Children of Salem

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 “Please tell me that you modern good gentlemen of fine sensibilities are not basing judgment of this matter on outdated texts?”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.”

“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!”

“For burying a dead cat in a cemetery with tea leaves and rune stones?”

“Of course not, but—”

“For an incantation or curse directed at a neighbor?”

“If she be guilty of bringing on a scourge on an entire community,” began Corwin.

“Or of attacking our children! Throwing them into fits,” finished Hathorne.

“Aye, the children. Recall too the death toll of our every minister in the village before now—Bailey’s family, Burroughs’ family.”

“But it makes poor logic then to point a finger at George Burroughs if his family was also under attack.”

“Mr. Wakely, there are patterns and connections here that you are unaware of,” said Hathorne with a little wave of dismissal.

Corwin toasted. “It’s really all about saving the children from harm, and not allowing our current minister to fall to this village parish curse.”

Jeremy shook his head, paced, found himself at the window. Through the waves in the pane of glass, he saw Parris approaching. He knew he had to talk fast. “These apparitions the children report giving up secrets and pointing fingers at their murderers, sirs, I beseech you. Do not take heed of anything smacking of ethereal evidence, or anything supposedly spoken by spirits! If you do not condone hearsay in your courts, why would you ever consider spectral hearsay? I tell you, it will make a mockery of you both—and history will not be kind to either of you. Think of your reputations, not the land and property holdings of the accused.”

“I resent that, young man!” shouted Hathorne. “We are not after acquiring land and property in this matter but souls!”

Jeremy nodded at this, unable to hide his disdain. “Osborne and Bishop have holdings, and I have it on excellent authority that others who are facing warrants sworn out by Parris, or those he controls, will most assuredly have many contested holdings as a result—holdings that will go to the court for redistribution.”

“Careful, young man,” shouted Hathorne. “You tread on thin ice.”

“This epidemic of fits and seizures among so many girls of the village I’ve seen before in my travels. But here, the finger pointing children are working at Mr. Parris’ behest, whether you know it or not—indeed whether Mr. Parris knows it or not.”

“That’s a bloody awful accusation to make, sir!” Hathorne’s face had become livid, the pale neck throbbing with arteries.

“Which of the two allegations offends you, sir?” countered Jeremy.

Hathorne bristled more, pacing like an angry, rabid dog now in circles about the room as if searching for something to throw at Jeremy. “You are a smar-mouthed fellow, aren’t you, Mr. Wakely.”

“I know human nature, and I know the law, sir. Think how it will look in Boston.”

“How it will look in Boston?” asked Corwin as if he’d not given it a single thought.

“And the rest of the world, if you put spirits coming to children in the night with accusations of murder as witnesses in your box. What’s the implication? That you two are provincial dupes, or that you had much to gain or . . . or too much to drink.”

“This is not just children at games, Mr. Wakely. You’ve seen the condition of the Parris girl.”

“Yes, something has terrified Betty straight out of her little mind,” he agreed, again wondering if it were not her own father who’d triggered her attack. What if her father had threatened her with sending her away? He brokered in children, after all. What if her father were at her with his switch for some slight? How better to deflect her feared father than to convince him she’d been touched by evil, bewitched—and of course, there was no telling what Tituba may’ve conveyed to the child about a likeness stuck full with pins and in the hands of Goode.

Parris rapped at the door.

“Who might that be?” asked Corwin.

“It’s Mr. Parris,” replied Jeremy, “but before you welcome him in, gentlemen, have a look at his upcoming sermon.” This got their attention. Jeremy produced the document and the two men scanned its contents as Parris knocked a second time.

They heard Parris the other side of the door now tapping at the window and peering inside, curious why no one had answered. Finally, Corwin called out the single name Hosanna! This roused his maidservant to open the door for Parris.

Parris came stomping in like a stallion, certain something was being discussed behind his back, or so his expression said. He stared hard at Jeremy. “Gentlemen, your honors, Mr. Wakely, I can only report that things’ve only worsened since last we met.”

