Six Women of Salem (42 page)

The justices could see clearly that the accuser’s fragment exactly fit the young man’s broken blade. The day before, he explained, he had happened to snap his own knife in two and “cast away the upper part, this afflicted person being then present.”

This development must have given Sarah Good a flicker of hope and confounded the accusers. The Nurse family would have reacted very differently from Thomas and Ann Putnam—for a brief time at least. (As the young man did not say he had actually
seen
the afflicted person take the fragment, perhaps the justices preferred to imagine that a witch might have spirited away the piece of blade to use against her accuser.) The court dismissed the young man, then, turning to the accuser, merely warned her “not to tell lyes”—perhaps uncertain whether she had lied or not—and allowed her to continue as a witness. The Putnams could relax at this, whereas Sarah Good and the Nurse family were plunged back into too-familiar dread.

Who was this afflicted person? A badly torn statement from William and Rachel Bradford and William Rayment Jr. questioned Mercy Lewis’s honesty by recounting events within the previous two and a half years when Mercy lived in the Bradford household.

Perhaps this was Susanna Sheldon, if she is the deponent whose name was given as Joanna Childen, who had claimed back on June 2 that she had seen the ghost of Sarah Good’s dead infant, who had accused her own mother of murdering her and called Sarah a witch. Good’s specter in turn said she had killed the child “becaus that she Could not atend it” and that “she did give it to the divell.” This accusation was not used at the trial, so Sarah Good was spared this painful charge at least, though the Sheldon girl would testify against other defendants.

In addition, even more people expressed their low opinion of Sarah Bibber’s honesty—neighbors and people who had had the misfortune to have hired Goodman John Bibber and his wife as live-in help: Joseph Fowler, Thomas and Mary Jacobs of Ipswich, Richard Walker, John and Lydia Porter. All agreed the woman was an idle, “double tongued,” malicious, lying gossip, “a woman of an unruly turbulent spirit” who “would have strange fitts when shee was crost.” The Nurse family would collect a sheaf of statements against Bibber, if they had not already done so.

Meanwhile, the jury found Sarah Good guilty as charged.

Susannah Martin, a combative widow, having faced the grand jury this same day, also faced the trial jury. The documents in her case include statements from the afflicted (written out for them by Thomas Putnam), including Annie Putnam, Mercy Lewis, and Sarah Bibber about her spectral torments during Martin’s hearing and at other times; statements from Reverend Parris, Nathaniel Ingersoll, and Thomas Putnam concerning what they saw the afflicted do and say at certain times; and statements from various neighbors in Amesbury who had had unfortunate encounters with her. Evidently Goody Martin spoke her mind in vivid terms during the proceedings, but this only helped convince the court that she was, as Cotton Mather relayed the opinion, “one of the most Impudent, Scurrilous, wicked creatures in the world.” Susannah Martin was also found guilty.

During one of the day’s trials, according to Robert Calef, one of the afflicted “cried out publickly of Mr. Willard Minister in Boston as afflicting of her.” Reverend Samuel Willard, minister of the Second Church where Samuel Sewall was a member, had criticized the court’s methods. The justices, however, knew Willard and trusted his character enough to assume the accuser had confused the name.
John
Willard was, after all, under arrest for suspected witchcraft and murder by witchcraft. The court sent her from the room, and word went around that “she was mistaken in the person.” Again, Calef did not name the accuser.

As the grand jury had accepted four indictments against Rebecca Nurse—for afflicting Annie Putnam, Mary Walcott, Elizabeth Hubbard, and Abigail Williams—her family had been busy gathering materials to refute these specific charges and to discredit the other accusers.

Rebecca’s son and son-in-law, Samuel Nurse and John Tarbell respectively, told how, shortly after her arrest, they had questioned the Putnam women and found that Annie had not been at all sure of the specter’s identity until either her mother or the maid named it and how then Ann Putnam and Mercy Lewis each said that the
other
had first made the identification. At the very least this showed uncertainty.

