Defending the Dead (Relatively Dead Mysteries Book 3) (11 page)

“Maybe you’re going at this the wrong way,” Ned suggested.

“What do you mean?” Abby felt miffed—after all, she’d done more genealogy research than he had, so how could he criticize? She struggled to quash it.

“If you’re trying to build a trail back to Salem, why not start with the people we know were involved there and work forward?” he suggested.

Abby said neutrally, “I thought about that and figured that would be cheating. But given how long it’s taking me, you may be right. All that material has been very well researched, and a lot of it is available online. If I dig up that list, then I’ll recognize a name if I stumble over it in the more recent lines. You know, I think I need a corkboard or whiteboard or whatever people are using these days, so I can see all this in front of me and keep it straight.”

“That’s easy. Just tell me how big. And is there dessert?”

“Of course. Ice cream. I’m too busy to bake.”

“Got it. I’ll do the dishes first.”

Yes, he was a wonderful man. While he was busy, Abby wandered back to her laptop in the formal dining room. She already knew that most of the original sources about the witch trials had been transcribed and posted online, and sure enough, there was a list of those accused, as well as those who did the accusing and the prosecuting. And that was just the official ones. There could have been others who were suspected but never arrested or brought to trial—or officials had gotten so overwhelmed within a short period that the record keeping had gotten sloppy. Still, the entire list wasn’t more than two hundred names. It wasn’t like hunting for a single war criminal among an entire army or something like that. Abby printed the list out. And then Ned appeared bearing two bowls of ice cream, and that put an end to her research for the evening.

• • •

The next morning she felt restless. Some small part of her resented that Ned had a job to go to, one over which he had a lot of control, since it was his company. But that wasn’t fair: he did listen to what she said about what she was working on, and he’d made some good suggestions. She should feel lucky that she had the time to dig into her research, because a lot of people didn’t have that luxury. And she’d better get her derriere in gear, because she didn’t plan to be a lady of leisure forever.

So, what were the names of the accused at Salem? Or, no, maybe she was starting at the wrong place.
Abby, focus! Pick one approach and stick to it, or you’ll never finish.
She really should know more about the whole series of events, and about the history of the town, in order to put her own findings into context. Assuming she made any findings. It might turn out that she had no personal connection at all—maybe that flash while she was in Salem had come from somebody just passing through town—but that wouldn’t necessarily be the end of the line: she could go back again and see if she could sense any lingering emotional charge. At least she could prove
something
. She decided to devote a couple of days to filling in her historical blanks, and then go see what was what on the spot.

Thank goodness for the Internet! While she didn’t assume that the quick summaries she found there were entirely accurate or unbiased, at least they provided a framework for further research. After a few hours of trolling websites, she had learned: the first inklings of anything amiss had come in January of 1692, and the whole thing had petered out (when some cooler heads prevailed) by April of 1693. Between those two dates, at least twenty-five people had died, nineteen by hanging, one pressed to death (the description of that was gruesome), and at least five had died in jail waiting for trial. But that twenty-five were out of a total of over a hundred and sixty who were accused. Fifty people had confessed, but mostly because they knew that would spare them from a death sentence. Salem had accounted for the nineteen hanging deaths, between June and September of 1692. She didn’t recognize any of the names on that short list, but that didn’t mean a lot since she knew little about her own seventeenth-century ancestors.

A lot of accusations had been flung about in Andover as well as Salem, which didn’t make sense to Abby when she looked at a modern map, but when she turned to earlier maps she realized that Andover and Salem had butted up against each other back then. What was then Salem Village was now Danvers. The village had broken off from Salem, then a thriving port city, which was what had sparked a lot of conflict even before the witch trials, since Salem didn’t particularly want to lose some of its best agricultural land. The more she read, the more she came to dislike a lot of people in the former Salem Village—they seemed to have given an awful lot of time and energy to fighting each other as well as the town of Salem. Maybe there was something in the water? Or it could be that kindred spirits kind of gravitated together—in this case, people who relished a good fight and who could hold a grudge for years.

