by Suzanne Weyn
“Van Leeuwenhoek’s ship is still docked. We are repairing its rudder, which was greatly damaged,” Aakif said, obviously having the same thoughts as I. “I haven’t seen him leave on any other ship.”
“Then maybe he is still at Harvard,” I guessed hopefully. “Do you think perhaps you could get a sample of this rye to him and ask his opinion of it?”
Aakif nodded. “I am well thought of at the shipyard and not watched closely. I can say I need some replacement part from the Boston yard.”
Pouring the rye into his hands, I nodded. “We should leave now. It would not be good to be found here together at daybreak.”
Despite the danger, we sat for a while thinking about all that had happened. “I’m not doing enough,” I said after a moment. “I have to tell them what I know.”
“You will get yourself into trouble,” Aakif warned.
“This is a demon, Aakif, and I brought it with us! We caused all this grief.”
“You can’t blame yourself,” Aakif said, taking me in his arms. “How could you have known?”
“But I do know now. It’s too powerful for me to fight, even with your help and Mary Carmen’s. But maybe if I reveal what I know, the whole town together can fight it.”
“Don’t do it, Betty-Fatu. I beg you not to. The way things are in this town, it will come back to hurt you. You mustn’t draw attention to yourself. You’ll become a target.”
“I have to,” I insisted as I tied the cord with the necklace back around my neck.
“You’ll be naming Mary Carmen and me. I’m still a slave. I have even less protection by law than the other people being accused.”
“I won’t name either of you.”
Aakif threw his arms wide in exasperation. “I didn’t come all this way just to see you hanging at the end of a gallows rope,” he cried.
To stay silent any longer was not right. “I have to,” I said.
Aakif walked with me back to the parsonage. “I have to go get Bronwyn back,” I said to him. “I’ve waited much too long.”
THAT MORNING, I WAS WAITING FOR REVEREND PARRIS. He went to the court every day and transcribed the testimony given. He brought the transcriptions home every night, which was how I knew all the details of the court procedures.
“Reverend Parris, I must talk to you.”
He stopped and gave me his attention. I told him everything I knew.
“So you’re saying that it was you who brought the demonic witches to Salem.”
“It was not my intention, but yes.”
“Come with me, please,” Reverend Parris said calmly. He guided me toward the stairs and walked with me to my room. Althea was just finishing doing her hair and he ordered her to leave. “You will stay in this room, Mistress Betty, until I send the authorities to come for you.”
“The authorities?”
“You have confessed to consorting with the Devil, have you not?”
“No!” I cried. “I’ve not consorted. I have been the victim of some great evil, just as everyone involved in these trials has been a victim. No one has willingly consorted. In her testimony, Tituba told the truth. It happened exactly as she has told you. And the rye in your storage cellar creates an altered state that so weakens anyone who eats it that the Devil may work its evil.”
“My rye?” Reverend Parris’s tone was scornful. “You are saying it is I who am to blame for this plague of witchcraft?”
“I’m not saying you intended it.”
“How dare you attempt to sully my good name with such an accusation!” Reverend Parris shouted, his face red with fury. “I am a member of the clergy! I do not aid Satan’s work!”
“I am not aiding it either! I am clear of any wrongdoing.”
“It does not sound so to me. We will let the courts decide what to make of it.” He shut the door and I heard the lock click. “My wife will not let you out under any circumstances, so don’t bother making a fuss.”
Pacing the tiny room, I cursed my own stupidity in believing I could trust Samuel Parris.
I had to stop this. I had caused this mayhem — however unintentionally — and it had to end.
I pulled Tituba’s book of spells out from under my mattress, where I’d hid it after she’d been arrested. The book was thick and I didn’t know how I’d find the spell Tituba had selected, but when I came to the page with the streak of dirt from her hand, I knew I’d gotten to the right place.
There was a knock on the door. “Betty, it’s me, Althea. Are you all right?”
