Children of Salem

Several days later

Jeremiah had received a note from Mrs. Elizabeth Parris, a cryptic message stating that Betty Parris’ illness had taken a horrible turn. She requested that he come at once to the parsonage home, adding that she required his counsel.

Jeremy didn’t hesitate, saddling his horse here in the large barn where Serena’s pleas to pay no heed to the minister’s wife echoed about the rafters. “It’s some sort of trap they hope to spring—”

“A ruse to arrest me along with Reverend Burroughs?” He snatched at cinches.

“Who is now behind bars along with Samuel Wardwell, the blacksmith from Andover.”

“The so-called Wizard of Andover, yes.”

“You’ll be taken! Called a warlock!” She grabbed onto him and held tight.

More men were now being arrested, called witchmen, warlocks, and wizards.

“Mrs. Parris’ note says it is to do with the child, Betty.”

“But it could be a lie.”

“She has remained all this time in a state of horrific illness and pain. Her symptoms are real.”

“Real?”

“Those of the afflicted I have seen in other towns, yes. The very symptoms those other girls in the village mimic so well—each chance they get.”

“Are you saying that Parris’ daughter is bewitched?”

“She is closer to it than any other I’ve seen, yes.”

“What are her symptoms?”

Dancer turned her head as if curious to hear his answer.

Jeremy described the horrid times when Betty would become stiff as cordwood, her limbs immovable, and how at other times she all but climbed the walls as a lizard might, of her cursing like a demon, spitting up foul vomit with her curses, and choking her own mother when Mrs. Parris got too near.

“Does sound horrible. But suppose it is a trap Parris has put his wife up to?”

“She writes that her husband is away, leading the seer children over to Wenham and Beverly as he did with Andover—to seek out victims beyond the village.”

“Any child of Salem has heard of Wardwell, his reputation.”

“As ready a reputation as George Burroughs’?”

She grabbed him by the arm this time, still hoping he would not go. “And now your reputation precedes you, Jeremy. Don’t you see?”

“What reputation?”

“Ha! The locals are just short of writing a ballad about—”

“Ballad? Me?”

“Yes, about your coming in the night down from Watch Hill to Parris’ home in disguise!”

“Should be quite a ditty.”

“Be serious and Jeremy, do be careful in the village. Promise, Jeremy.”

“Be careful? Me? What about you? I think it’s far too dangerous now to visit your mother at the jail.”

Serena had daily taken coins to Weed Gatter and Daniel Gwinn—the jailers. Payoffs for allowing her to return again and again with baked goods for the prisoners at both village jailhouse and Salem Town jailhouse. She did so with Mrs. Hale, the Wavery minister’s wife, reminding Jeremy of Mrs. Phipps’ like generosity in Boston.

In fact, a story circulated of how the governor’s wife had defied her husband’s wishes in order to continue to see to the needs of prisoners at the Boston jailhouse. Rumor, exaggeration or not, Serena had chosen to believe it and emulate it here.

“Father pays Gatter and Gwinn well to allow me to see mother and to get bread to her and the others. It’s the least I can do.”

“And how is your mother?”

“Terrible. Likely to die in that rabbit warren if we don’t soon get her home. You should be helping in that matter and not traipsing off to the village to that . . .that vile home where all this started.”

He mounted and was ready to ride. “I must know what the minister’s wife wants of me.”

“Fine! Fine, but nothing will keep me from seeing Mother, then!” she warned.

“Serena, even Rebecca has pleaded you stay away from there.”

“Nothing will stay my going.”

Seeing she was adamant, he nodded and bent from the saddle and kissed her again. “Perhaps then, my love, I’ll look for you there at the jail—as soon as I’m finished with Mrs. Parris.”

He rode off, leaving Serena fearfully looking after his dust. The rains had stopped some days ago, and the land had become dry and cracked. Few people had planted crops as yet, their fieldwork held up by all the to do in Salem, many now going into the village or the town to witness the trials.

