Six Women of Salem (14 page)

Perhaps a disagreement arose in the winter of 1688–1689, for on January 10, shortly before the birth of Elizabeth’s fifth child, John submitted two deeds to probate judge Bartholomew Gedney. At least one had been written some years earlier, as it referred to his “purpose, if the Lord pleaseth, to make Elizabeth Bassett, of Lynn . . . my wife I having her parents consent thereunto.” In the second she is Elizabeth Procter. The first stipulated that any children he and Elizabeth might have would inherit equally with his older children, and for this he put up, as bond, his land in the Chebaco section of Ipswich. The second states his intent “to make over and give unto my beloved wife Elizabeth Proctor and all my children . . . for their supply and maintenance” his Salem property, “house and land . . . cattle, swine, moveables and utensils.” (The land here was a parcel adjacent to his rented farm.)

Judging from Mary’s later testimony, John and Elizabeth quarreled as well, as she claimed that her master was nearly driven to make away with himself just to be rid of his wife’s squabbles. Evidently Elizabeth knew her own mind and expressed it. She owned several books as well, even carrying one with her when she visited her sister in the nearby town of Reading. Just
what
that book was about Mary did not know. Elizabeth also seems to have doctored her neighbors (or offered to) as her grandmother had done.

Mary must have been anxious about her own future.

Besides domestic work, women earned money by doing laundry, baking, brewing, or running small shops or taverns—but all these services required equipment and, in some cases, a license. Married women or widows ran these enterprises, not young servant girls who possessed the desire but not the means. Women were sometimes paid to spin thread (helping a housewife deal with the flax she had grown or the fleece from her sheep), sew, or help with harvest, though the latter was seasonal or at least occasional work. By herself, she
might
earn enough with only those tasks and still have a place to live—but not easily. A few women who could afford it rented space in the corner of a room in someone else’s house. Unless a woman had money or a strong extended family willing to have her be part of it, or if she worked as a domestic (as Mary did), she would need a husband to survive.

Mary was about twenty in 1692, the average age to marry.

But what prospects did she have?

She could be working in another woman’s kitchen forever, unless the enemy captured her, dragging her off into darkness and wilderness, or if, like her dead mother and stricken sister, she were the victim of vengeful magic—another fearful possibility.

(
1 )

From the meeting house gallery Tituba looks down on Mr. Parris as he speaks in the pulpit and down to on the heads of the congregation below—men on one side of the center aisle, women on the other, adults apart from the children. Up here above are the servants—free and slave—also sitting apart, the doctor’s hired girl with the Putnam’s maid. Tituba sees the heads of two young girls bend close, the children whispering when they ought to be listening: Mr. Parris’s niece Abigail and the Putnam girl. Tituba hugs her cloak closer against the cold of the unheated building. Now what were they up to? At home Abigail—and Betty too—had been acting strange lately, though Tituba could not say exactly how. They seemed more nervous, moping or starting. She was almost certain that some eggs were missing from the larder. Had the girls taken them—though not to eat but rather to waste on fortune-telling? Girls that age might do that—
and a little scrying was surely harmless if done right,
thinks Tituba, though she knows full well that Reverend Parris would not agree, and there would be an almighty trouble if he finds out,
if
that was what was happening. If they are sickening for something, she would have to deal with that as well, but for now, with hands idle in her lap, she might as well enjoy not working. Even so, she needs to listen, to some extent, to what her master says to the people, for he will question her on it later. Tituba sighs. He expects her to understand what his sermons mean. If she can just catch the gist of his words, she can then let her mind wander to other subjects, have her thoughts to herself.

“Man, yea all mankind,” Reverend Parris is saying, “the whole race of apostate Adam . . . even the very elect, are by nature dead in sins and trespasses . . .”

All
mankind?
Tituba muses to herself.
Even the masters and mistresses who want to own you?

