Crane Pond (35 page)

 

Not only has Nathaniel Saltonstall not been appointed to the Superior Court, but he has been the subject of malicious rumours. Apparently people have been accusing
him
of witchcraft, presumably on the basis that his denial of witches might have been self-interested. It seems impossible for a judge to avoid the taint. If he punishes witches it is because he is a witch himself. If he refuses to, it is for the same reason. The inexorability of this paradox actually affords Sewall some relief, and he feels a sudden warmth towards Mr. Saltonstall, who has other problems to contend with too. There is talk of him losing the command of his regiment of militia. Hardly surprising, then, that he's taken refuge in drink, though that of course has damaged his reputation even more.

For the next couple of weeks Saltonstall makes no appearance in Council, so Sewall decides to write him a letter.

 

Sir, Not seeing you in the Assembly, I am writing to wish you well and to offer you my sympathy in respect of the accusation that some people have been afflicted by a spectre in your shape. I fully believe in your innocence.

I would also like to say I was saddened you had drunk to excess when I met you a fortnight ago. You explained you were very merry, and then went on to talk about the breaking up of the ice on the Merrimack River—that's the occasion I'm referring to.

Please, break it off. I'm not talking about the ice now, but the drinking. As for the governor turning you down for the judge's position, I had nothing to do with that decision, and I don't know of anyone who did. And I was as surprised as you are to hear talk that command of your regiment might be given to somebody else.

Please don't give your enemies any ammunition. I want you to understand that I'm writing this out of friendship, not prejudice. And from a sense of my duty to you. Accept it in good part from someone who desires your everlasting welfare.

 

Samuel Sewall.

 

He leaves the letter on his desk to wait until he has an opportunity to send it to Haverhill and goes off to attend a Council meeting. When he arrives he is surprised to see that Mr. Saltonstall has turned up at last. He smells a little of drink but doesn't seem to be intoxicated. ‘I've written you a letter,' Sewall tells him. ‘I was going to post it.'

‘Oh yes? What does it say?'

‘Perhaps it would be better if you read it for yourself.'

‘You've whetted my appetite,' Saltonstall gives him a charming smile. ‘You can't leave me dangling. I shan't be returning to Haverhill for a day or two.'

‘I'll send it along to your lodgings later.'

That afternoon, after dinner, Sewall thinks about what he should do. He could rewrite the letter, omitting the reference to drinking and confining himself to denying Mr. Saltonstall's suspicions and to sympathising with him in his plight. But that would be dishonest, as well as a betrayal of the obligations of friendship. He will ask Bastian to deliver the letter as it is. No, he thinks again, I can't hide behind my servant. I will deliver the letter myself.

He still has hopes that Mr. Saltonstall will simply take it and wish him goodnight, but he invites him into his lodgings and asks him to have a seat while he reads. It's hard to sit calmly while your companion is discovering how drunk he was.

When Saltonstall has finished he continues to sit in silence, obviously reflecting on what Sewall has told him. Finally he raises his head. ‘Thank you, Mr. Sewall.'

‘My letter was written in a spirit of fellowship,' Sewall assures him, aware of his face turning red.

‘I read it in that spirit. I would only ask you one more thing. Please remember me in your prayers.'

‘If you will remember me in yours,' says Sewall, and on that note he pats Mr. Saltonstall on the shoulder and takes his leave.

 

 

 

It is Written
,
In EZEK. XXll. 30.—
I sought for a MAN among them, that should make up the HEDGE, and stand in the GAP, before me, for the Land, that I should not Destroy it . . .
The Rest of what is
Written
in the Verse, I will not Now Read unto you, as Wishing and Hoping, that it may
Never
be
fulfilled in our Eyes!

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

N
early four years have passed since the enforced closure of the Court of Oyer and Terminer. All the accused witches awaiting examination, all those awaiting trial, all those awaiting execution, have long since been released. Mr. Alden has returned (to be welcomed by his friend Sewall), as has Mrs. Bradbury and many others who escaped from prison or chose to flee the accusations of the afflicted. The crisis started as a children's game and like a children's game it has run its course and now the players have gone home to bed (except of course for the ones who died).

