Salem's Daughter

by Maggie Osborne

  Bristol looked up, interested. “I didn’t hear that. Was it anyone we know?”

  Divinity shook her head, her stiff matted hair not moving.

  “I don’t think so. At least no one I know.”

  They sat quietly, looking at each other and wondering for the hundredth time what the other would look like cleaned, rested, and well-fed. Divinity’s round eyes peered from a face crusted with grime and dried mud. Bristol knew her own face looked the same. She glanced at their fouled skirts and tried to decide what the original colors might have been. She couldn’t remember. Each scratched her head and body while they visited; it was as natural an action as breathing.

  “Did you hear Phillip English escaped again?” Bristol asked.

  “No!” Divinity’s eyes sparkled; escape stories were the essence of life. “How?”

  “Same as before. Bribed a guard. He got his wife out, too; she was in the North pen.” Here, as everywhere, money made all the difference. With money, extra food could be had, a second cup of water. And with enough money, escapes could sometimes be arranged.

  Divinity’s eyes took on a dreamy cast. “Someday a tall, handsome man will look over the fence, see me, and bribe the guards to let me out.” Like Bristol, Divinity had no family, no one to care that she was in prison.

  Bristol laughed. “Divinity, this man of yours needs to be a witch himself to see anything worth saving! He’ll have to use magic to see past all that.” She waved at the tatters Divinity wore over months of dirt. It occurred to Bristol that she hadn’t the remotest idea of Divinity’s hair color.

  Divinity sniffed. “My dear, I shall simply cast my best hex, and he’ll instantly see what a treasure I am.” She grinned.

  “Cast a spell to call up a rescuer for me too.” Bristol laughed as Divinity picked up her iron balls and hobbled across the compound to her own piece of fence.

  Bristol had met Divinity Cooper at one of the prayer meetings Reverend Cotton Mather regularly held for the witches. Neither attended much anymore. Prayer wasn’t likely to alter their predestined paths, and too long an absence could cost their fence spots. They’d seen many a woman return from a lengthy prayer meeting, a glow of peace on her muddy face, only to discover she had to claw someone out of her place. Peace and screaming didn’t mesh well. The Boston preacher didn’t miss either Bristol or Divinity—his prayer meetings were well attended despite the cost.

  “Anything new?” Bristol asked automatically when next Divinity visited Bristol’s rectangle.

  “Aye.”

  Bristol’s head jerked up at the unexpected answer.

  “They pressed a man to death!” Divinity’s round eyes stared. She rocked back on her heels and awaited Bristol’s reaction.

  Bristol’s mouth opened and closed. “Pressed a man to... to death?” Would the horror never end? She scratched her ribs and stared into Divinity’s mud-dark face.

  “Aye. Name of Giles Cory. I never met him, but I knew his wife, Martha Cory.” In the past they might have complained of Martha’s sharp tongue, but Martha Cory had been hanged last week. They said nothing. “Goodman Cory wouldn’t plead guilty or not guilty, so they put a heavy rock on his chest to make him plead. But he wouldn’t. They kept adding big stones until he... until he died.”

  The two girls stared at each other, trying to imagine what it must be like to feel life slowly crushed from the body, stone by stone. Bristol shivered. Man’s inhumanity to man could never be understood.

  “It took three days for him to die,” Divinity added hoarsely.

  Bristol closed her eyes. “It’s time to stand up,” she said, changing the conversation. If they didn’t stand often, rise out of the hobbled position, eventually they wouldn’t be able to straighten at all. They’d seen it happen to others. Both girls rose, holding their popping spines and groaning. Upright, they could see Boston harbor, sparkling in fall sunshine and dotted with rocking ship masts.

  “Did you ever sail on one of those?” Divinity asked, her eyes yearning toward the tall ships. Always the romantic, Divinity envisioned a trip on a sailing ship as a glorious experience.

  Bristol smiled sadly. “Aye,” she murmured in a soft voice. “Once... a long time ago in a better life.” All the ships resembled the Challenger. Indulging a moment of foolishness, she let herself think one of them might be Jean Pierre’s ship. Bristol’s smile turned wry, and she shook her head. She was becoming as wishful as Divinity.

