Tituba of Salem Village (26 page)

Tituba thought that surely Goody Sibley would come forward and say that Mary Warren was telling a twisted story about the making of the witch cake. Tituba had not worn a sheep’s skin around her shoulders and said those magic words. It was Goody Sibley. She looked for her in the meetinghouse. Though she saw many women, she did not see Goody Sibley.

Judge Hathorne said, “And what do you say to this? Are you going to say this did not happen either?”

“It did not happen,” she said. “I did not do this.”

“Did you foretell that Mary Warren would lose her shawl?”

“I told her she would lose something—but—” The rest of what she was going to say was lost because the afflicted girls began to shriek and have convulsive fits, worse than any they had had so far. When they were carried to Tituba and she touched them, they were instantly restored to normal.

Suddenly, John stood up. Tituba, looking at him, thought how tall he was and how broad his shoulders were. She decided that Judge Hathorne thought he was going to testify against her, just as Goody Good’s husband had testified against Good.

Judge Hathorne said, “Come forward where we can all hear you.”

John said, his voice breaking, “Tituba is not a witch. What has been said here about her saying magic words is not true—” and he was drowned out by such shouts and cries from the girls and such a roar of anger from the crowd that he could not continue. Judge Hathorne adjourned the court until the next day.

For the next four days, Tituba and Good and Osburne were questioned. When the court convened in the meetinghouse on the fifth day, Judge Corwin told Tituba that he and Judge Hathorne regarded her as a self-confessed witch. They based this on her confession to Mr. Parris before the hearing and on her testimony at the bar.

When she tried to protest, Judge Hathorne refused to let her speak. He said that she had admitted that the following charges were true: She had made a magic brew that healed the sick. She had a cat as a familiar, and the cat could talk. She had known Judah White, a notorious witch in Boston. She could foretell the future. She had pinched Abigail Williams. She was not a gospel woman and never went to meeting. She could spin more fine linen thread faster than a mortal woman could spin. She could weave more fine cloth faster than a mortal woman could weave.

He said she could be in two places at one time. She could be asleep in the ministry house and at the same time be in Barbados. She could be asleep in the jail in Ipswich and at the same time be seen communing with a strange beast on the trodden path in Salem Village. She could heal the afflicted children of their fits by her touch.

“Is this true?” he asked.

“In one way,” she said slowly, “some of it is. But that is not the rightful meaning of it—”

She was interrupted by a sound almost like a trumpet call. “Your excellencies, your excellencies—”

They all looked towards the back of the room. A tall gray-haired man was pushing his way through the crowd, heading towards the table where the judges were sitting.

“What do you want?” Judge Hathorne asked.

“I want to address the court on the subject of Tituba. I am Samuel Conklin, a weaver. I come from Boston.”

“Well?” Judge Hathorne said.

Samuel Conklin said that Tituba had been hired out to him in Boston by the Reverend Samuel Parris. He said she had deft quick-moving hands that felt things or touched things, not roughly and abruptly, but with an examining, feeling gesture, as though inquiring into the nature of the object being touched, discovering its needs and how it could best be handled. This held true whether the object was a piece of wood, a child, a fish, or a jar of water. This was not witchcraft. Some people had this kind of ability naturally.

Judge Hathorne said, “Mr. Conklin, what has this got to do with these charges of witchcraft to which Tituba has pleaded guilty?”

Samuel Conklin ignored the question. He said he thought the court should know that if Tituba could spin and weave faster than most women it was because he, Samuel Conklin, had taught her. She had the good strong hands of a weaver and she knew how to use them. He had never known her to practice witchcraft. He doubted that anyone else had either.

He finished by saying tartly, “I have listened to the evidence against her. It has as much value as a bucket of broken shive—which is to say no value at all for shive is the stem of the flax that we throw away.”

It took Marshal Herrick and all the constables to restore order. The constables lifted their muskets to keep the crowd back.

Judge Hathorne said, “Mr. Conklin, this court has not asked your opinion on the value of the evidence presented to it. Now get you back to Boston before I hold you in contempt. Marshal Herrick, have a constable escort this weaver to the outer reaches of Salem Village. See that he sets his horse on the trodden path headed for Boston. This court will now recess.”

