Ingrid was a little taken aback and looked to Matt for reassurance. She wasn’t sure how much the young girl knew about her background.
“Maggie’s always been fascinated by the macabre, haven’t you, kid? I thought I’d tell her a little about your work… as an archivist and history scholar.” Matt coughed.
“I’ve been digging into it a little—trying to see if I can figure out what was the spark—what started it…”
“It was the girls, wasn’t it?” asked Maggie. “Girls my age.”
Ingrid nodded. “You’re familiar with the story?”
“A little. I know it started with girls having weird fits.”
“Yes, Betty and Abigail. It was in the parsonage, the house of Reverend Samuel Parris, Betty’s father and Abigail’s uncle, where they started having those strange convulsions. When they wouldn’t stop, rumors began circulating that the girls were bewitched. Things took a bad turn when one of their neighbors, Mary Sibley, decided to take matters into her own hands, asking Parris’s Caribbean Indian slaves, Tituba and her husband, John Indian, to bake a witch’s cake.”
“What’s that?” asked Maggie, her eyes full of wonder. She had pushed her plate aside to lean forward toward Ingrid.
Ingrid looked to Matt. She smiled uncomfortably. “I don’t know if I should… It’s not particularly appetizing.”
“Go ahead, she can take it.”
A witch’s cake, Ingrid explained, was to be used for countermagic. It was to be baked with some of Betty’s and Abby’s urine, then fed to Parris’s dog. If the dog became seized with fits, it would prove that dark magic was at play. Or the animal might also run to the witch responsible for the girls’ fits, thereby pointing out the culprit.
“So what happened?” asked Maggie, breathless. “Did the dog lose it?”
Ingrid shook her head. “Mr. Parris found the cake as it was cooling, before it was actually fed to the dog. He beat Tituba to a pulp once he found out what it was and chastised poor Mary Sibley in church before all the parishioners, stating that with Mary’s actions, ‘the devil hath been raised among us.’ ”
“Sheesh!” commented Maggie, and Matt laughed at the expression.
“Parris’s position in the village was tenuous, and he wasn’t a well-liked man. I think he might have been afraid that his girls would soon be accused of being witches themselves. If that happened, he could lose his job, his home, everything. So he did what he could to shift the focus off his girls, off himself. But with his words to his parishioners, in a sense, the devil had been raised. At that point, other girls in the village began having fits, too. Hysteria spread like a contagion. But now Parris needed a culprit, someone to take the blame. He badgered Betty and Abby to tell him who exactly had bewitched them.”
“And did they say?”
Ingrid looked down at her hands. She had lived through the history she was retelling, she knew how it ended. “Sadly, yes. Many people were imprisoned and hanged.”
Maggie shivered. “Do you think any of it was real? Do you think the girls might have been… cursed somehow?”
Before Ingrid could answer, Matt cleared his throat. “Speaking of witch’s cake, I’m having a terrible hankering for dessert. You make us anything, Ingrid?”
Ingrid smiled at Matt’s little inside joke.
“But, Dad, Ingrid hasn’t answered my question,” Maggie admonished.
Ingrid suggested they go into the kitchen for ice cream, strawberries, and whipped cream first before she answered Maggie. She passed around the bowls and took a bite before addressing the issue. “Do I think the girls’ fits were real? No, of course not. They were faking it. In my opinion, it probably started out as a prank that got out of hand and the girls couldn’t recant their statements without being punished themselves. By the time they did take back their words, it was too late. So many of the victims had already perished. The remaining accused were eventually released but still had to pay the jailer’s fees…”
“Ugh! That’s awful!” Maggie scooped up the melted ice cream at the bottom of her bowl, mulling it all over. She attempted to hide a yawn. “I wonder what gave them the idea to even do such a thing.”
Ingrid had been wondering that herself and had recently come across a document that had proven to be very revealing: a pamphlet published in 1689 by an obscure Boston clergyman, a minister who went by the name of Continence Hooker. An Essay on Remarkable, Illustrious, and Invisible Occurrences Relating to Bewitchments and Possessions. But they would be here all night if she got into that, and she knew at this point that Maggie wouldn’t be adverse to the idea. She couldn’t do that to poor Matt.
“It’s hard to believe girls could cause so much trouble, huh?” Maggie asked.
“Not too hard.” Matt smirked.
Ingrid nodded. Girls had done this. Young girls, prepubescents, adolescents, innocent of the consequences of their actions. It was hard to believe they had desired to cause so much pain, so much evil. Could they have been manipulated somehow? Used? She wondered…
“Well, it’s late, and it looks like we’re all tired,” she said. “I gave you an earful! Maybe another time we can talk about it more?”
Maggie nodded as she took a last scoop from her bowl.
Matt tilted his head. “Well, I better get this one home to bed.”
Maggie looked at her father, scrunching her forehead. “I’m not tired!”
Matt laughed. “Sure you aren’t, Pidge.”
“Pidge?” asked Ingrid.
“Pigeon? There’s a kid’s book about not wanting to go to sleep,” Maggie explained.
“It used to be her favorite.”
“Dad still thinks I’m three years old,” Maggie said, rolling her eyes. “Fine, let’s go. Ingrid, where’s the bathroom?” she asked.
Ingrid told her, and when she turned to Matt she had a new appreciation for him. He was a good father, devoted, loving. She had the urge to lean over the table and kiss the freckles on his nose. It appeared he had the same idea, as he put his hands on her face and kissed her gently.
After he pulled away, they stared into each other’s eyes, elbows on the kitchen table. “Did I do okay?” Ingrid asked.