Children of Salem

by Robert W. Walker

  Corwin hemmed and hawed and pointed at the books on the table. “Going over precedent.”

  “There is no precedent for this,” said Parris. “This is open warfare.”

  “Mr. Hathorne has doubts about accepting the word of spirits in his courtroom—as does Mr. Corwin,” Jeremy boldly spoke for the judges.

  “What of the afflictions then? Never mind the word of spirits! Betty’s bruises and burns and puncture marks, these are not invisible.”

  “We fear taking this too far, Mr. Parris,” Hathorne said now.

  “No matter how many books you consult, you can only stop Satan lovers with execution!”

  “Ah-then you have the accused already executed, sir?” asked Jeremy.

  Parris glared at his apprentice.

  “Do you plan to arrest every old mother who’s lost her teeth or who has cured the giddies or the heaves with a home-made brew? Or are you also after those you call the dissenting brethren?”

  “You overstep yourself, Mr. Wakely, and you saw what happened at Ingersoll’s!”

  “And you, sir? You create trouble here, wantonly so. Show him the evidence of it, Mr. Hathorne, Mr. Corwin.”

  “I say again, Wakely, you overstep your position!” The veins on Parris neck looked as if they were made of ship’s rigging.

  “Do I? When there are lives at stake, and the peace and tranquility of the region?”

  “I want you out of my home, Mr. Wakely, tonight!” he countered. “Do you understand? I’ll write you up well for Mather, but your time here is over.”

  “I am packed and prepared to leave at any time, Goodfriend.”

  The use of the term had Parris gritting his teeth. “Tonight, now!”

  “Please, please, gentlemen,” began Corwin. “You will wake my ailing wife.”

  Jeremy held up a hand to the judge. “Well now. What Mr. Parris proposes is best all round, your honors, but before I take my leave, I will know what you intend to do about that sermon in your hand, Magistrate Hathorne.”

  “Sermon?” asked Parris. “What sermon?”

  “The sermon and excommunication you’ve planned for Rebecca Nurse.”

  Parris looked stricken and trapped for a mere moment. “There is ample reason to believe the woman one of them! She was among those midwives to Mrs. Putnam during several of the murders of Mrs. Putnam’s children!”

  “You’re now predicting who next will be called out a witch, sir?” asked Hathorne of Parris, a stern look passing between them.

  “Why, sirs, it’s no secret among the knowledgeable!” countered Parris. “The Nurse woman and her sisters all at one time or another attended Mrs. Putnam at child killings disguised as birthings, pretending the goodness of midwives!”

  “I know this woman, Mother Nurse, and such an allegation against one so pious as she, well it is an out and out lie!” Jeremy said, crossing the room and standing in Parris’ face.

  “It’s no lie, no prediction,” countered Parris, fuming, “but an inevitable conclusion. And that sermon appears to’ve been stolen from my desk! I’ll have it back.”

  Hathorne held the sermon pages overhead. “No, no Samuel,” he began, “you’ll not have it back.”

  “But it is my personal property.”

  Knowing he’d worn out his welcome, Jeremy found his cloak and hat.

  “Sorry, Samuel, but it’s no longer personal or private.”

  “Whatever do you mean, Jonathan?” replied Parris, stunned.

  For a moment, Jeremy thought that he’d won this argument. That the sermon predicting who next to be arrested proved Parris’ manipulating and orchestrating of events.

  Hathorne firmly added, “Your notes, too, Mr. Wakely are now a document of the court as you have your wish.”

  This froze Jeremy in place until he realized the magistrate was speaking of notes he’d made on the single sermon he had brought to their attention.

  “And you, too, Mr. Parris, you have your wish,” continued Hathorne.

  “My wish?” asked Parris.

  “The witch trials for Tituba Indian, Sarah Goode, and Sara Osborne are on.”

  “That pleases me to know, sirs. What of Bishop?”

  Corwin replied, “We are unsure of Mrs. Bishop; that there is enough evidence against her to bind her over for trial.”

