[PREVIOUSLY_ON]
Anne: Father?
[Gasps]
Increase: Take her to the cage.
Gloriana: Cotton! Cotton!
Emily: Hello, father.
Man: You'll be sold still, if the whores will have you.
Emily: I'm not going anywhere.
Cotton: I'm sorry.
Gloriana: [Crying]
Increase: Take her as far as your steeds will travel.
Cotton: Tell us, Mercy. Tell us what you saw.
Mercy: She held a spider to her neck. She seemed to feed it.
Increase: You. I hereby arrest you... On the charge of witchcraft. Guards.
[Indistinct conversations]
[Horse whinnies]
[Gasps]
[Groaning]
Your wrath burns like fire. You look upon me as worthy of nothing. You are of purer eyes than to bear to have me in your sight.
[Groans]
I am 10,000 times more abominable in your eyes than the most hateful, venomous serpent is in mine.
[Groans]
My wickedness makes me as heavy as lead, and if you should let me go, Lord, I will plunge into the bottomless pit, and all my righteousness would have no more influence to uphold me and keep me out of hell than a spider's web would have to stop a falling rock.
[Groaning]
[Wheels creaking]
Dollie: Any last words for your father?
Emily: May the Devil be as kind and considerate to you as you were to me.
[Grunting]
I miss Mercy.
Dollie: Our Mercy is always with us. Perhaps that's one of her servants now, watching over us and weaving its web of destiny.
Mary: Mercy... Mercy... You cannot hide from me in my own house.
Mercy: [Sobbing]
Mary: Why did you do it? How could you? Come out from there at once.
Mercy: I did it for you.
Mary: For me?
Mercy: He was coming for me. If I hadn't done anything, it would be you in the house of pain. You should thank me.
Mary: Perhaps. But it was not up to you.
[Spider crunches]
["Cupid Carries a Gun" plays]
♪ Pound me the witch drums ♪ ♪ witch drums ♪ ♪ pound me the witch drums ♪ ♪ pound me the witch drums ♪ ♪ the witch drums ♪ ♪ better pray for hell ♪ ♪ not hallelujah ♪
[Horse whinnies]
[Door creaks]
[Door slams]
Anne: There you are.
[Bird caws]
[Screaming]
[Breathing heavily]
[Breathes shakily]
Hale: I have known Tituba even longer than you have, ever since she was a small child.
With all that she has endured in her life, if there is anyone who can hold out, it is she.
Mary: "If." Such a small word with such immense consequence for all of us.
Hale: You must trust her. She will use the opportunity.
Mary: Opportunity? You call torture an opportunity?
Hale: The opportunity to divert Increase's attention to where we want it and away from where we do not.
Mary: I don't care. I can't bear it, the thought of what he might do to her. I won't stand for it.
Increase: Ha. Do you like it? "Truth through pain." I find it a fitting, almost poetic demonstration to the good people of Salem as to what is now expected of them. Hmm?
[Goat bleats]
Imagine transforming this house of woebegone pleasure into a place of repentance. I understand already they call it my house of pain.
Mary: And you approve?
Increase: Oh, yes. Yes, indeed, I do. Oh, keeping the pains of hell foremost in one's mind is the surest... Nay, nay, the... The only road to prevent spending eternity there. And how may I help you this fine day?
Mary: You keep someone here that belongs to me.
Increase: Well, I have very good reason to believe that she belongs to the Devil himself.
Mary: Nonsense. I've known her since we were girls. Truth be told, she is not just my servant. She is also my friend.
Increase: Well, I wonder, then, becoming befriended by... by one's mistress is perhaps the reason that she went astray. Hmm. Perhaps... Perhaps it is not she, but... but you who could most benefit from being here.
Cotton: I think you forget to whom you are speaking, father.
Increase: Cotton up and about. Good. No, no. I know this is Mary Sibley, wife of my friend George, under whose under tender care he has mysteriously withered into an invalid.
Mary: I resent your implications, sir.
Increase: I imply nothing. No, I say outright. At best, I find you to be a weak and irresponsible woman. And at worst... well, let us not even consider the worst. No, no. I shall take responsibility for George and for the slave, Tituba, for the time being. Meantime, I suggest you get you home to Mr. Sibley's house of seven gables. Cotton, to business.
[Sizzling]
Ah. Tongue tearer. This is for [Shears snip] Snipping the lies from the mouths of those we question.
[Shears thud lightly]
Skull crusher. Breast ripper.
[Chuckles]
Both of these are, well, quite aptly, if somewhat crudely, named.
Cotton: Father, I once pressed an innocent man to death. There must be a better way. Father, you must know, a tortured prisoner will confess to anything to stop the pain... Anything... true or not!
Increase: Yes, that is surely so. But you... you grossly mistake my faculties if you think me fool enough to accept as truth the first pained pourings that invariably come from the tormented lips.
