NOTES AND SUNDRY, continued Part, the ninth
Near three weeks ago, on the 29th of June, six were put to trial at Court of Oyer and Terminer: Sarah Good, Rebecca Nurse, Susannah Martin, Alice Bonham, Elizabeth Howe, and Sarah Wildes. We were encouraged by Increase and Cotton Mather, in their letter to the Village, to be cautious but proceed with speed and vigour to try these accused. The day was long in going, for these women must be examined separately, though all proved guilty. At every trial, the afflicted behaved exactly: when in the presence of a witch, they blanched and fell to terrible fits and protests, but when the witch was made to cover her eyes with a cloth and led to lay hands upon the afflicted person, the fit stopped at once: thus proving the causation. Rebecca Nurse, heretofore judged most holy, was acquitted by the jury, though the afflicted out-cried at the verdict. When I expressed myself dissatisfied, the chief judge said we would not impose again upon the jury. When another prisoner, who has confessed to being a witch, was brought into court to witness against her, Goody Nurse said, “What, do you bring her? She is one of us.” When asked to explain her remarks, she said nothing, and the verdict was later changed to guilty, though she later claimed she meant merely that the witness was a prisoner like her, and that she had not understood the charge. So say all. Each failed at their catechism, and we were most sure the jury was right.
In the docket, Alice Bonham protested that the girls and other witnesses were deceiving and in collusion, that they did prick their own skin, or bite one another, that they did hide tokens and talismans in the accused persons’ homes. When confronted with the Devil’s poppet she had made to conjure her own dead child, Goody Bonham wept so as to break stout hearts, but the jury found she was dissembling. She even cried to me, asking if I recalled the trial of Martha Corey and the pin found in the child’s cap, but I could not remember at the moment such an occasion and only now, in reading over what I have wrote, realize that Alice had made such claims of perfidy against the afflicted long before she stood accused.
But why would the children tell untruths, or neighbors bear false witness against neighbors? Are we not all good English men and women, under the same King and Queen, and guided by the Lord? It is the guilty who doth protest loudest, and wrong to accuse the poor Innocents who have no reason but to rid this place of Evil. Did not the Lord himself say, Suffer the children. I cannot believe her, and moreover, did think she tried to seduce even me with her greenish eyes and the hair escaping her bonnet. Did not Judas Iscariot have a red beard? Perhaps there is something to be said about the old admonition against the Red-Haired.
On 16th of July, the six were taken from Salem Prison to Gallows Hill, and the folk along the way treated the spectacle with more disdain than called upon. Old Sarah Good called out to the houses as we passed for a small beer, and at one such, the neighbor, taking pity, handed her a mug, which she drank along the way and did feel much better. Emboldened, perhaps, by the drink, she cursed me as I said the final prayers. “Thou art a witch,” I told her, hoping she would confess and save her life, “You know you are.” She spat out, “You are a liar, and if you take my life, God will give you blood to drink.” Such a wicked spell I cannot forget, and Alice Bonham, too, had turned into a most wretched soul. She saith upon the gallows, “And I am an innocent woman, no witch, and God will punish you and all for your wickedness and falsehoods. I hope Goody Good is right, and more, and your head swell in pain as mine is about to do.”
It took no more than seventeen minutes for the last to kick once and then pass from this world. Some had their necks broken, and others strangled to death. I turned to Mr. Hathorne and Mr. Putnam in attendance and commented upon the woeful sight of those six bodies hanging in the summer sun. God have mercy upon those who sought forgiveness, and may the families and friends of those who insisted wrongly on their Innocence find some solace in the church and in knowing the will of the Lord be done.
? ? ?
We fell into a measured silence, stunned by the finality of her story and the image of the six hanged women and the mob of witnesses. I could not look at anyone and did not notice how Alice had caused the doll to materialize. Strung on a single thread, the simple puppet was fashioned from a washcloth—with an elementary head and limbs, no features on its face, yet strangely lifelike. Through some manipulation of the string, Alice caused the doll to toddle across the tiles, and then give a little curtsy, and quite extraordinarily, to jump up on the sink and straddle my toothbrush like a miniature witch upon a broom. With a flick of her wrist to snap the noose, the puppet collapsed into plain terrycloth. She then reached into the archival box and handed one more document to the old man.
Boston, Massachusetts