Her Loving Husband's Curse

2. Chapter 1-1

Chapter 1

Sarah Wentworth didn’t know how her life would change the first year of her marriage. She sat on a bench near the Massachusetts shore, protected from the high August sun by the shelter of overhanging trees. She watched the families on the narrow stretch of beach of Forest River Park, the children digging holes in the rocky sand, the mothers gossiping under the shade of striped umbrellas, two grandmas in their old-timey bathing suits and floppy straw hats, knee-deep in the water, walking back and forth in the laps of the waves, talking intently between them. Beyond them small white boats bumped and bobbed in the water, unattached to any dock, floating at will.

Sarah was attuned to the laughter of children, and she watched the families eating at the picnic tables on the grassy expanse beneath the trees, lounging in portable chairs, playing games, enjoying the late summer day. She watched the tourists park their rental cars on the dirt lot and walk to Pioneer Village where costumed docents showed visitors around the historical replicas of wooden homes, medicinal gardens, carpenter’s sheds, and stocks for the naughty, explaining life in Salem, then Naumkeag, in the 1630s.

Before my time, Sarah thought.

She stood with a wistful look at the mothers tending their children, enjoying her time alone with her thoughts after her shift at the library, Forest River Park a short block across Lafayette Street from Salem State University where she worked as a librarian. Though it was a year since she moved to Salem, there was still a magic about the place for her, a quietness, a calm she couldn’t associate with anywhere else. It might be a Massachusetts thing, a Salem thing, or a seaside thing, she wasn’t sure, but people were different there. They smiled at you. Said hello. There wasn’t the mad-rush pace you see in larger cities where she had lived, like Boston or Los Angeles. Since she was a girl, she had always found something serene in the ocean, the peace of going home, she thought, and in Salem she had the tranquility of the bay every day.

She walked to the end of the park and waved to the shirtless teenage boy sitting in a lawn chair outside the gate. She headed down Lafayette Street, right on Derby, finding her way home. Thinking of her husband in their bed, still sleeping as the brightest daylight hours dwindled away, she smiled. She stopped in front of her wooden house, the one with the two peaked gables, and she realized she had such a fondness for the place. She and that old house shared a secret between them, after all. It was almost exactly a year to the day when she first stood on that lawn, fascinated by the museum-like home, needing to know it better. And then James had appeared, handsome and pensive in the shadows, reaching out to touch her cheek. Even then he knew her. Before she knew who he was, he knew her.

She walked past the crooked oak tree and touched the brown slats of the exterior walls, then looked through the diamond-paned casement window into the great room, the shelves of books, the flat-screen television mismatched against the old-fashioned furniture, her black cat asleep on the long reading chair. She looked at the sky, the light hazy, fading behind the breeze-blown trees. The air was cooler now, less heavy, the heat of summer fading into the beginning of a memory, and it was growing darker earlier, which Sarah liked.

She opened the green front door, walked inside, and pet her cat between the ears. She watched the sun drop away, first a pink light on the horizon, then blue, then dark. She glanced at her bedroom door, still closed, then at the wooden ladder leading up to the loft-style attic. I need to get up there soon, she thought.

“Hello.”

She felt her cheeks blush hot at the sound of his voice. There he was, James, handsome as always, tall, gold hair, stormy night-black eyes, the smile that lit her up from the inside. She stood on her toes and pointed up her face so he could kiss her, which he did.

“Hello yourself,” she said.

They kissed again, and again, until the heat settled within her and she had to pull back or risk being distracted. She dropped her arms from his neck, nuzzled close to his cool skin, then stepped away.

“Not tonight, Doctor Wentworth. The exhibition starts in an hour.”

James’ eyes narrowed. “Jennifer should have supervised it,” he said.

“But I’m the only one with personal experience from that time.” Sarah looked at James, his ghost-white complexion, the hardness behind his flat-black eyes. “I suppose you were here then too.” She smiled, trying to lighten the mood. “I’m all right,” she said.

They left their wooden gabled house hand in hand. On Derby Street they passed the House of the Seven Gables, the Salem Maritime National Historic Site, and the U.S. Custom House. It was fully dark, the water steady in the bay, the boats bobbing with the flat-line rhythm of the low tide. The tourists cleared away when the museums closed at five p.m., and the locals were enjoying a last summer hurrah, dining under the stars at the restaurants along Pickering Wharf. It was a quiet night in Salem. Peaceful. The remaining humidity lingered like a soothing blanket, Sarah thought, protecting us. Protecting us from what, she wondered? She didn’t know, but suddenly her palms went wet and her breath stilted. She looked around, searching for anything that looked menacing or frightful, but she saw no one but James. She looked at him as he pressed his wire-rimmed eyeglasses against his nose, and she knew his strength, all of his strength, would keep them safe. She dismissed her shudders with the thought that she had been spending too much time in the seventeenth century. After that night, when the exhibition was over, she could immerse herself fully in the twenty-first century again.

When they turned down Lafayette Street and walked onto the campus of Salem State University, James’ lips tightened and his shoulders closed together. Jennifer and Olivia were waiting for them inside the library. Jennifer, an auburn-haired beauty, and her mother, Olivia, ever the gypsy with her peasant skirts and coin earrings, were Sarah’s dearest friends, her Wiccan friends, and she was happy to see them.

“Bickering witches,” James said, but he smiled when he said it.

