Children of Salem

Chapter Ten

The following day, Jeremy again worked in the dim light below the stairwell at Tituba’s bed. He feared he’d not have time enough with Parris’ sermon to copy it word for word, so he’d only copied the sections he felt displayed Parris’ most venomous side.

Jeremy had precious small space to work in here below the damnable stairs behind the musty curtain, which could be pulled back at any moment by anyone in the house. But he’d heard Parris leave, taking his wife, daughter, and Mary Wolcott with him, a Thursday ritual walkabout as he’d overheard. Parris made much of trusting Jeremy to be alone in the parsonage, to take care of anyone who might come calling, anyone in spiritual need or in need of paying Parris’ late fees. In order to find time alone, Jeremy had assured Parris, “I love a challenge, and I can take care of any eventuality.”

“Have you had time to read the sermon?” Parris’d asked before leaving.

“I’m sorry, no, but I intend to now.”

“Good, good,” were his last words, taking the pale children and his equally pasty-faced wife off with him.

So Jeremy had furiously copied what he could of the sermon. Jeremy was thinking that Parris was blind to the effect of his own rhetoric when suddenly the curtain tore open with a shocking energy, and Jeremy found himself face to face with Tituba Indian.

Her coral black eyes lit with a strange fire; they bored into him and his journal. “You are the black man with the book?”

“It is my journal.”

“You write the names in it?”

“Just my daily meditations, I assure you.”

“Do you come to harm my master?”

Damn but the ignorant have instincts, he thought. “I only come to help.”

“Yes, young reverend,” she nodded successively. “Young master.”

“You may call me Mr. Wakely.”

Her cold stare spoke volumes. “Yes, Massa Wakely.”

How much do you know, Barbados woman?

Her eyes said, I know everything. Jeremy believed her the keeper of the family secrets.

“If you are not the black man,” Tituba finally said, “then are you a man of the White God, the all-powerful One?”

“Good, yes, now you understand.”

She dropped to her knees and lowered her head nearly into his lap. “I pray to you.”

“No, no,” he pulled her to a standing position. “You pray to God not to any man.”

“I pray to my god and to the White One.”

Pagan, Jeremy thought, but what Barbados black wasn’t a pagan? Jeremiah went to the rug near the hearth, and he suddenly lifted it, and found what he expected. The telltale sign of blood—sacrificial blood?—staining the boards of the parsonage.

“Is only de chicken blood; in winter, I work by de fire. You got blood if you butcher anim-mals.”

Jeremiah nodded but his eyes told her that he knew the truth. Whatever animals were butchered before the parsonage hearth had been sacrificed to the flames and to her lesser gods—the gods of the superstitious voodooists in the name of that ancient religion the Crown appeared unable to eliminate. “Oh, and I suppose, Titutba, that if I search the ashbin outside, I should find no bones?”

“No bones.”

Jeremy watched her eyes as she spoke; they proved as firmly set as they were black. To determine just how much witchery she’d been up to in this house, Jeremy decided to bait Tituba. “I saw a strange woman on the night I arrived here. Almost ran her below my horse’s hooves! Happened near Watch Hill, and I saw you with her.” It was a lie, but he wanted to see her reaction.

Her face blanched. “I only went to help Betty.”

“Betty’s been ill, I know. How did you ah . . . help her?”

“She be more than sick.”

“More than sick?”

“She has curse on.”

“A curse?”

“Goode put curse on dat child.”

“But why?”

“She angry! You know de reason why!”

“Amgry at Betty? A helpless child?”

“Angry at massa.”

“The reverend?”

“Yes.”

Jeremy recalled the awful curses Goode had heaped on Parris in the street that day outside the Putnam home. “So she curses his daughter? What sense does—”

“To get at de fadder through de child.”

Jeremy took in a deep breath. “So how did you ah . . . help the situation?”

“A witch pie.”

“No, really?” Jeremy was familiar with the ridiculous notion and recipe to combat a curse—a pie made from the urine of the innocent and virginal.

“I pay for it.”

“I see.”

“Urine of newborn child.”

Whether it had curative powers or not depended, Jeremy felt, on the faith of its user. It was the height of superstition, but Jeremy had seen superstition solve problems for some, create problems for others. “Powerful medicine, eh?” he asked with a wink.

“Most powerful, yes.”

Jeremy stared at the characterless walls of the parsonage. Over the fireplace, Sam Parris had hung a sword. Earlier, as they’d made the village rounds, Parris had confided that for an entire week that sword had vanished only to return in its rightful place as if by magic. “Or human hands,” he’d added. “I am at an impasse with my black servant, and am busily looking to sell her to the highest bidder. Might you, Jeremy, be interested?”

