The Last Witchfinder

by James Morrow

  “Tell him I died of a prison-fever,” she instructed Ben. “’Tis a plausible narrative, with naught of the shame attaches to having a witch for a mother.”

  “Splendid idea!” Mr. Turpin shouted.

  “Let the boy remember ye as ye were!” Mrs. Sharkey called.

  Punctual as always, Mr. Knox came tromping down the staircase.

  Ben seized a bar in each hand, as if making ready to bow the iron and pull Jennet through the gap. “Brave lady, I fear I’m about to lose my wits.”

  “You foresaw this disaster,” she said. “You would be within your rights to look me in the eye and say, ‘If only you had listened to me…’”

  “I would ne’er be so ungracious.”

  She continued briefly on the subject of Ben’s prescience, then bound him to the same pledge she’d extracted from Montesquieu. The moment the horse-cart pulled away, leaving her to dangle, he must come forward and lovingly abet the breaking of her neck.

  “My arms and legs shall honor your wish,” he said, “though my mind and heart will fight ’em every inch of the way.”

  The turnkey cleared his throat conspicuously. “Mr. Franklin.”

  Ben climbed the stairs backward, that his gaze and Jennet’s might stay fused as long as possible.

  On Tuesday afternoon Barnaby Cavendish descended into the depths of Manayunk Gaol-House. He arrived bearing his latest acquisition, preserved in an alchemist’s flask, which he set on the floor outside her cell.

  “The Globe-Boy of Baltimore,” he explained.

  “No other epithet would do,” Jennet said, for the fœtus was marked with lines suggesting meridians and blotches resembling continents.

  “A rumor hath reached me from German-Town. It tells of a stillborn babe with a brow so ridged as to resemble a crown of thorns. On the morrow I shall acquire this wondrous Christ-Child, and when I combine him with my Baltimore Globe-Boy, then add the two freaks who survived the shipwreck, I’ll have the matrix of the Jennet Stearne Crompton Museum of Wondrous Prodigies.”

  “I am flattered by your choice of name—but now let me ask of you another beneficence.” She gestured toward the thing in the jar. “I would have the loan of yon Globe-Boy, for I believe he will succor me in the hours ahead.”

  “The sufficiency of the world?”

  “Indeed.”

  “I shall instruct him to watch o’er thee most tenderly.”

  For the balance of his visit Barnaby told tiresome and protracted tales drawn from the nonexistent archives of the Jennet Crompton Prodigy Museum. She didn’t mind. Only by playing the rôle of carnival charlatan might her friend manage to endure this final reunion without dissolving into a blubbering puddle of woe. He related how the Lyme Bay Fish-Boy had once foiled an assassination plot against the Spanish king, how the Bicephalic Girl had become trapped in an endless disagreement with herself concerning the Eucharist miracle (Papist transubstantiation versus Protestant consubstantiation), and how the Baltimore Globe-Boy had recently rolled all the way to Florida and there discovered the Fountain of Youth. No sooner had Barnaby finished recounting the contrarian ministry of the German-Town Christ-Child than Mr. Knox began his descent.

  “I’m told the babe’s palms have tiny holes at their centers,” Barnaby said. His face was so time-ravaged that the tears reached his jaw only after trickling through a labyrinth of wrinkles, grooves, and wens. “Being a doubting Thomas, however, I’d have to see the marks myself ere I called ’em crucifixion wounds.”

  After Barnaby was gone, she sprawled on the cold stone floor and stared at the Globe-Boy. Catching the feeble torchlight, the fœtus’s lidless green eyes glinted like sunstruck emeralds. The stain below his left shoulder distinctly resembled Great Britain: each nation was there, even little Ireland, circumscribed by seas of skin.

  “All flowings and fallings, all flappings and snappings, all swingings and springings, all splittings and flittings…”

  Her chains scraped against the bars of her cell as she extended her hand, caressed the frigid glass, and prayed to the bottled monster that she might again behold the stars.

  j

  THROUGHOUT THE DEMONOLOGISTS’ homeward voyage on the Ignis Fatuus, the Son of Man and the Father of Lies battled one another, each seeking to determine the future of American witchfinding. The fact of Christly intervention became apparent to Dunstan when, shortly after the sloop dropped anchor off Manhattan-Isle, Abby removed her dress and permitted him for the first time to cast an eye on those places—left breast, right side—where Jennet’s demons had inserted the dagger. The lesions were completely healed. It was as if they’d never existed.