  “Our ruling should please both of you, Mr. Parris, Mr. Wakely—as well as Mr. Higginson and Hale. But, Samuel, this—” he held up the noxious sermon and call to excommunicate Rebecca Nurse overhead—“this notion of slandering the Nurse name, and the Towne name by decree . . . ” Hathorne shook his head. “We must not allow our passions and past petty squabbles and prejudices to get the better of us in this ordeal.”

  “Here, here,” added Corwin. “An ordeal that God Himself has set before us, to test us.”

  “Perhaps I was a bit hasty in my fervor against the Nurse woman,” replied Parris.

  “And this should please you as well, Mr. Wakely.” Corwin stood and stepped closer to Jeremy, “to know that we mean to contain this thing as you put it. I know Mr. Higginson was pleased to learn it.”

  Jeremy pulled his cloak tight, grabbed his hat from a rack that looked like a sceptor, and started away. “I simply hope you men will heed my suggestions, as I am in fact an emissary of the First Church of Boston, the Reverend Increase Mather.”

  “An emissary?” asked Corwin, crestfallen.

  “Increase Mather?” Hathorne eyed Jeremy more suspiciously than ever. “We were given to understand that you were placed under Mr. Parris’ tutelage with a letter of introduction from Mr. Mather. Now this?”

  “I have the letter from Mather right here,” announced Parris who dug the multi-folded parchment from his pocket, “but from the first, I suspected it a forgery—and perhaps my first instinct was right.”

  He’s just called me a liar, a forger. “Gentlemen, I can assure you that I am the emissary of Increase Mather.”

  “Then Mather sent you to Salem for what reason?”

  “To better understand the continued turbulence in the village parish.”

  “And here I thought all along the young man was sent to apprentice in the ministery, under my direction, but as you see, Wakely here doesn’t have the stomach for the work.”

  “For spying or for ministering to your parish?” asked Hathorne.

  “Both I think.” Parris laughed and Corwin tentatively joined in, pouring Parris a drink, while Hathorne remained stern.

  “I report only to Mather.”

  “You do that, Goodfriend,” said Parris as Jeremy prepared to leave. “But get your facts straight first.”

  “I will. I was sent to determine your fitness administer to your flock, Good Reverend, and I fear I’ve find you lacking.” Jeremy stormed out, intent on getting his horse and bags from the parsonage, and to locate new lodgings. Over his shoulder, he was faintly aware of the three faces in the windows watching him go, but when he turned, they’d all dropped the drapes into place and returned to parlay with one another. Jeremy cursed the fact that neither Higginson nor Hale had been on hand to support him. He could only pray that Hathorne, the seemingly stronger of the two judges, would act on his counsel—and perhaps the fear of moving too fast would stay his hand, if only to curry favor with Increase Mather.

  Jeremy sloshed through the muck that the spring rains had made of the village walkways and footpaths, a feeling of euphoria coming over him with the relief of telling no more lies—the freedom of not being Parris’ lackey a moment longer when from behind her heard that man’s grating voice.

  It came from Jeremy, from Corwin’s door, Parris’ last angry words. “You can count on me, Mr. Wakely, to make my own report! Filled with details of your thievery and conniving!”

  Jeremy kept going. When he refused to turn and engage the man in a verbal duel, Paris shouted loud enough for the dead to hear: “Satan strikes the most devout and saintly among us, Jeremiah Wakely! Even as his minions feed and clothe the vile and heretical among
us!”

  Satan strikes at the most devout and saintly among us, Jeremiah repeated the contention in his mind. “And who among us is chosen?” he muttered under his breath as he continued to march off. He wanted to argue but knew it was hopeless. That a graceful exit was called for.

  As he marched in quick step now, anxious to rid himself of Parris and the village, he continued to mutter to himself. “Most devout and saintly in Samuel Parris’ mind is himself! Playing the martyr to his parishioners.”

  At the end of the day, he told himself: I must save myself, get as far from his sight as possible, but first I must warn Serena and her family.