It's a summer's night and Sewall is asleep (wife Hannah lies in her own chamber in the last stages of pregnancy). He begins to dream of each of his children in turn. Firstly, young Sam. He is eighteen and serving customers in Mr. Checkley's shop where he now works (after finishing at Mr. Perry's on the grounds of assorted ailments afflicting him there). The shop is bursting at the seams with pots and pans, gardening implements and woodworking tools, cups and plates, tankards and cutlery, carpets and bolts of cloth (some of which have been imported by Sewall and sold on to Mr. Checkley at wholesale prices).

In his dream Sewall is a customer and asks Sam for a certain item (the dream doesn't specify which). Sam scuttles off to fetch it and Sewall waits for him as patiently as possible by the shop's table. Waits and waits, shakes his head, drums his fingers, reflects that Sam is slow, so
slow
, always has been. Finally he begins to search for him all over the shop, behind the piles of odds and ends, under the very table at which he has been standing, through a door that leads to the back office and store, but Sam is nowhere, nowhere at all, and the loss of his child, which would be terrible enough in life, is even more horrible in the dream world where nothing can be understood or explained.

Next young Hannah. Sewall is galloping towards the Dummers' farm (she is thirteen in this dream, as she was in life when staying at the Dummers', not seventeen and nearly as tall as her father, as she is now). No one greets him on the threshold, no child rushes out to embrace him. Sewall lets himself in but the house remains silent save for the creaking he makes by treading heavily on the boards, and Hannah is gone, gone irrevocably, gone forever.

The cupboard in the vestibule is black dark. Sewall is kneeling on the floor, praying, and Betty is sobbing quietly over her sins just an arm's length away. Then her sobs peter out. The silence deepens. He finds a candle and looks all about him, but though the space is too small to hide in, Betty is nowhere to be seen.

He daren't dream any longer and watch his remaining children disappear, schoolboy Joseph who cons his lessons so much more effectively than his big brother Sam ever did, and who has left the calculation of apples far behind already, little Mary, less intense than Betty and less timid than Hannah, already happier and more at ease with herself than either, baby Sarah, born last year and the very embodiment of friendliness, with a way of wagging her arms and legs at you in greeting like an overturned beetle (though subject to fits from time to time).

When he wakes, morning light has entered the chamber. He puts his head round the door of wife Hannah's room but she is peacefully asleep, and baby Sarah likewise in her adjacent cot. Then he washes his face, puts on his clothes, and goes down to join his other children for breakfast.

The Bible passage for today is from the fifth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles and it's Betty's turn to read it. She reaches the first part of verse four:
But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost
—and then her voice stumbles and stops and she can go no further. As so often she rises to her feet in order to make off to her cupboard, but on this occasion Sewall reaches out to grasp her elbow and stop her flight. It isn't good to retreat into darkness and secrecy all the time. Though this is valid reasoning he is well aware of what underlies it: the fear that when he follows his daughter into that dark constricted place he might not be able to find her inside it. ‘Dear Betty,' he asks as he tugs her (as affectionately as possible) back down on to her chair, ‘can you tell us why that verse upset you?'

She gasps and hiccups for a little while. ‘It's about lying to the Holy Spirit. I believe
I
lie to the Holy Spirit too. I might fall down dead at any moment just like Ananias and Sapphira did.' Suddenly she breaks into a torrent of weeping.

‘Sam!' Sewall says. ‘I think we need our minister. Go and ask Mr. Willard to come.' Sam rises to his feet. ‘And Sam. When you have spoken to him, you should proceed directly to Mr. Checkley's shop. You are late for work already.'

‘But shouldn't I bring Mr. Willard back with me?'

‘No, Sam. Mr. Willard can find his own way to our house. He's been here enough times.'

