Children of Salem

“Poisoned?” Now Jeremy stopped Parris, taking hold of his arm.

“Poisoned her small body, her mind, and perhaps her soul.”

“But I thought it just a recurrence of her fever, the ague?”

“The doctor is with her now.”

“Do you really suspect Tituba of harming your child?”

“I do. I do indeed now.”

Even as he asked, Jeremy recalled the likeness of Betty in Goode’s possession. “But to poison a minister’s daughter?”

“Brazen, I know. I fear Tituba, in league with Goode, meant some tainted food for me, but Betty ingested it instead.”

“But I’ve watched Tituba with the child, and she seems to love her.”

“As I said, it was likely an accident, the poison meant for me, but now I fear Tituba’s gone completely over . . . in league with Goode, I tell you. Joined to harm me through the child.”

“I find it so hard to believe.”

“There is ample evidence, and who better than one with access to my morning and evening meal?”

“Evidence? Do you have the tainted food?”

“Better yet, I have Tituba’s confession.”

“She’s confessed to harming the girl?”

“Put up to it by Goode, yes.”

“M’god.” Jeremy hadn’t seen this coming, and yet all the signs were there. The missing sword from over Parris’ hearth mysteriously gone, mysteriously returned, the so-called chicken blood stain on the floor, the witch pie that was meant to solve problems of being bewitched, but which could contain worse things than a ‘witch’s urine’, say like blood, bile, tainted crushed meats. There’d been no reluctance on Tituba’s part to take to the stable, a place where she may or may not have continued her dark plan with Goode.

Jeremy recalled the bloodstained straw. And what about Betty Parris? Had she been lured outside to the barn to witness a ‘blood sacrifice’ and to be told that the Black Man who carried his Black Bible, the minister of Satan himself, had written Betty’s name in his god-awful book, because she had been a bad girl with Mercy?

All supposition on Jeremy’s part. All enough to hang a witch so far as a man like Samuel Parris was concerned. His target was Goode, but he’d take out another, his Barbados servant with Goode, if necessary.

Parris again started toward their destination. He kept fingering some paper folded lengthwise and posited in his inside breast pocket.

As they continued in silence, Jeremy gave a moment’s thought to the rights of an accused witch in New England. Here the law of England prevailed, despite the overthrow of Governor Andros, which had left things in such disarray that Increase Mather must go to the new King of England—himself seated after a revolution coinciding with what had occurred in the colonies, law must prevail. Guilty until proven innocent ruled, but Goode and Tituba did have some rights: the right to face accusers, the right to a speedy trial, the right to a rope rather than being burned at the stake—considered barbarous. After all, witch or no, they remained English citizens, under the law.

“We’ll burn that bitch Goode at the stake,” Parris blurted out as they neared the parish house, but rather than go in the gate, he kept going, Jeremy trying to keep up. Parris’ face had become red. His remark about putting witches to the torch informed Jeremy that Parris knew less of the law than he’d pretended. However, this was no time to correct the man. If Jeremy wished to avoid another lecture on the horrors of disagreement, and the absolute need to concur with one Samuel Parris, he must choose his battles wisely. For the moment, he simply wondered where they were going.

“Tituba will also feel the full brunt of the law,” continued Parris, “but at least she has brains ’nough to’ve confessed.”

“So-ah . . . when were they apprehended?” began Jeremy, slogging onward. “And where’re these wretches being held?”

“Last night, during your strange absence, sir.” They passed the barn where inside Dancer still waited for feed. “As to where they’re being kept? Where do you suppose?”

“Your root cellar? The village jailhouse?”

He wheeled on Jeremy. “Absolutely not. This is no simple civil matter, Jeremy.”

“Salem Town Jail?” A place for pirates, thieves, cutthroats, and murderers, Jeremy thought. He also thought about the sudden, swift progression of things here, and knew that by placing Goode and Tituba into Salem Town Jail that he had automatically upped the ante. There was a village jail where they might have been housed, but to house them at the Town sent the message that they were not simple miscreants who’d be dealt with by the church assize or the village civil court, but rather the criminal court. It made Jeremy wonder how long had Parris been preparing to hatch these complaints and arrests? Which launched a vivid memory of that first night when Parris may well have seized upon the moment of Jeremy’s arrival to encourage Tituba’s contacts with Goode by putting his servant out of the house.

Jeremy recalled how he had protested her treatment at the time, saying that he’d be perfectly willing to take the stable that first night. Tituba Indian had gone from living beneath the stairwell like a cur, to living with the dumb animals in the stable, to living in a filthy, disease-infected jail cell the likes of which was the worst in Jeremy’s experience anywhere—save for the hovel that passed for a jail in the village.

In fact, the quick progression from housekeeper-servant to enemy of the family, and now the colony, had so many levels as to resemble the layers of an onion; Jeremy could not help but wonder just how much of it might be manipulation on the part of Samuel Parris—how to get rid of not one major thorn in his side, Goode, but a second, Tituba with one fell swoop.

Jeremy also wondered about the nature and weight of the so-called evidence against Goode and Tituba might be: a doll in the likeness stuck full with pins? A portion of witch pie? The minister’s sword? What? But Parris had also spoken of a confession. How many bruises, welts, and waves of the whip, had it taken to elicit this confession?

But for now he must keep step with Parris, who did not go toward his barn or orchard but onward toward the center of the village.

“Curious, Samuel, but have you anything beyond the black woman’s confession?”

“I do.” He nodded vigorously as if he’d discovered the secret of youth. “I do.”

“I’d like to hear it.”

“You will in due time; in due time, everyone will.”

Jeremy wondered what he meant by everyone? Everyone in the village? Salem Harbor? The entire colony of Massachusetts? He also wondered what Parris meant about revelations yet to come? “What possible revelations, Samuel, can be had in this matter if everyone in the village already accepts that Sarah Goode is a bona-fide witch who works in both white magic and black?”

Parris again stopped but this time he posted a notice on a post outside Ingersoll’s. He’d brought his own small hammer and pocketful of tacks, unseen until now. Jeremy assumed it was a birth notice and paid no attention to the document except to see that Parris had another copy yet in his pocket.

Again they were on the march, this time straight across the street, going back toward the parish house and barn, where Jeremy hoped to feed Dancer and find a quiet moment to weigh all that had happened in so short a time.

“She’s a blackhearted witch, that Goode,” Parris shouted to anyone passing by. “Everyone’s heard her curses on me!”

“But as I say—” Jeremy tugged at his sleeve—“the village knows that Goode is, was, and always will be.”

“A witch, yes!”

“A witch she has always been, sir. No surprise in it. One in every village, accepted as part of village life, sir.”

Parris’ lips curled in an inscrutable smile, and he repeated some of Jeremy’s words. “Always a witch, raised a pagan by her mother.”