Tituba of Salem Village (22 page)

He shook his head like a man emerging from sleep. He got up and gripped Tituba by the arm. He gave her a gentle shake, “It is you we must talk about.”

“Wait,” she said, backing away from him, “First you must promise that you will pretend to have fits.”

“I can not promise that. I have to weigh it out in my mind before I can decide.”

“What do you have to weigh? You have always said that no matter what happens the slave must survive—”

He interrupted her. “I said no matter what happens to the master, the slave must survive. I never said the slave must survive at great risk to his wife.”

Chapter 17

Two days later, Tituba woke up swearing and trembling as though her body knew something that her mind did not know. She heard a wolf cry—a long, drawn-out howl that sent a prickle of fear down her spine. And then silence.

She got up and went outside. Puss, the money cat, went with her. It would be dawn in a few minutes. The sky was still dark, but it was getting lighter. As she stood there she heard the triumphal honking of the wild geese going North. She thought, Spring will soon be here; it’s the first of March, and the ice is breaking up in the coves and lakes and brooks. She stared at the sky, peering, and finally she saw the geese flying in a wedge-shaped formation, the leader out in front.

The cat mewed and started walking in and out under her long dark skirt. She thought, I will have to drive him away. They say he is my familiar and they might hurt him.

She went in the barn, and sitting down on the milking stool, she reached inside her dress and took out the thunderstone. In all these years she had never unwrapped it. An old man who lived way back in the hills of Barbados had given it to her. He had a thick head of very bushy hair, and it was almost impossible to say where the hair of his head stopped and the hair of his beard started. He gave her the thunderstone because she’d cured him of a fever. He said if she ever thought her life was in danger, she was to unwrap the thunderstone and hold it in her hand. If she felt it move in the palm of her hand as though it were alive, it meant she would live, too. It was still wrapped in a piece of dark cloth, just as it was when she had received it.

She unwrapped it slowly, carefully. The cloth was wound around it rather thickly. She was disappointed when she saw it. It was an unevenly shaped, dark green stone, so dark it was almost black. There was a ridge down the center.

For a moment she hesitated. Suppose the stone didn’t move? Could she bear to know beforehand that she was going to die?

Then she closed her hand firmly on the stone. It felt cold. She enclosed it in her hand, making a fist. She sat there for so long, waiting, that she almost forgot what she was waiting for. Suddenly the stone seemed to move in her hand like a live thing, and she was so shocked she cried out and dropped it, and then had to get down on her hands and knees, and feel around in the straw on the barn floor before she found it.

Having rewound the dark cloth around it, she went back to the house. The money cat was waiting for her near the back door. She let him in and fed him, and then she looked at him, thinking what a fine animal he was with his thick, sleek coat of fur and his neat, clean ways.

She picked him up and put him outdoors, and when he tried to come back in, she threw water on him. Each time he tried to come near her, she threw water on him, throwing it in his face. It was a long time before she convinced him that she was not his friend. He kept trying to get near her. When he finally turned away and went towards the woods, his fur was soaking wet and flattened so close to his skin that he looked more like a big rat than a cat. She knew he would never be back, but it was better that way.

An hour later, Goody Sibley came to see her. She said, “Tituba, had I known the way the witch cake would turn out, I would have cut off my right hand rather than make it.”

“It would have happened anyway,” Tituba said. “There was talk and talk and talk of witches.”

Goody Sibley said that since she’d made the witch cake, the talk was worse, louder and with less sense to it. Elizabeth Hubbard had been saying that Good was following her around in the form of a great gray timber wolf.

“As long as she was the only one that said it, the folk could say she’d imagined it. But yesterday Goody Vibber saw the wolf, and so did Goody Putnam. It was loping along the trodden path just beyond Ingersoll’s and Elizabeth Hubbard was running ahead of it, running and screaming, and the wolf right behind her, its evil-smelling mouth open as though it were laughing. They said they could see the cruel white teeth gleaming, and its terrible tongue rolled out of its mouth, and drool was coming from its mouth.” She broke off and her voice sounded choked up. “You’re not safe here, Tituba.”

“Because of a wolf?”