“Consider the great sacrifices Christ has made for us,” Parris continues, “and think how much that indicates that ‘the worth of souls, is above all the world . . .’”

Even the soul of a slave?
she wonders. Perhaps Christ thinks so, for slaves who felt they were saved, and thus among the spiritual elect, had joined churches in Boston. But they still remained slaves despite the passage in the Lord’s Prayer her master had taught her: “May
thy
will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.” God’s will—not earthly property laws. These people were very definite about what they expected, yet there were so many contradictions.

Down in the better seats among the matrons, Ann Putnam looks up from where she sits at Mr. Parris, at his head and shoulders that are visible above the edge of the pulpit’s desk, with the cushion on the desk and the open Bible on the cushion. His breath makes little clouds just visible against the dark wood of the sounding board above the pulpit. She would take communion later with the other full members of the church, but even so . . . she does still wonder if she is
really
worthy enough to do so.

Christ, by “various troubles, afflictions, and persecutions in this world,” tests and teaches his people, says Reverend Parris, as parents chasten children to get the point of obedience across. “Our lord Jesus seeing us often overbold and venturesome upon sin, suffers us almost to fall even as it were over head and ears, and for a time seems to desert us, and all is out of love to prevent a total fall . . .”

The little nagging dread stirs in the back of her mind that she might not be saved after all, that by presuming to take part in communion she is only thrusting in where she does not belong, snatching rudely and insultingly at the Lord’s supper like a self-centered toddler grabbing at supper dishes that were none of its business. But no—she pushes that thought away. She has already done years of soul searching; she had not rushed into this grave matter of assuming herself to be saved. (Although one never knew, could never be sure in this mortal life but only try to live as if one were.) Her name was written among the elect—or at least written in the church record book’s list of fully communing members.

“Afflictions are compared to a hedge of thorns,” Reverend Parris continues, made to keep unruly livestock from bolting into dangerous territory. Because the elect are, in a way, separate from the world, others will oppose them, for “great hatred ariseth even from nearest relations,” and “it is the main drift of the Devil to pull it all down,” aided by “wicked and reprobate men (the assistants of Satan to afflict the Church).” Even the elect are endangered inwardly by their own soul lusts, outwardly by persecutions and by “the power of Death.”

Yet, says Parris, offering encouragement, Christ defends his Church and his elect not only “by supplying them with renewed strength suitable to their trials” but also “by hampering and fettering their enemies.”

Ann concentrates again on the sermon instead of her pestering doubts. She does not see her daughter whispering with the other girls.

____________________

B
ehind the minister that January day snow thickened and filled the scant view from the two high windows that flanked the pulpit. With the actual ceremony of the Lord’s Supper for the full members still to do and the snow showing no signs of slacking, Mr. Parris finally cut short his sermon and dismissed the majority. Tituba would have taken the Parris children home to the parsonage while her mistress, Mrs. Putnam, and the other communing members stayed behind.

Samuel Parris’s booklet of sermon notes, with his reference to the shortened meeting, has by chance survived. But what either Reverends John Higginson or Nicholas Noyes preached that day in Salem town has vanished unrecorded. As snow fell on Salem, on the wharves and the vessels moored at their wharves and on the larger Salem meeting house on the rise above the harbor, Mary English sat in the better of the women’s seats, her husband among the favored men of the town, with her perhaps listening more attentively than he. Bridget and Edward Bishop occupied lesser seats in the men’s and women’s sides of the aisle, along with John and Elizabeth Procter. The Procter’s maid-servant Mary Warren watched from the gallery.

Rebecca Nurse and her family usually attended services in the nearer Village meeting house, but as she was a fully communing member of the church in Salem town, that is where her family took her to partake of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. That winter would prove hard on her health, but she was not house-bound yet. Today she could also hear sermons and prayers from the elderly Reverend John Higginson and the younger Reverend Nicholas Noyes.

