by Suzanne Weyn
But then Bronwyn spoke. “We will cut off your head and return it to John Indian if you do not do as we say.”
Tituba told me that the three witches kept spinning in a circle, chanting a spell while Bronwyn instructed her to torment Abigail and her friends with a large knife. When she refused once more, the three witches began shrieking their evil words at top volume and Bronwyn placed her hand on Tituba’s head.
All at once, Tituba felt herself rise up and leave her own body.
“You were on the astral plane,” I suggested breathlessly.
“I have heard of that and I think I was,” Tituba agreed. “And so were the witches, for they had my spirit ride on a branch as they were. They were controlling the branch and so I was compelled to go with them. I saw no trees or path, but presently we were in the woods. There I saw Mistress Abigail Williams, Mistress Betty Parris, Mistresses Elizabeth Hubbard, Ann Putnam, and several other girls cooking some kind of cakes over an open fire in the forest. They used one of our frying pans.”
“Was Althea with them?” I questioned, worried.
“No, Althea was not there.”
“Thank goodness.”
“The girls held hands and chanted words I did not recognize,” Tituba continued. “As I watched them, some terrible evil took over my spirit. The evil you call Bronwyn directed one of her witches to take over my spirit. I was there but I was no longer controlling my own actions. I poked Abigail with my knife, causing her to cry out. As I did this, I reached out and pinched little Betty Parris on the arm.”
“Could they see you?” I asked.
“I know they could because they faced me — or the entity that looked like me — as I slashed my knife back and forth. They begged me, ‘Tituba, stop!’ And, Betty, I longed to stop; I did everything in my power to control the movement of my knife-wielding arm, but I was helpless. Then two others appeared in spirit. One was Sarah Good, the other was Sarah Osborne.”
“How did you know they were spirits?” I asked.
“Because they appeared from nowhere and I could see through them!”
“What did they do?”
Tituba shook her head forlornly and placed her hands over her eyes, as though she did not want to think about what had happened next. “The three of us tormented the girls, chasing them through the forest, kicking them, pulling their hair, jabbing them with sticks and my knife. But do you want to know something, Betty?”
“What?”
“I think those women were just like me. Something had entered them; the three witches were nowhere in sight during this. Your Bronwyn was doubled over, howling with vile laughter, but her minion witches were not near her as they usually are. I believe wholeheartedly that their evil spirits were inside of us women.”
“How did you escape?”
“I don’t know. Suddenly I was back at the lean-to, sprawled on the frozen ground, all alone.”
“Are you positive it really happened?” I questioned. “Could it have been a dream?”
“I could have fallen sleep, I suppose. It seemed real, but when I tell it, the story sounds more like a dream.” She rose from the table. “Let us go check on Abigail and little Betty. If they show signs of their torment in the forest, we will know.”
Tituba and I ascended the stairs to the second floor, where the girls of the house shared a room. We were only halfway up the steps when we became aware of a commotion. Mrs. Parris was shouting, her baby was crying, and I heard loud barking.
“The black hound is back!” I cried, hurrying upward. But when I arrived in the bedroom, there was no black hound.
Little Betty was on all fours, growling at Reverend Parris as though she believed she was a dog. Just as I entered, she took hold of her father’s pant leg and yanked on it as a dog might do, snarling all the while.
I immediately thought of the demonic black dog. Had its evil spirit entered little Betty?
“Betty, I’m warning you,” Reverend Parris bellowed at his daughter. “There is no humor in this. Desist at once!”
Abigail was bouncing on the bed, waving her arms and laughing maniacally. A mad smile played across her face and she seemed not to realize anyone else was in the room.
Tituba came in behind me, amazed and distressed by what she saw.
Mrs. Parris held her baby, who was wailing. She looked to Tituba for help. “What is happening?” she implored. “Why are they acting this way?”
Tituba was too stunned to speak and probably wouldn’t have known where to begin anyway.
Reverend Parris suddenly let out a howl of excruciating pain. Little Betty had sunk her teeth deep into his leg and would not let go. She seemed not to notice that blood covered her face as she dug her teeth into her father’s flesh.
