Crane Pond (19 page)

One of the older ones steps inside the circle. She points at Alden. ‘There stands Alden,' she cries out. ‘What a bold fellow!' She runs her eyes round the circle. ‘He keeps his hat on in front of the judges!'

The others either cheer or jeer at this, Sewall is not sure which. Alden is frozen for a moment. Then he raises his cap, scratches his scalp, replaces it. He shakes his head as if to establish that it's firmly back in position.

‘He sells powder and shot to the Indians
and
the French!' Again, those ambiguous cries. ‘He lies with Indian squaws!' This time shrieks, mixed with high-pitched laughter. Alden remains apparently impassive. ‘He fathers Indian papooses!' Now the girls are squealing and shouting in unmistakeable glee. For a moment they sound like wild Indians themselves.

Sewall recalls Cotton Mather's words about Indians as Apes of God, and the alliance between pagans and witches. Mr. Alden's dealings in the trackless forest have disturbed the girls (and Thomas Putnam too, no doubt). Just as trees twitch and shiver in the wind, so allegiances shift and bend in those dark woods. Your allies one day are united with the French the next. The accusers have heard about Mr. Alden doing business with the Indians (as was his duty, both as a military man and as a father) and assumed the worst. Sewall hopes word of those alleged papooses doesn't get back to Mrs. Alden.

Everyone is summoned back into the meeting house. When they are all in position again the girls cry out that Alden is pinching them. Hathorne tells him to stand upon his chair. The examiners have obviously concluded that the proceedings should continue. Now Hathorne orders the marshall to hold Alden's hands open, so his spirit can pinch no more. Immediately the girls subside. Mr. Alden pulls his hands away in disgust. Still upon the chair, he turns towards the justices. ‘Could you explain to me, your honours, why my spirit should come to this village to afflict these children when I never saw one of them in my life before today?'

‘Mr. Alden,' interposes Hathorne. ‘Please look once again at the afflicted ones.' Mr. Alden sighs. He steps down from the chair with the litheness of a younger man, not needing to grasp hold of its back, then stands and stares at the girls. His eyes are hard and unblinking, his face calm. Immediately, they begin to shriek and after a few moments fall to the floor, gasping in turn at the shock of impact.

Alden takes a deep reflective breath, then pinches his nose a moment as if considering how best to say this. ‘Could you explain to me, Mr. Hathorne, why they plummeted to the ground when I looked at them, but now I am looking at
you
and you remain perfectly steady.' He pauses, puts his head on one side, and inspects Mr. Hathorne with some care, as if to confirm his steadiness. ‘It makes me wonder how the providence of God can let those children accuse innocent people.'

‘Excuse me, your honours.' Mr. Noyes has scrambled to his feet immediately in front of Sewall. ‘With due deference to you as the examiners, if the providence of God is in question, that is my domain.' He looks round at the assembly to ensure they are endorsing his ministerial responsibility. ‘I would like to ask the accused why he's had the impertinence to invoke it in his cause.'

‘I—,' begins Alden but is straightaway interrupted.

‘The providence of God rewards the virtuous and punishes sinners,' Mr. Noyes announces with some force. ‘It has nothing whatsoever to do with accusing the innocent.' That seems to clinch matters for the justices, and Alden is remanded to Boston prison.

 

As he trots home through the hot afternoon, past fields and villages and country people going about their business, Sewall has the uneasy sense that nothing is as it seems, that up is down, white black, that the world all round him, now shimmering in early summer heat, is in fact nothing more than an insubstantial curtain or covering; and whatever lies beyond it is stirring into life, preparing to emerge into the day.

P
ies!' shouts the pie-man. Nearby a beer-seller with a barrel on a handcart is calling, ‘Beer!' In the distance a ship flies up the coast under curved white sails.

People have come from every walk of life for the opening of the trials, countrymen and women in shawls and smocks, old dames smoking pipes and their gnarled men in fustian frocks or deerskin jerkins, tradesmen in doublets and breeches, wealthier people from Salem and Boston with brass buttons to their waistcoats or virago sleeves to their dresses. As Sewall waits in line with his eight fellow judges he is conscious of the way the bright scarlet of their cloaks of office is slashed across the jostling mass like a wound.