Cotton: But, sir, it is a self-evident truth...
Increase: I take no truth to be self-evident, save perhaps that whatever acts of horror take place here today are due entirely to your laxity during my absence.
[Chuckles]
Do not let him mislead you. And abandon all hope of your deliverance by him or by any other agent. Now, what you must do is meditate... On these instruments which you see before you. You must set your mind firmly in pursuit of the goals which you must achieve, that of your survival and your salvation. The heretic's fork. Yes. To keep you attentive and alert during the process. And this... Well, this you surely recognize... Thumbscrews. I believe these to be the simplest, and yet the most effective method of revealing the truth. And so let us begin.
Cotton: You employ the very tools of oppression perfected by the inquisition...
Tituba: [Sobbing]
Cotton: Tools used against good puritans by those who would call us heretics.
[Thumbscrews creak]
Tituba: [Whimpers]
Increase: Fire with fire, my boy.
Tituba: [Screaming]
[Sheep bleats]
Mrs. Hale: Where is she? Where is Anne?
Hale: Your foolish daughter has done something exceedingly dangerous.
She put my mask on.
Mrs. Hale: Well, bring her home this instant.
Hale: I cannot.
[Object thuds]
Only one traveler may use it at a time, and as she has no experience, she will have no idea how to use it in order to get back. The only possible use for it now is as evidence against me.
Mrs. Hale: But where has she gone?
Hale: To the woods. I shall find her.
Mrs. Hale: You, man enough to face Indians... And wolves or the Devils you pretend to command?
Hale: There is no alternative.
Mrs. Hale: Fine one, for I swear by... By whatever it is you hold holy, if our daughter is not asleep in her own bed this very night, my tongue will wag until you are tied to a stake in the middle of the commons.
Hale: Take care, wife. You shall only implicate yourself.
Mrs. Hale: Then we will taste each other's ashes.
Anne: This is a dream... Nothing but a waking dream. The mask.
[Breathing heavily]
My father's study. These woods. It's all but a dream. At this moment, I lie [Gasps] upon my bed in my room... At home. Wake up! Wake up!
[Panting]
It doesn't matter how I got here. I must get back to Salem. East. This way. [Gasps]
Alden: What makes you think she's in the woods?
Hale: I-I know my daughter, how she thinks and how at times she doesn't. I-I know you feel that I have somehow failed in my duties as... as magistrate to uphold the natural rights here in Salem and that you hold whatever dark suspicions you do about me. But I ask not for myself. For Anne.
Alden: Let's go.
Hale: Thank you.
Alden: You can thank me if we find her... alive.
Cotton: Save us from hell, father?! Is that what you're doing... Saving us from hell? Well, too late. Salem is hell, and I am not out of it. I am the creature you have made. I cannot be who you will me to be, yet I lack the will to be anything else. Like that monstrous birth, it were better had I never been born. Though I cannot draw back the sands of time, I can break the hourglass. Goodbye, father. I will make my home in hell and await you there.
[Gasps]
[Yelling]
Weak. Too weak even to snuff this feeble candle.
[Sobbing]
Increase: Well, you're wonderful.
Quite remarkable. You've named at least half the people in the village. Of course, none of them are witches. The fact that you offer them up so eagerly attests to that. But you made great progress. We are working our way through the lies.
[Chains jingle]
Very soon, we will come to that precise moment when the agony will be so unendurable that even a-a loyal servant of the prince of lies can lie no longer. Ah. This tool... It is called the choke pear, although I have heard it called the pear of anguish.
Tituba: [Cries]
Increase: It is inserted into the darker cavities and then...
[Device creaking]
Opened up, with the expectation that the subject, too, will open up. Now, tell me the real names.
Cotton: My father, who art in Salem, hollow be thy name.
Thy kingdom's done, your will I shun, on earth... As in the hell you'd make of heaven.
[Breathing heavily]
[Demonic moaning]
The Devil himself come to take me. Take me, Devil. I should have lived every hour on earth as if it were my last. And now it is.
[Demonic moaning]
[Shrieks]
[Yells]
Out of death comes life. I see now, Lord, that is your true face.
[Gasping]
[Laughs]
Oh!
[Laughs]
Tituba: [Breathing heavily] You cannot know what I have done or who I have served until you know why.
Increase: So... Then tell me. Why?
Tituba: For justice. I am not a witch. I am not a puritan. I am of the Arawak tribe... Or I once was. But I close my eyes, and I can still see the green of my jungle and the deadly white of the Englishmen's faces. I had never seen skin like that, so white when we see them walking towards us, we think they are ghosts.
Increase: Slavers.
