‘Not those children we saw today. They—’
Sewall reminds himself that this is a moment to be uncompromising. He mustn’t succumb to groundless leniency in so serious a matter out of fear of offending one of his peers, as he did in the case of the pirates. There is always a price to be paid for such moral cowardice. In this case a reprieve for Bridget Bishop (even if he could pluck one from his sleeve like some conjuror performing in that back room of Captain Wing’s tavern) would give the lie to the afflicted children, and betray their courageous witness so that all their struggles and torments would have been in vain. And he would set free a witch into the plantations of New England, just as he had once set pirates free upon its seas. ‘They were pined and consumed, despite your argument,’ he says with as much quiet definiteness as he can muster.
‘It wasn’t an argument,’ Brattle replies. ‘It was simply a statement of what I saw with my own eyes. Or didn’t see.’
‘But you didn’t understand that the torments in question took place in the children’s souls. Their bodies remain unharmed because it is not their bodies that the Devil is after.’
‘Samuel,’ says Mr. Brattle, in unexpected (and unwelcome) intimacy, with lowered voice, ‘we live a long way from anywhere, from everywhere. We inhabit the edge of things. There is a vast tract of wilderness to our west, and a vast tract of ocean to our east. But you and I have travelled.’ He takes hold of Sewall’s elbow and peers intently into his face. ‘We were over the sea in England, where we became acquainted with seats of learning, of science and art, places where great thoughts are thought and great affairs undertaken. Surely while you were over there you didn’t leave your wits behind you in this small place?’
Sewall remembers that giant stride of the angel, leaning forward from Europe, plunging his foot towards the middle of the ocean and finding a resting-place for it on America’s shore. ‘Not just my wits, Mr. Brattle. I left my heart here too. And my soul. Good day to you.’
CHAPTER 16
A lovely June morning. Sewall is on his way to the Town House where he’s going to attend a session of the General Council at which it will finally be voted that the laws passed by the previous legislature should remain in force. As he passes Captain Wing’s tavern the door opens and a man with head aflame steps out on to the street.
‘Good morning, Major Saltonstall,’ Sewall says heartily, though his nostrils twitch as winy fumes dispel the freshness of the day. ‘Will you walk with me to the meeting?’
‘I’m not going to the meeting.’ Saltonstall looks Sewall in the eye and gives that disarming smile of his, shrugging his shoulders ruefully at the same time.
‘Why ever not?’ Sewall asks, Major Saltonstall being a conscientious and principled man.
‘Come in, and let me buy you breakfast,’ Saltonstall says, pulling open the Castle Tavern’s front door again.
‘I’ve had my breakfast already.’ Immediately, the smell of baking pastry and cooking meat wafts out of the aperture and he regrets this testy refusal, brought on by his colleague’s unexpected avoidance of his duty.
‘Well, I can buy you a drink, in any case.’
They enter the reassuring gloom. When Captain Wing sees who it is he rushes over to greet Sewall enthusiastically, crying, ‘Good morning, your honour!’ and shaking him vigorously by the hand. Now that the trials have begun people seem to be calling him your honour even when he isn’t in court. It’s as if his part in these proceedings is the only thing that matters, and his responsibilities as a Council member, merchant, private banker, householder and family man have all been forgotten. ‘I got hold of some plump rabbits, yesterday,’ Wing continues. ‘And have made some excellent pasties with them. Perhaps one each for you two gentlemen?’
‘Ah,’ Sewall replies.
‘And a bottle of wine,’ Saltonstall adds.
Luckily the pasties aren’t on the scale of the one Sewall took with him on the Salem ferry, but they are golden, fragrant and spherical enough. He decides to make use of his inconsistency. ‘Can’t I persuade you to change your mind about going to the Council as I have just done in respect of this pie?’
Saltonstall pours himself a glass of wine. His eyes are red-rimmed and tired, perhaps because of the wine he’s drunk already, but he’s not a young man in any case, more than twelve years Sewall’s senior. His bright hair is beginning to turn a little grey, as though depositing ash. ‘No, you can’t,’ he says.
‘Surely it’s our duty as upholders of the law to ensure there’s a law to uphold?’
