Children of Salem

“They’re at Higginson’s moving his hand for him so he can sign the order before he’s dead.”

Jeremiah didn’t see the blow coming as, while he spoke, he’d turned to send his message to the four corners of the large open Inn and Apothecary. Herrick’s gun butt had sent Jeremy into darkness and unconsciousness.

John Proctor swung out in reflex, knocking Deputy Herrick senseless. Proctor then helped a dazed Jeremy to his feet. Jeremy came to just in time to see that Sheriff Williard stood over the scene of his deputy bleeding and sputtering at his feet. Then Williard did the unexpected. He snatched off his Sheriff’s patch and threw the insignia at Herrick’s prone body, shouting, “I’m done with this business and this place. Moving off, maybe to Connecticut . . . anywhere I can find peace, and an end to the guilt.”

“You’re abandoning your post at a time like this?” shouted Ingersoll.

Williard, gun in hand, stopped at the door and turned on Ingersoll. “I’m finished with this ugly matter! I haven’t the stomach to arrest one more of my neighbors.” He marched back toward Herrick, still trying to gain his feet, and he snatched out a warrant for arrest. He held out a new warrant that the judges had hammered out to the dazed Herrick and shoved it into his chest. Herrick took the paper to Williard’s saying, “You’ve a liking for this business, Herrick. Take it and be damned!”

When Herrick, still unsteady on his feet, did not readily take the warrant but let it slip. Mercy Lewis grabbed it up, about to read it, when Williard ripped it from her, balled it up and threw it at Herrick. He the stormed out and past Francis Nurse, giving Nurse a sad look of apology as he did so.

Francis Nurse stood now in the doorway; he’d been watching the final moments of the series of incidents here, and his eye fell on Jeremy’s bruised cheek. He rushed in to help Jeremy, while Proctor’s relatives huddled about the three of them and rushed Francis, Jeremy, and John Proctor from Ingersoll’s.

The fat Nathaniel Ingersoll stood behind the bar with a scattergun raised, his hand shaking so that the wide muzzle imitated a gulping fish, but this fish might explode.

As they exited Ingersoll’s, Jeremy saw Mary Wolcott, and Anne Putnam Jr. had joined Mercy along with several other young girls who were among the crowd—as if just appearing out of thin air, yet they must have been moving among the crowd the entire time. Jeremy saw the anger in their eyes and the glances darting among them as if cueing one another. It said they’d be keeping their eye on him and Proctor and Proctor’s kith and kin as well as old Francis Nurse.

Chapter Nine

Jeremiah was surprised to find so many travelers today along the Ipswich Road; while a main thoroughfare wrapping around Salem Harbor in a wide arch, taking people between Village and Town, it’d never seen so much traffic in all its days. People flocking to the area for a glimpse of the excitement—to sit through excommunications by night, trials by day. The heavy traffic made for an already rutted road becoming near impassable when, after a hard rain and an even harder dry spell, the gutted avenue turned into a series of craters instead of the ribbon it was meant to be.

The condition of the road struck Jeremy as a metaphor for the condition of the population and the spirit prevailing in Salem. With Parris handling the church court, dealing with the ‘moral’ issues surrounding witchcraft, the denouncing of anyone’s lying down with the Devil, the man could call anyone in his parish into question to a public defense of banishment. Before the witchcraft pandemic, Parris had handled charges of misconduct of character, lewd behavior, and the occasional drunken brawl. He leveled fines and warnings, and he had the power to subpoena witnesses to his church court. It’s what kept him busy during a normal week, and it brought in money—a split of the fines taken in for the church—and presumably his pocket.

If a parishioner refused to answer Parris’s summons, the charges went to Mr. Corwin, presiding over the civil court in Salem Village. Higginson had the same arrangement with Hathorne in Salem Town, and now it was back to Salem Town for Jeremiah, although the time had grown late, and soon darkness would overtake him.

But he felt a strong urge to get to Reverend Higginson, and he knew that Williard was not guarding the house for the time being, and perhaps with the Boston men gone from Higginson’s bedside, Jeremy’s way would not be barred.

