Tituba of Salem Village (19 page)

They were both silent, and then John said, “They think that unless they can find out who has bewitched the children, they will all die.”

“Die?” Tituba asked. “Maybe some of them will. My little Betsey, perhaps, but not Abigail. She looks better after she’s had a fit than she did before she had it. All these orphan nieces and bound girls come out of their fits, looking very lively. So does Anne Putnam, Jr. But not Betsey.”

Betsey was growing thinner and paler and more frightened every day. On the other hand, Abigail flourished. Tituba tried to remember what she herself had been like at twelve, and shook her head. At twelve she could do almost as much hard work as a grown woman. She worked in the cookhouse on the plantation. She knew how to cook and to sew and how to clean a house and to weed a garden. When she was fourteen she was sold to Mistress Endicott.

Abigail had never learned to work steadily at something and finish it and do it well. She didn’t want to help, and so did everything badly.

Poor little Betsey could not work at anything steadily either. Even before the seizures started, her mind wandered and her hands stopped working. If the cat sat up and washed his face, going over it carefully with his paw, pausing to moisten his paw with his tongue, Betsey stopped sewing to watch him. The thread would break, or she would lose the needle, or the thread would become knotted so badly that she had to discard it and start over. So she never finished anything.

If she were outdoors, her attention might be caught by a butterfly flitting among the flowers or by a worm slowly inching over the ground. She would absent-mindedly pull up weeds and plants, too, watching the long grass in the meadow. Sometimes she sat without moving because a brilliantly colored bird flew through the orchard and started singing, and she had to stay still so she could listen to the song.

Sometimes Tituba thought it would have been better if the master hadn’t owned slaves. But with a sickly wife and two young children, how would he have managed?

Then she decided he could have managed if he’d had a young, strong woman to help. Abigail would have been so busy she wouldn’t have had time to become bewitched, and little Betsey—Tituba sighed thinking about her. The poor child saw things in corners, talked in her sleep, cried too easily, laughed too easily. She was afraid of her father, afraid of Abigail. She loved her mother, but she was afraid she might die. Tituba was always aware, when she helped the mistress during one of those dreadful fits of coughing, that little Betsey was huddled in one corner of the room, eyes big with fear, small body shivering with fear. Sometimes she thrust her small, cold hand into Tituba’s hand, whispering, “Don’t let her die, Tituba. Don’t let her die.”

After John left, Tituba kept thinking of the phrase, “those hands that witches do their works of darkness by.” The next day she spoke to Goody Sibley about Betsey, pointing out how pitifully thin the child had grown, how easily startled she was.

Goody Sibley said, “She’s bewitched. We have to find out who the witch is and break her power. I can find out.”

“The girls don’t know who bewitches them,” Tituba said. “The master has asked Abigail, and Deacon Putnam has asked Mercy Lewis and Anne Putnam, Jr., and Dr. Griggs has asked Elizabeth Hubbard—they don’t know.”

“We’ll find out,” Goody Sibley said confidently. ‘I’ll make a witch cake. I know how to do it. My mother gave me the recipe just before she died. We’ll wait for a day when Mr. Parris is not home. I’ll need John Indian to help me. We’ll get all the bewitched girls together here in your keeping room, and we’ll find out.”

Tituba thought, Not all of them are girls. Only three of them could be called girls—Betsey is nine, and Abigail is twelve, and Anne Putnam, Jr., is twelve. But the others are young women. Mary Walcott, Elizabeth Hubbard, and Mercy Lewis are seventeen; Elizabeth Booth and Susanna Sheldon are eighteen, and Mary Warren and Sarah Churchill are twenty.

“You will want all of them?”

“No. Just the ones who were first bewitched. Betsey and Abigail and Anne Putnam and Mercy Lewis and Mary Walcott and Elizabeth Hubbard and Mary Warren. You’ll see. The witch cake will draw the witch to the house.”

Chapter 15

On the day that the Reverend Samuel Parris went to Boston to consult with the Boston clergy on how best to handle the matter of witchcraft in Salem Village, Goody Sibley made a witch cake.

She arrived at the minister’s house soon after he left. She brought her niece, Mary Walcott, with her. She had a big bundle under her arm, and she put this down on the settle in the keeping room. She managed to pull her dog Ranter inside with her.

