Six Women of Salem (19 page)

Prison keeper John Arnold received them, and two days later he brought shackles to further confine Good and Osborn. Their specters, he had been informed, still tormented the Village girls, so the authorities hoped the weighty iron might put a stop to that. No one reported having seen Tituba, however, as she had confessed—and been believed. So she remained unfettered—yet another reason for the two white women to resent her.

Back in Salem the annual town meeting convened on March 8 to elect town officers. Philip English was among the new selectmen along with merchant John Higginson Jr. (eldest son of the Salem’s senior minister), their offices another indication of the town’s trust. New constables included two Village men, Jonathan Putnam and Sergeant John Putnam Jr.

The constables’ cousin Thomas Putnam still had a household beset by the Invisible World. Annie began to identify some of the specters she saw. Now that everyone knew from Tituba’s account that there were at least nine witches lurking about, Ann and the other adults proposed names to help the girl identify the hazy figures she said she saw. They asked about identifying marks such as what clothes the specter wore (for people had small wardrobes). In offering help, they overlooked that these were leading questions. The suggested names would be of individuals whom Ann and Thomas did not trust, whom they may have half-suspected for years. Eventually Annie named Goodwife Corey.

Martha Corey, married to farmer Giles Corey as his third wife, had a son, Thomas Rich, from a first marriage, and a younger son Ben who was later described as “mulatto.” For some years she had boarded in Salem town with young Ben, apparently apart from her husband, Henry Rich, yet since Henry’s death she had Tom’s inheritance in her keeping, waiting for his majority. She was, furthermore, a full member of the Village Church, had shared communion bread and wine with Ann Putnam, and sat in the congregation as one of the elect, one of the saints. Still, to Ann, she had an irritating knowing manner and a habit of referring to herself as a Gospel woman.

Because she was a member of the Village Church, allowing her to explain herself to fellow members was only proper. Consequently, around ten o’clock on the morning of March 12, Ann’s brother-in-law Deacon Edward Putnam along with Ezekiel Cheever determined to speak with the woman and, if possible, resolve the matter. They evidently decided this at Thomas Putnam’s house, for they asked Annie to take notice of what the specter was wearing when she next saw it in order to compare that with whatever Goody Corey proved to have on.

On their way to the Corey house about midafternoon, they stopped again at Thomas’s house only to find that at noon the specter had struck Annie blind. It had identified itself as Goody Corey, said Annie, and told her “shee should see her no more before it was night because shee should not tell us what cloathes shee had on and then shee would come again and pay her off.” (Whether this was blind to everything or just to the Invisible World is not clear.)

The men returned with a tale of Goody Corey knowing what they were there for before they had the chance to tell her, aware of their intent to ask about her clothing. They thought she seemed more scornful than concerned about witches in the community—and in the church—that their presence was a reflection on the whole Village. The Devil, she had replied, probably needed little effort to recruit the three prisoners, who were “idle sloathfull persons and minded nothing that was good,” she said, not like
herself
, who rejoiced to hear the word of God. The men reminded her that joining the church did not guarantee election, but she dismissed this and began to lecture them on the Devil and his wrath.

Once the men left her father’s house, Annie again felt distressing spectral symptoms and reported the vengeful specter of Martha Corey hitting and pinching her. According to her later testimony, Annie may already have identified another suspect as well: Elizabeth Procter.

On the following day, the Sabbath, specters seemed to be invading the Village meeting house. Goodwife Pope, a middle-aged neighbor of the Corey’s, went temporarily blind during the service. Martha Corey was likely present, determined not to give in to local fears. Ann and Thomas along with Annie Putnam were probably in their accustomed places as well, but how they fared is not stated. It may have been today, after meeting, that Thomas Putnam invited Goody Corey—who was, after all, a church member—to meet his ailing daughter directly. What Ann thought about the plan is not recorded.

