Winds of Salem (18 page)

“Here, let us pause, whilst I return a few steps back in time to tell how it all began, the very cacodemonic incident giving rise to these innocent children’s direful afflictions.

“Tailor Barker had sent his eldest, Helen, to purchase fabric from a local weaver, a Goodwife Mary Hopkins. No sooner had Helen stepped away from Hopkins’s door with the newly acquired cloth did she see that it possessed an unsightly large brown stain. Immediately, Helen returned to the home of weaver Goody Hopkins to show her the stain and trade it for a new clean piece of fabric for her father. Upon these actions, weaver woman Hopkins, a most scandalous and loathsome old Irish hag (whose own husband had brought her to court for placing a curse on him and turning his favorite cat into a dog), proceeded to give the young, prepossessing Helen a tongue lashing so vile the girl at once fell ill.”

The girls laughed, but Freya only blinked and went on reading.

“Upon the young Helen Barker’s return home, with not a stitch of fabric nor the money her father had given her to purchase it, for the snarl-toothed Irish hag had kept both, the girl was seized by fits so severe they resembled the quaking that accompanies a catalepsy. Within a couple of weeks, one after the other, the Barker children were fell into fits, tortured in so grievous a manner as to break the most immovable heart.

“These fits would not cease and only grew progressively worse, no matter how much parents and neighbors fasted and prayed. By then I, Reverend Continence Hooker, had been called upon to visit and see for myself. Perhaps I could offer a sage word or efficacious reading and prayer. What I saw in the house of the Barkers was most unusual and unnatural, and it moved me to my very core. There, I witnessed the children in fits at their most extreme and exquisite: trembling, shaking,
contorting, babbling incoherently. They hid beneath furniture; they stretched out and writhed on the floor, twisting their heads and pulling their tongues to an unnatural degree; they went deaf, dumb, and blind; they crawled whilst barking like dogs or purring like cats. Once did Helen take to running to and fro about the hall, flapping her arms and crying out, ‘Whish, whish, whish!’ The two smaller ones followed behind her, behaving like chicks, then Helen threw a hot firebrand from the hearth across the hall, nearly striking a neighbor. Finally, the oldest attempted to dash into the fire and up the chimney.

“It wasn’t until the evening when I visited that the children calmed—as it happened, right before dinnertime. They ate most tranquilly and heartily, and at night they appeared to sleep peacefully. In fact, one might have thought them angels in their slumber, never possessed by such demonic contrivances as would seize them again upon awaking at dawn.”

The girls listened, eyes glazed over and mouths agape. They were transfixed by the story, and Freya could see they enjoyed—even needed—this break from their humdrum and difficult little lives. She stopped worrying about whether it was right or wrong to read them this tale and immersed herself in the story.

Eventually, word of the strange happenings in the Barker home fell upon the ears of Boston magistrates, who with “great promptness looked into the matter.” As soon as Goodwife Mary Hopkins was placed in the jailer’s custody, the children were given some relief from their agonies. Then Goodwife Hopkins, along with the afflicted children, was brought before a tribunal.

At the trial, Goody Hopkins oftentimes refused to speak in English, answering the magistrates in Gaelic instead, which no one understood. Every time she bit her lip, the children fell into the most pitiful fits before the whole assembly, crying out that they were being bitten. If the goodwife so much as touched her
arm or scratched her head, the children cried out they were being “most grievously tormented,” struck, pinched, or pricked on those very same parts of their bodies.

The weaver’s house was searched, and they found several poppets made of cloth and goat hair. In court, “the hag admitted she used these images to torture the objects of her ill will by wetting a finger with her spittle, then rubbing the poppets.” Further, at one point during the trial, Helen cried out that she saw a “small yellow bird suckle betwixt the fingers” of the accused, which her siblings then saw, too, and the magistrates concluded that the weaver had summoned her invisible familiar.

There had been enough damning evidence. Goody Hopkins was charged with being a witch, then hanged. With her death, the children’s fits ceased.

Freya shuddered, slamming the pamphlet closed. She could read no longer. What exaggerations and untruths! Goodwife Hopkins must have been ridiculing the court because the trial was, in fact, a mockery. Did the poppets even belong to Goody Hopkins or had they been produced to prove a point? From the start of his essay, Hooker had seemed to have a bone to pick with the old Irish weaver, whom he lost no opportunity to call names such as
loathsome
,
scandalous
, and
vile
.

The girls were silent, still absorbing Freya’s reading. Abby stood to walk to the center of the hall, where she faced the girls at the table. She smiled and bowed her head. She had their full attention. She reached for her cap, removed it, and placed it in her apron’s pocket. She pulled the pins out of her bun, and her shiny dark hair fell down her shoulders. She shook her head softly. The girls watched her wordlessly, hypnotized by her languorous movements. She was indeed ravishing.

Abigail’s body began to tremble and shake, and she fell to the floor. Her head turned, her arms stretched out, her back arched, and her eyes rolled back. She flopped about. She went still. She was on all fours, swinging her head so that her hair flew up and down. She hopped up and ran about the room, pretending to be a bird, crying, “Whish, whish, whish!”

Struck dumb, the girls looked on in horror. Abby stopped in her tracks and stared at them, then burst into delighted laughter.

“Why the long faces, girls?” She smirked. “Come! Do try it!” She threw her arms up in the air and spun, then shook again.

The girls save for Freya ran to the center of the hall and began pretending to have fits, barking like dogs, meowing like cats, crying out about their agonies. So passionately did they carry on that their caps fell off their heads.

