Echoes of the Past
After my father's little talk, the twins decided to shape up, and there were no more problems. That night we left Martha's Vineyard, after a meal of freshly caught fish grilled with special seasonings, courtesy of the boat we'd chartered and the talents of the twins, who were excellent fishermen. And no, they didn't use magic either. As promised, we were going to spend a few days in Salem, despite the old rumor that no self-respecting magician or wizard ever goes to Salem.
This was partially because of us kids and also because Dad still needed to check on that information with his operative over there. Which meant that while Aunt Teri took us around to see the sights, like the famous Witch's House and Gallows Hill where they used to hang those convicted of witchcraft, Dad would be contacting his people and following up on those rumors I've mentioned, about people being targeted and if the Brotherhood of the Shining Path really was active again.
I couldn't wait to explore Salem. Something about it really drew me, though it was only later that I knew what it was. Right then I was just curious about how such a small town became involved in one of the worst witch hunts in the country. At least it was a small town back in 1690's. It wasn't that small now, but a lot of the historical places had been preserved, so we could see exactly what it had been like to live back then.
Back then, what we now know as Salem was actually two places, Salem Town and Salem Village. Salem Town was on the coast of Massachusetts Bay, it had prime shipping and trading opportunities. Salem Village, on the other hand, was inland, a farming community that had been hit hard by the French and Indian War and an epidemic of smallpox, as well as crop failure and bad weather. There were only a few influential families, read wealthy ones, in Salem Village, one being the Putnams and the other the Porters, who were fighting for political control over the village. Back then politics was linked to land, meaning the more land you had the more wealth you had. I guess it's the same thing today, sort of. Anyway, land meant power and so did religious influence. See, politics and religion were linked together in colonial times, there was no separation of church and state then, like there was after the Revolutionary War. So a rich man could appoint or invite a minister back then to come and preach for his village and thus have influence over the town.
Which is exactly what John Putnam did. In 1688, he invited Samuel Parris, who used to be a planter and merchant in Barbados, to become Salem's new preacher. I guess anybody could become a minister back then as long as they could read and had a little education, they didn't need to go to a seminary college or have a serious vocation. Then again, I'm not Protestant, I'm Catholic, so maybe it's different for them. Yeah, I know that sounds really weird, a Catholic wizard, but hey, God hasn't struck me dead yet for being what I am, or Sev either, for that matter.
I'd learned a lot of this stuff during my history class with Mr. Andrews and even more when we visited the Salem Witchcraft Museum, which had many documents and objects from the actual trials, accused witches' houses, and that kind of thing. This time, Nick and Drew didn't protest at all about being dragged to a museum, and I don't think it was for fear of being punished by our parents. They, like me, were fascinated by the Salem Witch Trials.
One of the greatest ironies about it was that out of the hundreds of accused and the nineteen convicted for witchcraft, only one woman was actually a true witch. That one, Sarah Good, was an earth magician, and she died to save her child, who had also been accused of witchcraft. Little Dorcas was only four and later went insane as a result of watching her mother die and being treated like an animal by the so-called God-fearing magistrates of Salem.
It was Dad who told us that little tidbit, for the sacrifice of Sarah Good was recorded in the church ledgers of the wizard minister he'd spoken to, a Mr. Ambrose, who was also a member of the Hunters, though not an actual Hunter, but he worked for the DHI as an informant.
"She made a deal with the magistrate and judge, John Hawthorne, that she would go to her death willingly and confess to witchcraft if only he would spare her daughter. Sarah was innocent of any wrongdoing, she only used her magic for good, but she knew in the end it could not save her and thus she sacrificed herself for her child, like any good mother would." Ambrose said to my father. "A sad story, made even more tragic by the fate of poor Dorcas, who was driven mad by the things she witnessed. The child was a latent empath, or so it was recorded, and it was thought she experienced the final death of her mother, and it was this that drove her insane. She was also a magician, but her powers never manifested after that, which was perhaps a blessing in disguise."
"What a terrible tragedy!" Aunt Teri cried upon hearing it. "That poor child. It's too bad I couldn't go back in time, I'd give those-those holier-than-thou bastard judges what for! Condemning innocent people to death and making a four year old watch her own mother's death! It's sick and disgusting."
"Go, Mom!" cheered Nick.
"They made her watch it?" Drew asked, looking ill. "Like the whole thing? Ugh!"
