Six Women of Salem (29 page)

Elizabeth Hubbard had not seen the ghosts but, like all the others, had been tormented because she would not sign the book. Annie Putnam and the rest affirmed that Burroughs’s specter was most insistent with the book. The magistrates asked Burroughs what he made of all this.

He replied that “it was an amazing & humbling Providence” but that he did not understand it. “[S]ome of you may observe,” he noted, “that when they begin [to] name my name, they cannot name it.”

Who, Stoughton asked him, did he think “hindered these witnesses from giving their testimonies?”

The Devil, Burroughs supposed.

“How comes the Divel so loathe to have any Testimony born against you?” Stoughton countered, and this, the magistrates thought, greatly confused Burroughs.

Sarah Bibber, a married woman, was tormented during the proceedings and said she witnessed the other spectral afflictions but that Burroughs’s specter had not hurt her nor had she even seen him in person, though his spirit had tried to lure her away from attending court that morning.

Susanna Sheldon had more to say, and in the confusion no one seemed to heed that Annie’s story of Burroughs’s dead wives being stabbed under the arm and killed in a boat contradicted not only Susanna’s tale of the ghosts telling her they were smothered and choked but also Mercy Lewis’s earlier account that Burroughs had killed them through witchcraft. It was enough that the women’s ghosts and now the ghosts of two children, according to Susanna, accused the man; attention to such crucial details was lost in the rising clamor. As Parris noted, some of “The Bewitched were so tortured that Authority ordered them to be taken away” to recover. If Annie Putnam was one of these, her anxious, watching mother would not have had much sympathy for the accused, certainly not for a man who was notoriously harsh to his first two wives, who supposedly kept one of them working even after the birth pangs came upon her.

Others testified, including confessors Deliverance and Abigail Hobbs as well as John and Rebecca Putnam, who recalled that, when he boarded with them, “he was a very harch sharp man to his wife.” He also had wanted his wife to sign and seal a covenant “that shee would never reveall his secrits” when John and Rebecca felt that the marriage vows were sufficient. Now the court was left imagining just
what
secrets Burroughs tried to hide.

Elizer Keyser told of an unnerving encounter with the confined Burroughs at Beadle’s tavern, after which Keyser saw a cluster of glowing balls of lights in his own darkened chamber that very night, surely a “diabolicall apperition.” (Elizer was a brother of the long-distracted Hannah Keyser who Mary Warren had mentioned as being not in her right mind.)

Various men spoke of Burroughs’s uncanny strength, for rumors told of Burroughs hefting a heavy barrel of molasses from a canoe by himself, which he denied, or holding out a long-barreled gun with one hand like a mere pistol. He tried to explain how he had balanced it, but no one was convinced.

That day the court also examined three other suspects, including Bethia Carter of Woburn, and kept all for future trial. (Elizabeth Procter may have been surprised to see Bethia joining the prisoners, for in her youth the woman had accused Elizabeth’s grandmother, Ann Burt, of bewitching her and testified as much at the resulting court case. Goody Burt had survived that encounter, so perhaps Elizabeth took a grim comfort in that.) No notes for the examinations of the other seem to have survived, and most of the reasons why they were suspected are only conjecture; the surviving paperwork does not indicate that Goody Carter’s daughter Bethia Jr. was arrested as ordered. By the end of the session the suspects also included Sarah Churchill, who was originally considered an afflicted witness but now regarded as a confessed witch.

Twenty years old and a refugee from Maine, Sarah Churchill came from a fairly prominent family, though it was one known for violence (her grandfather) and fornication (her mother). Sarah was working as hired help for George Jacobs Sr. over on Cow House River when she experienced convulsions as if bewitched. Her master was unsympathetic to her flailing. Long known as combative and now beset with arthritis, old Jacobs called her a “bitch witch” and apparently beat her with one of the two walking sticks he needed to support himself. However, she had ceased to have fits—Jacobs’s beatings may have cured them—and the magistrates assumed that her pain had stopped because she had given in and joined the witches. The afflicted reported her specter tormenting them, and at last, like Mary Warren and Deliverance Hobbs, she “confessed.” Her name, she told the court, was written in the Devil’s book twice, listed with the names of her master, Jacobs, his son, and his granddaughter.

