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Royal Navy. And has drawn this very accurate map of Boston harbour. I had forgotten that you were concerned in that business of the reprieves.’
    Sewall looks at the paper again, hoping that Cotton Mather won’t notice his hand shaking. Certainly it’s a meticulous map of the harbour. His own property, Hogg Island, is shown in exquisite detail, with the bulk of Noddle’s Island just below it like a bat that is batting a little ball into the air. The hand that drew this would have been in the grave if Sewall had had his way. And now Pound has been promoted to a captaincy in the Royal Navy. Does that mean that the reprieves were the right decision after all? Or has he, Sewall, helped to turn the world upside down, so that pirates are now naval officers, and misrule is gathering momentum?
    â€˜But what I meant,’ Mather says, ‘was the other one.’
    â€˜You mean Hawkins?’ Sewall asks. Perhaps
he
is a captain in the Royal Navy too. Perhaps Thomas Johnson, if he hadn’t been the sole pirate to go to the gallows, would have been an admiral by now.
    â€˜No, no, the other
Salem
. Not Salem Town, but Salem Village.’
    Salem Village is a tatty little rural community three or four miles inland from its prosperous namesake. Not a place for pirates, or seafarers of any sort. Sewall has passed through it from time to time when going overland to visit his brother Stephen (in good weather it’s usually quicker to go by ferry). There are no shops, just a nearby inn and a meeting house that hasn’t been up many years but is already the worse for wear. Sewall is acquainted with two of its former ministers, his friend James Bayley, an old man now, and in poor health, and a Harvard classmate, George Burroughs. Neither stayed long because the stipend was paltry. And it was only a year or two ago that the church there was grudgingly given permission to admit its congregation to the full covenant and administer communion.
    â€˜What has happened there?’ Sewall asks. His head is still awash with the pirates. And Salem Village is exactly the sort of place where nothing
can
ever happen. There are many townships and villages and hamlets like it in the remoter corners of New England, little communities that were set up by the early settlers in expectation that they would thrive but which have been passed by as the country has developed, places where America never quite arrived.
    â€˜What has happened there,’ says Cotton Mather, his voice rising to that sermonical piping note that underpins all his emphases, ‘what has happened there, Mr. Sewall, is witchcraft.’

C HAPTER 6
    I t concerns two children. The whole matter is delicate because it happened in the Salem Village parsonage. In fact one of the girls involved, Betty Parris, is the nine-year-old daughter of the current minister, Samuel Parris, the other being her cousin, Abigail Williams, herself just eleven. They had been using a Venus glass, and then been overtaken by strange fits, paroxysms of the limbs, foaming at the mouth.
    â€˜What’s a Venus glass?’ Sewall asks.
    â€˜A piece of paganism, as the name implies,’ Mather tells him, his neck reddening with indignation like a cockerel. Then, as the technicalities of the matter take over his attention, his voice becomes enthusiastic, expository. ‘You take a tumbler or a wine goblet, and pour in the white of an egg. Then you raise the glass to your eye, peer in, and try to discern in that foggy liquid the features of your future husband. Or wife, should the fortune-teller be male. In this case, husband. Indeed, husbands.’
    â€˜And the shock of doing this was enough to prostrate the girls? Perhaps they turned out to be very ugly husbands.’
    â€˜I’m sure they used other detestable conjurings,’ says Mr. Mather, glaring at his levity. ‘I have experience of these matters. They may have performed tricks with nails, and horse-shoes,