Today in Salem: The shipmaster has crossed his arms and is watching without expression as the pious Mary Esty is once again trembling before the magistrates. He and his wife have arrived early and are close enough to see the veins on Mary’s hands as she grips the bar. None of it makes sense.
He and his wife have ridden 20 miles from Boston to clear up a misunderstanding with the magistrates. 11-year-old Abigail Williams has named his wife during a fit, and it’s so obviously a mistake that they’re sure a simple conversation should fix it. But the magistrates aren’t available. It’s an Examination Day, and since he and his wife are already here, they’ve stayed to watch.
It’s hot outside, and even hotter in, and the smell of fear and unwashed bodies is overwhelming as the afflicted girls eke out their story. In starts and stops, passing the story from girl to girl, they tell about an iron spike that had been stolen. It was the spindle from a spinning wheel, and had been locked up in someone’s home. Then, mysteriously, it was missing.
No one knew where the spindle was until Mary Esty’s specter produced it with a flourish and began attacking the afflicted girls. No one could see it – it was spectral – until one of the girls grabbed it. Suddenly it was visible, and of course: It was the stolen spindle.
The pious Mary Esty is hardly allowed to speak before the judges send her back to jail, this time in Boston, with even heavier chains.
The next defendant hasn’t arrived yet, and the girls, only a few feet away, look at the shipmaster and his wife with curiosity. They’re visitors. Who are you? But the shipmaster has barely answered the question when the next defendant is brought in, then the next, and the next, one at a time. The shipmaster is more and more astonished as the spectacle continues.
The magistrates order touch tests, forcing the defendants to touch the afflicted girls and, if they are witches, to remove the evil afflictions. Somehow the girls are always “cured,” with the magistrates hardly glancing at them. They ask the defendants to recite the Lord’s Prayer, and punish them for the slightest pause. They say the girls have been struck dumb when they are simply recovering for a brief second.
None of it is convincing.
Later, taking a break from the proceedings, the shipmaster and his wife find themselves at Ingersoll’s Tavern. The shipmaster has arranged to talk personally with 11-year-old Abigail to clear up her accusation against his wife. But when she and the other girls come in, they convulse violently and fall to the floor. Like swine, he thinks. Like clumsy, rooting hogs.
“It’s her!” one of them cries, then they all join in, pointing and shouting his wife’s name.
His wife protests. She’s never heard of the girls before today. She’s innocent. But the magistrates make her stand up and stretch her arms out until she’s shaking.
“May I at least hold one of her arms?” the shipmaster asks, but no. He’s forbidden to help. They do allow him to wipe the tears and sweat from her face, but when she says she’s about to faint and asks to lean against him, the cruel Judge Hathorne says no again.
“If you are strong enough to torment these girls,” he says, “then you are strong enough to stand without help.”
Suddenly the slave John Indian falls down and begins tumbling around on the floor. He can’t speak, though, and when the magistrates ask the girls who is afflicting him, they say it’s the shipmaster’s wife.
The magistrates order the touch test, which the shipmaster has already seen with dismay. But this time it’s not a simple touch: When she gets close to John Indian, he grabs her hand and pulls her down on the floor with him, rolling and grasping until the constable can pry his hand away. The constable then forces her to touch John’s hand to ”cure” him.
“I hope God takes vengeance on this court!” the shipmaster shouts, “and delivers us from such unmerciful men!” But the magistrates are unmoved, and send his wife to jail.
