Agatha was picking flowers. The activity was frowned upon as frivolous by Pastor Parris and the elders of her 17th century New England village in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, but she loved the pretty blossoms, and her twenty-year-old mind could not understand why it should be discouraged so. It calmed her mind after the altercation that she had had with that girl, Anne, who was friends with Pastor Parris' family.
The April sunshine seeping through the light cloud cover warmed the field of spring blossoms, causing a slight dampness to rise from the cold ground in misty tendrils. The scent of the flowers cloaked in the mist was heavy in the air. Agatha jumped back as a bulky shape in tattered, grimy cloth arose from behind an old rotten log that she was approaching. She fell to the ground dropping her collected bounty as her hands flew to her mouth too late to stifle a small scream.
"Get ye gone from here!" the lump of cloth growled as she materialized into a scrawny old woman. "What cha mean scaring an old woman like that?"
As Agatha recognized the village vagrant, Sarah Goode, her heart began to slow. Reaching about she began retrieving her flowers, as she stammered, "Didn't mean to cause you fright."
"Go! Be gone!" commanded Sarah Goode, hopping from foot to foot, waving her hands wildly.
Agatha responded by leaping into the air and then turning and gathering her skirts up, racing back to the village as Sarah Goode sank back into what must have been her sleeping spot.
Neither saw the watcher in the woods adjacent to the clearing.
* * *
Strange happenings seemed to be very common that spring in the Bay Colony. All the adults were talking amongst themselves when they thought that the children could not overhear. People, mostly female, both young and old were behaving the most peculiar ways. The Pastor's children and their friends had been speaking in strange tongues and making wild gestures.
The bedridden old Sarah Osborn was said to rise and night and roam her house, strange shadows darkening the curtains, and the sounds from within were other-worldly.
A ghost was said to have been haunting the village square all the prior winter in the dead of the night.
The watcher in the dark saw and heard all.
* * *
Returning from the well with water early one evening, Agatha was keeping her head down, trying not to slosh the liquid from the buckets that she carried on a yoke across her shoulders. The hoots of owls and chirping of crickets filled the darkening dirt roads between the village houses. With the darkness came the chill and the wisps of fog, worming its way back in from where the sunlight had forced it to hide.
Rounding the corner of her cabin, she stopped suddenly, spilling just a small amount of the precious water. She could see a shape hiding in the shadows next to the wood pile. It did not move, but it was definitely there. Agatha peered more intently at it, hoping that it was nothing dangerous. The shadowy figure moved. It rose slowly from the crouch that it had been in.
The figure became that of an old woman, but something was amiss. It took Agatha a moment to place what was wrong, but she finally concluded that the problem was thatshe could see the wood pile THROUGH the old woman. It was the ghost! Somehow, her reflexes prevented her from spilling the buckets as she stepped back in fear. She could utter not a sound from her dry throat.
"Do you know where my daughter is?" the ghost whispered in such a low tone that Agatha could barely make out the words. "I can't find my little Tabitha."
At this point, another figure, this one a young woman glowing slightly appeared next to the ghost taking her hand and soothing her with her other hand stroking the back of her head. This new apparition looked over at Agatha and whispered, also very quietly, "Do not fear, my child. This one is lost and I will help her to find her way."
"What is happening?" Agatha blurted out as she looked around trying to determine how she could flee.
"I am Messenger Patience. You are not in danger. I am here to help this lost soul to find peace," the glowing woman answered.
"She will leave the village and never return?" Agatha asked, somewhat overwhelmed.
"Yes," said Messenger Patience, as she led the ghost around the corner of the cottage and both disappeared, the glow of the Messenger lingering for just a moment.
Agatha stood staring at where they had been but a few moments hence, and then went into the cottage.
As observant as Agatha had been regarding the ghost and the Messenger, she did not see the watcher in the shadow of the next cottage, but the watcher did see Agatha and the ghost, but not the Messenger who had apparently only appeared to Agatha.
