A Break With Charity: A Story About the Salem Witch Trials (12 page)

"Tituba, I haven't much time. I must speak with you."

She shook her head. "Too much talk. Tituba says it is now time for silence."

"No, Tituba, it is time to speak out! The girls in the circle have named you as one of their tormentors. The magistrates have issued a warrant for your arrest."

She thought this amusing. "They know where Tituba is. Tituba can't go away from this place."

"They'll want to examine you tomorrow. When they do, you must tell them of the secret meetings and what went on in them. So they know the girls are not tormented by witches."

"Tituba already tell."

"You told them of the circle?"

"Tituba say she been meddling in the black arts."

I could not believe this! "Why?" I gasped. I turned to John Indian and asked it of him. He shook his head and did not answer. "Why have you done this, Tituba?" I asked again.

"It is what the reverend wanted to hear. When I told him such, he stop beating Tituba."

"Oh, dear God!" I murmured. Then an idea came to me. "Tituba, tomorrow you can tell the truth to the magistrates."

"Tituba want no more beatings."

"They won't beat you."

"Tituba's master will, if Tituba tell truth. He don't want it known his little daughter and niece are lying."

"Does he know they are lying?"

"He never think this. He know only that Tituba makes disaster. He want to believe Tituba is to blame. Others need to think so, also. So Tituba will give them what they need to know."

So she had perceived that Reverend Parris and the others needed someone to blame for Salem's quarrels and troubles.

"They will put you in prison, Tituba."

"Tituba already in prison. Where they put me, the reverend can't beat me no more."

"Can't you convince her to tell the truth tomorrow!" I asked John Indian.

"There be no justice for the likes of us, little missy," he said.

I saw there was no hope here. "Tituba." I took her hand. It was feverish and bruised. "I am your friend, Tituba," I said.

She smiled and closed her eye and leaned her head against the wall. "Things will get bad," she said. "Matters will worsen. I will not be here when it happens, so I tell now. It will get very dark in Salem. Bad winds will blow and take many from this place. Listen to Tituba now."

"I'm listening."

"One night, when it is very dark, you will see, from your street, a ship in the harbor."

My heart beat very fast. "William?"

"No. The ship will not be in the water. It will be in the sky."

In the sky? She must be silly with fever, I decided.

Her good eye opened, and she looked to the opposite wall and raised her free hand to describe what she saw. "A ship made of dark clouds. You will see it against the sky. It will fly the skull and crossbones."

"A pirate ship!"

"Yes. And while you stand there and behold this vision, the shape of the flag will change before your eyes to be like a flag on your father's ship."

"An English flag."

"Yes. Then the ship will disappear. When this happens, brother William will soon be home."

"Oh, Tituba, thank you!"

"Tell no one this."

"I won't. But, oh, please, give thought to what I say! Tell the truth!"

"The air is black over Salem Town," she said. "The sun is gone from this place. Death is in the air. Tituba will do what she must to live. Go now, child. Be brave, don't be foolish. The secret is to know when to speak and when to remain silent. Some never learn this. Those who learn live to an old age."

I shivered. A gust of wind rattled around the corner of the shed. Tituba pushed me from her and turned her face away. Tears streamed down my face as I went out into the cold.

I went home and became sick. That night the cold set in to freeze the heart of the most brave. When morning came, silver with frost on the windowpanes, bitter with bonenumbing cold, I had a quinsy throat and fever. My head was throbbing.

Sickness is nothing to dally with in New England in wintertime, and Mama set about at once applying her remedies, which included hot broth and herbal and root medicine. Nonetheless, before the day was over I could not even raise my head from the pillow.

As the silver whiteness of the days blended one into another as February progressed, I knew what it truly meant to be sick in spirit and body, for I was not only aching and feverish, but miserable of heart over the turn of events in Salem.

My family kept me informed about what was going on with the witch testimony. I insisted upon knowing.

Tituba had confessed to being a witch. For three days, her confession went on in Salem Village Meetinghouse. She told the crowd that gathered of large red and black cats that came to her and bade her serve them. She told of a black dog that ordered her to hurt the afflicted girls.

She recounted how she had ridden on a pole through the blackest of nights with Sarah Osbourne and Sarah Good. She spoke of winged animals with the heads of women. And a little yellow bird that accompanied her on special missions of evil.

She described a tall white-haired man who dressed in black and led a coven of witches in and about the colony of Massachusetts, especially in Essex County. And she told them how she had signed her name in the Devil's book to please this man. And that there were more witches in Salem than just she and Osbourne and Good. But she did not know their names.

Then she admitted that the spectral shapes went into people's homes to torment them. She told the people of Salem what they wanted to hear.

The afflicted girls, sitting in court, too, groaned and threw themselves on the floor, crying and screaming, while Tituba testified. Meanwhile, Osbourne and Good claimed innocence. But no one believed them.

On March 7, when I was still in bed, the two Sarahs were taken to jail in Boston with Tituba.

My sickness persisted. I woke at night with fits of coughing, so I had to be propped up against pillows to breathe. I thought of Tituba in prison. I knew I had lost a good and true friend. I also knew she had taken what truth had been in Salem with her. Except for the truth that was in me. And I was not sure, in my fevered state, what was truth anymore and what wasn't.

MARY CAME IN
from the cold one day, fresh from market. Mama and I had been sitting by the fire in the company room. It was March 19. I shall never forget that day. It was one of my first out of bed and I was cosseted in a bed rug, sipping tea. Mama was doing needlework.

"Did you get the lemons and limes?" Mama asked.

A ship was just in at harbor with a large shipment of fruit, and Mama wanted fresh lemon juice for my tea. She had promised to make us a lemon cake, for we were hungry for the taste of these treasures.

