Kathleen Kent - The Heretic's Daughter

But if what they said was widely believed, it made all the more sense for Uncle to have run like a hare from Father’s axe laid across our table. And for Allen’s face to drain to the color of snow when Mother warned him that he would lose his head if he tried to chase us from our home. I remembered her warning me of the men willing to walk over my living body to get to the red book, the journal of our family’s history. My desire in that moment to dig it up and read it burned a hole in my stomach. And finally, I remembered the stories Uncle told us as we crouched around the fire. Stories of the execution of King Charles I of England, who was taken up the steps of Whitehall-Gate, bent over a block, and separated head from neck by a tall, hooded executioner who held the head aloft for all of London to see and proclaimed, “The King, tyrant, and despoiler of the people, is dead.”

As we left the meetinghouse yard, the only one to bid us farewell was Lieutenant Osgood’s little black slave. He was standing off away from the crowd of the men and women of the meetinghouse, small and twisted, his shoes still immense on his bare feet, his coat more threadbare and ragged than ever. It was fitting that this boy, ignored, shunned, and despised, should be the only one to stand and wave to us until we’d disappeared from sight. I would never see him again, but I would often dream of him, and in my dreams his coat was new, the buckles on his shoes silver, his black face as sad and timeless as the dark half of the moon.

ON JULY 20TH Mary Lacey, Mercy Williams’ friend who had taunted me in the Andover burial grounds and who had only just been put into Salem prison, gave testimony that she was indeed a witch, as were her own mother and grandmother. She told her inquisitors that Richard and Andrew were also witches and that Goody Carrier revealed to her at a midnight gathering of witches that the Devil had promised that she, my mother, would be Queen in Hell. On the 21st of July, John Ballard brought his cart for my two oldest brothers.

He waited until Father had left for his long walk to Salem and then strode as bold as anything into our house with the warrants. I had to call Richard and Andrew from the barn and stood alone with him in the common room while he smirked at me and told me with a crooked finger, “You’ll be next, little miss.” When Richard walked in and saw the master of warrants, he looked for an instant as if he might make a run but he thought better of it when John Ballard clapped his hand roughly on my shoulder and said to Richard, “If you don’t come I can just take this one here.”

Richard submitted to having his hands tied in front, and Andrew, following his brother’s lead, willingly held out his hands to his captor. He shrank back only when the bonds were tightened hard around his wrists. They climbed into the cart, and as the constable adjusted his reins to depart, I whispered, “Richard, remember what Mother said. Tell them whatever they wish to hear.”

But my heart tightened into a fist when he said, “There’s nothing they can do to make me give a false statement. If Mother can hold fast, so can I.”

The cart pulled away and I followed after, saying, “Richard, think of Andrew, then. He will take your lead and do what you do and say what you say.” The cart was pulling away faster than I could walk, and I ran after them for a quarter mile crying out, “Richard, please, Richard…” He looked at me defiantly, braced with the pride of a young man who is strong and stubborn but who, until that day, has only shed his precious blood onto the edge of a shaving razor. He had turned eighteen on the 19th of the month, two days before his arrest.

When I returned to the house I found Tom curled up next to the hearth, rocking back and forth on his haunches, his face streaked with tears that had washed away the grime in pink bands down to his chin. I had no words to give him, so I sat next to him in the ashes and waited for Father to return. Upon arriving in Salem Town, five miles east of Salem Village, Andrew and Richard would be locked into the basement of Thomas Beadle’s Inn for the night, as the constable did not want to take the chance of meeting my father along the road to the prison. The next morning they were taken in front of the magistrates, and among them, to see for himself the growing tide of spectral evidence, was Cotton Mather, spiritual advisor and exemplar to half of the ministers in the colonies. From his own mouth he gave instructions to Richard and Andrew to offer truthful testimony to the court. He told them that God and their earthly judges would be merciful to them if they offered up a full confession of their witchcraft. Mary Lacey, who had admitted freely to being a witch and spectrally torturing some of the girls of Salem Village, then entreated Richard to repent and admit his guilt to all. She accused him of bewitching the long-suffering Timothy Swan, the young man with whom Allen Toothaker had lived in Andover. She said Mother had killed seven people using a poppet that she stabbed with needles.

Richard had seen these judges at work at Mother’s trial and the trials of others, and he did little to hide his contempt for them. To every question he answered them a curt “No” or “I have not done it.” The chief magistrate, John Hathorne, then turned to Andrew, but to every question put to him he answered the same. When the magistrates could not get the compliance they had grown accustomed to having, they ordered Richard and Andrew to be taken into another room to reconsider their answers. The high sheriff and executioner of Essex County, George Corwin, waited for them in the anteroom with two lengths of rope. Richard was told to lie facedown on the floor, where his wrists were tied behind his back and his feet were bound together. After the rope had been wound round his ankles, it was then yanked up short and looped around his neck, arching his head back to meet his feet. This was called “the bow,” and even with the strongest of men it took only a little while for the back to weaken, the legs and head to lower, and the rope to tighten around the throat. The strangling was slow and agonizing and, unlike with a drop from a tree branch, the neck was not broken quickly to end the victim’s suffering. The tender flesh at the neck would crimp and bruise and burn, the eyes would bulge from the head and soon the blood would first trickle and then course through the nose in a torrent as the vessels burst from the pressure. The path for air would be inexorably shut off, and if the prisoner fainted, all would be lost for the laxity of the limbs would cause the rope to completely crush the airway. And although it was a departure from the usual methods of extracting a confession used in the new England, it was nevertheless called English torture because it was not considered as cruel as branding, burning, or racking.

Richard, being very strong and determined, looked to die rather than confess, so the sheriff threw Andrew down onto the floor and tied him so brutally that he bled from his wrists and neck where the rope cut into his skin. Richard later told me that Andrew cried like a little child and begged and pleaded to be released. He said over and over again, his words barely squeezing past the grip of the rope round his throat, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” It was Andrew’s suffering more than the danger to his own body that made Richard agree to tell his judges whatever they wished to hear.

When they brought my brothers back into the gathering room of the meetinghouse, Richard told the magistrates that he and Andrew were indeed witches but they had been so for only a little while. When asked who had made them turn against God, Richard told them that Mother had held their hands to the Devil’s book and made them swear their allegiance to him. He gave them the names of other witches but named only men and women who were in jail already accused and awaiting trial or who had been found guilty and hanged. Andrew said not a word but clung to Richard’s shirt and it took Sheriff Corwin and another man to separate them when their chains were brought to bind them for transport to Salem jail.