Potter James Kettle recalled a Sabbath in May when he visited Dr. Griggs’s house and spoke with Elizabeth Hubbard. “I found her to speack severall untruthes in denying the sabath day and saying she had nat ben to meting that day but had onely bean up to James houlltons. this I can testifie to if called.” However, Kettle had also deposed that when he had been at Dr. Griggs’s house on May 10 he had witnessed Elizabeth “in severall Fitts,” during which “she Cried & held her apron before her face saying that she would not se them”—“Them” being Kettle’s two dead children, according to Elizabeth, killed by Sarah Bishop—“& they were by her description much as they were when they ware put in to there Coffins to be buried.” The bereaved father must have had second thoughts about Elizabeth’s trustworthiness.

Similarly, Joseph Hutchinson of Salem Village described how, when Abigail Williams told him about an encounter with the Devil, “I asked her if shee wos not afraid to see the devell.” She replied that at first she had been afraid and had tried to flee, “but now shee wos not afraid but Could talke with him as well as shee Could with mee.” To him, this attitude implied too great a familiarity with the Fiend.

William and Rachel Bradford along with William Rayment Jr. submitted a statement about Mercy Lewis’s lack of honesty, which may have been intended to defend Rebecca Nurse. Unfortunately, today the paper is badly torn.

Robert Moulton Sr. wrote that while watching the ailing Susanna Sheldon he heard her contradict her own claims about spectral goings-on. He signed his statement, witnessed by Samuel Nurse and Joseph Trumball.

If Susanna Sheldon was the same person as the accuser whose name was written as Joanna Childen, her account of Goodman Harwood’s ghost claiming Rebecca Nurse had killed him was
not
used in court.

As none of the papers in favor of Rebecca Nurse were sworn, they do not indicate how or even if the court considered them. Testimony against her came from the afflicted, people who verified the actions and words of the afflicted, as well as neighbor Sarah Holton, who was convinced that Rebecca had had something to do with her husband Benjamin’s illness and death after a particularly bitter argument with Rebecca over Holton pigs damaging Nurse crops.

Nathaniel and Hannah Ingersoll said that although Benjamin Holton “died a most violent death” from “fittes like to our poor bewicthed parsons,” at the time “we hade no suspition of wicthcraft. amongst us.” Even though Thomas Putnam wrote the statement for them, the words offer some ambiguity as to cause of death.

John Putnam Jr. and his wife, Hannah, definitely blamed Rebecca for the “cruell and violent death” of their infant back in April. However, John Putnam Sr. and Rebecca Putnam, testified that although their daughter Rebecca Shepard and son-in-law John Fuller had died “a most violent death . . . wee did Judg then that thay both diead of a malignant fever and had no suspiction of wichcraft of aney nether Can wee acues the prisner at the bar of aney such thing.”

Francis Nurse had persuaded Thomas Putnam’s uncle Nathaniel Putnam Sr. to testify on Rebecca’s behalf. Although the document is torn, Nathaniel was clear that “what i have observed of her human frailtys excepted; her life & conversation hath been according to her proffession [of Christainity] & she hath brought up a great family of children & educated them well . . . i have known her differ with her neighbors but i never knew nor heard of any that did accuse of what she is now charged with.”

Not all of the testimony was written down, and some of the statements against Rebecca lay in the “confessions” of those who had succumbed to pressure and incriminated themselves, describing Rebecca among their fellow witches.

Facing judges and jurors, Rebecca Nurse pleaded not guilty. Her hearing, however, was not strong. She had heard or heard about the accusations before. She knew that certain neighbors had spoken for her and that many had signed the petition attesting to her good Christian behavior. She could see the afflicted writhing and contorting even when the words reaching her were muffled. She stood at the bar, exposed and tired as people came and went—clerks, officers, witnesses for and against her.

Though she did not notice, from the audience her daughter-in-law Sarah glimpsed the Bibber woman palm some pins from her clothing and then clutch her own knee and cry out that Rebecca’s specter had stuck her.

Another group entered the chamber under guard—fellow suspect Deliverance Hobbs and her stepdaughter Abigail Hobbs, that strange girl who ran about the woods at all hours. Why were the guards bringing in other prisoners?