* * *
That summersaw hysteria grip the village. Young and old girls alike started behaving in all manner of strange ways. When the Pastor's children were afflicted, he questioned them and determined that they were being controlled by witchcraft. A friend of his daughter, Anne by name, admitted that they had been bewitched by old Sarah Goode and several other women.
The accused were questioned and found lacking. At their trial, Anne and her friends writhed in agony making all manner of awful sounds and the unfortunate women were found guilty, despite their claims of innocence, and then quickly hanged. Burning of witches at the stake only occurred in Europe, but hanging was easier on both the accused and the witnesses in the Massachusetts Bay.
Author's Note: When this story was related to me by Messenger Doohan MacDonald, late of the Isle of Islay, so that I could pass it on to you, he indicated that Agatha was not told of these events, so I will not dwell on them here.
Agatha did not see her mysterious glowing visitor again during this time.
* * *
Agatha was not to be spared. After the initial group of witches were disposed of, the village hoped that things would return to some form of normality, but it was not to be.
As Agatha was once more going to the well to fill her buckets, she was accosted by three burly men of stern visage. Two of them grabbed her by the arms and started to pull her from the well, spilling her buckets to the ground, her yoke ignored where it leaned against the side of the well.
"What are you doing, Sirs?" She askedin shock, as she stumbled along in the wake of the men.
"Quiet girl," the third man, who had no hold on her, commanded. "You are to answer for your deeds."
"Mother! Father!" she wailed. "Help me!!"
The man who had spoken before slapped Agatha across the mouth and said once again, "I said hold your tongue witch!"
Agatha was aghast as jumbled thoughts raced through her mind, but not out her mouth. She was no witch. What were these men talking about? Where were they taking her?
Her parents came out the door of the cottage. Her mother screamed, "Where are you going with my daughter?" as Agatha's father held her back from following.
"Go back into your house," the man who seemed to be in charge shouted. "You will be summoned later."
Agatha's mother continued to wail incoherently as her father pulled the distraught woman back into their cottage and closed the door. They both knew what would happen but were powerless against the courts and magistrates.
Agatha was hauled feet often dragging in the dirt to the jail, where she was thrust unceremoniously into a dank, dark, little cell, the metal door clanging shut behind her. The cell was a mere 12 by 8 feet with damp stone walls and a dirt floor that was not quite muddy. She was not given any food or water by her jailors during the entire night.
She did have one visitor?
Messenger Patience appeared, glowing dimly in the cell. "Gather your wits and try to be brave," she instructed.
"But I have done nothing wrong!" Agatha said in a wavering voice.
"This is true, but such has not saved those who have gone before you," the Messenger replied. "They will tell all mannerof lies about you, and I fear that there will be nothing that can deter their course."
"You must prepare yourself for what will follow," the Messenger continued.
"What are they going to do to me?" Agatha asked in barely a whisper.
"They will end your life in this existence, but be calm," Messenger Patience responded. "Rest assured that this will not be the end of you. You will continue in the next existence, just as I did."
"I'm going to DIE?" Agatha gasped, her voice rising on the final word.
"Almost certainly," the Messenger said in return. "That is their modus. That is what they did in my case and in the case of the other women from this village who have gone before you."
"Your case?" was all that Agatha could think to ask, regarding that heavy, information filled statement.
"Yes, my case. I too was accused of witchcraft and executed ten years hence. It was a painful experience, but that is all behind, and now I am a Messenger. I help others enduring the same fate."
At this moment, a guard came into the small room outside the cell, shining his candle about above his head, but he only saw the young woman sprawled against the back wall. Messenger Patience could only be seen or heard by Agatha. "Be quiet," he commanded and left.
Agatha waited all that night and the next day, but no one came to visit her, nor to give her any food or drink or to let her free. Her stomach growled its complaint, and her mouth was so parched she could barely have spoken had there been anyone to speak with.
