Condemn Me Not: Accused of Witchcraft Read online

  A historical novel based on the life of my 10th great-grandmother

  Susannah North Martin

  Accused of Witchcraft

  Hanged in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692

  Copyright © 2017 by Mirror Press, LLC

  E-book edition

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form whatsoever without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief passages embodied in critical reviews and articles. This is a work of historical fiction. Creative interpretation of the actual historical events during the Salem Witch Trials are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  Interior design by Heather Justesen

  Edited by Jennie Stevens, Corey Pulver, and Lisa Shepherd.

  Cover design by Rachael Anderson

  Cover image credit: Brekke Felt, Studio 15 Portraits

  Cover model: Dana Moore, 11th great-granddaughter of Susannah Martin

  Cover background: Adobe Stock #44827278 andreiuc88

  Published by Mirror Press, LLC

  eISBN-10: 1-941145-92-2

  eISBN-13: 978-1-941145-92-0

  Susannah North Martin, born 1621

  Abigail Martin, born 1659

  Abigail Hadlock, born 1685

  Rebecca A. Lowell, born 1708

  Edmund Thurrell, born 1728

  Moses Therrell, born 1750

  Johnathan Therrell, born 1778

  William Coker Lisonbee, born 1804

  James Thompson Lisonbee, born 1839

  Zina Lisonbee, born 1870

  Scott R. Brown, born 1914

  S. Kent Brown, born 1940

  Heather Brown Moore, born 1970

  This woman was one of the most impudent, scurrilous, wicked creatures of this world; and she did now throughout her whole trial discover herself to be such a one. Yet when she was asked what she had to say for herself, her chief plea was that she had led a most virtuous and holy life.

  —Reverend Cotton Mather, 1692

  Salem, Massachusetts 1692

  Salem Jail

  Veins crisscross the backs of my hands like a map of trails, intersecting, yet leading to nowhere—much like the path I’ve worn on the dungeon floor as I pace around the huddled bodies of women, carving footsteps into the cold, hard earth. Back and forth and around. Back and forth again, stopping at each wall, then passing the row of bars reaching from floor to the cragged ceiling.

  Summer has yet to arrive in full, though the sound of birds can be heard in the first stretch of morning if I wake early enough and listen carefully above the sighing of female breath in sleep.

  Rebecca Nurse prays in her sleep, her lips restlessly moving, as she talks to our Maker. I stop next to her and lean down as she whispers, “Lord, preserve our souls. Bless our accusers. O Lord . . .”

  My eyes burn, and I straighten, as much as my seventy-one-year-old back can move.

  The years have been harsh to my body, but that harshness seems like heaven compared to the squalor I live in now. Bearing eight children took its toll, yet I would bear eight more if I could but go home again to my George. But I cannot. He has been in heaven these past seven years.

  Someone coughs, and it turns to a deep hacking sound. I wince as if the pain is pulsing through my own body. Rebecca sits up and hunches over as she coughs again, her hands to her mouth as her body shudders. I shuffle to the water bucket, the cords tied about my ankles chafing at my skin. I fill a ladle with stagnant water and kneel beside her.

  “Take a drink, Rebecca,” I say.

  She lifts her head and smiles. That smile warms me through as no sun could ever do so before.

  “Susannah, you are too good to me.” Her voice is low and hoarse. She coughs again, and I rub her back as her body spasms. Rebecca is the same age as I—we are the two oldest women in the cell. Two of her sisters have also been accused and imprisoned, but they are not in our same cell. I hold the ladle close to her lips again. Finally, Rebecca is able to take a breath and drink.

  “Thank you,” she whispers, lying back on the ground with her eyes closed. She shifts her feet, causing the shackles about her ankles to clang together. Some of us have only cords to tie our ankles, since the prison had run out of shackles. Rebecca cracks one eye open. “Do you never sleep?”

  “I woke to hear the birds,” I say.

  Rebecca coughs again, but I realize she is laughing. “The birds,” she says. “I must thank the Lord for the birds.” Her eyes close again, and her lips start to move in prayer.

  I return the ladle to the bucket and cross to the only window in the dungeon. It sits high in the wall, a good foot over my head. If only I was tall like my mother, but I was a small child and remained short into womanhood. The body parts that grew were my hips and breasts, and the latter George was more than happy for.

  The sky is violet outside, and a faint rattle of the breeze pushes through trees that I cannot see. Leaning against the wall, I close my eyes. I hear better when I can’t see—the wind, the birds, and sometimes I imagine I hear the grass drying under the warmth of the sun.

  I have not felt the sun on my skin for nearly a month. May 2 was the date of my arrest, and now it is the first of June. The jailer announces the day each morning, otherwise I might not know what month or week it is. I marvel to think of the times I complained that the sun was too hot and that I ever regretted staying in the sun too long and burning my pale skin until it was bright pink.

  George always had a bit of sunburn on his face, despite his hat, from working in the fields in the stark summer sun.

  With my eyes closed, I could almost see him now, just like it was the first time. I used to watch him in the fields without his knowledge. His family moved to Salisbury when I was twenty-five, and when my stepmother heard that a family with an unmarried son bought the neighboring farm, she sent me over right away.

