Six Women of Salem (22 page)

“I have got no body to look to but God.” She moved her hands as she spoke, and as she did, the afflicted responded with “violent fits of torture.”

“Do you beleive these afflicted persons are bewitcht[?]”

“I do think they are.”

“When this Witchcraft came upon the stage there was no suspicion of Tituba,” Hathorne continued. “She profest much love to that Child Betty Parris, but it was her apparition did the mischief, & why should not you also be guilty, for your apparition doth hurt also.”

“Would you have me belie my self [?]” Rebecca cocked her head, and Elizabeth Hubbard’s neck bent sharply to the side.

“[S]et up Goody Nurses head,” Abigail Williams cried, “the maids neck will be broke.”

“What do you think of this?”

“I cannot help it. The Devil may appear in my shape.” The magistrates ignored her logic and instead directed Reverend Parris to read the shorthand notes he had taken of some of Mrs. Ann Putnam’s fits. (These have not survived but must have been close to Reverend Lawson’s account of the same or a similar episode.) Mrs. Putnam’s spectral dialogues with an invisible Rebecca along with the courtroom convulsions of the afflicted impressed the magistrates more than the real Rebecca’s Scriptural argument about the Devil’s deceptions. The magistrates then ordered that Goody Nurse be held for later trial.

If Mary Warren had had any doubts about her interpretation of her symptoms, the sight of two grown women convulsing—respected married women, not just unregarded hired girls—accusing their neighbors of bewitching them must have seemed to prove her worst fears. Mrs. Putnam looked half dead as her husband carried her from the meeting house—a fearful sight.

The examination of Sarah Good’s child Dorothy is lost, but as young as she was, she also was held for trial. What the child thought it was all about is anyone’s guess. The afflicted reacted as though Dorothy’s specter attacked them every time the girl looked their way. Some of them claimed her specter bit them, showing little teeth marks on their skin. This must have impressed Mary Warren.

(The little girl may have been placed in the house of prison keeper William Dounton rather than in the common jail, for it was there, on March 26, that Hathorne, Corwin, and Reverend Higginson would question Dorothy further. They must have asked her about familiars, for, according to Deodat Lawson, the child “told them . . . it had a little Snake.” Pointing to “a deep Red Spot, about the Bigness of a Flea-bite” on “the Lowest point of [her] Fore-Finger,” she said that was where the snake would suck nourishment. And no, “the great Black man” [i.e., the Devil] had not given her the snake—her mother had.)

After the midday meal on March 24, visiting minister Deodat Lawson delivered the afternoon lecture, which was intended as a warning against jumping to conclusions. Was Rebecca Nurse present under guard as an example, or was she confined to the watch-house prior to being taken to Salem jail? Ann Putnam may have recovered enough to listen (the afflicted tended to recover fairly quickly, especially if they had won their point). Mary Warren was almost certainly present.

The text, Zachariah 3:2, concerned a man who Satan himself had accused, only to have his sins forgiven. Lawson himself had to have had his dead wife and baby daughter in mind, supposedly, according to Tituba, killed by witchcraft. But he reminded his audience that the Devil had malice enough against humanity and could act against them both physically and mentally without the help of mortal witches. He warned against the Devil’s “Mists of Darkness, and ignorance, in the Understanding” and “false Representations to the Eyes” (as Rebecca Nurse had warned the court), advised them to look into their own hearts and consider what they were doing that would please the Devil, and reminded them that no one had yet been
proven
guilty. “Give no place to the Devil,” Lawson warned, “by Rash Censuring of others, without sufficient grounds, or false accusing any willingly.” He reminded the courts to consider the cases by
lawful
means—that is, no folk tests or torture—and reminded the people against trying to use supposedly protective folk charms, which is so close to harmful magic. If John Indian sat in the gallery listening, he likely worried about the witch-cake Goody Sibley had encouraged him and Tituba to make to help the girls. If Goody Sibley heard this part, she had reason to worry about her association with magic of any kind.

