Crane Pond (22 page)

‘Not Mr. Mather, you goose. Sam, our Sam. Haven't you seen him?'

Something tough and strung in the depths of his body slackens suddenly. ‘I thought he was a . . . a vision,' Sewall admits lamely. Hallucination, ghost, spectre, coalesce into that safe word.

Hannah bursts out laughing. ‘Our Sam! A fine vision he would make. His breeches are torn and his shirt is dirty. I don't know what Mrs. Hobart was thinking of.'

‘But how can he be here? It's the Sabbath!'

‘I haven't asked him yet. I think he's rather upset. Be glad to see him, Sam, that's all I ask.
I
am. Very glad. I just wish young Hannah was here with us too.'

Suddenly, over Hannah's shoulder, here is Sam again. He has come into the vestibule from the hall, entering sideways-on (presumably so as to be as inconspicuous as possible). Certainly his head is lowered in shame and he peers at his parents out of the corners of his eyes. ‘Sam!' Sewall says sternly.

‘Yes, father.'

Sewall crooks his forefinger. ‘Come here, my son.' Sam shuffles crabwise up to him. Hannah rests her hand protectively over the back of her son's neck and gives Sewall a warning look. ‘How did you get here, Sam?'

‘I walked out of Mr. Hobart's house this morning while he was writing his sermon.'

‘Did you climb through a window?'

‘No, father,' he replies in a small voice. ‘I just went through the door. I went out through the door and then walked along the road and then a carter gave me a ride.'

‘The carter should not have been travelling on a Sunday. No more should you.'

‘I think you are allowed to travel in an emergency, though.'

‘And what
was
this emergency?'

‘The emergency was, I had to come home.' Tears suddenly run down young Sam's cheeks.

‘Was Mr. Hobart treating you cruelly?'

‘No, no, not at all,' Sam assures him, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. ‘Except that he made me do arithmetic all day long.'

‘And so he should have done. That was the arrangement.'

‘And God,' Sam continues in a complaining tone. ‘I had to study
God
a very great deal.' He broods upon this imposition for a little while. ‘God,' he repeats, and nods his head by way of agreeing with the accuracy of his own summary.

There is a pause. Hannah glances meaningfully at Sewall who suddenly opens his arms and embraces his son. ‘I am so happy to have you safely here,' he whispers in Sam's ear.

‘I am happy to have me here too,' Sam replies, his voice muffled by his father's shoulder. The aroma of boiling fowl wafts in from the kitchen to give a kind of domestic sanctification to the moment.

T
his is the very tale of America itself, thinks Sewall.

One spring evening almost a quarter of a century previously, John Pressy of Amesbury (across the water from Sewall's own home town of Newbury) just managed to catch the last ferry over the Merrimack River at the shutting in of the light. He then had a walk of about three miles to his own house. He climbed Goodall's Hill and stopped for breath at the top near three stooping trees whose branches clawed down at him, their twisted fingers dark black against the pale black of oncoming night.

He took off his coat, since it was warm now he was away from the river, folded it over his arm and set off down the hill, skirting a field belonging to a neighbour of his called George Martin. He walked on for some time before it occurred to him that he didn't know where he was. There wasn't a proper path in any case, though this was a journey he had made often enough before—but never in the dark. There was no moon and in the dim starlight everything was unfamiliar. Trees and bushes seemed to sidle menacingly close; the grass looked like the pale grey fur of some enormous animal. It was as if nobody had ever been here before, no previous eyes had ever seen it.

John Pressy was bewildered. He wandered for what seemed like a long time until, feeling his steps harder to make, he realised that the land had begun to slope upwards. Finally three stooping trees came into sight: he was back at the top of Goodall's Hill. He waited a while trying to calm himself and to solve the puzzle of how the hill had appeared
ahead
of him when in fact he had walked
away
from it. Then to his joy the moon came out. Once again he set off down the slope, full of confidence this time that in its bright light he would be able to steer himself home.