“Yes. Cow Harry, the neatherd at Ingersoll’s, shot at the wolf. He said it disappeared right before his eyes. And where the wolf had been, there was Goody Good, matted hair all crazy over her face and eyes and smelling so ugly that he said, ‘Paugh!’ and jumped back away from her, holding his nose. He knew he must have hit her in the leg because she limped away. Elizabeth Hubbard says that it was Good that time in the form of a wolf, but she says sometimes it’s you, Tituba, and sometimes it’s Osburne. They’re going to arrest all three of you.”

“Arrest us?”

“Yes. They’ll be coming for you this morning.” She continued, “You see, they keep asking the girls, Who bewitches you? And they give the same answer over and over, Good and Tituba and Osburne.”

Tituba looked around the keeping room. She had learned to cook beans with salt pork, to cope with a seemingly endless supply of fish and clams, and of game—rabbit and deer meat, bear steaks. She knew how to take salt stringy beef, and by soaking it and cooking it slowly, adding onions, a snippet of bay, a pinch of dill, and a handful of rice, she could turn it into a dish so savory that the very smell of it in the pot softened the lines in the master’s face. She had made the house clean, and kept it warm, and looked after a sick woman, and—

Yes, but those things did not outweigh the fact that she could spin a fine linen thread too fast, and she could weave too fast. And the money cat behaved as though he understood what she said to him, and being a very friendly animal, he probably did.

Goody Sibley said, “Tituba, they’re out to hang ye. If they say ye danced heels over head with the devil, say yes, ye did, but that ye now sit in the dust in sorrow and repentance. Say yes, to everything they ask. Yes, ye can fly. Yes, ye can talk to birds. Yes, ye can talk to rats. Yes, ye can send rats and cats and dogs to pinch the girls—just keep saying yes, I did, yes, I did, and I am now covered with sorrow.”

While Goody Sibley was standing there in the keeping room talking to Tituba, there came a great thundering knock at the door. They looked at each other without speaking, for they knew who and what this was.

The knock came again, and Tituba thought, So early in the morning?

A voice from outside shouted, “Open! Open! In the King’s name!”

Tituba stayed by the fire. She motioned to Goody Sibley to open the door. Three men entered. One of them Tituba recognized as Joseph Herrick, a tall, handsome man, who was known as the marshal or constable.

He said, “You’re under arrest, Tituba, on suspicion of witchcraft. Where is your master?”

She pointed towards the ceiling, indicating that he was upstairs.

“Call him,” Marshal Herrick said to one of his men.

They waited in silence. There were footsteps overhead and then on the stairs. The master came into the room. He tried to look surprised, but Tituba was certain he had known about this and helped to plan it.

Joseph Herrick said, “Mr. Parris, I have here a warrant to apprehend Tituba. I will read it to you.”

Tituba heard only a word here and there, that she and Good and Osburne had been complained against by Joseph Hutchinson, Thomas Putnam, Edward Putnam, and Thomas Preston, yeomen of Salem Village “for suspicion of witchcraft by them committed and thereby much injury done to Elizabeth Parris, Abigail Williams, Anne Putnam, and Elizabeth Hubbard, all of Salem Village … contrary to ye peace and laws of our Sovereign Lord and Lady, William and Mary of England, etc., King and Queen.”

Her heart gave a great lurch inside her because it also said they were to be taken to Nathaniel Ingersoll’s to be examined at ten o’clock. She thought, I will see John again.

“Come along, Tituba,” the marshal said.

Turning to Goody Sibley, she said slowly, “There is herb tea for the mistress warming near the fire. Someone must remember to look after the animate—feed the chickens, milk the cows, and look after the mare.”

Then she fastened her cloak around her, carefully wrapped her shawl about her head and shoulders. She wanted to say good-bye to the mistress and to Abigail and Betsey, yet she did not ask to see them for fear it would upset Betsey.

As she started towards the door, Goody Sibley said, “God speed, Tituba.” The master turned his head away, and she pretended she did not see this. She bowed by way of response to Sibley, and then she walked out of the house, following the marshal. One of his men walked behind her and one walked beside her.