Reverend Noyes, known as a pleasant conversationalist among men of his own station, delivered sermons in a plain style, demonstrating his doctrine point by point. He was also perpetually curious and, some people thought, incautiously fond of the prophecies in the Book of Revelation.

Reverend Higginson, in the view of a recent visitor to Salem, “uses soft words but hard arguments, and labors more to shew the truth of his cause, than his spleen [i.e., his temper].” The old man was firm in the face of wrong, yet, as Noyes would describe it,

Reproofs, like lightning from him flew;

But Consolations dropt like dew.

The one broke Hearts as hard as Stone,

The other heal’d the Contrite one.

Higginson’s “Touch-stone,” Noyes added, was the use of life’s hardships to teach and strengthen one’s faith. One needed to be strong, for no one knew what they might have to face.

Bridget Bishop had heard the sermons too, but she left with most of the congregation after the regular service. Mary English and Rebecca Nurse, the richest woman in Salem and a farm wife respectively, remained for communion, to receive the sacrament and share the Lord’s Supper with not only the other elect present but also as one in the long line of Christians, a fellowship reaching far into the past, back to the Apostles and to Christ himself.

This would have been important enough for Rebecca to make the effort to journey through the snow to town. But the rest of the time she stayed closer to home, where her extended family could keep her informed about the outside world—what families had sickness in them, who was near her time to deliver yet another child, what the situation was with Salem town and its quarrels.

Her husband, Francis, was on the committee the Village had chosen to represent their wish for more self-rule. So Francis was among the rest who toiled down the muddy roads to the harbor on January 11 during a thaw to present their case before the Salem town meeting. He returned with a story of town men treating the Village committee like so many bumpkins when the Villagers asked to separate and form their own town.

The Villagers had then offered an alternate request. (
They
were willing to compromise and had also, just in case, petitioned the province’s General Court in Boston for separation.) If they could not be independent, could they be exempt from all charges that related strictly to the town area in exchange for maintaining their own roads and poor? The Salem men were no more agreeable to this, claiming that the petitioners were not properly empowered to act for the Village; therefore they postponed the question—postponed indefinitely, Salem hoped. But the Village committee, irritated at the dismissal, were not about to let the matter drop.

At some point in January, when there was still snow on the ground in Salem town, Bridget Bishop’s friend Alice Parker suffered a catatonic fit. She would not have remembered what happened during the spell, but her neighbors had plenty to say about it. They found her outdoors crumpled “upon the durt & Snow,” looking quite dead. One woman assured the men that this had happened before, that it was an illness she had. Yet the men were skittish about touching her, and the man who carried her home, slung over his shoulder like a sack of meal, dropped her in his nervousness. Even then she did not wake, but just when most everyone thought she was dead for sure—after they undressed her and arranged her in bed—she came to and
laughed
right in their faces. Alice may have felt relieved at waking, but some of the neighbors suspected that she had parted her soul from her body in ­order to spirit about who-knew-where and had just returned to mock them at their efforts. Witches, they knew, could do that.

People also knew full well that such afflictions, even if not understood, were natural. But gossip was dangerous. Bridget Bishop could sympathize with her friend.

The Village folk also did not understand whatever worsening ailments troubled the girls at the Salem Village parsonage. Sighing and moping progressed to flinching and twisting, as if shying from something invisible—to others. Betty and Abigail gabbled nonsense no one could understand, huddled under the furniture as if hiding from . . . what? Mr. and Mrs. Parris first tried home remedies for ordinary illnesses. Then they called in the local physicians. When that did not ease the girls they added prayer, but the problem only grew. By January 20, according to Tituba’s later testimony, Betty and Abigail spent the evening in the parlor (sitting room and master bedroom combined) with Mr. and Mrs. Parris, both of whom prayed over the girls. But prayer did not bring peace to them. Tituba, in the hall (the main room of the house) could hear the racket from the parlor across the entry, could hear their cries and shrieks as if they were being pinched.