Crane Pond (13 page)

Mr. Danforth gives him a long, appraising stare and then, satisfied that this intervention is at an end, indicates that the examinations should begin.

 

A little girl called Ann Putnam is the first to testify. Danforth nods to Hathorne, who asks: ‘Ann, who hurt you?'

Ann is about eleven, dressed up by her parents for this court appearance in her Sunday clothes, a neat green bodice and skirt with a little apron and a white cap. The afflicted girls all around her make encouraging noises and gestures. She points vaguely towards the two accused.

‘
Tell
us who hurt you, Ann,' interposes Mr. Danforth.

‘Goody Proctor,' she mutters. Elizabeth Proctor gives a small gasp and puts her hand to her heart. ‘Then Goody Cloyse,' she adds. Sarah Cloyse gasps in turn and also puts her hand to her heart.

‘What did Goody Proctor do to you?' asks Hathorne.

‘She choked me and brought me a book.'

‘And Goody Cloyse?'

‘She came too. She came first. She brought the book to me. She bit me.'

Suddenly Goody Cloyse rises to her feet. ‘You are a grievous liar!' she exclaims furiously.

‘Liar!' agrees a voice from the spectators—John Proctor again.

Now one of the girls is screaming, a terrible animal cry of pain repeated over and over again. Her cries have that shrillness of pitch only the young can achieve, and they hurt Sewall's ears. ‘Whatever is the matter, girl?' he asks her.

‘She is Mary Walcott,' Hathorne explains, ‘Mary, tell Mr. Sewall who is hurting you at the moment.'

The screams subside. ‘Goody Cloyse,' Mary replies in a shuddering voice.

‘Come here and touch her then,' Hathorne tells her. She steps gingerly towards Goody Cloyse, and then Hathorne raises her hand until it makes contact with the woman's forearm. Immediately Mary gives out a long sigh and her whole form relaxes. Hathorne points her back to her place while Goody Cloyse looks on in apparent bafflement. ‘Has she hurt you before?' Hathorne asks her.

‘Many times.'

‘Did she bring you the book?'

‘Yes, she did.'

‘What were you to do with it?'

‘Touch it and there would be no more pain.' She suddenly goes limp as wax in a flame and collapses to the floor. The whole meeting house falls silent. Sewall begins to rise to his feet to go and help her but is stayed by Hathorne's hand. One of the court ushers comes from the side door he's guarding, puts his hands under the girl's armpits and lifts her up as easily as if she is a doll, placing her back on her seat. After a few moments she opens her eyes again.

‘Did Goody Cloyse come alone?' Hathorne continues.

‘Sometimes she comes alone, sometimes with Goody Proctor and Goody Nurse. Sometimes with many others.'

‘Which others?'

Mary Walcott looks blank for a moment. Then says, ‘I do not know,' and suddenly faints again, lolling to one side on her chair. The court usher tidies her back into a sitting position but this time Hathorne moves on to another of the afflicted, Abigail Williams, the child who was playing with Betty Parris in the Salem Village manse when the witchcraft began.

‘Abigail Williams! Did you see a company at Mr. Parris's house eating and drinking?'

Sewall looks across at Mr. Parris to see how he takes this first direct reference to his dwelling, the house of a minister of God now apparently become a rendezvous for evil spirits. Mr. Parris remains bent intently over his papers, scratching away with his quill, eyes screwed up as if he needs spectacles.

‘Yes, sir,' the child answers.

‘How many were there?'

‘About forty.'

Sewall gasps. Every time he hears about this Devil worship the number has doubled.

‘And did they tell you what it was they drank?'

‘They said it was our blood and that they had drunk it twice that day.'

‘Mary Walcott!' Hathorne says suddenly, like a schoolmaster turning his attention to a dreamy child. ‘Mary Walcott,' he repeats, now he has her attention, ‘have you seen a white man?'

She gathers herself, nods, then speaks in a whisper. ‘Yes sir, a great many times.'

‘What sort of man was he?'

‘A fine grave man.' She nods again, as if agreeing with herself. ‘He was a fine grave man, and when he came he made all the witches tremble.' The Devil of course is the Black Man, but Sewall reminds himself that on this occasion he was disguised as God. He can assume any disguise, even this one, for, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians, Chapter 11, verse 14,
Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light
.

