by Tanya Chris
“With your help, we’ll have that field finished afore the week is out,” he said as he unharnessed her.
My arms trembled like I’d been working on my bench press max and my stomach gurgled with hunger. Now I knew why Ezekiel felt so firm and looked so lean despite the hearty meals Mrs. Cheever served.
“You work like this every day?” I asked.
“I pulled off a little early so as we could teach you to ride. Daffy must still have strength in her legs to haul you around the barnyard.”
“Wait, that was early?” Shit. I redoubled my resolve to find a career other than farmhand. The weather had been pleasant—we’d both ended up stripped down to our doublets—and the air around the farm was sweet when it didn’t smell like horseshit, which it often did, but I preferred a desk job.
So that was an early day, and it wasn’t done yet. Once Daffy had been given her oats, Ezekiel mucked out her stall. I picked up a pitchfork and did my best to help without taking out Ezekiel’s eyes or a piece of Daffy’s flesh. Then he put a saddle on her and led her back out of the barn and I found myself confronting a dubious horse.
“She knows I don’t know what I’m doing,” I said as I took my place at her side. I put my foot in the stirrup and my hand up on the saddle horn, but I couldn’t convince myself to step up, positive I’d make fool of myself trying to haul my ass up there.
“She might at that,” Ezekiel agreed. “A horse likes to know who her master is.”
“I’m no one’s master,” I muttered, but I pulled myself up to full height as though I could intimidate a beast that outweighed me by more than five hundred pounds and stepped my foot into the stirrup again.
“Right, and up you go,” Ezekiel said cheerfully. Whether he was plowing or mucking or encouraging a friend to kill himself, he did it cheerfully.
I took a deep breath and threw all my momentum into the swing and was surprised to find myself actually in the saddle, canting dangerously over to the far side.
“Steady there.” Ezekiel grabbed my thigh to keep me upright, but I couldn’t appreciate having his hand on me because I felt like I was twenty feet off the ground rocking on a teeter-totter. He waited until I got myself stabilized before letting go, then the three of us marched around in a circle until I felt less like I was about to have a panic attack.
Once I’d mastered sitting, Ezekiel taught me how to steer. By the time the light had faded, I’d made it around the barnyard a time or two on my own.
“How do I make her go faster?” I asked, my mind filled with images of pulling into town in a cloud of hoof-churned dust.
“You don’t. Daffy’s a working horse, not a race horse. She’ll get you where you’re going, so long as you’re in no hurry to be there.”
Daffy turned around and nickered at me, confirming Ezekiel’s statement, and I gave up any dream I might have had of being a cowboy on a barely-tamed stallion riding with my posse.
For now, I had nowhere to go anyway. A few days slipped by without getting me any closer to home. Every night, when I met Mr. Cheever’s unspoken disapproval at finding me still hanging around, I silently agreed with him. Yep. Here we were again. Still.
Meantime, while I remained stuck in time, the clock in Salem ticked ever closer to tragedy. There hadn’t been any scary talk of witchcraft at the dinner table since the Coreys’ visit, but a storm brewed somewhere away from Ezekiel’s beaming good will and the children’s cheerful companionship.
Then one morning I was saved from another round of back-breaking labor on the farm by a knock at the door summoning me to scribing duties. Hathorne and Corwin had a third gentleman with them who I figured must be Reverend Hale from Boston. His name, like so many in Salem, was vaguely familiar.
Not for the first time, I wished I’d actually read that Wikipedia page I’d had open on my phone. If I’d paid more attention, I could have been Nostradamus to these people—really wowed them with my precognitive skills. Instead I bumbled about thinking “where have I heard that name before?” in reaction to almost every introduction. This Hale guy, though—he was important somehow.
He didn’t look important. He didn’t look any different from the rest of them, to be honest. I didn’t know how these people told each other apart, they were all so similarly dressed and styled. Individuality was not yet a thing in 1692. But Hale wore the rich person version of the standard uniform—better made, freshly pressed, more richly trimmed. He had a hat on over his own greying shoulder-length hair and carried a leather satchel on a long strap around his neck.