"That was a common practice back then," my dad sighed. "Public executions were meant to be viewed by everyone, and children were no exception. It was believed that if the kids saw a criminal executed it would serve as a warning-that's what will happen if you're bad, so don't ever steal or practice witchcraft. I don't know how many children ever got the message though, since from what I read, a lot of them got desensitized to violent death by witnessing hangings and such."
"It was barbaric, was what it was!" Teri said angrily. "You don't need to put a child through that kind of torture in order to discourage them from stealing or whatever. I'd wager half of those poor kids ended up with nightmares and psychological trauma from being made to watch such a disgusting practice. If I were a parent back then, I'd of refused to make my child watch such a thing."
"And you'd have been accused of being a witch sympathizer, Teri," Dad pointed out with a wry smile.
"Humph! Well, I am a witch sympathizer, Sev, and proud of it. So there!" And she gave him a glare that could have roasted him.
"Hey, take it easy, Dragon Lady, I'm not the enemy here," Dad soothed, holding up his hands. "You want to blast somebody, go dig up John Hawthorne or Rev. Samuel Parris, since they started the whole thing."
Dragon Lady's his nickname for Aunt Teri, since she can be as fierce as a bronze dragon when she's mad.
We were all sitting, or in Nick and Drew's case, sprawling in our hotel room, which was another suite like before, discussing all the interesting things we'd learned about the trials at the museum. We'd eaten a huge lunch at a place called The Craft Tavern ( as in witchcraft), Dad had met us there after he'd gone to talk with Mr. Ambrose.
"Not quite, Dad. They were big participators, but Tituba and those four girls were the ones who really started it," I informed him. I was sure he probably knew that, he read more than I did, but I couldn't resist this opportunity to lecture him for once.
He exchanged amused glances with Aunt Teri, then settled down in one of the comfortable wicker chairs and said, "Oh, really? Tell me about it, Mr. Snape."
"Yeah, let's hear it, Professor," Nick jeered.
I cast him an irritated glare. "Button it, Marciano, before I cast a tongue-tying hex on you."
"You and what army?"
"Shut it, Nick!" ordered Drew, socking his twin in the arm.
Nick stuck out his tongue at his brother, but settled down after a warning glare from his mother.
I cleared my throat, then I began. "Well, from everything that was written and documented, the witch hunt began sometime in February of 1692. It was really cold, more so than usual, and these four girls had been going over to the Parris house to visit Tituba, Sam Parris's slave from Barbados. Tituba was full of stories about voodoo and fortune telling and that sort of thing, but it wasn't real magic, just superstition. But the girls didn't know that, and they believed what she told them."
"What were their names?" Aunt Teri prompted.
"Uh, one of them was Betty Parris, the minister's daughter. She was twelve. Then there was Ann Putnam, she was eleven, Mercy Lewis, seventeen, and Mary Walcott, I think she was fifteen."
"Show off, memorizing their names and how old they were," Nick said derisively.
Drew elbowed him in the ribs.
"Get off me!"
"Nicholas, did I just hear you volunteer to write an essay for me?" Dad cut in, flashing my cousin one of his famous glares.
"Huh? I mean, no sir!" Nick stammered, then went red and clamped his mouth shut.
"That's what I thought. Continue, please, Gavin."
I shot Dad a grateful look, then I resumed my story. "Umm . . .where was I? Oh yeah, the girls liked to listen to Tituba tell all these freaky stories about black magic and stuff she'd learned in Barbados, where they practiced voodoo. Maybe that's what gave Betty the idea to start pretending she was being possessed by a witch. Only they didn't really call it that, they said she was being tormented by a spectral presence of a witch. Like a witch's astral form, I guess you could say. They were real big on the devil influencing people back then, typical Puritans, and they saw signs of Satan and evil in just about everything." Like Ferrous, I thought darkly, recalling with a wince the way he used to scream "I'm going to beat that devil influence out of you if it's the last thing I do, boy!" just before he switched me.
"I think she was just a bored spoiled little kid that wanted attention, and what better way to get it than by acting like she was possessed?"
"Like Marietta," Nick remarked impudently. "I swear sometimes she's possessed, all right."
"One more word out of you, young man, and I'm going to take you over my knee," snapped Aunt Teri.
Nick gulped and backed away to the furthest corner of the bed, well out of reach of his mom's hand.
