Children of Salem

by Robert W. Walker

  Jeremy stashed his journal, ink, and pen. Tituba watched him from the corner of one eye, gauging his fear of being caught with Tituba in a compromising circumstance. He saw a smirk on her lips.

  Then she called out across the room to him, saying, “Tituba wash bed linens?”

  “Yes,” shouted Parris, “do that for our guest, Tituba. Most thoughtful of you.”

  Jeremiah covered his tracks by snatching blanket away, then the sheets and pillow casing himself, but Parris ordered Mary Wolcott to take care of such work, saying to Jeremy, “Being a bachelor, I see you are in the habit of taking care of yourself.”

  “My father taught me self-reliance as a virtue, yes.”

  Parris frowned at this. “After you’re married, such trivial matters as sheets will fall to your Goodwife.”

  “That may be so but for now—” Jeremy shrugged and displayed a crooked grin, just glad that he’d managed to tuck away his journal, inkwell, and pen without arousing too much interest in them.

  Parris did not seem suspicious, as all he saw were his proffered sermon pages, and he was distracted, playing father to Betty. He hugged his little Betty to his cheek and asked if she had a fever. “The girl feels warm to me,” he added and asked his wife to decide.

  Mrs. Parris had Betty stick out her tongue while feeling her forehead and cheeks. “She’s not quite gotten over her winter chilblains.”

  Jeremiah had noticed a red, itchy swelling on Betty’s ears, fingers, and toes, a common ailment caused by exposure to damp, rot, and cold—or so the physicians warned.

  “I worry.” Parris continued to examine his only daughter.

  “As a father should,” Betty’s mother replied.

  Parris tugged at the child’s tiny hands and asked her how she felt.

  “I’m not sick no more! Tituba stopped that!”

  Parris stared at Tituba, whose back remained to them where she worked at the dry sink.

  The little girl seems his only special possession, Jeremy thought, watching Parris with Betty.

  “I’m fine, Da,” Betty pulled from her father’s grasp, giggling and running to Tituba, who kneeled and hugged the child and whispered some secret in her ear.

  Parris promptly but mildly scolded. “You come away from Tituba, now! She’s got chores and dinner to help with!”

  “But I-I’m all better, Dada,” whined Betty all of a sudden. “I wanna play with my dolly and I want Tituba to come!”

  “Wishing to get out of any work, aren’t you?” Parris fiercely scolded Tituba all of a sudden. “Whispering in her ear like that!”

  “No, no, massa!” countered Tituba, backing into a corner.

  “Do you want to turn Betty into a disobedient child?”

  Betty really looks flushed and feverish, certainly windblown and red-faced, Jeremy thought and at the back of his mind was Tituba’s witch pie story and the sacrificed chicken when in an instant, Jeremy saw the black woman place a finger to her lips as if to silence the child, Betty, who was again saying that Tituba made her well and could do it anytime.

  Parris suddenly flew into a rage at Betty, shouting, “You will not be playing with Tituba! And I won’t have you feigning illness to get out of work!”

  “But Father,” interjected Mrs. Parris, “the child has been ill. She’s still weak. Please!”

  “Ill is it? Weak? My child, weak? Or is it mere sloth? Simple sloth? Rubbed off from Mercy Lewis and Tituba over there!”

  Betty burst into tears and ran for the stairs, trying for her room, but she was caught up by her father who’d in one fluid motion grabbed the spanking rod and tore into the girl’s backside where he held her across his knee. “The Devil will never take thee, child!” Down came the rod again, Betty screaming in response, terrified. “I’ll kill ya afore I let the Devil ha-have ya!” Parris gasped with the last words, spent, his face now red, the veins popping.

  “Devil take you!” shouted Mary Wolcott, who rushed in and fought to pull Betty from her uncle’s grasp. But this only enraged Parris further. He shoved Mary hard against the floor and started in anew, spanking Betty.

  Betty looked like a kicking doll in Parris’ grip. To his wife’s wailing the word stop, the minister finally set Betty aside like a top spinning on her heels, searching for where to run to and finding her mother’s arms. Parris went now for Mary Wolcott. “You! In the shed out back until I come to tend to your insolence! Now!”

