Today in Salem: The Sheriff is choking on the hot dust rising around his cart as it jerks along the dirt road. Five women kneel in the cart, three of them elderly, their hands tied behind them.
With only a single horse to pull the heavy cart, it’s a slow journey to the hanging tree, where a minister waits on horseback, an unsure crowd shuffling behind him. He’ll pray, of course, but it’s also his job to urge each woman to confess and repent for her sin. It won’t change her fate. She will die. But her heart will be lighter.
The cart has hardly stopped when the deputies begin to pull the women off, one at a time, until they reach the beggar Sarah Good.
“Stay” one of them commands, and puts up his hand. The gesture isn’t lost on Sarah. She lurches forward as if to attack, but her hands are tied, and she falls back into the cart.
“Confess!” the minister says, loudly enough for those in the back of the crowd to hear. “Repent for your lies!” Sarah takes a deep breath and erupts in a rage.
“You’re the liar! Take my life, and God will give you blood to drink!” she roars, spitting and twisting away from the deputy who’s holding her back. A second deputy kneels to tie her petticoats and legs together, and the crowd cheers when he yanks the hood over her head and tightens the rope around her neck.
“May God forgive you,” the minister says. With that, the sheriff’s cart pulls away, hard, and Sarah jerks in the noose, her body emptying itself in one last insult.
The smells of waste and sweat are overwhelming, but the deputy doesn’t slow as he carries Sarah’s body to one of the graves, then turns toward the sharp-tongued Susannah Martin. She’s quieter than Sarah, but no less furious and will not, will not confess. She dies more quickly, but not without kicking, hard, then swaying, until she’s impossibly still.
The now-friendless Elizabeth How doesn’t need to be pushed or lifted into the cart. She bends and steps awkwardly into it on her own, her hands tied behind her. She looks at her husband, and for the first time is thankful that he is blind, that he will not see her die. But she’s also determined that he will not hear it, so she just shakes her head when the minister urges her to confess, looking at her wide-eyed daughter one last time as the hood is pulled over her head.
By now the people in the crowd have noticed the unmarked graves. No Christian burial for these lying witches. They turn to watch the proud Sarah Wilds as she’s pulled roughly into the cart. She, too, has seen the graves, but looks away, staring instead at her only witness, her son, who’s mouthing “Look at me. Look at me.” And so she does, even when the minister tells her to confess, even when she refuses and insists that she’s innocent, staring into her son’s eyes even as she is hooded, then hanged.
Only one more hanging is left, and the crowd grows quiet as the elderly and beloved Rebecca Nurse is lifted carefully into the cart. “Will you confess?” the minister asks. “No,” she says. “I am as innocent as the babe unborn.” Her voice trembles and she looks into the crowd, where she can see her husband, her eight children, their husbands and wives, and some of her grown grandchildren. Friends and neighbors are here, too, and others who know her from church, holding their hats in their hands. This time the deputy is gentle when he pulls the hood down, even when he tightens the noose around her neck. Rebecca’s shoulders begin to shake, but she barely kicks when she falls from the cart, and many in the crowd begin to cry.
Tonight in Salem: Two men row slowly, trying to soften the sound of the water splashing against their boat. Light from the half-moon guides them around the bend of the river to the ledge where the hanging tree cuts a silent, black silhouette.
The men slide the boat with a quiet scrape onto the riverbank. With shovels and blankets the two begin to climb, their shoes scrabbling in the loose dirt. To be seen would be to invite disaster, so they make quick business of it and carefully dig her out, wrap her in the blanket, and carry her back the way they came. She’s heavier than they expected, and it’s a precarious slide down the steep bank. But they’re determined to bring her home, to risk everything to bring the beloved Rebecca Nurse home for the Christian burial she deserves.