“What’s happened?” asked Hathone.

Parris removed his cloak. “We must act quickly, set an example.” He then stopped and stared back at the three men staring at him, realizing Jeremy’s empty brandy glass on the mantel meant he’d been here for some time. “What have your honors been talking about?”

Corwin hemmed and hawed and pointed at the books on the table. “Going over precedent.”

“There is no precedent for this,” said Parris. “This is open warfare.”

“Mr. Hathorne has doubts about accepting the word of spirits in his courtroom—as does Mr. Corwin,” Jeremy boldly spoke for the judges.

“What of the afflictions then? Never mind the word of spirits! Betty’s bruises and burns and puncture marks, these are not invisible.”

“We fear taking this too far, Mr. Parris,” Hathorne said now.

“No matter how many books you consult, you can only stop Satan lovers with execution!”

“Ah-then you have the accused already executed, sir?” asked Jeremy.

Parris glared at his apprentice.

“Do you plan to arrest every old mother who’s lost her teeth or who has cured the giddies or the heaves with a home-made brew? Or are you also after those you call the dissenting brethren?”

“You overstep yourself, Mr. Wakely, and you saw what happened at Ingersoll’s!”

“And you, sir? You create trouble here, wantonly so. Show him the evidence of it, Mr. Hathorne, Mr. Corwin.”

“I say again, Wakely, you overstep your position!” The veins on Parris neck looked as if they were made of ship’s rigging.

“Do I? When there are lives at stake, and the peace and tranquility of the region?”

“I want you out of my home, Mr. Wakely, tonight!” he countered. “Do you understand? I’ll write you up well for Mather, but your time here is over.”

“I am packed and prepared to leave at any time, Goodfriend.”

The use of the term had Parris gritting his teeth. “Tonight, now!”

“Please, please, gentlemen,” began Corwin. “You will wake my ailing wife.”

Jeremy held up a hand to the judge. “Well now. What Mr. Parris proposes is best all round, your honors, but before I take my leave, I will know what you intend to do about that sermon in your hand, Magistrate Hathorne.”

“Sermon?” asked Parris. “What sermon?”

“The sermon and excommunication you’ve planned for Rebecca Nurse.”

Parris looked stricken and trapped for a mere moment. “There is ample reason to believe the woman one of them! She was among those midwives to Mrs. Putnam during several of the murders of Mrs. Putnam’s children!”

“You’re now predicting who next will be called out a witch, sir?” asked Hathorne of Parris, a stern look passing between them.

“Why, sirs, it’s no secret among the knowledgeable!” countered Parris. “The Nurse woman and her sisters all at one time or another attended Mrs. Putnam at child killings disguised as birthings, pretending the goodness of midwives!”

“I know this woman, Mother Nurse, and such an allegation against one so pious as she, well it is an out and out lie!” Jeremy said, crossing the room and standing in Parris’ face.

“It’s no lie, no prediction,” countered Parris, fuming, “but an inevitable conclusion. And that sermon appears to’ve been stolen from my desk! I’ll have it back.”

Hathorne held the sermon pages overhead. “No, no Samuel,” he began, “you’ll not have it back.”

“But it is my personal property.”

Knowing he’d worn out his welcome, Jeremy found his cloak and hat.

“Sorry, Samuel, but it’s no longer personal or private.”

“Whatever do you mean, Jonathan?” replied Parris, stunned.

For a moment, Jeremy thought that he’d won this argument. That the sermon predicting who next to be arrested proved Parris’ manipulating and orchestrating of events.

Hathorne firmly added, “Your notes, too, Mr. Wakely are now a document of the court as you have your wish.”

This froze Jeremy in place until he realized the magistrate was speaking of notes he’d made on the single sermon he had brought to their attention.

“And you, too, Mr. Parris, you have your wish,” continued Hathorne.

“My wish?” asked Parris.

“The witch trials for Tituba Indian, Sarah Goode, and Sara Osborne are on.”

“That pleases me to know, sirs. What of Bishop?”

