Invisible World (14 page)

O
N THE DAY OF MY TRIAL, MARCH 19, GUARDS BROUGHT
me to the courtroom just as Rebecca Nurse was giving testimony.

A black-robed judge in a white wig sat at a high desk. I saw Althea among the people who'd come to witness the trial. She smiled at me, but I didn't want to acknowledge her for fear of involving her in any way.

Among the spectators, I was surprised to see the native Indian father and daughter, the same pair who had come to Salem with us on the ship. There were many others whom I knew.

At a table to the judge's right, Reverend Parris sat behind an open ledger, quickly recording everything that was being said. In the front row, to my left, sat Rebecca Nurse's sisters, Mary Easty and Sarah Cloyce.

As I walked in, they looked sharply in my direction. I was sure they recognized me from the night in the barn. I longed to tell them it had not been me who'd accused them. Four-year-old Dorcas Good sat off to the side with her mother, looking pale and sickly, with dark circles under her eyes. How I pitied the little girl.

On my right sat the accusing girls. They also appeared frayed and exhausted by this ordeal, their hair tangled and dirty, skin blemished, their eyes wild and sunken. It was not surprising to me, knowing as I did that they had been in a drugged delirium for weeks.

Abigail Williams suddenly jumped from her spot and threw her hands in the air. “She's twisting my neck!” she shrieked, pointing at poor, elderly Rebecca Nurse with one hand and clutching her neck with the other.

An icy draft hit me when I walked near the bench where the accusers sat. I was certain that Evil Bronwyn, the three witches, and the black hound were present. I aimed my mind-reading ability in their direction. Murmuring and mumbling filled my head, as did wild, shrieking laughter.
“We see you, Betty-Fatu! There's a speck of ergot still in your pocket. Taste it and join us!”

Reaching into my apron pocket, I discovered that there was, indeed, a black speck still there, clinging to the fabric. Now I was certain that the evil forces were right here with us.

The guards bid me to sit on the bench beside the other accused.

A tall, stern-looking man in his fifties had been interrogating Rebecca Nurse. Now he turned to Abigail. “Goodwife Nurse is all the way over here,” he pointed out, even as Abigail still clutched at her own neck. “How could she be afflicting you?”

“Her spirit afflicts me,” Abigail insisted. “Her specter is beside me.”

“I see it!” shouted Ann Putnam. “She is with her sisters and she torments us.”

“No!” Mary Easty objected as Ann collapsed, trembling from head to toe, her black boots banging on the floor, her back and head seizing as though she was being throttled.

John Hathorne, the judge, turned to Rebecca Nurse. “Goody Nurse, here are two — Ann Putnam and Abigail Williams — who complain of your hurting them. What do you say to it?”

“I can say before my eternal Father, I am innocent and God will clear my innocency. I am innocent and clear. I have been ill and unable to leave my house for the last eight or nine months.”

As much as I believed she was telling the truth, I too had seen her at the barn that night, along with her sisters and Dorcas.

“Are you innocent of this witchcraft?” John Hathorne pressed her.

Exasperated and exhausted, Rebecca Nurse dropped her head and spread out her hands in despair. “Oh, Lord, help me!” she cried.

The girls on the front bench shrieked in pain, twisting in agony. “She tortures us!” Mercy Lewis cried out. “Her hands. Make her put down her hands.”

“No, I will not sign it!” Abigail Williams shouted, talking to some invisible entity. “It is the Devil's Book! I will not sign it.”

Hathorne whirled on Rebecca Nurse. “You would do well if you are guilty to confess and give glory to God!” he bellowed. “Is it not an accountable case that when you are examined, these persons are afflicted?”

“I have nobody to look to but God,” Rebecca Nurse answered passionately.

“Do you believe these afflicted persons are bewitched?” John Hathorne questioned in a thunderous voice.

“I do think they are,” Rebecca Nurse answered. In fact, she knew they were. Like Tituba, she had memory of the event but no way to stop it. I knew she was not telling all that had happened, knowing that the truth would be twisted.

John Hathorne pointed at the hysterical, twitching girls. “What do you think of this?” he demanded.

Exasperated, Rebecca Nurse shouted her answer. “I cannot help it; the Devil may appear in my shape!”

 

When they brought me up to testify, I told my story as accurately as I could. “And so you see, I am sure there is evil afoot in Salem and the rye these girls are eating is infested with a substance called ergot that allows these evil forces to afflict them.”

Mercy Lewis was instantly on her feet. “It's a lie! We have done no wrong. We have not attempted to tell fortunes, nor have we made these dream cakes she speaks of.”

“It's you who lie,” I shot back. “You know you have eaten them.”