Tituba: They slaughtered many of our men, chained the rest, and have their way with the women. I am too young to be of use to them, but my mother and sisters are not. And they forced me to watch. Later, in chains, I look back, and they're burning the huts of my village, and I see two red eyes staring back at me, out of the trees. And the red eyes speak to me, "Tituba, you are mine."
Increase: Satan speaks to each of us in our own native tongue. And now shall we continue?
[SCENE_BREAK]
Alden: Someone came through here quite recently... Someone who didn't know where they were going... And moved erratically, as if lost or...
Cotton: [Urinating]
[Laughs]
Alden: Cotton! What in the hell?
Alden: Oh, not Hell, Johnny, nor Heaven.
Just Earth... Glorious, glorious Earth.
Hale: I fear the Reverend has gone mad.
Alden: Cotton, get your drunk ass down here.
Cotton: No, sir, I will not. I can see far more clearly from here. In fact, I can see everything. God himself walks among these woods, trailing clouds of animal glory.
Alden: What happened to you?
Cotton: I took my boots off.
Alden: Yeah, so?
Cotton: So, I felt the earth! I felt the raw, sacred earth beneath my naked feet. I felt the earth breathe.
Alden: Go home. If your great insight is real, it will be just as real in your chambers and a whole lot safer.
Cotton: The forest air and this... Sturdy tree are my teachers now.
Hale: We haven't time for this.
Cotton: I still have much to learn!
[Bellows hissing]
[Poker sizzles]
Increase: When exactly did you sell your soul to the Devil?
Tituba: My body was bought and sold many times, but never my soul, not until I came to Salem.
I am a child in a cage, given less to eat than the animals on the ship. I fear I will never see the sun again. And then a man comes. It was he that brought me to Salem, only to be bought and sold again. I am sold from hand to hand, from man to man. But at least I am no longer in a cage. And my final owner is not cruel. The wolcotts give me a bed to sleep in. Their girl child, Mary, treats me almost like a sister. But still at night, I weep for my mother, and I ride a river of tears out of my straw bed, into the dark woods.
Increase: The dark woods? Who do you meet in the dark woods?
Tituba: The kenaima. He has come to save me... Save all of us. He draws to him all who hurt, all who hide, all who hate, all who thirst for justice, gathers us into the circle and promises us a leader, a savior, one who will crush our enemies with a mighty fist. And he keeps his promise.
Increase: Girl, I, too, keep my promises. And I promise you now I will put your eyes out this instant if you do not tell me who is in the circle, who, the names, who is in the circle of witches. Tell me.
[Grunts]
What fortitude. Solidarity amongst the rudely oppressed. Inspiring. It's... it's all so very touching. But I tell you, you're duped. These creatures are not your friends, nor anyone's friends. They are the enemies of all mankind.
Tituba: Tell me, who started this war between witches and puritans, the scattered few of them or the mighty many of you?
Increase: By your own admission, these creatures have sold their very souls for vengeance to the Devil. Is this not so?
Tituba: Were your people never slaves? Did they never cry out in the wilderness for justice? And did your God not hear their cries and answer with thunder? Don't you see? There are no witches, only poor people like me, hunted and harried, tortured and murdered, and for no reason other than they are not you!
Alden: She was here. I've got her track again. No matter what happens, just stay calm and say nothing.
Alden: Kahyonhowanen wensi tekeni ehnita.
Ratkahthos kenraken yakonkwe?
Man: Rankwe karonya.
[Speaks native language]
Hale: You are a mystery within a mystery, Captain.
Walk the woods like a predator, speak to savages as if you were one of them.
Alden: They saw her, but they did not touch her.
Hale: And you believe them?
Alden: I do. They used a word to describe her. It can mean a lot of different things, but it usually just means "crazy."
Hale: My daughter is many things, Captain, but crazy is not one of them.
Alden: Well, lucky for her they thought she was. They think crazy people are what we call holy... Walkers between worlds. Make any sense to you?
[Crickets chirping]
Increase: You ask me who began this war.
As one scarred with 40 years soldiering in it, I tell you now... It does not matter... Only that it end. And end it will.
[Light clatter]
You and your kind have no hope. You will bleed, and you will hurt... And you will die in a hopeless cause.
Tituba: Love is not a hopeless cause. I will not betray the one true love of my life.
Increase: I understand. Finally I understand it all. I understand everything.
Tituba: [Gasps]
Increase: You poor thing. Just a little girl, kidnapped, enslaved, alone, seeking understanding, comfort... Seeking love.
[Sighs]
Do you not see? I do not doubt that you love. But just for this one moment here alone with me, be honest, if not with me, at least with yourself. Do you really believe that they love you as much as you love them? Think, woman. Think of that, that person. Picture them in your mind. You know them so well. Consider who they are, not who you wish them to be, but who they really are, and ask yourself, were they here, would they or would they not offer up your name to save themselves? They would betray you in an instant to save themselves, and this is the person that you love and who will never love you the same way. Is it worth it all, the horrors you have endured, and the agonies... And the ugly, ugly death you have in front of you? Is that really what you want, now that you have now admitted to yourself who they really are? Tituba... Do you know the greatest pleasure in the world? It is when the pain stops.