  A rotten egg sailed over the fence and smashed against Bristol’s shoulder, emitting a foul, noxious odor. Both girls instantly dropped to their knees and crawled nearer the fence, out of the sightseers’ range.

  “It gets worse every day,” Divinity complained.

  Bristol scooped a handful of dirt and scrubbed it into the ooze dripping down her arm. It helped some. “Sometimes,” she muttered in a low voice, “I worry that the good citizens will storm the prison and murder us all.”

  “I know,” Divinity answered, watching a rain of eggs pelt the center of the enclosure. “They’ve only managed to hang nineteen so far.” Her voice was bitter. “The law isn’t killing us fast enough; there are still hundreds alive.”

  Bristol’s hollow green eyes watched two women cover their heads and duck behind a dung pile. “How long do you suppose New England will be patient? How long before they decide to forget the law and hurry things along themselves?”

  Guards chased away the angry, frightened people hurling garbage at the witches. Then they unlocked the gate and stood just inside the pen. One of them glanced down at a piece of paper. “Bristol Wainwright! Bristol Wainwright!”

  Bristol and Divinity stared at each other. Divinity’s dirty fingers covered her mouth, and her eyes grew to saucer size. Both knew the procedure. The women were called out, cleaned some, and the next day were taken away to trial.

  And no one yet had survived a trial. All had been hanged.

  35

  The same old woman who weeks ago had pricked Bristol with the knife led her into a room containing a wooden tub filled with water. The old woman pushed Bristol into the tub and gave her a perfunctory scrub with stinging lye soap. At the finish, the old woman tossed a handful of clothes toward Bristol and ordered her to dress.

  The clothes were neither new nor very clean, but compared to her own filthy rags, they were queenly raiments. The old woman eyed Bristol fleetingly and pronounced her satisfactory. Apparently it wasn’t necessary to attack the embedded dirt beneath Bristol’s nails, or curl her hair, or tend to the red rashes of bug bites. So long as she wasn’t offensive to the nostrils of judge and jurors, she would do.

  Guards returned her to the pen with instructions to practice standing in order to endure tomorrow’s long journey to Salem Town.

  Bristol walked to her rectangle of space and leaned against the fence, her heart still thudding. From the moment they’d called her name, her nerves had tingled in fear and dread. How did one adjust to dying? She’d faced death before—but it was never acceptable.

  Uneasily she scanned the compound, seeing that the women avoided her as if she carried a fatal disease. Their eyes slid toward Bristol, then dropped away. Bristol Adams Wainwright was a dead person; they all knew it. Only Divinity Cooper offered comfort.

  Divinity settled beside Bristol, and together they watched the sun disappear in a blaze of reds and purples. A glitter of stars appeared overhead. “I’ll miss you,” Divinity said. A rustle of women adjusting themselves in sleep whispered through the night.

  “I hope your tall, handsome man finds you,” Bristol answered. Leaning forward, she placed her small hoard of treasures in Divinity’s lap. She had one limp carrot, a ragged piece of shawl, and a battered shilling which had been bequeathed to Bristol in similar fashion.

  Divinity accepted the items with tearful gratitude. “Thank you.”

  Although neither could think of anything to say, Divinity remained. No words would ease the fright and hopelessness in Bristol’s heart, but it helped not to be alon
e.

  In the restless silence, Bristol’s thoughts ranged through a panoply of years. She recalled herself as a child, as a young adult, and examined the woman she’d become. People whom she’d known and loved paraded through her mind, and she longed toward each, saying good-bye. One face surfaced again and again, but she couldn’t bear to bid it farewell. Not yet. Not until the very last.

  “Divinity? Are you awake?” Bristol asked softly.

  “Aye.”

  “Once, Divinity, I knew a very special man. His name was Jean Pierre La Crosse, and I loved him as life itself, and he loved me...” Her story spun into the starry night. Bristol talked to the distant white twinkles, and Divinity listened, understanding Bristol’s craving to speak his name, to summon his image... to say good-bye in her own way.

  When Bristol’s voice trailed, both girls sat quietly. Then Divinity pressed Bristol’s hands. “You’ve been luckier than most,” she said. “You’ve had a great love. Which is more happiness than most here have had.” She didn’t speak with envy; Divinity uttered a simple truth.

