Six Women of Salem (24 page)

But not all the supposed sightings were definite. On the same Sabbath, at Ingersoll’s, Ann Putnam’s maid Mercy Lewis had a seizure, during which she too called the name of Goody Cloyce—or so the bystanders heard. As Mercy came to, according to Ephraim Sheldon (a Maine refugee, like herself), “she was asked who she saw. she answered she Saw no body they demanded of her whether or noe she did not see Goodwife Nurse or Goodwife Cloyce or Goodwife Gory [Corey]. she answered she saw no body.”

Where her mistress, Ann Putnam, was at this time is not stated. Although she had tried to contradict their statements before, Mercy perhaps admitted doubt more easily if her master and mistress were not present, and their whereabouts is not always clear. Mercy spoke more certainly at other times, as when the angelic figure rescued her from the invisible witch-specters and their bloody mock-sacrament.

A week passed, giving time for Thomas Putnam to worry about witch attacks, time for the Procters to resent neighborhood suspicions while they kept sharper watch over Mary Warren, and time for Rebecca Nurse’s family to worry about the accusations spreading against their kin.

Suspense ended for the Procters on the morning of April 11, when Marshall George Herrick and his constables appeared at their door, reading an arrest warrant for Goodwife Elizabeth Procter on the charge that she and Goody Cloyce were suspected of committing “sundry acts of witchcraft” against Abigail Williams and John Indian at the parsonage as well as Mary Walcott, Thomas Putnam’s daughter Ann, and his maid Mercy Lewis.

Herrick’s orders included not only summoning Elizabeth Hubbard but also Mary Warren to give evidence. As the complaint had been entered the day after Mary’s note of thanks was read in the meeting house, clearly Walcott and Ingersoll still lumped her among the afflicted. So Mary must have had to accompany her master and mistress to Salem town and probably some of the sons as well, leaving the youngest children behind, who surely wanted to know why their mother was being taken away.

Ann Putnam may well have attended the hearings in the Salem meeting house, as Annie was one of the afflicted witnesses. Bridget Bishop would have had to decide whether it was safe to be present. She needed to find out exactly what the dangers were without reminding anyone of her earlier narrow escape from just such an accusation. Mary English may have thought that her husband’s position in town made her safe enough—if she thought herself in danger at all.

Rebecca Nurse, locked in the Salem jail with Martha Corey and young Dorothy Good, learned soon enough what the danger was when guards brought in her sister Sarah Cloyce and both Procters later that day. Sarah could tell her that Deputy Governor Thomas Danforth had presided at the day’s hearing along with four of the Governor’s Council. If any of the witch cases came to trial, the councilors would likely act as the higher court for capital matters once the province received its new charter.

Sarah could also relate the terrible racket of the accusing witnesses, their fits and shouts. The Putnam girl was one of them, Thomas Putnam’s maid, Abigail Williams, Mary Walcott, Elizabeth Hubbard, even Mistress Pope and Sarah Bibber, both grown women,
and
John Indian—a grown man, Reverend Parris’s slave, and Tituba’s husband. John Indian accused both Goodwives Cloyce and Procter to their faces of bringing him the Devil’s book to sign and then of choking him for his refusal. When Sarah called him a liar, he claimed her specter had bit and pinched him hard enough to draw blood the day before—on a Sabbath and in the meeting house. Sarah had fainted at one point, but instead of sympathy, the afflicted said, “Oh! her spirit is gone to prison to her sister Nurse.” And now she was in prison for real.

John Indian also accused Elizabeth Procter, at which her husband remarked that, given the chance, he would
beat
the Devil out of the slave. For a time most of the afflicted girls seemed unable to speak. Elizabeth Hubbard remained mute throughout, though they seemed to struggle to speak. Abigail Williams and Annie Putnam found their voices soon enough to claim that Goody Procter often tormented them for refusing the Devil’s book. “[S]he saith she hath made her maid set her hand to it,” said Annie Putnam. When the magistrate asked Abigail Williams what Goody Procter wanted her to do with the book, the girl replied, “To write in it and I shall be well”—as well as Mary Warren was on her recovery. Then Abigail had turned to Elizabeth and asked, “Did you not tell me that your maid had written?”