‘Mr. Sewall, the moment we vote to ratify the laws, Mr. Stoughton will sign Bridget Bishop’s death warrant. I want no part of it.’
Sewall is startled. True, Saltonstall advocated reprieving those pirates, but now, witches too! ‘You saw those tormented children with your own eyes.’ (Unlike Mr. Brattle, Major Saltonstall has children of his own, now grown.) ‘Are you saying they are liars?’
‘They testify to what they see and feel. I have to do the same. And I don’t see a witch, I just see a frightened woman. You know Mr. Stoughton asked me to join the examination of Mr. Burroughs?’ Sewall didn’t know, and shakes his head at Mr. Stoughton’s lack of frankness. ‘I’ve met Mr. Burroughs several times,’ Saltonstall continues.
‘So have I. He was in my—’
‘He’s a vain man and no doubt a bully. If he was being examined for treating his wives unkindly, I would willingly have taken part. But if you ask me to accept the possibility that he killed them by magic, as part of a conspiracy to turn New England into the Devil’s kingdom, I’m afraid I just can’t swallow it.’ He stares down at his pasty and shakes his head.
‘Bridget Bishop didn’t appear frightened to me, in any case,’ Sewall says. He remembers those dark irises of hers, that remote appraising look lacking any hint of female modesty. ‘She looked quite calm. I thought she was bold.’
Saltonstall raises his head and fixes Sewall with his sad eyes. ‘Numb,’ he replies. ‘Numb with despair and fear. I’ve seen it in battle. Numbness overtakes some men, and it’s easy to mistake it for courage. For boldness.’ He pours himself yet more wine, then holds the bottle over Sewall’s glass. Sewall places a hand over the top to say no. He wouldn’t mind another drop but doesn’t want to encourage his colleague to drink more than he should. To no avail: Saltonstall merely withdraws the bottle and squeezes more into his own glass.
Sewall presents the case he has already made to himself: the verdict was decided by the jury, not the judges; the punishment is prescribed by the law—again, not by the judges. Even as he speaks, this seems a wriggling and evasive kind of argument.
‘Yes,’ Saltonstall agrees tiredly. ‘But if I vote on the ratification, I will be directly responsible for its consequence, the death of the woman Bishop. And since I am not prepared to take responsibility for that, then it would be wrong for me to remain on the bench to hear similar charges against others. So this morning I wrote to Mr. Stoughton, resigning from the Court of Oyer and Terminer.’
Sewall says nothing in response to this astonishing news but simply slides his glass across the table. He needs another drink, come what may. Saltonstall makes to oblige but the bottle is empty. He gives Sewall his sudden charming smile, then turns and signals to Captain Wing for another.
The night before Bridget Bishop is hanged, Sewall lies in bed thinking tumultuous thoughts for many hours (Hannah is spending the night in her own chamber with little Mary, who has the colic, in a cot beside her). That conversation with Saltonstall beats through his brain. The children must testify to what they have seen. I (said Major Saltonstall) must do the same.
But does that mean that the children are seeing what isn’t there? And isn’t that the same as claiming they are lying, just as Mr. Brattle alleged?
Bishop is a woman awaiting hanging, numb with fear . . . How absurd that Mr. Burroughs killed his wives by magic, that he le
ads a conspiracy to turn New England into the Devil’s kingdom . . .
Sewall wakes with a start, as though he has reached the rope’s end himself. He must have been sleeping after all.
Hannah is not beside him in the bed and he gets up to look for her. There she is ahead of him, striding up a hill towards a tree at the top. No, it isn’t a tree after all but a gallows, and she is about to be hanged from it. He runs as fast as his heavy body will let him, calling out that there has been a mistake, but arrives at the base of the gallows just as she is turned off. As she falls he perceives it’s not a mistake after all, or rather it’s his own mistake, since the condemned woman isn’t Hannah but Bridget Bishop.
He glimpses Bishop’s face just as the rope bites, the expression indescribable, almost unseeable, utter terror, utter pain, utter misery, utter utterness, hardly room on her white countenance for it all, a woman poised for a final moment exactly on the cusp of am and was.
