THE DEATH FIRE.
The house of Samuel Parris, the minister of the church of Salem, stood
in a solitary place, a little out of the village, which lay between it
and the sea, whose interminable beat could be heard throbbing like a
pulse along the beach.
When every thing was still, and the hum of insects asleep in the forest,
which, boundless as the blue ocean, stretched in an opposite direction,
dark and teeming with mysterious shadows, the repose was almost
appalling. Then, especially, the sweep of these waves, coming with
distinctness to the minister's house, and blending with the shiver of
the forest leaves, and the cry of such birds as sing to the darkness,
rendered the night-time one of peculiar mournfulness in that
out-of-the-way dwelling.
But the young girl who sat in the little family-room, late one quiet
evening, had learned to love the dark hours, and so listened to the
mighty and interminable throb of those waves with strange sympathy. The
dull tick of an old oak clock, whose coffin-like frame was heavy with
carvings, seemed answering the eternal anthem with its small noise, like
a human voice striving to answer the hymns of universal nature; and the
petty sound irritated her nerves, while the everlasting sweep, afar off,
made her heart swell and her eye kindle.
As Abigail Williams sat thus restlessly listening, Tituba, the old
Indian woman, came into the room, and sat down on the floor at her feet.
The woman did not speak, but lifted her face, wrinkled like a dried
plum, to that of the young girl, and waited to be addressed. The large,
earnest eyes of Abby Williams looked down upon the Indian.
"It is late, Tituba," she said, "the clock has struck eleven, and no
sign of his coming!"
"He will be here--Wahpee would have been home long ago, if any thing had
kept the young chief away. Are you sleepy, Abigail?"
"Sleepy! no. I shall never be sleepy again. The knowledge of who I am,
and what they are in whose bosom I have slept all my life, keeps rest
away from me--I know well how Judas felt when he sold his Lord."
Tituba shook her head. She had no Bible, and could not be made to
comprehend what one meant, though she had lived with the minister at
Salem since Abigail was an infant. Hers was a wilder and more romantic
religion--the Manitou of the Indians was her God, and she read his word
in the leaves of the forest and the rush of the mountain stream. With
her, treachery to the whites was faith to the Indian. Had Judas betrayed
his enemy, she would have considered him a hero: but to betray his
Master--old Tituba could not have understood that!
"You look like her now," whispered the woman, folding her hands over her
knees, and rocking back and forth on the floor, as she always did when
about to talk of the past.
"My mother--do I look like her?" said Abigail.
"About the eyes, when there is trouble in them; but hers were blue, like
a periwinkle in the morning, while yours are darker, and change so."
"And her--that other woman--that grand, sweet-spoken woman, whose spirit
will not rest--Anna Hutchinson--my grandmother? Have you seen her,
Tituba?"
"Yes, when the warriors brought her into the forest for sacrifice. I was
there. I watched the women, while they gathered pitch pine-knots, and
scattered turpentine over the wood which the braves heaped on her death
fire!"
"Did they torture her?"
"No. The wood was piled high; the Pequod women had brought heaps of
pitch pine; the warriors, who held her and her little ones, came
forward, ready to throw them on the flames together; they only waited
for the chief!"
"And she stood ready for this terrible death?" broke in Abigail. "Was
she brave, or was it only in speech that she proved valiant?"
"Brave! The warriors grew proud of their victim, she looked death so
grandly in the face. The chief came, and his eye flamed brightly when he
saw her. She was worthy of the death fire kindled in his honor."
"And he, a king, stood by and saw this brave woman tortured?"
"Why, would you have them offer a meaner victim before the sachem?"
"It was a fearful cruelty," said Abigail, shuddering.
"She was brave for herself, but not for her children," continued Tituba.
"When her little ones clung around her, holding to her garments, pale
and terror-struck, she flung up her arms, and called aloud for some one
to take them away and save them from torture. She asked the warriors to
think of all their powers, and heap the pain on her; she would bear
every thing; they might be days killing her; only take her children
away, and keep them out of sight and hearing, while she died!"
"And did no one take compassion on her--even those fiends incarnate?"
"The same blood that burned in their veins beats in yours," answered the
Indian woman, severely. "Who took compassion on her, when she was tied
to a cart and whipped by constables from village to village, like a
vicious hound? Ask yourself if the death fire was not mercy compared to
that! The warriors knew how to respect her courage; but her own people
mocked her shame while they tortured her."
"Both were horrible. But her little children? My mother was one of those
helpless creatures!"
"There was a law in our tribe, maiden, by which a bereaved mother might
adopt a captive, if she wished, in place of the child she had buried. By
the side of the sachem stood a woman, who had lost a child, bright as
the May blossom; and her heart was heavy with grief when she saw a
little girl, with hair like sunbeams, clinging to that wretched woman,
with its eyes, large like those of a young fawn, turned on the fire.
Maiden, Manitou sometimes sends the soul of a dead child home again in
another form, when its mother's heart is breaking. The woman knew that
her child had wandered back from the great hunting-ground, with its hair
turned golden, and its eyes blue like the sky in summer. So she went to
the chief with many words, and asked for her child. The same mother bore
the Pequod sachem and the woman who claimed the little girl, so he gave
her leave to take, not only the golden-haired child, but both Anna
Hutchinson's children; for the other was a brave girl, who stood between
her little sister and the flames, till her hands and clothes were
scorched by them."
"And the Indian woman took them both?"
"They would not be torn apart. When Anna Hutchinson saw this, she
beckoned the Indian woman, and besought her to take the two sisters deep
into the forest, away from the sound of her death cries. The sight of
that little child made the woman's heart soft. She could have cried, but
that the females of her race are ashamed of tears. When your grandmother
saw this, she stooped and whispered, 'Take them away, and you shall fire
the pile; you shall kill me with your own hands, and feast on my agony
if it will please you.'