“I’m sure I could not afford her, sir.”

“Not even in payments?”

“Ah but, well! Selling her to me, wouldn’t rid her from your home.”

“Aye, but it’d rid me of the responsibility.” He had laughed at this.

Jeremy now asked Tituba point-blank, “Do you know, Tituba, why the minister’s sword disappeared from that wall?” He pointed to the long, shining blade.

“Don’t-know-nothing ‘bout dat.” Her black eyes lit with fear at the question. “And if you don’t say nothin’ ‘bout dat witch pie, I give you something special.” She began unbuttoning her linen blouse, preparing to show her ample breasts.

Jeremy raised both hands to her. “That’s not necessary.” At the same time, he heard Betty coughing and her father’s voice just outside. “They’re back,” Jeremy warned her and Tituba rushed into the kitchen, buttoning up and pretending busyness with pots and pans.

Jeremy stashed his journal, ink, and pen. Tituba watched him from the corner of one eye, gauging his fear of being caught with Tituba in a compromising circumstance. He saw a smirk on her lips.

Then she called out across the room to him, saying, “Tituba wash bed linens?”

“Yes,” shouted Parris, “do that for our guest, Tituba. Most thoughtful of you.”

Jeremiah covered his tracks by snatching blanket away, then the sheets and pillow casing himself, but Parris ordered Mary Wolcott to take care of such work, saying to Jeremy, “Being a bachelor, I see you are in the habit of taking care of yourself.”

“My father taught me self-reliance as a virtue, yes.”

Parris frowned at this. “After you’re married, such trivial matters as sheets will fall to your Goodwife.”

“That may be so but for now—” Jeremy shrugged and displayed a crooked grin, just glad that he’d managed to tuck away his journal, inkwell, and pen without arousing too much interest in them.

Parris did not seem suspicious, as all he saw were his proffered sermon pages, and he was distracted, playing father to Betty. He hugged his little Betty to his cheek and asked if she had a fever. “The girl feels warm to me,” he added and asked his wife to decide.

Mrs. Parris had Betty stick out her tongue while feeling her forehead and cheeks. “She’s not quite gotten over her winter chilblains.”

Jeremiah had noticed a red, itchy swelling on Betty’s ears, fingers, and toes, a common ailment caused by exposure to damp, rot, and cold—or so the physicians warned.

“I worry.” Parris continued to examine his only daughter.

“As a father should,” Betty’s mother replied.

Parris tugged at the child’s tiny hands and asked her how she felt.

“I’m not sick no more! Tituba stopped that!”

Parris stared at Tituba, whose back remained to them where she worked at the dry sink.

The little girl seems his only special possession, Jeremy thought, watching Parris with Betty.

“I’m fine, Da,” Betty pulled from her father’s grasp, giggling and running to Tituba, who kneeled and hugged the child and whispered some secret in her ear.

Parris promptly but mildly scolded. “You come away from Tituba, now! She’s got chores and dinner to help with!”

“But I-I’m all better, Dada,” whined Betty all of a sudden. “I wanna play with my dolly and I want Tituba to come!”

“Wishing to get out of any work, aren’t you?” Parris fiercely scolded Tituba all of a sudden. “Whispering in her ear like that!”

“No, no, massa!” countered Tituba, backing into a corner.

“Do you want to turn Betty into a disobedient child?”

Betty really looks flushed and feverish, certainly windblown and red-faced, Jeremy thought and at the back of his mind was Tituba’s witch pie story and the sacrificed chicken when in an instant, Jeremy saw the black woman place a finger to her lips as if to silence the child, Betty, who was again saying that Tituba made her well and could do it anytime.

Parris suddenly flew into a rage at Betty, shouting, “You will not be playing with Tituba! And I won’t have you feigning illness to get out of work!”

“But Father,” interjected Mrs. Parris, “the child has been ill. She’s still weak. Please!”

“Ill is it? Weak? My child, weak? Or is it mere sloth? Simple sloth? Rubbed off from Mercy Lewis and Tituba over there!”

Betty burst into tears and ran for the stairs, trying for her room, but she was caught up by her father who’d in one fluid motion grabbed the spanking rod and tore into the girl’s backside where he held her across his knee. “The Devil will never take thee, child!” Down came the rod again, Betty screaming in response, terrified. “I’ll kill ya afore I let the Devil ha-have ya!” Parris gasped with the last words, spent, his face now red, the veins popping.

“Devil take you!” shouted Mary Wolcott, who rushed in and fought to pull Betty from her uncle’s grasp. But this only enraged Parris further. He shoved Mary hard against the floor and started in anew, spanking Betty.