‘Which witches were these, who saw the grave man and trembled?'

‘They were Goody Cloyse, Goody Nurse, Goody Corey and Goody Good.'

There is a commotion to the left. Sarah Cloyse calls for water and Elizabeth Proctor grasps hold of her to stop her falling. Immediately there is an answering commotion from the right. One child is barking like a dog; another bleating like a sheep. One seems to be riding an invisible horse, from which she falls with a scream. Yet another calls out: ‘Her spirit has gone to prison, to visit her sister Nurse!' Sewall has forgotten that Cloyse is sister to another of the accused. This infection or infestation spreads through families, and his scalp prickles at the thought.

‘Elizabeth Proctor!' cries Hathorne. Elizabeth Proctor nearly drops Goody Cloyse in shock. ‘Elizabeth Proctor,' Hathorne says again in quieter tones, ‘do you understand the seriousness of the charges laid against you?' She looks at him with large brown eyes filled with tears, and slowly nods. Goody Cloyse's head is resting on her shoulder, her mouth open and eyes closed, breathing roughly, snoring perhaps.

Hathorne turns to the other side of the room. ‘And you, the afflicted ones, you must speak the truth or answer for it before God. Ann Putnam, does Goody Proctor hurt you?'

Ann Putnam opens her mouth to reply, but nothing comes out, or rather nothing but a strange mumble. The sound reminds Sewall of noises he has made himself when he has been speaking in a dream and woken up halfway through, and so has been able to listen for a moment to his own dream language in the daylight world.

‘Abigail Williams!' says Hathorne. Abigail does not start like Mary Walcott and Elizabeth Proctor did—even surprise can be unsurprising eventually. ‘Does this woman hurt
you
?'

‘Yes, often.'

‘Does she bring the book for you to sign?'

‘Yes, sir, and she tells me that her maid has signed it already.'

Mary Warren, the jade as Proctor described her (as well as ‘little bitch'), burbles something incomprehensible just as Ann Putnam did, and collapses into a fit, foaming at the mouth, her eyes rolled up so only the whites are showing.

Elizabeth Proctor stares at Abigail Williams, then holds out her arms towards the little girl. ‘Dear child,' she says in a cajoling voice, as a mother might do if her patience has been stretched to the limit and she's making a final effort to keep her temper or her wits. ‘Dear child, it is not so. Dear child, remember there is another judgement than the one in this court.'

Immediately both Abigail Williams and Ann Putnam fall into fits. Hathorne turns towards Elizabeth Proctor and glares, making it clear he doesn't like to hear this court slighted, even by comparison with a higher one. But then Ann Putnam, still unconscious and drooling, raises an arm and points towards the ceiling. She speaks in a voice blurred by spittle. ‘Look,' she says, even though her own eyes remain closed, ‘there's Goody Proctor, up there upon the beam.'

‘No!' cries Elizabeth Proctor in despair.

‘No!' comes that deep voice from the main body of the hall, her husband. ‘No! These girls are lying! This child is lying!'

‘Mr. Proctor,' says Justice Danforth, ‘the child is not even conscious. How can she be lying?'

‘You can lie with your eyes shut as well as open,' says Proctor. ‘
All
these children are lying.'

Pandemonium. One of the girls cries out; ‘He's a wizard!', pointing at Proctor, who rises from his seat and strides towards the front. He is pointing back, at his accuser, then at Ann Putnam, then at all the other children in turn, shouting, Liar! Liar! as he does. Children shriek and fall to the ground, as if his pointing arm is a gun and
Liar
the detonation. Sewall raises his eyes from this bedlam up towards the roof beam. Did something shift abruptly in the shadows, the way a bird sitting on a branch suddenly moves itself an interval to the right or the left by a mere shrug of its shoulders?

‘Ann Putnam!' cries Hathorne. ‘Tell us who has just hurt you!'

Ann Putnam rises to her feet. She lifts her arm with a strange authority, lifts it slowly, in a manner that makes Proctor's pointings look suddenly baffled and frenetic. ‘It is Goodman Proctor who hurt me,' she says.

There's a gasp from the crowd. Proctor stops in his tracks, clearly stunned. His pointing arm turns back from its targets to his own chest. ‘Me?' he mouths.

