Six Women of Salem (27 page)

And when the magistrates pointed out that she could see how the afflicted were tormented, she replied, “Would you have me accuse my self?”

Because even John Indian said that he had seen Goody Esty’s specter with Goody Hobbs, one of the magistrates asked how much she had cooperated with Satan in order for the Fiend to use a specter in her shape.

“Sir,” she answered, “I never complyed but prayed against him all my dayes. I have no complyance with Satan, in this. What would you have me do?”

“Confess if you be guilty.”

“I will say it, if it was my last time, I am clear of this sin.”

The magistrates seemed undecided enough to ask the accusers: “Are you certain this is the woman?”

The afflicted were speechless from convulsions, though Annie managed to say, “[I]t was like her, & she told me her name.”

But that slim doubt began to evaporate when the afflicted began mimicking Goody Esty’s gestures: their hands were clenched when she clasped her hands, Elizabeth Hubbard’s neck seemed pushed down when Goody Esty hung her own head. “Oh. Goody Easty, Goody Easty you are the woman,” Elizabeth wailed, “you are the woman.”

“What do you say to this?” the magistrate demanded.

“Why God will know.”

“Nay God knows now.”

“I know he dos.” Mary Esty, like her sisters, was not about to accuse herself.

“What did you think of the actions of others before your sisters came out?” asked the magistrate. “[D]id you think it was Witchcraft?”

“I cannot tell.”

“Why do you not think it is Witchcraft?”

“It is an evil Spirit, but whither it be Witchcraft I do not know.”

And like her sisters, Mary Esty was held for trial.

Mary Black, a slave belonging to Nathaniel Putnam, denied hurting by image magic, but when she pinned her neck cloth as the magistrate instructed, the afflicted reacted as if stabbed. Her case is hazy, but she too was held for trial. Sarah Wildes did not confess either, nor did Edward and Sarah Bishop, whose paperwork is lost.

Abbott was taken back to the court, but he did not return. The waiting prisoners learned that he had been released, with the charge dismissed. When the afflicted were told to look at him outside by daylight they had stared at the man’s knobby features and the swath of hair falling over his eyes, then decided that he was
not
the same person as the specter. Abbott lacked a wen next to his eye; this was even more encouraging.

No examination papers for Mary English have survived, only a family tradition of her attitude. Taken into the thronged meeting house, its interior dimmed by the crowd that blocked the windows, she faced the afflicted accusers: two girls, two young women, and a grown man—Annie Putnam, Mary Walcott, Elizabeth Hubbard, Reverend Parris’s niece Abigail Williams, and his slave John Indian. Presumably the fits and questioning proceeded as it had for the other suspects but without the doubts that freed Abbott. According to tradition, Mary, having learned what the questions were for the other prisoners, questioned the magistrates herself, demanding to know whether such proceedings “were right and lawful.” There were higher courts than the one she addressed, and she intended to inquire of
them
whether the current proceedings “were law and justice” and see “that their decisions should be reviewed by the Superior Judges”—or so her family would tell it. She may also have alluded to a Heavenly court where false witness would not deceive the Almighty.

Nevertheless, the magistrates held Mary English for further trial. Unless he had been out of town during his wife’s arrest (as one family story said), Philip English was presumably in the audience along with Isaac Esty for their wives, just as Francis Nurse had been present for Rebecca. Philip evidently kept his temper, for there were apparently no hotheaded objections like the ones that resulted in John Procter’s own arrest.

Hathorne and Corwin ordered Marshall Herrick to take all of the day’s defendants, except for fortunate Goodman Abbott, from the Village to the Salem jail.

But the afflictions did not cease. On the day after the latest hearings Annie Putnam recoiled from the specter of neighbor John Willard as he brought the Devil’s book and threatened her if she refused to sign. Ann and Thomas heard her beg the persecuting specter for mercy, promising not to complain of him if he would only stop hurting her. But on the next day, April 24
—
and a Sabbath at that—the specter hurt her so much that she cried out his name with all the visiting neighbors to hear.