Ranter had barked indiscriminately at everything that moved along the road—birds, squirrels, even dried leaves blowing in the wind. When he entered the minister’s dooryard and saw Tituba’s money cat, he barked frantically. The money cat hissed at him and then went towards the woods with his tail up in the air.

And now Ranter was pleasantly excited and not inclined to stay inside a house.

“I’ve sent word to John Indian to come and help me,” Goody Sibley explained, as she tied Ranter to the crossbar on the big door. “Anne Putnam, Jr., and Mercy Lewis and the others will be along soon.”

“You don’t have to tie the dog up,” Tituba said.

“I’ll need him later on.”

Tituba said, frowning, wondering what was to happen to the dog, “Sometimes these strange old cures don’t turn out right. I’m not sure we should do this.”

Abigail said, “Oh, yes, we must do this.”

By the time John arrived, the girls were all present and the witch cake had been made. Goody Sibley had mixed rye meal with the children’s urine and poured it into a flat pan, ready to be thrust directly into the fire where it would bake when the time came. She said that John must get up on the roof and stop up the chimney.

“Stop up the chimney?” he said, perplexed. “All the smoke will come in the house. Why don’t you put the fire out if you don’t want a fire going?”

She shook her head. “No. There must be a fire in the fireplace so that I can bake the witch cake, but the opening into the chimney must be closed lest the witch escape up the chimney. Everything must be closed.”

Tituba knew when he’d stopped up the chimney because smoke began to drift into the room. Then John came in and carefully closed the door behind him and barred it. The girls were watching with great interest—no sign of fits or sound of shrieks.

Goody Sibley undid her bundle. She put a long piece of black woolen cloth around her neck and put a hood of black lambskin on her head. She put more logs on the fire. She moved a pot of water closer to her. She then thrust the witch cake deep into the heart of the fire. Smoke poured out of the chimney. Tituba could barely see the blaze. She could barely see Goody Sibley crouched in front of the fire.

Goody Sibley began to rock back and forth, and she crooned, “O coom, great Kelah, coom, coom to the meal with seed of each gender, coom.”

Tituba got the uneasy feeling that something had entered the room. They couldn’t see each other because of the smoke. The girls were making choking sounds, and John was coughing. The dog began to whine and yelp and struggle to get free of the rope that held him.

Goody Sibley took the witch cake out of the fire, and as far as Tituba could tell, she sprinkled it with water from the black pot to cool it off. Then she and John thrust the dog’s snout into it, and he gobbled it down, and Tituba wondered if there had been something added to the rye meal to make him wolf it down with such relish. Then John touched the dog under the tail, and she smelled oil of wintergreen. The dog yelped and jumped straight up in the air, and John cut the rope that had been holding him.

Tituba, not thinking what she was doing, eyes smarting and running, coughing, choking, ran to the door and opened it, and the dog went out of the house, leaping and yelping and running in circles in the snow. Tituba went outside, too, choking and coughing. Even though it was cold and she had no shawl around her, she stood outside taking deep breaths of the clean, cold air. It was a wonder they hadn’t died shut up in that room with only smoke to breathe. She walked away from the house. Smoke was pouring out of the front door.

She caught a whiff of a familiar odor, rank, sour-smelling, and turned around. Goody Good was coming around the side of the house. She had Dorcas by the hand.

“I’m hungered,” she whined. “Ye said I should leave the Village. What kind of fortune was that to tell a body? I’m ye friend, Tituba. Dorcas and I are ye friends—” She broke off. “What crooked-handed woman is that?”

A horse had stopped in front of the house, and a young man was helping an old woman down from the horse. She stumbled when she got off the horse, and he held on to her, and then she gestured that he was to release her, and she came towards them; walking slowly.

“It’s old Gammer Osburne,” Goody Good said. “It’s old Gammer Osburne. Probably looking for Minister. Folks say she’s no Gospel woman. Hasn’t set foot in meeting for three years. Not since she married the redemptioner.” She peered at the woman. “Thought ye was bed-rid.”

“I came to see Tituba.”

Good pointed at Tituba. “That’s her. That’s her. What d’ye want of her? She tells bad fortunes.”