* * *
On the morning of the second day, which was, by some coincidence, All Hallows Eve, she was hauled from the cell into a room filled with people and made to stand in a small square space lined with a waist high railing, where she was chained to one of the spindles. The sound swelled as she had been led in and became so loud that it almost hurt ears not used to such volume. She was able to make out a few words from the cacophony; witch and evil and end her reign.
An old, stern man seated in dark robes with a white wig, banged on his desk with a gavel and demanded silence.
"This girl Agatha has been brought before us, accused of witchcraft and evilly consorting with the spawn of the devil," he said ominously. "Who makes these accusations?"
The Pastor's daughter Betty and her friend Anne Putnam was pushed forward by Pastor Parris. "Tell them what you told me, girls," the instructed.
Young Betty, only nine, stood with her thumb in her mouth, but the older girl, Anne, being 12, was more forthcoming, almost seeming to take glee from the attention of the crowd.
"I watched Agatha from afar for weeks. I saw her work magic with the Witch Goode and others," Anne declared to gasps from the audience.
"I saw the witch Goode fly up through the morning mist making the most horrible of screeches and animal sounds. She waved her hands at Agatha as she cast some sort of spell, making her fly also, then when Agatha landed, she ran away. The witch then sank back into the mist to disappear. Agatha was never the same after that. She would look at you with the mostmalevolent gaze and speak gibberish," Anne Putnum declared.
She continued her testimony, "I saw her among the many girls and women coming and going from Sarah Osborne's cabin at all hours of the night. The sounds were frightening so that I had to flee and could not overhear what was said."
Anne then added, "I saw Agatha banish the ghost from the village. She met it outside her cabin one night, talked to it a moment, then commanded it to leave and never return. The ghost then floated around the corner of the cottage, and no one has seen it in the village since." Anne led Betty back to Pastor Parris, apparently having said all that she intended.
These statements caused the crowd to erupt in a frenzy of voices, from which the Magistrate eventually regained order with much pounding of his gavel and shouting of orders. When the room was again quiet, he asked, "Who else has words to share in this matter?"
An old man, which Agatha recognized has the jailor, stepped forward and said, "She talked to her familiars while in the cell at night when no one else was there. I heard her."
Agatha tried to protest that this was all not true, but as she had been warned, it made no difference to those who had already made up their minds. The trial ended quickly with the Magistrate stating that with two witnesses testifying in agreement while none denied the allegations, he pronounced Agatha guilty of witchcraft, the sentence of hanging by the neck until dead to be carried out immediately. Her parents were in the back of the room, not having been allowed to testify in her defense. Agatha saw her mother collapse when the verdictwas given, her father catching the falling woman and easing her to the floor.
Agatha was unchained from the railing and led through the rabid crowd, who threw insults and other more substantial items at her. She was taken to an old oak tree behind the court where a large black robed man held the noose of a rope, awaiting her. She was made to stand on an empty wine barrel as the noose was placed around her neck. The Magistrate asked if she had any last words for her village or her God.
As Agatha's mind searched for something to say, Messenger Patience appeared floating before her, once more in a way that only Agatha could see or hear her. "Take my hands, child."
The assembled crowd watched as Agatha reached out with her bound hands before her to nothing that they could discern.
The Messenger continued, "It will only hurt for a brief moment, then you will be free, with me."
Agatha repeated the Messenger's words, "I will be free," as the barrel was pushed over, her neck snapped, saving her from the agony of strangulation, and she was gone.
When Agatha opened her eyes, she too was glowing as she, along with the Messenger, floated up through the branches of the huge oak tree. Agatha knew that one day she too would become a Messenger and help others.
Author's Note: This is the first story of my new Historical Messengers series. Agatha was a fictitious character, but most of the others actually lived during the period.
At the end of the Salem Witch trials, which spanned the period June 1692 to May 1693, 19 people had been hanged, 5 died in custody and one was killed by being crushed with stonesfor refusing to enter a plea of innocence or guilt. The trials ground to a halt after about a year when the Governor's wife was accused and later exonerated of witchcraft, after which court rules were changed to require more hard evidence than the word of impressionable witnesses.
