Crane Pond (12 page)

There's a pause. Mr. Stoughton takes another mouthful of his dinner, disposes of it as before, then resumes. ‘However, there was some ill-feeling about this case in the village. Voices have been raised. People who don't know any better are crying foul play. Mrs. Nurse has her friends and allies. She is not a Tituba Indian or a Goody Osborne. Or, as I said before, a Goody Good. And in three days' time there is to be another examination, this time of
two
accused witches. One of them is a woman called Sarah Cloyse. She is Rebecca Nurse's sister.'

‘Ah,' says Sewall. Here they are, two men of affairs, dealing with the possibility of social unrest. ‘And who is the other one?'

‘Elizabeth Proctor, also a woman of some standing. She and her husband have an inn—‘

‘I think I know it!' Sewall exclaims. It's outside Salem Village on the main highway to Salem Town. When going overland to visit his brother, Sewall has stopped there to have refreshment and bait his horse. The landlord, John Proctor, is a stocky irascible man, very sure of himself. Sewall can remember him haranguing his young maidservant, the jade as he called her, that her servings were too large. As Sewall recalls it, his own plateful was barely adequate. Proctor threatened to whip the girl should she offend again.

‘They have a farm, too,' Stoughton says. ‘These Proctors are people of property. They have weight in the community. That's why it's important that the examiners have weight of their own, to counterbalance theirs.' He has decided to beef up the proceedings when the court next meets. On this occasion, the examining justices already on duty, Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne, are to be joined by five more, and Sewall is to be one of them. The examinations will be held in Nicholas Noyes's capacious and smart meeting house in Salem Town rather than in Samuel Parris's decrepit and cramped building in Salem Village. Mr. Noyes himself suggested this.

‘Mr. Noyes?' asks Sewall in surprise. ‘Is he an officer of the court? I di—I was with him this very afternoon.'

‘He was merely acting as a friend to the court, as any citizen might.'

Sewall remembers Noyes's comments about the need to be a
malleus maleficarum
, instructions almost. Perhaps he already knew that Sewall would be coming back to Salem in a day or two. Perhaps he already knew the names of those to be examined, and was keeping the news to himself at dinner today. Sewall feels slightly resentful, jealous even, of the possibility that Mr. Noyes has gained privileged access.

And yesterday Mr. Mather took it upon himself to puff his way round to impart the latest news. And last Sunday Mr. Parris aimed a sermon at the possibility that a covenanted church-member like Rebecca Nurse might be an interloper in the house of God. It's natural the clergy should take an active interest in the witchcraft since it attacks Christianity itself, but for a moment Sewall feels a judge's resentment at clerical interference in legal matters.

The other judges have all already agreed but since Sewall was not at home, Stoughton has had to wait for him. He gives Sewall a somewhat acidic look as he tells him this. ‘There are other justices in Boston you could have sought out,' Sewall replies a little indignantly. ‘You could have agreed to attend the examination yourself.'

Stoughton shakes his head. ‘I think I will be more useful at a later stage. In any case we particularly wanted
you
to be on the bench. You have a reputation for fairness and impartiality which will be helpful in this instance.' He says the words as if they are hardly a compliment at all, as he might say, we needed a
small
man to fit on the bench, owing to its narrowness. ‘Time is short. I have brought you a copy of the court papers. You need to study them tomorrow.'

One thing Samuel Sewall is not is a small man, particularly at present. When the meal is over he feels he can hardly rise from the table.

S
ewall spends the following morning in his study, perusing the papers of the examinations so far. Each case dovetails into the next so it's necessary to have some knowledge of all of them. By the same token the two women, Sarah Cloyse and Elizabeth Putnam, are going to be examined jointly when the court convenes the day after tomorrow. The witchcraft is a collective enterprise.

After some hours he goes to the window. He needs to give his eyes a rest, or perhaps his soul. It's a lovely day, and Hannah is pushing baby Mary up and down the path, taking the air. He decides to go down to join them for a few minutes.

