Children of Salem

Jeremy frowned and slapped a sixpence into the hand this time, making Abraham wince. “So there has been someone here for her, correct?”

“Yes as you seem to already know.”

“A minister who came in the night?”

“Much like yourself, yes.”

“What do you mean like me?”

“Young fella come in the night.”

This didn’t sound like Parris. “Did you catch the man’s name?”

“Said he was from Salem. Let’s see. Overheard the woman insultin’ the reverend before it was over.”

“Insutlting him how?”

“Kept saying it was noise, all noise or something like that.”

“Noyes! Of course. Doing Parris’ dirty work these days.”

“Sir?” Abraham watched Jeremy march off, his steps heavy. Now all he need do is ask around the docks at ships that had made any contact with Barbados to determine if any captain might have any information about a Dr. Noah North in Barbados or a so-called Dr. Caball—a possible ships’ doctor. Most ship doctors were little more than butchers and most hadn’t proper training as medical professionals, and the seagoing men who came and went in such seaports as this talked a good deal about their experiences at sea, and they were a surprisingly tight-knit group. It was not altogether farfetched that someone in Boston, possibly at the nearest pub, might have some knowledge of Caball or North or both.

It wouldn’t prove all elements of her story to determine this fact, that Drs. North and Caball existed and that this Caball fellow would have access to opium and perhaps laudanum—the strange drink. If he could prove enough facts, provide elements of doubt about Parris’ past and present motives, his immorality with respect to his own child, the question of aborting a child in order to hide it from public notice, then who knows, perhaps Governor Phipps might take heed at last to the level of conspiracy and mendacity let loose in Salem.

Jeremy rather doubted that taking Tituba’s story to the judges and magistrates— now so afire with witch- hunt fever—would do a whit of good.

He rushed back to Dancer and the barn and his bed for the night; rushed to the lye soap and water. He concentrated mostly on the hand that Tituba had touched and held onto between the bars. He scrubbed until the skin felt raw. He scrubbed until he felt comfortably sure that he’d stopped any possible spread of her sickness to him. The idea that disease could be stopped or slowed in its tracks by soap and water was as old as the Ten Commandments, precepts ordering cleanliness alongside those that ordered men to consume no uncooked meat.

Dancer watched him, seeming to understand his fear.

When Jeremy’s head hit his cushioned saddle, sleep came quickly to his exhausted mind, sleep orchestrated to the sounds and the odors of the barn, far easier to take than those emanating from the jail. Still, even in his sleep, he missed Serena and hated being away from her, and still he worried first about her safety, then how he could learn more about this mysterious Drs. North and Caball, and thirdly, how he could get an audience with Phipps. Then he recalled how the governor’s wife had gone about the windows of the jailhouse with biscuits and rolls for the prisoners. She’d been banned from doing any further good for the accused, or so he was given to understand.

It might take weeks, possibly months to gain an audience with the governor, but what of the governor’s wife? Just how sympathetic to the cause of the imprisoned on these charges of witchcraft was Mrs. Phipps?

His thoughts and troubled sleep led him from the governor’s mansion back to the jail across the street, where Tituba Indian might die at any time. She had been a chief accuser, pointing at others, and having given herself anew to God by ‘confessing’ her witchcraft and her association with the Black One, Satan, she had been spared the fate that Goode Bishop, Nurse, and the others had found at the end of a rope. Any accused person who did as Tituba had—turned on other prisoners, naming names—was, so far, spared the death sentence, unless the accused publicly recanted the confession and assistance to he court, which had occurred many times over now as well.

Jeremy’s last thought before dozing completely off was of an imaginary Samuel Parris arranging to rush Tituba from her cell to a waiting outbound ship for Barbados. But this swiftly changed to his rushing her off to a waiting grave he’d dug in the woods.

She could go the way of her child, he told himself. A secret, improper burial bought and paid for—no psalms read, no songs sung, no sanctified ground, and no questions asked.

Jeremiah’s sleep settled into a dream about a man who had an unwanted child by his slave, a struggling businessman in a seaport town far from any civilized world, yet the unwanted pregnancy and child would be an embarrassment—even here. The child in the dream was drowned off the end of a dock like an unwanted kitten inside a gurney sack, the body thrown to the kelp bed and the ever-hungry fish.

That was murder even in Barbados.

Chapter Five

In Jeremy’s absence from Salem, from all accounts that he heard—both verbal and written—the lunacy continued at full gallop. More accusations, more warrants sworn out, more arrests, more trials, more hangings in the offing. Including that of Sarah Cloyse, Serena’s aunt and Rebecca’s sister.

Jeremy had a letter posted from Serena, and this news was corroborated by her pained questions: “What did Mother die for? Was it for nothing? Where is God, Jeremy? Where is justice?”

Sarah Towne Cloyse’s name had come up on what had come to be called The Black List, the list of arrest warrants—as did untold numbers of people, men and women, who’d signed one or both petitions that’d circulated on behalf of Rebecca Nurse and Elizabeth Proctor. Those who dared stand up and affix their names to petitions for mercy and attesting to good character were now being systematically accused and arrested.

More jails were being built. The officially sanctioned madness continued without an end in sight.

Serena had signed both those petitions, as had her father and brothers—as had Jeremy. It felt as if the walls of the world, the colonial boundaries, were closing in on them all. It felt as if no one was safe. Serena had been right about that.

I should have thrown Serena across a horse and made her go with me to Connecticut, he told himself on finishing her letter.

As a result, Jeremy stepped up his efforts to gain an audience with the First Lady of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Mrs. Phipps. It was proving difficult. It’d been Governor Phipps who’d signed off on the Court of Oyer & Terminer; it’d been by his edict that Sir William Stoughton, Major Saltonstall and the other Boston judges of the General Court go to Salem to fight the witches, demons, warlocks, and Satan on that ground. He’d been quoted as saying, “Let us take the fight to the monsters in their lair.” And it felt as if Mrs. Phipps had not only been sanctioned by her husband and banned from any show of mercy to the accused and arrested, but that she’d been informed about Jeremiah Wakely—just who he was and how he had called the court sitting at Salem unlawful, and that any attempt on Jeremy’s part to see her must be rebuked. In fact, Wakely was characterized as a crackpot, an imposter, and a larcenous miscreant.

Jeremy imagined all of this maligning of his character had kept Mrs. Phipps from seeing him. Days and nights went by without an answer, and Jeremy feared he’d again fail.

“When are the next executions in Salem?” he asked the newsman he’d worked for on a part time basis.

Mr. Horatio Spurlunkle handed him today’s pamphlet. On the cover the frightening news stared back at Jeremy:

Aug. 5, 1692 – Six more accused of witchcraft found guilty. Execution set for the 19^th for George Burroughs, former Salem minister and sometime minister, Casco Bay, Maine; John and Elizabeth Proctor, man and wife of Salem; John Williard, former Salem sheriff; George Jacobs Senior of Salem; Martha Carrier, a goodwife of Andover. These six are condemned by the Court of Oyer & Terminer to die on the gallows.

The rest of the article could be summed up in a phrase that’d become all too common: Brought in guilty and condemned.

“Mr. Sperlunkle, when will this madness end?”