Today in Salem: One of the judges sits alone in a tavern, staring into his mug of rum. He’s been a judge for 30 years and he’s never seen a trial conducted this way. It was a cacophony of noise and confusion, with the judges shouting their questions, the afflicted girls swooning and crying, and the defendant hardly able to speak a full sentence. The other judges seemed convinced that Bridget Bishop was guilty before she’d even arrived. And now she’s about to hang for it. But could she be innocent?
Witches and their craft are real, he has no doubt. But there are logical questions that should have been asked. First, are the afflicted girls really seeing specters? They do seem to be dramatically tormented. So perhaps they are.
If so, then it must be asked: Do those specters really belong to the people the girls have accused? Or are those specters the devil in disguise? The judge thinks about later tonight, when he’ll fall into a rum-soaked stupor and, if he’s lucky, sleep for several hours. It would be easy for the devil to pretend to be the judge’s specter, and the judge would never know.
He motions to the tavern owner’s wife for another mug, then asks himself the most troubling questions of all. Is Bridget Bishop’s specter actually the devil masquerading as her? Are we about to hang an innocent person?
The judge rubs his temples. His mind is muddled with rum, and the voices in the tavern sound like they’re underwater. It’s hard to think clearly. But someone has to.