Free The Witches: Salem, 1692 by Stacy Schiff Page A

The colony was without theater, considered a “shameful vanity.” While all of Shakespeare’s plays existed, no copy had turned up in North America, where the first organ would not arrive for another nineteen years. In the feverish air that Tuesday the usual rules and all hierarchy evaporated, as, in the weeks to come, inhibitions, obligations, and curfews would fantastically lift. The farmers knew very well their places in the dark, planked pews—among contentious issues, seating was nearly toxic, determined by an ego-bruising, oft-contested algorithm of age, rank, and estate—and that morning they were not sitting in them.
    From a table before the pulpit, justices of the peace Jonathan Corwin and John Hathorne presided. Widely respected, they counted among the first men of Salem town. A successful land speculator and quick-thinking militia captain, dark-haired Hathorne lived in a fine mansion. A skilled and harsh interrogator as his father had been before him, Hathorne had been hearing cases since 1684. He was the father of six, though as yet had no experience with teenage girls. Corwin owned sawmills, several in conjunction with Hathorne. The son of one of Salem’s wealthiest merchants, he had inherited one fortune and married another. The justices were close confederates, in their early fifties, and related by marriage. They lived a block from each other. Together they had seated the Salem town meetinghouse, where Hathorne played a leading role. They had recently traveled together to the Maine frontier to evaluate Indian defenses. And while neither had a background in the law—men with formal legal training did not immigrate to the colonies, which had no law school—both knew the business of the community, the offenders and the offenses, inside out. Hathorne had sat on the committee that five years earlier had urged the villagers to spare the town their animosities. He had devoted hours to adjudicating Putnam family disputes. No doubt with relief, both men had attended Parris’s ordination. Corwin had rescued the Parris family from the cold with the emergency October firewood delivery.
    After an opening prayer, Hathorne took charge of the hearing fromthe long table at which Parris and his deacons normally conducted the communion service. “Sarah Good,” Hathorne asked, “what evil spirit have you familiarity with?” She replied, “None.” Working from prepared notes, Hathorne continued as if she had said just the opposite. Had she contracted with the devil? Why did she hurt these children? What creature did she employ to do so? He proceeded less like a judge than a police interrogator; it fell to him to establish not the truth of the charges but the guilt of the suspect. When an alleged thief had appeared before Hathorne eight years earlier, he had begun: “What day of the week did you steal the money from Elizabeth Russell?” The second question was, When did you take it?; the next, Where is the money you took?
    The contest was asymmetric. For all her misdemeanors, despite the suit against her stepfather, Good had never testified before a magistrate when she stood that sodden morning—several feet and a waist-high rail separating them—before Hathorne and Corwin. It was the kind of confrontation that reduced responsible men to gibberish. All the same Hathorne got nowhere. Good continued in her sullen denials, as unforthcoming in the courtroom as she was intemperate on doorsteps. Hathorne tried a different tack. What was all that muttering about at the parsonage? She had merely thanked the Reverend Parris for his charity, she explained. She was falsely accused. She knew nothing of the devil. Hathorne directed the four girls, assembled together, to rise. Was this the woman who hurt them? Not only did all testify that she had—three had suffered at her hands that very morning—but as they came face to face with Good before the canopied pulpit, each began to thrash. Hathorne had no choice but to move them