Escaping Salem: The Other Witch Hunt of 1692 (3 page)

The tranquil silence was suddenly shattered as Katherine Branch, the family’s seventeen-year-old servant, burst through the door. She had been sent to pick herbs in a nearby field, but the wretched girl had none with her. Katherine was crying and moaning, her hands clutching her chest, and she was panting as though the Devil himself had chased her home.

“Well, where are the herbs?” her mistress asked sharply, resentful of this sudden end to her peaceful meditations. “What’s the matter with you?”

Kate gave no answer, but fell to the floor, her hands clasped and her body strangely contorted; she wept piteously. Abigail’s eyes narrowed. She neither liked nor trusted the young woman. Was this some trick to avoid completing her chores for the day? Or had something happened in the field to bring on this outburst?

A few hours later, Daniel Wescot returned home and Kate was still lying on the floor, her eyes red from crying and her hands clamped together as if held in place by some invisible force. He stopped short at the door, taken aback, and then shot a questioning glance at his wife. Abigail knew exactly what the flicker of panic in his eyes meant. He was recalling the torments that had assailed their daughter Joanna some years back. Daniel had never quite gotten over the horror of that ordeal. Their little girl had been plagued by spasms of pain and insisted that something or someone entered her room at night to torment her; she saw creatures running from one hiding place to another when no one else could see them. These disturbances continued night after night for three weeks. So frightened was the little girl that her parents could not persuade her to undress and go to bed in the house. Most nights they took her to stay with their neighbor next door, where she would calm down and eventually get some sleep. At the time Abigail and Daniel had worried that Joanna might be under an evil hand and so they sent her away to stay with friends in a nearby town. The torments subsided and Joanna returned a few months later.

Abigail understood why the sight of Kate contorted in fear on the floor would remind her husband of Joanna’s affliction, yet their maidservant’s condition was surely different. She had not said that anyone was after her. Indeed, she was refusing to say anything. She just lay there, weeping and whimpering. Best let her be, Abigail thought, and the episode would likely pass. If not, they could call in Sarah Bates, the local midwife. Daniel had often lamented that Stamford had no physician, but Abigail had faith in Sarah’s medical knowledge and skill. Meanwhile they must try to remain calm.

Sarah Bates found Katherine Branch lying immobile on a bed. The Wescots, who were clearly anxious, told Goodwife Bates that their servant had taken ill the day before. Some of the time Kate lay rigid as if in a trance, but she also had screaming fits and at times cried uncontrollably. The girl had said little since the onset of these afflictions, though she did reveal during an interval of relief that whilst out in the field gathering herbs she had been seized with a pinching and pricking at her breast.

Goody Bates had no formal training as a medical practitioner, but she did have many years of experience in observing and treating her neighbors’ ailments. Her expertise ranged far beyond midwifery. It was grounded in centuries of herbalist tradition as well as the shared wisdom of the local female community in which she was raised. The women of Stamford—young and old, mothers and daughters, household mistresses and their servants—gathered regularly to support each other as they braved the travails of childbirth and illness. Women like Sarah Bates emerged as experts from those communities of mutual care, their skills endorsed by the experience and gratitude of their neighbors rather than university degrees or formal apprenticeship. Goody Bates had a finely honed instinct for discerning what ailed a sick neighbor and was widely respected for her abilities.

Sarah understood that the operations of the human body could be disrupted by divine judgment and devilish intrusion as much as by natural ailment. Any responsible diagnosis had to take into account the possibility of supernatural intervention. God might have inflicted the symptoms as a punishment for sin; ideally this would prompt repentance and reformation as the inflicted person recalled the moral lapses that had provoked God’s anger. She also knew of occasions on which experienced doctors and midwives had concluded that an ailing neighbor was bewitched. Katherine Branch’s symptoms were certainly odd and resembled closely descriptions that Sarah had heard of bewitchment and demonic assault.

Kate’s mother had also suffered from fits—the falling sickness, or epilepsy, as some called it. Perhaps Kate had a similar malady. But medical experts disagreed as to what caused the falling sickness: some argued that it was rooted in a natural disease, others that the symptoms were brought about in at least some cases by possession or witchcraft. Goody Bates saw no reason to ignore the possibility of a natural explanation. She advised the Wescots to burn feathers under Kate’s nose, a method that she often found effective when dealing with fainting fits. The midwife then asked for a cup of water, drank gratefully, and exchanged a few pleasantries with Mister and Mistress Wescot. Before leaving she encouraged them to fetch her again if the servant’s condition did not improve.

The following morning Mister Wescot came again for Goody Bates, this time, even more anxious. The feathers, he told her, had seemed to help at first, but Kate had since relapsed into a stupor: she was, he said, both senseless and speechless. Sarah found the servant much as Mister Wescot had described. Kate lay as though dead, her eyes half shut, though her pulse was beating normally. Mistress Wescot and her daughters were gathered round the young woman, watching closely.

Since the feathers had not produced any lasting effect, some other form of treatment must now be chosen. But what? Mistress Wescot wanted Kate bled. To be sure, purging the body of excess fluids so as to restore a healthy balance between the four humors—blood, phlegm, choler, and melancholy—could solve many physical disorders. Yet the midwife knew that bloodletting was risky when dealing with a patient who seemed so close to death. She said as much, but Mistress Wescot insisted that they try, so Goody Bates removed a pin from her pocket.

Just as she was about to prick Kate’s foot, the servant broke out of her stupor and exclaimed, “I’ll not be blooded!”

“Why?” asked Sarah, astonished that the maid should so suddenly revive.

“It would hurt me,” Kate replied.