According to Abigail Williams, old Jacobs had made his granddaughter Margaret and the maid Sarah Churchill put their hands to the Devil’s book along with his own son George Jacobs Jr., his wife, Sarah, as well as “another woman & her husband viz: Mr. English & his wife” (Philip and Mary English). At some point Sarah Churchill also said that Ann Pudeator brought her a book to sign and that Bridget Bishop, “alias Olliver,” also tormented her.

Sarah was afflicted again at Ingersoll’s the evening of May 9 after her confession, at which time Mary Walcott identified the specter as Sarah’s master, old George Jacobs, “a man with 2 staves.”

The latest suspects were probably kept in the Village’s watch house overnight before being crowded into Ingersoll’s cart, which had been rented for the journey to Boston jail But Sarah Churchill, now that she was understood to be a
repentant
witch and thus a potential witness against her coconspirators, was kept in Salem, her arrival a matter of interest to Mary Warren; here was yet another imprisoned witness whose change of heart was not believed.

At Thomas and Ann Putnam’s home around midnight Mercy Lewis reported Jacobs’s pursuing specter, carrying his two walking sticks and the Devil’s book, beating her because she refused to sign and threatening to kill her that very night because she had witnessed against his maid Sarah that day and persuaded her to confess.

Because of this, Hathorne and Corwin issued an arrest warrant on the following day for George Jacobs Sr. and his granddaughter Margaret Jacobs. They ordered these suspects brought to town for a hearing in Thomas Beadle’s tavern, where Burroughs had been confined earlier. Sarah Churchill was taken there as a witness, and when she was returned to the Salem jail she had a distressing story full of contradictions that would give Mary Warren even more to worry over.

Sarah had testified against her master as she was expected to do, accusing him of hurting her despite the fact that the old man insisted on his own innocence. She must also have witnessed against Jacobs’s granddaughter Margaret, whose case notes are lost, for Margaret broke down and also confessed that she had indeed joined the witches.

But, as Sarah Churchill tried to explain later, the authorities had pressured her to confess. She had belied herself, she said, because
they
would not believe her.
They
threatened to lock her up with the other accused witches—people she had charged, who were thus bound to be resentful. They had kept at her until she was afraid
not
to confess,
not
to lie in the face of that stony disbelief. If she told Reverend Noyes only once that she had signed the Devil’s book, he would believe her. If she told him a hundred times that she had not,
then
he would think that she lied. Mary Warren knew what that was like.

Meanwhile, John Willard’s specter was also active, for Jonathan Corwin wrote an arrest warrant for the man at some point that day, May 10, and entrusted it to Constable John Putnam Jr., Annie’s uncle. But when Constable Putnam reached Will’s Hill, he found Willard was not at home.

Sarah Churchill returned to court on May 11, joining Mercy Lewis, Annie Putnam, Abigail Williams, Elizabeth Hubbard, and Mary Walcott, to continue her accusations against Jacobs and his granddaughter. Margaret Jacobs, having confessed, unlike her aggressive grandfather, accused both Mary Warren
and
Goodwife Alice Parker—Mary Warren’s enemy.

In Boston on May 10, the day of the first Jacobs examination, Sarah Osborn, unwell to begin with, died in jail. Her nine weeks and two days of imprisonment, as enumerated by the jailer, left an unpaid bill of £1:3:0. Hers was an unhappy and squalid death hastened by illness, no doubt, yet it was a more merciful escape from the prison than a trip to the gallows would be.

It would take time for news of Goody Osborn’s death to filter back to Salem, where, on May 12, Constable John Putnam Jr. reported to Hathorne that suspect John Willard was nowhere to be found. The constable had searched Willard’s house over near Will’s Hill along with “Severall other houses and places,” all to no avail. As far as he could tell from Willard’s family and friends, “he was ffleed Salem.” (Her kinsman’s failure to seize this suspected witch could only have made Ann Putnam even more concerned for herself and her children.)

That same day Magistrates Hathorne and Corwin questioned Mary Warren again in the Salem jail. They had interviewed Abigail Hobbs the day before, finding her as cooperative as Deliverance Hobbs and Susanna Churchill. If Mary had hesitated earlier, had held back from further direct accusations—for neither the various hearing notes or the subsequent indictments indicate her presence in court since her own hearing—she now collapsed in a torrent of confession and accusation while Jonathan Corwin took lengthy notes.

