Children of Salem

by Robert W. Walker

  News of Mrs. Hale’s having been accused had come along with testimonials as to her character. Oddly, the postmark on the news was that of Connecticut—a man named Silas Smithington, but the Sperlunkle knew it was an alias of the outlaw Jeremy Wakely.

  Whatever the truth of the matter, all of Boston had this news of Mrs. Phipps’ being a witch now on the tongue. It took the place of concerns of weather, crops, fishing nets and catches, and of cargo coming and going in the harbor, and the normal life of trade in weights and measures and working one’s fields, and clearing woods, and building barns and homes. Concerns that, particularly in Salem, had been let go since the witchcraft panic had begun and snowballed downhill until people were seeing witches everywhere. Now the frenzy, like a disease, had spread to other villages and towns until now it gripped Boston in a most dramatic fashion.

  In the Governor’s house, Mrs. Phipps sat her busy husband down, and she insisted he listen to a tale told by a so-called witch and now a reported fugitive and outlaw, a man named Jeremiah Wakely alias Silas Smithington.

  “How ever does my lady come by these accounts from this rogue Wakely?” demanded William Phipps, pacing their bedroom.

  Elizabeth Phipps sat at her mirror, brushing out her long, golden hair. “By a party who came to me while you were fighting Indians in the territories. A reliable source.”

  “That Samuel Parris has played us all for fools, the entire General Court? The Salem judges, Corwin and Hathorne? That Parris’ true intent was land holdings and the court seized on the idea along with vote gathering?”

  “You know something of the man I speak of,” she calmly replied and resumed brushing. “A man who has done work for you through Increase Mather, secretive work.”

  “Jeremiah Wakely? Who has come under suspicion himself? Who has married into one of the witch families down there?”

  She wheeled on him and angrily shouted, “Yes, the same as was sent by Increase Mather into Salem, just before all of this witch hunt business began, yes—orders stemming from you, Mister Phipps.”

  “One and the same, yes.” He avoided her eyes.

  “Increase, your trusted friend, he spoke highly of this Wakely as I recall.”

  “He did indeed. Trusted his judgment.”

  “As you did, and yet you take the reports of others against him as fact?”

  “He is accused of breaking prisoners out of the Salem jailhouse!”

  “And when they come to lock me away in the jailhouse here, William? Will you break me free? What I hear is that Mr. Wakely took back what was his, and it’s rather romantic, his facing a loss of everything—his reputation, his very future, his life for his love.”

  Sir William Phipps did not miss the innuendo. “I’d do the same for you, Lizbeth! You know I’d give up everything here—” he swept a hand through the air—“to keep you safe.”

  “Wakely told me a horror tale about a child aborted in Barbados by a Dr. Caball, a man I have heard my father speak of—a miscreant who has no education and is no doctor at all but a butcher whose services go to anyone with coin.”

  “Tell me then the whole story and how Wakely came by it.”

  Mrs. Phipps laid out everything she’d learned about Parris, including his connection to her father and this man, Caball, and the fact these two men conspired to hide Parris’ mistake.

  “How do you know this information is correct, Elizabeth?”

  “When I was a young girl, my father came home with an infant, a child of mixed race.”

  “Really? To raise as his own mistake?”

  “He made some peace with Mother about the child, and he and my mother raised the child. I asked mother about it once, and she simply said, “Your father saved this child from a certain death. He is a good man.”

  “Then there was no murder in Barbados of this Tituba Indian’s child.”

  “No, only what appears to be an attempt that my father learned of and stopped. He must have convinced Parris to allow him to take the child. The mother, in a drugged state and afterward assumed the worst.”

  “What became of the child?”

  “He was trained in the ways of a man servant, and he is still in my father’s service. His name is Reginald.

  “How can you know this is—was—the same child?”

  “How can you know that it isn’t?”

  “And if this confessed witch, Tituba is telling the truth . . . Parris is not the man he pretends.”