Tituba: [Cries]
Increase: And stop it will. You have but to tell me a name. Just whisper it.
Tituba: [Sobbing]
Increase: Tell me who is the leader of the witches in Salem.
Tituba: On my soul, the one you seek...
[Whispers indistinctly]
[Crying]
Anne: [Gasping]
[Sighs]
[Animals chattering]
[Sobbing]
[Gasps]
[Raining]
It could be worse. It could be raining.
[Laughing]
[Rain stops]
[Gasps]
[Bird cawing]
[Twig snaps]
[Gasps]
[Bird shrieks, wings flap]
[Demonic moaning]
[Gasps]
Demon: At last, you found your way home.
[Laughs evilly]
Anne: [Screams]
Demon: [Growling]
Anne: [Screams]
Alden: Anne!
It's all right.
Anne: [Gasps lightly]
[Sobbing]
[Gasps]
Hale: Oh! Oh.
I thought I'd lost you.
Anne: Me too. How? How? How did you find me?
Hale: [Sighs] Give all credit to Captain Alden and his preternatural skills in these woods.
Alden: Following the tracks was easy once I found my way out here. But what I can't figure is how you got so far out of Salem leaving so few tracks and traces between here and there.
Anne: I am a silly thing, and in a fit of petulance, I-I ran into these woods without thinking where I was going or how late it was... Until it was too late.
Alden: Without leaving any tracks out of Salem.
Anne: It... it rained briefly while I was... Wandering. Perhaps that washed away my tracks, or perhaps you just didn't find them. In either case... Please forgive me for the trouble I've put you both through.
Hale: Thank you.
Alden: Well, I'm sure you'd do the same thing for me if I ever needed... Rescuing.
[dog barking]
Mary: [Sobbing]
[Door opens, closes]
Increase: You were correct.
She's a remarkable young woman.
Mary: Hmm.
Increase: I can understand why she's not merely your... Your servant, but your friend, as well. I've discovered something quite extraordinary. I find so much love.
Mary: Love?
Increase: What I did not understand was that the chief witch of Salem is not merely her leader... But her lover.
Mary: She confessed?
Increase: Love is a-a two-faced coin, is it not? And one face is surely betrayal. Do you mind?
Mary: What? Oh. Yes, please.
Increase: I rarely indulge, but... I feel the need of a restorative. Oh, George [Chuckles] George. He's always cultivated the finest cellar in the colony, huh? What was I saying?
Mary: Love.
Increase: Yes. You know... It is true that, and no one will admit, that love is never equal. And in its inequality lies its fragility, for the one who is loved less will one day find love tastes like ashes. That is indeed what poor Miss Tituba found. But she did tell me everything, and she started with Mercy Lewis.
Mary: Mercy?
Increase: Mercy Lewis may well have begun as a victim of malice, but she... She was made witch by the very beast that assailed her.
Mary: She's not here. Uh, she went out this afternoon. She's not returned.
Increase: Well, it is no great matter. After all, where can she run to? I will have her and her girls by the time the sun comes up. Ahh.
[Sets glass down]
When I first returned to Salem, I was convinced that Satan's true partner was right in front of me and all I need do is reach out my hand to take her. You can imagine my shock to discover that Captain John Alden stands behind all of Salem's horror.
[Sighing]
I fear I... need a breath of air. Will you walk with me, Mary Sibley, in the evening air... Where we may have a good vantage point from which to witness an arrest?
Alden: I'm tempted to go back, see if Cotton's all right. He could get lost in those woods and wake up inside the belly of a bear.
Man: There he is!
Selectman: John Alden... By order of Increase Mather and in the name of the selectmen of Salem, I place you under arrest.
Alden: What for this time? Swearing in public?
Selectman: Witchcraft.
[Crowd murmuring]
Man: Disarm him, shackle him.
Anne: No!
No! Father, stop them! Father, please! Please! You have the power to do something!
Hale: Wait. Shh!
[Horses whinny]
[Bell tolling]
[Dog barking]
Plan: A: Mary; Q: Who deals with Mercy's betrayal? A: the torture; Q: What must Tituba endure in Increase's newly founded "House of Pain"? A: Anne; Q: Who stumbles upon one of her fathers artifacts and finds herself far from home? Summary: While Mary deals with Mercy's betrayal, Tituba must endure the torture inflicted upon her by Increase in his newly founded "House of Pain". Meanwhile, Anne stumbles upon one of her fathers artifacts and suddenly finds herself far from home.