‘What is it you had to tell me?' Hannah asks when he catches her up. Little Mary, now six months old, gives him a welcoming smile from the cushion on which she is reclining in her little cart. His family news has slipped his mind in the agitation brought on by Mr. Stoughton's visit.

‘Ah yes. I was talking with Stephen—' It occurs to him that this introduction sounds a little like a cabal between brothers, so adds—‘and with Margaret, of course, about our Hannah.'

Silence is of two sorts. There is the empty kind, like a room into which you can walk, and the solid variety, like a wall with which you collide. His wife's current silence is of the latter type. After enduring it for a few seconds he continues, ‘We agreed it would do her good to stay with them for—'

‘
You
agreed!'

‘Yes, we thought—'

Little Mary, sensing the difficulty of the situation, gives out a couple of tentative sobs, looking worriedly from face to face as if to check whether this is an appropriate reaction. ‘Shush,' Hannah tells her, then turns back towards Sewall. ‘So,' she says, ‘this
we
, this
we
that came to an agreement about
our
daughter—'

‘It was simply a conversation.'

‘A cosy conversation between you and beautiful Margaret Sewall of Salem Town.'

‘It wasn't
cosy
. We were all at dinner—'

‘You never told me you had dinner there. I thought you came home hungry. I had Sarah bake you all those pigeons.' It's as if Sewall's mendacity has given the birds wings again, despite having been cooked, and they're flying home to roost.

As if to deflect her adults from this unhappy conversation, Mary tries another smile, which at once turns into a tiny belch. Hannah bends down, lifts her up and pats her on the back. ‘Hannah is my child,' she says when this has been done. ‘I went to all the trouble of giving birth to her, just as I did to this one. I gave birth to all of them, those who still live and those who have already died. Let Margaret have conversations and agreements about her own children. She already has one extra one who by rights belongs to someone else. She doesn't need any more.'

‘You don't mind Sam being at Mr. Hobart's,' Sewall says.

‘That was
our
decision. It was necessary for him. He needs to grow up. And it's the usual thing for children of his age. They all need to grow up.'

Sewall is aware of her taking comfort from this truism, which allows Sam's deficiencies to be swallowed up in the general immaturity of his peers. ‘Well, Hannah is now the age Sam was when he first went off. Perhaps
she
needs to grow up too.'

‘Hannah is different. She's such a gentle child. You can't say Sam is gentle. Not like Hannah. He's a boy. He's—'

‘Not gentle, no. But he
is
vulnerable. Nevertheless I think placing him with Mr. Hobart has been a success, on the whole. I tried him again with a multiplication sum during my last visit and he got the answer nearly correct. Only a few apples adrift.' He sighs at the memory. ‘He told me he's grown tired of apples and wishes to calculate some other fruit.'

‘Hannah is quite good at arithmetic already.'

‘I was thinking more—' He waves his arm vaguely in the direction of that ‘more', which encompasses society at large, and sighs again. ‘Intercourse with the world. I was thinking more of her intercourse with the world.'

‘It's because she's short-sighted. She can't always make out who is approaching her. That's why she flees.' Young Hannah has the habit of rushing abruptly to the chamber she shares with Betty, like a startled animal. ‘You wouldn't like it if instead of it being Mr. This or Madam That, there was just a vague shape coming towards you, like one of those witches the girls complain of in Salem Village.'

‘Those witches come in their habitual form. Apparently the girls see them clearly.'

‘Well, they must have better eyes for the supernatural than Hannah has for the natural.' She puts the baby back into her cart. ‘I won't have her going to Salem.' She straightens up and looks Sewall in the eye. ‘I won't have her being frightened.' She's tearful at the very thought.

Sewall is about to remind her of the difference between Salem Town and Salem Village, but then pauses. The fact that the examination is going to take place the day after tomorrow in Salem
Town
seems to threaten the distinction between the two places. ‘Perhaps we need to send her somewhere else,' he finally agrees. ‘Where she is in no danger.'

