Today, Callie waited until the tours were in full swing before heading to Marta’s house. She walked through thick woods on a path that was almost a twin to the one that led to the boathouse. The trees were older on this side of the property, though, and not pine but deciduous. At the end of the path, she came to the kitchen garden, fallow now, except for the two witch hazel bushes growing near the side door and a leftover pumpkin still attached by its stem that the squirrels were taking apart bite by bite. The rest of the herb garden as well as some small bushes next to the witch hazel were protected with hay against the cold weather to come.
As Callie approached Marta’s small house, with its gables and leaded-glass windows, it was easy to imagine herself back in the 1600s. Callie noted the saltbox kitchen with its long slanting roof. She stepped inside. She wasn’t tall, yet the ceiling was only a few inches above her head. The kitchen was cozy. The fireplace took up most of the room, herbs and drying flowers hanging upside down on either side and a big iron pot hanging from its lug pole. She’d walked into the middle of a tour.
“The main cause of death for the woman of the house? Can anyone guess?”
No one spoke.
“Kitchen fires,” the docent said. “Being a housewife back in the day held many hazards, but the worst were burns, which killed a number of women. And even if the burn didn’t kill you, the infection that often resulted might. There were no antibiotics back then.”
Callie looked past the assemblage into the next room, where Marta stood, deep in conversation with a man from another tour group.
“Step carefully into the main room,” the docent said, making room for Callie. “The house slopes on each side of the center beam here.” She pointed to the floor in the middle of the room; it slanted tentlike on either side.
“There’s an interesting story about that beam,” the docent said. “It was once part of the Phantom Ship.”
The group stared at her blankly.
“Has anyone heard of the Black Phantom?”
People shook their heads.
“No,” the one man in the room said aloud.
“There were a number of ships that made the journey from the Old World to the New, carrying Pilgrims and Puritans searching for religious freedom. Many of them—financed by the Massachusetts Bay Company—headed for Salem in the early sixteen hundreds, the Arabella and the Mayflower among them. It was a long trip in close quarters, and many people didn’t make it, sometimes dying from smallpox or other contagious outbreaks they had no means to treat. This ship, the Purveyance, suffered the greatest losses. All of her registered passengers died of the Black Death, which had wiped out a third of Europe during the fourteenth century and recurred every few generations for centuries. When she finally reached Salem Sound, only the captain, the first mate, and a cabin boy had survived. There were violent winds that day and a following sea that was higher than the stern of the vessel. The captain, who was already sick with fever and boils, overshot the harbor and ran aground on Norman’s Woe. Though there were only three left alive, locals swore they heard the moans and screams of the dying all night long. By the time the winds had calmed, and they were able to send rescue boats, not one of them was left.”
There was a long quiet as people imagined what the docent had just explained.
Callie was both horrified by the story and amused that the docent had managed, in such short duration, to turn the tour from Christmas festive to Halloween creepy.
“What does that have to do with the center beam?” the lone man now asked.
“I was getting to that.” The docent smiled. “The damaged ship was hauled to Beverly Harbor, where it sat for many years. No one dared approach it, for fear of contamination. But resources were becoming scarce in the colonies. England demanded that all good lumber be sent back to London, and the Puritan colonists were left with little they could use to build their expanding settlement. Eventually, the townspeople began to pick apart the old ship, using the wood to build homes here and in Salem Town. The center beam you just stepped over was fashioned from the mast of that ship.”
“Didn’t the Puritans believe the Black Plague was the work of the devil?” the man’s wife said quietly to him.
The docent didn’t miss a beat. “The Puritans believed everything was the work of the devil. But necessity dictated that shelter against the harsh New England winters take precedence over fear.” She raised her brows theatrically. “At least for a while.”
Callie felt her stomach churn the way it had once when she’d gotten seasick.
The docent motioned for the group to follow. In the corner were a spinning wheel and a small table and chair with a biblical primer opened to a children’s lesson.
“This is where Mother would spin flax for thread, as the children sat at the table and learned their lessons during those long winters.”
“What was Dad doing all this time?” a woman asked.
“In the case of the Hathorne family, the mother was widowed.”
A few people murmured words of sympathy.
“Which, at the time, unless you had strong healthy children to help work the fields, would lead to desperation and poverty. In 1692, after the worst winter they’d yet endured, the Puritans began to blame their old standby, the devil. In Goodwife Hathorne’s case, she accused the Whiting matriarch of witchcraft,” the docent said.
Now the group made less sympathetic sounds.
“Specifically, she claimed the Whiting woman killed her cow by putting a spell on it that caused its milk to sour and then compelled the creature to run into the ocean and drown itself.”
Some of the group scoffed.
“Perhaps an early version of mad cow disease attributed to witchcraft,” the docent offered. “But then Goodwife Whiting countered the accusation with one of her own. She claimed that Goodwife Hathorne had bewitched her husband, using herbs from the Hathornes’ garden.”
“That happened in our neighborhood just the other day,” a woman deadpanned and got a laugh.
“Both women sat in Salem Jail for a long time, but neither was executed. Eventually, they stopped the executions, and the Court of Oyer and Terminer was disbanded.”
“Hanging judges and spectral evidence, that’s what Oyer and Terminer should be remembered for,” said another member of the tour.
The docent nodded. “After the governor’s wife was accused of being in league with the devil, a newly appointed court put an end to the trials, and those in jail were released. But being released was not the same as being free. You had to pay for your jail time, both room and board. Goodwife Hathorne was forced to sell her land to the Whiting family, everything but the house you’re standing in.”
Marta entered the room at just this moment. “Emily loves that part of the story,” she said, rolling her eyes and hustling Callie away from the group. She led her to a small bedroom, saying, “This is not part of the tour.”