She admitted freely to the practice of witchcraft, of hexing the village, of conjuring storms and blights. It was enough. The morning of the trial she was dragged from her cell, wrists bound and tied to the rear of a farm wagon. She was pulled by oxen through the streets in this way, her jailer lashing her with a whip the entire way through those muddy streets to the courthouse. The locals lined up to pelt her with rotten fruit and stones. On her belly then, she was dragged up the steps and before Magistrate Corey and his associates, Magistrates Bowen and Hay.
She was bloody and broken, sack dress hanging in strips, her back raw from the whip, her face slashed open from “the blooding”, her scalp missing patches of hair from “the knotting”. A metal cage known as a Scold’s Bridle encircled her head. The jailer removed it, tearing the bit from her mouth that pressed her tongue flat.
She begged for water and was given none.
She begged for food and was ignored.
She begged for mercy and the assembled crowd laughed.
Then the questioning began. The court had already assembled a lengthy list of evidence, not all of which was found in the Widow’s shack. People, certain now that she had been emasculated by the law, came forward with tales of horror and wonder. A young woman named Claire Dogan admitted that Widow Hagen had tried to seduce her into the “cult of witchery”, promising her riches and power. Dogan claimed that she had witnessed Hagen mixing up “flying ointment” which was applied to a length of oak, upon which, Hagen flew through the air, dipping over treetops and harassing livestock in the fields, laughing all the while.
A farmer named William Constant claimed that, in order to gain control of his neighbor’s holdings, he contracted Widow Hagen to “witch” the man. He said he watched her tie the series of knots in rope known as the “witch’s ladder”…and soon after, his neighbor was taken ill, dying shortly thereafter. Another farmer, Charles Goode, said that he-“while bewitched by the old hag”-had asked her to kill his shrewish wife. Hagen had taken a bone covered with decaying meat, sprinkled it with unknown powders, said words over it “which withered my soul upon hearing them”. The bone was buried beneath his wife’s window and as the meat rotted from it, so did the flesh melt from his wife’s skeleton. She died soon after of an unknown wasting disease.
A group of village children admitted that the Widow had taught them how to avenge their enemies: another group of children who had teased and tormented them. She showed them how to gather hairs from the other children and press them into dolls made of mud and sticks. The words to say over them. And whatever they then did with the dolls happened to the children in question. When one doll was thrown in the river, one of the offending children drowned. When a doll was thrown into a fire, its namesake’s cabin burned to the ground. The court recognized this as sympathetic magic. The children also said that when Mr. Garrity chased them bodily from his apple orchards, they said “strange words” taught to them by Widow Hagen and Garrity’s prize milking cow keeled over dead on the spot.
And more than one farmer came forward to say that there was always trouble during midsummer. That it was the time of the Wild Hunt-the legendary flight of the witches. That Elizabeth Hagen and her fellow witches would take to the air with a coven of demons and evil dead and by morning the unwary had been carried off and livestock went unaccounted for. That on nights of the Wild Hunt, wise men stayed indoors for it could be heard coming-a barking and hissing, screaming and churning.
So the evidence, as such, was not lacking.
High Sheriff Bolton told his wife in secret that if the Widow were to be “put to flame”, the entire village should burn with her. For there were precious few that had not encouraged her wild talents, had not called upon her in times of need. If she had gotten out of control, then who was to blame for empowering her? When there was trouble, her council was always the first sought. And that she had cured more ills and delivered more babies than any thirty doctors, there was no doubt.
But, even Bolton, after what he had seen at Hagen’s shack, had no sympathy for her.
On the first day of the trial, the horrors were heard.
Magistrate Bowen: Elizabeth Hagen…do you admit, then to being a witch?
Hagen: I admit, yer lordship, into being that which is called as such.
Magistrate Bowen: You admit to bewitching this community then?
Hagen: I admit I have my ways. I admit I use them against those what have done me wrong, yer lordship. I was stoned, was I not? My cabin was near-burned, was it not? I have been driven away by those who I have helped numerous times. And now…look upon me! Beaten and bloodied…have I not a right to avenge meself?
Magistrate Bowen: Yours is a crime against, God, lady. Yours is a crime punishable by death. Do you admit then to the worship of Satan?
Hagen: Satan? Satan? A Christian devil, yer lordship. I have no truck with him.
Magistrate Bowen: Then who have you struck your filthy bargain with?
Hagen (laughing uncontrollably): Bargain? Bargain, do ye say? Why with him, is it not? With him that crawls and him that slithers. Him that lords over the dark wood and the empty glen, him that commands from a throne of human bone.
Magistrate Bowen: How do you call this devil, this despoiler?
Hagen: Call him? Him that is She and She that is Him? Him That Cannot Bear Name? The Black Goat of the Dark Wood? She with a thousand squirming, screaming young? Him that calls yer name from the dead and lonely places? Aye! He and She that are It cannot be named! Cannot be held nor bound by such.
Magistrate Bowen: Say the name, witch, in the name of Christ Jesus!
Hagen (laughing): Jesus do ye say? A Christian charlatan! My doings, right and proper, are with Her, with Him, with It, the ancient Writher in Blackness!
Magistrate Bowen: Then you admit to entering into a pact with this nameless other?
Hagen: I do, if it please your honor. This I then do.
Magistrate Bowen: Do you admit, also, of that abomination in your root cellar? That you were growing it? Bringing it to term, as it were, a horror that would torment the community?
Hagen: You ruined me simple fun! What a lark that thing would have been, sucking out the bones of the good and proper!
Magistrate Bowen: I command you, lady, to name this devil who you have had commerce with. That which gave you power over man and nature.
Hagen: Ah, ye wish I hang meself, do ye? Ye wish I speak of commerce with them from the hollow places? Them that hop and jump and crawl?
Magistrate Bowen: You already have, lady, you already have. Tell us, then, of the children. Confess in the name of Jesus Christ.
Hagen: I will confess not in the name of a false god, yer lordship. The children? The children? Aye, I took their lives and laughed as I did so! I drank their blood and stewed their meat, didn’t I? Just as I loosed him what stole them babes, him that devoured their soft heads and picked his teeth with their tiny bones…it is only the beginning, the beginning! Do ye hear? Do ye hear me, you fat stuffed piggies of Procton? Only the beginning…
Magistrate Bowen: Your days of evil are at an end.
Hagen: Are they, yer lordship? Are they indeed? I think not! Stoned, I was. Tortured, I was. Eye for an eye, they say, and eye for an eye I shall have in His name! At an end? What I have called up, brought to me side, will be known for ages! The legacy will not end, this I swear by me mother’s soul which burns in the dark, cold place. Even now, yes, even now I have sewed the seeds. Even now there are three who bring hell into this world…
And so it came to pass.
While Elizabeth Hagen languished in her prison cell, the most peculiar thing happened: three village maidens became pregnant. And each were the daughters of town ministers-Hope from the Congregational Church, Rice from Christ Church, and Ebers from the Presbyterian Church. The girls declared themselves virgins and examinations by Dr. Lewyn proved their hymens to be intact. Virgin births, then. The village was joyous…yet horrified, considering who and what was currently being held in the stockade.
