About One Month Later
“What is a . . . witch cake?” I pretended simplemindedness, for of course I knew what a witch cake was. Any good witch would, and I was a very good witch. But I was not about to tell Betty Parris that. Nor would I tell her that witch cakes were silly superstition.
James Brandon had been at my side, as promised, informing me of the goings on at Reverend Parris’s house (How he knew such details, I did not speculate). As predicted, Betty’s symptoms had not been ignored. Rather, the doctor had been called, and when he found nothing, there was talk of witchcraft.
I had tried—oh, how I had tried—to ignore what was occurring, but it was impossible. Little of interest happened in Salem. On the rare occasion when it did, it was all people could talk about. The dry goods store, where I had walked to purchase buttons, had become a place of gossip and intrigue. And, dare I say, theatrics. Right now, young Betty was holding court with much of Salem’s youth gathered around her.
“Since Abigail and I have been having so many ailments . . .” Betty shivered for emphasis. “Goody Sibley suggested that John Indian make a witch cake to find out who was afflicting us with such miseries.”
I knew John Indian was one of Reverend Parris’s slaves, along with Tituba. I wanted to find out what the witch cake had supposedly told them, but first, Betty went into a recitation of the nature of her various “miseries”—fever, crying out in pain, barking like a dog, convulsions.
“You were saying about the witch cake?” someone finally asked.
“Well.” Betty smiled. “John Indian took the . . . contents of our chamber pots, Abigail’s and mine, and baked them into a cake. Then he fed it to our dog. Goody Sibley said that, since a dog is a witch’s familiar, once he ate the cake, the invisible particles that the witch sent to hurt us would make the dog hurt the witch.”
“The witch sent invisible particles to hurt you?” a girl named Mary Warren asked.
“Of course, Mary,” Betty said. “Everyone knows that! Invisible particles fly through the air and cause all our miseries. But when the dog ate the witch cake, the particles would come back to him, and make the witch suffer. So by her pain—Goody Sibley said—we would be able to tell who the witch was.”
The assembled girls stood, slack-jawed at this brilliance, but I thought it was the stupidest thing I had ever heard. Particles? In piss? And those piss particles would make the dog sick and, in turn, make the witch sick, even if the dog did not belong to the witch?
“What if the witch does not like dogs?” I could not help but ask.
Betty looked around, for she had not been particularly speaking to me. “I . . . I do not know,” she said. “Goody Sibley only said that witches had dogs as familiars.”
“I had always heard that witches had different familiars,” I said. “Like cats. Or wolves.”
I heard a gasp from without the crowd, and a voice said, “Wolves?”
I looked to see young Ann Putnam. She seemed wide-eyed. I did not know why.
I stammered an explanation that would get me out of this. “Well, I had heard that witches in England, where I once lived, liked wolves. I have never heard of an American witch who kept company with a wolf. But a dog is a great deal like a wolf, is it not?”
The girls goggled at me, and I felt a hand pinching my upper arm. Then it tugged me away. “Can I help you now, miss?” a voice asked. James! He was employed with the shop.
I say this as if I did not know it, but in fact it was my reason for coming. My every excuse for going there.
“I have come to get buttons for a dress Goody Harwood is making,” I said.
“What size buttons?” he asked, a bit more loudly than necessary, and before I could answer, he said, “Let us take a look,” and pulled me as far from the assembled group as possible.
When we got to the corner of the shop, he whispered, “Are you insane?”
“I do not think so,” I replied.
“Then why are you talking of witchcraft and familiars to the very girls who are likely going to be the ones . . .” He looked around, as did I. Betty was still giving her recital, but I noticed Ann Putnam was gone. When had she left?
James pulled me out the back door of the shop. “These may be the girls to accuse you.”
I thought he was being a bit overly dramatic, though I did wonder why Ann had left. “I was trying to tell them how silly it was. Piss cakes—my goodness—and feeding them to dogs.”
“Silly?”
“Aye. Silly. Those things are merely made-up stories.”
“And you, of course, know what real witches do?” he said.
“Of course I . . .” I stopped, seeing his point.
“Has anything that you have heard in your life led you to believe that the people of this town—or any other—believe witchcraft to be silly?”