But Lawson’s listeners apparently paid most attention when he described the dangers of the times as well as his description of how actual witches allowed the Devil to “use their Bodies and Minds, Shapes and Representations to Affright and Afflict others, at his pleasure.” And in that time of very real frontier attacks leveled at the towns from Canada, they paid more mind to his military metaphor to “ARM! ARM! ARM!”—which he clarified as meaning, “PRAY! PRAY! PRAY!” “Let us admit no parley,” he said, “give no quarter, let none of Satan’s Forces or Furies, be more vigilant to hurt us than we are to resist & repress them.”
Yes
, audience members like the Putnams and Mary Warren thought,
resist and repress
. The danger seemed so obvious to them.

Rebecca Nurse was taken off to Salem jail, while Ann Putnam returned home with her family, probably feeling somewhat (but not entirely) safer.

Mary Warren, however, did not return to the Procter farm but instead stayed somewhere in the Village overnight. She and the other afflicted girls still experienced fits and visions despite the capture of the latest suspects. Mary could not help noticing how differently the Putnam and Williams and Walcott girls were treated than she had been, how the adults offered sympathy and consolation, whereas Elizabeth Procter criticized and John Procter beat her. Even the maids, Lewis and Hubbard, were treated sympathetically by
their
masters. And in all cases the magistrates themselves took what the afflicted said seriously instead of dismissing their complaints as the foolishness of mere girls, paid attention to them who had, until then, been ignored.

Before she could return to the Procter farm the next morning, Mary’s infuriated master appeared. Not only had she disobeyed him, but he had also lost a day of her work, lost his own work time fetching her back, and would lose more time while she got over her latest spell of fits. He hauled her home, no doubt telling her, as he had already told Walter Phillips on his way to the Village, that he would rather have paid forty pence than let her go to the court. “[W]e should all be Devils & Witches quickly,” he had said to Phillips. Those supposedly afflicted accusers “should rather be had to the Whipping post,” he proclaimed—whipped like common liars, that is. Now he had to “fetch his jade home and thresh the Devil out of her.” He called her
jade
, as though she were a wanton woman, and he made it clear that her actions would only lead to more accusations. He doubtless repeated it all to Mary on the difficult trip home.

That John called Mary a jade, taken with Mary’s disjointed testimony about pulling a specter into her lap and finding it was her master’s spirit, suggests a sexual undercurrent to the problem. Had Mary done more than fantasize a romance with her master? Had she made any sort of advance toward him—the potential strong protector—or indicated that she would not rebuff such an advance from him if he offered one? Her statements never hint that he showed any desires toward her. His only stated reactions seem to be disgust and anger. Whatever he felt about the maid, the situation had to have caused an awkwardness between him and his wife. What did Elizabeth think, and did any of this refer to the couple’s quarrels that Mary would mention?

So on that day, while the specter of Rebecca Nurse reportedly lashed Annie Putnam with a chain as invisible as the specter yet raised visible welts, John Procter whipped Mary Warren with a firm hand. Gradually she responded to the beatings and quieted again. Nevertheless, others in the Village had already named Elizabeth Procter as a witch, and Mary, in the past, must have complained about her mistress to the other afflicted girls and probably in terms more disrespectful than just to call her “Betty.” Now insults like “hag” or “old witch”—if she used those terms—could have grim consequences. Soon others reported Goody Procter’s specter more and more often.

If Rebecca Nurse’s family attended the Village Church’s next Sacrament Sabbath on March 27, Reverend Parris’s choice of sermon text would not have pleased them, but they would have had plenty to report to their mother when they next visited her in jail. “Have I not chosen you twelve,” Parris quoted, “& one of you is a Devil?” The text cited Christ’s remark to his disciples after Judas had betrayed him to the authorities, and Parris intended it, as his notes show, to parallel the “dreadful Witchcraft broke out here a few weeks past.” The two examined “by Civil Authority” and “vehemently suspected for shee-witches” were not merely local; they were members of the Salem town and the Salem Village Churches (Rebecca Nurse and Martha Corey). The comparison was certainly clear to the congregation, for as soon as he announced the text a woman stood up from among the women’s benches, stalked out of the meeting house, and slammed the door behind her: Goodwife Sarah Cloyce, Rebecca’s youngest sister and a communing member herself. Apparently the rest of the Nurse and Cloyce kin present remained, as Parris’s notes mention no one else leaving. The afflicted grew agitated, and later they would say that Goody Cloyce curtseyed to the Devil at the gate outside.

