He remembers the allure of Madam Winthrop as she showed him her miry skirts. Perhaps she would also look normal (so to speak) if she wore no clothes at all. He tries to think through this question judiciously but finds himself taking out a handkerchief to mop his forehead (it is oppressively hot). Adam and Eve, having eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, stitched themselves little aprons from fig leaves, and then God sewed them coats of goatskins to wear when expelled from the Garden. He must remind daughter Hannah, unhappy at being taught to sew, that God Himself was willing to ply needle and thread.
Perhaps true indecency is when you can see nakedness beneath or within clothing, so that the whole sad story of the Fall is as it were compressed into a single image.
‘Nobody about,’ says the man. He points round at the absence of onlookers, at the presence of insensate fields, trees and rocks.
‘I am about,’ says Sewall.
‘You stopped and looked at me a purpose. You could have just rid on.’
‘But even before I came along someone was looking at you. God was looking at you.’
‘But God made me naked,’ the man says after a pause. ‘So why should He care?’
Sewall is impressed by his logic. ‘One day, here in America,’ he tells him, ‘a new dispensation, or should I say, the oldest dispensation of all, will be established and we will be returned to the Garden which was our earliest home. But in the meantime we are a fallen people and have to wear our clothes.’ If the man didn’t understand ‘supplement’ he is not likely to comprehend ‘dispensation’, but in this lonely place Sewall needs polysyllabic buttressing to establish his authority. The thought strikes him that if he was naked too there would be an enforced equality of the body, since social distinctions depend on dress. But those distinctions are as necessary to the sublunary world as big and little cogs are necessary in a clock (he is expecting delivery of a new longcase clock from England)—though of course in heaven there will be no need to keep time, no time to keep.
The man pauses for a moment, as if to emphasise that he isn’t cowed. Then he shrugs his shoulders, turns and walks slowly towards his pile of clothes, his bearing stiff with resentment, his arse glaring sullenly back at Sewall.
*
The witches are to be hanged from a single frame, a sad coven indeed.
Sewall waits with Nicholas Noyes and other interested gentlemen for the cart to arrive. Around them a hotch-potch of onlookers, relatives come to mourn, accusers and afflicted (a number of the young girls are present, Ann Putnam holding her father’s hand) to witness the lifting of their oppression, or at least part of it, and lastly the execution-gawpers, here for entertainment.
The gallows is situated on a low hill not far from the sea, which today is a rich navy-blue with white horses riding the breakers. The sky is much paler than the waters below it, as if the intense heat of the sun has washed away its colour. ‘I feel like a lump of fat melting in a pan,’ grumbles Noyes. ‘I’m sure they should be here by now,’ he adds, as though the condemned witches are carelessly late for an appointment. Sewall wonders whether they too resent the delay and wish their suffering over and done with, or whether they cherish these extra minutes, each with the sunshiny world within it.
At last the cart comes swaying up the hill with the five witches sitting awkwardly on its planking. There are five nooses dangling and beside each rests a ladder. The hangman places each witch at the base of her own ladder (puffing his pipe the meanwhile) and when they are in position the marshall reads out the confirmation of their death sentences. Then Sewall seizes his moment to speak. ‘As one of the judges of the court that sentenced you,’ he says, ‘I must remind you that you will not die today if you repudiate Satan. The way to do this is to admit your guilt. If you confess to your witchcraft even at this late hour, you will be returned to prison, and if it is determined that your confession is sincere may even be freed.’
The witches remain in place, saying nothing. Sewall wonders whether Nurse has even heard. She is standing just as she did at her trial, stiffly upright and looking straight ahead. He steps towards her and asks in a loud voice if she has understood. Without turning to face him she replies, ‘Sir, I am not a witch. I have nothing to confess. If I should say I was a witch I would be lying to God Himself.’’
Sewall sighs and steps back to Mr. Noyes. ‘Perhaps you should speak to her,’ he says, ‘as her man of God. The twists and turns she has experienced may have confused her. Or made her obdurate.’
