Three miles farther along Ipswich Road, Bridget Oliver Bishop had also closed both of her taverns. The only holiday business she might have expected were the young men of the village sneaking in to play the forbidden shuffleboard. Bridget allowed the game because the young men bought drinks while they played. That the villagers hated her for contributing to the corruption of youth bothered Bridget Bishop not at all. She leaned over a table, her sensual face set in concentration, and she pushed goat’s hair and hog bristles into the poppet she was making. Then Bridget took up bits of cloth she’d carefully gathered and fashioned tiny garments for the doll. No, Bridget didn’t care what people thought. But when certain men lusted after her, then snubbed her when their wives appeared—that made Bridget angry. Very angry. She muttered a few words and smiled at the poppet. Then Bridget Bishop drove a sharp silver pin through its leg.
Sarah Good was scarcely aware it was New Year’s Day. All the days were dismally alike to her. She led her five-year-old daughter, Dorcas, up the ladder into old Goody Osburn’s hayloft, and she buried Dorcas and herself in warm straw. It was bitter cold in the barn, but better than being out in the snow. Sarah unwrapped a piece of cloth containing a slice of mince pie and two meaty venison bones. A savage frown turned her face ugly. The old bitch could have given more; it wouldn’t have killed her! Sarah felt a surge of hatred. She hated all the people that gave her charity. Once she’d had as much as anyone; once Sarah Good had been as fine a woman as any of the high-and-mighty bitches in this village. But when you marry, you climb into a man’s cart; if his cart rises up the hill, you do too; but if it slides downhill, the road falls out from under you. And you’re reduced to begging door to door for food and shelter. Well, she had her pride. Sarah might beg, but she wouldn’t bow her head, she’d never grovel. Sarah gave Dorcas a venison bone. Dorcas worried her. The little girl was pathetically eager to please, desperately anxious for approval. Sarah didn’t give a damn for approval and made no effort to please. If she wanted to please, she’d leave Salem Village; she knew all the sanctimonious bitches wanted her to go. The good ladies of the village stared at Sarah like she was a slap in the face to the common good, like it was Sarah’s fault she had to beg door to door. Common good—it made Sarah want to throw up. And because they wanted to be rid of her, Sarah Good vowed she’d never leave. She’d rub their self-righteous faces in common good!
A few miles from old Goody Osburn’s hayloft, one of the few happy New Year’s celebrations was taking place in the home of Rebecca and Francis Nurse. Rebecca sat in the midst of her laughing, teasing family, bouncing a grandchild on her knee, or perhaps a great-grandchild—it was hard to keep track. Her dried-apple face smiled and bobbed, enjoying the warmth and good smells bubbling from the hearth. Rebecca couldn’t hear well enough to make out everything being said, but she smiled when her family did, looked pensive when they did, which wasn’t often. Beaming at her gathered family, Rebecca felt content and pleased with herself; when she passed to her final reward, all these pieces of herself would live on to show she’d come this way. At three score and ten years, she doubted she had many years left to enjoy. But dying didn’t frighten Rebecca; she believed her soul would join the saints in a heavenly home. Never in all her years had Rebecca told a single lie; and not once had an unkind word escaped her lips. It was an achievement to take pride in. She watched a chubby three-year-old pull up on her knee, and she smiled.
In the home of Reverend Samuel Parris, Tituba and Elizabeth Parris prepared the holiday meal. Abigail Williams approached her uncle in his study and flounced into a chair. After a moment Samuel Parris looked up from his sermon preparation and frowned. “What is it?” he asked coldly. Reverend Parris disliked interruptions, and the girl knew it. To his astonishment, Abigail expected to discuss witchcraft with him. He sent her packing with a stern lecture on children keeping their place. He reminded Abigail that children’s opinions were of no interest to anyone, were totally without value. Her chatter was a waste of an adult’s time, and worthless. Watching Abigail’s angry retreat, Reverend Parris scowled. He fervently hoped the girl would marry soon and leave his household. He was sick of her demands for notice and attention... Reverend Parris shook his head and returned to his papers. The idea—paying attention to a twelve-year-old chit like that! What was the world coming to?
Ann Putnam Junior had no time to think of attention or idle discussions. The responsibility for the holiday meal fell on her young shoulders, and she was hard at work, always with an ear cocked toward the bedroom for her mother. Ann Senior was having another bad spell. Ann Junior understood. Life had not been kind to Ann Senior. Ann Senior’s mother had cheated Ann of her rightful inheritance, leaving her wild with hope for her husband’s inheritance. But Thomas Putnam’s stepmother had persuaded Thomas’ father to alter his will on his deathbed—Thomas and his brothers received nothing. Twice Ann Senior had been cheated by older women she trusted; the lesson was not lost on her. Age turned women into harpies, instruments of hurt and deprivation. Ann Senior wondered about other old women in the village; she’d lost many babies, and she just knew the old women were somehow responsible. She lay in bed and opened her Bible at random, swinging down her finger for chapter and verse. The verse did not apply. Ann Senior searched for the verse that read: “Ann Putnam Senior, yer babies are dead and yer fortune is gone. And these people are to blame...” And then a list of names. Ann Senior could guess which names would appear, but she wanted it confirmed by another source. The Bible would be best, but any source would do. In the kitchen, Ann Junior stirred the pots, and a tear slid down her pale cheek. She wanted so much to help her mama; she would do anything to help Mama. She wanted Mama feeling good again, smiling again. She hadn’t seen her mama smile in years. Every night Ann Junior prayed God would deliver the names to her Mama. Then everything would be all right.
