Reverend Josiah Ansley had resided in the growing settlement of Dorchester for five years before the events I am about to relate. He moved here with his wife, Prudence and his seven year old daughter, Pamela, after completing his doctorate in Divinity at Harvard College. He looked forward to metaphorically tilling the spiritual and intellectual fields of this tiny community, as the 1600's hobbled through a final decade, and the new century promised a resurgence of the evangelical fervor of the first colonists to have arrived in Massachusetts Bay.
There was so much going on here, among these God fearing people, with the molasses and slave trade just beginning to realize its impact in uniting the Caribbean with the northern colonies, Europe and Africa in increasingly lucrative commerce. Wealth frequently breeds complacency, and the first victim of this laxity is so often a loosening of the bonds of faith. Ansley was here to stop that.
Then, a ship from Europe docked in Dorchester harbor, bringing with it an epidemic of Small Pox. Prudence Ansley went from house to house, village to village and farm to farm, answering desperate calls for help, in the name of the church of which her husband was the head, ministering to the sick and the dying. She even traveled three days west, to a particularly hard hit Indian settlement, and helped to bury over 60% of the population fallen helplessly to the pestilence.
Then one day, worn to a shadow of herself by ceaseless work, travel and extreme sleeplessness, Prudence fell ill in the arms of her husband. Tirelessly, he cared for her, nursed her and wiped her feverish brow with damp cloths, but to no avail. Prudence Ansley died quietly early one Sunday morning, and with all his learning, there was nothing that the Reverend could do about it.
Pamela Ansley, who was 12 years old by then, was devastated by the loss of her mother. People frequently caught sight of her wandering around town, clasping an old burlap bag close to her chest. No one was sure what was in that bag, but most people imagined that it contain hidden treasures from her mother, little keepsakes from which she refused to be separated.
That was when people started to notice a change in the face and demeanor of their hitherto optimistic and garrulous pastor. Ansley’s grief turned to anger, thence to detachment, absent mindedness and, eventually, long periods of isolation and a deeper and deeper withdrawal into the darkness of himself.
Oh! he continued to attend to his clerical duties, but he performed them
increasingly by rote and without any joy escaping from his heart. He was often known to sit at his massive oak desk, by the light of a single, pallid candle, seemingly in continuous thought or argumentation, long into the evening hours.
“What do you mean ‘It’s not my fault’?” he said aloud one night, as if to himself. It was only then that he noticed the merest shadow of a man filling in the obscurity of the chair in a corner of the room. The visitor was tall and almost unnaturally thin. His hair was long and dark, and his complexion was not distinguishable from the obscurity within which his host first noticed him. Although the darkness would not allow Ansley to see his visitor’s facial outline, the Reverend could scarcely miss a distinctive pair of motionless eyes, black as midnight with enlarged, red veins totally obscuring the whites. Despite the lack of clarity with which he was visible in the dim and failing light, it was clear that Ashley had no doubt about the identity of the spectral figure before him.
“It was your God who did this to you, His own gentle angel, sent to tend you and others with kindness and solicitude. Why did your good and merciful God snatch her away from you like that, except to throw it in your face and remind you that He, and not you, is forever in charge here. Go ahead, get angry, shake your fist at Him. See if it changes anything.”
“But I tell my congregation every week to trust in God," replied Ansley, his hands clutching the arms of his chair . "I comfort widows and children all the time for the lives that are lost in this wilderness! How is it that I cannot take my own advice?"
"Because you’re a MAN, Ansley, not God’s patsy or His rug." All the time, his visitor’s eyes neither moved nor blinked. "What you need," he continued, "is some real power and satisfaction. Show Him whose boss, whose town this is."
"What, exactly, do you mean?" asked Ansley in a tentative and ambivalent voice.
"Go back to your pulpit," the visitor said. "Give ‘em fire and brimstone. Make ‘em shake in their shoes. Once they’re truly afraid of something, blame it on somebody else; give them somewhere to focus their fear and rage. They’ll be putty in your hands."
"You mean get them mad about Prudence, and blame it on God?"
"No, no," said the mysterious dark counselor, "Misdirection is the thing. Prudence was killed by the pestilence. Get them scared of the pestilence and other forms of mass retribution. And don’t blame God in His own house. That will mean surrendering your status as God’s spokesman. Blame me. Everybody loves to hate me, even when they’re serving my interests. All along, you’ll know that it’s really God they’re afraid of and mad at. Meanwhile, they’ll do whatever you tell them to do, because they’ll think it’s the right thing."
"What’s this going to mean for Dorchester?" asked Ansley, with no little amount of concern.
"Notoriety, for Dorchester AND for you, Ansley! I hear they have similar goings on in Salem, though I assure you I had nothing to do with that!"
Reverend Ansley was feeling strangely exhilarated. All of a sudden, he had a new sense of purpose. "But what’s in it for you?" Ansley asked the man in black.
"Just the satisfaction that I’m helping out a friend," said the stranger with a self satisfied look. "Someday, I may ask for something in return, but for now, just consider it my humble way of helping you over your grief. It’s the least I can do."
So Reverend Ansley did just that. Next Sabbath, he climbed into the pulpit and glared at each face before him as if he could see something repugnant and despicable, behind every set of eyes. "This community has suffered gravely from the dreaded pestilence, and do ya know why? It’s because of the wickedness and sinfulness that you’ve been harboring in your cold and blackened hearts! The Lord God has suffered this depravity among you for many years, but now His wrath is coming thundering down upon you, whether you’re ready or not, to be taken in your beds or while working in your fields or shops.