  “I never told anyone this,” Bristol said in a low, thick voice. “But... I never gave up. Deep inside, I always thought that somehow... somehow Jean Pierre and I would find each other again. When Caleb died... God forgive me, for a while I hoped that maybe... you see, I’ve never imagined growing old without seeing Jean Pierre at my side.” She remembered that she would not live to grow old. “Somehow I thought we’d age together, surrounded by children with gray eyes and red hair.” Her head dropped. “Oh, Divinity, I love him!”

  Divinity squeezed her fingers and gently tugged Bristol to her feet. “Come on, it’s time to stand and stretch.”

  They gazed toward Boston’s moonlit harbor, both thinking of sea captains and great loves. And because she’d talked about him, in every dark ship on the water Bristol saw the Challenger. Neither girl noticed a glow behind them until Bristol yawned and turned back toward the fence.

  “Divinity!” Bristol’s fingers clawed at Divinity’s suddenly rigid arm.

  “Oh, God!” Divinity breathed. “It’s happening!” Her eyes rounded in fear.

  A long line of flickering torches advanced on the prison, bobbing up Prison Lane from the town proper. Bristol and Divinity distinctly heard a low rumble of angry shouts and the sound of horses.

  Dropping to her feet, Divinity wrestled frantically with the iron cuffs circling her ankles. A sob burst from her lips. “They’ll kill us!” she cried. “They’ll kill us all!” One of the sleeping women lifted up and yelled for Divinity to be quiet.

  Bristol knelt beside Divinity, her mind racing, “They can’t kill us all! We’re too many.” She clapped a hand over Divinity’s whimpering mouth. “Listen to me! Someone will see the torches. Someone will send for Reverend Mather. Even now he’s probably gathering men to help us.” Was that true, or had Boston exploded in witch fever as Salem had? “I’ve seen Cotton Mather handle a mob before. He’ll help us; he believes in the law.”

  “We’re the closest pen, they’ll take us first,” Divinity wept.

  First one woman overheard and looked for herself, then another. News spread through the compound like wildfire, and the women woke screaming. The pen erupted into a madhouse of screeching, terrified women. They sprang from their cramped spaces and ran forward, forgetting the iron balls shackling their feet. Many pitched forward into the muck.

  Bristol jerked up, blood pounding in her ears. The other pens woke, and screams blew through the prison like a wind from hell. In front of the jail, the torch line broke into two groups, one racing to subdue the guardhouse, the other... the other running toward them. Bristol spun and stared in terror as the gate crashed inward and torches and men spilled into the pen. For an instant they halted, taken aback at the massing of devil’s hags screeching and cowering from the light. Then the men flooded into the pen. The women shrieked and tried to run and could not.

  Bristol’s hands leaped to her mouth. Several women were clubbed to the ground like helpless animals at a slaughter. Others huddled against the fence, covering their heads and screaming for mercy.

  The men dashed through the enclosure, bending to unlock iron bands with keys mysteriously produced. Brutal kicks herded the women out the gate.

  Relentless hands bruised into Bristol’s skin, holding her while another man opened the cuffs on her ankles. Throwing aside the chains, he turned to Divinity. Divinity sobbed and begged, but her cries went unheard in the explosion of noise and screams and shouts. Viciously the men booted both girls into the stumbling crowd of women streaming from the gate. Outside, men circled the women, prodding them with sharp lances into a terrified knot. Others drove stakes into the meadow grass and piled faggots at the bases.

  “Burn the witches!” impatient voices shouted. “Burn the hags of hell!”

  Divinity clung to Bristol’s arm, sobbing, her body shaking uncontrollably. The women wept and pleaded and screamed for pity.

  In the midst of the wailing terrified women, Bristol stood like a frozen statue. Her body quivered in violent spasms, but her mind felt apart. Her death was preordained. Dying no longer frightened her. Burning did. To hang was terrible, but it was also quick; burning was not quick. Eyes wide with horror, she stared at the men stacking dry wood at the stake bases, and her mouth fell slack.

