20 September 1706
Dearest Sarah,
God’s blessing on you and your children, and forgive me for not writing in so many years, but I have heard some news today that I share with you, though I know not how to say it. Word has come from Salem that Ann Putnam, one of the girls who accused our darling Alice, has confessed to her sin. She recanted all and said before the congregation that it was a “great delusion of Satan” and that it was not done “out of any anger, malice or ill-will,” but done ignorantly, and she begs forgiveness of God and from the relations of those she condemned. We have some consolation, at last, that Alice was both truthful and right in reasoning that some base motive caused those girls to tell such dreadfull Stories and send twenty to the Gallows, not to mention poor Goodman Corey, who was pressed to death with stoneweights on the chest, and to stir the people of Essex county into a frenzy of witch hunting. I now believe that there is no Witches, and I am comforted to know she is truly with the Lord. I hope this finds you well. My new wife, not so new any more, is with child, and I feel like Abram, I am so old, and if it be a girl, I shall ask to call her Sarah, after you.
Sincerely,
Nathan Bonham No further records existed, and her story ended. She filed the last document in the box and shut the lid. A pause, pregnant with sentiment, interceded as we each contemplated this sad chapter from history. I expected her to lift the broom in attack against me as the other two women had done with their weapons, but she merely slumped against the wall and slid to a seated position, her red gown rustling like a sigh. The old man, some thought wrinkling his forehead, sat on the toilet and rested his chin in the cup of his hand. Dolly and Jane exchanged whispers in the bathtub, and I alone strove to make sense of it all. “At least, in the end, the girl apologized. It was not out of anger, but ignorance.”
“Ignorance?” Alice spoke. Her high thin voice colored echoes of New England. “She was a clueless pawn in a far more dangerous game. The wrath of righteous neighbor against neighbor, the old against the new, the status quo versus change. The anger of values upended, the petty grievances of the true believer meeting the unknown threat of the Other. Red, boiling anger. Not from the children, but out of their parents. The girls themselves may not have even known what tipped their game into madness, but they surely felt it in the long-simmering wrath of their parents and their ministers. A kind of institutionalized, socially acceptable political anger that struck out against the old and powerless, ripe targets for the venting mob. The worst kind of ignorant, misplaced anger. I am surprised that it took you so long to understand, being an educated and religious man.”
I did not understand the meaning of her last remark, since I do not consider myself particularly religious, but my confusion was superseded by the surprise of her gift of speech. We were all shocked.
“You can talk!” Jane and Dolly said together, and then to each other, “Jinx!”
“I told you she was a magical woman,” the old man said. “What concerns me most, however, is: whatever happened to the minister Noyes?”
Her green eyes flared like a wild animal’s as she spoke, and had I not known better, I would have thought Alice was casting a spell. “Justice delayed is sometimes the sweeter. Nicholas Noyes lived for twenty-five more years after the Salem trials, enjoying a good reputation and coming to regret and apologize for his role in condemning the innocent, but in the end, Sarah Good’s gallows prophecy came true. One morning he woke, coughed once into his pillow, and saw the first red drops. An aneurysm in the brain, a hemorrhage that sent the blood gushing out of his nose and mouth, and he lived just long enough to comprehend the meaning of the red stain spreading on his gown and bedclothes.”
As if thunderstruck, my head pounded again with the ferocity of a migraine, and the room began to spin, so I had to go lie down.