The April sunshine seeping through the light cloud cover warmed the field of spring blossoms, causing a slight dampness to rise from the cold ground in misty tendrils. The scent of the flowers cloaked in the mist was heavy in the air. Agatha jumped back as a bulky shape in tattered, grimy cloth arose from behind an old rotten log that she was approaching. She fell to the ground dropping her collected bounty as her hands flew to her mouth too late to stifle a small scream.
"Get ye gone from here!" the lump of cloth growled as she materialized into a scrawny old woman. "What cha mean scaring an old woman like that?"
As Agatha recognized the village vagrant, Sarah Goode, her heart began to slow. Reaching about she began retrieving her flowers, as she stammered, "Didn't mean to cause you fright."
"Go! Be gone!" commanded Sarah Goode, hopping from foot to foot, waving her hands wildly.
Agatha responded by leaping into the air and then turning and gathering her skirts up, racing back to the village as Sarah Goode sank back into what must have been her sleeping spot.
Neither saw the watcher in the woods adjacent to the clearing.
* * *
Strange happenings seemed to be very common that spring in the Bay Colony. All the adults were talking amongst themselves when they thought that the children could not overhear. People, mostly female, both young and old were behaving the most peculiar ways. The Pastor's children and their friends had been speaking in strange tongues and making wild gestures.
The bedridden old Sarah Osborn was said to rise and night and roam her house, strange shadows darkening the curtains, and the sounds from within were other-worldly.
A ghost was said to have been haunting the village square all the prior winter in the dead of the night.
The watcher in the dark saw and heard all.
* * *
Returning from the well with water early one evening, Agatha was keeping her head down, trying not to slosh the liquid from the buckets that she carried on a yoke across her shoulders. The hoots of owls and chirping of crickets filled the darkening dirt roads between the village houses. With the darkness came the chill and the wisps of fog, worming its way back in from where the sunlight had forced it to hide.
Rounding the corner of her cabin, she stopped suddenly, spilling just a small amount of the precious water. She could see a shape hiding in the shadows next to the wood pile. It did not move, but it was definitely there. Agatha peered more intently at it, hoping that it was nothing dangerous. The shadowy figure moved. It rose slowly from the crouch that it had been in.
The figure became that of an old woman, but something was amiss. It took Agatha a moment to place what was wrong, but she finally concluded that the problem was thatshe could see the wood pile THROUGH the old woman. It was the ghost! Somehow, her reflexes prevented her from spilling the buckets as she stepped back in fear. She could utter not a sound from her dry throat.
"Do you know where my daughter is?" the ghost whispered in such a low tone that Agatha could barely make out the words. "I can't find my little Tabitha."
At this point, another figure, this one a young woman glowing slightly appeared next to the ghost taking her hand and soothing her with her other hand stroking the back of her head. This new apparition looked over at Agatha and whispered, also very quietly, "Do not fear, my child. This one is lost and I will help her to find her way."
"What is happening?" Agatha blurted out as she looked around trying to determine how she could flee.
"I am Messenger Patience. You are not in danger. I am here to help this lost soul to find peace," the glowing woman answered.
"She will leave the village and never return?" Agatha asked, somewhat overwhelmed.
"Yes," said Messenger Patience, as she led the ghost around the corner of the cottage and both disappeared, the glow of the Messenger lingering for just a moment.
Agatha stood staring at where they had been but a few moments hence, and then went into the cottage.
As observant as Agatha had been regarding the ghost and the Messenger, she did not see the watcher in the shadow of the next cottage, but the watcher did see Agatha and the ghost, but not the Messenger who had apparently only appeared to Agatha.
* * *
That summersaw hysteria grip the village. Young and old girls alike started behaving in all manner of strange ways. When the Pastor's children were afflicted, he questioned them and determined that they were being controlled by witchcraft. A friend of his daughter, Anne by name, admitted that they had been bewitched by old Sarah Goode and several other women.