Betty looked like a kicking doll in Parris’ grip. To his wife’s wailing the word stop, the minister finally set Betty aside like a top spinning on her heels, searching for where to run to and finding her mother’s arms. Parris went now for Mary Wolcott. “You! In the shed out back until I come to tend to your insolence! Now!”

Jeremy stepped in, saying, “Perhaps if we go out on the porch and calm down, Samuel, it might—”

“You, too, Jeremy? Questioning my authority? Haven’t I warned you on that subject?”

Secretly, Jeremy wanted to send a fist into the mouth so near him that the hot breath stank. “We have, sir, but—”

“No buts, Mr. Wakely!” Parris held the rod so tight his knuckles bled white. Mary had also gone to Mrs. Parris’ comforting arms, but he shook the rod at her, and she obeyed, rushing just ahead of the rod, which cut into her twice before she got out of his reach.

Parris returned from the back stair, the tattling rod still in hand. By now Tituba, Mrs. Parris, and Betty had busied themselves with anything they could find in the kitchen. This while Jeremy found the hearth, pretending to warm himself so as to look a great deal less concerned and involved than he felt.

“Sorry, Mr. Wakely,” began a calmer Parris now in his ear.

“Yes, well . . . sorry I said anything.”

“I’m only sorry that you had to witness the . . . altercation. However discipline is one thing I insist upon.”

“I quite understand,” Jeremy lied, as he’d found the scene repugnant, and he’d seen the minister’s eyes the entire time. A kind of delight danced in them the entire time he was charging about and beating the children. One moment doting on his child, the next whipped into a rage at her, and Tituba the catalyst to the minister’s rage? Jeremy realized that he’d stepped into a far more complex web of relationships than he’d at first imagined.

Jeremy, still at the hearth, watched a flaming ember leap out at him, threatening to catch his pants-leg afire. “What the deuce?” He kicked out at the ember, sending fiery sparks up even as his action sent the ember back home to a bed of others. As it happened, a snakelike shiver spread over his brain, but he managed to fight for calm. For reasons he could not fathom, the family incident and the dancing ember recalled a time when Jeremy, as a boy in his father’s grinding shop had caught his hand in the cogs of a machine powered by a small water-wheel outside their cottage. Rather than scream bloody murder for help, young Jeremy had somehow maintained a calm beyond reason—perhaps as much from shame at having made such a stupid error as from any sort of courage. The entire time he was not calling out for help, Jeremy had spent struggling to remove a wooden peg that held the moving parts together. Once he pulled the peg, the cogs came willingly away from his hand. Self-reliance, in his father’s eyes, was more important than all the curtseying that went along with this notion of children being obedient and beaten into obedience.

Am I again caught with a hand inside a crushing machine? Is Parris a shrewder man than I’d earlier thought? Did he give me the written sermon yesterday as a test? Then today leaving me alone in the parsonage again, only to send Tituba in, not to change any sheets but to test a young apprentice’s mettle? To tempt my willpower and flesh? And the final touch: the parental outburst, demonstrating his absolute rule here as yet another test of Jeremy’s being a true Goodfriend? Or worse yet: to prove his twisted idea of parental love before the emissary of one Increase Mather?

Parris hovered as if eavesdropping on Jeremy’s thoughts. He lit a pipe and handed the long stem to Jeremy.

“No thank you, sir. I don’t indulge.” Jeremy eyed the busy women in the kitchen, all shakily and tearfully putting the evening meal together.

Parris eyed him hard, placed the pipe into his own mouth and began puffing away. “Not sure I trust a man who doesn’t indulge in one sin or another, Goodfriend.”

“Gambling, sir.”

“Gambling?” he asked.

“My weakness,” replied Jeremy, pacing the small room now.

“I see. Best then stay out of Ingersoll’s Inn.” He punctuated with pipe in hand, adding, “Men there bet on a glance out a window—on which bird will roost and which will fly from a branch.”

This made Jeremy smile, not because it was clever but because he knew it was true. He recalled it’d been the same at Ingersoll’s when he was a boy, too. Furthermore, Jeremy recalled how quickly Serena Nurse’s brothers bet on the fall of a leaf. “It is a vice for which I’ve paid dearly,” he finally replied, shooing smoke blown in his face from his eyes.

“And so you should dearly work to remain free of the vice, my boy.”

“As well I have since, Samuel.”

“It requires sense, indeed,” joked Parris, whose eyes and face had returned to their normal state.

The man is maddening in his need to dominate and have the last word, Jeremy thought, wondering if this, too, should go into his reports to Mather, and if so, how detailed should it be? Or would it raise the least eyebrow? After all, a man ruled in his home in the colonies as a tyrant over his people, and it was accepted as scripture, and the legal men running the colonies believed it this precept as surely as they believe in Heaven and Hell, God and Satan.