The Nurse men tried to keep to their fields, but the future didn’t look good for any of the wheat, beans, potatoes, and corn, but neither Francis nor Serena could concern themselves now with mundane matters like crops. This morning, she’d baked enough rolls to fill two baskets, and she returned for the goods, found Ben and asked him to harness a pair of horses to the buggy as she was ready to go.

She’d blessed the bread, and she’d prayed with her father for an end to the madness today as they did each day.

When she returned to the barn with her baskets in hand, she found Ben secreting a pair of guns beneath the buggy seat. “What’re those for?”

“Loaded and cocked, in case we run into trouble.”

“What sort of trouble?”

“Word is more warrants are being served.”

She placed the bread in the back and climbed up and onto the seat. “Let’s go.”

# # # # #

Jeremy approached the parsonage with a mix of anxiety, dread, and a stomach telling him to turn around and not look back. Even by daylight both village and parsonage had a grim darkness overall, like some ancient shroud had been laid over the place. The parish house in particular reeked of a solemnity that bordered on an unspoken evil; an evil not of the otherworldly or invisible sort, but one all too earthy—like a decaying corpse.

Within the parsonage walls so much had happened, and those two, mother and child, had remained within these many months. Mary Wolcott had been placed in another home, further isolating Mrs. Parris with her afflicted daughter, and no one had seen her or Betty without the minister’s opening the door and parting the curtain. They’d become virtual prisoners to the affliction and to the care of ill-equipped, stupefied doctors and to Reverend Parris and his gambit.

Jeremy thought it best to tie his horse in the barn in the futile hope he would not be seen going in. The place brought back images of Tituba and blood spatters about the place. The little Barbados native most assuredly had been in the habit of sacrificing animals to her own god.

In a moment, he was before the door about to rap when it opened on a sunken-faced, shaken Mrs. Parris. She was entirely ill herself, having been left to deal with her child’s infirmity alone all these weeks. The strain had taken such a toll as to turn her blonde head white. She looked a scarecrow, a shell of her former self.

“Please, inside at once,” she said almost inaudibly, her eyes darting about, as if fearful that any villager might see them together. “Thank you so much for coming.”

“You realize, Mrs. Parris, that I am no minister,” he said, once inside with the door closing on the dark interior, sending both into shadow.

“I am aware of your true calling, but I must have a man of your . . . your worldliness.”

“Worldliness?”

“I understand you have witnessed witchcraft outbreaks before, in other communities?”

“I have seen this before, yes; it’s why I’d thought it’d be over with Goode and Osborne’s convictions, that and your servant’s.”

“My servant? Tituba? She never was that.” From the tone of her voice, Jeremy felt certain that Elizabeth Parris knew of her husband’s indiscretions with the servant that may or may not have led to a child being born, and may or may not have led to a disposal of said child in a most unchristian manner.

“What can you tell me of Tituba?” he asked, helplessly watching her hands shake.

She sent her chin skyward, looking haughty and angry at the question. “I asked you here for your advice, not to give you a knife to place in Samuel’s back.”

“I understand and I’m sorry, but my advice?”

“In the matter of my daughter. She does not get well. She hurts herself daily as the demons within turn her skin to fire. She is my child and yet she is not; she is my child and is dying before my eyes, and I am helpless!” She broke down, crying. Jeremy caught her and helped her to a chair.

Once she had released the pent up tears, Jeremy placed a hand on the woman’s broad shoulders and said, “Take me to her.”

If any child in Salem was possessed of a demon, or set upon by invisible forces, such as witches on spectral brooms or hot pokers and giant knitting needles, it was Betty Parris. As Jeremy looked down on her, she gave vent to howls and barking, and the lifelessness in her eyes recalled a stunned dog below a felled tree. Frozen, glazed eyes, open but registering nothing, and giving off no clue as to anything behind the pupils as if all light and humanity had vanished.

