Crane Pond (27 page)

She has said all this standing with her hands clasped in front of her, looking down at the floor. Old man Jacobs watches her intently all the while she speaks and as she finishes raises one hand towards her, waving his staff. The gesture clarifies this whole strange episode in Sewall's mind. The girl is willing to sacrifice not just her life but her very soul for this old man. Sewall remembers the occasion when he told his own daughter Betty he would ask to join her in hell. It is as if the present turn of events in court is designed to demonstrate to him the wickedness of that declaration. Family life can be intense and loving but it must give way before the love of God. Or rather, if one loves one's family aright, there should be no conflict with the love of God.

There's a long pause, then Mr. Stoughton speaks. ‘Margaret Jacobs, you will be remanded in custody on a charge of witchcraft, to be examined in court at a later date.'

The girl bows her head and then, while it remains bowed, peers sideways at old man Jacobs. ‘I ask your forgiveness, grandfather,' she says, a sob in her voice.

‘You have it, you brave girl,' Jacobs replies. ‘I shall leave you ten pounds in my will.'

‘There you are,' Wait Still Winthrop whispers to Sewall. ‘I told you these farmers are well off. It all comes down to money in the end.'

Sewall is not so sure, since the ten pounds will be of little use to Margaret Jacobs when she follows her grandfather to the gallows, as surely she must in due time. As if to confirm this thought, Margaret Jacobs shakes her head and smiles at the old man, as though to say his forgiveness is all she wants.

She is led off and shortly afterwards George Jacobs, having tended to torture, afflict, pine, consume, waste and torment certain of the accusers in full view of the open court, is found guilty of witchcraft.

 

George Burroughs's trial follows the pattern of his examination, except for two things. One of the afflicted girls, Mercy Lewis, confirms that Mr. Burroughs has been appointed by the Devil to reign over an evil America, should the country be lost to God's word. And that he will have a consort by his side, Martha Carrier, an elderly woman from Andover. She is to be Queen of American Hell, it turns out.

On the face of it Carrier is not the most obvious choice for this most elevated, or rather most ignoble, of positions—she is perhaps twenty years older than Burroughs, a hard-faced country woman. Many of the depositions against her relate to cutting the ears off sows and making cows lose their milk. But she is formidable in her own way.

During the course of the proceedings, one witness falls into a trance and cries out with her eyes rolled up so you can only see the whites, ‘I wonder how you managed to murder thirteen persons?' Ann Putnam confirms this charge, claiming Carrier has indeed murdered thirteen people in her home town of Andover.

But Carrier turns to the judges, and takes it upon herself to rebuke them. ‘It's a shameful thing you should mind these folks who are out of their wits.'

As she is led off in irons, Nicholas Noyes is so indignant at her arrogance and presumption he cries, ‘Rampant hag!' at her clanking, retreating form.

 

The Proctors have learnt from Rebecca Nurse. They present a petition signed by thirty-one of their friends and neighbours. But this petition is counterbalanced by a swathe of depositions from witnesses who suffered torture from Proctor's spectre and that of his wife—and from other witnesses who are suffering such agonies now while the case unfolds. The two Proctors flutter up to the rafters just as they did at the examination, and Sewall is astonished at how their terrestrial bodies can so indignantly maintain their innocence while their avian projections hop about on the beams and preen themselves in full view of the afflicted girls.

The Proctors too are condemned to death, though Elizabeth Proctor brings a midwife into the court to testify that she is pregnant, so her sentence is suspended until the child is born. Stoughton gives her an icy gaze as he agrees to this delay.

 

The last case is that of John Willard of Salem Town (no relation to Sewall's pastor). He is a constable who was tasked at the time of the early examinations to bring suspects into court, a good example of the danger of contagion, because after a few weeks he began to defend the very witches he was entrusted to secure.

Mr. Hathorne asks Willard to recite the Lord's Prayer.