Elizabeth warned the girl against lying: “Dear child, it is not so. There is another judgment, dear child.” But after that, the girls saw only Elizabeth’s specter taunting them from the beam overhead as well as a specter of John Procter stalking among them. They shouted a warning to Mrs. Pope, who collapsed—the specter tipped her over, the girls said.

“What do you say Goodman Procter to these things?” the magistrate demanded.

“I know not,” answered Procter, “I am innocent.”

When Mrs. Pope fell into a fit, the magistrate continued: “You see the devil will deceive you; the children could see what you was going to do before the woman was hurt. I would advise you to repentance, for the devil is bringing you out.” He ignored the fact that Mrs. Pope could hear the warning
before
she fell, as could Goody Bibber when Abigail shouted another warning—“[T]here is Goodman Procter going to hurt Goody Bibber!”—just before that woman began to convulse.

Then the court placed John Procter himself in custody.

Benjamin Gould, who was not afflicted, described his sighting in his bedchamber the previous Thurday of both Coreys and Procters as well as Goodwives Cloyce, Nurse, and Griggs. (The latter was Elizabeth Hubbard’s aunt, but nothing would come of this suspicion.)

Both Annie Putnam and Abigail Williams tried to strike Elizabeth, only to be repelled by a force invisible to everyone else. Abigail did get close enough to connect with the lightest touch, but she shrieked, saying that her fingers burned. Annie collapsed, clutching her head.

None of this could encourage the prisoners or their families. It certainly could not have encouraged Mary Warren. The warrant named her as a witness and made no mention that she had tried to evade the summons (as others would try to do), yet none of the surviving records—Samuel Parris’s notes of the questioning, depositions from various parties—mention her at this hearing at all. She must have remained silent amid the turmoil, still free from fits, still resisting the urge to join in, but nonetheless hearing Abigail Williams and Annie Putnam both accuse her of signing the Devil’s book.

Nearly everyone present must have been aware of Mary’s recovery from her fits and afflictions, all too aware that the Devil had promised the others to stop hurting them if they signed on to his side. The law did nothing about the matter for the time being, and Mary presumably returned to the Procter farm with the resentful sons to face the younger Procter children, who had to be told that neither parent would be returning any time soon.

And it was all her fault, as the Procter sons would remind her. Every choice she made had turned disastrous, even the realization that her visions were false, deluded. If she had had foolish dreams of John Procter being her loving protector—or
any
sort of protector, for that matter—the court had ended that as well.

However much the sons of the first two marriages may have resented stepmother Elizabeth, they now could have hated Mary all the more for getting their father arrested. Yet she had nowhere else to go and had to live with the Procters, working for people who had no respect or even affection for her and carrying no notion of what her future held except the dread that matters would only worsen. She was utterly alone.

Notes for John Procter’s hearing are lost. He may have been questioned in Salem on April 12, the day after his arrest. The afflicted certainly reported his specter that day in town along with specters of all the other suspects then in Salem’s jail, including the Good child. According to John Indian they even tormented the dog that reclined under the table where Parris was writing.

All of the new prisoners—John and Elizabeth Procter, Martha Corey and little Dorothy Good, sisters Rebecca Nurse and Sarah Cloyce—were led from the jail that day or the next and carted to Boston to await trial. Despite the welcome fresh air, the jolting journey, which took the better part of the day, must have exhausted the elderly Rebecca. Giles Corey accompanied them as far as the ferry that would take them to Boston. Other relatives may have straggled along as well, such as the Procter sons, Peter Cloyce, and loyal Nurse kindred. The rest of the party crossed the water and ended at Boston’s jail. There young Dorothy could at least join her mother and sister.