‘I am not her man of God,’ asserts Noyes. ‘Not now, nor ever was. This Nurse was a hypocrite at the Lord’s feast. I excommunicated her as a matter of form but she wasn’t one of the saints in the first place. She was a viper in our bosom.’ He thumps his own bosom as if to establish the absence of any viper remaining there now. ‘I will speak to Goody Good instead. Her name and honorific are two good omens.’ He catches Sewall’s eye to check this wordplay has struck home, then steps over to Sarah Good, the muttering woman, a forlorn figure in raggedy dress and shawl, even now talking to herself under her breath. ‘You must confess,’ says Noyes. ‘You must seize this final opportunity to redeem your soul and save your life. You’re a witch and you know it.’
For a few moments Goody Good continues to mouth her imprecations. Then an amazing thing happens: her voice suddenly rings out across the broad day, loud and true. ‘You are a liar!’
Noyes emits a sort of high-pitched whinny. Good continues: ‘I am no more a witch than you are a wizard, and if you take away my life, God will give you blood to drink!’
Immediately the crowd begins to murmur, the afflicted with indignation at her impudence but the gawpers (Sewall suspects) to register their approval of this terrible prophecy. Meanwhile Mr. Noyes backs away incongruously on tiptoe. Only when he’s level with Sewall does he dare turn round. His paunchy cheeks are white, his eyes bulge, there are drops of sweat on his bald pate.
The marshall has seen (and heard) enough—he waves his hand at the hangman who immediately goes up to Goody Good and signals her to begin to climb her ladder. He seizes one of her ankles to let her know that she has arrived at a suitable rung, then climbs up behind her (still puffing smoke) and ties her hands together behind her back. Then he places the rope around her neck and climbs back down again. Sewall notices how, now that she can’t hold on with her hands, Good has flattened her body against the ladder out of blind need to preserve her life for as long as possible. The hangman repeats the process with each of the witches in turn. Several of them are whimpering and groaning in terror and anguish, but Nurse and Good remain silent.
Mr. Noyes begins to recite the Lord’s Prayer to a throbbing undercurrent of noise from the crowd, and a few hostile and sacrilegious shouts. The hangman approaches Good’s ladder again, gives it a quick twist then drops it to the ground. He does the same to the others.
And there the witches are, dancing at the end of their ropes.
Next day there’s a fast in Captain Alden’s house, organised by Sewall himself. It’s in order to ask God to keep his old friend safe, both spiritually and bodily. Alden himself isn’t present of course—he’s in jail, awaiting trial—but his wife and newly ransomed son participate in the devotions. These are led by Samuel Willard, who is minister both to Alden and to Sewall himself, but Cotton Mather also attends out of respect to a brave defender of the community as well as to Mr. Alden’s late father, Mayflower veteran and one of the founders of New England (as Mather announces somewhat floridly at the beginning of the little ceremony).
At the very moment Sewall opens the front door to take his leave, there’s a rumble of thunder. Suddenly the rain is beating down on the Aldens’ small front garden and the roadway beyond, sending up a pleasant aroma of refreshed vegetation and heated dust. This break in the weather is a good omen, both for the perturbations of Massachusetts in general and for the fate of John Alden in particular.
Sewall stands
on the doorstep a moment inhaling the cooler air. Someone is approaching along the road, a hurrying person, dimmed by rain. As he reaches the Aldens’ gate he spies Sewall, waves an arm and turns in. His features clarify as he comes down the path. It’s Mr. Brattle. ‘Mr. Sewall, good day. This is poor Mr. Alden’s house, I believe.’
‘We’ve been holding a fast on his behalf.’
‘I see.’ Mr. Brattle has squeezed in under the small porch so the two men are almost nose to nose. A silver droplet of rainwater dangles from Brattle’s, quivering when he speaks. ‘Don’t you fear a conflict of loyalties? As one of the judges who will try his case?’
‘Prayer is always acceptable, both to man and God. I wish Mr. Alden well, and hope he will be found not guilty of witchcraft. This doesn’t preempt the trial in any way.’
