Winds of Salem (32 page)

Ingrid recognized two key players from her past. There they were again: the burly, somber, and formidable Mr. Thomas Putnam, dressed in black upon his horse, and the sniveling Reverend Parris in his minister’s collar and frock, walking behind the cart, Bible in hand.

Then the afflicted girls appeared. They were anywhere from twelve to seventeen and, apparently, well enough to be here
despite the “witchcrafts” inflicted “in and upon” their bodies, as Bridget’s death warrant stated. They worked the crowd, whisking them into a furious frothing frenzy, striding close to the cart, mocking the poor, bereft Bridget. They sneered. They smiled in ecstasy. Ingrid remembered them from her own trial in Salem Village, when she and Freya had used the same futile defense as Bridget. Why would they wish any kind of harm to girls they had never met nor seen prior to court?

“She’s praying,” Ingrid remarked, observing Bridget’s moving lips. “Praying for us to see her innocence.” She tugged at her hood to conceal her tears. Troy stared stoically. The sun flooded the street. The crowd smelled dirty and sweaty. If it weren’t for Troy to hold on to, Ingrid would have crumpled.

The cart approached, and Ingrid heard the girls’ words. It was all theatrics.

“Getting yours now, aren’t you?” said one very prepossessing girl, whom Ingrid gathered was Abigail Williams, one of the ringleaders.

An older girl with a fair complexion—Mercy Lewis, it had to be—cried out, “You look so very proud now, but when you see the noose, we’ll see if you look proud then, Goody Bishop! Oh, how you did taunt and torture me!”

“You won’t be torturing us anymore!” added a third young girl.
Ann Putnam?

Ingrid felt a chill.

They were untouchable. Monsters.

Ingrid and Troy fell wordlessly into step with the procession following the cart down Essex. What was there to do or say? This was their history, a history of blood and madness. Little girls telling lies and spreading evil.

They walked in a daze, in shock, like victims emerging from a violent accident.

“We need to turn back,” Troy said. “I’ve seen enough!”

Ingrid appeared hypnotized. She stumbled ahead. She was hoping that she could help Bridget somehow, that she could change the course of events, but it was futile.

“It’s useless,” Troy insisted, but he couldn’t very well leave her here, so he continued by her side.

On Essex the dark wooden houses stood near one another, but the crowd turned north on Boston Road, where the houses grew farther apart and sparse, giving way to larger estates. They continued walking for about half a mile. Ahead, in the watery morning light, Bridget gazed out, to the right at the fields and orchards and then North River, to the left at the marshland and South River. She avoided looking straight ahead, where towering Gallows Hill came into view. Without noticing, Ingrid grabbed Troy’s arm.

As they made their way up the hill, the cart halted. The ascent was too steep and rocky to go any farther. Bridget was carried off the cart in her chains, then shoved forward and made to walk the rest of the way to the top. The girls and the crowd mocked her as she struggled up the hill.

“I am clear! You are the guilty ones, and you will suffer for this!” Bridget said before she was made to climb the ladder tipped against the oak tree.

The people only jeered and shouted back. The executioner climbed up behind her, then placed the thin white cotton hood over her face. Reverend Parris read aloud about fire and brimstone. There was no pity here.

Ingrid buried her face against Troy, barely able to watch, recalling how the rope had felt around her neck. She recited a calming spell for Bridget. That was all she could do. The girls
and the crowd grew incensed and wild. There were cries of triumph and jubilation, but also screams of fear. At the back of the crowd couples kissed and groped at each other when they thought no one was looking. Hysteria. Sex. Death.

The executioner pushed Bridget off the ladder, and she swung forward. She gave a faint yelp, stopped short by the noose, and a dead silence fell over the crowd. The crowd froze as if startled by the horror of the culmination of their actions, as if suddenly aware of the brutal reality.

The only sounds were of Bridget gargling as she dangled, her arms and hands fluttering up and down her body. Beneath the diaphanous hood, Ingrid saw her face contort, her lips swell, her eyes bulge and redden. A trickle of blood seeped through the cloth at her mouth, and she went stiff.

Ingrid turned her head away.

chapter forty-five

The Man in White

It had been a week since their capture. Freya and James had been taken to the Boston prison and placed in separate cells. Freya huddled against a wall, pressing her skirt over her nose and mouth. The overwhelming scent of human waste made it nearly impossible to breathe. She was placed in the cell with women who admitted to covenanting with the devil. By now, many had confessed, having been told that doing so as well as naming other witches would spare them from a hanging.

She hadn’t been there a day and yet it felt like an eternity already. The women who had confessed, unlike those who had clung to their innocence, had not been shaved from head to foot to be searched for witch’s teats. Nor did they wear manacles meant to tether their specters. But like all the prisoners, they had wasted away to skin and bones. Most had bartered their clothes for additional food from the gaoler. They shuffled about in their dirty thin shifts and sat apathetically on the rushes scattered on the stone floor, their eyes large and vacant. Some stood, clasping at the bars, calling out to a husband, child, or friend in another nearby cell.

