Children of Salem

Jeremy thought he recognized Parris’ hand in some of the welts and red markes o the child, and he had no doubt she’d taken a beating. He wondered if there were not a more mundane evil at work here, and not on the part of Martha Corey, and he decided that Mary, not getting the attention of Betty within the walls of the parsonage, had come to find a larger audience when one of the brooms at the broom-stand had leapt out at her and attacked with the ferocity of an angry cat.

Granted, Mary held her teeth, guns, and lips clenched now as the stick slammed desperately into her closed mouth, wanting to return to her throat. Granted, it caused bruising around Mary’s eye and cheek in its effort to strangle her again. Granted that the living broom tore at her, butting, stabbing, pounding with a ferocity no young person could long endure or possibly inflict on herself, and now with her petticoats asunder, the enchanted, angry-as-a-scorpion broom found its way below her dress and petticoats, seeking out another mouth to jam itself into as Mary screamed for help.

“Is there a man among you!” Mary finally cried out, somehow able to form words, when suddenly the broom came out from below her dress dripping blood to the astonishment of everyone present. Parris gasped with the other onlookers, while Jeremy thought the girl menstruating.

Suddenly, the broom had gone lifeless. Mary lay in a heap. She’d ostensibly been raped by an invisible hand, some horrid creature of Satan—like the ones she’d been hearing about now for days. Either that or she had masturbated in public just to show the men in the general store that she could do so without impunity, as she was bewitched, which apparently allowed for all manner of freedom.

After all, it was none of her doing; she was pounced upon by Martha Corey’s invisible other self, the true self, the one sold to the Devil.

Deacon Ingersoll stood in shock, unable to move, unsure what to do as Mary moaned and moaned in pain at his feet. “She’s your niece, Samuel,” he said. “Please, remove her.”

“You saw it, all of you!” shouted Thomas Putnam. “The girl’s been attacked by that witch, Martha Corey. First my children, then the minister’s child, then both his nieces, and my Anne. All our children’re under attack, and yours’re next! Mark my word!”

Parris knelt and lifted Mary Wolcott from Ingersoll’s splintered, dirty floor. “I’ll get her home. The child’s safety is my only object.”

Jeremy tried to fathom the quiet calm of the minister and the thoughts going on behind the quizzical look in his eye, and the way he held Mary close against him, the way a father might yes, but as he was not her father, Jeremy had a far grimmer thought about the way he held her, one hand about her legs slick with blood. One leg ended about her neck, the other turned back into her, and one arm wrapped round the underarm and breast, the other akimbo. Then it dawned on Jeremy that Parris was aroused, sexually so; not so much by Mary’s half nude form but by the attack of the invisible broom monster. That he realized how wonderfully it displayed reason to listen to him in matters of the Invisible World and how best to deal with such things. Jeremy had no doubt at that moment Parris felt ten feet tall and powerful. Yes, the attack on his niece, whether in her head or a new reality of a bizarre nature, the minister was aroused by his niece’s so called victimization by an invisible power. Such evidence of this, he could take to Hathorne and Corwin tonight.

Parris was a man who needed to be in control, and he craved power. That’s why Jeremy had been sent here in the first place, to document this man’s bedrock character traits. Had Parris taken advantage of Tituba in her youth? Ownership of another human being gave a man a sense of ultimate power, after all, to do with his livestock as he saw fit. Might the man have taken liberties with his niece, Mary, Mercy as well as his servant years before?

Parris ordered Jeremy to remain behind to help with the clean up, as Mercy had knocked over far more than the broom stand when attacked. She had in fact made a terrible mess of the place. All the same, Jeremy suspected it an excuse to gave Samuel Parris alone time with Mary while in his state of obvious euphoria—either to ply her with more names to shout out or to ply her with something worse—his manhood. Jeremy hoped to give the man enough rope to hang himself if he should attempt to take advantage of Mary. If Jeremy could prove Parris the worst sort of letch and a rapist of his own niece, the man would be jailed, his credibility and reputation shattered so badly that no one would follow his lead in this snowballing witch hunt. It would be a horrible thing for Mary, but it would completely diminish whatever power Parris wielded, and perhaps save lives in the bargain. Lives beyond Goode’s and Osborne’s—two such disreputable miscreants as perhaps were guilty of murderous thoughts and actions for years.

However, when Jeremy returned to the parsonage home, first rushing to the barn, half-expecting to catch Parris in the despicable act, he found no one but Dancer and Parris barnyard animals.

When he did catch up to Parris, the man was sitting alongside Mary in the bed he’d laid her in, smoothing back her sweat-soaked hair, tearful, saying kindly, fatherly words to her, his hands clasping hers as he prayed for her soul.

A big disappointment, he silently decided, and damned hypocritical of Parris to suddenly decide that Mary was worthy of his attention.

Elizabeth Parris, tearful, exhausted, had fallen asleep sitting beside Betty’s bed. Betty sat up and with the widest marble eyes Jeremy had ever seen, she glared at him as if she wished him gone or dead, but she remained silent. She’d been watching her father intently, curious about his sudden concern for Mary. In fact, Betty seemed upset with Jeremy for bursting in on the scene. She also seemed somehow to have matured by several years.

So he backed down the steps, leaving the afflicted family to itself, wondering how much incest characterized these people. Betty had appeared jealous; Mary had gotten the attention she wanted. Tituba was jailed. Mother Parris? Blind?

Instead of catching Parris in a supposed lewd or compromising act with his niece, Jeremy ended these notions with no evidence beyond a vague suspicion, one he felt might find verification in a solid interview with Titutba Indian L’englesian.

Jeremy imagined her heritage—part French, part Barbados, part English. He also imagined that her seeming lack of understanding of English a method of getting by.

At the foot of the stairs in this sad house, Jeremy recalled Judge Corwin’s invitation to return for brandy this evening.

As it was growing late, Jeremy decided Corwin and Hathorne might well be the authorities he needed to see in private. To this end, he walked briskly out of the house and made straight for Judge John Corwin’s village home.

As a student of the law, he truly wanted to know what was going through the minds of the judges now that they’d had time to digest all that had gone on. Perhaps cooler heads would prevail after all, even in light of the performance that a simple scullery girl like Mary Wolcott could bring to bear—or because of it. Word spread through the village of this incident like fire in a butter churn. No doubt by now Mary’s wild accusation against Martha Corey had traversed the village and beyond to Wenham, Topsfield, Beverly, Salem Town, and other settlements. Jeremy suspected if there was anyone in the area who had not as yet heard of a young girl’s having been attacked by invisible hands on a broomstick, that it must be the now accused witch, Martha Corey.

# # # # #

Evening of April 14, 1692

Jeremy was soon warming his hands at Judge Corwin’s hearth. He’d been welcomed to join Judge Hathorne as well, the two magistrates discussing the best course of action to take at this time. They claimed to welcome Jeremiah’s opinion on the matter.

On a table at the center of the room, a small stack of books lay open or marked. Jeremy accepted a brandy, and while sipping, he took a moment to browse the various titles of books lying about, books the magistrates had consulted before his arrival. Guide to Grandjurymen came as no surprise, nor that it’d been opened to the method of dealing with charges of witchcraft. Jeremy knew the text well, written half a century before and based on precepts dating back to the bloody Middle Ages. A pack of nonsense for the most part. “Please tell me that you modern good gentlemen of fine sensibilities are not basing judgment of this matter on outdated texts?” He posed it as a question.

“Mr. Wakely,” erupted Corwin with a bit of fire, “what would you have us consult?”

“This musty book is not the answer.”