The Last Witchfinder

by James Morrow

  “That’s quite possibly the total thus far,” Stearne said. “The great hunt’s not yet done.”

  “And would you also agree that most of those eight hundred thousand persons admitted to Satanism shortly before they were executed?”

  “Aye.”

  “Then would it be correct to say that, biblical passages aside, demonology derives its authority from eight hundred thousand signed confessions of heresy?”

  “It would.”

  “If those documents did not exist, might not a reasonable man question both your prosecution of Mrs. Webster and your aggression against the Massachusetts aborigines?”

  “But those documents do exist.”

  “Indeed they do, Monsieur. Indeed they do. Something puzzles me, however. Since a confession was unlikely to save his life, why would any self-respecting Satanist give his persecutors the satisfaction of a signature?”

  “By putting his name to a confession, the heretic seeks to purge his soul of the blackest sin imaginable.”

  “Mr. Stearne, is it not true that the majority of sorcery confessions were elicited under torture?”

  “As Judge Hathorne remarked on Monday, torture hath ne’er been used in an English witch-court.”

  “Let us disregard England—a mere two thousand cases at best. I speak of the momentous Continental cleansing.”

  “’Tis a pity that pricking and the other reliable tests of Satanic allegiance have enjoyed so little favor outside His Majesty’s realm,” Stearne said. “Continental law frames witchcraft as an invisible phenomenon and hence a crimen excepta, an exceptional crime, so difficult of proof that the ordinary rules of evidence must be suspended.”

  “And the ordinary rules of civilization as well?”

  The witness shuddered, temporarily dismayed, then mocked the question with an audible snort. “Because the Devil himself would ne’er appear in a courtroom and testify against his own disciple, my Continental counterparts have reasoned that torture is the best way to expose a witch.”

  “I’m sure you are aware, Monsieur, that in most Continental sorcery cases the executioner continued the torture well past the moment of confession. Can you explain this seemingly irrational practice?”

  “’Tis well known that Satanists perform their execrable rites in assemblies. Through torture, an executioner induces a witch to name her accomplices.”

  Montesquieu asked, “Is your education such that you might describe for us the five stages of torture employed during the Continental cleansing?”

  “I have indeed studied the traditions underlying my profession,” Stearne said. “The first stage was called preparatory torture.”

  “What did that involve?”

  Before Stearne could answer, the Reverend Samuel Parris scrambled to his feet and cleared his throat. “Excellency, the Crown’s advocate hath already stated that English witch-courts eschew torture. The Baron’s question enjoys no relevance to this case.”

  “I cannot make a proper defense of Mrs. Webster,” Montesquieu retorted, “unless I demonstrate what the witness means when he avers that his enterprise rests on eight hundred thousand confessions.”

  Hathorne scowled fiercely before making his pronouncement. “In the name of fairness, we shall allow a brief discussion of this unhappy topic.”

  “We were speaking of preparatory torture,” Montesquieu reminded the witness.

  “This required the executioner to squeeze the prisoner’s thumb or toe in a metal vise,” Stearne said.

  As Parris settled back into his seat, Montesquieu opened his portmanteau and removed a device that to a naïve eye might have seemed intended for cracking walnuts. “Whilst visiting the European capitals last year”—he held the machine before Stearne—“I found myself moved to collect and catalog several dozen torture instruments of the sort once used by Continental executioners. Would you call this a typical thumbscrew?”

  “I would.”

  “I have heard that the executioner often supplemented the thumbscrew with a larger vise—”

  “The Spanish boot, aye.”

  “—using it to pulverize the prisoner’s foot until the marrow spurted forth.”

  The Reverend Parris leapt free of his chair. “Excellency, I see no merit in this line of inquiry.”

  “Eight hundred thousand confessions!” Montesquieu shouted.

  “Eight hundred thousand confessions!” Ben Franklin echoed.

  Hathorne sucked contemplatively on his clay pipe. One puff, two puffs, three. “The bench will graciously permit a display of torture instruments, but only the most pertinent torture instruments.”

  “I would like you to tell the Court about stage two, ordinary torture,” Montesquieu said to the witness.