Seventeen-year-old Mary Warren wanted her life to be all right too. And she knew what it would take. John Proctor. But standing between herself and John Proctor was his wife, Elizabeth. Mary glared at a trencher of holiday food and pushed listlessly at it with her spoon. Her father shouted at her to eat or leave the table. She stared at him from sullen eyes. Mary would rather have spent the holiday with the Proctors, where she worked as a tavern wench, but Proctor had sent her home. Mary’s father reached across the table and slapped her. Her mouth opened, and Mary’s heart beat faster; she felt a tingle between her legs. Her father spit in disgust. Twice Mary had driven John Proctor to a fury of impatience and he’d struck her. Both times Mary nearly fainted with rapture. She’d looked into John Proctor’s eyes just as he hit her. She knew he returned her sick love, she just knew it. If only there wasn’t Elizabeth Proctor...
In the Wainwright household, New Year’s Day passed quietly. Hannah read her Bible in her room and Charity hid in hers. Bristol sewed and listened with half an ear to her husband’s ambitions for the coming year. She sighed silently. Their two months together had quickly settled into a dull routine oddly reminiscent of her life at the Royal Rumm. A drudgery unlightened by hope. Add slaps, she thought miserably, and she could easily have imagined herself in Almsbury Lane.
Life patterned into hours of exhausting labor, living in a household strained by tensions and darkened by a suspicion that happiness was an ever-elusive goal. As the weeks had passed, Bristol gradually came to understand that Caleb’s image of her was frozen in time. He still saw her as the selfish girl who had threatened his inheritance—as an impulsive child pressing a foolhardy elopement. His mind lodged firmly on these impressions and could not be swayed, nothing Bristol did or would ever do could alter Caleb’s ancient ideas of her. They were cast in iron. In two months of marriage he’d paid but one compliment: “At least you don’t giggle and make light of things anymore.”
Bristol had stared in astonishment. Then realized she hadn’t laughed since their marriage. It seemed a very long time. A time of work and worry.
The largest worry in Bristol’s life was Hannah.
When the Adams farm sold, another vital chunk of Hannah Adams died. The values Hannah most treasured in life were being stripped from her. Watching Hannah Adams was like watching years flash by; every week she looked six months older. Unless something was done, and quickly, Bristol suspected Hannah would not live out the year. But what?
When Bristol wasn’t concerning herself with Hannah’s ebbing energy, she worried about Charity. Poor miserable Charity. Charity fled the Wainwright farm on the flimsiest of excuses or hid in her room. When Charity made a reluctant appearance, her pale green eyes shone like wet stones, hard and as grim as the line of her lips. Charity suffered. It tugged Bristol’s heart to watch Charity enact the misery Bristol had endured living with Jean Pierre and Diana. Charity avoided Caleb whenever she could, and when they were forced together, she kept her sad face to the floor and seldom spoke.
Bristol watched with sorrowing eyes, and she longed to tell Charity that Caleb’s advances to her were infrequent and unsatisfactory—she recognized the agonized question in Charity’s eyes. But Bristol could do no such thing. Sex was a topic no decent woman ever mentioned. So they stumbled along, and the tensions grew.
Midway into a cold January, a letter arrived from Aunt Pru. Bristol turned Aunt Pru’s creamy envelope between her fingers, and a solution began to form in her thoughts. If she could convince Hannah to visit London, she suspected her mother would find a renewed interest in life. In the Wainwright household, surrounded by gloomy attitudes, Hannah had scant chance to recover her vitality. But at Hathaway House, bombarded by Aunt Pru’s infectious cheer... The longer Bristol pondered the idea, the more valid it appeared. She tore open Aunt Pru’s letter and eagerly scanned the pages.
And fell into a black pit from which she never wanted to surface. Aunt Pru congratulated Bristol on her marriage in listless terms. Further reading revealed why. Diana had crawled out on the roof in a raving haze of drugged insanity. And she jumped. Diana Hathaway was dead. Jean Pierre had returned to the sea; he was free.
Bristol Adams Wainwright was not.
Numb, her face a tortured mask, Bristol slowly folded the letter and dropped it onto the fire. She watched it curl into ash from blind, beaten eyes. Fate was life’s greatest enemy; a cruel, sadistic trickster. Jean Pierre, her dearest Jean Pierre. She staggered into the bedroom she shared with Caleb and fell across the quilts. She stared unseeing at the heavy ceiling beams. Oh, God. How different life would have been, married to her Jean Pierre; the difference between a rag doll and a living woman.
