Papa bade me go with him again to the meetinghouse. I pleaded to stay at the cottage, but Papa said one cannot pretend that what one does not like does not exist.
Today, Ann Putnam told the magistrates that the shape of Dorcas Goode, the daughter of Sarah Goode, appeared to her and demanded she sign the Devil’s book.
The child is four years old!
Tituba then said she has seen names in the Devil’s book.
I do not think Tituba knows how to read. How does she recognize names?
No one asked her this.
John Peter came for eggs after the proceedings. He asked what I thought of the events at the meetinghouse.
I did not know what to say. I do not know what he thinks.
I told him I fear the Village has lost sight of God and His tender provision.
He paid more than he should have for the eggs. He would not allow me to take less.
Still it goes on, this endless exercise. The Village is mad with interest in the Devil’s ways. Who among us remembers it is God’s ways we are to embrace? Townsfolk see the shape of Sarah Goode in their barns, in their cottages, in their dreams. She comes to them with knives and threats. Ann Putnam now says she saw the shape of Elizabeth Proctor among a company of witches and that Goodwife Proctor proceeded to bite and choke her. I do not know what to make of any of it. Elizabeth Proctor’s husband, Goodman John Proctor, owns a tavern and is wealthy. She is not what anyone would call strange. And she is with child.
I did not go to the meetinghouse today.
Papa did not ask me to.
Tituba, Goody Goode, and Goody Osborne have been sent to Boston in chains to await their trial.
I have no zeal within me for stories.
Mercy Lewis, Mary Walcott, and Mary Warren have joined the ranks of the afflicted. Ann Putnam has accused Martha Corey of witchcraft. Goody Corey is not a foreigner like Tituba, not odd like Goody Goode, and not ill like Goody Osborne. She is a godly woman. She is like any woman of good standing in the Village. And yet the charges are heeded.
Betty Parris has been sent away to live with family in Salem Town to ease her afflictions.
I told Prudence Dawes when I saw her at Ingersoll’s that it was wise for Betty to have been sent away. I think Prudence mistook my meaning She looked at me as though I had said Betty was the cause of all the trouble.
The end of the week came swiftly. By Thursday I was halfway through March in Mercy’s diary. I finished the March 13 entry a few minutes before six, and Abigail, who knew I was going home again that weekend to work on my dad’s proposal, told me I could stop there. But she wanted me to eat dinner with her anyway.
I correctly assumed she was in the mood to talk that particular afternoon. She wouldn’t have asked me to stay if she weren’t.
I waited to see what was on her mind before telling her what was on mine. She had only taken one bite of her brie en croûte before launching into book talk. I should’ve guessed it would be about a book.
“What are you reading for pleasure these days, Lauren?”
I felt my face color. I hoped she didn’t notice. “Um … Robinson Crusoe?
She did.
“Well, that’s nothing to be ashamed about, Lauren,” she said, cocking her head, waiting for me to spill the reason reading Robinson Crusoe made me blush.
“I know it’s not.”
She waited and I chewed.
“You’ve not read it before?” she said.
“No.” I took a sip of water.
“I’m surprised.” Abigail blotted the corner of her mouth with her napkin. “You’re such a fan of British literature.”
I shrugged. “For a long time I just didn’t think I would enjoy reading about a man marooned alone on an island.”
“Mmm. And now you think you would?”
I coughed on a flake of phyllo dough and looked up at Abigail, She was smiling. “No. Not really,” I said.
“Someone recommended you read it?”
“Yes.” I took another sip of water.
“A professor?”
I set the glass down. “A friend.”
“You know, I’ve always thought that Mr. Crusoe was a bit elitist for all he learned about life on that island. Even when he had no one and nothing, he set himself up as master of all that he saw. He taught the native he named Friday to call him Master instead of Friend, when what he really needed at that point was a friend, not a servant.”
I didn’t know if Abigail was really that annoyed with the fictional hero or playing the devil’s advocate.
“Well, I don’t know that he thought of himself as master of everything. I think his attitude of subduing the island was more about survival. Doesn’t the island deepen his relationship with God?” I said. “Doesn’t he begin to see himself as the created and not the Creator?”