"So the Pequod woman took the two children, one a young girl, the other
a little thing so high, and led them away to her own lodge. When she
went back to the death fire it was flaming high. The warriors had drawn
close around it; the trees above were heavy with smoke, and crisping in
the hot wind. Anna Hutchinson was chained to the death pyre. Her arms
were tied with thongs of bark, and her hair, thick with silver threads,
shone gloomily in the death light; for the flames had already seized
upon her garments and were creeping up the folds, hissing as they went.
She stood firm, looking toward the path where her little ones had
disappeared. When the woman came back she called out, with a great sob,
'My children, my children!'
"'They are safe in my lodge,' answered the Pequod woman.
"Then the warriors saw a smile break over Anna Hutchinson's face, which
rested there till the flames surged up and veiled her form in a cloud of
fire.
"Then the smoke rose blackly, and hot flashes of fire writhed in and out
like serpents in torment. A great gust of wind rushed through the forest
boughs and, sweeping the smoke away, drove the slumbering flames into
fury. Then an awful cry broke from that poor woman. The thongs that
bound her wrists snapped asunder--her arms were flung wildly outward
through the hot flames and surging smoke, and her cry burst into words
of awful entreaty that some one would be merciful and kill her.
"The Pequod woman had a soft heart. That cry ran through her like an
arrow. She could not bear to see the woman who had brought back her
child from the great hunting-ground, more beautiful than ever, writhing
in the hot fire which hissed, and leaped, and clung around her like
fiery snakes. The Indian woman took an arrow from her quiver, and aimed
at the white bosom that the flames were licking with a thousand hot
tongues. The arrow lost itself in the death fire, missing its aim. Then
the Indian woman took the tomahawk from her belt and poised it. Blinded
with smoke and mad with pain, Anna Hutchinson saw the act, and struggled
fiercely to step forth and meet the blow. But the thongs that bound her
to the stake were green and defied the flames. So with one bound the
Indian woman sprang into the fire and cleft that broad, white forehead
open with her tomahawk."
"It was a brave, a kind act," cried Abby, while the tears that had stood
in her eyes, flashed downward like broken diamonds. "And was this the
woman who died uttering curses, and denouncing her persecutors--whose
terrible maledictions cling to my own life? Tituba, tell me! Did you
hear Anna Hutchinson's curse come out from those death flames?"
"No, maiden--that was wrung from her when her family were butchered at
Aquiday, to which place she had been driven by the people of Boston.
Then she grew mad, and words fell from her lips like hot coals; for the
sight of her mangled children made her a prophetess; but afterward, at
the stake, when the two youngest of her children were safe, she broke
into smiles amid the flames."
The old woman spoke in the Indian language, and her narrative took a
depth and force which no modern tongue can reach. Abby Williams sat
trembling under the influence of the fearful picture she had drawn, for
the blood of Anna Hutchinson beat loud in her heart.
"And the Pequod woman--where did she go with the children?"
"She took them to her lodge, and loved them both as her own children.
But when her tribe was broken up, and Uncas dead, she wandered with them
among such fragments of the Pequods as still dwelt in the old
hunting-grounds. But the elder maiden never took kindly to the woods;
her heart turned to her mother's people; and she pined for a sight of
them. The Indian woman had a soft heart; so she came with the maiden and
her little sister to the sea-shore, to find a home for them among the
whites."
"Ah me! I know it all," cried Abby. "They came here into this very town.
She, my mother, was forced into the wilderness, as her mother had been,
driven with the constable's scourge. She was found almost dying in the
woods by King Philip, who made her his wife. I know how he fought and
died, leaving that woman a widow with two children. One, a noble boy,
was sold into slavery, under the hot sun of Bermuda, from which he was
rescued to be a fugitive and an outcast in the woods where his father
once reigned. The other was brought by the dying widow to this dwelling,
and left with the golden-haired daughter of Anna Hutchinson, who had
become the wife of her sister's judge, Samuel Parris. The fair
minister's wife, and King Philip's widow, met in this very room. The
widow was dying from exposure, grief, and starvation; and fled to find
shelter for her child before she joined her husband. From her cold lips
the minister's wife heard, for the first time, that she was Anna
Hutchinson's child; that her only sister had been scourged by the orders
of her husband. The truth killed her. That night her child, Elizabeth
Parris, was born. Two days after, King Philip's widow and the minister's
wife were laid in the burying-ground back of that meeting-house. The two
children were left together, and grew up lovingly, as sisters should,
till all the mournful details of this story were told to King Philip's
daughter by her fugitive brother, the Bermuda slave.
"You see I have forgotten nothing of this terrible story; how could I?
it is graven on my heart, and every mark has left a wound. But let me
tell you more, old woman; more of the poor forest-girl your love has
tended so long. When this story first reached her ear, she stood by the
double grave of these two sisters, and learned how they had been
wronged. Then all the sweet love of her nature was turned to gall; she
dreaded the sight of that fair being who had slept with her in the same
trundle-bed, who had been her second life. She trembled with constant
fear that her heart would fall back to its old love again. The sight of
these rude walls reminded her no longer of domestic peace, but of her
mother's wrongs. She was embittered by her grandmother's curse. Oh,
Tituba, Tituba, this fearful thing have I become, I, Abigail Williams!"
"No, not Abigail Williams. That name was given in the meeting-house, out
there, and does not belong to King Philip's daughter. He called her
Mahaska."
"Yes," said Abby; and her head fell forward upon her bosom in deep
despondency; "that is my name; it is burned upon my heart! All the
waters of the ocean would not wash it out."