Sarah At the conclusion of the foregoing, Dolly and Jane handed over their documents to Alice, who filed them in the proper places in the archives. Taking the old man by the sleeve of his robe, and nodding to the women, I whispered a private query. “I don’t understand the meaning of this. Why are you playing the husband here? Shouldn’t I be reading the part of Mr. Bonham?”
“It appears you have some other role.” With a wink, he bent close and I inclined my head so his words might better pour into my ear. “All in good time, lad. But I do think you are on to something. Good of you to have figured out the central conceit. I had not deduced as much, and that only goes to show how exceptionally bright and insightful you are.”
His compliment pleased me immeasurably, for I had heretofore thought he found me somewhat slow. Blood rushed to my head as I blushed, and a drop trickled down my scalp where the hole had once been. “Tell me,” I answered, “what is my place in Alice’s tale?”
“Are you saying you don’t remember her? A fine young woman like that?”
I stole a glance over his shoulder and saw her in three-quarter profile listening to the other two women. One of them said something funny, and she brought her hand to her mouth, her lips and fingernails the same shade of red. He grabbed me by the elbow and steered me toward the women. “We shall allow some patience in you for the passage of time and memory. Methinks the answer comes anon.”
But instead of handing me my part, Alice returned the journal of Mr. Bonham to the old man and instructed him to read the next few marked pages.
5 MARCH 1692
My wife consorts with a WITCH. The girls named Tituba as she what taught them to make the witchcake and other magick. They say she took a Jug of Beer and a green glass and that looking in the glass saw the shape of many persons and what they were doing though they be far away in their homes or in the town. They named the beggar Sarah Good and stout Sarah Osbourne, too, as the cause of their ailments, claiming them WITCHES and saying they do visit in spirit and prick and bite and torture &c them in their beds and ask them to fly on broomsticks through the windows and into the black woods. The Barbadoes Woman has confessed to her sin and is sent to prison, as are Goody Good and Goody Osbourne, though they confess no sin and are sore distressed by such accusations. Woe betide us should the girls accuse Alice.
25 MARCH
The devil runs like wild fire thru the Village and there is a conflagration of witchcraft spread this side of Salem. Though Betty Parris has been sent away to recover with her kinsmen in the wilderness of Maine, the other girls continue to find more tormentors among the erstwhile goodwives of our town. Martha Corey has been so-named, as fine and God-fearing a woman as ere met, as well. Little Ann Putnam pointed the finger at Sarah Good’s little four-year-old waif, and the child, too, now joins her mother in the jail, and my heart breaks at the thought of the poor girl in a dark cell. Mrs. Putnam herself begins to suffer an affliction, and she is soon to name more WITCHES. When shall this madness end? I dreamt last night that the same Black Man what haunts the girls was in the room aside my wife and me, beside the spirit of Thomas Putnam come from his house. As in all pictures that I have seen, He had him Cloven feet and Claws and would have me sign in blood his fowl Book. When Alice woke me in the morning and saw me ill and the bedclothes soaked with the Sweat of my night’s terrors, she knew I knew her secrets, and did all she could to rid me of my fears with many kisses and caresses. I sometimes wonder if I, too, consort with a WITCH.
“Just like a man,” Dolly said, “to not trust his wife and think the worst of her.”
Jane hid beneath her coils and added, “Yet he was willing to lie with her though she was possessed. What does that say about the kind of man he was?”
Softly Alice walked to the old man, who was resting his hip against the edge of the sink. She pressed her palm against his chest and lifting herself on tiptoe, she kissed him softly on the cheek and brushed the other side of his face with her open hand. His bright blue eyes widened in surprise and pleasure, and the faint trace of a smile parted his lips. He whispered a phrase—I am sorry or Do not worry—that could not quite be deciphered. Slowly she parted from him and fished again in the Hollinger box till another document she produced. The four of us wondered who should be next, and I was taken aback when the handbound pages were placed in my hands with the silent order that I was to read.
NOTES AND SUNDRY ON THE AFFLICTED
BY NICHOLAS NOYES
Being a Record in Preparation
Of the Writing of a Book; or Account of:
The Witches of Salem Village