The suspects’ specters, however, still roamed the Village, according to the afflicted, who expected the accused to resent them. Constable John Putnam thought so when, on April 13, his two-month-old daughter began to sicken and fall into convulsions. Back when Rebecca Nurse and Sarah Cloyce were arrested he had commented that it was not surprising that
they
should be suspected, as their mother, Joanna Towne, had been a witch before them, even if not prosecuted. Soon after saying this he was “taken with strange kinds of fits,” as he later said. Now the baby was sick. By nightfall the situation was so serious that he and Hannah sent for a doctor and for his mother as well. Despite the late hour Mrs. Elizabeth Putnam arrived to look upon her suffering granddaughter. The child, she feared, was under an evil hand. The doctor agreed. If he were William Griggs, this was the diagnosis he had given of the first afflicted girls. Two days later, on Friday, the baby died. News of this development would not have calmed Ann Putnam, fearing for her own children and convinced of Rebecca Nurse’s enmity.

So, imprisoned or not, the suspects’ specters could still do their work. The afflicted still convulsed, were still tormented by the same apparitions plus more—including those of Bridget Bishop and Mary Warren. On Monday, April 18, a week after John and Elizabeth Procter’s arrest, John Putnam Jr. and Ezekiel Cheever entered a complaint against Warren, Bishop, Martha Corey’s husband, Giles, and Abigail Hobbs. The victims of these “sundry acts of witchcraft” were listed as Ann Putnam Jr., Mercy Lewis, Abigail Williams, Mary Walcott, and Elizabeth Hubbard, all of Salem Village.

Constables arrested all four the same day and brought them to Salem Village for questioning on the morrow, probably keeping them in the watch-house over night.

Bridget Bishop might have felt a cold flood of fear but not surprise to see the marshall with his staff of office, his men, and an arrest warrant at her door. She knew she was suspected again or, rather, still. The stain of witchcraft never faded—certainly not from
her
neighbors’ minds. Yet the afflicted and their fits lived far off in the Village, and she did not know any of them. She possibly had heard of the supposed victims named in the warrant only in recent gossip. Their lives had not rubbed together over daily tasks, so there was no opportunity for resentments—justified or fancied—to grow.

Yet there she was, hands bound, balanced on a pillion behind one deputy, eyed sharply by the others, riding to a part of town she had never seen before, past fields and rough pastures, along the muddy road, deeper into the country to a crossroads with a tavern, a small meeting house, and even smaller watch-house. Loiterers from the tavern stared as a deputy hoisted her down from the horse and led her into the watch-house.

By nightfall three others beside Bridget shared the little room: an angry old man and two frightened young women.

After a comfortless night and a sparse breakfast, they were escorted, one by one, down to the meeting house, which was crowded with everyone who could steal away from work, barely leaving room for the magistrates and the afflicted witnesses.

Giles Corey was taken first, then the Hobbs girl, then Mary Warren. Bridget might cling to hope, knowing that she was innocent of the charge and that the courts had dropped the earlier cases against her. While the guards hovered around, looking nervous, Bridget remarked to one of them that she had been suspected of witchcraft for ten years but that she was
not
a witch, so the Devil could not touch her.

____________________

Mary Warren faces the magistrates and her accusers, very near panic, hardly able to make sense. She claims innocence, but the afflicted fall into such fits that they cannot speak even to accuse her, all except Elizabeth Hubbard, the Griggs’ hired girl, who had said a wolf chased her after an errand to the Procters’.

“What do you say for yourself?” Hathorne asks Mary. “Are you guilty or not?”

“I am innocent.”

Some of the afflicted girls seem struck dumb, but Elizabeth Hubbard accuses Mary before falling into a violent fit.

“You were a little while ago an afflicted person,” Hathorne reminds her. “Now you are an afflicter. How comes this to pass?”

God alone could understand this tangle. “I look up to God,” says Mary with some confusion, “and take it to be a great mercy of God.”

“What,” Hathorne demands, “do you take it to be a great mercy to
afflict
others?”

Elizabeth Hubbard says that soon after Mary recovered from her fits, she had stated “that the afflicted persons did but dissemble.” Then all the afflicted convulse—convincingly—including Mrs. Pope and John Indian. Mary’s specter, they say, causes these violent fits.