  “What will you do, William? What will your office make of my being accused a witch? They strip the witches to search for imperfections on their bodies, calling warts by another name—the teet where suckles a demon or familiar! Will you stand by as you have so long now when they strip—”

  “By all that is holy! By God and by my hand, no one will dare touch you, Lizbeth!”

  “And when they come for me, armed men of your court system?”

  Phipps thought of the scenario and it tore at his heart. “I have my own guard, and they are loyal men. Men who have fought with me in the provinces and the territories against the heathen horde. Men who will kill on my word.”

  “But suppose these same men are superstitious and believe the accusations and subscribe to the chosen children of Salem who have now accused me?”

  “Lizbeth!” he went to her and kneeled, his head in her lap. “What would you have me do?”

  “I have several requests, beginning with an immediate decree to open every jailhouse door and release anyone inside accused of murder or mischief by way of witchcraft.”

  “Done! It is done.”

  “And you need to hand down an edict that will immediately shut down the Court of Oyer & Terminer.”

  “Done!”

  “And in time, you must summarily replace Sir William Stoughton as the head of the judges, and possibly replace the entire General Court.”

  He hesitated a moment. “In time, yes.”

  “And immediately strip these two lesser judges of any power whatsoever to oversee any trial of any sort ever again.

  “Done, dear.”

  “And to remove from Salem Town a man named Noyes, a minister.”

  “Remove a minister of—”

  “A man who cannot fill the shoes of your old friend, Nehemia Higginson.”

  “And I suppose you also want the removal of—”

  “A thing you should have done from the beginning of the growing feud in Salem Village.”

  “Remove Samuel Parris.”

  “Put it to him. He can hang for high crimes and misuse of his office, or he can disappear.”

  “Done.”

  Chapter Nine

  Flyers and town criers went about Boston, Salem, and the colonies declaring the word of the top legal authority in the colony, Governor and Sir William Phipps. He had acted swiftly to quell any possibility of any further defamation of his wife’s character. He also declared a moratorium on arrests for witchcraft, trials for witchcraft, and executions for witchcraft. By carriage, he traveled to Salem, accompanied by Reverend John Hale, their two wives, surrounded by his private armed guard.

  Governor William Phipps took a series of meetings with the judges, and especially William Stoughton. He took private meetings with Cotton Mather, Reverend Noyes, Samuel Parris, and he examined letters that rent his heart, letters of appeal for reason and caution both by and on behalf of the executed—Rebecca Nurse, John Proctor, Reverend George Burroughs, Mary Easty, and Sarah Cloyse among them.

  Phipps took meetings individually with the seer children only to find himself called out by them as the most clever of all the wizards and warlocks in all of New England, and that he might just be the Antichrist with the Black Bible. In fact, he’d been given the scepter of the Black Minister leading the witches at their black Sabbath, the scepter of the heretic.

  Before returning to Boston, Governor Phipps ordered the jails in all of Massachusetts opened and everyone arrested on the say so of the Salem accusers released on the basis of insufficient
evidence. This included all those found guilty and condemned to die by the Court of Oyer & Terminer—the very court he’d asked Stoughton to convene. The court he now proclaimed at an end. These decrees were posted on the meetinghouse doors in every hamlet and town, and to be sure, they were posted at Ingersoll’s Inn and Apothecary, and Ingersoll was stripped of his duties as postmaster.

  News of Phipps’ finally taking action, while far too late for Rebecca Nurse and nineteen others executed, and one man tortured to death, and some three hundred incarcerated, quickly spread and made the front page of every pamphlet in Essex County. An assessment was ordered to determine precisely how many accused prisoners had died of consumption and disease while in custody, but no exact figure could be established as those accused of witchcraft were numbered in with those arrested on other charges who passed away while in the care of the state.

  On the way back to Boston, from behind the curtain within the Phipps carriage, Mrs. Phipps asked, “So what weight do you give, husband, on the documents recovered that Jeremiah Wakely had asked be posted but were never forwarded?”

