Wicked Girls Read online

  Stephanie Hemphill

  Wicked Girls

  A Novel of the Salem Witch Trials

  For Alessandra

  Contents

  The Girls

  Salem

  Girl

  Cast to Salem Village

  Step-Cousin

  The Way We are Seated

  Mercy Lewis

  Helpful

  A Kin to Whom?

  Never Left Alone

  Little-Girl Games

  The Shell Game

  Not Mine to Take

  Caught

  Ann Putnam Sr.

  Girls at Play?

  Not Supposed to Congregate

  Uprooted

  Greetings

  A Real Beauty

  What the Winter Wind Brings

  Thursday Meeting

  Absent and Absentminded

  Listen

  Work Never Ends

  The More I Tell Her

  The Good Doctor’s Good Girl

  Who Knows What is Brewing?

  Never Tell of Fortunes

  Washing Our Hair

  Talk of the Witches

  I am Afflicted

  Into the Woods

  What Boys Say

  On the Way to Elizabeth

  Turn Your Back

  Secrets

  Precious

  Ingersoll’s Ordinary

  First Time in the Courtroom

  Flattered

  Mother’s Orders

  The Pain of Affliction

  A Real Problem

  Group of Afflicted

  Mother Tells What I See

  Bewitched

  A New Witch Accused

  Hearsay

  First Sight

  What is Good, What is Great and What is Amazing

  Betrothed

  Because I Call Her Witch

  Our Place

  The Bite That Turns You

  A Garden Together Lays Root

  Impious Disruptions

  Distracted Children

  Can We See Good?

  Power Beyond the Pulpit

  Pray

  There is Another: What to Do with the Proctors’ Maid?

  Leadership

  Annoyance

  An Innocent Ride

  The Proctors’ Maid Recants Her Affliction

  Bag of Wool

  Beware

  Unexpected Expectation

  Three Sisters

  Ann Decides

  Keep Quiet

  Questioning Our Power

  Problem Child

  Random

  Outcast

  A Witch I Had Never Seen Before

  Silent Treatment at Our Tavern Table

  The Grand Conjurer

  What I Do for Mercy

  Feeling Quite Red

  Request

  He is Not the Man

  Living at the Putnams’

  Margaret in the House

  Advice

  Supper Guests

  Division

  My Mother

  Our Little Bargain

  Mine for the Taking

  New Girl

  Upheaval

  Do We Need Abigail?

  Can She be of Use?

  The Most Afflicted

  Lessons to be Learned

  Healers

  Town Unrest

  A Girl or a Wife?

  John Willard

  Why Susannah?

  A Rough Old Man

  Hysteria

  Mercy is Sent to My Uncle the Constable’s

  My New Home

  Without Mercy

  Let Him In

  With Temperature

  Shadows in the Sun

  The Power to Jail the Man Who Sold Guns to the Indians and the French

  Overbearing

  Can it be Seen?

  Neck and Heels

  Not at Home

  Broken Knife

  Morning Star

  Fasting

  Games at Court

  I am the Ringleader?

  We All See it the Same

  Ann Yet in Charge?

  First Witch Hanging

  Remorse

  Petition

  Girls Who Sin

  In Her Defense

  Secondhand Girl

  John Proctor Speaks Out Against the Trials

  Warning

  Cast Out

  Another Beside Me

  John Proctor Sent to Jail

  Death Sentence

  Autumn Ahead

  Sight Seers

  Excommunicated

  God Will Give You Blood to Drink

  Isaac in the Wild

  Scarlet Fever

  Little Spy

  Revenge

  Mother and Baby

  Burning the Letters

  Hangings

  Peine Forte Et Dure

  Colder

  Meeting

  Still Spreading Through the County

  A Familiar

  Innocent Dog

  The Trials Continue

  No Kin in Salem Village

  Crushed

  The Executioner’s Pipe

  Restoration

  Dissolution

  Not All Folks Alike

  Stand Down

  The Return of Mercy

  Go Home

  God’s Honest Truth

  Servitude

  Released

  Baby Sister

  Not My Kin

  Kiss and Forgive?