He wakes again, and is in his own bed. Of course, of course, his Hannah is safe in her chamber, with little Mary sleeping close by. He sighs, and collects himself. The room isn’t completely dark: morning must be approaching. He needs to piss but since he is alone he can use the chamber pot without awkwardness. He leans over and fumbles under the bed for it, drags it on top of the covers, kneels above it, hoists up the front of his nightshirt and relieves himself. As he bends over to return the pot to its place he realises the back of his nightshirt is warm and wet against his legs and then discovers that the pot is broken, part of the bottom missing, and the Welsh cotton blanket on his bed has been saturated.
He can’t think what to do. He feels too mortified to rouse Hannah, and certainly can’t confide in Sarah or Susan. He finally tiptoes to the window, opens it and calls down to the outhouse where Bastian has his bed, nightshirt clinging to his calves as he bends forward.
It’s odd, shouting in a whisper, but in a moment or two Bastian appears at the door of his small house in a nightshirt of his own, and having looked around for the source of the summons finally raises his face upwards, and then his arm to indicate he has seen.
It doesn’t take long for everything to be dealt with. Bastian fetches him a new nightshirt, lights a small fire in the grate, and puts the wet shirt and bedding over the backs of chairs to dry. ‘No one will be any the wiser, master,’ he says comfortingly.
‘Except you,’ Sewall replies glumly.
‘But I’m no one,’ Bastian replies, his chest heaving with almost silent laughter. ‘That’s proof of it!’
When he has gone, Sewall reflects on the strangeness of the night. He has lost his wife, then followed her to gallows hill, then seen Bridget Bishop executed and remembered his wife again. To cap it all he has wet the bed. Trouble and disgrace can come from any source; the world is composed of little things as well as great ones.
He thinks of Cotton Mather telling him about the way large witchcrafts and hauntings can be born of childish games; by the same token, perhaps, large and important Massachusetts citizens like Mr. Brattle and Major Saltonstall need to understand that the witness of young children is as valid as anyone else’s.
CHAPTER 17
‘Your adversary, the Devil, is a roaring lion,’ Mr. Willard exclaims at Sunday afternoon meeting. ‘He has come with power and in great wrath. He ranges everywhere. He takes every opportunity, however small it might appear, however fleeting it might be, to perform mischief on us to the utmost extent of his power.’
When he leaves the meeting house Sewall walks straight into Cotton Mather who is rushing up full of fluster and paperwork, wig awry. ‘Ha, Mr. Sewall!’ he cries.
‘I didn’t expect to see you, Mr. Mather. I thought you would be conducting the service at the North Church this afternoon.’
‘My father is officiating. I was going to attend Mr. Willard’s service, but I was working on this document in my study. To my mortification I lost all sense of time, and set out too late.’ A tear forms in the corner of each aghast, protuberant eye. ‘I will address the omission later, with prayer and prostration. With gnashing of teeth, Mr. Sewall.’
‘I’m sure your work was important in any case.’
‘No task, even one to be performed at speed by command of the governor himself, which this is’—patting the heap of papers—‘can take precedence over our duty to the Lord. My excuse is that this too was the Lord’s business, in its own way, since it concerns the spiritual health of our province.’
Wife Hannah and Betty come up. ‘Perhaps you will join us for some dinner, Mr. Mather?’ asks Hannah.
‘That is so kind, dear lady, but sadly I can’t. Time presses.’ He pats his papers. ‘But on second thoughts, a glass of wine and a handful of nuts? That will give Mr. Sewall a few moments to pass his eyes over the papers here.’ He turns to Sewall. ‘I was bringing this for Mr. Willard’s approval but it occurs to me it would be helpful to have your opinion first, as a judge of the court.’
The document is titled The Return of Several Ministers, though Cotton Mather has written it singlehandedly for the sake of speed, and simply intends to get the approval of other ministers before submitting it to the governor. Mr. Phips has commissioned it because of his concern at Bridget Bishop’s execution and the sheer scale of the developing witchcraft, with several hundred people now accused and nearly a hundred in prison awaiting trial (John Alden among them).