“Althea, I need your help. Could you undo the outside bolt for me? Reverend Parris has locked me in.” Immediately the bolt slid open and Althea appeared. I kissed the top of her head. “Althea, you might hear that I’m a witch, but I’m not. I have to leave this house right now and I may never come back, but I’ve loved sharing a room with you.”
“Are you on the run?” she asked.
“In a way.”
“Can I come? You might need help.”
Her bravery and generosity touched me. “Not now, but I have a feeling we’ll meet again some day.” Then I thought of something she could do and asked her to check if anyone was around.
“Just John Indian working in the yard,” Althea reported when she returned.
With Tituba’s spell book gripped beneath my arm and Aunty Honey’s jar of special honey in my hand, I sneaked down toward the kitchen. On the bottom floor, through the front windows, I saw two soldiers coming to arrest me. Keeping low, I was able to duck into the kitchen and out the door to the yard.
John Indian was chopping wood. He saw me run toward the rye field but kept on with his work. The rye had not yet sprouted but its stalks were high, providing good coverage. Bent low, I made my way through them until I could slip into the woods.
When I was deep among the trees, I stopped and sat cross-legged at the base of an extremely large pine. I breathed out slowly and then, even more slowly, I inhaled. I did this for almost ten minutes until my breath was deep and even. The energy in my body began to flow along my veins. Concentrating, I pushed that energy up along my spine until it circled in my forehead, filling my inner space with different shades of light. I gave myself over to the illumination in my head until there was no reality for me other than the swirling colors.
And then I was off, traveling the astral plane, zooming over landscapes, journeying through clouds, flying even higher into a place where it was all whiteness. I felt I was moving very swiftly, calling out to Bronwyn as I went.
She wouldn’t answer.
Finally, I gave up. It was easy to forget time up here, and I couldn’t afford to do that right now. With all my thoughts on returning to my body, I sped back down to it.
When I was grounded on earth once more, I knew the hard task before me. Terrified as I was, I had to move forward. I had to use my mind to contact a demon.
On my way toward Salem Town, John Indian came along in the wagon and told me to climb in. At first I said no, because I didn’t want to get him into trouble. He scoffed at this. “My wife is imprisoned as a witch. You are her friend. Do you think I would not help you? Get in.”
I climbed in, happy for the ride. He pushed a basket of food toward me. “I am bringing this to Tituba. Prisoners must arrange for their own food. Eat. There is plenty for her.” Gratefully, I ate some corn bread, first clarifying that none of the stored rye had been used.
“The rye is tainted and is to blame for some of this,” I told him. “Destroy what is left of it if you can.”
“All of the rye?” he asked.
“Only the rye in the back part of the storage cellar. The girls who are making accusations have been making dream cakes out of it. I believe the rest of the rye, the rye in the kitchen, is all right. It doesn’t have those black specks in it.”
He nodded in his taciturn way.
In Salem Town, he left me off, wishing me well. I made my way to the market and Mary Carmen saw me before I found her. I pulled her off to a side
alley, not wanting to be seen or to have anyone notice Mary Carmen speaking to me.
I told her that I had been accused.
“It’s going to be all right. Saint Teresa of Avila came to me again last night, Betty-Fatu,” Mary Carmen said excitedly. “She will help us in our battle against the Devil, but she says we must be very brave. It won’t be easy.”
I was stunned that Mary Carmen had this to say — how had she known?
“That’s exactly what we must do,” I told her. “It’s what I came to tell you. No one else will believe what’s really happening.”
Mary Carmen took a narrow vial of water from her apron pocket. “It’s holy water,” she told me. “I have carried it with me from Barcelona and have kept it for years. I think now might be the time to use it.”
“Keep it close,” I said, “and also the blue marble from Saint Teresa. We’re going to need all the help we can get. Somehow, we will figure out a way to defeat this thing.”
I left her then and went to find Aakif at the shipyard. As usual when he spied me, he came off the ship’s rigging.
“Let’s not talk here,” I warned.