The accused were questioned and found lacking. At their trial, Anne and her friends writhed in agony making all manner of awful sounds and the unfortunate women were found guilty, despite their claims of innocence, and then quickly hanged. Burning of witches at the stake only occurred in Europe, but hanging was easier on both the accused and the witnesses in the Massachusetts Bay.
Author's Note: When this story was related to me by Messenger Doohan MacDonald, late of the Isle of Islay, so that I could pass it on to you, he indicated that Agatha was not told of these events, so I will not dwell on them here.
Agatha did not see her mysterious glowing visitor again during this time.
* * *
Agatha was not to be spared. After the initial group of witches were disposed of, the village hoped that things would return to some form of normality, but it was not to be.
As Agatha was once more going to the well to fill her buckets, she was accosted by three burly men of stern visage. Two of them grabbed her by the arms and started to pull her from the well, spilling her buckets to the ground, her yoke ignored where it leaned against the side of the well.
"What are you doing, Sirs?" She askedin shock, as she stumbled along in the wake of the men.
"Quiet girl," the third man, who had no hold on her, commanded. "You are to answer for your deeds."
"Mother! Father!" she wailed. "Help me!!"
The man who had spoken before slapped Agatha across the mouth and said once again, "I said hold your tongue witch!"
Agatha was aghast as jumbled thoughts raced through her mind, but not out her mouth. She was no witch. What were these men talking about? Where were they taking her?
Her parents came out the door of the cottage. Her mother screamed, "Where are you going with my daughter?" as Agatha's father held her back from following.
"Go back into your house," the man who seemed to be in charge shouted. "You will be summoned later."
Agatha's mother continued to wail incoherently as her father pulled the distraught woman back into their cottage and closed the door. They both knew what would happen but were powerless against the courts and magistrates.
Agatha was hauled feet often dragging in the dirt to the jail, where she was thrust unceremoniously into a dank, dark, little cell, the metal door clanging shut behind her. The cell was a mere 12 by 8 feet with damp stone walls and a dirt floor that was not quite muddy. She was not given any food or water by her jailors during the entire night.
She did have one visitor?
Messenger Patience appeared, glowing dimly in the cell. "Gather your wits and try to be brave," she instructed.
"But I have done nothing wrong!" Agatha said in a wavering voice.
"This is true, but such has not saved those who have gone before you," the Messenger replied. "They will tell all mannerof lies about you, and I fear that there will be nothing that can deter their course."
"You must prepare yourself for what will follow," the Messenger continued.
"What are they going to do to me?" Agatha asked in barely a whisper.
"They will end your life in this existence, but be calm," Messenger Patience responded. "Rest assured that this will not be the end of you. You will continue in the next existence, just as I did."
"I'm going to DIE?" Agatha gasped, her voice rising on the final word.
"Almost certainly," the Messenger said in return. "That is their modus. That is what they did in my case and in the case of the other women from this village who have gone before you."
"Your case?" was all that Agatha could think to ask, regarding that heavy, information filled statement.
"Yes, my case. I too was accused of witchcraft and executed ten years hence. It was a painful experience, but that is all behind, and now I am a Messenger. I help others enduring the same fate."
At this moment, a guard came into the small room outside the cell, shining his candle about above his head, but he only saw the young woman sprawled against the back wall. Messenger Patience could only be seen or heard by Agatha. "Be quiet," he commanded and left.
Agatha waited all that night and the next day, but no one came to visit her, nor to give her any food or drink or to let her free. Her stomach growled its complaint, and her mouth was so parched she could barely have spoken had there been anyone to speak with.
* * *
On the morning of the second day, which was, by some coincidence, All Hallows Eve, she was hauled from the cell into a room filled with people and made to stand in a small square space lined with a waist high railing, where she was chained to one of the spindles. The sound swelled as she had been led in and became so loud that it almost hurt ears not used to such volume. She was able to make out a few words from the cacophony; witch and evil and end her reign.