Gammer Osburne said, “They say you’ve got a tea made of iris root that stops pain and that you only give it to folk if they come for it. I came to ask you to give some of it to me.”

Tituba said, “There was no need to come for it. You could have sent somebody. Come in now and rest yourself before you start for home.” The skin on the woman’s face was like the snow and pitted like snow that has started to melt.

Good said, “Is the house afire?”

“No. The chimney was stopped up and it’s smoking.”

“Ye sure ye want to set in that smoke, Gammer Osburne? Look at it pour out—ye sure the house ain’t afire?”

“I have to rest,” Osburne said. “It’ll air out fast in this cold clear weather, if you leave the door open for a while.”

Tituba led the way, and Osburne stumbled on the stone step behind her. She turned to help her; Good got on the other side, and they went through the door together.

The girls turned towards them, round-eyed, not falling down in fits, but silent, staring.

Finally Abigail said, “It’s Tituba. Tituba is the witch,” and her breath came out in a long sigh.

Mercy Lewis said, “It’s Goody Good. Good is a witch,” and covered her eyes.

Mary Warren said, “It’s my Aunt Osburne. Osburne is a witch—Osburne is a witch—” and she started to whinny like a horse.

“A plague on ye,” Good shouted. “Who’s a witch? Who says I’m a witch?”

“I do,” Abigail said boldly. “All three of you are witches. You’ve bewitched us. Goodwife Sibley said that after the witch cake is baked and the dog eats it, right after that whoever comes into the house first—those are the witches. You came in all at once, all three of you together. You were drawn by the witch cake.”

John shouted at Abigail. “Not the people who live here. Not Tituba. It is only natural that a person who lives in a place should enter it or return to it. Tituba isn’t a witch—”

Good said, “Ye are a fine one to talk about witches. They tell me this one”—pointing at Betsey—“knows what’s going to happen before it happens. If there be any witchcraft practiced, it’s here, right here.” She picked up the poker from the fireplace and pounded on the floor with it. “And if there be any witches in the Village,” she said, her eyes blazing with anger, “they be here. They be ye, and ye, and ye—” And she pointed the poker at Abigail and Betsey and Mercy Lewis and Anne Putnam, Jr., and Mary Warren, each one in turn. Then she was taken with a fit of coughing from the smoke and had to stop.

Goody Osburne turned away from them and spoke directly to her niece, Mary Warren. Her voice trembled. “You’ll come to no good end, miss, with this dabbling in the black art. You know I’m no witch. You spread lies and gossip about me and have ever since you’ve had to work for your keep.”

She went off without the iris-root tea, hobbling out of the room without a backward glance.

Goody Sibley said, “John is right. Tituba lives here and—”

Abigail said, “You said whoever came through the door first, no matter who it was, was the witch or witches. Tituba and Good and Osburne came in together, all at the same time. They are the witches.”

John said, eyes narrowed, “I will not listen to any more talk about Tituba being a witch.”

Good said, “What about me? Who speaks for me?” There was silence, and she said, “I cursed ye before and I curse ye again. A rot, a pox, and a plague on ye—”

John went to unstop the chimney. They left the door open. The smoke began to go up the chimney.

Betsey said, “If Tituba is a witch, so am I—so am I.”

There was an awkward silence in the room. Tituba said nothing.

Then they all went home. They were silent, white-faced as they left. John went back to Ingersoll’s ordinary.

That night when he came home he said that the farmers and the fishermen were coming from as far as Ipswich and Salem, and folk were coming from Boston, in the hope of seeing some of the girls in their falling and screeching fits. All the rooms at the ordinary were taken, and there were folk in the taproom until quite late. He said that someone had said it was a strange thing that so many of these afflicted young women were orphaned nieces or bound girls or servants. He doubted that their owners got much work out of them any more, what with their choking fits and their failing fits and their screeching fits.

It was quiet in the keeping room. The smoke was all gone. There was nothing to indicate that a fresh-cheeked woman had baked a witch cake in the fireplace in the afternoon and that three women had been named as witches as a result. The fire made a soft, yellow light; it softened the outlines of the settles and the long trestle table.

John said, “They speak of you in the ordinary, and they speak of this house. And they speak of the master.” He leaned against the corner of the settle, and she knew he was going to imitate the sound of the voices he had heard in the taproom.