“And yet he introduces Friday to Christianity and keeps him as a slave.”
“I guess Defoe was just keeping it real,” I ventured. “That was the custom of the day, to own servants. I do think Crusoe wishes he had listened to his parents instead of running off to do whatever he wanted. He seems repentant about that.”
“Oh, I’m not saying Mr. Crusoe didn’t wish he had listened to reason before he left England. It’s just that he repents as a lord and not a pauper. He learned his lesson, but he saw himself as a privileged man in a hostile environment, not a broken man in the everyday environment of need.”
I hadn’t read enough to know if she was right. I wondered what Raul would have said had he been there.
“I used to think that way,” Abigail said, her voice soft.
Pardon?”
“I used to think I was a privileged woman in a hostile environment.”
“Why did you think that?” I kept my voice soft too, coaxing her to continue.
“Because I was raised like you were, in a home where money was as abundant as expectations. What couldn’t be controlled with money seemed grossly unfair. Hostile, even. But that was just the ordinary world I’d come up against. That was everyday life, and everyday life is full of choices. The privileged have very few truly difficult choices thrown upon them, Lauren. So when we’re called upon to make them, we’ve no history of success or failure.”
I didn’t quite agree with her there. It’s a ridiculous notion that the rich have no troubles. But I wanted her to keep talking. I was certain she was reminiscing about the man she wished she had married. “What was it you came up against?”
“I had to make a choice. I made a poor one.”
“What did you choose?”
She hesitated for only a moment. “I chose the easy way.”
“The easy way?”
“The way that left me alone.”
Esperanza appeared at that moment to take away the brie and replace it with scallops in a sherry sauce.
I waited until she left. “Who said that was the easy way?”
Abigail raised her head and smiled. “Who, indeed?”
She said nothing else. She thought I was being facetious, but I wasn’t. I really wanted to know. Why had Abigail not married the man she loved?
I could only think of one reason a rich young woman wouldn’t marry the man she loved: he had no money, and that woman feared losing her social standing, the respect of her family, or perhaps even her wealth. So she chose ease over love.
This is what Abigail had done. I was certain of it.
“Abigail, what was his name?” I asked.
She cut a scallop in two. “It doesn’t matter.” She didn’t look at me.
“Yes, it does.”
Abigail pierced the scallop with her fork. “Not anymore.”
But I could see it did matter. Anyone could see it.
For several long minutes, we said nothing to each other. We ate our scallops, the breeze toyed with our napkins, and a lone bee buzzed about the floral centerpiece.
“The transcription work was hard today,” she finally said, letting me know we were done rummaging around in her past.
“Yes.”
The bee flew away.
“There are more entries like that one, I’m afraid,” she said. “Time has not been overly kind to the diary.”
Or to you, I thought. “I hadn’t heard of someone appearing as a shape to someone else. Those sentences threw me, especially since they were so hard to read,” I said.
“That was called spectral evidence. Many of the Salem convictions were based on spectral evidence. By autumn of 1692, it was no longer allowed, but by that time it was too late.”
“And spectral evidence was …?”
“It was one person saying he or she saw the specter or the shape of someone else, sitting in the rafters above their cooking fire, prancing about their kitchen, or hovering over them as they slept, sticking them with pins and knives.”
The thought sent a shiver down my spine. “Like ghosts?”
Abigail inhaled deeply. “Well, yes, sort of like ghosts, only those whose shapes were seen about the village terrorizing innocent people, those people were still alive, many of them sitting in prison in chains at the time.”
“No one else saw these shapes, though?”
“Apparently only the bewitched could see the shapes. No one else.”
I was beginning to understand. “So no one could refute them.”
“No. No one could. And it went on for months. By the time spectral evidence was finally banned in late November, Mercy was already …” Abigail’s voice trailed off.
Silence filled the air around our table and uneasiness enveloped me.
I knew what was coming in the pages of the diary. Not the exact details, but I knew how the story would end. Abigail didn’t have to finish.
I knew assumptions were going to be made about the girl I spent my afternoons with. Accusations were coming. Mercy would be asked to choose. There was no easy way. Confess or face execution. There would be a trial. A conviction.
A hangman’s noose.
I pushed my plate away.