The three rich dudes filled the wagon’s bench seat up front, so I heaved myself into the back. While we bumped along the dirt road at a walking pace, Hathorne and Corwin brought Hale up to date on what had been going on in Salem, and Hale shared his wealth of knowledge about animal familiars, which were these evil-spirit-by-proxy creatures that allowed witches to torment their victims without ever leaving their own beds. Alibis were meaningless when spirits got involved.
By the time we pulled up in front of a bare-board cottage, I’d lost any hope that Hale would tell Salem to cut it out with the witchcraft bullshit already, but I hadn’t decided if he was a clueless enabler like Hathorne or a straight-out psychopath like Corwin.
I waylaid him on his way up the worn footpath. “Luther Johnson,” I said, sticking my hand into his stomach so he’d have no choice but to shake it. “I’m your scribe.”
“A pleasure, Mr. Johnson.” He took my hand with more grace than I’d expected. “I’m Reverend Hale.”
“You’re an expert on evil spirits, are you?”
“Oh no, no. Never encountered one before, but God will guide me, I trust.”
All right. This guy wasn’t so bad. He shook my hand and called me by name and admitted there were things he didn’t know, at least. I’d give him a chance.
The lady of the house, a Mrs. Putnam, opened the plank door to us and made way for us to enter. Her home was laid out something like the Cheevers’ with a large, open room encompassing kitchen, dining room, and den, but without the second story. She led us to a dim back room where a pre-teen girl lay on a narrow bed. The only light came through a single narrow window set high on the wall and the room smelled so distinctly of urine I was sure there must be a chamber pot under the bed.
“My daughter, Anne,” Mrs. Putnam said. “She’s been abed for days, not able to work nor even to school. Most surely it’s the witches, for she says they torment her something fierce.”
Prompted, Anne cried out. “There! Just now! Did you see it?”
“I saw nothing,” Corwin said. He sank into the only chair in the room with a grunt. There was no table for me to set up my writing stuff on, so I found the spot where the single sunbeam hit the floor and sat cross-legged there, resigned to breaking my back. From this vantage point I could see the chamber pot I’d only smelled before.
As my buddies at home and I always reminded each other at happy hour: I was lucky to have a job.
“There it is again!” the girl cried.
Hathorne wheeled in the direction she pointed, but Corwin was busy inspecting his nails. I dutifully recorded the word “again” and added some narration to the effect that the witness had pointed to the air over Mr. Hathorne’s head.
“Can you tell us who torments you, child?”
“A host of demons with their familiars.”
“A bird?” Hathorne asked eagerly. “A yellow bird?”
“Yes, yes. The yellow bird. There it is!”
“That’s Sarah Osborn,” Hathorne explained to Hale. “Make note that Sarah Osborn is accused again,” he told me. I wrote her name in parenthesis next to the bird, thinking that I should make a table for cross-reference purposes: bird equals Sarah Osborn; dog equals Sarah Good. I imagined myself being cited in future research papers.
There was a good bit of back and forth, with Hathorne making suggestions and Anne agreeing to them all. Hale admired Hathorne’s facility for examination, and my esteem for h
im took a dip. He might be a more decent guy than Corwin, but he was as gullible as Hathorne.
When they’d gone around in the same circles a few times, Hale rose from his perch on the edge of Anne’s bed and said, “We should let the child rest.”
“Perhaps she’ll be able to sleep now,” Mrs. Putnam said, “having unburdened herself. Say a prayer for her, will you, sir?”
Reverend Hale nodded and Hathorne doffed his hat and I damn near doffed my wig because it still felt like a foreign object on my head. Some nice words were said about freeing children from affliction. I didn’t record them.
“A shame,” Corwin observed when we’d all said amen.
“What’s that?” Hathorne asked as he settled his hat back on his head.
“Ah, nothing. I was only thinking it were a shame that Martha Corey shouldn’t hear this child’s most dreadful testimony, for I understand as Mrs. Corey thinks there are no witches.”
“No witches,” Hale repeated. “Indeed, she’d think otherwise were she here.”