Straightaway he is confused, indeed seems to stumble at the threshold of the prayer before he has even begun to recite it, making strangled sounds much as a fisherman might make preliminary casts before sending his hook to the water. ‘Maker of heaven and earth,' he finally settles on. He realises immediately that this is not how the prayer begins, tries again, and misses once more. ‘It's a strange thing,' he says, ‘I can say it at another time. I must be bewitched just as these girls are. Say they are.' He gives out a high-pitched laugh that chills the marrow, it's so devoid of humour. He tries again, misses. Again, misses. ‘Well, this is a strange thing,' he says again, shaking his head. ‘I cannot say it.'

There's silence as the court waits. Again he tries, fails. He makes a sort of whimpering noise, sweat beading on his forehead. ‘It's these wicked ones,' he says in a cajoling tone, gesturing vaguely round the room to indicate where the wicked ones might be hiding. ‘They are overcoming me,' he whispers.

All the prisoners except Elizabeth Proctor are sentenced to be hanged on 19 August.

 

As the date of the hangings draws near, Sewall lies awake with one thing on his mind, a conundrum, both ludicrous and appalling at the same time. How will the old witch, George Jacobs, who can only walk with the aid of two staffs, mount his ladder in order to be hanged?

The hangman must be used to dealing with the ailing, the infirm, the crippled, above all the faint (not that Jacobs is likely to be one of these). But Sewall can't let it go. With the strange late-night lucidity that descends like a curse when you most want and need to sleep, his mind investigates the problem from all angles.

Perhaps Jacobs will be provided with very long staffs, so that he can continue to grip them even as he climbs up the rungs?

Perhaps the hangman will carry him up the ladder on his shoulders? (Jacobs is small and thin, as witches usually seem to be, and the hangman is sturdy and strong, as hangmen usually seem to be.)

Perhaps the noose will be lowered so that Jacobs doesn't need to climb the ladder at all, and can be hoisted up rather than pushed down?

All of these are possible solutions but Sewall doesn't know which to fix on, so he tries out one after the other in his head and when he has finished the sequence he starts again. Every now and then he shakes himself vigorously, hoping to shake off the grisly tableaux, hoping to achieve an emptied head, but as soon as he stops the insectile image of George Jacobs enters his mind again, lurching towards the gallows on four legs.

Finally he creeps out of bed to check on Betty (wife Hannah is sleeping in her own room to escape his restlessness during the hot weather). Betty's fears have returned. A few days ago she asked, ‘Why does God get angry? He must have been very angry when he killed all those people in Jamaica. Sam told me the earth shook and swallowed up the houses. And the sea shook and swallowed up the ships.'

‘Mr. Mather says that the terrible earthquake was probably caused by the Devil,' Sewall told her. ‘He had been imprisoned underground but escaped because the people had begun to use evil conjurations.'

Betty pondered this for a moment. ‘But the Devil can only do bad things if God lets him,' she then said. This is a point that has been made several times in the trials. The issue of course is not about God
stopping
the Devil, but about the witches allowing him to
start
, just as those doomed Jamaicans did. ‘But–why–does–
God
–get–angry?'

‘I will tell you why. You know when we go into a shop and buy something that has to be weighed? Some apples, let us say, are put on one side of the scales, and weights on the other, and when the two sides are level we know the amount we are buying. God's anger is like those weights. It exactly equals the offence. If I allowed myself to be angry my anger would be too great or too small. But God's anger is always exact.'

‘Sometimes He is very angry indeed.'

‘That is because the sin must be very great indeed.'

‘My sin is very great indeed. This is how I know I am not one of the elect—I can hear His voice in the night, shouting at me.'

Her breathing sounds regular but as Sewall peers across the dim room from the doorway he can make out the faint gleam of her open eyes. He stands for a while listening intently. If God is speaking to her it will be to her alone, but if His voice is as loud as she says it is, perhaps there will be some sort of after-echo. But he can hear nothing except, very faintly, the tick-tock of his new longcase clock in the hall downstairs. ‘Are you all right?' he whispers finally.