Her small body lay in a twisted, gnarled pose on the bed, nightshirt so wrapped about her as to be cutting off circulation in the lower extremities while choking her throat. Breathing came shallow with unintelligible words in a litany of nonstop gibberish with the occasional ugly word. Jeremy heard a mix of Latin in with the English.

“What is to be done, Mr. Wakely? I beg you if you know anything, anything that might help, please! I’d give my life for it.”

“I have no potions, no medical knowledge, but true, I have seen children in this condition in past.”

“You have!” she grasped at this straw.

“Yes, sad to say. Always seems a girl child. I imagine your Betty has been terrified into believing the power of . . . well, the witches.”

“Believing the power of the witches is what tortures her?”

“Believing in their efficacy, yes. In the power they claim to wield over her. You recall that when Goode was arrested, that they found a bell, a book, a candle on her?”

“Yes, so?”

“They also searched her haunts, and they found a doll. A doll I had seen her with before—a doll very much in Betty’s likeness, which has not been recovered. I suspect it was burned in a fire.”

“A likeness of Betty, yes, I know but it weren’t destroyed by Goode.”

“What do you mean?”

“My husband in his well-intentioned efforts to bring Betty round, he . . . he brought the damnable thing in to our house.”

“He did?”

“He thought it might shock Betty into knowing that the witch could not any longer harm her. He plucked out every nail and needle before her eyes.”

Jeremy gritted his teeth. “To what result?”

“Betty flew into a worse frenzy than ever, and has ever since exhibited this! This you see now.”

“I suspect that Betty, and perhaps other village children, were led into some dark games, thanks to Tituba and Goode, and at one such meeting, Goode presented the very doll, and I suspect Betty fell immediately ill due to the idea that Witch Goode had placed a hex on her.”

“As-as a result of seeing her likeness stuck full with nails and needles.”

“Goode placed a curse on her father, and everyone in the village knew this. Betty could not be immune to fear of Goode and Tituba at that point.”

“That Mary Wolcott was in on it, too. I just know.” Mrs. Parris’ eyes filled with tears. “But what reparation can I do? Nothing works!”

“I have only known one cure for this sort of thing.”

“Name it and name your price, sir.”

“No price.”

“What then?”

“You must pack Betty into a carriage and take her as far from Salem as you can possibly go.”

“Leave?”

“Leave, yes. Remove her from the influence of evil lying over all Salem now.”

“And it will save my Betty?”

“I assure you, it is your and Betty’s only hope, and point out to Betty each time you cross a body of water that witches can’t cross God’s pure water, no matter their other powers.”

“Is that true?”

“Absolutely.”

She nodded and rolled her hands one over the other until she they resolved to spiral skyward as in prayer. “Then it will be done and done now. I have relatives in Connecticut. We’ll have crossed three rivers.”

“A good number, three,” he assured her. “Go there at once. I’ll arrange for a carriage while you pack. The man you sent with the note. Is he trustworthy?”

“He is. He was Tituba’s man but they were not married. He is broken-hearted over what’s happened.”

“Will he accompany you to your relatives?”

“He will.”

“Excellent. Find him, pack, and I’ll fetch the carriage.”

“Then your answer is—”

“Distance, yes, distance and time.”

“Put distance between Betty and the witches.”

Jeremy didn’t split hairs on the matter, but she’d also be putting distance between them and Parris, who had likely acerbated his daughters bewitchment far more than had Goode. Bringing her the doll to gander at while in such terror already? “I’ll be back in an hour with your transport. What monies do you have?”

“I’ve hidden away enough.”

Her words could be taken two ways, Jeremy thought. He then rushed off to make plans to get this sick child and mother away from this cursed parsonage. It was something practical he could do; something to be accomplished that didn’t involve invisible forces or frustration of this Earth. The desire to help Betty and her mother and follow through with getting them away propelled him. But it must be done swiftly and definitely in Samuel Parris’ absence.