Mistress Wescot reassured her servant that “the hurt would be but small, like the prick of a pin.” Kate then calmed down. Sarah observed the girl with growing suspicion as Kate held out her foot obligingly. This was a remarkably swift recovery from lying senseless on the bed. Sarah bled her a little and then Kate lay down again. A few minutes later, Kate suddenly grabbed the bedspread on which she lay and screamed.

“Mother,” gasped one of the Wescots’ daughters, “she cried out!”

“She is bewitched!” declared Mistress Wescot.

Sarah flinched, recalling that the Wescots had reacted the same way some years earlier when their daughter Joanna had fallen sick. But the midwife had no time to consider this before the servant girl surprised her again. Kate turned her head away from the Wescots as if she would hide it in the pillow—and then she laughed.

Goody Bates did not know what to think. Was Kate convinced that her sickness was natural and so surreptitiously laughing at her mistress for thinking that she was bewitched? Or was she faking her symptoms and enjoying her success in duping the Wescots? Or was the laugh itself a symptom of her fits? Determining the true cause of Kate’s behavior was not going to be easy.

When Goody Bates had first voiced her opinion that Kate’s affliction might well have a natural cause, Daniel Wescot was willing to entertain that possibility. After all, finding a natural explanation would spare them from having to confront the darker possibility that their household was once again under occult attack. But during the days that followed, all that Kate revealed of her strange afflictions made Mister Wescot more and more convinced that his servant was indeed bewitched.

Shortly after the midwife’s second visit, Kate announced that during her fits she saw a cat that spoke to her. It invited her, she said, to go away to a place where there were “fine things” and “fine folks.” There followed more fits and she seemed much tormented. When Daniel Wescot questioned her further, Kate said that the cats (for now there were several) told her they would kill her. A few days later she saw a room with a table on which was spread a variety of meats; there were ten cats eating at the table and they asked her to join them. But Kate told her master that she ran away to hide, explaining that she saw “a cat coming to her with a rat, to fling it in her face.” Not long afterward she told him that the cats were again threatening to kill her, “because I told you of it.” Sometimes, Kate declared, the cats turned into women and then back again, though who the women were she could not say.

One night, about two weeks after the afflictions had begun, Kate’s fits became much worse and she suddenly cried out, “A witch! A witch!”

When her master asked what had happened, Kate said she had felt a hand reach out to her in the darkness.

As Daniel Wescot reflected upon Kate’s fits, it seemed to him that the creatures she saw were more than likely witches in animal form, conspiring to lure his servant into their hellish band. He knew from the sermons he had heard on the subject that witches, the Devil’s disciples on earth, were always campaigning to augment their hateful fellowship. It would not be surprising if they tried to tempt Kate with “fine things” and splendid feasts. Anyone could fall prey to such temptations—such was the moral weakness of all men and women. But Kate would be especially susceptible, given the circumstances under which she had come to live as a servant in his household.

It was not unusual for young people in New England communities to be “put out” by their parents to work in neighboring households so as to learn a trade or skill. Sometimes they lived there as well, especially if the distance between homes was great. Parents who feared that they were overly indulgent to their children might send their offspring to live for a while in households where they would receive a stricter form of governance: ensuring a proper sense of discipline and humility was much more important than the immediate comfort of children or their parents. Whether sent away to learn a particular craft or to be saved from the sin of pride, such children knew that their being put out was temporary; at some point they would either return to their parents or set up households of their own. But other young people went to work as servants because their families were unable to support them or because they had been orphaned. Such was the lot of Katherine Branch: her parents were dead. She had no inheritance to use as a dowry and so had little prospect of securing an advantageous marriage. Kate might well crave “fine things,” ruminated her master, but she almost certainly would not get them. The servants of Satan were cunning: they knew the soft spots of potential recruits and went straight for them.

Any doubt in Daniel Wescot’s mind that they were dealing with witchcraft disappeared once Stamford’s minister became involved. The venerable John Bishop was an educated and experienced man of God: he had graduated from Oxford in 1632, just a few years after the first wave of Puritan settlers sailed to New England; he had served as pastor in Stamford for nearly fifty years. Mister Bishop visited the Wescots’ home several times to observe and counsel their servant. On one occasion he brought with him Thomas Hanford, the pastor in nearby Norwalk since 1654. Both men were clearly convinced that Kate was bewitched. Surely they could be trusted to understand such things?

The Reverend Bishop explained to Kate that the witches wanted her to join them in secret devotion to Satan—hence their anger when she told her master and mistress about them. God preserve her from such assaults! Both ministers warned Kate that she must not yield or else her soul would be lost to the Enemy of mankind. On leaving the house, the two ministers promised to observe a day of fasting and prayer in company with the Reverend Abraham Pierson of Greenwich, a much younger pastor who had arrived in Connecticut the previous year. Daniel Wescot readily trusted their reading of the situation; he took comfort that they and the Reverend Pierson would be praying for his household in its affliction.

Before he left, John Bishop impressed upon the Wescots that they must keep a close watch over their young charge and be on hand at all times to protect her. Such was their duty as master and mistress. Like any other servant, Kate was a member of their family, albeit in a subordinate station. The Wescots were responsible not only for meeting her material needs—food, clothing, and shelter—but also for supervising her education and spiritual welfare. The Reverend Bishop taught in his sermons that the head of a family should think of himself as fulfilling the role of a priest within his household: he must do all he could to nurture the spiritual well-being of those living under his roof. A household mistress also had a crucial role to play, setting an example of Christian conduct and protecting the young people under her care from temptation. Given that Kate no longer had any parents of her own, the Wescots had a special responsibility toward her. That duty to provide both practical and spiritual care would now take on a new and extreme form.