The marshal mounted his horse, and his men helped seat her on the pillion behind him and then mounted their own horses. They took the trodden path through the woods, heading towards Ingersoll’s. It was cold and very windy. Snow lay unbroken on each side of the path. The trunks of the trees were dark silhouettes against the snow. Occasionally she heard the chattering of a squirrel, caught glimpses of bluejays, and heard their harsh cries of alarm as they warned other birds of the approach of this small cavalcade. They passed through a big grove of very old pine trees, and the pungent smell of pine lingered in the clear cold air.

To her surprise there were other people going in the same direction. They overtook boys and young men who were on foot, farmers jogging along on heavy slow-moving work horses, women and children riding in crude wooden carts that were drawn by worn-out nags. Most of these people recognized Marshal Herrick. Men nodded to him, women bowed. Each time he was greeted, the marshal lifted his hand in salute and then tightened his grip on the reins, so that the horse cavorted almost as though he were dancing.

These people stared at Tituba with such hostility that she finally covered her face with her shawl, so that she would not see the angry looks sent in her direction. She did not uncover her face until they reached their destination. Then she saw that there was a great crowd gathered on Ingersoll’s Common, the open space in front of the ordinary where his sheep grazed in summer. A cry went up, “Here they come! Here they come! The constables are bringin’ the witches in!”

Marshal Herrick reined in his horse, and the horse pranced, nearly unseating Tituba. His men dismounted and pushed people away, using the butts of their muskets to clear a space around the horses. They helped Tituba to dismount.

There was a roar of sound at the sight of her, “Look! Look! Here are the witches!” And then, “Die, old witch, die!”

The marshal and his men hustled Tituba through the crowd, into Ingersoll’s big house, and up the stairs into a small room near the front. They left a guard at the door, his legs spraddled, his musket held butt down. A sword dangled at his side.

Tituba stood in the center of the small room, looking around. One part of her mind kept noting the contents of the room, the big bedstead on one side pushed against the wall, the small windows, the brisk fire in the fireplace, the bench near the fireplace, the table that stood between the windows with a candlestick and an inkstand on it. Another part of her mind kept insistently repeating the hoarse cry she had heard outside, “Here are the witches!” She thought, They brought me here by myself. I am not a witch and I am not old. Thirty-two is not old.

They had also shouted, “Die, old witch, die!” As she stood there she was suddenly afraid. She felt a tremor run through her body. It was so violent that she pressed her hand firmly against her chest to quiet the dreadful trembling. Her hand encountered something hard. It was the thunderstone. She thought, I have to get rid of it. I have to get rid of it. If it is found on me, they will say it is a charm by which I work magic. I must find a place to hide it.

She took a hasty tour of the room. As far as she could tell, you couldn’t hide so much as a grain of corn without its being found. Then she thought, But there’s the fire, and stones do not burn. The cloth it was wrapped in would burn, but the thunderstone would not be harmed.

Warming her hands in front of the blaze, she pretended to be seized by a sudden fit of coughing, and bending over, she reached inside her dress, took out the neatly wrapped thunderstone, and tossed it far back in the fireplace, and still pretending to cough, still bent over, she watched the cloth ignite. It burned quickly. She knew John cleaned the fireplaces in the ordinary. He took out the ashes and saved them for soap-making. He would find the thunderstone. She hoped he would know what it was.

Shortly afterwards, there was a hustle and bustle outside the door. Then the master entered the room. He had his writing box with him. He said hastily, “I’ve come to be sure you are prepared in your testimony, Tituba.”

He sat down at the table, opened his writing box, and began to write without saying anything to her or asking her any questions. His quill made a faint scratching sound as he moved it over the paper. She wondered what he was writing and why he had come into this small room where she was. She watched him for a while and then removed her cloak and her shawl and sat down by the fire.

When he finished writing, he got up and came toward her. Holding his quill out to her, he said, “Now you must make your mark.”

“My mark?” she said, bewildered.

“When people can not read and write they make a mark instead of signing their names. I want you to make a mark on the bottom of these papers. It’s just as though you signed your name to them.”

“What do the papers say?” she asked, alarmed. John had taught her to read a little, but she could not possibly read all that small writing with which the master had so thickly covered the paper, let alone understand what it meant.