  Invisible as the World We Saw

  When He Leaves Me

  The Hush of Snow

  Cannot Trust Her

  After Affliction

  Unstable Ground

  Rules

  A Hanging Tree is Not a Family Tree

  Isolation

  Poor Abigail

  Family

  Housebound

  Caretaker

  Good-Bye, Salem

  The Real Girls and What Happened to Them

  The Real People the Girls Accuse

  Author’s Note

  Should You Wish to Explore Further

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  THE GIRLS

  in order of appearance

  MERCY LEWIS (age 17) is an orphan of the French and Indian War. She is a new servant in Thomas Putnam’s house.

  MARGARET WALCOTT (age 17) is Ann Putnam Jr.’s step-cousin (because Margaret’s father married Thomas Putnam’s sister, Deliverance, after Margaret’s mother died). She comes from a lower social status than her younger cousin.

  ANN PUTNAM JR. (age 12) is Thomas Putnam’s eldest child and therefore a young lady with stature in Salem Village.

  BETTY PARRIS (age 8) is the daughter of Reverend Samuel Parris and Abigail Williams’s cousin. She is the youngest of the accusers.

  ABIGAIL WILLIAMS (age 12) is a niece of Reverend Samuel Parris and a cousin to Betty Parris. She lives at the parsonage with the Reverend and his family. She is one of the first seers.

  ELIZABETH HUBBARD (age 17) is another new girl in Salem Village who has been sent to live with Doctor Griggs and his wife. She is a distant niece of the Doctor. Doctor Griggs is her grandparents’ age.

  SUSANNAH SHELDON (age 18) is the only girl not from Salem Village, but from Salem Town instead. She serves in William Shaw’s house. She joins the group last.

  SALEM

  January 1692

  Silent, not even the twitter

  of insects. The wind stills

  against a distant sky of clouds.

  The cold is gray and fierce,

  bitter as a widow at the grave.

  The trees’ bare bony fingers

  p
oint crookedly

  toward Heaven or Hell

  or worse than that, toward nowhere.

  Winter days

  wear long as the ocean shore,

  governed by a god

  harsher than windstorm hail

  and more punishing than the waves

  that break ships in two.

  There are rules to follow here,

  one righteous path

  thrashed down through the woods.

  GIRL

  Mercy Lewis, 17

  Before the orange of dawn

  before the hearth fire’s lit

  when the kitchen floor

  will feel as ice under my boots

  and I would rather keep under quilt,

  my eyelids sealed,

  my nightclothes neck-tight;

  he slobbers kisses on my cheek,

  his gritty tongue

  swabs my chin

  like a wet woolen stocking.

  “Wilson.” I whisper and try not to giggle.

  With two paws on the bed

  he licks my hand.

  “Down, boy. Don’t wake the baby.”

  Wilson bobs his head,

  sits silent as the dark.

  I splash water, button clothes,

  and slip quickly into the black of day.

  Like I be blind, Wilson guides me

  to the place where he can be fed.

  “Go on then, eat,”

  I say, and point at the bowl.

  He just grins his five teeth.

  He hangs his front paws on my shoulders.

  My arms wrap around him.

  I ruffle his gold, dank fur.

  The sun flashes through the window.

  “Come, boy!” Mister Putnam calls.

  Wilson’s ears perk and he is off

  as after a doe, down the hall heavy

  and loud-pawed. The baby cries.

  “Girl!”

  The voice commands

  like a great fist

  pounding the wall.

  CAST TO SALEM VILLAGE

  Mercy Lewis, 17

  “Mercy, bring this wool

  to the weaver,” Missus orders.

  I bundle the yarns

  under my cloak.

  I feel as though I’ve been thrown

  to an ocean of ice floes,

  the weather so flays my skin

  and gnaws at my bones.

