Six Women of Salem (48 page)

The ghosts, the tortures, the biting specter, the repeated pestering threats with the Devil’s book and the offered bribes—witnesses and confessors presented all these stories to a packed courtroom as well as how Burroughs appeared as leader of the witches, how he presided over the great meeting in Salem Village and promised better times for those who joined the Devil’s side as he worked to replace the Kingdom of God with the Kingdom of Satan.

Other witnesses spoke of Burroughs’s rough treatment of his late wives (though not all the offered testimony seems to have been used at the trial), of his apparently uncanny ability to know more about what happened when he was not present (or not
visibly
present), of his unexpected strength for such a little man that he could manage a long-barreled fowling piece one-handed or lift full molasses barrels from a canoe with no trouble (he had always been strong for his size).

Tales that he could lift that long gun with merely one finger inserted in the barrel were, however, disregarded, as were the stories of the ghosts—though everyone seemed to accept the truth of them. Whatever answers Burroughs made to all these allegations seemed, to the court, thin excuses at best, inconsistent and contradictory. He spoke up to challenge juror selection, but nothing he said helped, certainly not his opinion of some of the witnesses’ reputations. Finally he presented a paper to the jury explaining that contracting with the Devil or sending imps to harm others at a distance was impossible. The judges recognized the statement as a passage copied from Thomas Ady’s book
A
Candle in the Dark
. Ady was a skeptical Englishman who argued that people’s foolish imagination caused the problems blamed on witchcraft. When the judges noted the source, however, Burroughs denied copying the words, as the court understood his protest, and said that “a gentleman” gave him the piece. But his phrasing now seemed like a lie about its source. To the court, his whole defense sounded like “Contradictions, and Falsehoods,” and neither they nor Mrs. Ann Putnam, whose daughter was named as victim in one of Burroughs’s four indictments, were swayed by his “Reflecting upon the Reputation of some of the witnesses.”

In any case the jury found George Burroughs guilty.

When the foreman pronounced this verdict Burroughs said that he could see why the judges and jury condemned him with “so many positive witnesses against him,” as Reverend John Hale remembered it, “But said, he dyed by false Witnesses.”

If this was sarcasm, it was lost on such as Ann Putnam. But the statement bothered Reverend Hale enough that he later visited one of the confessing witnesses in prison, someone such as Abigail Hobbs or old Ann Foster.

I seriously spake to one that witnessed (of his Exhorting at the Witch Meeting at the Village) saying to her; You are one that did bring this man to Death, if you have charged any thing upon him that is not true, recal it before it be too late, while he is alive. She answered me, she had nothing to charge herself with, upon that account.

If Mary Warren witnessed this exchange, it may have smothered any lingering doubts she had of her own claims.

Reverend Increase Mather, having traveled up from Boston to observe the trial, may also have taken the opportunity, as he would again later, to question some of the confessors in the jail. “More than one or two of those now in Prison,” he later wrote, “have freely, and credibly acknowledged their Communion and Familiarity with the Spirits of Darkness, and have also declared unto me the Time and Occasion, with the particular occurrences of their Hellish Obligations and Abominations.”

Mrs. Ann Putnam showed no doubts of that sort of testimony, not with her family so busy for the cause, as she saw it, of right. Thomas was often in Salem town working with the magistrates or over in Andover with Annie. Sometimes the afflicted families in Andover sent people with horses to accommodate her daughter and Mercy. Not that these trips were without danger, however. Annie fell from her horse once and said that one of the witches had pulled her off. The Putnams saw Andover as infested by witches—whole families of them gone over to Satan, like weeds among God’s wheat, blighting the crop. But Ann could take comfort in the thought that those witches had lost the advantage of surprise now that their plans were known.

And that Bradbury woman was also revealed for what she was, as far as Ann was concerned. Yet, like Goody Nurse, Bradbury had her supporters, some no doubt deluded, others probably collaborators. That husband of hers had collected a long list of names on a petition, just as the Nurse family had. Even a gentleman in Salisbury had written to question the court’s methods, to question the judges’ wisdom in believing the accusations. But the conclusion would no doubt end the same as the Nurse case had.

Ann prayed fervently that it would.

Rebecca Nurse’s still-grieving family faced similar fears far differently motivated from Ann’s. If witchcraft was thought to run in families, as in Andover, what did the neighbors think of
them
?

But this legitimate concern for their own welfare did not keep them from trying to help their kin, the two aunts, Sarah Cloyce and Mary Esty, who were currently jailed.

Still, most of the family no longer felt comfortable—or safe—attending services at the Village meeting house. What were services now but Parris’s offensive views and the afflicted’s interruptions? They fully expected to be accused—if not now, then soon enough. So they mostly attended services elsewhere, probably in Topsfield, as Reverend Capen had not assumed that the accused were necessarily guilty.

Thinking “it our most safe and peaceable way to withdraw,” they avoided their neighbors. But they did not give up resisting but rather only waited for an opportunity to do something that might help.

More suspects came in from Andover on August 11
—
some of Martha Carrier’s younger children, and a daughter and granddaughter of Andover’s senior minister. (But then again, Reverend Francis Dane was also Martha Carrier’s uncle, no less.) The children had confessed in Andover at their initial questioning the previous day, though the local magistrate Dudley Bradstreet had his doubts about the whole matter, “being,” as he said, “unadvisedly entered upon [a] service I am wholly unfit for.” Annie Putnam and Mercy Lewis did not doubt, and the Salem magistrates accepted the confessions readily. Now two Andover girls witnessed among the afflicted: Martha Sprague and Sarah Phelps—local girls, not just the Salem Village experts.

