Six Women of Salem (17 page)

On Saturday, February 27, a day of biting northeast wind, Elizabeth Hubbard arrived at the Procters’ door, sent by her uncle, Dr. Griggs. The purpose of the errand was not recorded, but it would have been an opportunity for the girl to relate the latest Village news to Mary Warren, if to no one else. John Procter did his best to minimize the fears of possible witchcraft, but the maids were more apprehensive. Elizabeth left for the long trudge home, this time facing into the wind, and later word spread that a wolf had stalked the girl during her panicked walk.

On that same day Annie Putnam’s agitation increased, until she had a name for the tormenting specter: Sarah Good.

So! Her identification of that disreputable beggar would come as no surprise to her parents. They could easily believe that that disagreeable and spiteful woman would cooperate with the Devil.

Annie’s distress continued as she resisted the specter, with the weather matching the mood, lashing a tempest against the region. Wind and cold rain drenched the still-frozen earth and flooded rivers already winter-full, drowning cattle westward and keeping many people from Sabbath services.

But it did not prevent the spread of gossip. Elizabeth Hubbard had reported specters not only of Sarah Good but also of Sarah Osborn, a sickly woman married to her former servant who now controlled his late master’s farm.

By Monday Thomas Putnam had had enough. Resolved to put an end to the assaults from the Invisible World, he and his brother Edward, with neighbor Joseph Hutchinson and Rebecca Nurse’s son-in-law Thomas Preston, braved the muddy roads and traveled into Salem town to register their complaint against Sarah Good, Sarah Osborn, and Tituba. They returned with news that the magistrates had issued arrest warrants immediately and ordered area constables to take the suspects into custody for questioning on the morrow at Ingersoll’s ordinary.

Yet even this did not inhibit the specters. Although family and concerned neighbors gathered at Thomas and Ann Putnam’s home to offer help and comfort, as was the custom in times of ordinary illness and hardship, Annie remained terrified all that evening, surrounded by spirits she said threatened her throat with a knife.

At the parsonage Betty and Abigail reported being pinched, but Tituba remained in the house. Parris ordered her to wash out the lean-to chamber, which was probably meant to keep her away from her supposed victims. Upstairs in the cold, low, slant-roofed room, which may have opened from her master’s study, she worked under his suspicious eye. (Oddly, Parris did not seem to suspect John Indian, although he well knew the man had helped make the witch-cake.) Parris presumably gave consent for his slave to be named in the complaint. He must have questioned her himself after the gathering of ministers in order to inquire more forcefully just
what
she had been up to in his absence. It was a master’s prerogative to “correct” a servant’s ill behavior, and some were known to strike even their free white employees. However, she had not confessed to anything yet.

____________________

Tituba and John Indian kneel with the rest of the Parris family for evening prayers. They do this every day, but tonight concentration is impossible. Her master continues to address the Almighty aloud, but sudden shouts from Abigail and Betty drown out whatever
he
has to say. Betty and Abigail cringe and cower from specters they say are pinching them, stabbing them, tearing them away from prayer. Young Thomas and little Susanna are silent, the boy nervous but keeping apart from the girls, as Susanna starts to cry.

Abigail points to a swarm of invisible familiars that, to judge from the way she bats at the air, must surround her like a cloud of summer mosquitoes.

“The witches brought them!” she shouts.

Betty shrieks in terror again and again. Both girls topple as if struck, and they writhe under the table in a desperate attempt to escape . . . what?

Tituba’s ears hurt from the piercing noises. She glances toward John, but his head is down. He is in no position to do much about any of this madness, much less to protect her. She cannot attend to Parris’s prayers for fear of what these people mean to do next. None of the family trust her now. The girls react to her presence as they would to a rattlesnake in the house. She has no idea what to do about it.

(
3
)

Tituba learns what will happen early the next morning. While the girls are twitching as usual, the constable and some deputies arrive at the door, and Reverend Parris looks relieved but not surprised. She has barely enough time to snatch her cloak before they bind her hands and lead her outdoors into the cold. With a deputy on either side, she is marched down the road to the nearby ordinary—Deacon Ingersoll’s home. They hold her arms firmly but seem jumpy, as if she might use magic to overpower them and escape. No one explains anything to her, but she gathers that the magistrates will question her here. So, she comes to understand, they do believe the children’s accusations after all.

People are already loitering in the ordinary’s yard, filling the tap room, where the magistrates will sit. They take her into another smaller room and leave her with Goodwife Ingersoll and some other women, but they stay within earshot. If Goody Ingersoll calls for help, they will rush in, but Tituba knows that no one will come if she cries out. She feels trapped and knows she must keep her wits about her if she is to find a chance to help herself.

She is to be searched for witch-marks and must remove her clothing. Shivering from more than drafts, Tituba removes her cloak and bodice and then pulls down her shift so Goody Ingersoll can look. No one seems to comment on any marks—something the Devil brands his witches with, Tituba understands, just as some slave masters brand runaways. There are no comments on anything from the waist down either. She tugs her clothes back together as Goody Ingersoll slips out. The two remaining women are also prisoners: an old woman who looks none too strong—Goodwife Sarah Osborn—and the ragged woman with a pipe who came begging at the parsonage—Sarah Good. Osborn looks desperate. Good glares. Outside the door they hear the voice of Good’s husband asking Goody Ingersoll if she saw a certain wart below his wife’s right shoulder. He is precise when giving its location, though he is sure it was not there before. Good scowls all the more.

