Robert Walker: Children of Salem

The doll’s ruffled dress moved. A breeze . . . cracks in the old cabin walls accounts for it , Goode decided when the frilly dress stilled. Another strange wind threatened her candle and lifted the book page, flapping it ever so gently as if by an invisible hand or fairy. Now a stronger gust blew into the cracks, threatening to extinguish the candle.

She attempted to save the candle from going out, but the page tore from the book, lifted and wafted off and below the table.

Is Reverend Parris at the window? Is he before his fire, sending forth his familiars to bedevil me even as I mean to bedevil him? Is the man in black a blackhearted wizard himself? Could he be causing me to lose my page and my calm?

“A pox on ye!” she shouted the habitual chant before bending, reaching unsteadily, and finally crawling below the table for the page. The page regained, she groaned with her rising. Upright, a hand on her backside, her eye went from window to door, half-expecting to see it broken in, followed by men and lanterns and dogs come to drag her to the nearest tree. All with Parris overseeing her hanging. She imagined herself squealing, kicking, fighting to no avail until choked to death, her neck broken.

But all remained silent. Just the wind kicking up .

Her hazel eyes went directly to the blue eyes of the doll again. Warm blue pools so like the minister’s daughter, wee but plump Betty Parris.

“Gawd but that clever Andover blacksmith put so much of you into the likeness,” she said to the empty cabin. “He did fashion you well, my Betty. Even got your dimples down. Gaw’d blind me, if you ain’t-a-spittin’ image.”

Trembling in anticipation of her full-blown magic and the results of her witchery, Sarah smiled her toothless grin. The witch held the doll against her breast, sobbing over it, asking its forgiveness, calling it by the child’s name as she did so. “Forgive me, Betty, dear.”

She held it against the table with one hand while her other lifted overhead and sent the longest needle into the doll. The needle deeply and evenly penetrated the soft, balsa wood belly. She brought the likeness, needle and all, up close to her mouth and kissed its lifelike lips, noting how extraordinary the little nostrils appeared, so real in the candle glow. As if breathing on its own…a pained breathing… and those eyes . . . vacant and innocent, had they been painted brown, the doll might be a likeness of her own Dorcas.

Sarah felt the pang of onrushing emotion. She freely cried for the child, Betty, and she cried for her missing Dorcas. “I didn’t ask for this trouble between your father and me, child,” she told the doll. “Twas all his doing! First excommunicating me from that damned church, and then stealing my Dorcas! And cloakin’ it in the goodness of his parish duties! Lying swine. Sold my Dorcas into slavery is what he’s done! Money changed hands!”

She jammed another long needle into Betty’s likeness. Tearfully, Goode cried out, “The sins of the father are visited ’pon the child! Not my rule! Not my sins.”

She heard the doll whisper, I understand, Goodwife Goode.

Goode rammed another needle into the doll .

The doll winked at her under the candle glow as if to add, Father’s left you no choice.

Chapter Two

Watch Hill, outside Salem Village, same time

Jeremiah Wakely in black riding cape reined in his pale horse and brought the gray-speckled mare to a soft trot. He and Dancer rounded the base of the gravelly hill that Jeremy recognized as Watch Hill. Must be careful . . . discreet . He urged the horse now up the gentle slope beneath the moonlight. Must arrive in Salem Village without notice. “Perhaps an impossibility?” he asked the horse, leaning in to pat the animal.

As Jeremiah and his horse Dancer scaled the ancient hill, he wondered if it had not been a mistake to make this pact with Mather. Wondered if he shouldn’t ‘ve told both ministers the previous night— and in no uncertain terms that he was…what? Uncertain? “Hardly strong enough language for what ails ye tonight, eh, Wakely?” he spoke aloud to himself in the cold night air. Any moment now, he expected to see Higginson coming up the other side of this wretched hill, but so far no sign of the man.

In a pace that stirred so much emotion in Jeremy, he wondered if the Mathers, and now Higginson, had not placed their confidence in his ability to remain neutral and above the fray possible. An attitude necessary to accomplish what amounted to a conspiracy against Reverend Parris. Am I the right man for this affair? Suppose the others are wrong? Suppose I’m the worst possible choice for this grim and complicated undertaking? Am I up to it?

Then there was the fear that had welled up and engorged his heart with every hoof beat bringing him closer to Salem and Serena. His mind played over this fear…played over the moment that he’d most assuredly again lay eyes on her.

The feel of the white steed beneath him sent a slow and easy rhythm through Jeremiah. A calm had settled over man and horse after the full gallop from Boston. Nonetheless, Jeremiah could feel the animal’s heart racing still—a kind of chant, reminding Jeremiah of his mission, its gravitas and significance. More rumor than fact but in earlier attempts to unseat Samuel Parris, people had fallen gravely ill and others had died—some said of poison, some pointed to poisoned thoughts, while others cried witchcraft! After all, a minister who practiced magic was not altogether unheard of in Salem as people there recalled Reverend George Burroughs who on occasion had performed magic tricks and displays of so-called superhuman strength at the altar.

Coincidence or not, the latest and most outspoken of Parris’ critics was none other than Rebecca Nurse, Serena’s mother, who—if word could be believed was herself abed with a condition bordering on death. Of course, there might be no connection whatsoever, but it smelled mightily to some, and it raised suspicious minds to a fevered pitch, especially as Serena’s father, Francis, had also been an outspoken member of the group opposing Parris. Odd for certain, yet not surprising that Serena’s family—serious churchgoers—would be in the thick of any parish business. It amounted to yet another reason why Jeremy questioned his ability to pass fair judgment one way or the other.

Regardless here he was, poised to enter the fray himself. And regardless of how he was selected or why, he’d soon enter that cursed village of ill memory; enter it along a dirty cow path west of Ipswich Road.

Man and horse reached the summit of Watch Hill, a place where once, as a boy Jeremiah Wakely worked for the village and room and board at Deacon Nathaniel Ingersoll’s Inn and Apoethcary. As a scrawny boy, Jeremy guarded the entire expanse of what had been called Salem Farms. He stood watch, prepared to torch a bonfire and to ring a huge bell so large it’d been mounted on a heavy oaken frame. Jeremy had been proud in those days—acting as eyes and ears against the then troubling pagans of the bush as Ingersoll, his overseer, had routinely called the native Massachusetts Indians.

Bonfire and bell were long gone now. In their place a scorched area of earth that looked for all the world to be the remnants of a pagan dance altar what with that familiar spike of a boulder squarely in it. Jeremy took in the old place even as he cursed the apparent absence of Nehemia Higginson. He had expected the creaky old minister to have taken the easier approach on the northwest side in a comfortable buggy, but no sign of horse, buggy, or minister. Groaning aloud, he scanned the distance all round from the top of Watch Hill. No sign whatsoever of the aged minister reported back.