Authors: Kevin
Bridget Bishop, a sturdy and fl amboyant woman in her early fi fties, stood shackled in the back of a horse-drawn cart, forced to stand up by a guard on either side so the numerous people lining the streets could get a good look at her when the cart rolled by. People from Salem and neighboring towns and villages gathered to see the spectacle.
They fi ltered in from every avenue to get a look: merchants came out of their shops; families, out of their homes; wanderers, from their roads. The spectators froze and fell silent as the horses clopped past, bringing the prisoner steadily to her doom.
The air was still and dead. The horizon, streaked with the sullen shades of a blood-red sunset, set an appropriate backdrop for the execution to come.
As the cart rolled past the great Meeting House, Bridget glared for more than a few seconds at the building and sounds of the structure’s unknitting from the inside immediately followed. A few men and women, hearing the noise, ran inside to inspect. They found a plank from one of the walls lying on the opposite side of the room. A man picked it up and carried it outside.
“Goody Bishop did this!” he shouted. “Hurry off with her, and be done with it! Send her wretched soul back to Hell from whence it came!”
The crowd, prompted by the man’s outburst, found its voice and clamored.
“Hang the witch!” one man yelled.
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“Bridget Bishop is the Devil’s consort!” another hollered. “She must be put to death!”
“I am no such thing!” Bridget shot back. “I am an innocent woman falsely accused! God Almighty knows the truth, and He shall surely see justice served! Only He can judge me!”
“And so He shall, Goody Bishop!” a bitter young
woman proclaimed. “And so He shall, indeed!”
“The wench blinded my boy!” a stern-looking elderly woman cried out. “She must be punished for her sins!”
The crowd roared.
The driver of the wagon, realizing the furor of the crowd, cracked the reigns harder and barked at the horses to move faster. As they did so, Bridget heaped curses upon her persecutors in defense. Tears started streaming from her eyes as she was carted away to the outskirts of Salem Town, several people running behind and along side the cart, cursing and spitting at her.
She was utterly alone now. All her friends and
family had deserted her; some of them even cheered for her destruction. And there would be no reprieve. She knew that, and at this point that was fi ne with her. There could be no more forgiveness. There would be no forgetting. Her innocence meant nothing to them. Better that she be hanged and have it over with than to live amongst these people who so obviously hated her to the core of her being.
But she was afraid to die. What would happen to her when the noose choked the last breath from her twitching body? Would she cease to exist all together and be nothing more than rotting meat in the ground—food for worms and their like? If there was a God, would He take her into His arms openly with love and forgiveness? Or, would He turn her away 133
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from the Gates of Heaven, and cast her headlong into the depths of Hell to serve and be tormented by Satan for time eternal? She hadn’t lived the cleanest of lives. Could it be that she very well may be damned? Her stomach did sickly fl ip-fl ops at the thought. She felt ill and nauseated.
The wagon made an abrupt turn from the main road and jolted up a narrow path to the rocky terrain of Gallows Hill. Bridget slipped and fell, her knees slamming into the hard wood fl oor of the cart, jabbing them with sharp daggers of white pain.
Her guards, Nyle Cranley and Wilfred Brown, hauled her up roughly to her feet. Though she chastised herself inwardly for making such a comparison, she couldn’t help but be reminded of the Crucifi xion and the procession to Golgotha during which Christ had suffered so many indignities. She had been taught about the Crucifi xion when she was child and remembered the story now. She regretted comparing herself to God’s Son and, being so close to death, she also began to regret the way she had lived her life.
She wept heavily now as they came to the hill’s apex.
Gallows Hill, a rocky ridge which overlooked Salem and the sea beyond it, was barren but for a few oaks and locust trees that had managed to become implanted in its shallow soil. It was a place rooted in death, a place where the spirit of death and injustice lingered long. It was a place stained with the blood of unwilling martyrs.
Bridget’s vision blurred at the sides then went
altogether black, leaving her a narrow tunnel view of the driver and the horses and the scene they approached. Sheriff Corwin, Judge Hathorne, and the other magistrates stood gravely before the largest of the locust trees waiting for her arrival.