There are some familiar faces. Nicholas Noyes is back at the head of the judicial procession—he has been made chaplain to the Court of Oyer and Terminer. Perhaps it's better that his role should be defined in this way—it might prevent him from trying to sum up the proceedings. Samuel Parris has been relieved of his position as clerk, and brother Stephen is standing in his stead at the end of the file, carrying his portable desk and looking surprisingly clerkly for such a bustling and busy person. In the mêlée is another face Sewall knows well. Thomas Brattle, treasurer of Harvard College.

He and Mr. Brattle were in England at the same time. They saw the sights of London and attended a concert at Covent Garden, the first professional music-making either of them had ever experienced. They sailed back to America on the same ship too. Mr. Brattle began spitting blood in the middle of the Atlantic and Sewall nursed him until, to the surprise of both men, he recovered.

And yet they've never quite achieved the bonds of friendship. Mr. Brattle will inspect you with bland blue gaze and a little smile, then quietly dismember whatever it is you have happened to assert. There are sharp lines graven around his mouth, as though that organ is not just articulate but
articulated
, so as to enforce the greatest possible precision in its utterances.

‘Good day to you, Mr. Brattle,' Sewall says.

‘Good day to
you
,' Mr. Brattle replies. ‘Your honour.'

 

When the crowds have shuffled in, Mr. Noyes steps forward and intones a prayer, that the Lord might guide the judgement of the jury (who have been installed on benches to the right of the judges), inform the wisdom of the judges, and protect the blessed plantation of New England in its time of greatest danger, that the Devil's attempt to pluck out its Christian heart might be thwarted.

The accused is a middle-aged woman called Bridget Bishop who was remanded at one of the earlier examinations. She has a sharp nose and mouth, small black eyes like currants and, bursting from under her little cap, long straggly hair that's turning from dark brown to grey, giving it an unclean look. She is wearing a grey dress with a white apron and shawl

The court hears there have been rumours about her for a very long time. Ten years ago a little girl called Priscilla developed fits after Bishop had come to her parents' house to demand payment of a debt. As soon as the front door shut behind the unwelcome visitor, Priscilla began screaking (said her father in his country idiom), and Sewall can hear that sound biting into his soul like a saw (little Hull had screaked in
his
fits). The child died two weeks later.

When Bishop was thwarted in a land transaction (she's a businesswoman on a petty and local scale, just like Goody Osborne, now awaiting trial), a sow belonging to the other party went mad and began knocking its head against a fence. Dolls with pins in them have been found up the chimney of a house she formerly owned. She once changed somebody's black piglet into a thing like a monkey. She had an argument with a farmer and then his cart got stuck in a hole that appeared out of nowhere, right in the middle of a meadow that up till then had been flat as a pancake.

Even worse: Bishop's body was examined by a team of nine women with experience in such matters, and a bulge of flesh, otherwise known as a witch's teat, was discovered in a place with no name, the dim and dingy and unfrequented part of the body that lies between the pudendum and the anus. Bishop denied that such a thing was there and accordingly was examined again by the women a few hours later, by which time the teat had disappeared. Compelling demonstration that the Devil was responsible. Who else would be able to remove such evidence once it had been discovered?

But it's the evidence of his own eyes that affects Sewall most. From the moment when Bishop was brought into the court the accusers began to scream, stagger like drunkards, fall over. When she turns her head towards the public in the main body of the hall (perhaps trying to appeal to them), the heads of the afflicted children all turn too, and they cry out in pain at the unwilled movement. When she raises her left hand in a gesture, all the left hands of the afflicted rise up, even though some try to restrain the delinquent limb with their other hand. Every action on the part of Bishop is immediately reflected in the multiple mirrors of those poor children.

A fourteen-year-old called Deliverance Hobbs is called before the jury to testify (she's just a year older than Sewall's daughter Hannah and, cheeks pinked by the occasion, thick spectacles perched on her nose, not unlike her). In a quavering voice Deliverance describes how Bishop, or rather her spectre, came to her and endeavoured to make her sign ‘our book'. When she resisted, Bishop took her to a field belonging to Mr. Parris's manse. Here a general meeting of witches had already assembled. They were taking part in a diabolical sacrament of bread and wine, an alternative to the Christian observances conducted in the nearby meeting house. What Deliverance saw, thinks Sewall, remembering his conversation with Judge Stoughton about Mr. Parris's proximity to the witchcraft, was Devilish worship taking place
just to one side
of the communion of saints.