Willard had been in their house in person, along with other neighbors, helping them and showing sympathy for the afflicted. He had even served as a deputy to convey arrested suspects before losing patience with the afflicted and refusing to help in the escalating arrests. “[H]ang them,” he had said of the afflicted. “[T]hey ar all witches.” And now, according to Annie, here
he
was among the witches, actively opposing the afflicted. His own relatives were suspicious of the man.

Word of Annie’s accusation reached the real Willard, who, then, like Martha Corey, determined to solve the problem by facing the girl directly to sort out the truth—and with no greater success. Ann Putnam watched as Thomas let Willard into their home and saw how the encounter only worsened her daughter’s continuing distress. Annie begged the man to stop tormenting her. She still refused to sign the Devil’s book but weakened enough to bargain, begging that if he would only stop hurting her, she would not complain against him. Willard, in response, denied he had anything to do with specters, but nothing was solved.

That was Monday, April 25. Annie actually had an easier time for the next few days, as if her pleading had yielded results. By Thursday the Willard specter was back, throttling the girl, beating and pinching her and threatening to kill her if she would not sign his book, just as he had whipped her little sister to death. Annie continued to resist, and, as she would later testify, “I saw the apperishtion of my little sister Sarah who died when she was about six weeks old crieing out for vengance against John willard.” Then, according to Annie, the ghost of Willard’s first wife appeared also in her winding sheet, right from the grave, to accuse her husband of killing her as well.

Ann could not see her dead child’s ghost, but such a revelation could only stab her heart with cold fear, fear for Annie, crushing sorrow for the lost Sarah, and fear for the baby to come. For some reason, however, the Putnams did not yet enter a complaint against Willard.

In Salem town, meanwhile, Philip English visited his imprisoned wife daily (according to family lore). This at least allowed her to get news of and make plans for the children. But confined as she was, her specter, like those of the other prisoners, was reported harming the afflicted along with the specters of Bridget Bishop and Giles and Martha Corey. A newly bewitched girl, Susanna Sheldon, was at this time beleaguered by all of them—pinched, bitten, prevented from eating, and threatened with the book. Mary English, she said, had a yellow bird familiar, while Bridget’s was “a streked [i.e., a streaked] snake creeping over her shoulder and crep into her bosom.”

She said she saw Philip English among the witches as well, first when his specter climbed over his pew on the next Sabbath in the town’s meeting house to pinch her—while Philip himself probably sat in his newly refurbished seat. It followed her home along with “a black man with a hy crouned hatt on his head” who seems to have been either the Devil or the black-haired Reverend Burroughs, who kept presenting a book to her. The English specter told Susanna “that black man were her god and if shee would touch that boock hee would not pinsh her no more nor no bodie els should.” She continued to refuse the book, so the next day English’s specter pinched her again and threatened to kill her if she would not comply.

Philip’s sharp business practices had certainly made him unpopular, especially among people who owed him money. He had also spoken against the current government, for he much preferred Andros (a fellow Anglican and fellow Channel Islander) to Phips.

On Saturday, April 30, a week and a day after Mary’s examination at the Village, Thomas Putnam and Captain Jonathan Walcott swore out complaints against six more suspected witches: Salem Village’s former minister George Burroughs, who was now in Maine; Susannah Martin of Amesbury; Lydia Dustin of Reading; Sarah Morrell and Dorcas Hoar of Beverly; and Philip English of Salem (but not John Willard—not yet). Their victims were listed as Captain Walcott’s daughter Mary, Thomas Putnam’s maid Mercy Lewis and his daughter Annie, Abigail Williams, Elizabeth Hubbard, and Susanna Sheldon. Hathorne and Corwin issued arrest warrants for all of the suspects and scheduled the next examination for the following Monday at Ingersoll’s in the Village.

Perhaps the Sabbath gave Philip English the opportunity to hear of this development in time and, if he had not already left town, flee. Whenever Marshall George Herrick arrived at English’s house, he discovered that the suspect was not to be found.