Corwin replied, “We are unsure of Mrs. Bishop; that there is enough evidence against her to bind her over for trial.”

“Our ruling should please both of you, Mr. Parris, Mr. Wakely—as well as Mr. Higginson and Hale. But, Samuel, this—” he held up the noxious sermon and call to excommunicate Rebecca Nurse overhead—“this notion of slandering the Nurse name, and the Towne name by decree . . . ” Hathorne shook his head. “We must not allow our passions and past petty squabbles and prejudices to get the better of us in this ordeal.”

“Here, here,” added Corwin. “An ordeal that God Himself has set before us, to test us.”

“Perhaps I was a bit hasty in my fervor against the Nurse woman,” replied Parris.

“And this should please you as well, Mr. Wakely.” Corwin stood and stepped closer to Jeremy, “to know that we mean to contain this thing as you put it. I know Mr. Higginson was pleased to learn it.”

Jeremy pulled his cloak tight, grabbed his hat from a rack that looked like a sceptor, and started away. “I simply hope you men will heed my suggestions, as I am in fact an emissary of the First Church of Boston, the Reverend Increase Mather.”

“An emissary?” asked Corwin, crestfallen.

“Increase Mather?” Hathorne eyed Jeremy more suspiciously than ever. “We were given to understand that you were placed under Mr. Parris’ tutelage with a letter of introduction from Mr. Mather. Now this?”

“I have the letter from Mather right here,” announced Parris who dug the multi-folded parchment from his pocket, “but from the first, I suspected it a forgery—and perhaps my first instinct was right.”

He’s just called me a liar, a forger. “Gentlemen, I can assure you that I am the emissary of Increase Mather.”

“Then Mather sent you to Salem for what reason?”

“To better understand the continued turbulence in the village parish.”

“And here I thought all along the young man was sent to apprentice in the ministery, under my direction, but as you see, Wakely here doesn’t have the stomach for the work.”

“For spying or for ministering to your parish?” asked Hathorne.

“Both I think.” Parris laughed and Corwin tentatively joined in, pouring Parris a drink, while Hathorne remained stern.

“I report only to Mather.”

“You do that, Goodfriend,” said Parris as Jeremy prepared to leave. “But get your facts straight first.”

“I will. I was sent to determine your fitness administer to your flock, Good Reverend, and I fear I’ve find you lacking.” Jeremy stormed out, intent on getting his horse and bags from the parsonage, and to locate new lodgings. Over his shoulder, he was faintly aware of the three faces in the windows watching him go, but when he turned, they’d all dropped the drapes into place and returned to parlay with one another. Jeremy cursed the fact that neither Higginson nor Hale had been on hand to support him. He could only pray that Hathorne, the seemingly stronger of the two judges, would act on his counsel—and perhaps the fear of moving too fast would stay his hand, if only to curry favor with Increase Mather.

Jeremy sloshed through the muck that the spring rains had made of the village walkways and footpaths, a feeling of euphoria coming over him with the relief of telling no more lies—the freedom of not being Parris’ lackey a moment longer when from behind her heard that man’s grating voice.

It came from Jeremy, from Corwin’s door, Parris’ last angry words. “You can count on me, Mr. Wakely, to make my own report! Filled with details of your thievery and conniving!”

Jeremy kept going. When he refused to turn and engage the man in a verbal duel, Paris shouted loud enough for the dead to hear: “Satan strikes the most devout and saintly among us, Jeremiah Wakely! Even as his minions feed and clothe the vile and heretical among us!”

Satan strikes at the most devout and saintly among us, Jeremiah repeated the contention in his mind. “And who among us is chosen?” he muttered under his breath as he continued to march off. He wanted to argue but knew it was hopeless. That a graceful exit was called for.

As he marched in quick step now, anxious to rid himself of Parris and the village, he continued to mutter to himself. “Most devout and saintly in Samuel Parris’ mind is himself! Playing the martyr to his parishioners.”

At the end of the day, he told himself: I must save myself, get as far from his sight as possible, but first I must warn Serena and her family.