She doesn't reply. He is about to turn away but then it occurs to him that she may be too choked up by her terror to speak. ‘When I was a young man,' he says quietly, ‘I felt great sorrow for my sins, just like you do. I also feared that I wasn't one of the elect.' He is about to explain the cause of this crisis, his unaccountable failure to confess his sins and the subsequent stillbirth of their firstborn son. But he doesn't want to overcomplicate the story, to make it specific to
him
when he needs it to be helpful to
her
. Also, perhaps, he is ashamed of confessing that long-ago failure to confess. ‘I was in great torments until one day I read something that brought me some peace. It was such a comfort to me that I learned it off by heart and remember it even now, after all these years. Do you want me to recite it to you?'

It's a short passage written by the great Calvinist divine, John Owen, sometime chaplain to Oliver Cromwell and the man responsible for obtaining the release of John Bunyan from Bedford Prison. But scholarly attribution is not the point here. ‘This is what was written,' Sewall tells the prone form of his daughter. ‘“No man ought, no man can, justly question his own election, doubt it or disbelieve it, until he finds himself in such a condition as to make it impossible that the effects of election can be found in him. If such a condition there be in this world.”'

In his mind, the last sentence is italicised, but he no longer remembers whether this was the case in the original or whether he simply underlined it himself when he copied it down. Either way he repeats it to Betty to pass the emphasis on to her: ‘“If such a condition there be in this world.”'

She still says nothing. He wonders if in fact she has fallen asleep. ‘What I think it is saying,' he explains, ‘is that God is so generous and forgiving, and loves humankind so much, that he has in fact elected
every
body to be his saints.'

He turns and is starting to tiptoe away when Betty speaks at last. ‘If we are all elected, then why are the witches witches?'

‘Perhaps election is like a birthright. We all receive it but the witches have sold theirs for a mess of pottage. Which in their case is the ability to fly on sticks and send their spectres to torment those who defy them. And suchlike tricks.'

Betty gives a little sigh at this explanation. Perhaps Owen's words will give her some peace, as they did him. But he must not give her vain hopes. He would be a poor parent if he didn't warn her the house might be built on sand. ‘The writer doesn't know for sure. Nobody knows for sure. But what he is saying is that we must all live as if we
are
elected. There is no other way to live. Because then we will live good lives to justify our election.'

‘I will try,' says Betty.

‘My good girl.'

As he takes his leave Sewall wonders if the codicil he has added has undermined the helpfulness of Owen's main thrust, and left Betty subject to doubt and despair once more. That is the difficulty of exploring the paradoxes of election. At the very moment you experience hope you can succumb to fear. God has made their religion an anxious one, for good reason of course. It keeps his people sharp and alert. Hope and fear. Tick and then tock.

N
ext day young Sam is home early from work. A passer-by came into the shop and berated him for hypocrisy. ‘He said I was selling sermons and books of religion,' Sam explains.

‘Well, so you were. At least, I hope you were.'

‘While my father was hanging good Christian people.' His voice tails off as he repeats this allegation.

Sewall is aware of the way hostility is gathering. Two days ago Susan came back in tears after being sent out to do some shopping. Sarah said she herself would get the provisions for the time being. ‘If anyone speaks out of turn to
me
, they're in for a shock,' she announced. ‘Let them try to tell me there are no witches. I'll show them a witch.'

‘Only proven witches are being hanged,' he tells Sam, ‘not good Christian people. Witches, Sam!'

‘Yes, father.'

‘Witches! The opposite of good Christian people. The enemies of good Christian people.' Sewall takes a deep breath and steadies himself. ‘And in any case, that isn't hypocrisy.'

‘He said—'

‘Hypocrisy is something that takes place inside a single person. When he professes one thing and does another. It can't take place between
two
people. If
I
do one thing and
you
do another, that's simply difference, not hypocrisy.'

Sam nods vigorously as he takes this distinction on board (if indeed he does), obviously keen to nod away any indignation his father might be feeling. But Sewall senses there is something more. ‘And?' he asks.

‘And what?' Sam looks at him with hot eyes (and cheeks).