“Stop! Stop!” Reverend Parris shouted and flung his daughter across the room. Little Betty hit a wall but it didn’t seem to bother her. She was immediately back on all fours, barking at all of us.
Thomas Parris ran in. “Oh, they’re faking!” he cried indignantly. “Can’t you tell? This is all a grand performance.”
“Quiet, boy!” Reverend Parris demanded, stooping to wipe his bloody leg with a handkerchief. “The Devil’s hand is in this!”
Abigail suddenly lost her crazy demeanor and let out a deafening scream. “She’s pinching me! She’s pinching me! Make her stop!” With a robust bounce from the bed, she scrambled under a straight-back chair and once more broke into peals of hysterical laughter.
Reverend Parris rushed out and soon returned with a black book. “These words will exorcise the demons from them,” he announced. He began to shout out passages from the book that exhorted the Devil to leave the premises, but it was to no avail. The girls did not cease their antics.
“What has happened to you girls?” Mrs. Parris pleaded. “Tell us! Please!”
Abigail came out from under the chair and stood, feet planted apart. “Tituba did this to us!” she shouted, pointing. “It’s all her fault. She’s a witch!”
All heads turned to stare at Tituba.
“I am no witch!” she defended herself.
Reverend Parris glowered at her. “You are a witch, Tituba,” he accused in a towering voice.
“No. It isn’t so!” Tituba insisted.
“It is!” Reverend Parris intoned. “And by the power of the clergy, you stand accused.”
The next I knew, I was thundering down the stairs behind Tituba, sure I was the next to be accused.
TITUBA SOUGHT REFUGE IN THE WOODS. “YOU MUST GO back,” she urged me. “If you hide here with me, it will be the same as admitting you are a witch. Reverend Parris did not accuse you.”
I knew she was right, and some time later I nervously returned to the parsonage. “Were you able to catch her?” Reverend Parris asked when I came in. He was sitting on a chair in the kitchen while Mrs. Parris attended to the bloody bite on his leg.
This question took me by surprise and left me speechless until I realized he’d misinterpreted my actions. He had thought that I was running after Tituba rather than fleeing right behind her.
“I did not, and I believe I was wrong to pursue her, sir,” I said. “I do not believe that Tituba is a witch. Whatever delirium has seized the girls has caused them to believe things that are not so.”
“Doctor Griggs has seen the girls,” Mrs. Parris told me. “He can find nothing physically wrong with them and has concluded that their ravings have all the indications of bewitchment.”
“If this is so, how can you be sure it is Tituba who is the witch?”
“Abigail named her. Betty seconded the accusation,” Reverend Parris said. “They also named Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne.”
I knew Abigail wasn’t lying and neither was little Betty. They had seen Tituba in the woods, as well as the two Sarahs. The girls were telling the truth as best they understood it.
Several days later I met Tituba among the withered stalks of rye behind the parsonage. “My mother’s book of spells is buried here,�
�� Tituba told me. “It is our only hope.”
It wasn’t easy to dig the cold winter ground, but Tituba and I banged at the hard earth, I with a hoe, and she with a shovel we took from the lean-to. We dug until a large patch of polished wood emerged from the dirt. Tituba tossed away her shovel and clawed the ground, pulling out the wooden box. When she pried it open, I saw a thick, worn leather book whose pages were so yellow and brittle I was afraid they would crumble and blow away if we dared to touch them.
Tituba opened to the middle section of the book. “We must banish this evil monster altogether — send it back where it came from.”
“Is that possible?” I asked.
“Of course it is. People have been doing it since time began.” She finally found what she’d been searching for. “Here it is!” A smear of dirt from her hands soiled the page but she paid it no attention. “These are the words the evil thing doesn’t want to hear.”
The passage was long and written in tiny handwriting, so I didn’t bother to read it then. “It must be said along with the protection of powerful talismans,” Tituba continued to read.
“What kind of talismans?”
“Objects to keep off the Devil and the evil eye.”
