Children of Salem

From the anteroom, Thomas Putnam ushered in both his charge—Mercy Lewis—and his daughter, Anne, to stand before the ministers and the magistrates. “We’re here to give in evidence,” said Putnam as if he’d practiced the line.

I’ll bet you are, Jeremy thought but held his tongue.

Higginson shook his head. “These, I suppose, are two of the so-called afflicted girls?”

“Two of the bewitched, sir, yes,” replied Putnam. “Me daughter and Mr. Parris’ niece, Anne and Mercy beseech you, sirs, respectfully so.”

The girls both looked as if they’d not bathed since Mercy had been taught her lesson by Parris at the hearth; in fact, the two girls appeared so disheveled they might’ve been in a fight with one another just before coming here.

Higginson stepped close to the two children, who huddled together. It seemed to Jeremy that they were working hard to not meet Tituba’s eyes even as they stole glances her way. Seeing Tituba in chains and bonds seemed to have a chilling effect on the girls, or so Jeremy secretly prayed. This situation needed a bucket of cold water thrown on it. Perhaps Parris had just overplayed his hand.

“And I thought not to see any Mercy here tonight,” Higginson attempted to lighten the moment, but it could not be done. “And here is Mercy genuflecting and respectfully doing so. Two lovely children, Mr. Putnam, Mr. Parris, and you believe them witches, too?”

“No, no sir. You have it wrong,” complained Putnam. “These girls are victims of cruel witchcraft at its foulest, the sort that’s killed my other children!”

Chapter Nineteen

Both the anemic, frail-boned Anne, and the lusty pink-skinned Mercy Lewis, older, taller, more robust, appeared sheepish among the gathered power brokers of the village and town. The whimpering of Tituba Indian and her rattling chains acted as a counterpoint to what was being said.

“Tell them, Anne,” said her father. “Tell them what your brothers and sisters’ve told both you and your mother.”

“Hold on,” interrupted Jeremy. “I thought the girl’s siblings died at or near birth? How can they’ve told her or her mother anything?”

“They came to us in the night,” said Anne, her voice hardly audible, making Corwin erupt with, “What? What’d she say?”

“She said,” began Mercy, a good deal bolder, “that they’ve haunted her and her mother ever since.”

“Ghosts? Spirit?” asked Noyes, eyes wide.

“Your evidence is the word of a ghost?” said Jeremiah, a startled laugh escaping him. “Your honors, you mustn’t start down that road. It’ll open your courts to every kind of—”

“They told me they was murdered!” Anne suddenly shouted, startling the grownups. Her eruption also caused every man in the room to lean in to hear what else she might say. “Murdered with long knitting needles the midwives hid in their petticoats.”

“Needles jammed into their little brains,” added Mercy, demonstrating with a bony finger, “right back here,” added Mercy, pointing to the base of her skull as she pirouetted so as they might see. “And sometimes here!” She indicated her under arm. “To puncture the hearts.”

Jeremy saw that the back of her neck remained bruised from where Parris had held her head at the fire that day he’d exorcised her demon.

“Some got the needle up under their arms,” agreed Anne. In the armpit . . . sidewise to the heart,” she repeated Mercy’s assessment. Anne then held up a pair of long, sterling knitting needles that shone in the light, reflecting the flames from the hearth.

“And your ghosts, will they come to court to testify?” Jeremy’s question drew a half-snarl from Mercy Lewis and a glare from Anne who erupted. “You don’t believe me? Then talk to Mother. She’s been visited by all my dead lovelies, too.”

“We will speak to your mother,” replied Higginson, giving the girls a stern look that made him look the picture of God casting thunderbolts. “And child, if you are lying about this murder business, you will be severely punished, I can tell you. Severely.”

Parris, a hand on the Mercy’s shoulder, said, “Tell the judges and ministers, Mercy, what you told me about Tituba here and Goode.”

“I-I saw them dancing naked round a fire in the woods, I did.”

“Naked? Not a stitch of clothing between them?” asked Noyes.

“It’s true!” shouted Anne. “I saw it, too.”

“In another dream?” asked Jeremy.

“No, not a dream. When Mercy and me was playing about the apple orchard near the church, we saw a fire, and we went to warm ourselves.”

“That’s when we saw her,” added Mercy, pointing to Tituba, “and-and Goode, and others I could not make out, all dancing and touching one ’nother, and-and taking turns hurting Betty—or a likeness of her.”

“Taking turns hurting Mr. Parris’ child?” asked Hathorne.

“The child’s not been out of bed for several days,” countered Jeremy.

“Not Betty but Betty’s likeness, and-and Goode, she kept stabbing it with needles.”

A long silence followed this ‘expert testimony’. Jeremy realized that there was just enough truth in the story to make believers of these men of Salem.

“Take the children home, Mr. Putnam,” suggested Hale, who’d listened without a word.

After the children and Putnam had left, Jeremy looked around the room at the grim faces of the ministers and magistrates. He pointed and asked, “What’s to become of Tituba, here?”

“She’s to be held until she confesses her part in all this,” replied Parris, “and given her stubborn heart, that may be indefinitely. However, if she but confess, name names of those she and Goode have conspired with, then she will of course be spared and rehabilitated.”

Jeremy imagined Parris’ idea of rehabilitation.

“Confession, contrition is her only recourse,” added Noyes, nodding and downing a second Brandy.

“Osborne,” said Tituba in so low a whisper no one heard it at first.

“What?” asked Corwin. “What’d she say?”

“Osborne,” she repeated in a birdlike voice.

“Of course,” Hathorne shouted, “that crude Sarah Osborne.”

“You know her?” Hale asked of Hathorne.

“The woman’s been in and out of my court so many times, I know her entire history.”

It’d become village history long ago. Sarah Osborne had scandalized Salem Village when suddenly her normally hale and hearty husband, Camden Osborne, fell deathly ill. It’d been a protracted, painful, ugly death as if the man’d been poisoned some said, and perhaps he had been. To add another layer of curiosity to the situation, the widow subsequently married her bondsman, William Osborne, thus wiping out all her debts to Osborne, and he soon after succumbed to a similar end as Osborne’s.

Some supposed Mrs. Osborne got her poison lessons from Goode, and many resented how she’d come by Osborne’s property and holdings as a result. She’d been hauled into Hathorne’s court on this charge of poisoning, but it’d gone unproven. Osborne had also come before Corwin’s court, but as always, there simply was no evidence strong enough to hold her, much less to hang her.

Now they have ‘spectral’ evidence to help out, whispered Jeremy to himself, imagining from Higginson’s twitching expression that he was thinking the same way—that when people used their dead ancestors and relatives as proof that the law must take a stand and say no to such twice-told tales and hearsay from sprites.

“Look here, this is all coming from the fruit of a forbidden tree, gentlemen. Even our books dealing with witchcraft in the courts urges us to pay no attention to the so-called whispers of ghosts and goblins. That we not make spectral words more credible than the word of the living by virtue of a judge’s blessing.”

For a moment, Jeremy was encouraged. The judges were listening even if the ministers were not.