‘Goodman Proctor! Goodman Proctor!' the other children call. ‘Goodman Proctor! Goodman Proctor!'

Suddenly a piercing voice cuts through the chorus. ‘There he is!' An arm is pointing upwards. ‘There he is, up in the roof! There he is, up there on the beam!'

All heads move together to peer upwards—except Sewall's. He stares in fascination as John Proctor's own head moves backwards like all the others, part of that silent chorus of craning faces, in order to inspect
himself
up there in the rooftrees. It must be like peering into the depths of a terrible mirror, one that shows not the blemishes of a complexion but the deepest perversions of the spirit itself. Then Sewall's own gaze follows all the others up to the timbers once more.

There they are, perched side by side. He can't see them, but after all they inhabit the invisible world, so that is how it must be. The children can see them because they have sharper senses, in the same way as they can hear the screaming of bats. And they have the advantage of being more recently in, more proximate to, the invisible realm. He has observed in respect of his own babies and children, both the still living and the now dead, how close is that veil or curtain or door to where children play their games or lie in their cots.

He pictures these Proctors as man and wife birds, with sharp beaks and raptor eyes, peering down at the throng just as the throng, corporeal Proctors included, peer upwards towards
them
.

Now Abigail Williams cries, ‘There he goes! There goes Goodman Proctor.'

‘Where's he going?' a querulous voice calls out.

‘He's going to Mrs. Pope!' cries Abigail Williams.

There's a yapping sound from a small fat woman standing near the front of the audience. She is wearing a large grey shawl and voluminous rusty brown gown that falls all the way to the floor, so that she looks like a little volcano running with lava. At Abigail's words she falls back into her pew, clutching at her bosom.

Another of the afflicted girls—Sewall cannot see which one it is—has taken up the call now. ‘There goes Proctor!' she cries. ‘He's going to lift up Mrs. Pope's legs!'

Sewall is astounded to see Mrs. Pope slide sideways in her seat as her short legs slowly rise. Her skirts hang down from them, revealing two plump calves in green knitted stockings

‘Goodman Proctor, what do you say to these things?' asks Hathorne in a loud triumphant voice, pointing towards Mrs. Pope with the unfortunate effect that the word
things
seems to be referring to her legs.

Proctor's face has gone red as claret, with rage or shame. ‘There's nothing I can say. This is all nonsense.' He waves a hand at the strange tableau, a woman leaning back in the pew of a meeting house with her legs sticking up into the air while the crowd stares at her in wonder and the girls at the front of the building cry and moan and fall down. ‘I am innocent of this,' he says, shaking his head. ‘It's all a . . .' He doesn't say what it is. It's evident he has no word for it.

‘That is what
you
say,' says Hathorne, ‘but the Devil says otherwise. The children could see you were going to lift Mrs. Pope's legs before you even did it. The Devil is bringing you out.'

Suddenly Mrs. Proctor speaks up. She is no longer supporting Goody Cloyse who is sitting in the chair beside her staring off into the far distance. ‘Why would the Devil bring him out,' Mrs. Proctor asks, ‘if John is in league with him, as these children claim?' Sewall is taken aback at seeing her come to the defence of her husband even though she has just seen his spectre molesting another woman, further evidence that they are allied in evil, side by side on their perch.

As soon as she has spoken, Abigail Williams and Ann Putnam rush towards her across the front of the meeting house. Seeing them approaching, Elizabeth Proctor rises to her feet, but in any case they stop short just before they reach her, as if colliding with a pane of glass. Mrs. Proctor resumes her chair again. Abigail draws back her arm as though about to throw a ball a great distance. Then she clenches her fist and makes as if to strike Mrs. Proctor. Her fist moves slowly slowly through the thickened air towards Mrs. Proctor's head but then her hand unclenches and her fingers gradually open so that in the end all that happens is that their tips gently touch Mrs. Proctor's hood. ‘My fingers are burnt!' she cries, and thrusts her hand into its opposite armpit, squeezing it with her upper arm as if to squeeze out the agony like water from a sponge.

Ann Putnam meanwhile flings her own hands up to the sides of her head as if afflicted with a terrible headache. She sinks to her knees, crying with pain.

Sewall watches the suffering of the two girls in horror. It seems to be his fate to look on helplessly while children suffer.