A Break With Charity: A Story About the Salem Witch Trials (7 page)

Over Betty's head, Tituba made a sign to me, shaking her own head and scowling. I kept my silence.

"God broods on Salem," the child went on. "My father says in his pulpit that God has reason to brood on us. Men can be kept from murder but not from hate. From adultery but not from lust. From theft but not from greed. We are all sinners in Salem."

"I am sure your father does not think you a sinner, Betty," I said.

She looked at me as if I had not understood a word, as if I were dimwitted. "There is no mercy from God for those He has destined to damnation." Her tone was quiet, as if she were remarking on the weather.

"I'm sorry you are ill, Betty," I told her kindly. "I had no intent to disturb you."

"It is my spirit that is disturbed. 'Tis the Lord's judgment for my sins. My good father preaches against certain pleasures. I indulge in them."

"We all disobey our parents on occasion."

She raised her fever-bright eyes to me. "You disobey more than your father, coming here. When the others find out, your spirit will be afflicted, too."

"They won't find out," I said.

She rewarded me with a sly smile. "But they must, don't you see? 'Tis my bounded duty to tell them."

"Why?"

"I know not why," she said dismally. "But I heed their call before I heed God's. Before I heed my father's. Oh, God!" And she screamed shrilly again and commenced to weep. "Why do I have these unhallowed needs?"

I became truly frightened then, but Tituba calmly took her in hand and led her back into the hall and up the stairs. "I will be down in a moment," she said. "But you should take your leave soon."

I waited by the fire in the silent room. In a very short while, Tituba crept back down the stairway, cautioning me with a finger to her mouth to speak in whispers.

"What ails her?" I asked.

She took up her darning. "The fever."

But I sensed it was more, sensed that Tituba was keeping things from me. That in all little Betty's delirium, she had spoken the truth. That, indeed, what was going on in this house was not God's work.

But if not God's work in a parsonage, then whose?

I shuddered. "Will she tell the others I was here?" I asked Tituba.

" 'Twas the fever speaking," she assured me. "By tomorrow she will remember nothing of what she said. Or about your being here. She dips in and out of these spells."

"Spells?"

"She is a delicate child. What the others take in sport, she takes seriously."

I was starting to understand. "You mean your little sorceries?"

"Yes. They trouble her. 'Tis only an innocent game, but the guilt weighs heavily on her mind. She is filled with Puritan righteousness."

"Then why do you do it?"

"Because they ask it of me," she said simply. "Oh, child, go, go. And keep an innocent heart. No one will believe anything Betty says. They are all sensible of her sickly condition. Tomorrow all will be well and forgotten."

I went. But not without misgiving. Betty's tongue had discomforted me. There had been some appeal in her cries, some warning in her ravings that I could not discount or put down to fever. By the time I reached home that day I was convinced that little Betty Parris had been right. There
were
mysteries in the Parris household that went beyond the cauldron's bubbling contents.

And given the prospect of the dreary winter ahead, the drudgery of routine—even in our house, where my mother and father were more tolerant of innocent laughter, occasional song, and book reading, as well as entertaining of friends—I knew that I would be drawn back to the Parris household to find out what those mysteries were.

When I would return, I did not know. But I would go back. For there was still the possibility that Tituba would give me more word about William.

LEADEN SKIES
hung heavy with snow the night Father returned from Boston. Gusty winds blew from the northeast. He had no word of William. The
Amity
had come into Boston Harbor from Barbados with nails, ironware, fancy goods, and hogsheads of sugar and molasses. Yes, its captain had heard of the
William and. Susanna,
but that ship had left Barbados before he arrived.

He had heard that its intrepid captain was eluding some Spanish pirates, headed perhaps for the Christopher Islands. Or Grenada or Guadeloupe.

The night Father returned, we went into the company room after our meal, sitting in front of the fire to hear his latest news from Boston. Mary and I were stitching hems on linen pillow covers when Deborah answered the thumping sound at our front door and admitted Deliverance and William Hobbs from Topsfield Village.

"What brings you out on such a night?" Father asked.

As soon as they were in front of our hearth, partaking of Canary wine and honey cakes, William Hobbs told his tale.

"Our daughter has run off again. She has not been home in two nights." William Hobbs choked back a sob. Deliverance leaned her head on Mama's shoulder.

All of Salem knew of the Hobbses' troubles. Their only child, Abigail, who was sixteen, insisted on living in the woods.

She preferred sleeping outdoors with the creatures of the wild to sleeping under her parents' roof. She could live for days in the salt marshes and the forests, existing on nature's bounty, and never look the worse for it.

"She took some provisions," William Hobbs said. "And she will drink from streams. In summer, my wife and I abide such behavior, difficult as it is. But these nights are so cold! And snow is coming!"

Clearly the poor man was beside himself. Deliverance could not even speak; she just kept shaking her head and sniffing.

"We can no longer bear it," William Hobbs admitted. "We have done all in our power to make a proper and God-fearing young woman of her. She refuses to go to Meeting. She reads books! Not the Bible! Books! She writes her thoughts down on parchment. Surely this is not proper behavior for a young woman."

"My own daughters read," Father said.

The poor man was bewildered. "More than the Bible?"

Father's voice was calm. "They have access to all the works in my library. Susanna just finished reading
Paradise Lost.
"

The man turned to regard me as if I had just sprouted horns. "Do they prefer the company of geese and deer to that of their mother and father? Do they slip about on the salt marshes or follow the streams like Indian women?"

"Thank the Lord, they give us no torments," Father said.