Mercy stopped and looked at Freya, still sitting at the table. “Join us!”

Freya shook her head no, feeling a sudden chill. This was all wrong… there was something here… something very wrong…
What had she done?

“What a wet rag, you are!” Mercy made a face, fell to the ground, lay on her back, and shook her entire body.

Tituba came through the door into the parsonage, carrying two plucked chickens by their necks. The girls had been so lost in their fits that they hadn’t heard her enter. The Caribbean servant, not knowing what had transpired, stared at the girls in horror. “What is going on here?”

The girls immediately stopped. Sitting on the floor, Mercy let out a little yelp of fear as she spied the servant.

“We were playing,” said Abby, walking over to Tituba, patting her on the arm. “That was all we were doing, Tituba. It was nothing.”

Tituba shook her head at Abby. “You girls let yourselves be
tempted! Oh, I saw it, Abby, and I will not have it! Not in the reverend’s house!” She looked about the hall. The girls were gathering their caps from the floor. “You put on your caps and go!” she said, addressing Mercy and Annie. “Abby, Betty, fix your hair and skirts and return to your godly endeavors.” She carried the chickens to the table, where Freya had stood to take her leave.

Tituba gave Freya a look of such disapproval that she felt as if her heart had withered. She really shouldn’t have succumbed to Abigail’s demands as she had. In hindsight she saw just how manipulative the girl had been.

chapter twenty-three

Loose Lips

Freya had time on her hands now that she was practicing magic more frequently. She loved to be alone, rambling through the woods with her basket, gathering herbs for poultices and tinctures. It was good to get away from the Putnam farm and daydream about her upcoming nuptials with Nate. She was impatient to wed; she had not run into him lately, nor seen him at church, and she missed him. She found solace in the woods with the birds twittering, the insects’ song swelling, and tiny animal feet scampering over dried leaves. Once when she had walked to the river, she spied a baby fawn taking a dip. Just its head bobbed on the surface, moving downstream, until the small graceful creature reached the bank and strolled out of the water with a little shake. Freya had mistaken it for a dog until that moment. She thought it the sweetest thing, with its white spots.

She arrived in the clearing where the wild rosebush grew. The rose’s white-pink petals had fallen, but the rosehips they had left behind weren’t big or red enough to pick yet. Someone coughed, and she turned around and saw her friend James standing by the large stone outcropping.

“Good day!” He gave a quick bow, removing his hat. “I am very glad to have found you,” he said.

“You always seem to know where I am,” she returned.

“Funny, that!” he replied with trepidation.

“What is it, James?” she asked. His expression had made her anxious.

He bit a knuckle, then let the hand fall to his side. “It’s just that I felt I should warn you. I care very much about you, Freya…”

She peered inquiringly at him, nodding her head to encourage him to continue.

“You and your cunning ways…” He cleared his throat, appearing uncomfortable.

“Yes?” she said, batting her eyelashes.

He shifted on his feet. “Well, not everyone understands you… the way I do.”

She thought he meant there was an implicit understanding between them because of their friendship, but he seemed to be suggesting more.

“What do you mean?”

James took a step closer. “It is terribly dangerous, what you are doing, Freya.”

“What am I doing?”

“One hears things…”

“Things?”

“The other night… I happened to look up at the stars… and…”

“And?” she challenged.

He shook his head. “I cannot speak of it. It is too dangerous. Freya, you must promise me you will take better care. Do not…”

“Do not what?” she said impudently. She did take care. Mercy was her dearest friend and promised not to breathe a word about her talents. Those she helped in the village were appreciative. Added to which, she wasn’t the only one who made
physics. A few goodwives did as well; the only difference was that her physics always worked. So why not offer help when she could? Some people made such a silly fuss about it all, like the reverend or Thomas Putnam, who took everything so seriously.

“Do not do anything that will cause people to notice. People are always watching in Salem. There are eyes everywhere.”

Freya softened. “Do not worry about me, my friend. I am safe.”

“For now,” James said. “Mind you listen to my advice,” he said softly. “It would grieve me to see you come to harm.”

With that warning, James bade his leave.

Once again, Mr. Putnam sent the girls to Reverend Parris’s with provisions the little man had hinted needing in his sermon.
What would be next? A horse and carriage?
Freya wondered. This time only she and Mercy made the trip on foot.

Annie stayed behind to sit with her mother, who had lately taken to talking to her dead sister and nieces and had somehow managed to set her Bible on fire. Most providentially, Mr. Putnam had been in his study at the time. He had run into the room at the scent of smoke and stomped on Mrs. Putnam’s Bible. It was on the floor by the bed, and a candle had fallen on top of it. The whole event, which Freya had learned about through Annie, seemed strange. Ann Putnam Senior needed to be closely watched when she behaved like this. Poor Annie had been very frightened. She saw the burning Bible as a portent presaging some kind of doom.

As the girls walked to the parsonage, Freya was quiet while Mercy was her loquacious self. Freya nodded her head in agreement as the maid chattered, but she was miles away. She was
thinking about what James had said, about being more prudent. As if on cue, Mercy asked about the very same subject.

“I saw you with James earlier,” she said. “Was he asking about me?”

“Yes—no. I mean, yes, I was with James.”

“What did he want?”

Freya told her about his warning. “He is right. I have been brazen with my… abilities lately, and it
is
dangerous.”

Mercy was the silent one now. They walked along a narrow road lined with poplars. Freya gave the maid a sidelong glance, and as they moved in and out of sunlight and shadow, she saw that Mercy still looked troubled.