Six Women of Salem (49 page)

“Wait! What goods do you mean?”

Some of the men start herding the cows from the nearby pasture and, to judge from the squealing, try to drive the pigs from their pen.

Thank heaven some swine are loose in the wood lot.

Abby’s wail from the house sends John running inside. The deputies—one looks almost apologetic, one sneering—haul boxes and sacks of supplies from the root cellar.

“You’re frightening the children,” says John, but the men keep working, piling the Procters’ supplies and possessions into the center of the room. Someone clumps across the floor above.

One of the deputies rolls a sloshing barrel from its corner—the last of the beer supply.

“Get rid of it,” one of the men orders. “And I don’t mean drink it.”

They heave the barrel over, sending the beer foaming onto the hearth, then begin packing brass and iron kitchen gear. Everything else—anything of value—vanishes into sacks.

“Wait!” says Mary. “That’s our dinner.”

The sneering deputy doesn’t reply but instead lifts the pot from its hook and slops its contents onto the small cook fire beneath. The thin broth hisses as it quenches the frail flame and sends a small twist of smoke up from the wet ashes.

“What are we supposed to live on?” John demands. “When do we get any of this back?”

Corwin still sits upon his horse, directing the operation from on high and, thus, keeping his hands clean. John Procter seethes and dares to do nothing, as his relief at not being arrested turns to anger. It seems to take hours, but eventually the procession forms again. The loaded wagons creak forward back down the road toward town, followed by a ragged drove of cattle lowing their unease at the change of routine. The pigs give more trouble, but they too are prodded along with the rest.

Dear Lord, what will happen next?

John slumps against the sundial’s post and watches the thieves recede.

How have they missed taking the brass sundial?
he wonders. First their father and his wife are taken, then Benjamin and William, then Sarah.
We should be grateful no one was arrested this time, but still—what
are
we to live on?

His younger brothers and sisters are watching him, waiting to be told what to do. He straightens up. “Mary, see what’s left in the house. Thorndike, come with me. We must find the rest of the cows—and hide them.”

____________________

C
onfiscations, as the Procters had endured, were a new twist on the treatment of convicted felons, a part of English common law not used before in Massachusetts Bay but used now in the government’s efforts not to violate the charter’s repugnancy clause. The idea was to remove a convicted felon’s material possessions and store them so as to prevent the felon’s family and other supporters from disposing of them before sums due to the Crown (or the Crown’s provincial government) could be paid. After that, the deceased felon’s heirs could be provided for. However, with the escalating number of prisoners being jailed that summer, at least some of the goods were being used to feed them or sold to pay for the court’s many expenses.

The result was even greater resentment among both the families of the accused and the population at large.

John’s sons could, in visits to the jail, have told him the discouraging news—how the sheriff and his men had arrived not to arrest any more of the family this time, a fear foremost in their minds, but instead to take forfeited goods. (Possibly Mary Warren would have overheard or been told what had passed, what her fancies and distractions had caused.) In whispered fury the sons would have told their father the details during a prison visit. The law had “left nothing in the House for the support of the Children,” as they would later report.

The cattle, as they had learned, were either sold at half the price they were worth or slaughtered, with the meat salted for the West India trade. The government had no place to keep livestock, so selling was the only solution. The Procters would be lucky to get the money equivalent back, but the cattle and other possessions were gone for good.

Mary Warren, preparing to leave the jail with the rest of the afflicted to witness the latest hangings on August 19, could not help overhearing her former master arguing with someone—the sheriff, perhaps, and Reverend Noyes.

He was not ready to die, John Procter’s voice carried down the corridor. He needed more time to settle his soul.

Reverend Noyes’s voice carried even more clearly. Because Procter would not confess to what was so obvious, what the court had proven, how could he presume to be able to put his soul to rights under those circumstances?

Procter objected. At least pray with him now, he asked.

But Noyes refused, unwilling to waste compassion on the obviously guilty—what was the point?

Mary could not stop listening. The other prisoners stayed quiet, straining to hear.

They had already heard that Margaret Jacobs, once a confessor-accuser but since recanted, had asked to see Reverend Burroughs the day before to acknowledge personally that she had given “altogether false and untrue” evidence against him, as well as her grandfather George Jacobs and John Willard, and to ask for his forgiveness. Burroughs not only forgave Margaret but also prayed with her. (She may have apologized to her grandfather as well, for he had a line added to his recent will, leaving her £10 in silver.) But neither Mary Warren nor the other confessors were willing to change their stories.

Now Martha Carrier made her farewells to her children. But the youngest of them at least, their shrill voices verging on tears and then dissolving into weeping, begged their mother to confess, to choose life and stay with them. One of them lamented that their own mother had dedicated them to the Devil, but the mother’s impatient harried tones interrupted all of this. Words were hardly distinguishable, the emotions too raw to miss.

So sad
, Mary thought, then corrected herself. Her own mother had been taken by witches, bewitched to death, and where was the pity then?

Finally, the five felons were boosted into the waiting cart. The procession assembled, and the gate creaked open. The usual crowd was out there, more along the street—more all told than for any of the previous executions. An influx of gentlemen, including several out-of-town ministers from Boston and elsewhere, had come in to witness the end of their erstwhile colleague, George Burroughs.

