over the Causey is, by reason of the high Tide, so wet, that is fain to go to bed till sends for dry cloaths to Dorchester…

  The rest of the world had been cut off by a gray curtain of rain pounding at the windows. A voice echoed somewhere deep within me:

  “Nay, William, I belong not to Satan! I belong only to God—and to thee!”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Greg had hardly left when Dr. Brun came into the kitchen, shaking the water off his trenchcoat. He perched on the kitchen stool, his skin ruddy-gold and moist from the weather, the water still dripping from his mustache and beard.

  “Was ist los, Mitti?” he asked. “You have a faraway look.”

  I hesitated, then said, “I was thinking about making hot chocolate. Would you like some?”

  “Ach, wunderbar!” he exclaimed.

  “Understand, this is part payment for a psychiatric consultation,” I said after I’d set out the cups of steaming chocolate. “I expect your bill to be reduced accordingly.” I said it lightly, but there was concern on his face.

  “Is it about Rowan?” he asked. “She has had another spell?”

  “I thought so at first,” I replied, “but it was only an act. She’s trying to convince me she should play the teenage lead in the pageant. No, this time I’m the patient. You once told me you have a recurring dream. Well, I have the same problem, but my dreams are getting out of hand. In fact, it’s uncanny. They’re changing in character, becoming more intense and—well, they concern things that happened centuries ago. Only later do I find out that what I dreamed about really did happen—at least part of it. I find myself beginning to believe in my dreams.”

  If my symptoms perturbed him, he didn’t show it. “Perhaps you’d better start with your original dream,” was all he said.

  “There were several, actually, but one in particular stands out. I used to dream I was with a man in a tall, Puritan hat, walking beside the sea. We were in love, but then I did something—I don’t know what—that alienated him from me forever. Lately, however, I’ve been having other dreams, all related to the same general period in the Salem area. In most of these dreams I’m older and married to another man. It’s as if all the years between Salem and Peacehaven had been stripped away and events that took place then are trickling through a thin wall of time into my brain. Does that sound crazy?”

  My cup shook as I tried to sip my chocolate. What would he think? A low laugh snapped the tension building up in me.

  “You are asking a psychiatrist if that sounds crazy?” He continued to chuckle. “Meine liebe Mitti, you’ll have to do better than that to make me think you’re crazy.”

  “But there’s more,” I said, reassured. “In my dreams I seem to be reliving scenes in the life of a person who actually existed. Her name was Mary Towne Esty and she was executed in Salem on this very day in 1692. What’s more, Greg is collaterally descended from her.”

  “Ach, well, that is natural,” he said. “You picked that up from him.”

  “Not exactly. Before I ever met Greg I dreamed I was Mary Towne, and I was in the kitchen of our home in Salem Village talking with my mother. She reproached me for spurning the suit of Isaac Esty, the cooper, and aspiring to be married above my station to a young gentleman from Boston. How could I know those names or that Isaac Esty really was a cooper?”

  He shrugged. “Perhaps you heard it all as a child.”

  “No, the people here weren’t obsessed with their heritage then—not like they are now. Oh, they made jokes about their witch ancestry at times, but only in passing. Furthermore, while most of the family names here are right off the Salem gallows, there were no Townes or Estys here then, so I wouldn’t have known those names. Do you think there might be something to reincarnation after all?” I asked abruptly.

  He didn’t answer immediately, but kept stirring his chocolate. “You and Lucian argued about that when you first came,” he recalled. “I feel as you do. It’s a tempting theory. It hasn’t been proven one way or the other, and I don’t think anything in the Christian religion demands we choose either side. We can only conjecture and conjecturing produces many possibilities besides reincarnation.”