Elizabeth Hubbard, a girl of seventeen, who was a maid in Dr. Griggs's household and one of the accusers, also jumped up. “You hope to shift your guilt to us with this lie. You are an evil witch.”

All the girls nodded and murmured their consent. Only little Betty Parris averted her eyes guiltily.

“Tell the court again how you survived the shipwreck of the
Golden Explorer
,” John Hathorne bid me.

“I swam until I found a barrel to float in.”

“You swam?”

“Yes.”

“Who taught you to swim?”

“My governess, a good woman named Bronwyn.”

“This same Bronwyn who you claim has been taken over by the Devil?”

“Yes, taken over through no fault of her own.”

“And this Bronwyn guided you … coming to you as a witch flying through the night … to the Isle of Devils where you were instructed in spells and potions by an African Witch?”

“No!” I objected. “They are good women. Healers!”

“Everyone knows that the ability to swim is a sign of a witch!” John Hathorne shouted at me. “Everyone here knows it. You were taught to swim by a witch and are, yourself, also a witch!”

“No!”

“You are the granddaughter and great-granddaughter of witches who have been put to death for their compliance with the Devil in practicing witchcraft. You are from a familial line of the Devil's handmaidens!”

His accusation left me speechless. What could I say to it?

John Hathorne grinned at me in smug triumph. “I have researched your family tree, Elsabeth James. The secret of your devilish family has been revealed. What say you to it?”

“They were not witches and neither am I,” I replied quietly.

“You claim you have seen this Bronwyn the witch and her three witch helpers. You have seen the snarling Hound of Hell. I say you are the Devil's Consort.”

“She is friend to Tituba who set upon us in the woods!” Ann Putnam, Jr., shouted.

“And when I told the witch Sarah Good to leave the property, Elsabeth James scolded me,” Abigail put in with a vengeful and satisfied glance at me.

The judge banged his desk impatiently. “I have heard enough. Elsabeth James, I find you guilty of witchcraft. You will await your sentencing in jail!”

I
N THE NEXT MONTHS, THE DEMONIC PRESENCE RAN RAMPANT
through Salem, causing chaos and misery at every turn. The village was engulfed in a frenzy of accusation and counteraccusation. In April, Rebecca Nurse was convicted of witchcraft. When her sisters testified for her, they too were convicted. All were condemned to hang.

A woman named Elizabeth Proctor was accused by her servant Mary Warren. When her husband, John, protested, he too was convicted of witchcraft. Mary Warren said she had lied, then took it back, saying she had not lied. It was madness.

In the first week, Mary Carmen came with food for me. Up until then, Tituba had been sharing the food John Indian brought for her. For comfort, I also dipped into Aunty Honey's jar of honey. It was still edible, since honey never spoils, and I discovered that nothing made me feel stronger or calmer.

“Aakif will come soon,” Mary Carmen told me. “Mr. Osborne will send food with him for his wife. He has written to Van Leeuwenhoek at Harvard.”

“Do you think he will be of any help?”

“I hope so. Perhaps Van Leeuwenhoek can convince the governor to stop this madness. He is a renowned figure and has influence.”

My only relief was that Aakif did, indeed, begin to come to the cell every other day to bring food to Sarah Osborne. Afterward, he sat with me and we talked. I told him of the effects of the honey and he wasn't surprised. “Keep eating it. It has great power,” he said. We thought it might be unsafe to show our love too openly, but the brush of his hand over mine or a secret caress of my back gave me more comfort than I can say.

In May, Sarah Osborne grew ill, but despite her fever, they would not take off her shackles. Aakif came to bring her a basket of food and discovered her condition. “Bring my husband,” she requested.

Aakif seemed reluctant to leave her, but I said I would look after her. I made a drink from the special honey that Aunty Honey had given me. Tituba gave me some of the cider John Indian had brought her that was mixed with chamomile and ground birch bark.

“Bless you both,” Sarah Osborne said as I put the tonic to her lips. “You know I am no witch.”

“Forgive me for naming you,” Tituba implored. “I saw you in the woods that day, as you saw me. I know you were not acting on your own accord. I am so sorry. I believed they would understand me if I told the truth of what happened. I see now I was naïve.”

“Evil is afoot here,” Sarah Osborne said. “Demonic evil and human evil. It is true that my body was spirited away by some devilish force. And it is also true that John Putnam hates me because I have tried to claim what was rightfully mine. My dead husband and I bought and worked that farm together. It should have been left to me. Putnam hates that a woman should challenge the law. I never had a chance of being understood. What has happened to me is not your fault, Tituba. There is nothing to forgive.”