The remaining congregation then heard Parris’s sermon, in which he somewhat qualified his remarks. Christ’s “Church,” he said, “consists of good & bad, as a Garden that has weeds as well as flowers.” But there were many ways to commit evil other than outright witchcraft: drunkenness, slander, lies, pride, envy. Even church members should examine their own hearts for the weaknesses that let the Devil in even as they pray for a solution to the present crisis of the Devil’s invasion.

“Pray we also that not one true Saint may suffer as a Devil, either in name, or body. The Devil would represent the best Saints as devils if he could,” he said—as Lawson had warned and as Rebecca Nurse had tried to explain to the court—“but,” he added, “it is not easy to imagine that his power is of such extent.” Rebecca’s family realized that Parris was convinced that the current suspects—including their own mother—were indeed allied with the forces of evil.

The term “devil,” Parris explained, included humans as well as “wicked spirits,” those “vile & wicked persons . . . who, for their villany & impiety do most resemble Devils.”

Being a full member of the church, Parris continued, and assuming one was saved did not guarantee that one was correct in the assumption. “This you & I may be, & yet Devils for all that.” He also warned the devilish hypocrites among the membership that taking communion under such lying circumstances made them deserving of “the hottest of God’s wrath.” So “if there be any such among us, forbear to come this day to the Lord’s Table, lest Satan enter more powerfully into you.” Sarah Cloyce had already left, but the rest of the full members must have feared what the neighbors might think if they did
not
come forward. Parris’s notes say nothing of any abstentions, and what the communing members of Rebecca’s family did is also not recorded. Francis was not a full member and would have left with the rest of the congregation after the main service. His daughter Mary Tarbell and her husband, John, son Samuel Nurse and his wife, Mary, were all communing members along with his sister-in-law Sarah Cloyce’s husband, Peter. Ann Putnam would likely have quashed her own reoccurring doubts of worthiness to take communion, applying all of Parris’s remarks to Rebecca Nurse.

Before the communion service itself, the full members heard Parris read aloud Mary Sibley’s apology for her “rashness” of using the countermagic of the witch-cake. The voting members (only male) agreed to accept it by raising their hands—unanimously. Although the charm was admittedly magic, even if countermagic, it was not magic enough for Goody Sibley to be considered a witch. This may have caused more resentment among Rebecca’s kin: Why was
their
mother chained in jail and Goody Sibley—who had
confessed
to the charm—not even charged? Yet the men’s vote had been unanimous, indicating that Peter Cloyce, Samuel Nurse, and John Tarbell had voted to forgive Goody Sibley.

Nevertheless, on the following day, March 28, members of Sarah’s and Rebecca’s families investigated the accusations for themselves. There was still time to clarify the facts of the matter. Samuel Nurse and his brother-in-law John Tarbell visited Thomas Putnam’s house to speak with the afflicted. Ann, her daughter, and the maid were well enough at the time that no one suffered any fits. Who, Tarbell asked, had first named his mother-in-law Nurse as one of the specter witches?

As Tarbell later reported, Annie said that at the beginning of her problems, back before the others were affected, she had seen “the apperishton of a pale fast [i.e., pale-faced] woman that sat in her granmothers seat but did not know har name.”

But who
named
Goody Nurse? Tarbell persisted. Mercy Lewis said that her mistress had. Ann Putnam said Mercy was the one who had told her daughter. Each thought the other had first identified the spirit.

“It was you,” one said, and “It was you that told her,” said the other.

“[T]hus they turned it upone one another,” Tarbell noted, and he noted also that it had happened “before any was afflicted at thomas putnams besids his daughter” and that either Mrs. Putnam or the maid or both had “told his daughter it was goody nurs.”