  I hand the weaver’s son

  the yarns to dye.

  “What a pretty cloth

  for such a pretty one,” he says.

  His eyes tighten upon me

  like a corset.

  “’Tis not for me,” I say,

  and turn to leave.

  He catches me by the shoulder,

  his hand stained indigo.

  “Did one ever tell thee

  thou hast bluest eyes?”

  “Jonathan!” His father rumbles

  right as a reverend.

  “Thou art needed to mix the dye.”

  Jonathan boy scurries off.

  But his father looms down on me,

  tries to stare me apart

  like I be one of the dock girls

  flashing stockings and crinoline.

  Without a flinch, I gather my scarf

  and push back into the freeze.

  Even in deep winter

  the town of Salem swells.

  The port fills with merchandise,

  and pockets droop heavy with pounds.

  On the barge, bags of grain

  and jugs of cider unload,

  for the Salem Village farms

  see meager crops.

  I am told the slaves used to eat pudding

  at Thomas Putnam’s table,

  but not in a winter this cold.

  Few in Reverend Parris’s flock

  dine far above broth and grain.

  I meet the eyes

  of a uniformed soldier.

  I cannot praise and bow.

  The wars up north

  echo in my skull

  like the sea inside a shell.

  A different kind of battle bruises

  Salem’s shores.

  For here neighbor to neighbor,

  brother to kin,

  old money against the new,

  jealous feuds

  whistle through the night.

  And I have barely a bonnet

  to protect my head.

  Why, Lord? Why am I here?

  STEP-COUSIN

  Margaret Walcott, 17

  Sky’s painful bright outside

  the parsonage, even without sun.

  I scratch the wet topping my hood

  and sneeze. “Hole in the roof

  been dripping me in meeting.

  I fear I caught the cough,” I say to Ann.

  “Perhaps tomorrow at our gathering

  we’ll find you a remedy.” Ann smiles.

  She turns her head from me

  and stares dumb-like at her new servant girl.

  I shake and spit up a cough and a sneeze

  what pierce the ears

  like a horsewhip cracking.

  Folk turn and stare.

  I whisper, “Ann, have you a kerchief?

  I must be looking all spotted and ugly.”

  Ann shakes her head no

  and steps back from me.

  “You know you always look fair.”

  She pulls her cloak tighter

  round her shoulders.

  My nose be dripping worse than the roof.

  I need to wipe it on my glove.

  I sniffle.

  Break in morning service be at an end

  and brethren file toward the meeting door.

  “Wait, and we’ll go in after the others.”

  I hold Ann’s arm, but she wiggles free.

  “Mother said I must not dawdle

  outside meeting.” Ann shrugs

  and darts toward church.

  When all’s gone into the meetinghouse

  or be looking that way,

  I turn myself back

  toward the parsonage.

  I swipe back and forth

  my nose ’pon my sleeve

  till my cuff be wet as my head.

  I look up,

  and he stares on me.

  I want to crawl under my skirt.

  His shoulders be broad

  as a boat’s bow.

  I feel cherry-cheeked.

  Will he tell I be not a lady?

  He walks toward me.

  I see now ’tis worse

  than I did think.

  He is not my elder.

  “Isaac Farrar—”

  I cough and the tears

  brim my eyes.

  Oh, I will be always

  the girl who uses her sleeve.

  “It be not…” “I meant but to…”

  I wince at the thought

  of his scold or laugh.

  Only three feet from my own,

  Isaac just smiles.

  And not like some snake in low grass,

  but a smile like warm,

  sweet milk.

  I turn away quick

  and stumble over my own foot

  as I run direct into church.

  THE WAY WE ARE SEATED

  Margaret Walcott, 17

  “Life is not for joy and jolly,

  but for toil and test,

  an order ordained.”

  Reverend rings in our ears.

  The men of land and money

  lined up front

  like a fence of wood stakes.

  My father snug among them