William Hobbs set his mug aside. "We have already been warned by the selectmen and magistrates. They say if we cannot keep our daughter from roaming the woods like an Indian squaw, they will take her from us and place her with some family who can."

Father got up from his chair and began to pace. "I have always been of the mind that people's affairs are their own," he said. "But that is an Anglican belief. The Puritan community sees people's private affairs as belonging to the community. You will want to find your daughter before the authorities do."

"She has been seen in Salem Village. In the vicinity of the parsonage," William Hobbs said.

My heart leapt inside me. Dear Lord, had Abigail Hobbs heard of the circle? Was she wanting to belong? Mary and I had gone to dame school with her. Even then she had been unruly and wild, fearing nobody.

I knew what concerned our magistrates and why the Hobbses were so fearful for Abigail.

Women who read books, who wrote their thoughts on parchment, did not honor their fathers or ministers. They were considered dangerous. It went back to the time of Anne Hutchinson.

Father had told us about Anne. She had been a self-proclaimed minister who had put forth her own independent religious beliefs and argued against ordained ministers.

Massachusetts Bay Colony had never quite recovered from the heresies of Anne Hutchinson. In 1637, its leaders had tried her for thinking on her own and banished her and her followers to Rhode Island.

"I will send some servants out tomorrow to search for your daughter," Father said.

"She will run from your servants," William Hobbs predicted. "She is as nimble as a fox."

"What would you have me do, then?" Father asked.

"Your own daughters know her from dame school. Perhaps they could seek her out and ask her to come home."

"I'll go, Father," I volunteered immediately. I did not want Mary near the parsonage, asking questions about what was going on. "Abigail never liked Mary. Don't you remember, Mary, how she would take your hornbook in school? And how she would hide it from you?"

"Yes," Mary said. "Forgive me, Mistress Hobbs, but she was a scourge to everyone."

"I think little of being the mother of such a dafter," Deliverance admitted.

"I'll go with Ellinor, Father," I said.

The snow held back overnight, thank the Lord. But all of nature seemed intent upon making us miserable. The air the next morning was so damp that one's bones near froze. Molasses's breath came out in spurts of whiteness, as did our own.

Before we got to the parsonage, I dispatched Ellinor to the house of Joseph Putnam, uncle of Ann. His wife, Elizabeth, had just given birth, and I sent Ellinor along with a basket of honey cakes and sweetmeats from our pantry.

With her out of the way, I approached the parsonage. Abigail sat on some evergreen branches on the ground, a bit away from the house.

"Abigail?"

"We are here on the edge of madness, Susanna English. We are a lost people without a home."

"You have a home, Abigail. And parents who wish you there."

"Don't you ever think that we sit on the edge of a vast wilderness, without knowing what's out there?" She looked up at me intently.

"I try not to ponder that, Abigail."

"My father says we are a special people who have a covenant with God. I say God has forgotten us, if He ever knew we exist."

I was not about to debate the Lord's concern for us in such raw surroundings. "Aren't you cold?" I asked.

"It is nothing as to the coldness in some people's hearts."

"Abigail, we don't see each other much anymore. But I always felt in sympathy with you, even back in dame school."

"You were one of the kinder ones," she admitted. "But I hated dame school. I longed to read poetry. They made us read the Bible. Didn't you ever wonder why the evergreen stays green all winter while all the other trees die? Why the mockingbird mocks those different from him? Where the geese go in winter?"

"The geese go south. My mother's family lives in Virginia. I've been there. My father's ships go there regularly to trade."

"I'd like to see Virginia." Abigail drew up her knees, bundled her cloak around her, and gazed pensively into the winter landscape. "Wouldn't you love to go to London?"

"Someday, my brother William will take me with him on a real sea voyage," I said. "And I'll meet a fine ship's captain. William will introduce me to him. And we'll marry, and my husband will take me with him on his travels. We'll winter in the West Indies. I'll travel to London and come home wearing the latest fashions."

"And they'll persecute you here in Salem for wearing such clothing. I hate this whole place. I hate the rules they make us live under. I care not for fine clothing, but they won't even let us read books. All our elders are hypocrites."

"Surely not your good people. Or mine, Abigail."

"Most grown-ups are. Living as I do, I see and cannot be seen. Outside people's houses at night, I hear their sobbing, their cries, their voices raised in argument. One summer's evening, I came upon two people in the wood. They were naked and frolicking. He was married to someone else and so was she. Next day, I saw them in Meeting with their rightful spouses. I don't go to Meeting anymore. Have they sent you to fetch me home, Susanna?"

"Your mother and father have much concern for you."

"They know I can care for myself."

"The magistrates have threatened your mother and father, saying they will put you with another family if yours cannot keep you properly."

"I could live on my own. This rule Puritans have about making unmarried people live under the guidance of a family is senseless."

"Such talk will bring you trouble, Abigail. You've heard the stories about Anne Hutchinson."

"Yes, and my only regret is that she lived before my time. I do harm to no one. Why do the magistrates plague me?"

"They want you to be a true daughter to your parents."

"I've helped my father slaughter his hogs. I've sheared sheep, washed and bleached and dyed wool, hoed the garden, helped with the candle and soap making. What I do with my own time is my affair."

"They say you are acting like an Indian squaw."

She sighed. "I wish I could be as free as an Indian squaw." She stood up. "It isn't my wandering ways that upset the magistrates. It's that I read. And write down my thoughts. So, now I am to go home and be a docile daughter? And what of my needs? My wants?"