I knew that the birch bark would soothe her pain and the chamomile would let her rest. Both were mild medicines, but they seemed to help.

Later, Aakif returned with Andrew Osborne. Sarah Osborne was able to speak to her husband for a long time before the guards made him leave. Andrew Osborne had summoned Dr. Griggs but he had refused to come.

In the morning, Sarah Osborne — still shackled — was dead.

 

In June, a person named Bridget Bishop was the first woman hanged as a witch. I knew her from jail and believe they hanged her more for her irreverent comments and colorful dress than anything else. When I asked her if she'd had any experience with the demons I'd met, she didn't know what I was talking about.

In July, five women, including Sarah Good and Rebecca Nurse, were hanged on Gallows Hill. In August, four men and one woman were hanged. Elizabeth Proctor was convicted but not hanged because she was pregnant. But her husband, John, was one of the five killed. On the day her husband died, Elizabeth wept loudly the entire time. Although it was awful to listen to, no one asked her to stop.

Also, in September, a man named Giles Corey, who had been accused back in April, was crushed to death under the weight of huge stones. As I sat in my prison cell, I felt a terrible pressure on my chest and grew breathless just thinking about it.

“I will lose my mind in here,” I confided to Aakif.

“I bring you books, but the guards won't let them in,” he replied.

I squeezed his arm tenderly. “I understand. If it wasn't for you and Mary Carmen, I would already be raving mad.”

“Be strong, Betty-Fatu. We will find a way out of this. There are people in town who have written a petition to stop these trials. Mary Carmen has set up a prayer meeting of people who want this to end.”

“How many people have joined her?” I asked.

“Many, and more are coming every hour. They sit in a field and chant short prayers over and over, asking for help against this evil that has beset Salem. In one hand, she holds a blue marble, and in the other, a vial of water. They have been doing it all day and it's still going on.”

That night I could not sleep. My sentencing would be in the morning. As I twisted on my patch of straw, I heard a voice. Lifting my head to see if one of the other prisoners was talking, I heard only light snores.

But the voice came again.
“It's me, pet.”
Sitting immediately, I saw Bronwyn beside me.

Thinking it was a visitation from Evil Bronwyn, I jumped up, but one look at her familiar soft eyes told me it was Good Bronwyn. In the next second I clapped my hand to my mouth in stunned surprise, the emotions of joy and relief whirling together.

“That awful thing kept me stuck on the astral plane with its spells. But today something has changed. The entity is being weakened by something.”

Was Mary Carmen's prayer group having some effect on the evil creatures? It had to be.

“What should I do, Bronwyn?” I asked.

“You must join me on the astral plane. We have to move now while the creature remains weak.”

“I don't have the strength to rise from my body. I'm sorry, but I don't feel I can.” The months in prison had been so difficult. Not only my body but my spirit had been weakened.

Bronwyn surveyed me critically. “You are dispirited. I can see that.”

“Let me eat some of this,” I suggested, opening my jar containing the last of the honey. When I felt restored by its power, I told Bronwyn I was ready. “But I'm not sure I remember how.”

“Remember what I've taught you. Sit cross-legged and focus your breath. Let the spirit rise along the length of your spine. As it rises, stabilize the vibration. Concentrate on not dropping back down.”

I did as she said, and with a flash of white light, we were both hovering above the prison. Good Bronwyn beckoned and I followed her until we were over the shipyard. She gestured below and I saw Evil Bronwyn writhing in pain on the deck of a large ship.

“Why is it on a ship?” I asked.

“It is trying to get as far as possible from the source of its irritation.”

Good Bronwyn and I came up with a plan. In our astral forms, we traveled to Aakif. He was asleep in the hayloft where the Osbornes had created a room for him. I set down beside him and whispered in his ear until he began to awake. Suddenly he sat upward. “Betty-Fatu! Are you a ghost?” He jumped to standing. “Have they killed you?” He clutched his stomach. “Tell me it isn't so!”

“No! No! Don't be afraid, sweet. I'm traveling in spirit. Now you must listen to me, please.” I told him to go to Mary Carmen. “Tell her group to keep praying no matter what.” Then I asked him to go to the prison and bring my bag to the shipyard.

“Won't they realize you're gone if I do that?” he asked.

“No. My body is still there. They will think I am asleep.” I gazed at his dear, handsome face. “I will do everything to get back to you,” I said. “And if I don't, know that I will love you for all time, even if I die.”

“Don't say that! You won't die. You can't die.”

“The good Bronwyn is here with me. I'm not alone.”

I kissed him, and though he couldn't see me, he stood still and his eyes took on a happy gleam. “You
are
alive,” he said quietly.