‘I see. That hasn’t always been the case, however.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I was present a few weeks ago when—oh, excuse me.’ Mr. Brattle has become aware of that jiggling raindrop depending from the tip of his nose. He is a man who likes neatness and order, both in his surroundings and habits of thought. To Sewall’s astonishment (and admiration) Brattle raises his thumb and forefinger to his nose and plucks the drop from it, for all the world as if it’s a gemstone rather than just sparkling like one. ‘When one of the accused, John Proctor, asked Mr. Noyes to pray for him. Mr. Noyes flatly refused because Proctor wouldn’t admit to being a witch.’
Sewall recalls how Mr. Noyes also refused to speak to Goody Nurse at the foot of her ladder yesterday. ‘Mr. Noyes wishes to encourage the accused to admit their witchcraft and thereby save themselves, soul and perhaps body also.’
‘That’s very commendable, I’m sure. But it rests on the assumption that everyone accused is guilty—with the exception, perhaps, of the one prisoner who happens to be a friend of the judges and clergy of this colony, Mr. Alden.’
‘And it is as a friend that I prayed for him. Just as, no doubt, Mr. Proctor’s friends pray for him. Mr. Noyes wasn’t present here today because he isn’t on intimate terms with Mr. Alden.’
Mr. Brattle smiles a superior little smile with those chiselled lips of his. ‘Well, at least he seems to be consistent in withholding his favours.’
‘He is consistent in wishing to safeguard our poor province. He’s consistent in hammering heretics, as we all should be.’
‘I have some news. I don’t know whether you’ve heard it. Relating to the consistency of another gentleman, though consistency of the opposite sort. Mr. Saltonstall, up in Haverhill.’
‘What of him?’
‘It concerns his judicial responsibilities.’
‘He resigned from the Court of Oyer and Terminer some weeks ago, as I’m sure you’re aware.’
‘Indeed I am. I wrote to congratulate him on his integrity.’
‘He could have retained his integrity by sitting on the court. The court qua court does not lean one way or another.’
‘I wonder if Mr. Stoughton would agree, given his disgraceful intervention in the case of Rebecca Nurse. The friends who prayed for her must have lacked sufficient influence.’
‘I protested at that point. Major Saltonstall could have done so too, if he’d—’
‘Well, anyhow, even though he has resigned from your court he is still the magistrate of his own township.’
‘What of it?’
‘The witchcraft has reached even that far north. By which I mean, you must understand, the craze for denouncing so-called witches has progressed to that area. Four poor women were hauled before Mr. Saltonstall’s court. But he has refused to hear their cases, which have been transferred back across the river to Andover. No doubt they will be remanded to the Court of Oyer and Terminer in due course, but if they are, Mr. Saltonstall’s hands will be clean.’
‘It was Pontius Pilate who washed his hands, if I remember,’ Sewall replies.
‘I’ll take my leave,’ says Mr. Brattle, ‘since it’s stopped raining.’ He gives a curt little bow and scurries off along the Aldens’ garden path.
Indeed, it has stopped raining. In the last few moments the clouds have rifted and the sun is peeping through. And there, over the rooftops, appears a faint rainbow. Sewall sighs with pleasure. He is a lover of rainbows, a collector of them in fact, since he makes a point of recording each sighting. Every time he sees one he thinks of the angel making his enormous stride across the Atlantic to grace America, that angel with a rainbow on his head like a many-coloured crown. Perhaps this present manifestation is to reassure him that the Court of Oyer and Terminer is just and necessary (and pleasing to the Lord) despite Mr. Brattle’s snide remarks.
And, more importantly, that it will ultimately rescue Massachusetts from its woes.
He wakes in the middle of the night, heart pounding.
Yesterday Mr. Brattle gave news of four more witches being discovered at Haverhill.
And the day before, Susannah Martin of Amesbury was hanged as a witch (along with the four others).
Both places are adjacent to Rowley, where daughter Hannah is staying. The contagion is sweeping through the area and his child is in danger. He has already ignored the first of these two warnings. At any moment Hannah could be attacked by spectres. At best she will suffer; at worst succumb. She could become a witch herself. And she is only up there in the first place in order to justify a lie. It seems impossible, suddenly, to understand how he can have failed to listen to her cries for help. What can he have been thinking of? Hoping she will learn to sew a cushion while her very soul is endangered?
