Six Women of Salem (32 page)

Willard, at a loss for words, chewed his lip, at which Mary Warren and Annie Putnam wailed, “[O]h, he bites me.”

“Open your mouth, don’t bite your lips,” the magistrate snapped.

“I will stand with my mouth open, or I will keep it shut, I will stand any how, if you will tell me how.” When Annie Putnam’s and Susanna Sheldon’s statements were read he marveled at the reports of what he had supposedly done to old Bray and young Daniel.

“What do you say to this murdering and bewitching your relations?” asked the magistrate.

“One would think,” Willard answered, “that no creature except they belong to hell from their Cradle would be guilty of such things.”

When he “offered large talk”—trying to explain his side of the story—the magistrates cut in: “We do not send for you to preach.”

Willard might have grovelled, but his statements
did not fit with his relatives’ accounts of his cruelty toward both his animals and his wife. According to Benjamin Wilkins and others, Willard not only beat Margaret but did so hard enough to break the stick he struck her with until she ran away to hide from his fury. “There are a great many lyes told,” Willard objected. “I would desire my wife might be called.” His reputation, however, was too well known, so it was easy to believe that he had committed murder by magic against several recently deceased locals as well.

As the afflicted witnesses still reacted to Willard’s movements, the magistrates proposed the touch test. Annie Putnam volunteered—to the defendant’s alarm. “[L]et not that person but another come.”

Now even John Indian cried out, “Oh! he cuts me.”

When Susanna Sheldon exclaimed that the Devil was whispering in Willard’s ear, he protested, “S[i]r I heard nothing nor see nothing.”

But the magistrates were not convinced, especially when Susanna tried to approach Willard and seemed repelled. He did take her hand, “with a great deal of do,” as Parris noted, but that did not break the spell as it was expected to do, and the girl kept shouting, “O John Willard, John Willard.”

When she finally recovered, she explained that “The black man stood between us”—the shadowy form of the Devil—to prevent the touch from working.

“They cannot come near any that are accused,” said Willard.

“Why do you say so,” said a magistrate, “they could come near Nehemiah Abbot, the children could talk with him.” Abbott, as was now well known, had been released for lack of evidence when the afflicted could not positively identify him with one of the specters.

When Mary Warren was the next to convulse, deputies carried her to Willard, who clasped his hand on her arm, at which point her body relaxed.

“Why,” Willard demanded, “was it not before so with Susanna Sheldon?”

Constable John Putnam Jr. and various bystanders said that it was because the bystanders had not held his hands still then.

By now most of the afflicted reported the ghosts of Willard’s murder victims drifting about the room, calling for vengeance.

“Do you think these are Bewitcht?” the magistrate asked Willard.

“Yes, I really beleive it.”

“Well others they have accused it is found true that they are the guilty persons, why should it be false in you?” And just how, they wanted to know, did he send his spirit from his body to attack the witnesses? as Mary Warren and Susanna Sheldon now said he was doing.

“It is not from me, I know nothing of it.”

The magistrate reminded him how incriminating his reputation for cruelty and his flight from the law were, stating, “[I]f you can therefore find in your heart to repent it is possible you may obtain mercy & therefore bethink your self.”

“S[i]r I cannot confesse that which I do not know.”

Willard tried the Lord’s Prayer test, but he garbled a line of that familiar prayer, tried again, and again missed. The general belief was that anyone pledged to the Devil’s work would be unable to repeat the prayer’s desires, especially that God’s will be done. The commotions of the afflicted could not have helped his concentration. As Thomas and Edward Putnam would soon depose, the afflicted were “most greviously tormented as if their bones would have been disjoyned.”

“It is a strange thing,” he said. “I can say it at another time. I think I am bewitcht as well as they.” He laughed, but no one else did. Nor did the court consider Willard as beset as the afflicted were.

He missed twice more. “Well this is a strange thing I cannot say it.”

And after the fifth time he cried, “Well it is these wicked ones that do so overcome me.”

The afflicted witnesses must have taken particular notice of
that
remark.

“Do not you see God will not suffer you to pray to him?” asked a magistrate. “[A]re not you sensible of it?”—perhaps the magistrate here referred to Proverbs 28:9: “He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination.”

“Why it is a strange thing.”