That same day Annie reported a new specter: “the apperishton of a pale fast [i.e., pale-faced] woman that sat in her granmothers seat but did not know har name.” Whether this referred to a seat in the meeting house or at home, nor which grandmother (or stepgrandmother), is not clear. Ann, joined by Mercy Lewis, the hired girl, questioned her daughter. They suggested names until Annie agreed to one of them: Rebecca Nurse.

With Uncle Edward and some other neighbors present, Thomas and Ann Putnam received Martha Corey at their home. The moment the woman crossed the threshold Annie thumped to the floor, with her head, hands, and feet twisted and contorted. It was Goody Corey doing this, the girl gasped, then she gagged as some invisible force pulled out her tongue and clamped her teeth into it. Ann watched frantically at this revenge inflicted on her own child and in her own home.

Once Annie began to recover she pointed at Corey. According to her Uncle Edward’s notes, Annie exclaimed, “[T]her is a yellow burd asucking betwen your fore finger and midel finger I see it . . . I will Come and see it.”

“[S]o you may,” said Goody Corey,

As Edward would depose later, “I saw martha Cory put one of her fingers in the place whear ann had said she saw the burd and semed to give a hard rub.” Annie exclaimed that the bird had disappeared, and “emediately she was blinded,” unable to approach. As the girl struggled to reach the woman she “fell down blinded and Cold,” contending, in her mother’s view, against something unseen.

It was Goody Corey who made Goody Pope blind on Sabbath, Annie said, demonstrating with her hands over her own eyes only to then find that she could not remove them. Her parents and uncle tried to pull the panicked girl’s hands away from her face, but they seemed stuck fast, and her family feared breaking them. Finally, somehow, Annie’s hand came free, but what she then saw was the Invisible World, a vision of a man skewered on a spit and roasting over the fire of her home’s own hearth. This matched stories of what some Indians were said to do to captives, a possibility well known to the maid Mercy Lewis, who had survived frontier attacks in her childhood. Everyone had heard stories of such tortures after the raid on Salmon Falls. (How had Mercy reacted to that? And what might Annie have expected Mercy to do now at this news of a man on a spit?)

“[G]oodey Cory,” Annie shouted, “you be aturnning of it.”

At that, Mercy grabbed a stick and struck a blow where Annie pointed. This made the vision vanish for a moment, but it returned almost immediately. Mercy swung again, and Annie warned, “[D]o not if you love your self,” but it was too late. Mercy screamed from the pain in her arm. It was Goody Corey, said Annie.
She
had struck Mercy with an iron rod. Now both girls were in agony, and the Putnams begged Corey to leave.

“I won’t. I won’t!” Mercy screamed at the figures that menaced her—witch specters trying to make her sign the Devil’s book.

At this point Martha Corey left, but Mercy’s fits lasted for hours more. Menaced by the shadowy forms of women she could not identify, she resisted, shouting at the specters even when they threatened to twist her neck.

Her fits grew so bad that two or three grown men were sometimes needed to hold her, lest she fall into the fire or brain herself against the furniture. Late that night, when the clock was nearly at eleven, Mercy huddled in a chair opposite the hearth, resting. The chair began inching toward the fire. That got the watchers’ attention. Two of the men grabbed the chair’s back, only to find they could not prevent its slow, inexorable crawl, instead, the chair, with the girl in it, “her feat going formost,” dragged them all toward the flames until Edward Putnam put himself between the fire and Mercy. Among the three of them they managed to lift the chair with its occupant—which stopped the movement.

So Edward later reported the incidents and swore to them the following September. (Later commentators assumed Mercy was using her feet to drag it forward, though it seems difficult for her to have moved a heavy chair
and
the two grown men pulling back on it. As with any of the year’s testimony, events could have expanded with each retelling, like fish stories.)

As all this was happening, even if Mary Warren was not able to slip away against her master’s wishes to the March 1 hearings, she would not have lacked for news of the goings-on at the Village when people stopped at the Procters’ for a drink and gossip. Their stories included that of the wolf that Sarah Good sicced on Betty Hubbard (unless it was Sarah herself in disguise and not her familiar) right after Betty had left the Procters’, of the nine signatures in the Devil’s book, and of the many specters menacing the Village.