  Salisbury, Massachusetts 1646

  I knew all the single men in town, and none of them could be called a passing handsome. The verdict was still out on Orlando Bagley—a boy several years my junior, but I couldn’t imagine marrying my best playmate.

  Please, Lord, let the Martin boy be handsome, and unwed . . . and about my age. I’d overheard my stepmother, Ursula, speaking to my father that week about finding me a husband. It was far past time, that I knew. At age twenty-five, I was becoming a disgrace. I guess the burden of my sassy mouth outweighed the virtual slave labor I did for her. When I heard the names of the men she suggested, my stomach twisted into a hard rock. Between Widower Parris with four children already and pimple-faced Bernard Allen, my choices were quite narrow. When not working on my parents’ farm, I hired myself out as a nursemaid. My stepmother said I had a gift with healing. But she also thought it was a waste of my God-given time to sit by one of my brothers’ or sisters’ bedside as they lay sick.

  “Susannah, pull the loaf out and wrap it in cloth for the Martins,” my stepmother hollered from the kitchen. “Tell them I’ll be over later with Father to make proper introductions.”

  I finished straightening the quilt on the bed of my sparse bedroom. At least I had it to myself since Mary had married Thomas Jones II and moved to Gloucester. My sister already had four children, one born before their marriage, and now Mary was pregnant again. I smoothed my hair back and twisted it into a tight bun, then pinned my white bonnet on.

  Normally I’d complain about meeting the new neighbors on my own—but I wanted to be first to meet the unmarried man, to see for myself if he was anyone to be interested in. Besides, my stepmother wanted to be the first to greet the new family. If she delivered the first loaf of bre
ad, we’d be considered the most neighborly—an important status in a Puritan community.

  I stepped into the kitchen. The fire was fully roaring, heating up the big kettle of wash. Mother looked up at me, her face thin and flushed. “Hurry there and back. Today’s washing day.” My stepmother and I looked nothing alike, of course, so no one could mistake us for being related. Where she was tall and thin, I was short and on the stocky side. Although I could barely remember my own mother’s looks, I was definitely my father’s daughter.

  I hurried as fast as I could across our fields without breaking a sweat. I’d put on a clean apron, one that was a bit too small, to show off the shape of my figure when tied tight around the waist. It was probably a sin to want to look like a woman in front of the Martin boy, but if he was handsome and single—without pimples and without a dead wife and little brats hanging on his legs—I’d ask the Lord to forgive me later.

  I neared the border between the farms and picked my way around the fresh manure Father had laid that week. I didn’t want to carry the smell of the farm when I reached the Martins’ threshold. I was focusing so much on where not to step that I didn’t see the plow until I nearly crossed in front of it.

  “Whoa,” a man said, stopping his horse that had been pulling the plow. It was a scrawny horse, not much better than ours. I wondered when my father had hired this laborer. He didn’t mention it at supper last night, and I knew very well that we couldn’t afford one. Father’s back must really be in a bad way, even more than he let on to Mother. He must have hired this man from Salem or Gloucester, but why hadn’t my father told me?

  The man wore dark pants and a light-colored, long-sleeved shirt with no vest. That’s when I noticed it was open in front, showing a bit of his chest, and that he was younger than I first thought.

  He tipped up his hat and grinned. “Hello there.” He was definitely younger than I thought. In fact, I guessed him at about three years my senior. Likely twenty-seven or twenty-eight. His dark blue eyes—maybe even gray—held mine. But I told myself not to stare at his eyes, or even think about the fact that he was handsome, despite the crook at the top of his nose. And I told myself that a man with such a wide smile couldn’t be all that comely either. The Lord wanted men to be more modest around women and not to grin at them.

  And I was definitely a woman.

  “Do you speak English?” he said, studying me.

  “Of course I speak English,” I snapped, my shock at seeing this man made my tongue sharp.

  He only chuckled at my outburst.

  I took a step back, noticing that his boots were dark and scruffy, but his hat was a light brown instead of black—maybe he wasn’t from these parts. Maybe he wasn’t even Puritan. I couldn’t enter into a conversation with this stranger that made my blood hot. I needed to find a polite way to leave the man to his work.

  “Are you Susannah North?” he said, and I stopped cold.

  My father must have told this laborer my name—but why?—and then I looked past the stranger to the small house beyond the fields.

  “Are you our new neighbor?” I asked, knowing the answer before he spoke.

  He grinned and tipped his hat. “Yes, I’m George Martin. Pleased to meet you.”

  “And you,” I said, barely able to speak coherently over the pounding of my heart. I had been openly gawking at him. Clearing my throat, I said, “I’ve come to meet your family.”

  George Martin’s grin didn’t waver. “My sister is inside the house. She’ll be right pleased to meet you.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and hurried around the plow, before giving him a chance to continue our conversation. Any Puritan male knew it wasn’t proper to speak to unattended and unmarried women, which told me this man was nonreligious. What would my stepmother think of our new neighbors now?