Mr. Stoughton sums up for the benefit of the jury. Bridget Bishop is not on trial for turning a piglet into a monkey or for making a hole in the centre of a meadow. This is merely evidence
suggestive
of witchcraft. What is under consideration are crimes committed by her—in her
capacity
as a witch—against certain children. He raises his head and glares at Bridget Bishop. ‘Such crimes took place in full view of the court of examination, and have been repeated today. The children were hurt, tortured, afflicted, pined, consumed, wasted and tormented.'

Mr. Stoughton is about to ask the jury to consider its verdict when his attention is arrested. Mr. Brattle has risen to his feet in the middle of the public seating area. ‘Excuse me, your honour,' he says in that quietly spoken, inexorable way of his.

‘What is it, Mr. Brattle?'

‘I wish to come forward as a witness.'

‘The case is concluded. I have just reminded the jury of the charges that they must consider.'

‘My testimony relates to the formulation of those charges, your honour.'

‘We have already called all the witnesses necessary. The matter has been thoroughly explored.'

‘All the evidence has been hostile to the accused. I wish to speak in her defence.'

Silence. Mr. Stoughton stares at Mr. Brattle. Mr. Brattle looks unwaveringly back. Stephen looks up from his desk to see what he should be writing next. Then Judge Saltonstall breaks the deadlock. ‘I think, Mr. Stoughton,' he says, ‘that we should find out what Mr. Brattle has to say.'

Mr. Stoughton continues to gaze at Mr. Brattle for a few more moments. Very slowly he inclines his head.

Mr. Brattle comes to the front of the room so he can address the jurors directly. ‘You heard the charge in the mittimus,' he says. ‘That those children across the room were hurt and tormented and so on and so forth. Well, take a good look at them. They seem perfectly all right to me.' The jury all peer over towards the girls, who shift uneasily at this inspection.

‘Gentlemen of the jury,' puts in Mr. Stoughton. ‘We are not claiming that the children are in torments at present. But think back a few minutes, when the Devil was trying to stop them bearing witness against the accused. It was a different spectacle then.'

‘Oh yes,' says Brattle. ‘They were squirming on the floor or running about with their arms flapping like chickens chased by a fox.' He looks back towards Mr. Stoughton with his bright blue eyes. ‘By a
spectral
fox, I should say. But I was watching them before the proceedings began, when they were as healthy a bunch of children as you could wish to see, hale and lusty to a fault, just as they are now.' He turns back to the jury. ‘I ask you to reflect on the words in the mittimus. Pined. Consumed. These are terms that suggest a fading away, a sickness unto death.' He swings back towards the children and points at them. Ann Putnam gives a little gasp then is silent again. ‘But these girls are neither pined
nor
consumed. On the contrary, they are fat and happy as pigs in muck.' The vulgar phrase is uttered with as much precision as if it was Latin.

There's another silence except for a little snuffling from some of the girls, shaken at the insult and this attack on their good faith. Bridget Bishop tosses her fading hair, sighs in satisfaction at the unexpected defence. ‘Mr. Brattle,' says Stoughton, ‘I must object to the offensive language you have just employed.'

‘I'm sorry, your honour. That was the first example of cheerful good health that came to mind.' Mr. Brattle looks round at all concerned, jurors, judges, the accusers themselves, to check his point has gone home. Sewall suspects that his reference to happy pigs was intended to undermine those witness statements that referred to porcine distress and transformation. Satisfied he has had an effect, Brattle returns to his seat.

‘To clarify this matter, I will make a ruling,' Mr. Stoughton tells the jury. He pauses a moment in thought, pressing the tips of his fingers together. ‘You are not to mind whether the bodies of the said afflicted are
really
pined and consumed,' he then says. The jury shuffle uneasily; Sewall does too. It's hard to see what's left of the charges given such a sweeping concession. ‘The issue to be considered is whether they suffer such afflictions as naturally
tend
to their being pined and consumed, and wasted, and suchlike. What matters in law, gentlemen, is intention rather than result. Do you understand this point?'