Time Travel Omnibus, page 947
“Ah, yes. You mean these?” said the woman, pulling two folded parchments from her pocket.
Stoughton paled. “How did you . . .” Fear crept in again. He looked around the hill, not entirely comforted that he saw no one else lurking about. His anger began to rise. Who did this woman think she was to question him, and why was he tolerating it?
“I presume that you no longer have such faith in those girls and their spectral visitations? Or the wealthy patrons who house and entreat you? Half those girls have confessed to bearing false testimony, and will no longer approach the court.”
“Woman, I am here doing the work of the Lord. I came to Salem to find its witches and see them purged from this village! I need no patron or girl to tell me when witchery is afoot! Words will not deceive me. Those girls were clearly bewitched and now claim falsely to being misled. I will go forth without their witness, and apply the vengeance of the Lord!”
“Do you know how to find a witch, William Stoughton?”
“Of course, woman! I have already found and put many of Satan’s brood to the rope, and I will continue my mission!” Who was this woman, Stoughton wondered, and why was he continuing to suffer her questions? He was the magistrate here, not this wrinkled old crone. “I am tired of your games and questions. You will stand before me in court, and then you shall answer my questions! Then you shall tell me what you know of witches, old woman!”
“Fair enough.” The woman’s tone shifted. “But first, I must ask a favor of you, WIlliam Stoughton.”
He was annoyed at this woman’s use of his name, and eager to be away from her. He would no longer indulge her foolishness. It was most unlike him to meet her, but the events in yesterday’s court had left him unsure of many things. To get away, he snapped: “What?”
“I ask that you take this paper, and this quill and ink. You are to write a letter that you were wrong to put innocents to death on the words of misguided, mistreated children. You will write that you prosecuted innocents in your blind zeal, pushed by the greed and spite of others. You will write that you abused your power and that you hanged people for witchcraft without any real proof.”
Too outraged for words, Stoughton sputtered incredulously at the audacity of this woman.
“Oh, and then you will place that letter in your pocket. You will climb this tree, place that noose around your neck, and give value to your life by ending it.”
Disbelief gave way to fear as the woman walked up to Stoughton. Giving in to the fear and outrage, he pulled back the cane he was carrying and started to bring it down on her, but found himself frozen by her gaze. There was no fear in her eyes, even though he was about to crush her skull. Fear made his arms tremble, and he could not deliver the blow.
“The truth of witches in Salem, William Stoughton? None of them, Stoughton. None of the people whose lives you ended were witches.”
He whimpered. “What have you done to me?”
Ignoring him, she continued, “If it comforts you, realize that I am no better than you. I have heard your testimony, and in truth, I had already decided upon your guilt before you came before me.”
“Why are you doing this?” he whispered as he moved toward the elm.
“Because you will not stop. And because it is the right thing to do. What you have done here is wrong. Your actions have served the cause of evil. And now I have to stop you from going any further. So now I must do what is right and serve the cause of good.” The woman smiled a sad smile. “Again, you have brought me down to your level, William Stoughton. It seems we have both failed our Lords on this day.”
William Stoughton tried to scream as he dipped the quill into the ink. In the distance, he heard a woman’s voice reciting the Lord’s Prayer.
Sheriff John Walcott walked nervously up to Gallows Hill. It was after midnight and clouds hid the moonlight. He saw a familiar face and walked purposefully toward her.
“Ah, John Walcott. Thank you for coming, we have much to discuss.”
“What is this about?”
The old woman handed him a blank piece of paper and a quill. He caught a glimpse of movement behind her near the elm. His mouth fell in shock as he saw the limp body swinging. Next to the limp form were three dangling nooses.
“I must ask a favor of you, John Walcott.”
September 23, 1692
“The funeral was lovely.”
“Mm—hmm.” The woman rocking on the porch nodded as she sewed an unfinished baby blanket.
“She was so frail at the end. She seemed to pass peacefully.”
“Mm—hmm.”
“And in her own bed.”
The rocking slowed. “The governor was quick to clear the jails, wasn’t he? A decent God-fearing man, our governor.”
The bloodhound stretched out on the edge of the lawn, his head on his paws. A cat slept on the dog’s back.
“I am glad that business is over. Four signed confessions of false prosecution from those men on Gallows Hill. Bad business.” The younger woman sewed up a tear in a shirt.
The afternoon passed. Constance noted that Ruth worked slower than usual.
“Ruth, are you well?”
“I have been tired lately. And this morn, my stomach sent me from me from my breakfast again.”
“Congratulations, dear!” the old woman said with a knowing smile. Two chairs rocked gently as hands worked industriously.
“I was thinking about the name Agnes. I believe it is a girl.”
“That would be nice. What do you think, Mercy?” Ruth started and looked up. Standing at the steps of the porch was Mercy Lewis. At her feet, the dog laid quietly, and the cat continued to sleep peacefully.
“I . . . I should think John or Samuel would be among the names to consider, not Agnes.”
“Indeed.” Constance nodded. Ruth looked at the two, and at the bloodhound that still lay quietly.
“May I . . . may I speak with you ladies?” the girl asked timidly.