  Epilogue - Book One

  At the Parris home

  Jeremiah had returned to the parsonage home when a silvery moon slipped from behind smoldering indigo clouds to rain down a pale pink light over the apple orchard where, without looking for it, he thought he saw an animal scurrying, something large yet quick. A deer perhaps? At the same time, this eerie peripheral movement at the edge of his eye instantly recalled Tituba’s testimony of a coven beyond the orchard—which news Parris or Putnam had scattered, and it had grabbed hold of the public imagination. A tale that’d taken on new, weighty and exaggerated detail. The tale of hundreds of witches now, as it took that many to be so bold as to steal Sam Parris’ sword and fruit, and now his child from him. Details of how these creatures, in league with Satan, had spewed their chewings into Tituba’s face while they’d beaten her with hot pokers as she bravely refused to make her mark.

  He squinted and went closer to the tree line and forest, and most certainly saw definite shadows in human shape. This was not the swaying of trees, or mere moonlight reflection against the waving branches and thickly clumped bushes. This wasn’t animal movement either, but human. More than one.

  Now they dashed as he stepped into the orchard to have a closer look. Long, thin shadows, but hardly adult. Yes, most of these scurrying people were the size of elves, leprechauns, or children. Despite the length of the shadows they cast, these were village children, girls, he guessed from the giggling and unintelligible chatter getting farther away.

  From inside the Parris home, Jeremy heard the continued distinct wailings of two girls behind a second floor window—Betty and Mary. Their wailing momentarily pulled his eyes to the lighted second floor pane. When he returned his gaze to the wood beyond the orchard, he saw nothing, no one. But scanning the ground around the orchard and house, he found the telltale naked foot and shoe prints, and he put two and two together.

  Other village children had dared Parris’ wrath to approach the house in an effort to get a look at the afflicted girls through the windowpanes. There was even a ladder left lying at the base of the house. Then, the children hearing and seeing Jeremy’s approach—a black-clad man coming at a quick pace straight for the house—had panicked and ran. He may well have been mistaken for Parris.

  “Enough to terrify any child,” he muttered, and then heard a straggler lift from the earth near the barn and strike out across the orchard like a terrified field mouse. “Bugger off!” he shouted to encourage this final mouse to go home and to bed.

  “This time of night,” came a feminine voice behind him. It was a harried-looking Mrs. Parris.

  “Breaking curfew to dare witches strike them, it would appear,” Jeremy replied.

  “Seems, despite what my husband says, the village children are unafraid of the contagion.”

  The horrid wailing from inside the house signaled Mrs. Parris to return to her daughter and niece in their sickroom.

  Jeremy entered the home to the chorus of suffering above. Jeremy grabbed up his bedroll and saddlebag, which held any notes remaining. He’d posted all of his earlier notes to Reverend Cotton Mather.

  He’d wisely prepared for this day, and almost all of his things were packed. Part of him felt he’d failed miserably. He’d not had the tenacity and patience of a spy who must swallow everything thrown at him. At least not in dealing with so intolerable a man as Samuel Parris . . . and not in the face of what was happening here.

  Still, another part of Jeremy felt he’d done a remarkable job. After all, he’d begun to understand what drove the man, and he’d gotten self-damning words in the man’s own handwriting placed into the public record now that Judge Hathorne meant to file the man’s lethal sermon and prediction into evidence on the side of reason and logic over superstition and syllogisms during the hearings set for Goode, Tituba, and Osborne. Perhaps it would take three sacrifices at Salem before peace was restored, and perhaps Fate had dictated it be three from the first. Sad that even now men must have their sacrificial lambs.

  To be sure Goode had brought this fate down around her own ears, and Tituba was no innocent either. As for Osborne, he knew not except that the woman had, for years, brought suspicion on herself.

  Then there was the part of Jeremy that must concern himself with his own sanity and safety, that part of him simply wanting out of this man’s sphere of influence, out of this village of broken and sad people—and out now!

  To get back to the arms of his love, to bask in Serena’s love and warmth and kindness. It was what he wanted above all things now that his duty to Mather had been fulfilled. Now that the truth sat square on the proverbial table for all to partake of. He must also race to the Nurse compound for another reason, to warn Serena and her mother and father of the depth of danger her mother and her aunts faced thanks to Parris’ accusations along with those he had, Jeremy believed, nursed out of Little Anne Putnam and her mother—that the midwives attending the Putnam birthings through the years had actually been on hand to slyly kill the very infants they pretended to usher into the world. A diabolical tale if ever there was one.