There had been accusations of witchcraft in neighboring towns, but Abby decided to set those aside for now. Salem Village had been the epicenter, the focal point, the catalyst—where it had all started. Of all the victims hanged at Salem, nine of them had come from the village.

Abby sat back in her chair and considered what she had just learned. Apparently she had been sadly ignorant before now. While most people would nod knowingly when someone said “Salem” and “witch” in the same sentence, their understanding of the events didn’t go much further than that. What had really happened? And more important, why had it happened—why there, why at that particular time? Abby dug back into her research.

By late afternoon she had compiled a list of proposed causes for the frenzy. It made entertaining reading, but there was no consensus. Candidates included: hysteria (whatever the heck that meant), Lyme disease, Jimsonweed overdoses (Abby found a very amusing story about such a problem at Jamestown, but nothing for Massachusetts), encephalitis, fungus poisoning—including ergot—post-traumatic stress (based on what trauma?), religious awakening, and fear of Indian raids. Those were just the most popular theories.

“Huh,” she said to herself. Okay, she assumed all the surviving legal and personal documents had been examined closely for evidence of something or other. Unless somebody found a handwritten diary under the floor of some 1700 house, there was probably little to be mined there. What about the possible physical causes? She had to admit that “hysteria” seemed to fit well, but many of the lists of causes seemed, well, kind of out of date. “Sexual repression?” “Perverted habits of thought?” “Idleness.” “Faulty emotional training?” It almost sounded as though some of the so-called experts had labeled the symptoms based on what was described at Salem rather than the other way around.

Ergotism: hallucinations, stomach upset, dry gangrene (ick!), and a burning sensation of the limbs. Jimsonweed: disorientation, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, seizures, headache. Okay, maybe some of those fit. Lyme disease was a newer candidate, starting with basic flu-like symptoms and progressing to such things as cognitive impairment, light or sound sensitivity, mood swings, and more of those tingling/burning/shooting pains. Viral encephalitis: early flu-like symptoms, followed by confusion, hallucinations, seizures, loss of sensation or even paralysis, problems with speech or hearing, and smelling nasty things that weren’t there.

Abby was beginning to feel overwhelmed. She could understand why people had seized on one or another of these as possible causes, but from her quick reading it appeared that all the more dire symptoms were the exception, not the rule. From what she knew, initially there had been a cluster of young girls who had shown symptoms. Abby was willing to accept that they could have been exposed to the same contaminant or bacteria or virus, but there was one sticking point: most of the girls had continued to show these symptoms for weeks or months. Most diseases, then and now, ran their course much more quickly than that. One or two girls might have been more seriously affected than the others—but all of them? From different families and different parts of the village? That was really hard to swallow. If the source had been food-based, wouldn’t everyone in the village have suffered to some degree? And what about the people of Salem town who ate what Salem Village produced?

And none of those diseases included as a symptom a malicious urge to accuse other people—old, young, male and female—of awful things like consorting with the Devil and doing harm to others. Knowing full well that such an accusation could lead to their deaths.

All right: assume that at the very beginning there might have been a physical cause. But to sustain this handful of inexplicable symptoms over time, and to have it spread to others, surely there must have been a psychological component. Among a group of teenagers? Really? In a repressed society? And all females, at a time when women were seldom given much power or even respect?

Enough
. Abby’s head was spinning (
an early sign of hysteria?
she wondered, then grinned to herself). She needed to digest what she’d read, and tomorrow would be time enough to delve into the psychology of Salem at the end of the seventeenth century. And to do that she needed to know more about the people and the culture and the history of the time. Her work was cut out for her.