Sounds of the crowd increase, and time passes with no conversation among the three. They have nothing in common except their current captivity. At last a guard enters and tells them they’re moving down the hill to the meeting house. Guards lead the three out, and the crowd parts but does not retreat far. Already too many people have swarmed to the site to fit in Ingersoll’s ordinary, too many even for the large meeting house. Figures jostle at the windows as more pack the interior—more than those who attend on the Sabbath, Tituba notices.

Several strangers await them, men from Salem town: two magistrates, more deputies, and the constables. Reverend Parris and another man prepare to take notes. The four afflicted girls, clustered to one side, recoil at the sight of the prisoners. The magistrates say something, introducing the proceedings, then Good is brought forward to be questioned first while Tituba and Osborn are taken out of the room to wait their turns.

After a time Osborn is next. Nothing about the examination is a secret.

The rumble of voices carries through the unshuttered windows: demanding and questioning from the magistrates; lower tones from others in the room; higher tones of the accused women denying the charges, angry (in Good’s case) or pleading (as Osborn is desperate to be believed); and the shrieks of the bewitched girls and thumps as they fall on the floor in convulsions.

Details trickle out, passed from one onlooker to another: neither woman confesses, neither admits she is a witch as charged, although Good is quick to believe that the other two may well be. Both say they are innocent, and neither is believed.

The court recesses for a noon meal, and with all three prisoners guarded together, it becomes plain that the other two think Tituba is the witch. Good glares daggers at her. Osborn cringes away fearfully. Even they, who know the charges against themselves are wrong, believe Tituba to be the Devil’s servant. The magistrates must be even more convinced.

Soon enough Tituba is summoned to the meeting house. All eyes in the room fix on her, pinning her to the spot. She has sat in the gallery so many hours, as good as invisible to the better sort below, as she listened to Mr. Parris deliver his sermons. Now the crowd is looking at her, expecting her to speak in that place, before so many people. The four bewitched girls huddle to one side, witnesses, recoiling when she looks their way.

“Tituba,” one of the magistrates demands, “what evil spirit have you familiarity with?”

“None.” It is only the truth, but the magistrate regards the afflicted girls as they moan and flinch.

“Why do you hurt these poor children?” he continues, ignoring her denial. “What harm have they done unto you?”

“They do no harm to me. I no hurt them at all.” She does not try to explain that whether the girls lie or if they are genuinely mistaken, their accusations cause
her
prodigious harm. The magistrates must be made to believe that whatever is happening,
she
is not the cause of it. If evil spirits are at work, she knows nothing about it. But they do not believe her.

“Why have you done it?”

“I have done nothing. I can’t tell when the Devil works.”

“What? Doth the Devil
tell
you he hurts them?”

“No, he tells me nothing.” But this makes it sound as if she has at least encountered the Devil, so the magistrate pounces on it.

“Do you ever see something appear in some shape?”

“No. Never see anything.”

“What familiarity have you with the Devil, or what is it you converse withal? Tell the truth. Who is it that hurts them?”

“The Devil for aught I know.” From what she has heard from these people, the Devil does not need
her
help to hurt anyone, being quite strong on his own.

“What appearance or how doth he appear when he hurts them?” The man will not let up, will not listen to her. The afflicted witnesses continue to twitch and squirm. “With what shape or what is he like that hurts them?”

Slaves are expected not only to obey their owners’ orders but also to conform to their expectations. This man—and her master, the whole room full of people—expect her to confess to what they already believe to be true. Very well then. She would obey their expectations if that would make the questions stop.

“Like a man, I think,” she says cautiously. “Yesterday, I being in the lean-to chamber, I saw a thing like a man that told me serve him. And I told him no, I would not do such a thing.” (Something she cannot say to Mr. Parris.) This is not a confession. She has not admitted to doing or seeing anything more than what the girls have described. Let them think the Devil also plagues her.

The girls begin to relax and be still, their pains stopping as Tituba speaks, as the court assumes she is confessing.

Had she seen anyone else? the man asks.

Four women, she says, and when pressed, she names the two other suspects. “Goody Osborn and Sarah Good, and I do not know who the others were.” A tall man from Boston was with them, she adds. The room is hanging on her words, the afflicted remain quiet. Yes, Boston—they were there last night. The witches took her and brought her back. They told her to hurt the children, but she would not.

And then? The magistrates want to hear more.

The four witches and the man hurt the children, she says, and put the blame on her. This would explain why the girls said she hurt them, but when she continued to resist the witches’ orders they told her flatly that they will do worse to her than they do to the girls.

“But did you not hurt them?” asks the magistrate.

“Yes,” Tituba says, “but I will hurt them no more.”

And then?

So Tituba continues her tale of how the spirit appeared more than once, many times in the past few months. Sometimes it took the form of a man, sometimes of a hog, and at least four times like a great black dog. The dog demanded she serve him and threatened violence if she refused, then turned into a man who threatened her again before trying bribery. A yellow bird accompanied him. He would give this to her, he said, if she would serve him; he would give her the bird and other pretty things. But he did not show her what those were.

“What also have you seen?” The questions would not stop.

Cats, she says, a red one and a black one, both demanding she serve them, demanding she hurt the children. Yes, she had pinched Elizabeth Hubbard this very morning. The man in black took Tituba to the girl invisibly.

“Why did you go to Thomas Putnam’s last night and hurt his child?”

She has heard the gossip about goings-on at the Putnam’s.

“They pull and haul me and
make
me go,” she says. She describes being dragged from the parsonage (as the guards had done that very morning) and flown through the air over the treetops to the Putnam’s house. Concealed by a spell of invisibility, they entered seen only by the afflicted girl and ordered Tituba to cut off the child’s head with a knife.

Men in the crowd speak up to verify that Putnam’s daughter had described this very scene with the knife.