  “Praise God, I see no sign of the bodkin,” he said, pulling off his day-shirt.

  “Our Savior’s lips have kissed my wounds away,” Abby said.

  He removed his breeches. “’Tis a miracle, plain and true! Now let me put my own lips to those very spots, that my passion might complete thy cure.”

  But Lucifer, too, had reserved a berth on the Ignis Fatuus. As the sloop blew across Long-Island Sound, a raging fever took hold of Mr. Parris, causing him to convulse as violently as any were-wolf or epileptic. For thirty-five terrible hours he thrashed about in his bunk—hemorrhaging from his mouth and nose, spitting up bile, screaming like a victim of the Spanish boot—until at last he lay quiet in his niece’s arms.

  Within minutes of the minister’s death, Captain Morley came to Abby and Dunstan, all grief-struck as if he too were kin to the deceased. After bemoaning the loss of “a tireless and brilliant general in the war against demonic insurgence,” the captain regained his stalwart self and addressed a practical matter. Mr. Parris’s remains, he explained, might harbor the seeds of a contagion, and prudence demanded that they cast them over the side.

  The burial ceremony occurred at noon, the entire ship’s company standing silently on deck whilst Dunstan read from the Book of Ezekiel. Balanced on the larboard rail, the corpse lay inside a canvas sack weighted with a length of anchor chain. “‘And when I looked, behold, a hand was sent unto me, and, lo, a roll of a book was therein,’” Dunstan recited. “‘And he spread it before me, and it was written within and without: and there was written therein lamentations, and mourning, and woe.’”

  “‘Lamentations, and mourning, and woe,’” Abby echoed.

  “Oh, Goodwife Stearne, my heart goes out to thee.” Captain Morley tipped the sack toward the waves until it slid free of the rail. The bagged corpse, spiraling, drilled through the surface of the sea and vanished.

  “He was ne’er a particularly loving uncle,” Abby said, “but as a witchfinder he’ll prove difficult of replacement.”

  “May God rest his soul,” Dunstan said.

  “Ere I became a woman,” she noted, “’twas his wont to beat me nightly with a willow wand.”

  The Ignis Fatuus put to port the following morning. Although Dunstan had vaguely hoped that a welcoming committee organized by the Calvinist clergy might greet them, no one amongst the scurrying multitudes on Clark’s Wharf took much notice of the cleansers as they disembarked. Perhaps the news of their victory had not yet reached Boston—perhaps the Bible Commonwealth reporters were still in Philadelphia, their quills poised to set down the visual, auditory, and olfactory particulars of Rebecca Webster’s gallows dance.

  Eager to collect their two hundred pounds, and more eager still to tell their sponsor of the jurymen’s verdict, Dunstan and Abby proceeded directly to the Governor’s mansion in Treamount Street. Splendidly attired in a red silk waistcoat and feathered turban, a manumitted Negro named Simeon ushered them past the snootish Mr. Peach and into Mr. Belcher’s august presence.

  “’Tis my sorrowful duty to report that yesterday the eldest amongst us, the Reverend Samuel Parris, died of a fever,” Dunstan said, addressing the Governor with a deferential bow. “Our bereavement is somewhat compensated, however”—he lifted his head and offered Belcher a sizable smile—“by the felicitous outcome of the Philadelphia trial. To wit
, Excellency, Rebecca Webster meets the hangman two days hence.”

  “Prithee, accept my sympathy on the death of your fellow pricker,” Belcher said, clucking his tongue. “Concerning Mrs. Webster’s imminent execution, ’tis not exactly news round here, as this office subscribes to six different provincial journals.”

  Dunstan strained to purge his voice of pride. “Ah, but didst know the jury deliberated a mere three hours?”

  “I did,” Belcher said with an inamicable snort.

  The Governor’s manner perplexed Dunstan. Surely the salvation of the Parliamentary Witchcraft Act, once a matter of imperial concern to Belcher, merited a greater show of enthusiasm. “In my letter to the Privy Council,” Dunstan said, “I shall fully credit you with the deft maneuvers by which John Hathorne replaced Malcolm Cresswell as chief jurist.”