They finish on that note, not exactly in harmony but at least not in open conflict. He tries to tickle little Mary under the chin but she immediately grimaces in an exaggerated childlike way as if being choked. This little failure to please his youngest daughter makes him feel suddenly tired.

As he makes his way back to his study it occurs to him that he has conducted the argument with his wife just as if he's always had it in mind to send Hannah off for the sake of her development, rather than Betty for the sake of her soul. He can't decide whether this means that his lie has now become entrenched or that it has mutated into truth.

 

Mr. Noyes stands at the doorway of the meeting house to greet the examining justices as they file in. With his black cloak flapping in the sea-breeze he looks like an enormous crow with ruffled feathers. The judges are topped and tailed by clergy, since Mr. Parris brings up the rear in his capacity of clerk to the court. He's been fulfilling that role during the examinations in his own meeting house in Salem Village, and it was decided that for continuity's sake he should do so today in Salem Town. He seems a nervous and watchful man (the jumpiest of the lot, Stephen called him), as well he might be, given that the Devil visited his manse while he was oblivious and deep in prayer.

The Salem meeting house, like Sewall's own South Church in Boston, indeed like all the New England meeting houses, has a raised-up pulpit halfway down one of the long sides of the oblong building, with a bench or fore-seat each side of its steps for elders and wardens to sit on facing the congregation. This is where the judges will sit today, and little tables have been set in front of the fore-seats where they can write their notes. Facing them are pews which run most of the length of the building with an open area between them and the judges (rather like a stage in a theatre, Sewall imagines). Chairs have been placed at the left of this stage for the accused, and to the right for the accusers.

Mr. Parris takes his place at a little table at the end of the left-hand fore-seat, sharpens his quill, opens his inkpot, arranges his papers. The crowds pour in until the meeting house is entirely full, with people standing in the aisles. Mr. Noyes, who would normally be officiating from the pulpit, has reserved a place for himself in the front pew.

Eventually two burly men acting as court officers push the doors shut against the indignant residue, and the Essex County Marshall, a white bearded man with a gold chain of office round his neck, calls the room to order. Mr. Noyes promptly steps forward to the front, stands with his head bowed before the judges, and offers up a prayer for the success of their endeavours (whatever the word success might mean in these circumstances). Then he resumes his place in the front pew and the marshall leads the two accused women in.

Sarah Cloyse is perhaps fifty years old, in a brown gown and apron. Elizabeth Proctor is much younger and wearing a grey cloak with a hood and a matching grey skirt and bodice beneath. They both look tired and timid. They take their places, each with her head lowered, and then the marshall brings in the accusers. These are all young girls, mostly just children, some as young as ten or eleven, and none older than seventeen or so. As they take their places, a man in one of the pews towards the back rises to his feet, and starts shouting, a big, chunky figure with a red face. Sewall recognises the innkeeper, John Proctor, who is furiously proclaiming the innocence of his wife.

‘She's only here today because of that little bitch, Mary Warren!' he shouts, pointing at one of the afflicted girls who Sewall recalls serving him in the inn, a thin spotty creature with a pale face and straggly hair. ‘She'll get better soon enough after a good thrashing!' Sewall suspects the girl has already had thrashings enough: she has a thrashed look about her. ‘All these stupid girls are the same,' Proctor rants on, ‘idle wenches who need to be set to work. Give them some
proper
work to do. That will cure these imaginings.'

Presiding Justice Danforth has risen to his feet. ‘I take it you are Mr. Proctor,' he says.

‘Yes, sir, your honour, I am,' Proctor replies in a more normal tone. ‘But this business here is all—' He shakes his head in despair at what this business is.

‘Mr. Proctor, you have a right to attend this examination, since your wife is one of the accused. But if you cause any more disturbance I will have you removed.'

Proctor looks at his wife and raises his hand in her direction, as if in greeting. He is considerably older than she is, by twenty years or even more. He resumes his seat but then calls out, though less loudly than before, ‘My advice is hang them, hang them!' He seems concerned that he may not have made his meaning clear and adds, ‘Those stupid girls, I mean,' nodding his head towards the row of accusers.