"Anyway . . ." I shot my cousin a shut-up-or-else look. "She started acting really weird. She claimed she had a fever, but it made her hallucinate or something, because she ran all over yelling and having fits, falling on the floor and convulsing, crawling under the furniture, screaming that somebody was pinching her. Must have made her parents real scared, 'cause they called in a doctor, but nothing he did made her any better. Soon as he was gone, she started having fits again and nothing her parents did had any effect.
"I guess she must have liked all the attention she was getting, since she was the youngest girl, because she kept right on convulsing and all that till the doctor was sent for again. His name was William Griggs. He didn't know what the hell was going on, but whatever it was, it wasn't anything physical.
"About the same time, Betty's other girlfriends got the same idea, and they started doing it too, fainting, convulsing, screaming and acting possessed. Now Griggs was really in trouble, because all these girls had the same symptoms but he didn't know what was wrong with them. So he starts looking around for something to blame it on.
"The obvious thing to blame it on was the devil, of course. He'd read a book by a guy named Cotton Mather, another preacher who believed in witches, it was called . . ." I paused a moment. "Memorable Providences, and it described a similar case of witchcraft in Boston, and the symptoms mirrored the girls' exactly."
"Probably that's where they'd gotten the idea, from reading it too," Aunt Teri surmised.
"Yeah, that's what I figured. They probably read it together and then decided to pretend to be attacked by spectral witches or whatever. So Griggs tells all the girls' parents that their kids are the victims of witchcraft and it was known that witches targeted children, look at all the fairy tales. What could they do about it?
"A neighbor, Mary Sibley, knew a countercharm, supposedly." I grinned. "Know what she told Tituba to do? She told her to bake a rye cake made with some of the afflicted girl's pee and feed it to a dog. Dogs were believed to be witches' familiars, associated with the devil, see?"
Drew snickered. "No way, Gav! You're making that up. That's-that's the dumbest thing I ever heard of. Not to mention gross."
"Swear to God, I'm not. Mr. Andrews told me that, it was in a book called Countermagic in the Days of the Salem Witch Hunts." I told him.
He rolled his eyes. "Muggles! How stupid can they get?"
"They were ignorant, not stupid," Dad corrected softly. "And not all Muggles believed in superstition either. Go on, Gavin."
"Well, Tituba did what Mary Sibley said and soon suspicion began to fall on her. She was a slave, she wasn't English, and she was known to believe in heathen practices, like voodoo and fortune telling, which were sins to the Puritans. Before you know it, the girls' other friends joined in the afflicted group, until there were seven altogether. The new girls' names were Elizabeth Hubbard, Mary Warren, and Susannah Sheldon.
"I think the doctor said they could be freed from their affliction if they named the witch behind it, and that's what made Betty and Mercy turn on Tituba. Or maybe Tituba threatened to tell on them, that they were making it all up, then they'd have gotten a good whipping for sure. The whole town was obsessed now, seeing the devil and witches everywhere. So the girls quickly named Tituba, Sarah Osborn, and Sarah Good.
"Tituba was named for the reason I said before, Sarah Good was a real magician, but I'm sure nobody knew that, just that she was single mom with a child, which was odd back then, and Osborn was old, quarrelsome, and hadn't gone to church in the last year. Perfect targets, since they were town misfits and didn't have anybody to defend them.
"And the girls, especially Ann Putnam, were backed by their families, who were rich and powerful. So they arrested Tituba and the two Sarahs on witchcraft charges. The complaints were brought before two county magistrates, one of them was John Hawthorne and the other Jonathan Corwin. They held an examination and the whole town showed up to see it. The girls did their fake possession act and the magistrates bought it, it was so good.
"They were helped by the other people in Salem who told stories about how their milk had turned sour when one of the women went by and their goat got sick and all kinds of stupid nonsense. But taken together, it looked like the three were cursing people and the magistrates kept asking Tituba and the other two if they were witches and if they'd spoken to Satan, and insisting they were evil.
"After a couple of days of this, Tituba broke, I'm sure they were threatening her with stuff like hot irons too, and admitted she was a witch and she'd met the devil and signed in his book and so did the two Sarah's and two other women. She also said they could take spectral form and fly through the air on broomsticks."
"Poor woman! She must have figured they were going to hang her anyhow, might as well make them hang her for something, since they wouldn't believe she was innocent," Teri said, shaking her head.