The Carrier children, aged eight and ten, confessed even more about their witchly activities, about how their own mother had recruited them to the Devil’s cause. Betty Johnson was twenty-two, but as her grandfather Reverend Dane would say, she was “but Simplish at the best.” She, like others, had also formed the hope that the court would spare confessors rather than merely postpone their cases, as was the reality. “I feare the common speech that was frequently spread among us, of their liberty, if they would confesse,” Reverend Dane would soon write, was what tempted many into false confessions.

Unlike her niece, Goodwife Abigail Faulkner refused to lie, stating, “I know nothing of it.” Perhaps, she said, “it is the devill dos it in my shape.” But she would not confess, not even when her niece urged her to do so “for the creddit of her Town.”

Goody Faulkner’s gaze and the fact that she nervously twisted a handkerchief as she spoke set off convulsions among the afflicted. Mary Warren’s fits were so severe that she ended up under the table as if dragged, but Goody Faulkner’s touch broke the cycle and relieved the girl, though doing so brought no relief to Goody Faulkner.

____________________

Mary English sits by the window of their small room in the jailer’s house to catch the daylight. She knots the silk in her needle with a deft twist of one index finger and draws the strand through the strip of hooped linen in her lap. She has obtained, along with clean clothes, something to embroider with, although there is less and less contact with their servants in Salem now, and Philip’s friend Mr. Hollard provides their meals.

“Now watch, Susanna,” she says to the six-year-old girl beside her. But her father’s pacing back and forth across the cramped space distracts the child. He acts like a caged wolf even though they do get to walk about the town from time to time as long as they pay for the guard who accompanies them.

“Watch.”

Outside, the street sounds of Boston compete with conversations in the prison yard and the clamor of gulls.

Mary slides the needle back through the cloth. “See? This is called a running stitch.” She repeats the design. “Now you try.”

Philip, muttering curses in French, progresses to fuller complaints about the courts. “The fools, to believe the lying wenches who accuse
me,
who accuse
both
of us of witchcraft! Fools and liars to accuse and
more
fools to believe them!”

His harangue, not the first since their arrival here, is making the girl uneasy and offers no comfort to Mary either, but there is no use in asking him to calm down.

“Stitch them closer next time. Try again.”

Philip moves on, with his voice becoming more defiant, to his disgust over the new governor. He had never liked Phips, even before their arrests. “Sir Edmund was the better governor,” he fumes. “But no, these imbeciles would have a local man regardless of whether he could govern. That Phips—practically a pirate—may do well enough on a quarter deck, but can he lead
gentlemen?
Not bloody likely.” Philip has learned to curse in English as well.

Everyone knows he dislikes Governor Phips. One of the so-called afflicted girls, they have heard, reported Philip’s specter hurrying off from Salem to Boston to deal with “his great enemy the governor.”
Philip never did hide his emotions,
Mary thinks.

“All that misguided hope placed in this new governor,” Phillip goes on. “All this talk of a change and see what they get. The lout couldn’t even read until he was over twenty!”

Mary has heard that too. Taught by his wife, people say. Philip English and William Phips certainly do not socialize, but their wives are clearly of equal rank and do. She has heard the rumors that some prisoners have escaped. It had to be possible.

Mary makes a few more running stitches as examples and hands the hoop to Susanna. “Practice,” she says.

(
14
)

The remaining Procter brothers, mucking out the cow yard, hear the creaking wagon before they see it. If this is a customer, then they can use the business, though supplies are low and, with their stepmother in jail, there is no one to brew more beer. John Procter Jr., at twenty-three, is the eldest remaining son. He squints down the sloping road under the sun’s glare.

Too much dust for just one cart,
he thinks,
men on horseback too.
The younger half-siblings are in the house—or are supposed to be. Three-year-old Abigail darts outside, asking, “Papa? Is it Papa come home?”

Her brother Samuel follows, trying to exert his six-year-old authority. They tussle as the other children watch from the doorway.

The cavalcade is closer now, and John discerns a bristle of black staffs. No, this is not their father returning. This is the law—again. Hot from the day and his work a moment before, John realizes he is drenched in cold sweat.

Dear God, who are they arresting now?

Part of him wants to run away. Part of him wants to fight back.

Instead, he stands by the gate.

Abby breaks away and stumbles toward the road.

John clamps a hand on her shoulder as she tries to pass and calls to his other sister: “Mary, get them back in the house.
Now.
”

I should have sent them to our older married sister,
he thinks.
I should have insisted she take them in.

The procession turns into the farmyard. A gentleman at the fore halts his mount and surveys the area. His men fan out. Sheriff Corwin, only a few years older than John, holds the reins in one hand and rests the other lightly on the polished hilt of his sword.

“John Procter Junior?”

Clutching the dung fork in one hand and restraining the struggling child with the other, John is all too aware how his grimy work clothes and the cow shit on his boots undermines any attempt at dignity. Even so, he draws himself up, trying to act as he feels their absent father would. “I am.”

Abigail begins to cry: “Mama? Did they bring Mama back?”

Finally Mary scoops up the child and carries her away. Sheriff Corwin produces a paper from his pocket and reads it through, but something about it is different. John hears the name of their father and the names of the monarchs but no name for the accused.

“What?” It is
not
another an arrest warrant. Nearly dizzy with relief, he cannot hear what the sheriff says next. Corwin looks annoyed and repeats himself.

“Take the felons’ goods into custody. I trust no one will interfere with my men.”

“Goods?”
What is he talking about?

Corwin nods to his deputies, who split into groups and head for the barn and the house.