Tituba of Salem Village (25 page)

Mercy Lewis did not reply. There was a stillness in the meetinghouse. People bent forward, straining to hear the answer. But she did not speak.

Judge Corwin stood up. He was shorter than Judge Hathorne, but in his black clothes he was equally as impressive. He stood looking up at Mercy Lewis. He said sharply, “You said it was terrible cold and there was high drifted snow. Was this true of the three times you mentioned just now?”

“Yes, sir,” she said faintly.

“Yet you all went two miles or more to the minister’s house? Why did you go so often and what did you do when you got there?” When she didn’t answer he said insistently, “What made you go that distance in the dead of winter? What did you do there?”

There were cries of, “For shame! For shame!” Reverend Parris was standing up, looking as though he wanted to protest but not daring to.

Tituba thought, It will be now. The truth will be told now. Mercy will tell about Betsey Parris and her trances, about Pim, the bound boy, and his fortune-telling cards, and about the dolly that had been made in the image of the Mulenhorse child. She will say that the dolly belonged to little Dorcas Good, and she will tell how Abigail threw it in the fire and how Betsey said that the dolly cried out. Then when they heard the Mulenhorse child had fallen into the fire and been burned to death that same afternoon, Abigail fell down in a fit.

It really started right then. Because it was after that, the other girls began to have fits. Mercy Lewis would tell about the witch cake. She would say that the only reason that Tituba and Good and Osburne were said to be witches was because they were the first ones to enter the master’s house after the baking of the witch cake. It would all be told now.

Tituba found that she was gripping the back of the minister’s chair so tightly that her hands actually hurt.

“Answer the question,” Judge Corwin shouted.

“I—can’t talk—” Mercy Lewis shrieked, and throwing up her hands, fell off the table as though she had been suddenly struck down dead.

There was such an uproar that Judge Hathorne adjourned the court until the next morning.

Two guards led Tituba to Mercy. Tituba bent down and touched her. Mercy was lying flat on her back on the wide floor boards of the meetinghouse. At Tituba’s touch she moaned and then she sat up. Color began to come back into her cheeks. She ran her fingers through her short yellow hair.

Tituba thought, watching her, The real reason the master and the judges and all the folk gathered here believe that I am a witch is because these afflicted girls seem to be instantly healed when I touch them. Or when Good touches them. Or Osburne. This makes all three of us appear to be witches. It leaves us sore afraid.

Chapter 19

Good and Osburne and Tituba spent the night in an unused building that stood near the constable’s big barn in Ipswich. They were the only occupants of this makeshift jail. In one corner there was a mound of hay which was to serve them as a bed. Good showed them how to burrow into it and then suggested that they lie close to each other for warmth. Tituba was certain that she would smell like Goody Good for the rest of her life. But it was cold inside and after a while the smell did not bother her.

When she awakened in the morning, she thought that she was in the keeping room at the ministry house and that the fire had gone out. Enough light came through the cracks in the building to show her that she was sleeping in a mound of hay with Good on one side of her and Osburne on the other.

Shortly after they awakened, the constable brought them pieces of johnnycake and wooden mugs filled with cider. After they finished eating, Tituba brushed away the hay from her clothing and from Osburne’s clothing.

Good said, “Don’t go to brush me off. Not for the likes of those judges.”

Then all three of them mounted the horses that had been provided for them and accompanied by three constables, they headed for Salem Village. Cow Harry met them about a half a mile away from the meetinghouse. He walked ahead of them, beating on a drum. They slowed their horses, forming a procession behind him. He led them straight to the door of the meetinghouse.

The crowd that had gathered inside was bigger and more disorderly than it had been the day before. Again the court opened with a prayer by the Reverend Samuel Parris. This time he said that devils were mustering their infernal forces, coming armed to carry on their malicious designs against the souls of many in this poor village. He repeated his previous statement that unrepentant witches who would not confess their guilt would be hanged and that the witches who confessed to the sin of witchcraft and who repented would live. He said this was according to the covenant which they all held sacred. He closed his prayer by saying, “We are deeply humbled and we sit in the dust in contrition. Amen.”