  Jeremy stepped in, saying, “Perhaps if we go out on the porch and calm down, Samuel, it might—”

  “You, too, Jeremy? Questioning my authority? Haven’t I warned you on that subject?”

  Secretly, Jeremy wanted to send a fist into the mouth so near him that the hot breath stank. “We have, sir, but—”

  “No buts, Mr. Wakely!” Parris held the rod so tight his knuckles bled white. Mary had also gone to Mrs. Parris’ comforting arms, but he shook the rod at her, and she obeyed, rushing just ahead of the rod, which cut into her twice before she got out of his reach.

  Parris returned from the back stair, the tattling rod still in hand. By now Tituba, Mrs. Parris, and Betty had busied themselves with anything they could find in the kitchen. This while Jeremy found the hearth, pretending to warm himself so as to look a great deal less concerned and involved than he felt.

  “Sorry, Mr. Wakely,” began a calmer Parris now in his ear.

  “Yes, well . . . sorry I said anything.”

  “I’m only sorry that you had to witness the . . . altercation. However discipline is one thing I insist upon.”

  “I quite understand,” Jeremy lied, as he’d found the scene repugnant, and he’d seen the minister’s eyes the entire time. A kind of delight danced in them the entire time he was charging about and beating the children. One moment doting on his child, the next whipped into a rage at her, and Tituba the catalyst to the minister’s rage? Jeremy realized that he’d stepped into a far more complex web of relationships than he’d at first imagined.

  Jeremy, still at the hearth, watched a flaming ember leap out at him, threatening to catch his pants-leg afire. “What the deuce?” He kicked out at the ember, sending fiery sparks up even as his action sent the ember back home to a bed of others. As it happened, a snakelike shiver spread over his brain, but he managed to fight for calm. For reasons he could not fathom, the family incident and the dancing ember recalled a time when Jeremy, as a boy in his father’s grinding shop had caught his hand in the cogs of a machine powered by a small water-wheel outside their cottage. Rather than scream bloody murder for help, young Jeremy had somehow maintained a calm beyond reason—perhaps as much from shame at having made such a stupid error as from any sort of courage. The entire time he was not calling out for help, Jeremy had spent struggling to remove a wooden peg that held the moving parts together. Once he pulled the peg, the cogs came willingly away from his hand. Self-reliance, in his father’s eyes, was more important than all the curtseying that went along with this notion of children being obedient and beaten into obedience.

  Am I again caught with a hand inside a crushing machine? Is Parris a shrewder man than I’d earlier thought? Did he give me the written sermon yesterday as a test? Then today leaving me alone in the parsonage again, only to send Tituba in, not to change any sheets but to test a young apprentice’s mettle? To tempt my willpower and flesh? And the final touch: the parental outburst, demonstrating his absolute rule here as yet another test of Jeremy’s being a true Goodfriend? Or worse yet: to prove his twisted idea of parental love before the emissary of one Increase Mather?

  Parris hovered as if eavesdropping on Jeremy’s thoughts. He lit a pipe and handed the long stem to Jeremy.

  “No thank you, sir. I don’t indulge.” Jeremy eyed the busy women in the kitchen, all shakily and tearfully putting the evening meal together.

  Parris eyed him hard, placed the pipe into his own mouth and began puffing away. “Not sure I trust a man who doesn’t indulge in one sin or another, Goodfriend.”

  “Gamb
ling, sir.”

  “Gambling?” he asked.

  “My weakness,” replied Jeremy, pacing the small room now.

  “I see. Best then stay out of Ingersoll’s Inn.” He punctuated with pipe in hand, adding, “Men there bet on a glance out a window—on which bird will roost and which will fly from a branch.”

  This made Jeremy smile, not because it was clever but because he knew it was true. He recalled it’d been the same at Ingersoll’s when he was a boy, too. Furthermore, Jeremy recalled how quickly Serena Nurse’s brothers bet on the fall of a leaf. “It is a vice for which I’ve paid dearly,” he finally replied, shooing smoke blown in his face from his eyes.

  “And so you should dearly work to remain free of the vice, my boy.”