But once again he became confused. He could see his surroundings sure enough, but they were different from what he would perceive in the daytime, and indeed from what he had (barely) made out in the starlight, the back-to-front light of the moon apparently shifting and rearranging the objects in the valley so that there was no clear route through them. Again he became hopelessly lost, and again he finally found himself once more on top of Goodall's Hill, looking up at the three stooping trees.

He set off a third time. Now, however, because of the knowledge of wrong ways he had accumulated in his previous attempts, he knew where he should go, or at least where he shouldn't, and soon had walked a good half mile on his way. Then he saw a light on his left-hand side, about ten yards off. For a moment he was tempted to walk towards it, but he forbore and continued on his way, leaving it behind him. But he hadn't gone far when the light appeared again, in exactly the same spot in relation to him as previously. Once more he walked past it; once more it appeared. Yet again he left it behind him and proceeded on his way a few more yards; again the light reappeared, this time directly in front of him and blocking his path. He tried to push it out of his way with his walking stick, but in response the light seemed to burst upwards and wave from side to side like a turkey cock spreading its tail.

At this point Pressy began beating it with all his might, delivering at least forty blows with his stick.

Finally he managed to get past. He was just about to move on when his feet were hoisted up from under him, and he found himself lying on his back, sliding down some invisible slope. He only managed to save himself from falling by clutching on to some bushes.

After he'd gone a few more yards he saw Susannah Martin, George Martin's wife, standing a little way to his left exactly as the light had repeatedly done. She said nothing but just stared at him, her head turning so that she could continue to watch him as he went past. He was so upset by this time that when he finally reached his house he carried on right past it and had to turn back. He couldn't call out or even speak until his wife opened the door and addressed him.

Next day the story was all round the neighbourhood that Goodwife Martin had gone back to her house in such a terrible state that her whole body had to be swabbed. Eventually John Pressy was persuaded to tell his story to the local justice, but by then Martin's injuries had healed and nothing could be proved against her. However, she heard about his report, came round to his house and abused him and his wife, telling them they had taken a false oath and would never prosper. In particular that they would never own more than two cows, and even though they might in due course seem to be on the point of obtaining more, they never would.

And sure enough, despite all their best efforts, John Pressy and his wife have never owned more than two cows in all the years that have gone by since then.

 

Sewall wakes up in his chamber in Stephen and Margaret's house and thinks about John Pressy's testimony. What's odd is that it didn't seem like testimony at all, despite the fact that it had been written down on paper and read out to the court by Sewall's own brother. Instead it was more like an adventure Sewall himself had had. In his mind's eye he can clearly see those three stooping trees with their clutching fingers, feel in his calves that maddening thrice-repeated climb up Goodall's Hill, view the unexpectedly unfamiliar landscape with familiar eyes, eyes that have become used to that strangeness, remember exactly how it felt to beat at the obstinate, recurring,
substantial
, ball of light, experience in the pit of his stomach the terrible sensation of sliding into a pit that shouldn't be there in the first place.

I remember it even though it didn't happen to me, thinks Sewall, hoisting himself up in bed. How can that be possible? How can he share that pilgrimage of terror with a man he has never even met?

Perhaps John Pressy is Everyman, like the Pilgrim of
Pilgrim's Progress
? Or at least an
American
pilgrim, since his story seems to contain the fearfulness of America as it is now, with townships and settlements that appear so ordered and safe but have the forest hunching its shoulders all around and pagan Indians waiting to attack, with farmland that is tidy and well-tilled but was wilderness just a lifetime ago and recalls that ancestry in any shift of the light or swing of the weather; this current America of 1692 where witches are dressed in sober Puritan clothes, and New Englanders project their dark intentions on to the souls of innocent children.

Sewall gropes for the cup of water beside the bed and takes a drink. He can hear the gentle soughing of the sea and occasional snoring of the shingle, which makes it sound as if the house itself is slumbering peacefully. He slides himself out of bed and tiptoes across the floor to the window, pulls open the curtain and peers out. There, between the houses opposite, the silvery glitter of moonlight on small successive waves looks like the ruffled afterglow of the bestriding angel in Revelation.