  “So you’ve heard the tale?”

  “Not much gets by my attention, as you well know.”

  “I’ve seen the vileness behind the parsonage walls, the vileness within this man Parris thanks to Wakely’s meticulous notes. There is this one sermon in particular, and there is a detailed report of a sham exorcism.”

  “I should like to see Wakely’s reports some time.”

  “They are not comfortable bedtime reading, my dear.”

  “All the same, I wish to see them.” The rough road made her slip and slide into him when the wheels hit a particularly bad spot. He took advantage of her being almost in his lap, and he kissed her passionately. She returned his kiss, very much in love with this man. But when she pulled away, she said, “Don’t think you can distract me. I still want to see those reports that should have come to Cotton Mather and then to your hands in the first place.”

  “All right,” he conceded to the sound of the creaking coach. “After which the flames will see them.”

  “You mean to destroy it all?”

  “What good to perpetuate what has happened here. News of what really went on here gets back to England, it will make a mockery of what we’re here to accomplish on these shores, Lizbeth—a horrid mockery.”

  “Ah, I see . . . politics?”

  “More than politics. It could mean the survival of this-this experiment. We came here to build a New Jerusalem, to glorify God with a paradise on Earth. What will all the enemies of Puritanism make of what’s happened here?”

  “Aye, plenty of people want us to fail. Among them my father.”

  “The old cussed doctor, yes. He’s never believed in me, has he?”

  “Afraid not, and I wish you’d forgive him that. I have.”

  “He hasn’t any belief in our dream here in New England, and he has cursed me for taking you away from him.”

  It was a sore point in their marriage and had always hung over them. He took her hands in his. “Write to your father in Barbados. Ask him directly about this man Caball and this Reginald’s origins—if you wish to pursue this Parris business any further —which I do not, my lady. Otherwise, it is dropped.”

  “What of Parris then—the so-called ordained minister?” The coach again bucked hard and the driver slowed. From above they heard his urgent apologies for the road.

  “Parris is done on these shores, Liz. I’ve ordered him out of the jurisdiction of the Bay Colony.”

  “But then he will simply go elsewhere and spread his venom in Rhode Island or—”

  “Drop it. The man has lost all influence and—”

  “Lost his influence? While others’ve lost their lives, William!”

  “—and-and any hold he may have had on this parish, including any land holdings he thought he had in Salem.”

  “Lost his parish house did he?” She remained sarcastic.

  “Including a tract he thought he had that touched on the Frost Fish River, a tract that would have set him up as an ore magnate. Turns out he held an interest in a nearby mine with his relatives here.”

  “He should be taken out to those awful gallows we saw on the way in and hung!”

  “An eye for an eye? That’s not like you, Liz.”

  “If anyone deserves it in all this, if capital punishment means anything—”

  “Lizbeth! He fades away quietly from this place.”

  “And pays no price?”

  “God will repay him in due course.”

  “Twenty-one dead that we know of, dead by these witch trials, and he walks away untouched? Is that justice?”

  “We are interested in healing at this time.”

  “And justice be damned?”

  “Justice? There is none to be found here, and-and—twisted justice—is what has got us to this cross.”

  She reached out to her husband and with a finger to her lips shushed him for the sake of the carriage driver and gossip. “It’s none of your doing, William. You put your trust in our beloved faith—and in the highest court in the land.”

  “I should’ve held faith with you.”

  “True but you didn’t; still, recriminations against yourself now are of no use.”

  “Should have paid attention to your intuition. Early on you had your suspicions on this matter.”

  “Yes, I did, and I predicted it would hurt us all badly in the end.”

  “And it has indeed.”

  “I will write father in Barbados, but I fear he will not be forthcoming on the subject of his part in hiding the child, but now that so much time has passed, perhaps. Be if true, think how clearly the line is to be drawn from the death or rather near death of an infant by a needle in Barbados to the multiple deaths of infants—so-called by witchcraft and by needle—aborted, here! Coincidence?”

