Today in Salem: Three women have been tried for witchcraft this week, and one was hanged last month, but the court isn’t done yet. Two more trials are scheduled, both of them today: the neighborly Elizabeth How, and the flamboyant and aptly named Sarah Wilds.
The neighborly Elizabeth How stands trial
Elizabeth How walks quickly into the courtroom, energetic despite the dark circles under her eyes. She’s lain awake all night praying and trying to understand how she got to this point. But she knows the truth: though she’s surrounded by accusations, she is innocent.
Like always, the judges begin with the afflicted girls. They are swooning and seizing as usual, but recover when Elizabeth is forced to touch them.
Twelve or more people testify on Elizabeth’s behalf, including two ministers and her 94-year-old father-in-law. But it means little compared to the testimony of the two bereaved parents who are convinced she’s guilty. Several years ago, they’d watched helplessly as their ten-year-old daughter wasted away, growing smaller and thinner until she died two years later. During one fitful episode, the girl had accused Elizabeth of hurting her, but later took it back, even when prodded by her family. Still, there was no changing the parents’ minds. Who’s to say their daughter hadn’t recanted out of fear?
Other testimony follows, most of it from people who believe that she’d caused their cattle to die. But the courtroom crowd is shocked by one particular story: When a man refused to lend his horse to Elizabeth’s husband, the mare had stopped eating, her lips raw and swollen, and her tongue black and blue. When a treatment for belly-ache didn’t work, the man and his friend tried counter-magic: To attack any evil forces, they inserted a long-stemmed pipe of burning tobacco into the horse’s rectum. Immediately, a blue flame shot over the mare’s rump and flared toward the rafters of the barn. The next day the horse fell over dead. Clearly the magic of a witch – Elizabeth How – had triumphed over their counter-magic.
The support of a dozen people means nothing next to these statements. The judges pronounce Elizabeth guilty. She will be hanged.
The flamboyant Sarah Wilds stands trial
Sarah Wilds sashays into the courtroom, lifting her filthy petticoats just over her ankles. She’s pinched her cheeks until they’re rosy, and a wisp of hair curls out from her cap. She’s 65, and she’s been in jail for two months, but she will not let that change who she is. And she will not let the judges forget.
Sarah looks with disdain at the afflicted girls, already gasping and rolling on the floor, and points her chin when the judges say they have no accusations from “other” witches. What they do have, though, is story after story about her malicious acts, especially from the family of her husband’s first wife.
He had married Sarah only seven months after his first wife died. The family might have shrugged it off if Sarah was a godly woman. But they were all too familiar with her scandalous past. He was a good man. What could have made him marry such a salacious woman, and so soon after he was widowed? He must have been bewitched.
As a young woman, Sarah had been thought of as glamorous. When she was 22, she was whipped for fornication. Then, in her mid-30’s, she was brought to court for wearing fancy clothes that were above her station.
Sarah’s stepson had said she was a witch, and then died. Other family members were quick to chime in. Ruined crops, dead cattle, mysterious cats, broken carts – proof of her evil was obvious and endless.
Guilty.
Sarah doesn’t flinch when she hears the verdict. She just releases her petticoats and brushes them with her hands, the way she might brush off the ashes from a hearth fire, then turns toward the constable so he can escort her from the room.