“I have been accused,” I told him once we stood together at the shaded end of the alley, away from the street.
Immediately, he wrapped his arms around me. “We’ll go away,” he said. “Tonight, I won’t go back to the Osbornes’ but I’ll meet you at the barn. We’ll leave before they find you.”
“No. We have to fight this thing,” I objected.
“You are brave, Betty-Fatu; but how? Do you really think that we can take on the Devil?”
“Maybe it’s not the Devil,” I suggested, “but only some evil force.”
“What does it matter? You’ve seen what it can do. Pride is a sin too, you know. Pride can destroy a person. Don’t let it destroy you.”
What he said made sense. I didn’t even know how to find these witches and their hideous, terrifying black hound.
“All right,” I agreed. “But we have to bring Mary Carmen with us. I can’t leave her behind.”
“Fine. Surely. We will meet tonight at the barn and then go to the Osbornes’ together to get her.”
“Did you see Van Leeuwenhoek?”
Aakif nodded. “I just returned minutes ago. He was intrigued and looked at the specks while I was still there. He said to tell you there are animalcules in the rye. His colleagues there said it was a mold called ergot.”
I recalled the evil Bronwyn referring to this as ergot rye.
“When eaten, ergot rye makes symptoms such as the girls display: muscle twitching, nausea, jerking limbs, and delirium. It can kill a person,” Aakif continued.
“This is amazing, Aakif. It must be what allows the evil creatures into the mind of their victims,” I realized. “We have to get them to stop eating those dream cakes.”
“Forget it, Betty-Fatu. Let’s just get you away from here where you’ll be safe.”
“I don’t know. I have to think on it. It doesn’t seem right to run.”
“Van Leeuwenhoek is going to write to Governor Phips. He will tell him what he’s learned.”
Two guards walked by and one of them glanced at us. My heart nearly stopped but they kept going. “I have to get back into the forest where it’s safe,” I insisted. “If they catch us together they will arrest you, as well as me.”
“I will risk that,” Aakif told me as we walked back toward the street. “Nine o’clock tonight at the barn. Bring everything you have that you will want to take with you.”
Aakif left first, and a few minutes later I emerged from the alley. It was too early for John Indian to be done with his work at the tavern, so I set out on foot, my face averted from the passersby, out of Salem Town and back toward Salem Village where I knew the forest well.
My mind raced with the possibilities before me. What good would I be to anyone if I was incarcerated in a cell like Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne? But something deep inside told me that to run away and save only myself was wrong. I knew Aakif was thinking only of me, and I loved that he cared so much. I just didn’t know what I should do.
With my head down, I passed through the streets, almost forgetting where I was. But suddenly I started and cried out in shock. Hands gripped both my arms. There were guards on either side of me.
“Elsabeth James, you are under arrest. You have been charged with maleficium. Witchcraft.”
ON THE DAY OF MY TRIAL, MARCH 19, GUARDS BROUGHT me to the courtroom just as Rebecca Nurse was giving testimony.
A black-robed judge in a white wig sat at a high desk. I saw Althea among the people who’d come to witness the trial. She smiled at me, but I didn’t want to acknowledge her for fear of involving her in any way.
Among the spectators, I was surprised to see the native Indian father and daughter, the same pair who had come to Salem with us on the ship. There were many others whom I knew.
At a table to the judge’s right, Reverend Parris sat behind an open ledger, quickly recording everything that was being said. In the front row, to my left, sat Rebecca Nurse’s sisters, Mary Easty and Sarah Cloyce.
As I walked in, they looked sharply in my direction. I was sure they recognized me from the night in the barn. I longed to tell them it had not been me who’d accused them. Four-year-old Dorcas Good sat off to the side with her mother, looking pale and sickly, with dark circles under her eyes. How I pitied the little girl.
On my right sat the accusing girls. They also appeared frayed and exhausted by this ordeal, their hair tangled and dirty, skin blemished, their eyes wild and sunken. It was not surprising to me, knowing as I did that they had been in a drugged delirium for weeks.