"After that, Parris and Hawthorne and the rest started hunting down witches like crazy. The girls were naming people left and right, I think they were on a power trip and wanted to see how far they could go. It was like a game."
"Some game! People died based on their little stories," my father scowled.
"Not at first. At first all they did was throw the accused in jail. It wasn't until they brought a Grand Jury together that they convicted the original three and hanged them," I said. "After that, I think the girls realized what they'd done, or maybe they didn't, but it was too late to stop. It was like wildfire, people went mad, and pointed fingers at their neighbors for anything. Next thing you knew, they'd accused little Dorcas of being a witch and threw her in jail too, along with sixteen others."
"And that number grew, as neighbor turned upon neighbor," Dad spoke up. "When it ended, nineteen innocent women had been hung, and one old man pressed to death because he refused to admit he was a warlock."
"Pressed to death? What's that mean, Uncle Sev?" asked Nick.
"It was a nasty execution. Giles Corey was in his eighties and they tied him on the ground and piled huge stones on him until he was crushed to death."
"That's horrible!" cried Drew. "Why didn't somebody stop it?"
"It was far too late for that, Drew. By then the hysteria was in full cry, although after Corey's death and the death of George Burroughs, the former minister of Salem, the magistrates began to seriously question the evidence they'd received. They finally realized that some of the evidence was false, though of course they didn't dare admit it, but they voted to dismiss spectral evidence as inadmissible for testimony and eventually the new governor of the colony stepped in and declared the witch hunt officially over and released all those accused still alive from jail."
"What happened to the girls?" Nick wanted to know. "Did they ever get found out for liars?"
Dad shook his head. "The only one to ever admit that she lied was Ann Putnam, and this was only after her parents were dead from a fever several years later. She admitted that her testimony was fabricated, mostly because her father wanted to buy land from several families who refused to sell to him. So he encouraged her to name members of those households so he could get his greedy fingers on their land once the family was discredited and destroyed. The others never admitted anything and they died liars and murderers."
"Judge Hawthorne's grandson Nathaniel was so ashamed of the fact that his grandpa sentenced innocent women to death that he spelled his name with a "w" to make people think they weren't related," I recalled. "Before that, he spelled his name H-a-t-h-o-r-n-e."
"Can't say I blame him. It must have been a black disgrace to have a relative involved in persecuting those women, once the truth was known," Aunt Teri said. "And that's why, boys, you must be very careful about starting rumors, because they can get out of control before you know it, and hurt innocent people terribly."
All of us nodded. Then I turned to my father. "Dad, is it true that there still are people who believe in, uh, witch hunts today?" I was fishing for information on his case and well he knew it. "Like that Brotherhood of the Shining Path or whatever."
He sighed and didn't reply for a moment. Then at last he said, "Yes, unfortunately there are still bigoted and self-righteous people out there looking for people to blame the world's ills on. The Brotherhood of the Shining Path is related to those Salem witch hunters, and they continue to search out anyone they believe is in league with magic or witches and bring them to justice."
"Sev, you don't mean they kill them?" Teri gasped.
My father nodded again. "Yes, there have been reports to that effect. Not recently, but years ago . . .The Brotherhood thinks it's their sworn duty to exterminate witches, wizards, and anyone or anything associated with them off the face of the earth. They're white Puritan supremacists, like the Nazis."
"Or the Ku Klux Klan," I added.
"Yes, but not as widespread. That's what I'm doing, trying to track down the truth behind these sudden rumors and the families who've been targeted by someone," Dad said. Then he stretched and stood up. "And that's all I'm going to tell you, Gavin, so quit trying to nose more information out of me, boy." He shook a warning finger at me. "Remember, young man, curiosity killed the cat."
I knew what he meant. I'd better stop asking questions that were none of my business, before it got me in trouble. "Yes, sir," I said, but then I thought rebelliously Curiosity might have killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back. And the only thing that would satisfy me now was getting to the bottom of this Shining Path mystery.
If my dad wouldn't share information with me, then I'd have to find out some other way. By doing some rather clever sneaking and spying of my own. It was something I was quite good at, former street thief and pickpocket that I was. Not to mention the son of the US's top spymaster. Severus Snape didn't raise any dumb sons, and it was killing me to know what connection the Brotherhood had to these accused people and the witch trials.