When Mr. Willard arrives, he asks if he can go with Betty to a private place. Sewall mentions her cupboard but explains it is windowless and dark. ‘We are all in the dark, old friend,' Mr. Willard replies somewhat sententiously, and requests a candle. (Sewall has never felt confident of their friendship since reading that dialogue between S and B.)

When the two emerge some time later, Betty is quiet again, but it's impossible to tell whether her sorrows have been dispelled. ‘She finds it difficult to explain her troubles,' Mr. Willard tells Sewall in confidence. ‘She says she's confused. This whole province is in a sad state of confusion. I believe we are still in the grip of that witchcraft tragedy.'

‘But that was four years ago. And in any case, Betty—'

‘Four years is a mere blink in the eyes of the Lord. And of course Betty is concerned in it. We are all concerned in it. In fact I am going to petition the governor for a fast day so our province can ask forgiveness for the injustices that occurred.'

Ask forgiveness for injustices committed by a certain
S
, thinks Sewall bitterly.

The acting governor has resisted confronting the events that happened before his appointment. Mr. Phips might have adopted a different stance, but Mr. Phips is no more. Within a year of the cancellation of the Court of Oyer and Terminer he began to succumb to strange fits of rage, assaulted Mr. Brenton, Collector of the Port of Boston, and furiously caned Captain Short of the frigate
Nonsuch
(the very ship that brought him to New England to take up his office) in an argument over Admiralty jurisdiction. It's as though the turbulent passions that afflicted the province the preceding year and which he so assiduously distanced himself from at the time, caught up with him at last and drove him into a frenzy. He was summoned to England to explain himself, where he promptly died (of apoplexy, Sewall assumes) and for the time being his place has been taken by William Stoughton, of all people.

‘Before I go,' Mr. Willard says, ‘I will say a prayer with the family.'

‘Madam Sewall is still in her bed,' Sewall tells him. ‘She is near her term.'

‘Of course. Give her my good wishes when you speak to her. Her condition will give me my theme for the prayer.'

When the children (all except Sam) are assembled round the table, Mr. Willard says his prayer. ‘The Lord bring light and comfort out of this dark cloud that hangs over our dear sister, Elizabeth Sewall. Grant that Christ Himself is being formed within this sweet child, and that the issue of the pangs she now experiences will be the birth of the Lord in her spirit.'

Betty looks tense and pale but perhaps somewhat vindicated at hearing this prayer. Hannah regards her admiringly, no doubt impressed at the scope of her perturbations and the grandeur of their possible outcome.
Amen
, say all the children,
Amen
, says Sewall, strangely comforted by the appositeness of Mr. Willard's words.

 

Later that morning Sewall decides to take a walk. He might go to his warehouse on the wharf and run through his books. But his real motive is to call in at Checkley's shop and see how Sam is getting on.

As he walks across the Common he is approached by Mr. Melyen, leather-dealer and part-time constable, a stocky man with stubbly cheeks and rheumy eyes but usually affable enough in casual conversation, though this one begins strangely.

‘Do you see that?' Mr. Melyen asks. He twists his head by way of pointing. ‘Do you see it?' he repeats, stepping rather closer to Sewall than is usual (or indeed quite polite). His rheumy eyes look up at him indignantly.

Sewall screws his eyes up against the glare of the sun and tries to see what Mr. Melyen wants him to. There are people going about their business; there are shops and houses, horses and carts; that's all he can make out. ‘What is it?' he finally asks.

‘It's big enough, damn your eyes!' Mr. Melyen replies. He takes a deep furious breath. ‘How
can
you stand there and tell me you can't see it?'

‘I didn't tell you I couldn't see it,' Sewall replies in as mild a tone as possible, hoping to calm his companion down. Again he peers across the Common. ‘I simply don't know what it is I'm looking for.'

‘It's the biggest thing in the whole town! How can you deny you see it?'

Once more Sewall looks, with his hand held above his brow to shadow his eyes. There are no giants among the people scurrying to and fro, no sign of an elephant or giraffe unexpectedly shipped here from Africa (in any case Sewall keeps himself up to date with Boston's imports). ‘No,' he admits at last, shaking his head.