I lifted the necklace Aakif had given me from under the neckline of my dress. Tituba smiled. “Yes, like that. I know that type from the isle of Barbados, where I lived for many years before coming here. It might be the thing we need.”
Just then we heard boot steps crunching through the dead, fallen stalks of rye. Soldiers in gleaming breastplates and helmets approached us.
Tituba tossed the book of spells back in the hole and we both kicked dirt on it. I covered it with dead rye and then, on hands and knees, crawled into a thick patch of rye stalks. As the guards came closer, I lay flat on my stomach, face into the dirt, holding my breath.
Tituba was not as quick.
“Tituba the slave, you are under arrest,” the lead soldier boomed. “You are charged with the crime of maleficium, witchcraft. You must come with us.”
“I am no witch,” Tituba objected.
“Just the same, you must come and be tried. You have been accused.”
It was so hard not to look to the book of spells. If it were discovered so close to Tituba, it would not bode well. Fortunately, the guards were too busy shackling Tituba’s wrists to notice it.
They marched her from the rye field and I lay flat and quiet a long time. Finally, when I felt certain they were gone, I got up and recovered the book of spells, and hurried off with it back into the parsonage.
IT WAS THE MIDDLE OF MARCH AND I WAS AWAITING Aakif, who would, under the cover of darkness, meet me in the abandoned barn we had selected as our regular meeting place.
On March 1, when the judges questioned Tituba, she told them honestly what had happened. She had been ambushed by a terrible demonic force and kidnapped. Tituba had seen Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne there. When she tried to explain that these women, like herself, had been inhabited by evil spirits, no one credited it, or even understood what she meant. “There is a conspiracy of witches at work in Salem,” she told them, speaking the absolute truth.
Tituba was still in jail, as were the two Sarahs. All were awaiting trial. But they were not alone. Every day, the jail was more and more crowded as Abigail, little Betty, Ann Putnam, Jr., Elizabeth Hubbard, a girl named Mercy Lewis, and others continued to have mad fits and accuse one person after another of bewitching them.
I didn’t think they were lying, either — not for the most part, anyway. This demon that had invaded Salem was running havoc, having its attendant witches jump from body to body.
“These courtrooms are like carnivals,” I said to Aakif when he arrived and sat on the floor of the barn beside me. “The girls claim evil spirits are right in the room with them. Every time one of the accused even moves a hand, they think they are under attack. They shake and quake and go into deep trances. I know the demon is responsible, but I wonder if there is some other cause as well. Maybe it’s a sickness of some kind. I can’t believe they’re being bewitched at every second.”
“I’ve been thinking of something, Betty-Fatu. Do you remember the cone grass Aunty Honey showed you how to use?”
I nodded, remembering it well.
“What if they’re eating something like that and it’s affecting them?”
“It’s possible, I suppose. I don’t know. They might still be eating those dream cakes. But the cakes are only just rye flour, butter, milk, and some sugar.” Reaching into my apron pocket, I took out a few pieces of the black-specked rye that I had wrapped in a piece of cotton. I’d saved it to show Aakif.
Aakif inspected it. “What are those specks? The Osbornes’ rye doesn’t look like that.”
“I don’t know.”
“I wonder,” Aakif said. He picked up a few specks and smelled them. “It has no odor,” he noted.
I dropped some on my tongue. “It’s tasteless too.”
Leaning back into Aakif’s shoulder, I suddenly felt a powerful fatigue and drifted to sleep. How long I slept, I can’t be sure, but I suddenly felt a sharp pinch on my arm and was instantly awake. Turning to Aakif to ask why he’d pinched me, I saw that he was sleeping soundly.
A low growl made me look abruptly to the source — and my heart turned to ice.
Scared, I clutched for the marble I always wore at my neck. It wasn’t there.
Evil Bronwyn, her three attendant witches, and the black hound stood in a row staring at me.
“Serve me!”
The voice was definitely male and it had come from the dog.
A disturbing ring of numbness banded my arms and ran up and down the length of them. On the periphery of my vision, colored lights sparked, and I felt dizzy. Trying to rise, I fell backward.