“Unless she has been here,” Corwin suggested. “Not to hear Anne’s testimony but, perhaps, to stop her from testifying.”
“I’ve not seen Mrs. Corey,” Mrs. Putnam said. “Not other than at church of a Sunday.”
“No, and like you wouldn’t,” Corwin agreed. “I wonder though, if Anne has seen her.”
Hathorne started. “You do not suggest that Martha Corey—”
“I? I suggest nothing. I’ve not yet been afflicted myself, thank the Lord. Only do I wonder how Mrs. Corey could be so certain as there are no witches.”
The dirty weasel. I knew exactly what he was suggesting and exactly who he was suggesting it to, and sure enough, Anne began writhing. She’d settled down after that prayer, but now she worked herself up into a good state, clawing at her throat and making a choked screeching noise. With an unvoiced sigh, I lowered myself back down into my sunbeam, ready for the next episode of Today in Wild Accusations.
“Child, child.” Hale sat at her side and took her hands in his, separating them from the flesh she’d been rending. “Tell us who torments you so.”
“Mar—“ Anne’s voice broke with a choked cry before she could finish uttering the name of her accuser.
“Yes,” Corwin urged. “Tell us, child. Who do you see?”
“Martha Corey.”
Hathorne and Mrs. Putnam gasped, but neither Corwin or I were at all surprised.
“Anne, dear,” Mrs. Putnam said. “Are you quite sure? Martha Corey is a confirmed member of the church. We mustn’t make accusations lightly.” She chuckled a little, as though only just now realizing how ridiculously dangerous this whole charade was.
“I can’t credit it,” Hathorne said. “I think she sees in error. Perhaps another evil spirit draws a veil over her sight.”
“Indeed,” Hale agreed. “It could be possible. The child is over-tired and overwrought. We should leave her to her rest and come another day, perhaps.” He smoothed a hand over Anne’s brow and Anne, perhaps sensing that the crowd had turned against her, settled back onto the bed.
“You recorded that true?” Corwin asked me. He reached down and I made the foolish mistake of thinking he meant to give me a hand up, but when I went to take his hand he yanked it back fast enough that it blurred. I climbed to my feet without his help and gave him the paper I’d been writing on, which was his real aim. He looked it over, then grunted and rolled it up and tucked it into a pocket of his frock coat.
I had recorded Anne’s testimony, but I wished I hadn’t. Hathorne might not be eager to throw Martha Corey in jail, but Corwin intended to do it, and I’d just handed him the ammunition he needed.
Hathorne wanted corroboration of the accusation against Martha Corey before he took action on it, so we all piled back into the wagon and trotted off to the Parris house where the first two accusers lived. I knew what would happen there: Corwin would put Martha Corey’s name into the children’s ears and they’d run with it. I didn’t know what these girls were getting out of this witch hunt, other than attention and something to do—God knew it was boring as hell living in Salem in 1692—but I knew what Corwin was getting out of it because I’d heard him say it.
And if I needed a reminder, I got it on the drive over.
“Speaking of the Coreys,” Hathorne said. “Giles Corey came by t’other day and talked to me a good piece about Rebecca Nurse.”
“What about her?” Corwin asked. He had the reins. Hathorne sat next to him, sandwiched in between him and Hale. Their voices came and went depending on how much noise the iron wagon wheels kicked up and how busy I was mentally cursing the way I got jostled by every rut or bump, but I caught the gist of their conversation.
“You remember it were raised at the town meeting as we should pay her a pension?”
“Motion didn’t carry, as I recall.”
“No, ’twere tabled at the time, but Mr. Corey thinks as we had better pay her one. She’s doing poorly, he says. She must be near-on ninety if she’s a day. Not likely to last long.”
“Never can say,” Corwin said. “We start paying out a pension to every person what grows a little old, it could run us a fair sum. She’s got family, I think.”
“Oh, aye,” Hathorne agreed. “There’s some family.”
“Well, then,” Corwin said, as though that settled it.