Late that afternoon, the court convened again. Judge Hathorne said that he and Judge Corwin were ready to announce their decision. Good, and Osburne, and Tituba were helped up on the table where the important witnesses had stood.

The three women stood close to each other, swaying slightly because Osburne was unsteady on her feet. Tituba was certain from the way Judge Hathorne’s voice lingered slowly over the first words he spoke that the judges had decided that she and Good and Osburne were guilty of witchcraft. Master Parris kept his head turned away, but the afflicted girls stared at her, round-eyed, white-faced, silent.

Judge Hathorne said that the three witches, Good and Osburne, who had not confessed to being witches, and Tituba, the self-confessed witch, stood charged on behalf of their majesties with feloniously committing sundry acts of witchcraft at Salem Village on the bodies of Elizabeth Parris, Elizabeth Hubbard, Abigail Williams, and Anne Putnam of Salem Village … contrary to the peace of our Sovereign Lord and Lady, William and Mary of England. They were to be sent to their majesties’ jail in Boston where they would be confined.

There was a great roar from the crowd and shouts of “Hang the witches! Hang the witches! Hang the witches!” “No! Burn ’em! Hanging’s too good for ’em! Burn ’em! Burn ’em!”

The constables helped the three women down from the table and hustled them out of the meetinghouse, as the crowd continued to shout.

Again they spent the night in the jail at Ipswich. Tituba tried to sleep and couldn’t. She fingered pieces of the hay they were lying on, crushing it between her fingers, thinking that if she could only find something for her hands to do she could comfort herself. Her mind was fretful; it would not stay put: she thought about John, and Mistress Parris, and wondered what had happened to the money cat and if anyone fed the chickens. She kept asking herself the same question, again and again. How could anyone believe she was a witch? A witch?

It was bitterly cold. She drew closer to Goody Good and to Osburne in an effort to get warmer. Finally she dozed.

They left Ipswich early the next morning. There was snow on the ground; the ponds and small coves were frozen. Once again Tituba was aware of the darkness of the forest. She and John and the master and the mistress and Abigail and Betsey had followed this same route when they went from Boston to Salem Village. They had made the trip on horseback, just as the marshal was making it now.

All that day as they traveled towards Boston, she kept trying to sort out what had happened and lay it straight in her mind. She knew she wasn’t a witch. She had told fortunes when she knew she shouldn’t have. She had not stopped the girls from inducing trances in little Betsey Parris. She should have gone straight to the mistress and told her what they were doing. She had had doubts about the making of a witch cake. She had let Goody Sibley convince her it would be a good thing to do.

Right after the making of the witch cake, she and Good and Osburne entered the house, and the girls had named them as the witches who were torturing them. She told herself that it was a waste of time to try to place the blame for a thing like that.

She thought about the girls and the amazing fits that made everybody crowd around them and pity them and exclaim over them. Would they stop accusing people of bewitching them now that she and Good and Osburne were in jail?

It was dark when they arrived in Boston. The jail-keeper was a fat red-faced man named Peter Wardle. He welcomed them with chuckles, saying, “Ha! Three witches, eh, constable? Do they ride on broomsticks? Will they ride out over Boston Harbor tonight? Ha!”

He escorted them to a small room. It was cold inside and very dirty. The smell was indescribable.

“Never had three witches before,” he said cheerfully. “One’s sick. Ha!” He pointed to benches against the wall where they could sleep. Then he was gone. He took his lantern with him, leaving them in total darkness.

They had never, any of them, been so miserable before. They were cold. They were hungry. They were dirty. Osburne was too ill to stand up.

They had been there only two days when Tituba heard the terrible clanking sound of chains being dragged across the stone floor of the corridor outside their door.

Wardle unlocked the door and said, “I got to chain you. I got orders from Salem Village. Those witched girls say you’re floatin’ around ’em at night. A-pinchin’ of ’em.”

Good said fiercely, “I’d pinch ’em if I could. Jailer, you know we’re here in this jail all the time. Every night. Every day.”