Olivia patted Sarah’s hand lightly, as if she were afraid of breaking her. “Are you all right, dear?”

“You need to stop tip-toeing around me,” Sarah said. “I put the exhibition together. I’ve been working on this for weeks. I’m fine.”

“James doesn’t look fine,” Jennifer said.

“I know,” said Sarah. She looked around expecting to see one more face, and she was surprised when it wasn’t there. “Where’s that new guy you’ve been gushing about, Jennifer? I thought he was coming.”

Jennifer shook her head. “Soon,” she said.

They walked in silence to the Winfisky Gallery at the Ellison Campus Center in the North Campus, passing students with their backpacks slung over one shoulder, most walking in pairs chatting, others riding their bikes or listening to music blasting through their earbuds. Sarah felt her heart cough in her chest when she saw the sign outside the museum: The Salem Witch Trials. James’ hand tightened over hers, and though it hurt, his grip was strong, she squeezed back, trying to comfort him. After watching the doom on Olivia’s face, and the gloom on Jennifer’s, Sarah had enough.

“Stop looking at me like I’m going to explode!” Sarah said.

Olivia exhaled. Jennifer smiled. James looked away.

“I knew you’d be all right,” Jennifer said. She nudged James’ arm. “I told you she’d be all right.”

When they turned the corner near Winfisky Gallery Sarah saw the people waiting. Most were tourists with their walking shoes and cameras, ready for one more witch museum to visit, as though the Salem Witch Museum, the Witch Dungeon Museum, Witch House, and the tours weren’t enough. But there were others there too, locals as well as friends and families of the art and design students who created the exhibits.

Inside the gallery Sarah found the students making last minute adjustments, turning the statue of Rebecca Nurse to the right, straightening the painting of Gallows Hill, lighting the portrait of John Hathorne sitting center at a witch trial. James wandered from wall to wall, staring into the art as though he could reach through the paintings and the pencil drawings to the seventeenth century and wring a neck or two. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought him after all, Sarah thought.

“Should I open the doors, Mrs. Wentworth?” a student asked.

“Yes, Natalie,” Sarah said. “Go ahead.”

The people came in, oohing and aahing at the artistic interpretations of the Salem Witch Trials. Families and friends hugged each other, proud of their students. A few wiped away tears. Sarah nodded, pleased with the response.

Olivia stepped beside Sarah, slid her arm around Sarah’s waist, and squeezed. “This took such strength for you, Sarah. Look how far you’ve come in just a year.”

“Thank you,” Sarah said.

Olivia leaned close and whispered. “Jennifer said there’s a recreation of the…the…” She shook her head, unable to continue.

“The dungeon? It’s in the next room.”

“Show me.”

Sarah led the way. It was dark inside, and she could barely make out Olivia’s short-cropped red hair and steel-gray eyes in the flickering light of the flameless candles. The recreation of the dungeon was 70 by 280 feet, made of oak timbers and siding, and inside were dirty, suffering-looking women mannequins in seventeenth century rags, chained by irons to the wall. Most of the women had no bedding, though one had a sad excuse of a straw mattress. One mannequin woman was on her knees praying. Another was prostrate, her eyes open, staring at a God in heaven who could not or would not help her. She was dying, or already dead, it was hard to tell. Sarah watched the women, some with their witch-accused children clinging to their knees, and she was surprised to feel nothing. Maybe she had relived the scene so often in her dreams that seeing it played out with life-sized dolls didn’t affect her. She felt Olivia watching her, that detective seeking clues look only Olivia could do.

“You’re all right,” Olivia said.

“I told you I was fine.”

“I didn’t believe you.”

“I know.”

Olivia stepped closer to the exhibit. “Where are the bars?”

“They didn’t need bars. We were chained. If anyone tried to escape they were immediately executed whether they were tried or not, whether they confessed or not.”

Olivia’s hand went to her heart. “Why do only a few have bedding?”

“We had to pay for everything. We had to pay for the bedding, a flat straw mat, useless though it was, and we had to pay for food. The prisoners who couldn’t afford to pay went without. We had to pay the salaries of the sheriff, the magistrates, even the hangman who would take our lives away. The bit of light here is brighter than it was then. When it’s dark, that’s when your mind plays tricks on you. Everywhere was a shadow where monsters could hide.”

Suddenly, in the space of a thought, the numbness went away and Sarah was there again, in 1692. She saw herself in the dungeon alongside the mannequin women, only they were living now, all of them suffering. The pain of it all, the horror and the sadness, were real and she had to shake herself back into the present. Olivia placed a comforting hand on Sarah’s shoulder, and Sarah exhaled.

“We had to pay for the privilege of having our bodies searched for witch marks. We paid to have our heads shaved. Sometimes I could hear James arguing so loudly, begging them to treat me well. Name your price, he’d say, the grief cracking his voice. Name your price for some kindness for my wife and I will pay you that and tenfold more. But I suffered with everyone else. They barely gave us enough water to drink because they thought they could coerce a confession from us if we were thirsting to death. When it rained it flooded inside and we’d be up to our waist in rainwater, urine, and feces, and often that was the only water we had to drink. The rats would bite our legs and arms. Some prisoners went mad. The only thought that kept me sane was knowing that James was trying to set me free. After a while I was shipped to Boston with other prisoners because the jail here was full. But I was already too sick when I arrived.”