  “Also known as strappado, ‘to pull,’” Stearne said. “The prisoner’s feet were hung with weights and his hands tied behind him with a rope threaded through a pulley on the ceiling.”

  From his portmanteau Montesquieu retrieved a great iron pulley, large as a melon. “A pulley such as this?”

  “Aye. The executioner raveled up the rope, lifting the witch into the air. After several such hoistings, the prisoner became highly inclined to confess his diabolism and name his confederates.”

  “And if he remained stubborn…?”

  “The executioner proceeded to stage three, extraordinary torture, accomplished through squassation.”

  Elaborating, Stearne revealed that, as with strappado, the accused witch’s hands were tied and his feet weighted. After hoisting him to the ceiling, the executioner would release the rope, then abruptly grab it when the prisoner was within inches of the floor, causing him to jerk violently. With repeated applications, squassation normally dislocated a person’s arms, hands, legs, and feet.

  “I am told that the agony of squassation is beyond imagining,” Montesquieu said.

  “Hellfire is far worse,” Stearne said.

  Montesquieu spun the rollers of the pulley, sending a high barbed screech coursing through the hall like the cry of an enraged cock. “Far worse. No question. Oui. But may I surmise that whereas strappado sometimes failed to produce a confession and a list of accomplices, squassation nearly always turned the trick?”

  “Quite so.”

  “Then what purpose was served by the next two stages?”

  “Stage four, additional torture, figured in cases where a judge wished to punish a witch for a particularly horrific act of maleficium.”

  Returning the pulley to his portmanteau, Montesquieu removed his steel pincers, fanged like a serpent, then waved them before the witness. “Punish him, for example, by ripping out his fingernails?”

  “For example.”

  “Stage five—occasional torture—was that likewise punitive?”

  “Punitive, but uncommon. ’Twas inflicted only on a witch of the worst sort, one who could ne’er be called back to Christ.”

  For the next hour Montesquieu prompted Stearne to present the particulars of additional torture, which was subject to regulation, and occasional torture, which knew no limits. The jurymen learned of gouged eyes, severed limbs, flesh torn apart with tongs, bowels dislocated by ribbons of swallowed cloth, feet slit open and immersed in boiling lime, and diets of salted herring unmitigated by even one drop of water. Throughout the witness’s testimony, Montesquieu surveyed the courtroom. With the exceptions of Judge Hathorne, Samuel Parris, Abigail Stearne, and a handful of depraved rustics in the audience, everyone seemed on the point of either fainting dead away or breaking into hives.

  Hathorne now declared a luncheon interval, though Montesquieu doubted that anyone felt favorably disposed toward a hearty meal. His intuition proved accurate. Although most of the jurymen and spectators patronized the food stalls, they returned with portions far smaller than ordinary. Franklin brought Madame Crompton an apple tart, which she succeeded in consuming only on her third attempt.

  “Hear me now, Charles,” she said. “For all you have made a potent presentation, I bel
ieve ’twould be unwise to continue spoiling the jurymen’s appetites.”

  “Have no fear. The Court has seen the last of my vises, pulleys, and pincers.”

  At one o’clock Hathorne reconvened the trial and publicly forbade the Baron to solicit any more grisly particulars concerning torture.

  “I am pleased to comply, Excellency, for the real issue before the Court is how we should interpret the use of torture in the classic witch-trials.” Montesquieu turned and gestured toward the mottled white mass on Stearne’s brow. “I see your face is scarred, Monsieur. I hope you’ve not been tortured.”

  “Many years ago I rushed into a raging fire set by Nimacook savages, that I might rescue my father’s cleansing license. The pain of my burns was severe”—Stearne bobbed his mutilated head toward Madame Crompton—“but not so severe as to make me repudiate God.”

  “Do you say that if accused of witchcraft you would cleave to your innocence no matter how terrible the torture?”

  “I do.”

  “Most admirable.” Montesquieu enacted a wince. “I promise you, Monsieur, if you subjected me to squassation, I would confess to sorcery and name my confederates not because I was a wizard, but simply to stop the pain.”

  “Stop the pain!” Franklin cried.

  “Stop the pain!” the spectators echoed.

  “Silence!” Hathorne screamed.