The tree was all but dead, only the merest trace of life to be found in its few fl ourishing limbs, branches sprinkled 134
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sparsely with tattered brown leaves. A temperate breeze blew in westward from the North River as Bridget surveyed the tree.
A sickly heat rolled up the back of her neck into her head. A thick hemp noose had been secured from one of its higher boughs and swayed languidly in the diminishing sunlight as the wind tossed it casually to and fro. A ladder led up to a large bough about twenty-fi ve or thirty feet above the ground and nine or ten feet above the bottom of the dangling noose. On this bough sat Morley Lawson, the hangman, nonchalantly smoking a pipe as he waited for the witch, Bridget Bishop.
The cart stopped suddenly and Nyle Cranley removed his hand from the crook of Bridget’s arm and hopped down onto the ground. She turned toward Wilfred Brown and thought of Simon, the man who was forced to help Jesus carry His cross to Golgotha. She squeezed her eyes shut tight and shook her head thinking
: I surely must be damned. I have sinned, and
now I must be punished.
She opened her eyes and looked into his face. He looked kind. His face was gentle. Maybe he was a man she could look to for help.
“Please,” she begged. “I am innocent. I know nothing of witchcraft or witches or their ilk. I have hurt no person, nor do I wish to see any soul in pain. Please. Let me go.”
Brown’s face and grip on her arm tightened.
“It is not my place to do so, Goody Bishop,” he said sharply. “And if it were, I would not. You have been found guilty. You
are
guilty. You have lived most wickedly and have done so for many a year. If it were my doing, you would have been put to death long ago.”
He paused, examining her face critically. Her mouth had dropped open to a mortifi ed gape. No, this was no Simon of Cyrene. This was no Good Samaritan; no compassionate 135
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man. This was one of the Devil’s henchmen making certain she kept her appointment with him.
“Come, Goody Bishop,” he said. “The gallows await you.”
Unable to articulate herself, she squirmed to get away from him, but his hold on her was strong and her struggle vain. He shoved her off the cart with rancor—her shackles clanging—into the arms of Cranley. Brown jumped down, then each man took an arm and forced her to accompany them to the ladder which was propped up against the large bough of the great locust tree.
Judge Hathorne cleared his throat as the trio came to a stop, then addressed Bridget directly but formally.
“Bridget Bishop,” he said without needing to refer to the document he held in his hands. “You have been tried and found guilty of witchcraft whereby you did torment the said Abigail Williams, Ann Putnam, Mercy Lewis, Mary Walcott, and Elizabeth Hubbard of Salem Village.”
As Hathorne said this, another horse-drawn cart
rolled up to the top of the hill followed and preceded by the many people who wished to view the hanging. The fi ve maidens whom Hathorne had just mentioned sat inside and were presently helped down by several of the men who had accompanied the wagon uphill.
This is no execution
, Bridget thought.
This is a carnival show, and I am the main attraction.
Somehow, she was beginning to feel better physically, as if she had come to accept the immediacy of her death, but her legs still felt wobbly. Her whole body trembled, and her tunnel vision didn’t abate, but closed in more. She couldn’t see anything other than the faces of her persecutors now, and she could only see them one at a time when she looked directly at each one. Her ears buzzed.
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The sensation she had of feeling better fl eeted away, a mere lull in her suffering. She reeled, straining to hear Hathorne over the speckled hissing buzz that razed her ears and brain. Hathorne’s face was the only vista her eyes would allow now: a white ball of righteous indignation spewing forth contempt and lies.
Her eyeballs rolled under their lids as consciousness threatened to abandon her, but she wouldn’t have it. There wasn’t much in this world she could still control, but she was determined to control something. She could still preserve some modicum of dignity and self-respect. She swooned and swayed listlessly, her movements alerting her guards to the possibility of her breakdown, but she wouldn’t give them the satisfaction any longer of seeing her harrowed. She clenched her fi sts into tight, white-knuckled balls and ground her fi ngernails into the palms of her hands. The pain was a bracing tonic for her.
