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?
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