Freya called to James but there was no answer. She tried again and was ordered to be silent, but regardless of the harsh stares of her companions, Freya kept calling until her voice had turned too hoarse to continue and now she had no energy left.

There were whimpers and whispered prayers all around. The ill cried out in agony. The dying moaned. She closed her eyes, turning her head to the wall. She had been whimpering as well, although she was unaware of it until now. She hushed herself, slowed her breath, and sought to find a silence within.

Someone placed a hand on her shoulder. She jumped. Through a blur of tears, she stared at the woman in the dimness. It took time to parse out her features and recognize them; the woman’s skin, once lovely and creamy brown, was now sallow, dry, ashy. She looked years older, her black hair peppered with gray, her plump pretty face thinned, the spark in her eye extinguished. Dressed in rags, she stared at Freya with crusty, watering eyes.

“Tituba!” Freya whispered. “Why are you here?”

Then she remembered—the girls, the accusations, the trials… it was all happening again. Tituba was one of the first victims.

“I am most sorry!” Tituba rasped. “He came to me! The tall man with the white hat. He gave me a pin to let my blood, and I signed the book. He made me do it… I am most sorry!” There was something crazed in her eye. “The demon had come! He appeared to me—he made me do it!”

The poor woman was terrified of something or someone. Who? Was it Mr. Putnam or the reverend? Who was the tall man in the white hat? Perhaps Tituba had lost her mind.

“Shh! Shh!” said Freya, rocking the woman gently to sleep. She left Tituba lying on the floor.

A feeble light poured into the corridor beyond the bars: the gaoler was coming down with rations of rancid biscuits and water. Freya’s belly grumbled.

Someone called her name, and when she looked through the bars, there was a man standing there. He was in shackles.

“Nate!” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“I helped James get you away, so they’ve charged me with
conspiring with a witch.” He bowed his head. “I’m sorry about my uncle—I couldn’t stop him… it was Putnam’s idea from the beginning. He put it in his head. I lent James money and told him to take you as far away from here as possible. I’m sorry, I didn’t know Mercy would find you…”

“You helped us? Why? After what I did to you—when I sent you away,” she said, remembering their previous encounter in a different life.

She had fallen for him when he had called himself Bran Gardiner, but he had betrayed her. It was all a trick to get her to love him, to claim her for his own. But she loved Killian, had chosen him over Bran, as she had in their ancient past. In retaliation Bran had brought death and disease to North Hampton, releasing the doom of the gods, and she had banished him from her heart forever, or so she had believed.

“Isn’t it obvious?” He looked up at her, and she could see him—truly see him—the mischief in his eyes, the affection in them, the wildness that had always drawn her to him… to Loki. “I love you, Freya. I always have and I always will.”

His words stirred the magic inside of her, and somehow, she was out of the ugly, filthy prison, and she was standing in the woods, in the forests of Asgard, at the beginning of time, and she was young and beautiful, and alone. She looked up at the stars, how bright they were, flashing in the darkness, and she was waiting for her love.

There he was, the beautiful boy she had given her heart to. His name was Balder, and this was before, before everything, before the poison, before the breaking of the worlds, before Salem, so long before, when they were just spirits, young, and alive, and immortal, and beautiful.

He kissed her then, and she was all joy, and love, and their clothing fell away, forgotten on the grass, and she wrapped her arms around his strong back, and his mouth was on her breasts, and her hands were on him, and his body was tense, and hot, and they were slippery and ecstatic… and then… in the middle of their lovemaking…

She could feel the eyes on her.

Another pair of eyes.

But they were not eyes of hate, not eyes of jealousy…

But of love.

She opened her eyes and there he was, Loki, standing in the shadows, watching them… as Killian would watch her one day, when Bran took her in his bed… one of them, always in the shadows, watching, while she was in his brother’s arms…

One of them outside the circle…

While two were joined together…

When it had happened so long ago, during the dawn of the universe, Freya had stopped and screamed, and sent him away, and the poisonous jealousy in his heart had festered, and centuries later Loki would take his revenge… but perhaps… perhaps there was another way… perhaps it could save them even… from this…

She looked deep into Balder’s eyes. “My love… we are not alone,” she said.

Balder continued to kiss her—giving her his blessing, she did not know—but she knew he would not stop her from doing what she must, what she thought might save them all…

She motioned to Loki in the trees. She would take away the hurt in his eyes. She would replace jealousy and anger and centuries of ruin and revenge with love. She was love. She was love. She was love. She loved him. She had always loved him. She put out her hand and motioned to him. “My love,” she called. “Join us…”

chapter forty-six

Down the Rabbit Hole

They had left the way station a long time ago and had already passed several levels of Limbo, but Freddie could no longer recall how many, exactly. The geography of Helheim had eluded him even as a resident. All he knew was that they were way down below, and it was getting colder by the second. He shivered in the cold damp of the stairwell, tugging the hood of his gray sweatshirt over his head. The pixies followed him down the endless flights, grumbling all the way.