Rafferty didn’t take the bait, but he held up his hand to stop the conversation.
“Dear God!” Emily said. “Let’s drop the subject. And find something less gruesome to talk about.”
Not for the first time, Callie was grateful for Emily’s rescue. Her hand shook as she reached for her fork. How could this be happening? The thought of the town digging up the bodies of her mother and the others filled her with a panic she couldn’t rid herself of. Why hadn’t Rafferty told her they were seriously thinking of exhuming them? She could feel his eyes on her, as well as Towner’s. She reached for her wine and took a deep swig.
There was a long silence, and finally Finn acted on Emily’s cue. “What’s the other news from across the bridge? I heard that my friend Mickey Doherty has opened two more haunted houses,” he offered.
“Oh, I love Mickey Doherty,” Emily said, encouraged by the new subject. “He’s such a funny man.”
“Anyone who makes a living as a pirate reenactor is okay by me. It’s the creative economy at work,” Finn said.
“I hear he opened a new side business tracing tourists’ ancestry back to the Salem Witch Trials,” Towner said.
“He’s made that a business?” Emily seemed surprised.
“Sure. Six degrees of separation and all that. I’d bet a good number of tourists can find a connection if they look back far enough. The same way anyone whose family has been around here long enough does,” Paul said, turning to Callie to explain.
Finn nodded agreement, adding for Callie’s benefit, “Many people whose families have been here for generations have accused witches in their families.”
“Some who’ve been here for generations have both accusers and accused,” Marta said, looking directly at Finn.
“Marta has both,” Emily explained. “Goodwife Hathorne was both at various points during the hysteria. She’s related to Rebecca Nurse, too, if I’m not mistaken.”
Callie looked at Marta. Rafferty, too.
“No, not Rebecca Nurse,” Marta said. “But there were others on our family tree as well as on the Whitings’. Take it back far enough, and we could all be accused of communing with the devil.”
“You’re not clinging to that erroneous mythology,” Finn said to Marta. “You still think the devil was raised in Salem?”
“Not personally, no,” Marta said. “But even most of the accusers came to believe that they were wrong about the accused, though they still believed that the devil had been raised. They came to think the entire episode was a ‘delusion of Satan.’ A misdirection of sorts.”
“What does that mean?” Paul asked.
“The devil is a known trickster,” the archbishop offered.
“Be careful what you say, Father,” Finn warned, turning back to Marta. “You Protestants are pretty free with your labels. We are Catholics, and Catholics were the devil to these people. Catholics and Native Americans. And don’t forget the poor Quakers. They used to hang them on sight as agents of the devil.”
Marta shrugged. “This isn’t my belief system, Callie. I’m just telling you that they thought he was on the loose. Only not in the places they had searched.
“The stage had been set with the Catholics for a long time,” Marta said. “Back in England, Catholics did the persecuting and executing, mostly of Puritans. So deep hatred and a desire for revenge was carried with the Puritans on their ships to the New World.”
“After the Reformation, England wasn’t the best place for Catholics, either,” Finn said. “Mistakenly convinced that the New World was the place to avoid religious persecution, my Catholic family headed over on the third voyage of the Mayflower. We landed in Salem to find it populated by Puritans, the people who hated us most. The Whitings quickly hightailed it out of Salem Town and over to what is now Pride’s Crossing. Even so, they had to practice their religion in secret. There weren’t any clergy nearby, as preaching Catholicism was a hanging offense.”
“Pride’s Crossing was where all the outcasts ended up,” Emily said.
“Still is,” Paul joked.
“But you said your family was Puritan,” Callie said to Marta.
“But Marta’s family had been suspected of witchcraft once before,” Emily said. “Isn’t that right, Marta?”
“How nice of you to mention that again.” Marta smiled at Emily, then turned to Callie. “Even though they were related to one of the hanging judges, under the circumstances, my family thought it best to create a bit of distance from the center of town.”
“The same way my family did,” Finn said.
“But Whiting’s wife and Hathorne’s widow ended up accusing each other,” Paul said. “And they both landed in jail.”
“The Salem courts were willing to hear an accusation by a Catholic?” McCauley sounded shocked.
“By then, everyone was accusing everyone, and no one was safe. The Puritans thought the devil could be anywhere. Things were out of control and everyone knew it. But it was the end of the trials, so no one was hanged. The Court of Oyer and Terminer had been dissolved, and spectral evidence was being questioned. It all came to a close when the governor’s wife was accused.”
Callie was becoming more and more uncomfortable. The talk of exhumation had triggered the darkness from her past; her deepest fears were curling around her and trying to join her at the table: the murders, the nightmares, that ever-present thing…She took another gulp of the wine a waiter had just refilled.
“What about banshees? Aren’t they agents of the devil, too?” Mink Woman asked.
“And we’re back to this,” Emily said, frustrated.
“According to Church history, banshees originated as paid mourners,” Archbishop McCauley explained. “A leftover from the Pagan religions. The more mourners a family could afford, the higher their stature. When the early priests went to Ireland, they banned the practice. The mourners were mostly women; they wore their hair long and uncovered, which was forbidden at the time. And the keening was otherworldly. The banshee myth originally comes from those women. The priests outlawed keening, making beggars of the mourners.”
“They let them starve?” Mink Woman had the grace to sound horrified.
“No, but the women had to rely on the charity of the Church to survive.”
A shadow crossed Marta’s face. “Lovely.”
“It made for easy converts. And that was the point,” McCauley said. “I’m not condoning the behavior any more than I do the proselytizing missionary programs of any organized religion.”
“And that’s all there is to the banshee legend? Some ostracized women who were converted?” Mink Woman was clearly disappointed.
“The story I’ve heard is that they were part of the pantheon of Celtic goddesses, diminished by the early Christian clergy,” Paul said.