  “Consider this narrative,” Montesquieu said to the witness. “I arrest a woman on a false charge of Satanism and torture her until she names seven accomplices. Next I apprehend these supposed witches and torture each into naming another seven. By torturing the forty-nine, I acquire three hundred and forty-three new names. I perform the operation once again, flushing out an additional two thousand four hundred and one presumed heretics, and still once again, bringing in a harvest of sixteen thousand eight hundred and seven. In short, my Lord Witchfinder, the question is not, ‘How could the courts have elicited eight hundred thousand false confessions?’ but rather, ‘Why did they not elicit ten times that many?’”

  “I have ne’er heard such specious reasoning,” Stearne said.

  “Your quarrel is not with me, Monsieur, but with the multiplication tables.”

  “I can compute as well as you.”

  “Then tell me if I am correct when I compute that your organization makes an annual profit of two hundred and forty English pounds.”

  “’Tis not so.”

  “The Pennsylvania Gazette reports that you indict and execute twenty supposed witches each year at twelve pounds a head.”

  “The Baron confuses profit with income.”

  Having broached the subject of Stearne’s finances, Montesquieu now faced the jurymen and proceeded to argue that cleansing could not be understood apart from its economics. Because the courts were empowered to seize the property of convicted Satanists, he explained, witch-hunting had until recently ranked amongst the world’s most lucrative industries, commensurate with ship-building, rum-running, and the slave trade. The enterprise was as circular as it was remunerative. As the number of trials increased, the more the courts needed money, and the more the courts needed money, the more they needed witches.

  “Money for the judges, money for the lawyers, money for the bailiffs,” Montesquieu chanted, glancing from one juror to the next, “money for the constables, money for the gaolers, money for the executioners.” He swerved toward the witness-stand, reached into his waistcoat and, like an apprentice ambassador practicing a bow, made a great show of pulling out a scrap of paper. “During my recent European tour I came upon a German document dated the twenty-fourth of July, 1628, which I copied by hand from the original, then translated into French and English. Right before he was burned for a wizard, Johannes Junius, Burgomaster of Bamberg, wrote his daughter a letter, which the gaoler agreed to smuggle out of the prison. I would ask that you read the passages marked in red.”

  “I assumed the witness-stand to belie your philosophy, Baron, not to become your puppet,” Stearne said.

  “As you wish,” Montesquieu said, slipping on his spectacles. He unfolded the transcription and positioned it a foot from his nose. “Herr Junius begins, ‘My dearly beloved daughter Veronica, innocent I have entered this prison, innocent I have been tortured, innocent I shall die.’ Junius proceeds to recount the testimony of the prosecution’s witnesses, one of whom claimed she heard him abjure God as he danced upon the moor. ‘And then came also the executioner, and he put the thumbscrews on me until the blood spurted from the nails, so that for five weeks I could not use my hands, as you can see by my writing.’ Junius goes on to describe his ordeal of squassation. ‘I thought Heaven and Earth were at an end. Eight times did they draw me up and let me fall again, so that I suffered terrible agony.’ Next the prisoner reports on a remarkable conversation betwixt himself and his tormentor. ‘Sir, I beg you, for God’s sake, confess something,’ the executioner says, ‘even if it be false, for you cannot endure the new tortures to which you will be put. And even if you do bear them, still the judges will not free you, but one torture will follow upon another until you say you are a witch.’ After pondering his hopeless situation, Junius accepted the executioner’s logic and confessed. He told the judges how he fell under the enchantment of a succubus named Füchsin, who appeared to him first in the guise of a dairymaid, later as a goat, and persuaded him to reject Christ, worship Satan, and participate in Sabbats. ‘Now, sweet daughter, here you have the story of my confession, and it is all sheer lies and fabulation, so help me God. Fare well, dearest child, and remember me in your prayers, for you will never see your father Johannes Junius again.’”

  Montesquieu refolded the transcription, slowly, deliberately, and returned it to his waistcoat. A ponderous silence descended upon the courtroom.

  “Monsieur, might you tell us your reaction to Johannes Junius’s letter?” the Baron asked the witness.

