Today in Salem: While the bold John Proctor is calmly putting his affairs in order, the outcast Martha Carrier is shaking, with anger or fear or both, she cannot say. Her trial was nothing more than a parade of neighbors, and even her own nephew, throwing accusations at her like stones. “Queen of Hell,” they’d called her. That was the Devil’s promise, they said. If she followed him, if she did his bidding, then she would be his Queen. Throughout everything, the afflicted girls had performed with their usual crying and falling, pointing at her “specter” and shrieking. Martha had lost her temper and shouted at them. Now she will hang.
Martha begins to pace. Once again her neighbors had held the recent smallpox outbreak against her. She would never understand it. How could people believe that she had conjured smallpox to kill her father and two brothers, not to mention four of her extended family? And now four of her children are in jail, also accused of witchcraft. Her two teenage sons, one with a terrible stutter. Her ten-year-old boy, named for his father. And her quiet little eight-year-old daughter. What will happen to them? Martha’s racing heart gives in to panic, and she doubles over, leaning against the cold stone wall. She can’t breathe.