The first witnesses called testified against Goody Good. They spoke hurriedly and fearfully, not looking at her while they talked. They said that she carried the smallpox, that she set fire to people’s barns and their haystacks with her pipe, that she had caused cows to sicken and die. She had caused children to have strange wasting diseases.

Two farmers, William Allen who was tall and thin and John Hughes who was short and fat, said that Goody Good had come to them in the form of a wolf and had followed them around.

Good shouted, “You lie! You lie!”

The afflicted girls screamed, and some of them had fainting fits, and the crowd roared, “Touch them! Touch them!” When Good touched them, they were restored to their normal state.

Goody Osburne was questioned again. She insisted that she knew nothing of witchcraft. She summoned enough strength to shake her finger at the judges and say, “It is a shameful thing that you should mind these folk who are out of their wits.”

This caused a violent outbreak among the bewitched girls. They repeated her gesture, jumping up and down, shaking their fingers at the judges, and shrieking the one word, “Shameful. Shameful. Shameful.”

Judge Hathorne ordered the constables to hold Osburne’s arms so that she could not make gestures which would upset the children.

Then Tituba was called to the bar for questioning. Judge Hathorne leaned forward, staring at her. His manner was more unfriendly than it had been the day before.

“What magic drink is this you give to the sick?”

“I have no magic drink,” she said. “I make a tea from the roots of iris, and I add a little vinegar. That is all.”

“Where did you learn about this drink?”

“In Boston.”

“Who taught you to make it?”

“Judah White,” she said.

“Judah White is known to be a witch. Was this a witch’s brew?”

Tituba did not reply. “Was this a witch’s brew?” he repeated.

She shook her head. No one could convince her that Judah White was a witch. She remembered what a pleasure it had been to look at her—the sparkling dark eyes, the long red cloak, the loving way it caressed the long grass and the weeds. “No,” she said. “I know nought of Judah White being a witch. My master said she was. But I do not know that she was.”

“You know more than your master?”

She shook her head again, and he abruptly changed the line of his questioning.

“Where do you go at night?” he asked.

There had been a confusion of sounds in the meetinghouse. It was a noisy crowd. People called out threats, shuffled their feet, moved benches back and forth. This question caused silence.

“I—” She began and stopped. She had told the master that she traveled in her dreams and that sometimes the dreams of the island were so vivid that she thought she had really been there. He must have told these judges what she had said. Had he told them that it was only a dream? A tremor of fear ran through her.

“Yes?” Judge Hathorne leaned forward.

“In my dreams,” she said slowly. “Well, sometimes I dream I go to Barbados.”

“Where is that?”

“It is an island in the West Indies. The island where I came from.”

“How do you go?”

“I do not know,” she said. “I would sleep and dream, and presently I was there.”

There were outraged cries of “Witch,” “Conjurer,” “Hang her, hang her.” Judge Hathorne banged on the table with the short thick stick that lay there ready to his hand. “Silence! or I will have this room cleared.”

He turned his attention back to Tituba. “Were you a witch in the West Indies?” he asked.

“No—never.”

“Were you a witch in Boston?”

“No,” she said. “I have never been a witch.”

“But you knew Judah White, a Jersey maid, who was a witch in Boston. Did you not?”

She hesitated, and there were screeches and outcries from the afflicted girls. “Yes, I knew her. But I did not know she was a witch.”

“She is a known witch. You admit that you knew her, so you knew a witch in Boston.” He paused for a moment. Then he said, “Where were you last night?”

“In the jail in Ipswich.”

“You never left the jail?”

“No.”

“Recall William Allen and John Hughes,” he ordered.

They stood up and came forward. William Allen spoke for both of them. He did not look at Tituba. He spoke quickly and kept his head down. People strained to hear what he was saying for his voice was low in pitch.

He said, “Last night I was going home along the trodden path when I heard a strange noise not usually heard. And it so continued for many times so that I was affrighted. Coming nearer to the noise, I saw a strange and unusual beast lying on the ground so that going up to it, the said beast vanished away. And in the said place start up two or three women and fled from me not after the manner of other women but swiftly vanished away out of our sight. Which women we took to be Sarah Good, Sarah Osburne, and Tituba. The time was about an hour within night. And John Hughes saw the same thing.”