Dawn comes at last. He slides up the bed, frees himself from the thin sheet and swings his legs over the side.
‘It’s early, isn’t it?’ Hannah whispers.
‘I have a journey to make.’
‘It isn’t another trial so soon? I hate you having to attend them. They are so . . . ’ She tails off, unable to determine exactly what is so so about them. ‘I hate them,’ she concludes lamely.
‘No, it’s not another trial. I’m going to cousin William’s at Rowley. I think it’s time to fetch our Hannah back home. I don’t like—’
‘Oh Sam! I’m so glad!’ She lunges over to his side of the bed and grasps his arm to pull herself up to him. ‘You don’t know, I’ve lain awake night after night worrying about her.’ She has a pleasantly intimate smell.
‘I feel she needs her family around her in this dangerous time.’
‘I have felt that all along,’ Hannah says without any animus. ‘You must have some breakfast before you go. Are you going to hire that little carriage again?’
‘I’ll leave it to Bastian to do that and follow me there. I want to get to Hannah and tell her the news as soon as I can.’
He arrives early in the afternoon at cousin William’s farm, sun beating down upon his shoulders, his horse twitching with fatigue. He calls out but no one comes. He takes the horse round to the barn then knocks vigorously on the front door, putting his ear to its surface to hear the result. The whole place is silent except for the chirping of crickets in the grass and the buzz of bees in a lavender bush by the house of office. No one in the nearby fields even, just some distant cows placidly grazing.
As he rode here he pictured his arrival: Hannah rushing out to greet him, he swinging down from the saddle to take her in his arms (counterbalancing that horrible moment when he had to kick his boot away from her grasping hand as he rode off to Salem).
He tries the door and to his surprise it opens. Perhaps the place is too remote to be in much fear of robbers (and both witches and Indians can effect an entry without the use of keys). He calls again, just in case the door muffled his voice, but still no answer.
It’s cool in the kitchen—the oven fire has been let to go out. There’s a small barrel of beer on the side. He has had only water on his journey, which became unpleasantly warm
in the bottle as the hours went by. He takes down a tankard hanging on a hook and pours himself some. The beer is cool and refreshing but drinking it down makes him feel hungry.
To his surprise the pantry contains only a small portion of cooked chicken and a piece of cake. This is a farm. Where are the smoke-blackened hams, the golden pies, the preserved fruits, the corn cakes and the loaves of bread? He takes the meagre fare to the table, puts it on a trencher and sits down. For some reason he eats without dignity, taking a bite of the chicken, then of the cake, then of the chicken again, instead of finishing the one before starting on the other.
After his meal he sits and waits. He has a Bible in his pocket but can’t summon up the energy to read it. Every half an hour or so he rises to his feet, walks to the front door, and looks across the shimmering landscape towards its blue distances, hoping to see the Dummers and Hannah coming back. On one of these occasions he hears a mournful cry. His heart contracts with fear but then it’s repeated and he realises it must come from some sort of bird, perhaps a loon calling from a hidden pond. Nevertheless from this moment on he keeps imagining a terrible fate has overtaken the three of them, that they have been carried off, or scalped and murdered, by an Indian raiding party.
The afternoon wears slowly on. The light coming through the kitchen window modulates from white to yellow to pale orange. Sewall sighs to think of his wasted hurry, of that joyful anticipation he experienced while galloping here. A bluebottle whizzes tirelessly about in the room’s still air.
And then, a distant sound of hooves, rumbling of wheels, snatch of inaudible conversation, a brief peal of laughter.
Sewall rushes to the front door. The Dummers are still a few hundred yards away, approaching in their cart, William at the reins and Abigail and Hannah beside him. They are all laughing and talking animatedly, and haven’t spied him yet. Sewall is amazed to see his daughter looking so cheerful and relaxed. Where is the author of those tear-stained letters?
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