So I wasn’t at all surprised when Rebecca Nurse’s name got worked into the narrative at the Parris house. After they’d got Betty Parris and her cousin to call out Martha Corey—Corwin didn’t even have to do any of the heavy lifting there; Hathorne was more incompetent then evil, but once he got a name in his head he was as dogged with it as those girls—Corwin slipped it in that Martha Corey and Rebecca Nurse were often seen together and Betty cried out against Rebecca not a minute later.
“The Rebecca Nurse what Betty cried out,” Hale asked when we’d piled back into the wagon, “was that the same Nurse you mentioned afore?”
Corwin nodded stiffly as he picked up the reins. “We see now why she seeks a pension—to increase the funds she has available for doing the Devil’s own work.”
“Surely not,” Hathorne said. “Betty overheard us speak of her, no doubt, and misunderstood the purpose.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Corwin said. “I’ve long had my suspicions about Goody Nurse. You see how she outlives her enemies.”
“I wasn’t aware Goody Nurse had enemies,” Hathorne mused, sounding like he could be convinced. “But no, I’ll not believe it of Rebecca Nurse. Betty were mistaken.”
“At any rate, we must arrest Martha Corey,” Reverend Hale said from Hathorne’s other side, “before the contagion do spread further.”
Something was about to spread, all right, but it wasn’t witchcraft. Once a guy like Corwin saw he could get rid of the sick, the old, the poor, the helpless in a single pogrom, what was to stop him?
I couldn’t play Switzerland any longer, couldn’t be the guy in the history books who witnessed evil and did nothing to stop it. But how to intervene? I had no political clout myself.
The time had come to talk to Ezekiel.
Chapter 11
Ezekiel wasn’t in the barn when I got home, and neither was Daffy. I scanned the near field for them, but didn’t see his head bobbing up and down behind hers. Inside the house, Mrs. Cheever was removing her bonnet, a sign she’d just arrived home herself. Abraham slept in a basket at her feet.
“You must be hungry,” she said as she tied her apron on.
“I wanted to see Ezekiel,” I answered, though my stomach clenched at the thought of food. Not knowing how long I’d be gone, I hadn’t even grabbed an apple from the barrel on my way out that morning.
“He went off to the far field. He thought to be home afore supper, but I’ve not seen him. You might take something out to him.”
She bundled hard-boiled eggs and biscuits into a burlap sack and I filled a flask with water from the pump and set out down the road in the dir
ection of the far barn with my cloak flapping around me and Ezekiel’s grandfather’s hat on my head in place of my wig.
The sun beamed down warmly and there were dots of purple and blue stretching out across the fields— wildflowers pushing up to greet the returning warmth. Looked like Ezekiel was right about spring coming. I danced a bit as I walked. A man in a cloak and a hat couldn’t help feeling debonair, like the musketeer I’d dressed myself up to be.
Occasionally someone clopped by and I raised my hat to them with a grand sweeping gesture, though I never got more than a slight lift in return. Puritans didn’t appreciate the theatrical possibilities of their outfits or the freedom of being out under all this sky. Where I lived, a person had to travel a long way to be this alone in the middle of this much space.
I didn’t see Ezekiel when I got to the far barn, but Daffy was tied up with a bale of hay in front of her, so I knew he was in the vicinity.
“Yo, Zeke!” I shouted, enjoying the fact that in all the world there was only one person who could hear me.
He popped out from around a corner of the barn with a smile.
“Luther,” he said, like he’d been waiting. He held out his hand and I took it and used it to pull him towards me into a chest bump. That left his face right up next to mine, but I didn’t kiss him the way I wanted to. Instead I dropped his hand and thrust the sack his mother had sent into it.
“Lunch.” I dropped down against the side of the barn and he sat next to me and we tore through the food without wasting any time talking. It wasn’t until after we’d licked the grease off our fingers, thinking how we’d rather be licking the grease off each other’s fingers (at least, that was what I was thinking) that I told him about that morning’s testimony and Martha Corey being accused.
I’d expected him to be as freaked out as I was, but he took the news in stride.
“Don’t you think we should warn her?” I asked.