  “’Tis probably a forgery,” Stearne replied. “Or if this Junius truly wrote the thing, then he lied to call his confession a fraud. A succubus named Füchsin who is also a were-goat—that’s certainly not something a person could simply invent out of his head. I believe this Junius was a wizard.”

  “Merci, Mr. Stearne. I have no more questions.”

  j

  ON THE MORNING following Dunstan’s testimony, the local readership of The Pennsylvania Gazette opened their newspapers to find an essay by Ebenezer Trenchard that in Jennet’s opinion easily eclipsed everything the Seaman Scholar had written thus far. Trenchard asserted, “The Crown’s Case turns on the Assumption that an innocent Man would never confess to Witchcraft even if you tore out his Fingernails.” He concluded, “The Baron de Montesquieu hath shown the whole Witch-Cleansing Industry to be a corrupt Castle built upon degraded Sand.”

  The rising sun sent shafts of light through the courthouse windows, each beam as glorious and golden as a flying buttress pressed against the weightless wall of a heavenly palace. Hathorne puffed languidly on his clay pipe, removed the stem, and coughed.

  “Monsieur le Baron, you may interview your next witness.”

  “The defense calls Rebecca Webster,” Montesquieu said.

  Opaque as stones, phlegmatic as clay, the twelve landholders collectively returned Jennet’s gaze as she crossed the hall and settled into the witness-stand. What she most wanted at that moment was a mechanics of human consciousness, a Principia Mentis by which she might study each juror’s deportment and consequently learn his thoughts.

  “My first question is simple,” Montesquieu said. “Mrs. Webster, are you a witch?”

  “I am not.”

  “Have you ever met the Devil or written in his alleged register?”

  “I have not.”

  “Très bien.” From his portmanteau Montesquieu obtained his copy of The Sufficiency of the World. “As a devotee of J. S. Crompton, I was gratified to hear you evoke his formidable treatise when Mr. Stearne interviewed you on Wednesday.”

  “I find Mr. Crompton�
��s book to be an irrefutable disproof of demons,” Jennet said.

  “A provocative statement, Madame. Your lawyer would have you elaborate upon it.”

  Cued by Montesquieu’s questions, Jennet spent the next three hours explicating the sufficiency hypothesis. She began by arguing that English experimental philosophy was of a largely Neo-Platonist bent. Because various preternatural beings logically lurked behind Plato’s famous Veil of Appearances, this perspective went hand-in-hand with the demon hypothesis. On the Continent, meanwhile, René Descartes’s followers had cast the world as a vast clocklike machine. But here, too, spirits both benign and malign were permitted, nay, required, since the universe’s dynamic phenomena—magnetism, acceleration, elasticity, and the rest—necessarily employed immaterial entities as their agents, many doubtless corresponding to the demons, devils, and fallen angels of biblical revelation.

  Both views, she explained, suffered from the defect of being untrue. Poised against Platonism was William of Occam’s famous parsimony postulate: God had situated his creatures in a real universe, not the shadow of a real universe, and there was no need to muddy this circumstance with Eternal Ideas and Perfect Forms. As for the dead Cartesian planet, J. S. Crompton had persuasively replaced it with a pulsing, blooming, sufficient world. Why posit genies and vortices when Nature’s algorithms could account for all the motions that matter enacted, all the shocks to which flesh was heir?

  Hathorne decreed a recess, whereupon Jennet consumed an enormous luncheon. She could recall no time in her life when rabbit pie had tasted more delicious, cheese more savory, pease-bread more filling, ale more satisfying. Despite everything—despite Bella’s death and Rachel’s abduction, Dr. Halley’s reproof and Tobias’s reproach, the rout of Aristotle and the wreck of the Berkshire—she had finally brought forth an argumentum grande and given it to the world.

  Fortified, she threw herself into the labors of the afternoon. Thus far she and Montesquieu had provided but the bones of the sufficiency hypothesis. Now they must give it muscle, meat, and skin. Under the Baron’s direction, the marshals dragged the defense table to within ten feet of the jurymen, then erected on its surface a six-foot inclined ramp scored with two parallel grooves. Though handicapped by her chains and manacles, Jennet grasped a pair of spheres, one of lead, the other of straw, and set them on the starting line.