They sit in the study, Sewall reading at his desk and Cotton Mather opposite, cracking walnuts with surprising loudness. It’s odd how harmless words can seem when they first strike the eye. You perform the mechanical task of determining the sense of what is on the page, and only when you have done that does the meaning sink in. Cotton Mather has attacked the procedure at the preliminary examinations and at the Court of Oyer and Terminer, the noise and chaos that erupts, the tests for possession, above all the phenomenon of spectral evidence because (claims Mather) the Devil can take the form of an innocent person and thereby give the afflicted the delusion they are being haunted and tormented by witches.
Sewall sits where he is, taking deep breaths, trying to organise his thoughts. The detonations from Mr. Mather’s walnuts continue unabashed. There is noise and chaos in court, thinks Sewall, because crimes are being committed there and then, before the very eyes of jury and justices, and crimes bring suffering, and suffering makes people cry out and fall over, especially when the victims are children. Mr. Mather is a loving father himself; how can he be immune to those cries of pain? And the tests for possession, such as the one where the afflicted touch their tormentors to see if that will return the spectres to their original bodies: how can proof be proved without a test?
And lastly, if the Devil can take the form of innocent people when committing his own crimes, then all crimes whatsoever might as well be assigned to him and him alone, and every court, prison and gallows in the whole world can be closed down for lack of custom. In any case, Sewall has previously checked the doctrine that Satan cannot take the shape of innocent persons in his law books. It has been the primum mobile of witchcraft cases in England, as asserted by both Glanvil and Baxter.
Aware that Sewall has finished reading, Mather looks hopefully across at him. Within the tendrils of that fulsome wig he looks like the schoolboy he must once have been, awaiting praise for his homework. How can he not understand what he has done? ‘You have poured scorn upon the court,’ Sewall tells him. He feels suddenly weepy as he says this. ‘You have attacked the good faith of the judges.’
Mather blinks in astonishment. ‘I beg your pardon?’ he replies. ‘I was simply suggesting good practice.’
‘The moral to be drawn from your Return is that the judges have made a terrible mistake in allowing the execution of Bridget Bishop.’
‘My dear friend, I would never impugn your integrity. Or that of your fellow judges, all of whom I count as my friends too. Oh dear, oh dear, how to make good? Do you have a pen I
can borrow? And some ink?’
Mather begins scratching away furiously. After a few minutes of this he puts down the quill, blows on the page with as much contentment as if cooling a bowl of soup, and passes the document back to Sewall. Then picks up another nut and cracks it sharply by way of writing finis to his labour.
Sewall scans the text. Mr. Mather hasn’t crossed anything out but simply added a new sentence at the end of his piece. It reads: ‘Nevertheless, we cannot but humbly recommend to the government the speedy and vigorous prosecution of those who have rendered themselves obnoxious, according to the laws of God and the statutes of England for the detection of witchcraft.’ He looks up in bafflement.
‘There,’ Mather reassures him, ‘this appendix, or one might say, coda, should put the wind in your sails. This is what will stay in the governor’s mind.’
Sewall continues to stare. As far as he can see, the appendix (or coda) flatly contradicts everything that has gone before. The trials are a fiasco; the trials must continue; those are the conclusions to be drawn, one then the other. Yet clearly Mr. Mather sees no problem at all with this contradiction. His intellect is so roomy it is able to accommodate both points of view at the same time. As a critic he finds fault with the trials; as a friend to the judges (and sincere hater of witchcraft), he wishes them God speed.
Having concluded the meeting to his own satisfaction, Mather gets to his feet, adjusts his wig, picks up his papers and takes his leave. Sewall accompanies him down the stairs and through the vestibule. Mather pats young Sam on the shoulder as he passes, and to Sewall’s gratification his son gives a small bow in response.
Then, as he pulls the front door closed behind the scurrying Cotton Mather, Sewall freezes. Sam? What is Sam doing here? He should be with Mr. Hobart, over in Newton.
For a moment he inspects the wood of the door, as if trying to fool himself into an interest in the convolutions of its grain. Then at last he slowly turns. Sam isn’t here. The vestibule is deserted.
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