An old, stern man seated in dark robes with a white wig, banged on his desk with a gavel and demanded silence.
"This girl Agatha has been brought before us, accused of witchcraft and evilly consorting with the spawn of the devil," he said ominously. "Who makes these accusations?"
The Pastor's daughter Betty and her friend Anne Putnam was pushed forward by Pastor Parris. "Tell them what you told me, girls," the instructed.
Young Betty, only nine, stood with her thumb in her mouth, but the older girl, Anne, being 12, was more forthcoming, almost seeming to take glee from the attention of the crowd.
"I watched Agatha from afar for weeks. I saw her work magic with the Witch Goode and others," Anne declared to gasps from the audience.
"I saw the witch Goode fly up through the morning mist making the most horrible of screeches and animal sounds. She waved her hands at Agatha as she cast some sort of spell, making her fly also, then when Agatha landed, she ran away. The witch then sank back into the mist to disappear. Agatha was never the same after that. She would look at you with the mostmalevolent gaze and speak gibberish," Anne Putnum declared.
She continued her testimony, "I saw her among the many girls and women coming and going from Sarah Osborne's cabin at all hours of the night. The sounds were frightening so that I had to flee and could not overhear what was said."
Anne then added, "I saw Agatha banish the ghost from the village. She met it outside her cabin one night, talked to it a moment, then commanded it to leave and never return. The ghost then floated around the corner of the cottage, and no one has seen it in the village since." Anne led Betty back to Pastor Parris, apparently having said all that she intended.
These statements caused the crowd to erupt in a frenzy of voices, from which the Magistrate eventually regained order with much pounding of his gavel and shouting of orders. When the room was again quiet, he asked, "Who else has words to share in this matter?"
An old man, which Agatha recognized has the jailor, stepped forward and said, "She talked to her familiars while in the cell at night when no one else was there. I heard her."
Agatha tried to protest that this was all not true, but as she had been warned, it made no difference to those who had already made up their minds. The trial ended quickly with the Magistrate stating that with two witnesses testifying in agreement while none denied the allegations, he pronounced Agatha guilty of witchcraft, the sentence of hanging by the neck until dead to be carried out immediately. Her parents were in the back of the room, not having been allowed to testify in her defense. Agatha saw her mother collapse when the verdictwas given, her father catching the falling woman and easing her to the floor.
Agatha was unchained from the railing and led through the rabid crowd, who threw insults and other more substantial items at her. She was taken to an old oak tree behind the court where a large black robed man held the noose of a rope, awaiting her. She was made to stand on an empty wine barrel as the noose was placed around her neck. The Magistrate asked if she had any last words for her village or her God.
As Agatha's mind searched for something to say, Messenger Patience appeared floating before her, once more in a way that only Agatha could see or hear her. "Take my hands, child."
The assembled crowd watched as Agatha reached out with her bound hands before her to nothing that they could discern.
The Messenger continued, "It will only hurt for a brief moment, then you will be free, with me."
Agatha repeated the Messenger's words, "I will be free," as the barrel was pushed over, her neck snapped, saving her from the agony of strangulation, and she was gone.
When Agatha opened her eyes, she too was glowing as she, along with the Messenger, floated up through the branches of the huge oak tree. Agatha knew that one day she too would become a Messenger and help others.
Author's Note: This is the first story of my new Historical Messengers series. Agatha was a fictitious character, but most of the others actually lived during the period.
At the end of the Salem Witch trials, which spanned the period June 1692 to May 1693, 19 people had been hanged, 5 died in custody and one was killed by being crushed with stonesfor refusing to enter a plea of innocence or guilt. The trials ground to a halt after about a year when the Governor's wife was accused and later exonerated of witchcraft, after which court rules were changed to require more hard evidence than the word of impressionable witnesses.
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