Mary trudged on among the afflicted, down the road to the Town Bridge, over the creek that entered the river bend in its little marsh, and up on to the ledges above the tidal pool. The crowd jostled its way onto the more level land, leaving a space around the gallows. The proceedings began as the other executions had, but this time the prisoners in the cart had more to say and turned to one of the visiting ministers, Cotton Mather from Boston—Mary heard the crowd murmur his name—to ask him to pray with them. Unlike Noyes, Mather agreed, and together the five felons and the minister addressed the Lord. They prayed for God to identify the true witches among them; to forgive their accusers, the judges, and the juries for finding them guilty; and to forgive all their sins—their actual sins. The prisoners also repeated their claim of innocence and prayed “that their blood might be the last innocent blood shed upon that account.” Procter and Willard appeared unaccountably dignified and collected. Even old Jacobs seemed to impress some in the crowd. From what Mary had heard, he rarely forgave a slight ordinarily.

But none of this was ordinary despite that it happened so often now.

Reverend George Burroughs had more to add once he stood on the ladder, teetering a little, for his hands were tied behind him. He also offered a prayer, addressed as much to the onlookers as to God, again declaring his innocence. More people in the crowd murmured to hear it, especially when Burroughs ended with the Lord’s Prayer—word perfect. The magistrates had allowed the recitation of this so-familiar prayer as a test for the accused, even though that was a folk test, not a proper use of Scripture. Everyone knew it, but several accused had slipped on the lines, mangling the meaning. Willard certainly had. And a witch sworn to Satan’s cause would hardly express the sentiments of that prayer perfectly. “May
Thy
will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.”
God’
s will, Burroughs emphasized—not necessarily man’s will.

Although more people reacted to this delivery, some even moved to tears, and restlessness rippled through the throng, no one stepped forward to do anything about it—yet.

“The Devil whispered the lines to Burroughs,” some among the afflicted said. “He could not speak so well otherwise.”

The hangman kicked the ladder away.

Burroughs dropped and slowly died.

The crowd muttered, and their tone was angrier than it was before. Mary couldn’t see over their heads, and too many of the people were looking
her
way, toward the afflicted. She caught snatches of conversation discontent that the law had hanged a minister, one who prayed so well, a man ordained of God. Were they going to hit someone?

Reverend Mather spoke out over the rising din from his horseback vantage point. She heard most of what he said:
not
ordained (that was true) folk tests could not be trusted (yet the court used the touch test—did Reverend Mather know that?) nor outward appearances, for even the Devil had disguised himself as an Angel of Light to deceive. Mary knew that a shining angel-like personage had been reported among the specters. What did
that
mean?

The crowd pulled back, objections dwindled, and the threat of riot subsided. The hangings continued—the whole messy, reeking process of wringing a soul from its body. When the last corpse stopped swinging, the crowd began to pull away. They moved back down the ledge to the road, while the deputies began to dispose of the bodies—to a waiting grave, to waiting relatives. The day was hotter than ever, and nothing seemed to have been settled.

Thomas Brattle, treasurer of Harvard College, was one of the gentlemen who attended the executions of August 19. The conduct of the condemned impressed him, especially that of “Proctor and Willard, whose whole management of themselves, from the Goal to the Gallows, and whilst at the Gallows, was very affecting and melting to the hearts of some considerable Spectatours.” He could not forget their prayer “that their blood might be the last innocent blood shed.”

Oddly, Brattle did not mention Reverend Burroughs, whose last words from the ladder would be reported by Robert Calef, his claim of innocence phrased “with such Solemn and Serious Expressions, as were to the Admiration of all present; his Prayer (which he concluded by repeating the Lord’s Prayer), was so well worded, and uttered with such composedness, and such (at least seeming) fervency of Spirit, as was very affecting, and drew Tears from many (so that it seemed to some, that the Spectators would hinder the Execution).”

In Boston, meanwhile, Philip and Mary English planned an escape, or at least Mary did—family lore would have much to say on the matter—for the outcome of the trials was not in the least encouraging. Philip’s £4,000 bond allowed the couple visitors and some restricted movement about town, especially to attend religious services. The oldest of Boston’s three Congregational churches, the First Church, was closest, its meeting house halfway between the jail and the town house, where the legislature met. Reverend Joshua Moody was one of the two ministers there, and one August Sabbath, according to the family story, he invited Philip and Mary to attend. On that occasion he delivered a sermon on the text Matthew 10:23: “And when they persecute you in this citie, flee into another,” the minister announced from the pulpit. Moody himself had been hounded by the royal governor of New Hampshire, who insisted that Moody conduct the more ceremonial Church of England services that were against the minister’s Congregational principles, then forbad him to deliver any sermons at all. Moody had no intention of conforming to the Episcopal practices so many had left England to avoid, so he relocated to Massachusetts. (Boston had a Church of England congregation, but no one
had
to be a part of it—or a member of any of the churches there, for that matter.)

After the service Moody and Reverend Samuel Willard of the nearby Third Church visited the Englishes in their rented quarters. Some of the Oyer and Terminer judges attended Willard’s church, but he himself had warned, in a series of sermons, that the Devil raged against Christians without the help of recruited witches. Although the judges in his congregation seem to have ignored it, his stance prompted “unkindness, abuse, and reproach from many men” and may have led to him being accused around the time of Rebecca Nurse’s trial. Fortunately the court informed that accuser that she was mistaken. (Samuel may have been a distant relation of the condemned John Willard of Salem Village, who was not as lucky.)

Now, according to later family lore, the two ministers spoke more directly to the Englishes.

Had they taken note of his sermon? Moody asked.

Philip replied that he had, but what exactly did Moody mean?

Their lives were in danger, said the minister bluntly, and they should do everything they could to escape. “Many have suffered,” he told them.

“God will not permit them to touch me,” Philip insisted. (Family tradition wholly ignored Phillip’s earlier escape and his month hiding in Boston, burrowed, when necessary, under a pile of dirty laundry.)