  He placed his broad, powerful hands on mine, but in spite of the intimacy of the gesture, he seemed to be speaking from a great distance. “As a scientist and physician, I should accept only those things I can perceive through my five senses, but I cannot. I am basically a metagnostic, which means I believe that a knowledge of the Absolute is attained not through logical or scientific processes, but through a higher consciousness—intuition if you will. Man cannot wait for science to prove the Absolute. He must make great mental and spiritual leaps forward beyond the reach of science.” He stopped and shook his head. “I sound as though I am beginning another book. To put it simply, my dear Mitti, I believe in a life after death. If my conviction is correct, those Salem people of whom you speak are somewhere, whether reincarnated or on some other plane of existence, call it heaven if you will.”

  A warmth had stolen over me. I remembered the discussions I used to have with my father.

  “And where are those other planes of existence?” he rumbled on. “Maybe, as you say, we’re separated from them by a thin wall and Mary Esty’s thoughts are coming through to you. Perhaps she’s directing them to you.”

  “But why?” My father had never gone that far. “That’s even further out than reincarnation. Why should Mary Esty be trying to get through to me?”

  He withdrew his hands and gestured helplessly. “I cannot answer that. Perhaps she wants to communicate something that’s been forgotten in time or… he paused.

  “Or she’s trying to warn me of things to come.” I shivered.

  “It may not be Mary Esty at all. Possibly you picked up someone else’s thoughts—Greg’s, for instance.”

  “Before I ever knew him?”

  “Thought transference knows no bounds. On the other hand, your dreams may be merely—dreams.”

  “Even if they come in broad daylight, when I’m wide awake?”

  “Waking dreams are not unknown.” He patted my hand. “Don’t worry, Mitti, I don’t think you’re hallucinating. But you are very sensitive, possibly mediumistic. So were the saints.”

  “I never thought I had anything in common with them,” I laughed, “but you would have had something in common with Mary Esty—both you and Dana. According to my dream, Mary and her mother were versed in ancient medical lore handed down to them from the Old Wives—maybe witches, for that matter. They cured with herbs and rhymes and some of their treatments were astonishingly ahead of their time. For instance, in one dream Mary’s mother inoculated
an Indian girl with matter from pustules on my—on Mary’s hands. You see, I was down with the cowpox and—” I stopped. Dr. Brun had lost his air of detachment and was staring at me.

  “It’s not possible!” he breathed.

  “Of course not! Vaccination hadn’t been invented.”

  “I don’t mean that. You just reminded me of a dream I had last night. Perhaps there is something to your theory of a ‘thin wall.’ I thought I visited a home where the goodwife told me she and her mother had saved some Indians from contracting smallpox by rubbing pus from cowpox into cuts on their arms. I remember being both intrigued and horrified—horrified because the practice sounded like witchcraft. Yet these Indians had remained immune.”

  “Who—who was this woman?”

  “I don’t know, but I was Cotton Mather.”

  It was my turn to stare. “The one who attended the hangings and wrote about the witch trials? He’s mentioned in Sewall’s Diary.”

  “The same. However, the dream could easily have arisen from my subconscious. You see, I could not call you crazy without pointing a finger at myself. In the course of my theological studies, I became obsessed with John Calvin and Cotton Mather, two of the most brilliant bigots who ever lived. At times it even seemed they were taking me over. Calvin sent Michael Servetus, a Spanish physician and Catholic theologian who dared question the Trinity, to the stake. Cotton Mather, for his part, wrote pamphlets on witchcraft that inflamed the people of Salem. Worst of all, he prevented the reprieve of his fellow divine, George Burroughs.

  “Ironically, Mather, years later, provoked the wrath of his contemporaries while making his finest contribution to mankind. Having studied medicine, he became interested in a London physician’s paper on smallpox inoculation. During an epidemic in 1721, Mather persuaded Dr. Zabdiel Boylston of Boston to inoculate 241 people. Of these only six died, a remarkable record, especially since they were using the dangerous method of inoculating their patients with smallpox matter, instead of the safer cowpox vaccine Jenner was to ‘discover’ years later. To people brought up in fear of witchcraft, inoculation seemed perilously close to sorcery. The tables were turned on Cotton Mather. A bomb that fortunately failed to ignite was tossed into his house at the height of the furor.