"It didn’t used to be like that among you! You used to be good, hard working, God fearing people. What happened to ya? I’ll tell ya what happened!" Ansley was really getting himself into it, now. "I’ve been walking in the town, and I’ve noticed unmistakable SIGNS of the DEVIL among you. Yes, and what do we see in the Devil’s wake? We see illness, we see darkness of spirit, we see babies born dead and sinners dying unrepentant! We see children running off to dance with the Devil in the forest. We see old ladies playing with magic they learned from the practitioners of Voodoo in the Caribbean!
"Beware, beware brothers and sisters! There is EVIL among us! And evil has a name, a face, though he hides it from us! He recruits his servants as witches and dissemblers to lurk in our very midst. We must be vigilant and purge his diseased presence from among us!"
Folks shuffled uneasily. Some women and men screamed and fell to the floor as if stricken with epilepsy. Reverend Ansley looked with satisfaction at what he had done. As yet, he had no idea of the forces he had released that day.
The next day, Good Wife Holmes came to see him about her neighbor and friend, Sarah Perkins, whose baby had been delivered – dead - last month by the midwife, Goody Miller. This was the fourth time this year that Goody Miller had presided over a still birth here in Dorchester. "Isn’t this a sign of witchcraft? Shouldn’t we have Goody Miller detained for questioning?" Goody Holmes was obviously deeply troubled by this state of affairs, but she was reluctant to point fingers without sufficient proof. Reverend Ansley reassured her that he would look into the matter, while keeping her testimony confidential.
Goody Holmes was just leaving the parsonage by the back door, when Martha Langley came to the front with a complaint against Goodman Foster, the town’s apothecary. It seems that Good Wife Langley’s husband had been taking one of John Foster’s tinctures for upset stomach, when suddenly he turned up dead in his bed. "Now doesn’t that sound peculiar? His was poisoned, he was, and who’s going to give me my husband back?"
Before he knew it, Ansley had a crowd of angry people on his front porch with torches in their hands, demanding a series of arrests and trials before a tribunal which, of course, should be headed by Reverend Ansley. Meanwhile, the man in black was nowhere to be seen.
The next day, Ansley sent a dispatch to Governor Stoughton to send an expert on witchcraft to Dorchester so that Ansley might impanel him to assist in hearing these cases. The Governor was reluctant at first, what with the ugly turn of events in Salem, but given Ansley’s sterling reputation and excellent credentials, he eventually acquiesced.
Thus satisfied with his day’s work, Ansley decided to take a walk in the forest. Whom should he meet there but the man in black, carrying a small white pole upon which were attached an array of colorful ribbons.
"What is this?" asked Ansley, noting the contrast of the white pole with the dark man.
"This is a May-pole," remarked the stranger. "All we have to do is put it up in the forest where the children in town will find it. The girls will undoubtedly be tempted to dance around the pole, whereupon you can catch them and add more defendants to your roster of witches."
"But that would be entrapment!" protested the Reverend.
"In for a penny, in for a pound," replied the man in black, looking amused at Ansley’s reluctance.
So the two of them set about anchoring the pole to the ground and then hid themselves in some nearby bushes to await the results. Presently, some children arrived and, before long, a merry, innocent dance commenced, with each girl holding on to a colorful ribbon.
There was only one problem with this: one of the children was Ansley’s own daughter, Pamela! "No!" protested the Reverend. "You can’t have me arrest her! Pamela is all I have in the world! You can’t have me lose Prudence AND Pamela!"
The man in black just shrugged. "I told you I might one day ask you for something in exchange for all I have done for you. You never bothered to inquire as to what that something might be! Besides, it was YOU who started all this hysteria, wasn’t it?"
While they were still arguing, an angry mob of townspeople entered the clearing in the forest. At their head was a young woman named Sarah Perkins, the same Sarah who had recently suffered a still birth. She was carrying a straw doll filled with straight pins. "The child, Pamela, the Reverend’s daughter was harboring a puppet to perform magic!" she announced. "I found it in the old sack she’s always carrying around. A stranger in black gave it to me. She killed my baby! She’s the Devil’s child!"
"Silence, everyone," said Reverend Ansley, in as loud a voice as he had ever used in the pulpit. "This is nonsense! Pamela is not a witch, and neither are these others. I made it all up to get my revenge against God. I’m the one who made a deal with the devil. I’m the one who told you there was witchcraft among us. He can tell you about the whole project." But as he turned to enlist the testimony of his witness, the man in black was no longer there.
Even as Ansley said these things, he realized how ridiculous it must all sound, but since he, himself, was the chief judge, they had no alternative but to release the girls and place Ansley in custody.
Alone in his jail cell, Ansley’s solitary musings were interrupted by a heavy set guard. "Someone to see ya, Reverend, said the jailer with no small degree of sarcasm. Ansley looked over the jailer’s shoulder and his eyes met the reddened, unblinking eyes of the man in black.
"I don’t want to see you," said Ansley in a sharp, dismissive voice.
The man in black was unmoved. "I just wanted to bring you up to date on a few things. Pamela is in the care of the widow Collins. She’s all right. Good Wife Miller and Goodman Foster," he continued, "have been freed. The town officials want this dealt with as quietly as possible, to avoid scandal. Governor Stoughton sent a message recalling his expert and inviting you to leave Massachusetts Bay Colony and never come back. So you’ll not be turned over to me just yet.
"I hope you’re proud of yourself," said Ansley.
"Oh, I dare say this has been a very good day for me. Once this all blows over, there will be a lot of questions about you, about me, about God. Not a bad day’s work, if I do say so myself!"
"You lied to me! You used me!" stammered Ansley, beside himself with rage. The man in black did not deny it. He just continued to look at Ansley with those cold, lifeless, motionless eyes.
"Why are your eyes always so red and swollen?" Ansley ask him abruptly.
"I work mostly at night, it seems, or in secret. I never sleep." With that, the man in black went away – for a while.
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