Crane Pond (17 page)

‘Which finger?'

Mr. Hathorne peers at the document on the desk in front of him. ‘The middle finger,' he says finally.

‘I did not.'

‘Which finger
did
you insert, then?'

‘None of them. What need would I have of a barrel of molasses?'

‘I imagine you would have need of a
gun
, up there in Maine with an Indian hiding behind every bush? A good big gun?'

Burroughs shrugs his shoulders, conceding the fact.

‘Captain Wormwood says that at another time he saw you insert your finger in the barrel of a gun, your middle finger, a gun with a six-foot barrel, and then lift it from the ground.'

Burroughs holds his hand in front of his face then inspects his middle finger as if to check whether it might have been boasting of how it performed these feats single-fingered while its owner's back was turned. When he raises his head to return Mr. Hathorne's stare he is looking mildly amused. ‘I lifted my gun by the trigger guard as many men are able to do.'

‘I think it is time to bring in the accusers,' says Stoughton wearily. ‘This is just yes-no, tit for tat. It's getting us nowhere.'

The marshall hurries to the right-hand door, opens it, issues instructions. The girls enter in single file, the steward bringing up the rear. The first to bear witness is little Ann Putnam. Her collar is starched white as is the apron over her brown skirts. ‘Tell us what you saw in the night-time, Ann,' asks Hathorne.

‘I was in bed. It was the middle of the night. Then I saw them. They came into the room.'

‘Who were they?'

Ann glances to the right so she does not have to look at the accused. ‘Mr. Burroughs's dead wives.' Burroughs lets out a sigh of disgust and turns to his own right so he does not have to look at her.

‘Describe them,' Hathorne commands.

She lowers her voice. ‘They were in their winding sheets,' she replies. The other girls, standing in a row behind her, gasp and whimper. Mr. Burroughs sighs again, more loudly, as if to express disappointment at the predictableness of this vision.

‘Mr. Burroughs,' says Stoughton. He speaks quietly but his voice is loaded like a gun. ‘I must ask you to look at the witness.'

Slowly Burroughs turns to face Ann who simultaneously turns to face
him
. At Wells cathedral in Somerset, Sewall saw a clock with manikins who came to life and jousted on the hour and the quarters, and now this choreography brings back the strangeness of that performance. At the precise second Burroughs is facing her squarely, Ann lets out a scream and collapses. Her disappearance exposes the girl behind her to Burroughs' gaze and she collapses in turn, then the next, and so on down the line, one skittle after another, until all the girls lie scattered on the floor.

Mr. Stoughton turns to his fellow judges. ‘I think that clarifies the issue,' he tells them. There's a pause while the judges wait for Mr. Parris to complete the mittimus. Hathorne and Corwin talk quietly to each other. Mr. Stoughton has produced a sheet of paper and a quill from a document case and is writing a letter—he's not a man to let time hang heavily.

Suddenly Sewall feels the need to make a point. He glances down at Mr. Parris, who is sanding the mittimus and giving it a final perusal with a little smile of satisfaction on his face. The document is read out and passed to the marshall. Mr. Burroughs is remanded to Boston prison to await further proceedings. The judges rise to their feet to go their separate ways. Sewall asks for a word with Mr. Stoughton. ‘I have a suggestion about the trials,' he says.

‘When and if they ever take place,' Stoughton replies grumpily. ‘I had hoped the new governor would be here by now. What is it?'

Sewall lowers his voice. ‘It occurs to me that perhaps Mr. Parris should not continue to act as clerk. When—and if, as you say—they take place.' Conveniently, Mr. Parris has walked to the opposite side of the building. He now turns, gives a little bow, and leaves by the main door.

‘Why not?'

‘He is so near the centre of this whole trouble. It began in his manse.'

‘You're not—'

‘No, no, I'm not. Of course I'm not.' Sewall remembers Stoughton's praise of the appositeness of Mr. Parris's sermon on hypocrisy. He needs to proceed with caution. ‘True, Mr. Parris is
near
the centre but he remains to one
side
of the centre, I concede that. But this very proximity gives him—'

‘An axe to grind?'