“I do indeed,” he said, chuckling. “I do indeed. But the orders has come, and when the orders has come, I do what the orders say. If the orders say Wardle chain the witches, then Wardle chains the witches.”

Tituba noticed that he did not chain Osburne. He pretended to. And though he attached a chain to Good’s leg, he did not chain her to the wall. She could move freely though the clanking of the chain would accompany her every movement. Then he stood looking down at Tituba and he frowned.

“I don’t have to chain Tituba. She’s a reformed witch. She don’t fly no more.” He said, “Ha!” and pretended he was flying as he went out of the door. He was back in a few minutes with three blankets. “One apiece,” he said.

He lingered in the doorway, staring at them. Finally he said, “Be a lot more witches in here before the week is out. They’re catchin’ witches in Salem Village just like they was chickens on a roost.”

Tituba did not believe him. But he was right. As the days and weeks passed, more and more people from Salem Village were brought to the jail in Boston, charged with witchcraft. The jailer laughed whenever he saw Marshal Herrick arriving. “More of the Salem witches, eh?” he’d say. “Well, bring ’em in. We’ll soon have to build a bigger jail.”

That summer some of the people charged with witchcraft were hanged. Goody Good was one of them. Tituba heard that she had stood in the hangman’s cart and looked straight at one of the judges and said calmly and with great dignity, “I am no more a witch than you are a wizard.”

During this time of terror and sadness, Tituba made herself keep busy. Samuel Conklin, the weaver, came to see her in the jail in Boston and brought her news of John. At least once a week, the weaver brought her a loaf of good dark bread and a wedge of cheese. He told the jailer that she was a very good cook, and she was put to work cooking for the other prisoners, preparing the thin gruel and the coarse bread that constituted their principal food.

In the fall more of the prisoners were hanged—charged with witchcraft. Then came a revulsion of feeling against the trials and the judges and the kind of evidence that had been used. From that time on, there were no more trials.

But at least fifty people were still held in the prison in Boston. It was bitterly cold. The jailer supplied them with more coarse, heavy blankets—and the cost of these was added to their board bills. But now he removed the chains and the leg irons, even from the prisoners who had been condemned to death. They were free to move around. Dirty and unkempt, they survived the winter. Tituba, kept busy by the jailer, felt the cold only at night.

In May the royal governor of the colony of Massachusetts issued a proclamation which said all the people in the jails charged with witchcraft were now free. The jailer brought them the news.

They stood in little groups, staring at him and at each other. But with the news of their freedom he warned them, “Can’t none of you go till you pay what you owe me for room and board and for the use of me chains. It’s quite a bill some of ye has run up. Two shillings sixpence a week. Some of ye’ve been here for over a year like Tituba here. She come about the first of March in 1692, and now it’s May in 1693. More than a year.”

“Master Parris will pay my fees,” Tituba said proudly.

She was wrong. Master Parris did not pay her fees.

Tituba was the last of the prisoners taken in witchcraft still in the Boston jail. No one had come forth to pay her fees, and she continued to work as a cook in the prison. She was sitting in the dooryard of the jailer’s house, cutting up onions to flavor a rabbit stew. As she sat there a shadow passed between her and the sun. Before she looked up she knew who it was. Her master, the Reverend Samuel Parris, stood before her, taller, thinner, almost gaunt.

She stood up and moved away from him, so that his shadow no longer crossed her body. He said, “I came to pay your fees, Tituba, but only on one condition.” His voice was as harsh as she had remembered it through the long months she had not seen him.

“Yes, master,” she said softly.

They did not argue about the condition. He said he would not pay her fees unless she stood by her confession. This she refused to do. Master Parris left her in the door-yard of the jailer’s house.

But that very day Samuel Conklin, the weaver, paid Tituba’s fees to the jailer. As Conklin left the jail with her he said, “You have good hands, Tituba. That’s why I am buying you. You have the good strong hands of a weaver.”

Tituba looked down at the worn, dark hands that had cooked and cleaned and gardened and nursed a sick woman, hands that had been called evil hands. Then she looked up at the tall stoop-shouldered man who had shown such abundant kindness to her. Her mind, tired with trying to straighten out what had happened to her, kept echoing his words—“good strong hands,” “good hands.”