Children of Salem

“What then?” Corwin snatched at his right ear which seemed to be ailing him as if some insect buzzed within.

Jeremy lifted the tome entitled Trial of Witchcraft, Showing the True and Right Method of Discovery.

Judge Corwin smiled, his powdered wig slightly ajar. “Look, young man, you can’t take issue with Cotta’s methods, now can you?”

Jeremy finished the brandy offered him earlier. He knew he’d need more spirits if he were to deal with these two. “Cotta’s a fool,” he announced. “A bumbling fool.” Jeremy then lifted book after book on the table and slammed each down, seven in total. “These books are littered with superstitions long put away since King James but perpetuated by idiots and men who made their living burning witches at the stake in the last century.”

“The Devil’s Maelstrom? Morgan’s treatise on Witchcraft Dealings?” asked Hathorne.

“This is 1692, gentlemen; we are on the verge of 1700—a new century in eight years! Are we to drag the bloody roots of the Dark Ages into the future with us?”

“But Mr. Wakely, these before you . . .” protested Hathorne, “this is the sum of our combined library on the subject,”.

Jeremy flipped through Demonology, the work penned by King James himself, and then he thumbed through William Perkins’ Damned Art. “So, your intention is to hang these women?” asked Jeremy. “No bonfires to be made of them?”

“It would appear so, if they are found guilt by the duly appointed court of the Crown,” replied Corwin.

“If they do not repent,” added Hathorne. “And I suspect that after a few more days in the holes we have them that they will repent.”

“I understand the number has risen to four now.”

“That is accurate. Four arrested.”

“Doubled in twenty-four hours. Can’t you see how this might spread?”

“Everyone at every level is working to contain it,” countered Corwin.

“We may not be worldly nor wise as some, Mr. Wakely,” added Hathorne, stepping close to Jeremy, “nor as well-traveled as thee; we may even be called parochial by some—”

“Never by me, sir.”

“—but everyone in Salem is doing his duty this day, and for that we hold our heads high.” Hathorne toasted the early successes.

Corwin smirked and said, “There is talk now that those who’ve been suffering are coming round to wellness as a result of actions taken.”

“And as for Bridgett Bishop and Sarah Osborne? They’re to forfeit anything they might own if and when they testify before God that they’ve dabbled in witchcraft?” asked Jeremy.

“Ahhh, so you do know something of the law, Mr. Wakely,” said Corwin, still grinning. “Do ye hear this young man, Jonathan? I’m impressed.”

“These women haven’t any holdings to speak of,” countered Hathorne.

“Osborne has her husband’s holdings in her name,” Jeremy challenged. “Bishop owns an inn on your main thoroughfare.”

Corwin’s eyes went from Jeremy to Hathorne. “Is that right, Jonathan?”

“The key phrase here is her husband’s holdings. True in both cases. In a sense, they never held a thing. They are women, Mr. Wakely, and women do not hold title in the colonies.” Hathorne poured himself another brandy. “The property never properly belonged to these two Goodwives, especially if gained through nefarious means . If you really knew your law . . .”

Corwin nodded approvingly. “Which is the rumor—ah, the common belief, which so often has more than an element of truth to’t.”

“Yes, but common belief is not law,” Jeremy countered.

“Nay, but the law is often common!” Corwin joked.

“And getting commoner by the day in Salem Village,” Jeremy replied, refilled his glass, and raised it to them, seeing that while Corwin laughed at the sparring that Hathorne bristled. Jeremy then asked, “Are you sophisticated men really going to hang Goody Goode for jabbing pins into a wooden doll and cursing Parris on the green?”

“For murder of children! Not for curses or pins,” shouted Hathorne, silencing the room.

After a moment and several sips of his drink, Jeremy muttered, “Then you, sirs, are actually thinking of accepting this spectral evidence from the Parris girl’s fevered brain, and that of the Putnam girl, who we all know has had fits and seizures her entire life?”

“Evidence of a nature, we feel corroborated by Anne Junior’s mother—Anne Putnam.”

Jeremy pictured the grim, bone-thin Mrs. Putnam standing guard at that dark house he’d visited once too often.

“Didn’t Mr. Parris inform you?” asked Corwin, genuinely surprised.

“We interviewed her earlier today,” added Hathorne.

“I’m sure she made a believable witness.” Inwardly, Jeremy knew they’d not understand the irony of this interview with Anne Carr Putnam.

“She was most convincing, I’d say.” Corwin paced, glanced out a window as if expecting someone, and sipped at his drink.

“Does it occur to you men that Mr. Parris is manipulating ahhh—” Jeremy stopped short of suggesting that they were easily manipulated—“Things.”

“Manipulating things?” asked Corwin as if Jeremy had slapped him.

“Orchestrating the whole business, this entire witch hunt.”

Hathorne stared at Jeremy as if he were a witch. “No man can control such events—and certainly not our courts, Mr. Wakely! Such matters are in no one’s hands but God’s. Being a man of God, you most certainly know that.”

“I hadn’t the impression God was with us last night with Tituba chained to that chair.” Jeremy indicated the chair now replaced in a corner.

“Goode has informed us—independently—that Osborne and Bishop are both as much witch as she, but that they hide their mischief behind their aprons,” said Hathorne as if he had struck Jeremy with a thunderbolt.

“Let me understand this,” began Jeremy, setting his empty glass down. “A known witch, known to be practicing witchcraft in Salem, her heart set in stone against Parris, who has sold her soul to Satan to affect her ends, yet you sirs are willing, nay anxious, to take her word against Osborne and Bishop?” Jeremy paused to let this logic sink in. “What sense is in it, gentlemen? How can you trust her implication of another anymore than you can Tituba Indian’s?”

“I saw nothing wrong with our taking Tituba’s confessions last night,” countered Hathorne.

“Coerced confessions are highly questionable, sirs. And where will it stop?”

Hathorne hefted Guide to Grandjurymen in his regal hands and read a section he’d left his marker at: “Those who use, practice or exercise any witchcraft, enchantment, charm or sorcery, whereby any person should be killed or destroyed—”

“But what evidence that anyone has been killed save the word of ghosts supposedly whispered into the ear of a child and her disturbed mother?”

“—such councilors and aides of Satan shall suffer punishment of death!”

“An eye for an eye,” added Corwin.

Jeremy wanted to send a fist into a table, but he controlled his anger. “But no one has died here of witchery or sorcery.”

“Yet Parris daughter is near death, and now his nieces, and this Putnam child, and we are hearing reports of other children being attacked.”

Jeremiah thought, I’m fighting upriver with both hands tied. “Would you have some reckless, poor woman or farmer hang, sir, for-for curing a cow with beetles and bitterroot, or make a protective prayer over roseroot?”

“Nay, nay!”