John Hughes nodded and moved closer to William Allen, almost knocking him down. He said, “I saw the same thing. We set our mark to the minister’s paper as to the truth of this.”

Judge Hathorne turned to Tituba and said, “What say you to this?”

“It never happened,” she said firmly. “I spent the night in Ipswich jail with Goody Good and Goody Osburne.”

“Here are two men who say it did happen. They say they saw you on the trodden path in Salem Village last night. Why would they say this if it were not true?”

“I do not know.” She wanted to say that she had heard this story before—told differently. There was a minister with the three women. He had been left out of the story. It hadn’t occurred last night but some time ago. There was a low-lying mist on the ground which meant it would be impossible to see people plain enough to tell who they were. Before she could straighten out her thoughts, the judge called more witnesses.

These witnesses spoke one right after the other. Some of them testified to the abundance of fruit and vegetables in the minister’s garden and his orchard; some said that Tituba talked to the hens and to the mare and to the cows and that they answered her. Others said she talked to the money cat and they had heard him answer her.

There were women who said that Tituba could spin so great a quantity of fine linen yarn as they did never know nor hear of any mortal woman could spin so much or weave so much fine cloth. They said she never went to meeting and was a Sabbath breaker.

Questioned about this by the judge, Tituba said that her mistress was an invalid and someone had to stay with her lest she be taken with one of her fits of coughing. The master had ordered her to stay at home with her. She looked towards the Reverend Parris, thinking he would say, Yes, that is true. But he moved one of his papers forward on the small table in front of him, and pushed another one back away from him, and never so much as glanced in her direction.

The judge said coldly, “Who looks after her now?”

She sensed that they were about to reach some high point in the trial because Judge Hathorne did not wait for her answer. He cleared his throat, adjusted his cloak about his shoulders and leaned over to whisper in Judge Corwin’s ear. Then he said, “Gill Mary Warren.”

Tituba watched horse-faced Mary Warren approach the table where the important witnesses were asked to stand. She pretended to be so weak and so helpless that two constables had to lift her up on the table, and she swayed a little, and hung her head, and coughed faintly.

Judge Hathorne said, “Proceed.”

Mary Warren said, “I—well, I went to the ministry house, and Tituba told me she knew what was going to happen before it happened. She said she could see things. And when I asked her how, she said she would show me. She put a sheep’s skin that had been dyed black around her shoulders. She had the chimney all stopped up so the smoke came right down in the minister’s keeping room and there was so much smoke we couldn’t hardly see. Then she kneeled down and rocked back and forth in front of the fire.”

Mary Warren did not kneel down, but she did sway back and forth, showing what Tituba was supposed to have done, saying, “Coom great Kelah, coom, coom to the meal with seed of each gender, coom.” There was a stir in the room, as though people were afraid of the sound of these strange words, afraid that Kelah or whatever it was that was being summoned would enter the meetinghouse. Women screamed, and men started moving towards the door.

Judge Hathorne banged on the table with the short thick stick. “Silence. Silence.” Then he looked up at Mary Warren. “Before you continue we will go to prayer. Mister Parris, lead us in prayer.”

When Reverend Parris finished praying, the room was quiet. “And now continue,” Judge Hathorne said to Mary Warren.

“Something horrid seemed to come into the room. I thought it had wings and a hairy face, and it flew around the room and Tituba called it Kelah. She said that Kelah spoke to her and told her that I would lose my shawl on my way home.” She was silent.

“Did you?” he asked. “Did you lose your shawl?”

“Yes,” she said. “Yes—” And she suddenly started to howl and fell down senseless, just as Mercy Lewis had done.

There was so much noise and confusion in the meetinghouse, so many cries of outrage, and shouts of “Hang the witch, hang her, hang her,” that it took all of the constables and Marshal Herrick as well to restore order. At Tituba’s touch, Mary Warren, too, was instantly healed of whatever ailment it was that had caused her to fall from the table.