While Sewall struggles to slide his bulk back between the sheets, holding his nightshirt against his thighs to prevent it rucking up, an idea occurs to him (he's noticed before that when he's preoccupied with an awkward and engrossing task it somehow frees his mind to have thoughts of its own, like a horse slipping the reins). That name, Goodall's Hill. Goodall could surely be a corruption of Golgotha! And, Sewall realises with sudden excitement, the three stooping trees at its top could stand for the three crosses of Calvary.

Yes, yes, of course. Pressy's three visits to that place, or rather his three descents
from
it, were analogues of the three repudiations of Christ by Peter when the cock crowed (like the dying John Hurd's cries of Hold your tongue! when his wife announced the presence of visitors to comfort his soul). By the same token, the landscape at the bottom of the hill seemed alien because Pressy had alienated himself from his Saviour. His journey through the suddenly strange valley became an errand into the wilderness; and the deceptive light was the blandishment of a witch, leading him a false way toward the pit of hell, into which he almost slipped.

As God, through his prophet Moses, pronounced in Deuteronomy,
To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall slide in
due
time
.

The slide of Pressy's foot was arrested, and he was allowed to clutch at a bush, on account of his struggles against the seduction of the false light. He had beaten back that chimaera, and the black and blue of the beating appeared on Susannah Martin's body, thus demonstrating the hidden link between spectral projection and the witch who provided its source (Sewall has checked the legal precedent for this, in Glanvil,
Sadducismus
, part 2, case of Julian Cox, executed at Taunton in 1663, summing up by Judge Archer). Pressy's adventure happened twenty-four years ago but it prefigures New England's present crisis, as well as reaching back to the eternal and eternally repeated story.

 

Susannah Martin is one of five accused witches who are being tried over three days by the Court of Oyer and Terminer in Salem. She is a tall lean woman of sixty-seven with a lined face, hook nose and bright probing eyes—a witchy woman, in fact. The afflicted cry out and fall over during her hearing and when she is asked why they are behaving like this, she refers the court (to Sewall's astonishment) to the account of the Witch of Endor in the first book of Samuel, chapter 28. The witch in this passage summoned up a spectre in the shape of the recently deceased Samuel (an innocent person
par excellence
) in order to disconcert Saul with dismal prophesies. In short this ignorant countrywoman makes the very same argument, that the Devil can make spectres in the shape of innocent people, that Cotton Mather made in his
Return
.

Sewall is amazed at Martin's impudence, which can equate Samuel's spectre (even though fabricated) with the apparition of her own unworthy self in order to claim that
it
was fabricated also, as though there could be any comparison between the two.

The other cases are similarly straightforward, with the afflicted suffering such afflictions as tend to their being pined and consumed in full view of the open court, and with copious supporting testimony from other witnesses over the years. It is only Rebecca Nurse who poses a dilemma.

 

Goody Nurse is the well-to-do and apparently respectable inhabitant of Salem Village who is a covenanted member of Nicholas Noyes's church in Salem Town, and who has regularly attended services in both places. She is small and thin but stands stiffly upright and looks straight ahead, like a diminutive soldier called to attention. A petition in support of her innocence and good character, signed by thirty-nine of her friends and neighbours, is presented to the court. Nevertheless it's notable that when the afflicted girls are in their torments Nurse's face is expressionless.

Mr. Hathorne asks her why she doesn't weep at their suffering.

A long pause. Then in a quiet, rather creaky voice, she replies, ‘You do not know my heart.'

There's shocked silence at the arrogance of this remark. It's the court's responsibility to come to a verdict on the content of the accused's heart, so Nurse is in effect accusing it of unfitness to undertake its allotted task. She's denying the validity of the whole legal process. In any case there should be a continuum between heart and utterance, inside and out, appearance and reality. When that is lacking the Devil is able to insert himself into the resulting space and perform his wickedness. Nurse is a member of two congregations yet is prepared to proclaim the secrecy of the self.