“What?” asked Rebecca. “[D]o these persons give in Evidence against me now?” She asked, stating they “were of our Company.”

But the Hobbs women spoke, going on, as far as Rebecca could hear, about the great witch meeting.

The jury withdrew and waiting began. Eventually the men returned to the courtroom, and Foreman Thomas Fisk stood to deliver the verdict.
Not
guilty, he said, and as Rebecca’s kindred felt the exhilarating relief at that good news, all of the afflicted in the courtroom shrieked, the startling noise soon followed by more screams from the other afflicted witnesses outside, with the “hideous out-cry” amazing not only the audience but the court officers as well.

So even though she was declared not guilty, Rebecca was not dismissed. Court recessed, with the justices, exiting, in conversation. Clearly many interpreted the painful reaction of the afflicted to have been spectrally induced, however self-defeating it would have been for Rebecca to take such revenge on her accusers at such a time. Then again, it may have been supposed, the devils she allegedly dealt with had their own agenda and had not released their hold on the woman. Some of the judges thought they might indict Goody Nurse on this latest evidence of torture.

When court resumed, Chief Justice Stoughton informed the jury that although he would not try to “impose” upon them, they might consider the defendant’s comment about one of the Hobbs women—a self-confessed witch—as “one of us.” The jury, confused and in doubt after the hair-raising shrieks, asked if they might reconsider the verdict. Stoughton agreed, and the jury withdrew again—and again the courtroom waited, tense with apprehension and dread. Rebecca and her family prayed that the jury would be sensible, the afflicted wondered if they would be charged as liars or as tools of the devils, and Thomas and Ann Putnam were aghast that the court might release a witch to rove among them (and Thomas was concerned for his own credibility in the matter).

The jury filed back into the room. Rebecca, standing again at the bar, must have been exhausted physically and emotionally. The foreman said something. So much talk, so many words—they buzzed in her weary ears like so many flies with only a few clear snatches. He said something else, then the jury retreated again. After a time they returned, and Fisk stepped forward. Guilty, he said, guilty of witchcraft. The justices said something, and the guards led her away, back to the jail.

Later, when her family was able to speak with her, they asked why,
why
had she not explained what she had meant when she had the chance, to explain that when she called the Hobbs woman “one of us” she meant one of us
prisoners
. The jury had already found her innocent. And Rebecca realized she had not heard the question, had not known she was offered a chance at life and freedom and thus had thrown away that chance.

But Rebecca’s family did not give up. Her daughter-in-law Sarah Nurse had someone write out her description of what one of the afflicted—Sarah Bibber, that turbulent gossip, a grown and married woman—had done during Rebecca’s trial:

the testimony of Sarah Nurs aged
28
years or there abouts who testifieth and saith that being in the Court this
29
of June
1692
I sawe goodwife bibber pull out pins out of her Close and held them betwene her fingers and Claspt her hands round her knese and then she Cryed out and said goody Nurs prict her this I can testifie if Calld as witnes my mark

Sarah signed with a rough, S-shaped mark, and the family added the document to a growing sheaf of papers in their mother’s favor.

____________________

Tituba paces the end of the prison yard by the high fence, feeling a slight breeze from the North River, one of the few advantages of cooperation. The other confessors had such privileges but kept to themselves in little family knots. The summer was growing hotter, and the shaded side of the jail offers small relief. She paces to stay moving and wishes she had something specific to do. Enforced idleness lost its charm after a time, even for such as herself, so long forced to work for others.

Shouts from the street catch her attention. The front gate creaks open, and a bristle of guards escorts Sarah Good back inside the fence. She has been tried, and there is no need to ask about the verdict—the woman looks more furious than usual.

“You!” she shouts, catching sight of Tituba watching. Good struggles against the guard who is trying to steer her toward the jail door. “See what you started?” Sarah rails. “They’re taking evidence against you too. Don’t think you’re safe just because you confessed.” The guards finally push her inside, and whatever else she is saying is lost, muffled by the walls.