She was revived almost immediately, and once again became alert and animated. The buzzing in her ears faded. Her vision widened. She stood stolid but aware. Hathorne’s voice became clear again, and she was almost glad to recognize the words he was speaking as the closing of his speech. She had no desire to have the agony prolonged by listening to the long-winded moral platitudes he was known for. Better to be done with it, she thought. Then rest would come. For better or worse. For salvation or damnation. Rest would come, and rest was bliss.
“It is customary,” Hathorne continued, “to ask the accused once more before her sentence is carried out if she would confess her crimes to her community and to God. Do you wish to do so?”
Bridget had her wits about her again and would not relent in professing her guiltlessness.
“I have nothing to confess to you or to God,” she said stridently.
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Hathorne balked at her defi ance. Even in the face of certain death, she refused to atone for her wickedness.
“Am I to understand that you remain unrepentant?”
“I have nothing to repent,” she replied. “I have done nothing to cause any person harm through witchery or any other device. I am innocent.”
“Then to the gallows with you. And may the Lord
Almighty have mercy on your damned soul.”
Corwin nodded to Cranley and he shoved her up
the ladder. She complied reluctantly with his proddings, even though she had decided to be brave and die with dignity. There would be no crying, no screaming, no last minute confessions for crimes and sins she never committed.
Lawson reached out and grabbed the rope, pulling it up and coiling it in his hands. He waited.
Bridget climbed the ladder slowly and sullenly with deliberation, her shackled hands sharing one rung at a time, all too aware of what awaited her when she completed her ascent.
From below she appeared like a huge inchworm crawling up a steep offshoot, taking its time but steadily covering the distance.
She reached the top of the ladder and looked down at Hathorne, Corwin, and the crowd still gathering at the bottom, looking up at her, gawking. It seemed that she was very high up, higher than she imagined it was when she looked up at Lawson from the ground below. Her stomach felt uneasy. Its sour taste fi lled her mouth. Though outwardly she appeared stoic, she was terrifi ed. She felt her heart pounding quickly in her chest. Her breathing was rapid and shallow. The buzzing in her ears and the burning at the back of her head and neck returned again, this time with greater intensity. She tried digging her nails into her palms again, but it wouldn’t work.
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“May God have mercy on your souls,” she declared drunkenly, her vision narrowing fi rst on the appalled face of Corwin, then on Hathorne’s.
Bridget may as well have said, “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.” She didn’t realize until the words had already left her mouth the blasphemy implied by such a proclamation. She huffed and turned up to Lawson, looking at him with bleary eyes.
“Well,” she croaked with a dry tongue and a raspy voice. “Be done with it already.”
He stuck his pipe between his teeth and took the rope in his hands, grabbing the noose, and allowing the slack to drop. He produced the black hood which he had tucked in the waist of his breeches and placed it over her head.
The black fi eld she now saw only served to feed her sense of uneasiness and isolation. Everything was blotted out.
Was this what death was like? It was far from comforting to know that the most dreadful, inevitable fate to ever strike man was so close, but, she realized, it was inevitable. It could be put off and delayed, but it would come, and it would come to everyone sooner or later regardless of sex, age, race, or character. Death, she fi gured, is natural. Whether she came to accept it in the few moments of life she had left or not, it would take her, and the inevitable would be over for good.
But she wanted to accept it, embrace it like a long pined for lover. Then she would know peace. Then she would know contentment.
In an effort to speed the process of acceptance, she attempted to empty her mind of all thought and worry.
Let
Death come
, she said inwardly.
Let him ravage me, body and soul, and
I shall touch my lips to his and languish in his arms.
But her thoughts betrayed her and the fear swept over her again with renewed vigor, sharp and cold and ruthless like 139
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the blade of a sword. She choked on her tears as they came afresh when she felt the hangman slide the noose over her head and under her chin, cinching it snugly around her neck, tightening the knot behind her left ear.