  Once I cleared the flanks of the horse, I hurried as fast as I could without breaking into a run, trying not to think of how his intense gaze had made my neck prickle. I crossed the border and cut to the lane leading to the house. Old Widow Framer used to live in this house until last winter, when she died of a disease of the lungs. At least that’s what the physician said. Reverend said it was because she’d stopped paying her tithing. “Paying tithing is more important than eating. The spirit needs more nourishment than the body,” he’d said.

  I was panting by the time I reached the door. Surprised that it stood wide open, letting all manner of flies and bugs inside, I hesitated. Looking around, I saw no one and wondered if perhaps they’d gone to town to purchase supplies. Finally, I knocked. A woman’s voice called out, “Come in.”

  It sounded raspy . . . and sick. I stepped inside and waited a few seconds for my eyes to adjust to the dimness. “Hello? Goody Martin?”

  “In the back room,” came the voice, fainter now.

  I walked through the small house, taking note of the changes that had already taken place from when Widow Framer lived there. It was cluttered with crates piled into a corner, as if the Martin family was used to a larger home.

  I pushed open the bedroom door that stood ajar. “Ma’am?” I said.

  Two dark eyes peered at me over a worn quilt. The woman sat in a rocking chair, bundled in blankets. The woman looked to be in her mid-thirties, but her frailty made her seem older. She wore a white cap over her pale hair, and she was thinner than a bird. One hand darted out to wipe her mouth. “Come in, dear. That smells delicious.”

  I remembered the loaf of bread I carried, and I took a couple of steps forward. “I’m Susannah North, from the next property over.”

  “The Norths. Yes, the reverend told us you’re our neighbors.”

  So the reverend had been here already. Did that mean they were religious after all? My stepmother wouldn’t be too happy that the reverend had visited first. “Have you met anyone else besides the reverend?” I asked in a very innocent voice.

  Her bird hand extended toward me. “No, dear. Come closer and let me get a good look at you. My eyes aren’t what they used to be. I’ve my brother to do most things for me now.”

  I shuffled a little closer and smelled rosemary. I wondered how sick this woman really was and why she was coddled up on such a nice warm day. The only ones in our town who spent their day in bed were those who were severely ailing. Or had just delivered a babe.

  Her watery gaze assessed me quite shrewdly. “Are you the daughter who’s yet unmarried?”

  If I was a cursing woman, I would have cursed. Instead, I blushed. “That’s me, ma’am.”

  A faint smile warmed her face. “George is my younger brother, not yet thirty. He was widowed this past year, God rest his wife’s soul. But a man needs a wife, and although he’s been too stubborn to marry yet, he should not remain unattached for long.”

  A widower . . . the man I’d met in the fields was a widower. And only just. Her eyes narrowed for a fraction as they studied me, as if to determine the level of my stubbornness as well. Then her face relaxed again. “My brother will be sorry he missed you. He’s in town with the good sir, Mr. North. George is setting up an apprenticeship with the blacksmith there. I don’t know what he sees in it—farming has been in our family for generations.”

  “I just met your brother,” I said. “He must have returned early. I passed him working in the fields.”

  “Oh, wonderful,” she said.

  I wanted to move past the topic of her brother. “Is there anyone else in your family?”

  “Alas, there’s only us, and the small child of George’s. I’ve never married on account of my health. Hannah is sleeping in the next room.” Goody Martin brought her thin hand to her mouth and coughed. Then she continued as if her chest hadn’t just been wracked in pain.

  I listened to her talk about her niece, Hannah, and her childish antics. I wanted to ask more about George and what had happened to his wife. But I’d rather cut my hand with a butcher knife than ask such a thing. I took pity on this poor woman, stuck in her house with illness while her brother was
out in the fresh air. I had so many questions, but instead I only asked, “Would you like me to slice a piece of bread for you?”

  “That would be lovely,” she said. “The knife should be unpacked and sitting out somewhere.”

  I left the bedroom and looked around the small kitchen, surprised at the orderliness in comparison to the first room I came through. Her brother must know how to set up a kitchen. Maybe they’d moved more than once. I wondered briefly what it would be like to live someplace other than Salisbury, but that was probably a sin, so I stopped wondering.

  I found the knife and cut a slice of bread. There was a slab of butter covered with cheesecloth. I spread a thick layer of butter on the bread, deciding that Goody Martin needed all the fat she could get. After rewrapping the bread and leaving it on the table, I went back to the bedroom.

  “You are such a dear.” She took the lathered bread from me and nibbled at one end. “I’m sure your mother has a hard time sparing you. Tell me about your family.”

  So I told her about my real mother, who died back in England, and the new woman named Ursula my father married before leaving England. About how I was the youngest and how my stepmother lost two babies after me. I told her about my sister Mary and my other sister, Sarah Oldham, who at twenty-nine and widowed had vowed to never remarry. She and her twelve-year-old daughter, Ann, lived with us. I told her of all the babies my mother had who’d died: John, Hester, and Hepzibah.

  Goody Martin exclaimed in all the right places, even saying, “Oh dear Lordy,” a few times. I wasn’t sure about that expression. It sounded Anglican to me.

  “I shouldn’t keep you long, but it’s so nice to have a visitor,” Goody Martin said, finishing the last of the bread. “Do you like to sew?”