Abigail Williams suddenly jumped from her spot and threw her hands in the air. “She’s twisting my neck!” she shrieked, pointing at poor, elderly Rebecca Nurse with one hand and clutching her neck with the other.
An icy draft hit me when I walked near the bench where the accusers sat. I was certain that Evil Bronwyn, the three witches, and the black hound were present. I aimed my mind-reading ability in their direction. Murmuring and mumbling filled my head, as did wild, shrieking laughter. “We see you, Betty-Fatu! There’s a speck of ergot still in your pocket. Taste it and join us!”
Reaching into my apron pocket, I discovered that there was, indeed, a black speck still there, clinging to the fabric. Now I was certain that the evil forces were right here with us.
The guards bid me to sit on the bench beside the other accused.
A tall, stern-looking man in his fifties had been interrogating Rebecca Nurse. Now he turned to Abigail. “Goodwife Nurse is all the way over here,” he pointed out, even as Abigail still clutched at her own neck. “How could she be afflicting you?”
“Her spirit afflicts me,” Abigail insisted. “Her specter is beside me.”
“I see it!” shouted Ann Putnam. “She is with her sisters and she torments us.”
“No!” Mary Easty objected as Ann collapsed, trembling from head to toe, her black boots banging on the floor, her back and head seizing as though she was being throttled.
John Hathorne, the judge, turned to Rebecca Nurse. “Goody Nurse, here are two — Ann Putnam and Abigail Williams — who complain of your hurting them. What do you say to it?”
“I can say before my eternal Father, I am innocent and God will clear my innocency. I am innocent and clear. I have been ill and unable to leave my house for the last eight or nine months.”
As much as I believed she was telling the truth, I too had seen her at the barn that night, along with her sisters and Dorcas.
“Are you innocent of this witchcraft?” John Hathorne pressed her.
Exasperated and exhausted, Rebecca Nurse dropped her head and spread out her hands in despair. “Oh, Lord, help me!” she cried.
The girls on the front bench shrieked in pain, twisting in agony. “She tortures us!” Mercy Lewis cried out. “Her hands. Make her put down her hands.”
“No, I
will not sign it!” Abigail Williams shouted, talking to some invisible entity. “It is the Devil’s Book! I will not sign it.”
Hathorne whirled on Rebecca Nurse. “You would do well if you are guilty to confess and give glory to God!” he bellowed. “Is it not an accountable case that when you are examined, these persons are afflicted?”
“I have nobody to look to but God,” Rebecca Nurse answered passionately.
“Do you believe these afflicted persons are bewitched?” John Hathorne questioned in a thunderous voice.
“I do think they are,” Rebecca Nurse answered. In fact, she knew they were. Like Tituba, she had memory of the event but no way to stop it. I knew she was not telling all that had happened, knowing that the truth would be twisted.
John Hathorne pointed at the hysterical, twitching girls. “What do you think of this?” he demanded.
Exasperated, Rebecca Nurse shouted her answer. “I cannot help it; the Devil may appear in my shape!”
When they brought me up to testify, I told my story as accurately as I could. “And so you see, I am sure there is evil afoot in Salem and the rye these girls are eating is infested with a substance called ergot that allows these evil forces to afflict them.”
Mercy Lewis was instantly on her feet. “It’s a lie! We have done no wrong. We have not attempted to tell fortunes, nor have we made these dream cakes she speaks of.”
“It’s you who lie,” I shot back. “You know you have eaten them.”
Elizabeth Hubbard, a girl of seventeen, who was a maid in Dr. Griggs’s household and one of the accusers, also jumped up. “You hope to shift your guilt to us with this lie. You are an evil witch.”
All the girls nodded and murmured their consent. Only little Betty Parris averted her eyes guiltily.
“Tell the court again how you survived the shipwreck of the Golden Explorer,” John Hathorne bid me.
“I swam until I found a barrel to float in.”