  “All the same, any further attack on the ministry and the court can only weaken our government here, Elizabeth.”

  “And we can’t have that, now can we?”

  He glared at her but was at a loss for words. The coach had maintained a steady pace now as if the driver was being more cautious or curious; it was impossible to tell. All around the carriage uniformed militia—the Governor’s private guard—rode in formation, cheering suddenly. This made both governor and wife look outside where they saw some burly Salem farmers had sent the Watch Hill gallows tumbling down.

  Inside the coach, Mrs. Phipps’ expression was of a bittersweet smile. “What of the lands and properties seized by the court?”

  “They are in question yet, but I will look them all over with Wilburforce, entertain petitions, attempt to return lands rightfully to those who have lost due to this . . . this—”

  “Debacle you may call it.”

  He nodded and smiled at her. “That’s a proper word for it.”

  She muttered under her breath, “Over three hundred of our citizenry have been jailed in disease-ridden, rat-infested prisons where the numbers of dead have not been kept.”

  “Do you know what Sir William Stoughton said to me, Elizabeth?”

  “I warned you about that man. I’ve always detested his arrogance and love of power.”

  “Do you wish to hear what he had to say then?”

  “Of course, I do. I may want to write a book one day.”

  “Don’t think of it. A governor’s wife penning a book!”

  “So what did he say?”

  “He said of his judges, and I quote, ‘We are in one agreement. We have no intention of putting an end to God’s work until every single witch and wizard is found out, confesses—as hundreds have done—or are executed as only a handful have been.”

  “So your words to him and the high court fell on deaf ears?”

  “Afraid so.”

  “Righteous men with a righteous cause are often blinded by their very righteousness. So how will they proceed without a court? If they go against your edict then—”

>   “Then they will be arrested, and they know it. They have no court overseeing cases of witchcraft no longer.”

  “Did you tell them our suspicions against Parris?”

  “Only in the most general terms. I didn’t want to cast eyes or aspersions on your father, who some might think this mysterious Dr. Caball.”

  She hadn’t considered this and it took her aback, but she dropped it and instead asked, “But you made the point that Parris is an ambitious oaf capable of doing anything to get what he wants?”

  “I did; I made that plain enough.” Governor Phipps, a hero of the Indian wars, banged the top of the carriage with his cane, using the signal for speed. The carriage moved faster over the road to Boston and home.

  # # # # #

  In further public forums, the Governor declared repeatedly that every jail door be opened in a General Amnesty to all prisoners within and specifically anyone accused of witchcraft or murder by means of witchcraft. William Phipps went on to publicly denounce the use of nightmares, ghost stories, or spectral evidence of any sort in any court in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

  It was as if cold water had been thrown over an entire land, as if everyone had awakened from a gruesome shared nightmare. A gut wrenching, sobering of the collective mind spelled the end of the hysteria that’d taken the lives of neighbors.

  This light-of-day, cold sobering, which began with the accusation of Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Phipps, replaced the out of control power that’d been handed over to the chosen ones—the ‘seer children’—who suddenly were given no more heed than fools and naves.

  # # # # #

  Jeremiah and Serena had found temporary lodging in a river village along the Connecticut River that was quite the outpost; in fact, the sound of Indian chants and the smell of Indian fires were within earshot and nostril. But it felt like a place of peace, and it proved a place where Mr. and Mrs. Silas Smithington held up as newlywed Goodman and Goodwife striking out on their own, and not fugitives from the now infamous Salem ordeal.

  It’d been from here that Jeremy had sent his dispatches to the Boston editor, Horatio Sperlunkle who might or might not publish the lie that he had not fabricated but had nourished instead—that the Salem accusers, those supposedly capable of seeing into the Invisible World of Satan—had called out the name of Elizabeth Phipps—none other than Governor William Phipps’ wife. This time it was Jeremy who fanned the flame.