  “As well I have since, Samuel.”

  “It requires sense, indeed,” joked Parris, whose eyes and face had returned to their normal state.

  The man is maddening in his need to dominate and have the last word, Jeremy thought, wondering if this, too, should go into his reports to Mather, and if so, how detailed should it be? Or would it raise the least eyebrow? After all, a man ruled in his home in the colonies as a tyrant over his people, and it was accepted as scripture, and the legal men running the colonies believed it this precept as surely as they believe in Heaven and Hell, God and Satan.

  Chapter Eleven

  Samuel Parris sat on the edge of his bed, trembling in a mix of giddy excitement and anxious dread. Over him loomed his larger than life shadow from the lantern light at his bedside. Drafts of cold, seeping through the cracks and window frame made the light flicker, despite its canopy—so like a protective cocoon or womb. The flickering gave life to his shapeless shadow in against the splintered log room.

  How many times now had he searched the curves and strokes of Increase Mather’s handwritten note to determine any meaning between the lines—any hint, a double entendre, anything in the nature of a coded message, or a single loaded word. But

  each time it came out the same: a simple letter of introduction for this fop Wakely. The fools in Boston had now saddled Parris with a know-nothing apprentice, when in all his petitions he’d specifically requested an experienced man—a worldly man who’d handled situations like his before. Situations involving heartless people who dared cause trouble in Salem Village Parish.

  “And why now?” he muttered. “Why now after all this time? Three years in a troubled parish, and now this? He’d had big plans when Thomas and the others had talked him into coming here to take hold of the parish property and a share in this upstart mining business of Wilkins-Putnam Mineworks, and to eventually purchase prime land that touched upon the river leading directly to Salem Seaport. In Barbados, for years now, all the talk was of the riches coming and going out of that seaport, and to be in the right position and the right time—that was good, intelligent business. If they could extract ore from the mine and transport it to the sea with ease, if they could have as direct and clear a pathway as some of the millworks and lumber yards and farms in the area, they could all make a fortune several times over. But in the meantime, he must maintain what tenuous holdings he had been awarded. He could not pull this thing off from a distance. He must first establish himself as an upright citizen of Salem and continue to make contacts with the shipmasters and exporters in Salem Town.

  It’s been three hard years. Still I’d successfully managed things here— maneuvered is more to the point.

  He had gotten his strongest allies placed on the church board in the elections of elders and deacons. Not that he controlled them all, yet. He meant to control every rung in the ladder. Five in all he could count on now. Captain Thomas Putnam, his chief ally, was now parish secretary, while his brother, Captain John Putnam had become Parris’ treasurer. Lieutenants Nathaniel Ingersoll, Bray Wilkins, and Isaiah Wolcott—all men of the local militia company, were in his pocket, as was Porter.

  There has been some triumphs, some things to rejoice over.

  Parris had marshaled the support of a large segment of the community as well, and he’d gathered damning evidence in the public records bearing the original signatures of all the Select Committeemen agreeing that Thomas and John Putnam visit Barbados to petition Parris, to convince their relative to return to the New England village as their new preacher. He’d also seen the original land grant for the parsonage and its acreage, and nowhere did it say the minister could not hold title to the land, a promise made to him by the Select Committeemen.

  Once relocated and in the parish home, Samuel learned of the dissenters, those who’d signed off on his taking charge as their minister but who’d then claimed never to have promised any lands or buildings whatsoever. They had petitioned for clarity from the church assize, then the village assize, next Salem Town church assize, and finally the town court. No one had wanted to settle the issue.

  At first, both the village and town magistrates, Corwin and Hathorne, had been in sympathy with the wrong side, but over the years, working slowly behind the scenes, Samuel had won over Judge John Corwin and Judge Jonathan Hathorne, and Hathorne had introduced Parris to the Boston magistrate Judge William Stoughton, who on reviewing the evidence, said that Parris had a case—and a good one at that.

  But Judge Stoughton had also warned Samuel to take each Select Committeeman on one at a time. “Do not attempt a lawsuit against the entire group; if you do so, you’ll lose pitifully.”