While Philip found a hiding place, John Arnold began making repairs to Boston’s jail and to the “prison house” where he and his family lived: five hundred board feet of lumber, two hundred nails. He added the cost of these to the list of out-of-pocket expenses, which included chains made for Good and Osborn and the two blankets provided for Sarah Good’s infant child.

____________________

Tituba overhears scraps of news from the visiting families of Rebecca Nurse and Sarah Cloyce. Husbands and children make the long journey to Boston, which takes at least a half a day or more. They bring supplies and news and what comfort they can offer, but the arrest of the third sister, Mary Esty, is no comfort at all. Corey and Procter kin visit when they can. No one comes for Sarah Good. That woman has young Dorothy—the child clings, barnacle-like, to her mother—as well as the infant, who seems to be growing weaker. On the day Dorothy Good arrived with the latest prisoners, what relief and tearful joy on the child’s face when she saw her mother! But what despair on the mother’s face when she saw her daughter here in prison.

Sometimes an offended relative of the accused speaks directly to Tituba, but the words spoken are seldom more than an accusation. Yet even this, their outrage, can be viewed as an improvement. Not too long ago they never would have deigned to address her at all.

Her husband, John Indian, now among the afflicted accusers, convulsed during the hearings and between times in the taverns. Frustrated family members blame Tituba for her confession and the direction the courts have taken because of it. Did she
know
what that John Indian did? He accused our Sarah of biting him—her specter, that is—but a barbarous accusation nonetheless. And do you know how he rolls about on the floor with the afflicted white girls? What does
that
mean?

After the hearings for Goodwives Cloyce and Procter in Salem, Tituba learns, her John was given a ride back to the Village behind another man, two to a horse. Partway there he had a fit (or whatever it was the so-called afflicted had), during which he
bit
the man before him. Edward Bishop (the tavern owner, not Bridget’s sawyer husband), riding nearby, clouted John with his stick to make him let go, which he did. John claimed he was trying not to fall off the horse, for the spirits had bound his wrists. But Bishop was not impressed, even though others present wondered how the slave’s hands got tied so tightly that the cord bit into the flesh. After that, in a hardly surprising development, the afflicted named Goodman Bishop among their specters.

What can Tituba make of this morsel of information? Biting a white man—how satisfying that must have been for John. But how John’s inclusion with the afflicted might affect her own case—as an admitted witch not yet tried—that is another matter.

(
7
)

Mistress Mary English and hired girl Mary Warren both wait in the Salem jail along with Mary Esty, Edward and Sarah Bishop, and Abigail Hobbs, with her father, William and stepmother, Deliverance for the next stage of the court’s proceedings. Philip is not there. His visits to Mary had stopped abruptly, and his absence is troubling. Finally word came to her that he too had been accused and had run away a step ahead of the arrest warrant. So far he eludes capture. She prays the servants are taking proper care of the children.

Goodwife Hobbs, earlier besieged by specters, had been herself accused and then confessed that she too was a witch—then thought better of it. Yet once she denied the confession, her specter began to torment the afflicted once more. Now the magistrates question her again in the jail. Jonathan Corwin takes notes.

Just what has she done to cause her specter to torture the afflicted again? they want to know.

“Nothing at all.”

“But have you not since been tempted?”

She begins to weaken. “Yes Sir, but I have not done it, nor will not doe it.”

“Here is a great change since we last spake to you, for now you afflict and torment again.”

The magistrates are still convinced that if a confession gives the afflicted victims temporary ease, that shows the suspect has renounced a previous pact with the Devil. But, as Mary Warren knows all too well, if a suspect tries to withdraw a confession—and her specter again attacks the girls—then the suspect must have
rejoined
the Devil’s side, the recantation being only half-hearted or a lie. Honest people tell the truth. The Devil is the Prince of Lies. “Now tell us the truth. Who tempted you to sign again?”