  “Your scheme was a masterstroke, my Lord Governor,” Abby added. “Hathorne displayed even more theological acuity in Philadelphia than at Salem forty years ago.”

  From the tea-chest beside his desk Belcher retrieved a half-dozen issues of The Pennsylvania Gazette. “Both The New-England Courant and The Bible Commonwealth reported on the case, but ’twas Mr. Franklin’s pithy periodical supplied the fullest account. For all I hold it a seditious paper, methinks there be wisdom in these essays by Ebenezer Trenchard.” He tapped the topmost issue with his index finger. HATHORNE COERCES GUILTY VERDICT FROM JURY, ran the headline. “Mr. Stearne, I am sorely vexed. Why did you neglect to tell me that the Baron de Montesquieu, not to mention Mrs. Webster herself, would make such puissant points against the demon hypothesis?”

  “There be no more truth in Trenchard’s narratives than in sailors’ tales of selkies and sea serpents,” Dunstan said.

  “If milk will curdle in consequence of animalcules,” Belcher said, “and geese go mad from ergot, ’twould seem the world hath need of neither demons nor demonologists.”

  “Every word Mr. Franklin prints is a falsehood,” Dunstan said.

  Propping his elbows on the desk, Belcher made a steeple of his fingers and leaned toward Abby. “According to Mr. Trenchard, you pretended Mrs. Webster unleashed a band of wicked spirits against you.”

  “That were no pretending, my Lord,” she said. “Her goblins drove a dagger into my side.”

  Belcher set his palm atop a ragged stack of papers. “Yesterday I received a petition from our House of Representatives. They, too, admire the Trenchard letters, and so they ask that for the nonce I restrict your Commission’s activities—”

  “Restrict ’em?” Abby said.

  “Restrict ’em, aye, until such time as His Majesty’s advisers have sorted through the arguments advanced in Mrs. Webster’s favor.”

  Dunstan stared out the mullioned windows. Sheets of rain descended on Boston, thick as the smoke from John Hathorne’s pipe, heavy as the fumes of burning Haverhill. “I did not realize our Governor was so beholding to his legislature.”

  “Every so often I must lend an ear to the rabble,” Belcher said. “It makes me appear fair-minded.”

  “I beg your pardon, Excellency,” Abby said, “but the Massachusetts House enjoys no power o’er the Purification Commission, and neither—forgive my bluntness—and neither do you.”

  “Wrong, Madam, wrong—for your charter hath no validity without it displays the signature of the man who occupies this mansion. B’m’faith, I cannot recall setting my name to any such paper.”

  “You did sign it, sir, three days after you took office.” Opening his valise, Dunstan withdrew the Commission’s charter from its customary place betwixt Question Five and Question Six of the Malleus. He passed the paper to Belcher. “See how your name adorns the bottom, plain as a button.”

  The Governor grunted, grinned obliquely, and proceeded to perform an action so audacious that in Dunstan’s view it would have shamed even the Baron de Montesquieu. Removing a scissors from his desk drawer, Belcher blithely punctured the charter and clipped out a rectangular fragment bearing his signature. The snippet drifted free of the blades and, as the Witchfinder-Royal gasped and shuddered, glided to the floor like an errant autumn leaf.

  “Examine your charter more closely, and you’ll see it wants for ratification,” Belcher said. He smoothed the gelded document across his desk, and for an instant Dunstan imagined he intended further mutilation—but instead the Governor folded the paper in half, securing it beneath his ink pot. “You may now follow Simeon back to the antechamber, where Mr. Peach will present you with your two hundred pounds. As for your charter, I stand prepared to sign it once I hear that the Privy Council hath found no merit in Mrs. Webster’s case. But until I take up my quill for such purpose, you must not imagine that you enjoy the slightest authority to hunt so-called witches in this province.”

  Dunstan said, “Had you seen Abby vomit forth those iron nails, you would not be thwarting us so.”

  “Trenchard insists ’twas legerdemain made the nails appear,” the Governor said. “He compares the event to the trickery of Pharaoh’s court magicians.”

  “They were Christ’s own nails flew from my mouth,” Abby said.

  “Demon-carried through time and distance, all the way to Philadelphia,” Dunstan added.

  “Demon-carried?” the Governor said.

  “Aye,” Dunstan said.