Once again, this is an issue that is clarified in the telling. His doubts have crystallised into a clear sense of a conflict of interest, or at least of a failure of impartiality. ‘Mr. Burroughs for example held the very post Mr. Parris now occupies. The situation could easily—'

To his relief Stoughton is there already. ‘Have been the reverse?'

Sewall shrugs, not wanting to go too far.

‘Perhaps you're right,' says Stoughton. ‘It might be better not to have a minister in that position. We're here to apply the law, not attempt an exorcism. Who would you recommend?'

Sewall is taken aback at Stoughton's willingness to concede the point. He had expected him to want to mull the matter over at the very least. But without thinking he replies: ‘My brother, Stephen Sewall.'

Stoughton gives a little start and then smiles at Sewall's promptness, or perhaps at his impertinence. ‘Your brother? Why him?'

‘He's not a minister. He's a man of affairs. And he disapproves of the whole business of the witchcraft.'

‘We all disapprove of it, surely?'

‘He disapproves of it as a
topic
. It holds no interest for him.'

‘I see. Unlike Mr. Parris he is a
long
way to one side of it.'

‘So far to one side that Mr. Parris's little daughter, one of the first girls to be afflicted, was sent to board with him, and has recovered. But he lives in Salem Town, so would be conveniently on hand should the trials take place here. He is well respected. And not just by me.'

Stoughton snaps to a decision. ‘In that case I would be grateful if you could sound him out informally, Mr. Sewall. Good day to you.' And suddenly he has gone. He is a man who always has other business elsewhere.

Sewall makes his way to his brother's house, heart thumping. He has shown Mr. Stoughton that he's a man of independent ideas. Then once again it occurs to him that he's proud of the independence of his ideas precisely
because
they have met with Mr. Stoughton's approval. And what kind of independence is it that needs endorsement from the powerful?

 

Stephen is shocked. He puts down his cup of cider with a thump. Margaret looks nervously at him. It's her turn to worry about family rifts. ‘Sam,' Stephen says, ‘you know how I feel about the witchcraft. I've no taste for hobgoblins or bugbears.'

‘That's the reason I suggested you. We need a man with a cool head to make a record of the proceedings.'

‘You want somebody who isn't interested to take an interest,' says Margaret.

Sewall is relieved to get the endorsement of her wit. ‘It will need to be a record of what's said and what's seen,' he adds, ‘without ought or must or maybe. This witchcraft is a mystical business but the report of the trials must have a hard factual edge for that very reason.'

‘I can be cool and hard enough, I suppose,' says Stephen. He taps the edge of his cup and inspects the ripples that flow across the surface of the cider. ‘When I'm buying a barrel of fish.' He looks up and smiles at Sewall. ‘But how can one tell what's a fact and what's not in this business?'

‘The mysticism turns into fact when the Devil reaches from his kingdom into ours. An agitation somewhere else creates an agitation here, and though most of us can't see it we can bear witness to its effects.' Perhaps those afflicted girls, being young and innocent, have an extra sensitivity to the nuances of the wind; they veer towards it like weathercocks, and the rest of us must just observe which way they point. ‘It would be your task to make an accurate report of what is witnessed, no more, no less.' He recalls his conversation with Cotton Mather on this topic. ‘You won't have to describe the Devil, just the footprints he leaves behind.'

‘Hoofprints, surely?' asks Margaret. Again she is trying to give a touch of levity to their conversation, but the image gives Sewall a shiver.

 

 

 

Our
Sins
are those
Accursed Things
, which by producing of
Breaches
in our
Hedge
, do prove the
Troublers
of our
Land
. Would we have our
Wall
undisturbed? There are then certain
Heads
, I mean
Hearts
, to be thrown over our
Wall
. . .

—C
OTTON
M
ATHER,
Memorable Passages,
relating to New-England
(Boston, 1694)

G
overnor Phips's ship, the
Nonsuch
, enters Boston harbour in the late afternoon of 14th May. Her sails are already being lowered and she approaches silently on the glowing gently-rolling water like a vessel in a dream.

Sir William Phips appears on deck as the gangplank is being lowered, resplendent in a blue velvet coat with gold lace, a sword at his hip; beside him the skinny stooping figure of Increase Mather in a plain black coat, his falling bands sparkling bright as they catch the evening sunshine. A long wig descends to his shoulders.