Jeremy entered from the western edge of town, and as before, he was astounded at the sight Salem Town presented. Ever busy, even at this hour, ever growing and prosperous. Salem deserved its reputation as a great seaport, perhaps the best in all the colonies, even over Boston for more whaling ships called it home than any other.

Jeremy managed a smile as he stepped along the boardwalk of Townhouse Lane, passing the Customs House, Judge Hathorne’s main avenue of wealth. Tall mastheads created a skyline filled with upraised spears blending with the freshly built seaport homes and the towering steeple of the First Church of Salem.

Although darkness neared, Jeremy passed open doors and windows, people shouting from each, blocking doorways, talking, bargaining, disputing weights and measures, haggling over prices. “All’s normal here,” he said to himself, comparing this routine array of life with what was going on at Ingersoll’s and the village.

Jeremy tipped his hat as he passed others, his cheek red and blue yet. He passed shops and windows filled with bakery goods, a shoemaker’s, a dyer’s, a tannery, and smoke houses large as warehouses where fresh meat was dried and salted for outgoing ships. The cooking aromas surrounded him, reminding him of nights in his father’s house when all they had to share had dwindled to a fresh loaf of hot bread. And here too was a stonemason’s shop, and a dish turner’s shop. His father had been a simple dish turner.

Jeremy stopped to stare in at yet another bakery window but was shaken from his thoughts when, in the window, he saw the see-through shadow of a dark and sinister form coalesce. It moved across the window, a reflection that made him turn and stare across the street. Samuel Parris had gone by, Nicholas Noyes on his arm. They’d come down the First Church steps. The two conspirators—for this is what they appeared to be— proceeded on to Higginson’s home ahead of Jeremiah.

Jeremy cursed the luck and himself for having dallied.

He pulled up his courage and made for Higginson’s anyway. On arriving, he heard sobbing as it flowed from the door, which stood ajar. He called out, “Hello! May I come in?”

But no one answered. From inside, he heard only the sounds of grief.

He entered. Everyone had gathered in the front room at the big bay window, and surrounding what Jeremy guessed to be Mr. Higginson’s remains. Higginson’s successor, Noyes, Paris, the manservant who’d doubled as coachman, a maid in her midlife years, and some of the Boston ministers surrounded the bed. Despite the well-lit room, despite the crowd, it was cold and empty tomb—this sight, this knowledge. Salem had lost not just a man but her moral compass, her rudder.

Another door closed to me, Jeremy thought as he backed out of the house, realizing that Noyes had sent for Parris on the occasion of his taking charge now of Salem Town’s spiritual needs, and so far as Jeremy believed, no man was less worthy or capable of filling the old man’s shoes. Even a counterfeit minister like me could do a better job of it. Just another blow to Salem; another nail in the coffin.

All this occurring and the colonies still without a legal charter to exist; in essence, without the rule of law. There’d been an overthrow in England and the colonies almost simultaneously in 1689, nearly three years ago. King Charles was reportedly dead, and King William the Conqueror, as rumor coming off seagoing ships had it, had taken the Crown of England. During the same period, the colonials had risen up against King Charles’s overseers and tax collectors here in Massachusetts, and they’d audaciously hung Governor Andros. They’d followed up by voting in Sir William Phipps as acting governor, but now Phipps had rather fight Indians than phantasmagorias. So the new head of state under a charterless colony had rushed off to conquer the ‘heathen and pagan’ threat. The kind of threat that presented a solid target.

In cold fact, Phipps had posted a public dispatch in Boston and Salem, making clear his point: “I’d rather fight the red devils than the invisible ones. These I can see and wield a weapon against. I have no knowledge of how to fight spirits and demons.”

Like Increase Mather, Phipps was no longer home.

Phipps had made it clear that he placed the Salem problem in the hands of Stoughton, Saltonstall, Addington, Sewell, and the local magistrates and ministers of Salem. He simply wanted the contagion contained, and he didn’t like the idea of housing witches in the cells in Boston. Furthermore, general knowledge had it that he’d forbidden his wife to visit the jails for fear of ‘catching’ the disease of the afflicted children of Salem.