“No it is no strange thing that God will not suffer a wizard to pray to him,” the magistrate replied. “There is also the jury of inquest for murder that will bear hard against you. Therefore confess. Have you never wisht harm to your Neighbours?”

“No never since I had a being,” Willard responded. But there were plenty of people present who recalled Willard’s temper and his reputation for beating his wife as well as his livestock.

“Well confesse & give glory to God,” said the magistrate. “[T]ake counsell whilst it is offered.”

“I desire to take good counsell,” said Willard pointedly, “but if it was the last time I was to speak, I am innocent.”

John Willard was held for trial, a relief to Ann Putnam, who was evidently afflicted during his questioning.

The magistrates then re-opened Mary Esty’s questioning. Imprisoned nearly a month, the woman not only insisted on her innocence but, like her sister Rebecca Nurse, also had strong family support. Somehow—the papers for this are lost—her family persuaded the court to reconsider the evidence the afflicted witnesses had given.

This time only Mercy Lewis spoke against Goody Esty; the rest were no longer sure she really was the same as the reported specter. And this time the magistrates released Mary Esty, a move that would bring great relief to her and to her family, give hope to her sister Rebecca Nurse, subdue—if only temporarily—the afflicted witnesses who may have felt a glimmer of doubt about what they said (even while it alarmed Ann Putnam), and reinforce the magistrates’ confidence that they were indeed impartial.

Although both Sarah Churchill and Margaret Jacobs were present as witnesses at Willard’s hearing, it is possible that neither of them spoke against him, for neither is named in the hearing notes. However, a later list of witnesses says that Churchill and Warren were the ones “that Willard diswaded from confession.” Whether the two young women said this was the case or whether only the other afflicted witnesses said that Willard’s specter dissuaded them is unclear. However, the fact that Margaret’s mother, Rebecca Jacobs, was questioned during this same session, had confessed, and was being held for trial must have prayed on the daughter’s conscience. Even if she had not testified against her own mother, her past accusations had endangered her whole family.

The magistrates ordered Willard, Farrar, Toothaker, and Goody Hart removed directly to the Boston jail. They also took a deposition from a new girl, eighteen-year-old Elizabeth Booth, who had already lost both her father and stepfather. She blamed her sufferings on two specters: the absent Daniel Andrews, who brought the Devil’s book to her to sign, and Mary Warren. Even though Mary had testified against the day’s suspects and convulsed like the rest of the afflicted, Elizabeth evidently did not trust her. On the night before last, said Elizabeth, Mary Warren’s specter had appeared at “her bed side and brought a little Baby to this Deponent and told her that she might sett her hand to the Book and not know of it,” and if she would not, she said, Andrews would torment her. (Certainly Mary had nearly admitted to touching the book that Procters’ specter brought her without realizing what she was about, but the significance of the baby is unexplained.)

In the Salem jail Mary Warren continued to be tormented. Perhaps the visions were nightmares or hallucinations, or perhaps she later embroidered her distress as stories. She had reason to worry whether other afflicted witnesses continued to report her specter among the accused. Burroughs’s spirit, Mary later told the authorities, had invaded her cell around this time, blowing a trumpet to summon a meeting of his witches. Mary said she refused to join them in spite of their wheedling assurances that their bloody sacrament was better than wine. She named several suspects already in custody: Abigail Soames, John Procter, Rebecca Nurse, and Goodwives Parker, Pudeator, and Duston.

Ann Putnam now lacked Mercy Lewis’s help—not that she had been any help lately, however—cousin Sarah Trask took her place in Thomas Putnam’s household. Sarah, fortunately, remained immune to afflictions and convulsions—a relief to Ann, who was shorthanded and feeling the frequent effects of pregnancy and the occasional effect of bewitchment. Even though the witches still tormented Young Annie, she still attended the hearings and visited afflicted neighbors faithfully.

On May 20, two days after the court had freed Goodwife Esty, when John Putnam was busy in Salem town, Samuel Abby showed up at Thomas Putnam’s doorstep with a plea from Hannah Putnam for Annie to come over and see what specter still tortured Mercy. So Annie, along with Abigail Williams from the parsonage and accompanied by Sarah Trask, went off to help. Thomas probably followed them later with other concerned neighbors, for Annie did not return until the next morning.