  So Parris had bided his time, and he’d sent off lawsuit after lawsuit to the higher court in Boston, and he waited . . . and waited . . . and waited for his day in court, a day that had as yet to come. Instead comes Mr. Jeremiah Wakely with a letter of introduction from Reverend Increase Mather, former president of Harvard Theological College and present head of state in the colony, presiding over the First Church of Boston, and the courts by extension. So had Stoughton finally done as promised? Had he taken Parris’ case to the top man, Increase Mather? Only to see Mather leaving for England?

  Parris stood and paced, the floor boards beneath him squealing from his weight. He and his wife Betty had but one child, and he’d once sired a bastard that he’d gotten rid of. Ill-luck, disaster, black cloud, calamity, ruin, adversity—whatever one called it—tragedy had followed him like a character in a Greek play.

  Frustration chilled Samuel Parris more than the cold cutting through the crevasses and cracks of the worthless place he’d fought to own for so long now. Desperation always felt cold. A man seeing himself at the end of days with nothing to show for but a failing business and a failing reputation in Barbados—where copper and other precious ores were in short supply—must act and act now for the good of his child and his wife.

  The thought gave him a fresh idea for yet another sermon—one that would outstrip that weakly worded diatribe he had shared with Wakely as a trap. A single word of that sermon gets back to me through his contact with Judge Stoughton, and he would know for certain the purpose of Jeremiah’s being here. It was the only reason he had allowed Postmaster Ingersoll to let Jeremy’s letter up till now go through to Boston.

  Parris smiled at his cleverness and contacts that now had tentacles as far away as Boston. He quickly located pen and inkwell and began jotting down notes for the real sermon he meant to deliver at the meetinghouse.

  He scribbled and mumbled the words under his breath as he went: “Brethren, when you harm me, you harm my family. When you withhold my rate, you withhold bread from the mouth of my child, nay, my entire family. Look on my wife here; look on my child here (stand Elizabeth, Betty). Look on them. They have pure hearts and have no grievance with you, yet you harm my loved ones in your skullduggery toward your minister in this pitiless plot—your conspiracy—committing shameful sin against a mother and child while you target a man with your gossiping tongue. It’s as sure a curse as any witchcraft, your unchristian stand against your own minister.”

  Parris found himself repeating his habit of wetting the quill pen with his tongue before dipping it again in the i
nkwell as he worked for stronger language to follow. He needed something even more dramatic than displaying his wife and child before the dissenters. He needed something to make them take honest to God notice, but what might that be? He feared he’d be up most of the night contriving it.

  # # # # #

  The Nurse-Towne Family home same night

  “Are you sure, Mother, that this is wise?” asked Serena, helping her mother, Rebecca, prepare food for the next day’s repast beneath the trees.

  “Don’t be foolish, Serena! We’ve already put it off a week thanks to everyone’s complaints! Besides, I sent word round to all the family. Everyone will come, and we’ll have a wonderful time.” Rebecca busily cleaned her best pewter dishware.

  “But if it is as cold tomorrow as today—”

  Mother stopped in her work to stare at her daughter. “Are you worried about the weather, or what our neighbors might say?”

  “Both to be honest.”

  “Look here, Serena,” began Rebecca, taking her daughter’s hands in hers, guiding her to sit with her a moment. She pointed to her bedroom window. “Dear, I’ve looked out from that upstairs window all winter! Abed—staring at that big tree of ours and those idle tables lined below it.”

  “Our family gathering ground for as long as I remember,” Serena said.

  “Precisely. All winter long while I fully expected to die of whatever it is the doctor has no idea of—my affliction, as he calls it—”

  “That doctor calls anything he can’t diagnose affliction or auge or both!” Serena laughed. “I’ve forgotten more medicine learned from you than that churn-headed butter-brained man ever knew!”

  Rebecca could not hold back a giggle at Serena’s colorful characterization of Dr. McLin. “Yes, I fear it’s so, but now listen to me, child.”

  “Go on, Mother.” Serena dried each dish as Rebecca rinsed.

  “Abed up there for so long, and so I made a promise to myself.”

  “A promise? Let me guess.”