She may have agreed with the charge of witchcraft because of fear or confusion, coming to believe that if the afflicted acted as if her specter were pursuing them, perhaps it was. The magistrates and the ministers, educated gentlemen all, were convinced that this was true. Maybe she believed—or almost believed—it was true, for they said that her actions could give the Devil permission to use her appearance even if she were not aware of it.

Or Mary gave in and agreed to the charge solely to save her skin. A proven witch would be put to death. But a cooperating repentant witch could be considered sufficiently free of Satan to live long enough to testify. So she did as she was expected to do—she confessed and accused her supposed coconspirators. Besides, Goody Parker had been named among the specters, and that was an accusation she could believe. That her own specter was also reported was an inducement to cooperate, to contradict
that
sighting.

Yes, she admitted, she
had
signed the Devil’s book, saying, “I did nott know itt [then] butt I know itt now, to be Sure itt was the Devills book in the ffirst place to be Sure I did Sett my hand to the Devills book; I have considered of itt, Since you were here last, & itt was the Devills book, [that] my Master Procter brought to me, & he Tould me if I would Sett my hand to th[a]t book I should be well.” So by now she was accusing John Procter as well as Elizabeth.

Mary, like others, seemed to embroider actual innocuous events to fit the magistrates’ expectations. She denied hurting the afflicted children with magic and then admitted to using poppets. Her mistress, Elizabeth Procter, had brought her a cloth doll representing either Abigail Williams or Annie Putnam. Her master brought her another poppet representing Abigail Williams. The specters of Goodwives Alice Parker (
that
woman who had killed Mary’s mother) and Ann Pudeator had brought her in prison other dolls as well, representing girls such as Mercy Lewis and Mary Walcott. Alice Parker and Ann Pudeator had bragged of the people they had killed, Mary said. Parker had caused the deaths of local men at sea and drowned Goody Orne’s son in Salem Harbor, washing him up by his mother’s very door. Pudeator poisoned her own husband. While Mary “was thus Confessing,” Corwin wrote, “Parker appeared & bitt hir Extreamly on hir armes as she affirmed unto us.”

Many witch specters continued to confront her, Mary said, naming other prisoners, ranging from Rebecca Nurse to Dorothy Good, telling how Goody Corey’s specter turned into John Procter’s on her lap. They paused in the session when Reverends Higginson and Hale arrived in order to observe. As Corwin read his notes aloud to the two ministers, Mary “Imediately ffell into dreadfull ffitts” when he read Goody Parker’s name. The woman’s specter had appeared, as did that of Goodwife Ann Pudeator when Hathorne spoke her name.

According to Mary Warren, the Parker specter had not only struck wealthy John Turner unconscious for a time when she knocked him out of a cherry tree in his orchard but also bewitched the power of speech away from Mary’s own sister. Yet Parker failed completely in her attempt to bewitch Mr. Corwin’s mare to prevent the magistrate from riding to Salem Village. Burroughs likewise failed to hobble Hathorne’s horse to thwart his trip to Boston. They were not
that
powerful. They could not bewitch Hathorne, but they could evidently attack Mary, who fell into such severe fits that Hathorne and Corwin issued an arrest warrant for both Pudeator and Parker and ordered Marshall Herrick to bring them in immediately for questioning. (The location is not specified but may have been Beadle’s tavern as before.) The afflicted witnesses against them would be Mary Warren and Margaret Jacobs.

When the marshall brought in Alice Parker, Mary English’s tenant and neighbor and Bridget Bishop’s friend, Mary Warren did not hesitate to accuse her. All the resentment at everything her family had lost—her sister locked in silence and her mother dead—due to this perceived enemy boiled over.

____________________

Mary Warren, face to face with Alice Parker, does not doubt her accusation. Not now, not with
this
woman. She may only half believe her own confession, but even when she had declared that her fits were part of a distraction, even when she tried to recant, she had no reason to doubt the reality of witches, of malefic magic, of the Devil’s malice.
Someone
could be causing her misery and the afflictions of the other women and girls, and who would
want
to do such things? Goody Parker is so obvious a threat. Does not the woman go rigid and blank, as though her soul flits elsewhere, invisible to her victims? If anyone is a witch, this woman is for sure, one of the Devil’s willing servants.