There's a tug at Sewall's elbow, and he turns to see that Bastian has come up beside him. ‘Mistress said I'd find you here.'

‘What is it, Bastian?'

‘Nurse Hurd has come to the house.'

Sewall feels a sudden chill. ‘Who—?'

‘No, no,' Bastian says. ‘Everyone is fine. All the family. It's Goodman Hurd. He's dying, nurse says.'

Goodman Hurd is a tailor, or was. He's about seventy years old, and for the last few years his eyesight has been too poor to allow him to practise his trade. It was sad to see his spectacles grow fatter and his stitches get bigger.

‘All right, Bastian, I'll go there. You fetch Mr. Willard in the meantime.' Mr. Willard will be less than delighted to be summoned in this way. He will be preparing tomorrow's sermon, no doubt, and the Hurds are members of the congregation of Cotton Mather's North Church, not the South. But Mr. Mather will be busy with his father's arrival for the rest of the evening—at this very moment he's rushing up the gangplank to greet him, arms outstretched and his own grey wig cascading on to his shoulders. ‘Tell Mr. Willard that my neighbour Hurd needs a final heave toward heaven.'

‘A heave toward heaven. Yes sir, Mr. Sewall,' says Bastian, and hurries off through the crowd, Sewall following in his wake.

 

The front door of the Hurds' little house is open and their goat is standing in the aperture as if on guard. Sewall calls for Nurse Hurd and she replies from upstairs, telling him to come in. Sewall cajoles the goat but she remains obstinately in position, glaring at him with those strange horizontal irises goats have. Finally he tugs at one of her horns and she gradually stumbles forward, bleating at the indignity of it, until he is able to slip past her.

‘Come up, Mr. Sewall,' calls Goody Hurd, her voice weak and plaintive. She's waiting for him at the top of the stairs, in a clean grey gown with cap and apron, her plump cheeks shiny with tears.

‘I've called for Mr. Willard,' he tells her, ‘since Mr. Mather is aboard the governor's boat, greeting his father.'

‘You're a kind man, Mr. Sewall,' she says. She releases his hand and opens the door of the bedroom. ‘Husband, here is Mr. Sewall to see you.'

There's silence for a moment and then in a fierce voice Goodman Hurd replies, ‘Hold your tongue, woman!'

She jumps back as though shot, and stands quite still for a few moments to accommodate the rebuff. Then turns to Sewall, wringing her hands. ‘I'm so sorry. He's not himself at present.'

‘His voice sounds robust,' Sewall tells her by way of comfort. ‘Perhaps it's best if we wait for Mr. Willard.'

They stand awkwardly facing one another on the little landing in the dim evening light. After a long few minutes there are noises from below, then Mr. Willard's deep angry voice, ‘Go away, horrible goat! Leave us, madam!'

‘That must be Molly,' whispers Nurse Hurd, and gives a nervous laugh.

Then quieter, calming tones, Bastian, who has a way with animals. The goat utters an affectionate bleat, and now Mr. Willard is coming up the stairs. ‘I'm sorry to hear of your husband's state, Goodwife,' he says, infusing a little kindness into his tone (to Sewall's relief).

‘Thank you, sir.' She turns to the bedroom door. ‘John, Mr. Willard the minister is here to see you!'

Again a pause; again he calls back, ‘Hold your tongue, woman!'

‘Husband! Mr. Willard is here to see you. And Mr. Sewall.'

‘Hold your tongue, woman!' Goodman Hurd cries a third time.

A third time! The words of Jesus come into Sewall's head: ‘The cock shall not crow this day, before that thou shalt thrice deny that thou knowest me.' Thrice John Hurd has rejected the opportunity to pray and receive spiritual consolation. Sewall thinks of the goat guarding the Hurds' front door, with its harsh odour and strange eyes. Many speak of goats as the Devil's beast, or at least as one of them.

‘Let me alone!' cries John Hurd. Maybe that is a fourth rejection, in which case the analogy with the gospels doesn't apply. Or maybe it is merely an extension to the third, in which case it does.

‘I wish to pray with you,' counters Mr. Willard.