"Yes," Mary said. "And you will never guess what I heard at market."

"Come sit and have tea and tell us," Mama invited. "Is there news of William?"

"Not of William, no. But news. Mistress Parris has sent little Betty away from the village to live here in Salem Town in the home of Stephen Sewall."

"That is good news," Mama agreed. "No child should live in the Parris household."

"There is more," Mary said. "Abigail Williams has accused Rebecca Nurse of witchcraft."

Mama's teacup clanked down rudely in the saucer. "Rebecca Nurse? Never! She is seventy-one, the town matriarch! Why if the word
goodwife
applies to anyone, it applies to her."

Mary sank down by the warm fire, served herself tea, and nodded. "She is the last person one would think would be named."

Rebecca Nurse was staunch of spirit, kind of heart, learned in Scripture, the mother of four sons and four daughters. She kept a spotless house and a flax garden. She and her husband lived in the old Townsend Bishop house, which was always bustling with the comings and goings of family.

"Not only that," Mary added, "but Ann Putnam, the younger, has accused Martha Cory."

"Martha Cory has been skeptical about this witchcraft business from the beginning," Mama said. We could see she was upset by this news, but she becalmed herself and picked up her needlework again. "Martha goes constantly to Meeting. The woman is no more a witch than I am. Her only trouble is that she talks too much."

"A warrant was sworn today for her arrest," Mary said gloomily.

"But I thought we were finished with accusations, now that they named the three and put them in jail," I said.

We all sat and stared at each other. The March wind rattled against the leaded windows. The fire crackled cheerily.

"To give this conversation a good turn, I met Johnathan Hathorne at market today," Mary said, smiling.

"You give it no good turn," I said gloomily. "His father will send all these dear friends of ours to jail."

"Johnathan inquired after your health," Mary persisted. "I said you would soon be well. He said he would come to call."

"I won't know what to say to him," I admitted.

"To be fair, the son is not the father," Mama reminded me.

"He's more like his father than I'd want him to be."

"Then be mindful of what you say," Mama cautioned. "Say naught of this witchcraft business."

"Does anyone in Salem speak of anything else?" I asked.

Johnathan came to call on the first Lord's Day in April, the third. I was not well enough yet to go to Meeting, and truth to tell I didn't want to go and hear Reverend Parris tell us how sinful we all were. I had lost all faith in the man. But Mary and Mama had gone thither. Father was in his library, studying or praying or doing whatever it was he did when the weather was too raw to row across the bay to St. Michael's.

Deborah took Johnathan's cloak and served him some claret and cakes. He kissed my hand, then presented me with a book beautifully bound in red leather.
The Pilgrim's Progress.

He brought the outside world in with him, in the color in his face, the wood-smoke fragrance on his clothes. Seeing his broad shoulders and strong wrists and hands, his wind-tousled hair, I felt truly alive.

"I have missed you, Susanna."

I had missed him, too, I realized, seeing him standing before me. I was tongue-tied.

"I have thought of you often and prayed for your recovery."

"Thank you, Johnathan," I said politely.

He sipped his claret and nibbled at the cakes. He spoke of sundry matters, but there was a deadness in the air after those first few words, as if we were both mindful of our distressed last parting.

Finally he set down his mug. "You mustn't bear me ill will because of what my father is doing, Susanna."

"You agree with everything he does," I reminded him.

"I don't. I am here today to tell you I have had doubts."

I stared at him as if he'd taken leave of his senses. "About what?"

"This whole business is foul. I was in court the day they examined Rebecca Nurse. She is a dear woman. She shines with an inner light."

"It will serve her well in prison."

"Ann Putnam, the elder, accused Rebecca of murder. She said her dead sister's children had come to her in a dream in their winding-sheets, telling her that Rebecca murdered them."

"The Putnams are evil, Johnathan. All but Joseph and his wife, Elizabeth. When will you become sensible of this?"

"Elizabeth Putnam is my cousin. I am sensible of it. And much more. My father said in court that an innocent woman would weep before charges of murder. He counted Rebecca a witch because witches cannot shed tears."

Johnathan rested his elbows on his knees and put his head in his hands. "That same day the afflicted girls named Elizabeth Proctor. People go from court to Ingersoll's Ordinary like the whole business is a traveling carnival. At Ingersoll's they fill up on rum and cider and gossip about who will be named next."

"How terrible," I said.

"The afflicted girls go there and have fits. John Indian joins them."

"John Indian?"

"He rolls on the floor. He guides newcomers who come to gawk at the girls through the history of the outbreak of witchcraft in Salem. He boasts that his wife is a witch."

John Indian? I could not believe it. He must be acting so to avoid being cried out on, I thought. Like Tituba, he must have decided that the only way open to him was to give the people what they wanted. "Who named Elizabeth Proctor?" I asked.

"All the girls. Her husband, John, announced one day at Ingersoll's that he'd cured his maidservant, Mary Warren, of her fits by setting her down at her spinning wheel and threatening her with a whipping. But the magistrates sent for her to come to court to testify. After that, the girls cried out on Proctor's wife. Proctor defended his wife in court. But his voice was lost in the screams of the girls. The magistrates believe the girls, not him."

"And you? What do you believe, Johnathan?"

"I started having doubts about the whole witchcraft business after Rebecca Nurse was accused. I went to talk to Joseph Putnam. His sentiments are like a fresh wind. The man keeps his head. I'm so glad my cousin Elizabeth married him and he is near kin. Joseph went to his brother's wife and warned the elder Ann that if she dared touch anyone in his household with her foul lies, she would answer for it."