“You’ve eaten the ergot rye,” Evil Bronwyn said with a laugh. “You can’t get away from us.”
I suddenly felt as though an army of ants was crawling the length of my legs and was nipping at me as they went. Horrible! But were they real or only in my mind? Swatting at them, I discovered that they were indeed there.
Repulsed, I began to scream. “Stop it! Make them stop!”
“Serve me,” the black dog growled again, his voice an unnerving rumble.
“No! No!” I shouted, quaking in fear yet determined not to submit to this horror.
My screams awoke Aakif. I could see and hear him but felt that he was too far away for me to reach. “Betty-Fatu,” I heard him cry, “what’s the matter?”
What was the point in answering him? He was so far away. So I turned back to the demonic crew. To my surprise, they had been joined by a sweet little child with bouncing blond curls. It was Dorcas Good. She began to sing and dance around me. “Little ants bite. They bite me and you. Little ants will eat Betty-Fatu!”
“How do you know I’m called Betty-Fatu?” I demanded, my voice quivering.
The little girl suddenly transformed into the slave master Parris. He lashed the ground beside me with his whip. “I know you, Betty-Fatu!” he growled menacingly. His form melted and he was once more a little girl singing about ants.
I covered my ears as the ants swarmed me.
“Serve me and I can make it stop!” the voice once more emanated from the black hound.
The ants were in my hair, crawling into my ears. I swatted at them, rolling and screaming.
Evil Bronwyn howled with laughter, clapping her hands with demonic glee. “Ah, the ergot rye is marvelous! It lets us in! It lets us in! And you can’t get out.”
I saw that three more women had entered the barn. I knew them from my trips into town. One was elderly Rebecca Nurse, and the others were her two sisters, Mary Easty and Sarah Cloyce. They stood where the three witches had been.
All three sisters seemed to be in a trance as they walked toward me. Frail and elderly as they were, they easily lifted my squirming, resistant body and carried it toward the black dog. The dog’s face had taken on an
oddly human and sinister expression.
“Serve me.”
“Make the ants stop!” I implored. I was covered from head to toe with the maddening insects.
“Serve me and it will stop,” the black dog spoke.
The sisters and Evil Bronwyn began to chant. “Serve him. Serve him. Serve him.”
“Serve who?” I shouted. “Who am I serving?”
“You know who he is,” Evil Bronwyn scolded. “You know his name.”
Suddenly, two strong hands pulled at my stomach and I was lurched away from the sisters. Ice water was being thrown in my face and I was being shaken. Aakif’s voice was shouting at me. “Wake up, Betty-Fatu! Wake up!”
I was in the barn and the first light of morning was filtering through. “Betty-Fatu, come back! Come back!” Aakif’s voice was thick with urgency and he was waving something over me. It was the blue marble necklace. He had found it! He’d used it to dispel the evil spirits just as Aunty Honey had said it would.
Evil Bronwyn, her witches, the dog, the little girl, Rebecca Nurse, Mary Easty, and Sarah Cloyce were all gone. There was no sign of them, not even a footprint, as though they had never been there at all. “Was I having a nightmare?” I asked Aakif.
Aakif shook his head. “That was no dream. You were floating, Betty-Fatu! Floating in air! And look at your skin.”
My arms, chest, and neck were scratched and clawed at. In some places, my skin bled. Even my cheeks were scratched.
“Were there ants crawling on me?” I asked.
“No, but you were acting as though you were covered with them.”
He had seen nothing other than my frantic scratching and my body being lifted. He saw no one else in the room.
Suddenly faint, I slumped into Aakif’s arms and he caught me. We settled down by the wall and, still lying in his arms, I told him all I’d experienced. “This is a lot like what those girls are saying,” Aakif noted. “You say that Evil Bronwyn said that eating the rye is what lets them in. And we have this odd, speckled rye.”
“This rye is in those dream cakes they’re eating,” I pointed out. I pulled the speckled rye seed from my apron pocket and thought of Van Leeuwenhoek. If he inspected this with his microscope, would he discover what they were?