A Break With Charity: A Story About the Salem Witch Trials (25 page)

"I will write a letter," Thomas Brattle said when I stopped talking. He got up and paced before the windows. "I have wanted to write such a letter for weeks now. The trials are a sham. Oh, shameful, shameful, what has transpired in Salem! The evidence is based on common gossip! I scorn these magistrates and these lying she-brats. I sensed the girls were pretending from the outset. Now that I hear what this child tells me, I know my instincts are right."

"To whom will you send such a letter?" Joseph asked.

"I shall address it, 'Dear Sir.'"

"Will you publish it?" Joseph asked.

"No, I shall have copies passed from hand to hand, in lieu of publication. Let us pray that enough men of goodwill have the brains to come forth now and speak out."

We went home to Salem and waited. We resumed our lives. In the fortnight that followed, I looked back to my visit to Boston as if it were a dream.

I did not know anymore what was real and what I had dreamed. I felt as if I were a ship without anchor, floating toward some distant harbor, not knowing what to expect when I got there.

I woke every night when everyone was asleep, afraid. I found myself afraid most of the time. It was as if a hand was put upon me to wake me from my dreams, which were always bad and had nothing to do with anything I recognized, except in the feelings of terror that pervaded them.

I would lie in bed plunged into depths of fear that I had heretofore never known existed. I would think of my family and yearn for those wonderful days of my past when we were together. I asked myself what had happened to us all and how could such things happen to good people. And why did I never realize how precious those days were that went before. I knew my life would never be the same, and I wondered if we would ever be happy again, any of us in Salem.

By daylight, however, I was cheered. As autumn colored the landscape with the sun still warm in the afternoons, as I took baby Mary out for a walk or helped Elizabeth make cider from the apples in Joseph's orchard, I knew in my heart that the world would be right again. Autumn has always renewed me. And that year I had the additional good feeling of knowing that if life in Salem were ever to be good again, I had had a part in making it so.

But side by side with that thought was the guilt I felt at realizing that people might be alive if I had spoken out sooner. I could not enjoy one feeling without suffering the other. And so, when the witch madness ended, finally, like everyone else in Salem I was left with self-recriminations, which stay with me always.

On October 9, Joseph came racing up the path toward the house, waving a piece of parchment in his hand.

"Brattle's letter! I have a copy!"

It had been released the day before, and Brattle had sent one by special messenger to Joseph.

"A copy has gone to Governor Phips," Joseph told us breathlessly. "It was on his desk when he returned to Boston the other day. Word is that Phips is going to write to the Privy Council in London. He returned from his recent trip to find Boston in an uproar from the impact of Brattle's letter!"

We hugged each other, Elizabeth and Joseph and I, with baby Mary between us. Tears streamed down my face.

Three days later, Johnathan dismounted his horse at the front gate and came through the door while we sat at supper.

He stood there, benumbed. We stared up at him. "Governor Phips has written to the Privy Council in London," he said, "informing them that he is forbidding further imprisonment on the charge of witchcraft."

Silence in the kitchen. We just stared at him. The only sound was that of baby Mary gurgling in her own little language.

It was over. I felt a strange floating sensation. Silently, with subdued rejoicing, we hugged each other, and Johnathan sat down with us to eat.

I cannot speak for the others, but for me there were more guests in that kitchen than Johnathan. They were the spirits of those hanged.

They numbered nineteen persons.

On October 29, two memorable events occurred in my life.

My brother, William, came home, and Governor Phips dissolved the Court of Oyer and Terminer.

Over 150 persons still languished in prisons, but Phips had all the children released, as well as those adults jailed only on spectral evidence. And petitions were pouring in to magistrates in Topsfield, Gloucester, Haverhill, Chelmsford, and Andover, from people urging the release of their kinsmen.

Winter was coming. "There will be more trials," Joseph predicted. "But never again will they be as before. Phips cannot just empty all the prisons. He needs time, but his eyes have been opened. I'll wager that by spring he'll come to his senses completely and pardon all who remain in prison."

We had been expecting William, for a letter had come the previous week from the captain of a ship put in at Salem Harbor, telling us of the imminent arrival of the schooner William was due to come in on.

The letter was addressed to our parents. It had gone to Magistrate Hathorne, who had Johnathan deliver it to us.

The air was cool and crisp as Joseph, Elizabeth, little Mary, Johnathan, and I drove to Salem Harbor. We waited on the wharf, in the midst of people, boxes, crates of goods, carriages, and the usual mayhem, for William's schooner, which was late.

The masts of several small ships were etched against the fine blue sky. My heart was beating wildly. Johnathan held my hand.

"You are cold," he said.

"Yes."

"And trembling."

"Will he know me?" I asked. "How do I tell him about our parents? He will expect them to be here. He will find no family here but me."

"He will find us with you," Joseph said.

"How can I even begin to explain to him what has happened in Salem in his absence?"

"After pirates and imprisonment, William will be able to abide it," Joseph predicted.

I could scarce keep myself from falling apart as the schooner docked. My eyes scanned its decks, the men coming down its gangplank.
Where was he?

And then, in the next moment, he was there, standing taller than I had remembered, his face and hands browned from the sun, the growth of a fortnight's beard on his handsome face, a pipe in his mouth. I saw him looking around for familiar faces. "William! Oh, William! Over here," I called.

Joseph pushed me forward. "Go to him," he said.

I ran. I saw recognition come upon William's face. The pipe came out of his mouth. The eyes, so accustomed to searching the sea's horizon for pirate ships, squinted in the bright sun. "Susanna?" he asked. "Is it you?"