11

Over dinner Abby outlined to Ned her observations based on what she’d found so far. Ned was a scientist: he should be able to find a rational pattern in the data. Assuming, of course, that there was one. Could there be real biological evidence lurking among the remains of the accusers of Salem Village? In other cases, hadn’t people found samples of the virus that had caused the flu epidemic of 1918, in frozen corpses? And living bacteria in the guts of frozen mammoths? There might still be something from Salem. If it could be found. Abby kind of ran out of steam at the end of her summary and fell silent. For longer than she had thought, apparently, because Ned prodded her gently. “Abby? You’re woolgathering.”

“I guess I am. Where did that phrase come from, anyway? Was collecting bits of wool so absorbing that you couldn’t pay attention to anything else? Or was it so mindless that you zoned out completely?”

“I can’t tell you, although I could look it up on my phone.”

“You have any comments about what I said? Observations?”

Ned thought for a moment before answering. “I agree with your conclusion about the physical illnesses. Any number of them could fit, but only if there were a few isolated incidents, and for only a short while. What happened in Salem went on too long, and was too consistent, to make a single illness or infection credible. Especially in a small and specific subset of people in the village.”

“Good. So why have all these dedicated researchers been trying hard for years to come up with a single answer? They’re grasping at straws. Oops, another odd metaphor. Why would anybody grasp at straws?”

“Abby, I’m not a walking dictionary!” Ned protested, smiling. “The real question is, why do so many people want to find a rational physical explanation for what happened?”

“Exactly!” Abby said triumphantly. “It was an awful thing that happened. Cruel. People died. Families were torn apart. It’s a wonder somebody didn’t set a torch to Salem Village and burn it to the ground so they could start over. The place is evil.”

“And you say this without ever having seen it?” Ned asked.

“Just read the accounts! What people did . . . Look, before I go sailing off on another tangent, are there any biological reasons that
haven’t
been looked at? Something in the water? In the air? Ergot has already been suggested, and it would have been found in the grain they grew and ate, but what else did they grow? What if they grew potatoes and there was something like that blight that caused the Irish potato famine?”

“That killed potatoes, not people,” Ned pointed out.

“Yes, but it could be the same but different, couldn’t it?”

“Maybe. Or maybe there’s some localized chemical or mineral that would affect behavior. Or some weed that nobody paid any attention to, and then the cattle ate it all and it went away before people noticed it.”

“Did cattle die at that same time?”

“I don’t know, Abby, but you can probably find out. And there are plants that can harm humans without affecting other animals, and vice versa.”

Abby slumped in her chair. “Why did I start this?”

“Because it was a very intense period, and you wanted to see if it left a residue. One that you could sense.”

“I guess,” Abby replied. “What’s so interesting is that people are still talking about it now, in the modern world. Whatever the cause, I guess we still all feel some sort of a collective guilt, that supposedly decent people allowed it to happen. It’s a blot on our history. It makes us think less of ourselves, and maybe wonder if it could happen again.”

“That about covers it. If we’re done eating, we could go sit somewhere else.”

“Sure,” Abby said. She stood up and carried her dishes over to the sink, and Ned did the same.

He took her hand and led her to the back parlor, where there was a shabby couch. He sat her down, then sat beside her, pulling her toward him so that she leaned against him, with his arms around her. “Let’s try something,” he said.

“What?”

“Try to picture what life was like back then. It’s not as easy as you think. Shut your eyes if that helps.”

“Okay.” Abby obediently shut her eyes. “I’ve never seen Danvers, you know. I’ve seen a little of Salem.”

Ned leaned back to look at her face. “Really? When?”

“Last week. I was bored with the wallpaper and had a couple of hours free and needed to get out of the house . . .”

“Why do you think you have to justify that to me?”

“Because I didn’t tell you that day and I’m not sure why,” Abby ended with a rush.

“Was there something to hide, Abby? Or is that the wrong question?”

“No, I wasn’t hiding anything, exactly. But I didn’t want to wait for the weekend, when you’d be free to come with me, and I felt guilty going alone, since this affects both of us, but I really wanted to get a sense of the place before I did any more research.”