Their news was not encouraging. Stalked by specters of Esty and another woman, the girls rode horseback to the neighbor’s house only to find Mercy in convulsions. For hours the specters of Goody Esty, aided by Willard and Mary Whittredge, set upon her. Other visionary girls joined the watchers—Mary Walcott, Elizabeth Hubbard, Abigail Williams—and they reported the same spirits plus John and Elizabeth Procter’s daughter Sarah with her aunt Sarah Bassett and elderly widow Susanna Roots. The Esty spirit was the worst, Ann learned, threatening to kill Mercy before midnight in retaliation for the girl’s testimony against her. Esty had magically blinded the other witness against seeing her specter before, but Mercy could not blinded.

“Deare lord Receive my soule,” Mercy had wailed. “[L]ord let them not kill me quitt.” For much of the time she could hardly breathe, let alone speak.

Elizabeth Hubbard showed up at one point, and though all of the afflicted watchers were tormented at intervals, Elizabeth and Mercy “fell into fits by turns, the one being well whilst the other was ill,” both complaining of Goody Esty. All of the afflicted appeared choked, but a spectral chain choked Mercy.

When John Putnam returned with Benjamin Hutchinson and Marshall George Herrick, Mercy seemed almost dead of exhaustion. The three men hastened the six or so miles to town to find Hathorne and get a warrant to arrest Goody Esty anew for this latest assault and confine her at Beadle’s tavern. Thus, paperwork in hand, the three men headed for Topsfield, racing to capture Esty before the midnight deadline. And so they did, Thomas told Ann, returning to John’s house at midnight to find Mercy still alive yet still badly tortured, seizing again and again, resisting the specter that threatened her with a coffin and a corpse’s winding sheet while it pushed the Devil’s book at her to make her sign allegiance. This kept up all night, with the terrible convulsions continuing until the Salem magistrates, informed of the situation, shackled Esty in irons. This at last subdued the specter, and Mercy grew quiet and slept from exhaustion. When the groggy neighbors finally trailed home at dawn on Saturday, the girl still seemed close to death. She would, however, recover.

Here was more reason for Ann to fear for her own daughter—so far Annie remained healthy when she was not in a fit, and her fits did not last as long—and fear for herself as well as for the next baby.

Thomas took practical measures, going down to town with John Putnam Jr. and entering complaints against the latest batch of suspects: widow Susanna Roots, Elizabeth Procter’s daughter Sarah, and Elizabeth’s sister-in-law Sarah Bassett.

On Monday Hathorne and Corwin brought Mary Esty to Salem Village from Thomas Beadle’s tavern, where she had been kept apart from the other prisoners. Once again she faced the afflicted witnesses, now including Mary Warren, in the meeting house. But this time they were not blinded to the Invisible World. Though Goody Esty was likely still in chains, the afflicted choked so badly that the magistrates could not proceed until well after prayer time. When at last they were able to speak they all accused Goody Esty of causing them “that mischef,” and some of them blamed her for stabbing at them with an iron spindle. This time Mary Esty was held for trial for sure.

Annie must have told her mother all of this at day’s end as well as about the other specters that tried to overcome them: those of Benjamin Procter, Sarah Pease, and Elizabeth Procter’s sister Mary DeRich. These suspects and the three arrested on Saturday were all questioned and held for trial.

Another woman, Mistress Elizabeth Cary, had been bold enough to travel with her husband Captain Nathaniel Cary all the way from Charlestown to persuade the magistrates of their error in believing Abigail William’s report of her specter. The result was no different from the other attempts at confrontation, for Mrs. Cary was arrested straightaway and questioned. But she cowed neither Annie nor John Indian, who had accepted a mug of cider from Captain Cary earlier and shown him his scars. As the afflicted reported Cary’s specter making John convulse on the floor, he pulled Mrs. Cary down after him when the magistrates ordered the touch test. In spite of Captain Cary’s fury and his wife’s tears, she was held for trial.

The following day Magistrates Hathorne and Corwin left for Boston for the legislature’s first session under the new charter. Behind them trailed a slower cavalcade of the latest suspects being carted to Boston’s jail: Mistress Elizabeth Cary, Abigail Soames and Susanna Roots, John Procter’s son Benjamin, Sarah Bassett, Mary DeRich, and Mary Esty.