“Of course, Mercy. We’ve been expecting you.”
Mercy sat cautiously in the empty rocking chair. After a time she spoke: “I did not mean for it to go as it did. When Betty and Abigail began to have the fits, the doctor claimed witchcraft, not us. It was not our intent, but the story grew, and as we were in court, I feared for them if they were seen as lying.”
“And when did you begin wanting very, very hard that all in the room should believe?”
Mercy sat with her mouth agape for only a moment. “Early. I first wanted Tituba to admit to witchcraft, and that others should believe her. And for all courts, I wanted with my heart that our lies not be turned on us. Then Abigail Hobbs claimed to be a witch, and that was not my doing. Then I had no part, and all believed despite me. Then I found that I wanted very, very much that people stop believing.”
“But that did not happen, did it?”
Mercy shook her head, her eyes downcast.
“Once begun, you could not reverse the tide, could you?”
“No. I sat and prayed, and hoped and tried, but it was no use.”
“No. Such persecution takes root easily in the minds of men, and grows like a fire,” Constance said. “Is this the first of such misguided efforts, Mercy?”
Mercy shook her head. “No,” she said very quietly. “My parents.” Mercy began to cry. “Who never wronged me, not once.”
“Well, what is done, is over.” Constance resumed her work.
“But I have done wrong by others. My sins are terrible, and I do not know how to make them right!”
A maternal smile met the confession. “My dear, others have already died for your sins, because theirs were the greater sins.”
“But does that truly forgive me?”
Smiles from both older women on the porch came to that question. “No, dear, none of us are forgiven, no matter how many others die.”
Much later, at the sunset, Mercy spoke again. “May I join you ladies?”
“You already have, Mercy. You already have.”
PARSLEY, SAGE, ROSEMARY AND TIME
Jon L. Breen
It all started with a bet I had lost but was sure I should have won.
I was one of those wannabe writers determined to reach the shrinking ranks of willing-to-be readers, and for the past few years I had belonged to a writers’ group that met every other Wednesday evening at the home of a member. The members ranged in age from late thirties to early seventies. Some, including me, were what’s called pre-published, a vile euphemism that never raised my self esteem by a single degree. Others could lord it over the rest with a sale or two. A couple were so successful we wondered why they would bother with the group, maybe out of genuine altruism or maybe for relief from the built-in loneliness of the keyboard.
My chosen field was crime fiction, but no stories or novels by Justin Prince (classy byline, no?) had yet seen professional print. A recently acquired gig reviewing mystery novels for the local paper had raised my spirits, however.
The Wednesday after my first reviews appeared, we were meeting at Maisie Goldblatt’s house, a quaintly cozy, fragilely feminine venue better suited to genteel romance than mean-streets violence. To sustain us through the evening, we had coffee (decaf only in these wimpy times), tea, and cookies; the readings were as mixed a bag as usual.
Our oldest member, retired math teacher Fred Bushworthy, had just finished reading his latest essay on the fine art of orchid growing.
Grace Needleman said, “Fred, that is just beautiful. I can just see those orchids. I feel like they’re family.” Grace invariably liked everything and encouraged everybody.
“Fred,” I said, “your target market is a popular gardening magazine, right?”
“I hope so,” he said cheerfully.
“Well, it’s way too technical. Your weekend gardener is going to get lost in all that terminology.” I glanced at the notes I’d made. “Like stigmatic depression and non-parasitic epiphyte.”
“It’s redundant anyway,” said Maisie Goldblatt, who obviously understood the lingo better than I did. “Epiphytes are non-parasitic by definition.”
“I think you need to either simplify it—”
“You can’t write down to your readers,” our perpetually gloomy poet Axel Gruber intoned. “Respect their intelligence. Don’t treat them like children.” It was his hobbyhorse, and variations on it were almost the only comments he made on other members’ work.
I persisted. “Writing at a level they can understand isn’t writing down. Fred, you’re falling between two audiences. Either write it so the amateur can understand it or add some footnotes and send it to a professional journal.”
Always cheerful in the face of criticism, Fred shrugged and said, “I get it. You’re telling me this is another candidate for Fred’s compost heap.”
I shook my head in denial. Fred’s compost heap, which we all swore would some day bring forth blossoms, was a running joke of the group.
Fred was and always would be a hobbyist who wrote to keep busy and didn’t care greatly whether he sold.
Next to share was one of our successful pros. The latest chapter of Judy Klinger’s cute-cat mystery in progress struck me as oversweet as the dessert recipe that accompanied it, but she was selling the damn things, so the group cooed over it.
“Isn’t Itsy-poo just the darlingest pussy?” Grace enthused.
“Has there been a murder in this one?” Bill Wandsworth asked innocently.
“Three chapters ago,” Maisie remembered.
“I’ll get back to it,” Judy assured us, “but you’ll find when you’ve been at this as long as I have that your characters just take over and do whatever they feel like. I could no more tell Itsy-poo what to do than I could any other cat. And the people are just as intractable. Characters that really live and breathe can’t be ordered around.”
Preciously pernicious advice, but what could you say? She was a successful pro.