  “Through time and distance?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Spend your two hundred pounds wisely, Mr. Stearne, for many a year will pass ere I suffer you or any other witch-pricking mountebank to draw a single shilling from the Royal Purse.”

  j

  THEY TOOK A ROOM at the Red Parrot in Hannover Street, a wretched establishment presided over by a bovine woman who, upon learning that her customers were Rebecca Webster’s prosecutors, treated them with a deplorable surliness. They rose the next morning at eight o’clock, discovering to their dismay that the rain had not slackened, then broke their fast with eggs and salted veal in the tavern-room. All during the meal Abby ministered to Dunstan’s melancholy, reminding him of the difficulties his father had faced during the dark days following the Salem hunt, when Sir William Phipps had presumptuously reprieved nearly fifty convicted Satanists.

  “The Province’s original Witchfinder-Royal did not allow Phipps’s defection to discourage him,” she said, “and I know you will endure Belcher’s treachery with equal fortitude.”

  “Thy faith is most gratifying,” he said, heaving a sigh.

  At two o’clock they boarded a day-coach heading west, sharing the compartment with a wig-maker off to visit his sister in Natick and a tallow-chandler seeking to borrow money from his uncle in Marlborough. The rain continued to fall, drumming on the windows with a monotonous cadence that set their fellow passengers to dozing.

  “Our next course of action is clear,” Abby whispered in Dunstan’s ear.

  “How so?”

  “Let us grant the nefarious Governor Belcher six weeks in which to collect and ponder the Privy Council’s findings,” she said. “If he ratifies our charter, we shall bless him and return to our trade. But if he withholds his signature, we must betimes cry him out.”

  A vile discomfort spread through Dunstan, as if in digesting the morning’s meat his stomach was now encountering a poisonous green morsel. “Cry him out? Dost mean…for sorcery?”

  “Aye.”

  “I’Christ, ’tis the boldest proposition I’ve yet heard from your lips,” he said, pressing a hand to his belly. “Can you truly believe Belcher practices the dark arts?”

  “He reeks of Perdition.”

  “But the man’s a governor.”

  “And Lucifer’s a prince. I was ne’er a person to be dazzled by rank.”

  The rain went soft in Needham, turned to a swirling mist in Natick, and vanished completely by the time they reached the Merry Alewife in Framingham. As dusk descended, leaching the world of its nuances and hues, they collected their valises and headed south down Badger Road, moving into the teeth of a frigid wind.
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  Dunstan had imagined that their crossing of Waushakum Pond might be impeded by ice floes, but so far the freezing air had wrought upon the water only a delicate crystalline crust. They removed the pine-bough cloak from their dinghy and dragged the craft into the shallows. After retrieving his fishing-pole from the stern, he upended a flat rock and took hold of the large gluey slug beneath. They clambered aboard. Whilst Abby worked the oars, Dunstan impaled the slug and tossed the hook into the pond. The iron easily pricked the ice, bearing the slug netherward. As the last light faded, a solitary star blazed white in a lapis sky, but he took no pleasure in the vista. He was cold, and weary, and worst of all nauseated, as if a regiment of Van Leeuwenhoek’s wrigglers were mustering in his stomach.

  By the time Abby had rowed them to shore, he’d hauled their supper from the pond’s murky bottom, a corpulent catfish with long elegant whiskers. Docking, they disembarked and followed the dirt path toward the house, Dunstan holding the fish suspended before him so that it oscillated on its line like a Satanist dangling from a swimming-rope.

  Two ragged pieces of paper lay nailed to the front door. The top fragment read, HEREIN DWELLETH THE MURTHERERS OF BLAMELESS SALVAGES. On the lower scrap was scrawled a familiar Gospel verse. O GENERATION OF VIPERS, HOW CAN YE, BEING EVIL, SPEAK GOOD THINGS?

  “Mayhap we could be doing a better job of explaining ourselves to our neighbors,” he said.

  “‘A prophet is not without honor,’” Abby recited, “‘save in his own country.’”

  The demonologists passed the next hour in silence, stumbling about the house like exhausted beasts of burden whilst they lit the candles, ignited the lanthorns, swept the floor, aired out the bed-chamber, and set a fire in the hearth. Presently Dunstan’s thoughts turned to preparing the cat-fish. He searched through the utensil box and, finding no knife of suitable sharpness, opened his wife’s valise and retrieved her dagger.