Then, one evening Mary Warren also reported shadowy forms. As she later described it, a shape, possibly Goody Corey’s, drifted about the room, and as it passed her, Mary snatched at it and pulled it toward herself. Yet when she did, she found that the specter on her lap now had the appearance of her master, John Procter.

Procter himself stood elsewhere in the room, observing this suggestive mime. “[I]tt is noe body but I,” he said, “itt is my shaddow that you see.”

Mary tried to explain what she had seen, but Procter was disgusted. “I see there is noe heed to any of your Talkings, for you are all possest With the Devill for itt is nothing butt my shape.”

Where Elizabeth Procter was on this occasion is not recorded

Despite her master’s scorn, Mary felt more and more on edge. Who else in the neighborhood was malicious enough to have joined the Devil? And did every twinge herald a spectral attack?

Rebecca Nurse kept close to home now, feeling that the winter weather was too much to allow her to go abroad, even for neighborly errands. Her children kept her informed of the Village afflictions, Tituba’s confession, and the threat of more unknown witches. Descriptions of the girls’ convulsions alarmed her, and although she knew she ought to visit the families with illness in them, she feared to do so. Later, when asked why she neglected this neighborly duty, she replied, “Because I was afraid I should have fitts too.” Stories of the reported familiars would also be alarming, especially that of the great black dog so like Black Shuck of Yarmouth’s Long Sands: Yarmouth was far away, but the Devil was not.

Convulsions may be the result of physical ills (epilepsy, fevers, poisons, hypertension, etc.), emotions (hysteria), or a combination of the two. Convulsions from either means are actually contagious. A person sympathizing with another who suffers seizures can, as fear and excitement mount, also react the same way if they
expect
convulsions to be a logical outcome of the situation. In 1692 some—though not all—of the fits may have been, as critics have long stated, pretense, acting, and lies. But empathetic onlookers needn’t know that to find themselves also convulsing, and the reaction in itself would be frightening enough to make the matter a self-fulfilling prophecy. Chadwick Hansen pointed out this fact in his 1969 study,
Witchcraft at Salem
. In addition, great fear can cause a person to breathe in shallow rapid breaths that, supplying insufficient oxygen to the brain, can cloud vision and cause convulsions and unconsciousness. But because the afflicted tended to recover quickly from their fits, the cause was not likely physical.

____________________

Mary Warren feels the dread close in ’til her panic rises as darkness seeps into her field of vision. It becomes harder to breathe, and she hears little shuddering gasps of distress that she knows are her own as she begins to tremble, the motion increasing violently. She half hears Goody Procter’s voice commanding her to stop, half hears the disapproving tone more than the words.

The room and other inconsequential details fade from her notice as she heeds the shadowy specters that are rushing forward to overwhelm her and . . .

Suddenly, Mary is back in the Procters’ kitchen. She reels, as if she has just been dropped into this familiar place from somewhere else. The side of her head stings.

Before her, Goodman Procter stands glaring, clenching his fists. She realizes he has just slapped her—
hard
—
and is ready to hit her harder if necessary.

She clutches the burning side of her face. It takes her a moment to understand what her master is saying, but the tone of his voice is unmistakable. He is furious and does not believe that her fits are real, does not believe the specters she reports are real, does not believe that the pain she claims these spirits inflict is real. But if it’s pain she wants, he will give it to her.

Mary tries to explain her fears, but he clouts her again, on the ear this time, his wife just standing there, looking grim and satisfied at the turn of events. Mary cries out at the pain. Procter grabs her arm and drags her across the room. Resistance only hurts the more, and Mary finds herself swung in an arc toward the spinning wheel. She collides with it and feels Procter’s grip on both her shoulders as he shoves her down onto a stool. She nearly topples over, but he does not let go.

“You
will
work,” he says, his angry face just inches from hers. “You
will
end this dangerous foolishness. You
will
behave and obey the both of us. Understand?”

Mary nods, unable to speak. She has often wondered what being this close to her master would be like, but this was not the sort of touch she had daydreamed about.