  Finished, the men whirled and ran toward the circle of women. Brutal hands flew into the ring and dug into flesh. Bristol felt herself yanked forward. Divinity and five others were pulled out next, all whimpering and falling, weak with terror.

  Three men half-carried, half-dragged Bristol to the last of the stakes. They hurled her against a wooden pole and lashed her arms behind her. A cord circled her waist, and another cut into her throat, binding her to the stake. “Please,” she whispered, her voice a terrified croak. “Please.”

  They didn’t hear. They ran on to the next stake, cutting lengths of rope to bind Divinity.

  Bristol’s head sagged against the pole, and she peered toward the night sky, hidden by bright torchlight. A cracked voice floated across her mind: “... and the one who is not, shall stand in dark flames...”

  “But not the others,” Bristol prayed through bloodless lips. “Please, God, save them. Help us, Father, help us!”

  Her brimming green eyes looked desperately to the town in the distance, and a flutter of hope quickened in her breast. Tiny dots of light wound toward the prison. Another line of torches streamed up from the harbor. But they were so far away.

  The men in the clearing ran back and forth, flickering torchlight illuminating their faces. Seven women were lashed to the stakes. More men searched the meadow floor for additional poles. The remainder gathered behind a man who obviously led the mob; they looked to him, waving swords, muskets, and hissing torches.

  The leader stepped forward, a tall man in somber Puritan dress with a face that twisted in fear and loathing. He waved a worn Bible in the night and lifted his voice. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!”

  “Aye!” roared the voices. A lone shout lifted. “No sermons, Hacker, get on with it!”

  “Aye!” came the chorus. “Burn them! Burn the witches!”

  Hysterical, Bristol stared toward the dots of light in the distance. “Hurry!” she urged. “Hurry!”

  “Have you anything to say?” the leader cried in a parody of legality.

  Goodman Hacker earned a torrent of scorn. “Never mind that!” “Burn them!” “Set the torches!”

  A dark-haired woman tied to the first stake screamed, “I curse you! God will give you blood to drink! God will curse your babies and the seed of their seed!”

  The men gasped and drew back. Then the mob surged forward, and only Hacker’s hasty intervention prevented them from tearing the woman from the stake and killing her with their bare hands.

  “Hear me!” Goodman Hacker shouted, running up and down before the line of stakes. “Hear me! They will all die! Blood will cleanse Boston of evil, but blood washed in fir
e! Blood shall not stain our hands!” He pulled the men from the woman. “Colter! Light the fire on this one! Now!”

  The man called Colter began with the cursing woman. He thrust his torch deep within the pile of faggots and held it there. Then he ran down the line. The bound women screamed, and their eyes bulged toward the curls of smoke drifting at their feet and hems. The circle of women awaiting their turn at the stakes covered their eyes and shrieked. They held to each other and watched Colter pausing at each pole, then running forward.

  Colter shoved his torch against the wood at Divinity’s feet, ignoring her screams; then he raced toward Bristol. For an instant he stopped and stared into her panicked, pleading gaze. This one was cleaner than the rest; he could see what she looked like. “You’re beautiful!” he breathed.

  “Please,” Bristol said. Her lips framed the word, but only a croak emerged.

  “Colter!”

  The man gave his head a shake, looked about him, then bent with an angry glare. He plunged the torch into the wood at Bristol’s shoes.

  A panting silence bung in the clearing of men and whimpering women. All eyes fixed on the gray curls of smoke fogging the women’s feet. In the distance came faint shouts and the pound of horses’ hooves, but no one turned to see.

  Then the wood about the feet of the cursing woman caught with a soft burst of flame, and a hoarse cheer broke from the men’s throats. All down the line of stakes, fire blossomed in orange balls around the base of the stakes.

  Above a hurricane of fear roaring through her mind, above the crackling whisper of flame, Bristol heard Divinity scream—a long hopeless wail that pierced the autumn night. It went on and on and on. A wavering curtain of heat shot up from the fire nibbling Bristol’s feet, and she blinked at the men’s eager contorted faces through a wave that shimmered and moved.

  One or two of the men seemed to suddenly realize what they did, and they sank to their knees with pale sickened expressions. But the mob didn’t see; they waved their fists and shouted triumph until their throats rasped hoarse.