Next, Maisie treated us to a chapter of steamy romance that a few years ago would have been classified as soft-core porn.
“Can you get that graphic in a romance nowadays?” Charlie Wallace asked. Years in city journalism hadn’t destroyed his ability to blush.
“You sure can,” Maisie assured him. “I watch my market closely.”
Bill Wandsworth, who was almost my age and thus younger than the rest of the group, had become a close friend. As usual, he regaled us with another case for his tough but unsold private eye Johnny Whiplash, who went through all the familiar paces, including taking on a beautiful but treacherous client and surviving another blow to the skull. This shamus had undergone enough concussions to retire half a dozen NFL quarterbacks, but he kept coming back for more.
“Bill,” I said, “the pace is great and I liked some of your similes, but Johnny still seems to me like a forties character living in the twenty-first century.”
“But don’t you get it?” he said. “That’s the whole point!”
There was no point, but I let it go. Not for the first time, I wondered if I was wasting my time taking these Wednesday sessions so seriously. Were we just spinning our wheels, making and not hearing the same comments, never getting any farther ahead? If not for my reviewing gig, the predictable course of the evening would have depressed me.
Now it was time once again to hear the newly revised first chapter of Grace Needleman’s novel, a saga that would cover the whole rich canvas of twentieth-century American life. We all agreed it was getting better, the descriptions sharper, the writing tighter, the portents more portentous, but she’d been revising that first chapter for the past year. If she ever started chapter two, we’d have to break out the champagne.
We listened to Axel Gruber’s latest poem, his usual surrealistic and impenetrable free verse.
“Axel,” I said mildly, “have you ever tried writing a sonnet, I mean, as an exercise in self-discipline?” I wondered if he could, just as I wondered if abstract painters could draw a horse if they had to.
“I do not write sonnets,” he intoned, voice dripping with disdain. “Nor limericks. Nor haikus. Nor clerihews. Real poetry, great poetry, doesn’t color inside the lines; poetry isn’t made by a cookie-cutter; poetry doesn’t come with a set of printed rules like Scrabble. Poetry is the deepest expression of the self.”
When no one seemed ready to add anything to that, I said, “Well, I guess it’s my turn.” Next to last on the evening’s bill of fare, I regaled them with a new beginning on a suspense novel; I had a lot more beginnings than endings, but at least I offered a new one every week. Grace liked it; she always does. Judy made some grudging and patronizing remarks on my promise.
That brought us to the evening’s last reader, our calming influence and the man whose unaccountably regular presence held the group together. Charlie Wallace, a columnist for the local paper and a thorough pro, read us one of his humorous essays. And as usual all we had to offer him was appreciative laughter. Why did he keep coming to the meetings? Maybe the silent appreciation of his readers wasn’t enough. Maybe he was a frustrated stand-up. It was good to have Charlie as the last act, so to speak. If we ever let Axel go last, we’d all go out and kill ourselves.
The group’s unwritten bylaw was that no adult beverages would be offered until the reading was over and the purely social part of the evening began. This time Maisie brought out a bottle of sub-Dom-Perignon-but-better-than-chainstore champagne, filled a flute for everybody, and offered a toast: “Here’s to Justin’s first sale.”
Luckily, the group took the term sale rather loosely—what I was getting paid as a book reviewer was a little more than a free book but hardly enough to earn the exalted label of sale. It would have been more appropriately toasted with a boxed chardonnay. But I was pleased about it and happily accepted a round of congratulations. They all seemed to have read my first group of reviews and had nice things to say.
“It’s so hard to review a mystery without giving too much away,” Judy said. “So often, at least in my case, a reviewer will reveal something the reader should find out for herself. The people who write jacket copy are even worse. You hit just the right balance, Justin.” She simpered coyly, and I caught a flickering glimpse of the pretty young woman in her years-old publicity photo. “Maybe you’ll be reviewing me one day.”
God, I hoped not. If the opportunity came, I’d quietly turn it down on conflict of interest grounds—I could claim Judy, whom I could barely stand, was too dear a friend for me to retain my objectivity.
All the comments were complimentary until Bill said offhandedly, “You made one gaffe, though, you know.”
I was wounded, of course. You’ll always remember that single flotsam of rebuke in a sea of praise. “What do you mean?”
“When you were reviewing that mystery about the World War II home front, you said the use of the term ‘shrink’ was an anachronism.”
“It was,” I said. “ ‘Shrink’ as slang for psychiatrist didn’t come in until much later.”
Charlie came to my aid. “Justin’s right. I would say maybe in the late forties or early fifties, they started to use headshrinker as a slang term for psychiatrist or psychoanalyst. Eventually, this got shortened to shrink, but not before, I don’t know, maybe late fifties, early sixties. For sure, early forties is too early.”
Fred said, “Charlie’s got it right. I’m older than anybody here, and I don’t remember hearing shrink to mean shrink before the Kennedy administration.”
“It’s not a serious mistake, though,” Maisie said. “It’s not easy to keep track of period slang.”
“I never said it was a serious mistake,” I said, sounding more defensive than I intended. “I just mentioned it in passing in a damn favorable review. The author should be very happy with that review.”