"Oh, William!" And I ran to him. He set down his bags and swooped me up in his strong arms. And as he whirled me around, I saw through my tears the name of the schooner he had journeyed home on.

It was the
Amiable Tiger.

Mulling over the whole matter as I sit in church waiting for Ann Putnam to appear, I mind how painful it is to recollect the events of those days. But once we allow memory to open its floodgates, we are hard put to stop its flow.

I stayed with the Putnams all that winter of 1692 and 1693. 'Twas brother William's wish, I recall now. Though he chose to live in our house on English Street while he oversaw its repair.

Only one piece of furniture, a servant's bed, remained in our house. William slept in it, amongst the ruins. I went once or twice a week to give my advice about the draperies, carpets, and furniture he was importing from England so as to have the house ready for our parents' return.

In November, right after William returned, the General Court of the colony created the Superior Court to hear the remaining witchcraft cases. In this court the justices traveled to try each witch in his or her own county. And spectral evidence was no longer allowed.

Yes, they still condemned witches, but Phips would not allow anyone else to be executed.

William joined forces with Joseph's people, who were now working with Phips to bring weight on the justices to have the condemned reprieved.

Joseph and William were of like mind and took to each other immediately. William often supped with us, and the Putnam house became a meeting place again for those working for the release of prisoners.

That winter there was dire want in Salem, for crops had been sadly neglected, and the farms of many of the accused were abandoned. William immediately wrote to Father in New York about the matter. And Father looked about him and saw the full corncribs and warehouses and sent hundreds of barrels of corn and flour to Salem to help feed his neighbors.

Some of these things I have not thought about in years. It all seems so long ago now. Oh, I sit here and I smile at some of it, and yet I also wish to cry.

In May of 1693, Governor Phips pardoned everyone still in prison for witchcraft. But John Alden had long since escaped to Duxbury, and Mary Bradbury was safe in Connecticut.

My parents came home in June, on a day when the world was alive with blossoms and the air was like silk. A great crowd of people came out to meet them in the road. Mama told us later that she had become frightened. "Oh, Phillip," she had said. "Do they come to arrest us again?"

The crowd was led by Judge Hathorne, Johnathan's father. In his hands he held the silver goblet Mother had given Father the day they met. It had been confiscated with Father's other things.

Mama was not well. Prison had made her ill, ruined her health. She died the following winter of consumption.

My sister, Mary, married Thomas Hitchbourne. They live here in Salem. I married Johnathan in 1697. In the summer of 1694, William took me on a sea voyage to Guadeloupe, where he was traveling to meet and bring home his beloved Juliette, whom he had met there while in prison. She is the daughter of the French magistrate who invited him to dinner.

I was the only woman on board on the outward bound voyage, and was very coddled. One fine day, I dressed in some of William's clothes and climbed up the mainmast to the crow's nest.

As I peered out across the calm waters, with the salt spray in my face and the wind blowing my hair, I whispered softly, "This is for you, Mary Bradbury. I do this for you."

William was very upset when he saw me up there, of course. And he scolded. But I was happy. How many young women get the opportunity to do such a thing, after all? I shall forever be able to close my eyes and feel the salt spray on my face. It was worth the scolding.

"Perhaps, if you go and stand with your neighbors, you will manage to forget," Johnathan told me before I came here today.

Forget? I think I never will. Nor will the others assembled here now. How can we ever forget how the community was torn asunder, how smashed and ruined houses of some accused were left to the wind and the wolves. How businesses went bad because outsiders refused to have dealings with those in Salem for years afterward.

How can I forget how Father acted when Sheriff George Corwin died ten years ago? Father near lost his mind. My honored Father, a gentle and decent man, seized the body of Corwin and would not release it. He could not forget that Corwin had set himself on his wharves and warehouses, his ships at anchor in the harbor, as well as his home and Mama's shop. Nothing we said at the time could convince him to release Corwin's body. Not even William could reason with him. Mary and I feared he was going mad.

He did release it, finally, when Corwin's heirs agreed to some restitution. But the nightmare of that time has never left me. And Father still dislikes Johnathan's father for his part in the witch trials. They barely speak two words to each other at family gatherings, and this is hard for Johnathan and me to bear.

But in so many ways, Father is still generous and kind. Look how he donated the land to have an English church built in Salem. It will be called St. Peter's. Yes, there are still those who would have him ousted from this community for wanting an English church. But Father says this country was founded for freedom. And that should include freedom of worship.

When I dwell on all that has happened, I could myself go mad, but I must not dwell on it, for I must be a good mother to my own children.

Look there, now! Here come the kinsmen of those who were hanged. Oh, there is the Widow Preston, daughter of Rebecca Nurse. And John Tarbell, Rebecca's son-in-law. There are her other sons and daughters and their wives and children.

So many of Rebecca Nurse's children. Such a large and wonderful family. There are the kinsmen of Martha and Giles Cory. And all of John and Elizabeth Proctor's children. And Sarah Cloyce, sister to Rebecca Nurse and Mary Esty.

Too many, too many! They smile and nod at me, and I act in kind. But they are like the ghosts of our crippled past. I ponder if this is such a good idea after all, seeing each other in this meetinghouse again.

We all must stand now. Ann Putnam walks up the aisle and turns to face us. Here is Reverend Green in the pulpit.

How old Ann has become! Why, she can't be more than onescore and six! And she looks so tired and sickly. I recollect now what they say of her, how her parents both died within a fortnight of each other several years past. And she has brought up her younger siblings.

She
is
done up nicely, in the whitest of caps and shawls. But I do not trust her motives. I never will. They say she would seek communion in this church again. I'll wager that's the only reason for her being here. Now she speaks.