  To a chorus of shrieks that might be cats stuck between the walls of this home, all coming out of Betty Parris and Mary Wolcott’s sickroom, Jeremy rushed from the dark house. He wanted out before Samuel Parris should return. He wanted no more confrontation with the man. To this end, he rushed for the barn and his horse, perhaps the only creature at the moment in this place that he might speak openly and honestly to without fear of retribution. In fact, in the current climate, perhaps the only safe place to unleash pent up emotions and opinions, was the ear of a horse, cow, or family pet.

  Jeremy wasted no time saddling Dancer. As quickly as he could effect his escape from the parsonage, Jeremy was in the saddle and racing out the barn door when suddenly, his mare reared back on her haunches at the sight of Samuel Parris, who’d very nearly been run down and killed but had leapt and fallen to safety at the last moment. Jeremy left the minister lying in a hard-frozen pigsty of mud, not slowing, racing toward the Nurse family compound, unaware that he horse’s hooves sent up great gobs of dirt and mud in the wild dash from the Salem Village.

  BOOK TWO

  Chapter One

  Late evening, April 13,, 1692

  “A challenge to every Puritan,” said Reverend Parris where he stood drinking ale at Ingersoll’s Inn. He’d come uncharacteristically late to the Inn. Ingersoll was in fact closing, but when he found the minister at his doorstep, he remained in business, his light on. He had poured a pint of ale for Parris, whose bill with Ingersoll had been settled recently with a bushel of beans and potatoes, goods others had paid the minister in. Parris had need of someone’s ear and Ingersoll had been elected. He informed Ingersoll of the truth of Jeremiah Wakely’s identity and his true purpose in the village, and that he’d been sent in to spy on the minister, and all those letters he asked you to post, Nathaniel—I was right to intercept them. He was a fraud from the beginning, and he thought I didn’t know.

  Ingersoll solemnly nodded. “He is an arrogant scoundrel, that young pup.”

  “It’s the same with the Falllen One.”

  “Aye, he’s the ultimate arrogant angel.”

  “What angel?” asked the carpenter, Zachariah Fiske, who’d seen the light on and had stopped in for a dram.

  “Satan, of course!”

&nb
sp; “Aye, indeed.” Fiske put down a coin on the counter, and Ingersoll poured him a pint.

  “So how do the judges intend to proceed?” asked Ingersoll, pressing Samuel Parris for information.

  “As precisely and as carefully as they should!” continued the uncharacteristically prudent minister.

  “And how is that, precisely?” nudged Ingersoll with a wink for Fiske.

  “Why, as men of honor,” replied Parris, “courage, and integrity.” He lifted his pewter cup and toasted.

  Ingersoll nodded and met the minister’s eye, and all three men drank to this. “I’ve always heard it said, Samuel, that Bridgett Bishop’s a witch if ever there were one, so why was she not kept in jail?”

  “A scarcity of evidence there, but they’ve got their eye on her, that one.”

  “They’ve found it with the others but not Bishop?”

  “The innkeeper on North Ipswich road here?” asked Fiske, his face pinched in confusion.

  “The very one,” replied Parris, taking another drink. “If that witch is shut down, Nathaniel, imagine the business you’d have here.”

  Ingersoll added, “Aye, but that’s no good reason to cast aspersions.”

  “The one whose husband, Malachi Bishop—may he rest in peace— died in the throes of something horrible, Mr. Fiske,” continued Parris, nursing his drink.

  “Horrible and mysterious, so far as anyone’s able to determine,” Ingersoll felt compelled to admit with Fiske searching his features.

  “I recall it, I do,” replied Fiske, nursing his own ale now. “Happened just before your arrival here, Mr. Parris.”

  “Three years,” muttered Parris. “Yet no one thought to bring the woman up on charges back then?”

  “Oh, but there was charges made,” Fiske disagreed, “but there weren’t no evidence, so they let her go free, and ever since she’s run Bishop’s Inn.”