* * * * * *
Later on that night, I crept like a shadow into the room where my father and aunt were sleeping. I might not be a thief any more, but I hadn't forgotten all my lessons from Smoke and the Ravens. I needed to sneak a look in my dad's little black notebook, where he kept a list of names of people to talk to when he was working a case.
I knew if I'd been caught, I'd be dead meat, no question about it. But my luck was flying tonight and I found the book tucked in his backpack and slipped it under my pajamas quick as blinking. Then I slipped back into my own room and into the bathroom, where I could turn on the light and quickly scan the pages.
I also used my firecalling talent to erect a skintight light shield over the bathroom, so it would appear dark if anyone happened to wake up, which wasn't too likely, my cousins were snoring soundly.
I scanned rapidly through the book, it was organized by date and cases, in my father's typical neat small script. Ah ha! Here we go-Salem Rumors and Targets, Possible Witch Hunt? Beneath that heading were the names of the four families, and what they'd had done to their house or whatever.
Amberly family: Jacob (father), Marie (mother) and 2 children (Gail, age 5) and Selina (age 12)
Poppet hung on their front lawn in elm tree and warning notes left in mailbox-witches go home or else we'll get you! Wizarding family-children half-bloods, father Muggle.
Cosgrove family: Mary (mother), Abe (father, deceased), 3 children Ally (age 2), Eva (age 5) and Anna ( age 13), also a cat Sugar.
Red paint in the sign of a pentagram painted on their driveway plus broomsticks and the words witches live here, devil worshippers. We know who you are! Cat also painted with black witchcraft symbols.
Ashe family: Kevin (father), Linda(mother) and 2 children Bobby (age 6) and Kelsey (age 9), also a cat and a dog, Mystic and Shimmer, black cat and white Pomeranian. Mother is a magician, children potentials.
Poppet attached to car with pins in it and paint and eggs smeared all over car and on childrens' playhouse. Message attached to poppet read: Repent of thy sins, witch mother and turn to the Light again, or else suffer the fate of those before you.
These were written in the order they'd been vandalized. First the Amberlys had been targeted, next the Cosgroves, and then the Ashes. It looked as though the warnings had gotten more explicit as the weeks went on, far as I could tell. That last one made the hairs on the back of my neck bristle.
The last name on the list belonged to the old woman my cousin had called "the crazy cat lady".
Evelyn Proctor (age 75, widow) lives alone save for her seven cats, Abigail, Silk, Pounce, Juniper, Lily, Misty, and Scamper.
Found an effigy of a cat burned in her front yard and one of her cats tied in a sack, cat unharmed. Paint splashed all over front of house with pentacles, pitchforks, and other Satanic symbols, and the word Witch! scrawled on her front door. Pinned to one of her cat's collars was the note: This is the devil's familiar, as are you. Admit thy guilt and walk in the Light, or else suffer the wrath of the righteous, Handmaid of Satan.
I shivered as I read that last. These people, whatever they called themselves, were seriously touched in the head. Screwed up beyond belief. If I were that old lady, I'd hire a police escort to watch my house and buy a Doberman to guard the property.
I flipped over the page and saw a checklist of informants, Mr. Ambrose was checked off at the top of the list. Then I saw Evelyn Proctor's name again. What's this? She was a DHI informant? Yes, according to Dad's notes, she was connected to the wizarding world, her sister Wilimina had been one of us, but she had died last year. Evelyn was a Muggle, but she knew all about the wizarding community.
I tapped my chin thoughtfully. She had probably seen a lot, given how old she was. Perhaps I could go and talk with her, see what she knew about the Brotherhood of the Shining Path. But I had to move fast, before Dad visited her first. And I'd have to do it in disguise. Now I could put the lessons Fireflash had taught me into practice, and see how well I'd really learned to illusion cast.
Tomorrow, I'd find a way to see her tomorrow, when the twins and I were wandering about Salem. Of course, I'd have to invent an excuse as to why I needed to disappear, because there was no way I could trust the twins with my scheme. They weren't subtle enough, my dad would crack them in two seconds and then that would be it.
I quickly canceled the light shield, turned off the light in the bathroom and slipped back into my father's room with the book under my shirt. I returned it to his pack, careful to put it back exactly where I'd found it. Then I snuck back into my bed and wrapped the covers about me. I was still pondering how to lose the twins when I fell asleep.
Next: Gavin plays a trick on Severus and starts an invesitgation of his own