It wasn’t that Caleb Wainwright was a bad person, her blunted mind admitted. He was not. Caleb was a good man, well respected, flourishing, and a decent husband if not warm and loving. But a distance existed that could never be bridged—a gap forever keeping Bristol and Caleb strangers. A distance created by the fact that each of their hearts belonged elsewhere.
Seeing Caleb and Charity together told Bristol all she needed to know about Caleb’s heart. He and Charity were more alike in outlook, more compatible, than Caleb and Bristol could be in fifty years of trying. Caleb and Charity fit together like... like ... Bristol and Jean Pierre.
Bristol turned her hot, dry face into the pillow and felt a giant hand squeeze her heart.
Then sudden urgent fingers tugged her shoulder, startling her from a vacant, empty world. Bristol sat up, her dead eyes staring at Charity. Immediately Bristol forgot her own troubles. “Charity! What is it? What’s happened?”
Charity wrung her hands, and her freckles leaped from a paste-white face. Her eyes were wild. “Oh, Brissy... oh, Brissy...” Her voice rose in a reedy wail.
Frightened, Bristol pulled Charity to the edge of the bed and gripped her icy hands. “Charity! What is it?” Charity’s eyes rolled like terrified pale marbles; she shook all over.
“Oh. Oh. When Mama finds out, it will kill her! This on top of everything else!”
“Is it Caleb, Charity? Has something happened to Caleb?” Bristol bit her lip. She’d never seen Charity like this. The girl hovered at the edge of hysteria.
“It was innocent, I swear! We were just having a bit of sport.”
“Shhh. Everything will be all right. Just tell me what happened!”
Charity’s voice cracked in panic. Tears rivered down white cheeks. “The worst part is, we don’t know for sure if he saw us. Or what he’ll do! I just know he saw us, I know he did! Oh, Brissy, help me! Help me!”
“Charity,” Bristol said, her voice sharp. She pulled Charity’s hands from her face and forced the sobbing girl to meet her eyes. “Slowly. I want to help, but I can’t until I know what’s happened. Slowly, now. Start at the beginning.” Bristol couldn’t imagine what might have occurred to produce the terror and fear in Charity’s crumpled face, in her posture, in the wild rolling eyes.
Then, as the story poured past Charity’s frozen lips, Bristol did understand, and her own cheeks drained of color.
Several of the village girls had met in the Parris kitchen. They badgered Tituba for stories; then Ann Putnam Junior had begged Tituba to look into the past and name the people who had hurt Ann’s mother. But Abigail objected and turned the direction of the conversation. Eager to marry and escape the confines of the reverend’s house, Abigail demanded the girls cast fortunes to reveal their future husbands. Charity seized on the idea, as did Mary Warren and the others. Under Tituba’s direction, they began. Each broke an egg white into a glass of water and chanted a spell Tituba taught them. Slowly the egg white formed into a symbol of their future husband’s profession.
Mary Warren swore she saw a row of pub kegs in her glass. Poor frightened Betty Parris insisted she saw nothing; she was ten years old, so this surprised no one. Abigail Williams thought the experiment a failure; she saw so many images forming and reforming, she could make sense of none. But Charity. They all watched in growing horror as the clear shape of a Coffin appeared in Charity’s glass. They stared in fascinated shock... and did not hear Reverend Samuel Parris’ steps until he was in the kitchen nearly on top of them. Reverend Parris glanced at the girls sitting in a circle on the floor, paused, frowned, then returned to his study.
“Oh, dear. God,” Bristol breathed, her heart pounding.
“Aye! Aye!” Charity tore at her hair, distraught.
“Did the reverend say anything to you?”
“No. But that isn’t his way, Brissy. He’ll ponder it before he denounces us. It was that way with the skipping!”
Bristol’s cheeks felt as snowy as Charity’s. “Witchcraft,” she whispered. “He’ll accuse all of you of practicing witchcraft.”
Charity shrieked and covered her face. “Aye! It’ll kill Mama, Brissy! It will just kill her!” She clasped Bristol’s hand in a painful grip. “It was all innocent, Brissy, I swear it! We didn’t mean any harm, When that coffin appeared, I...” She shuddered and broke into fresh sobbing.
Automatically Bristol patted Charity’s cold fingers while her mind raced. “Wait, Charity, wait. Let’s think this through.” Her brow contracted in fierce concentration. “It’s possible he didn’t see you.” She held up a hand, stopping Charity’s protests. “This wouldn’t be the first time Samuel Parris missed something right under his nose. Or maybe he saw but didn’t understand what you were doing.” She thought hard. “In any case, Reverend Parris won’t do anything immediately, maybe not at all. No, listen to me! Think what a position this places him in! He’s been preaching witchcraft—but in his own kitchen? With his niece, his daughter, and his servant at the center of it? He’ll believe, and rightly so, that if the story comes out, he’ll lose what little credibility he has left. He might even worry that he’ll be blamed for every misfortune in the village... that some will think he’s a witch too.”
“Oh, Brissy, Mama will hear of it ...”
“He’ll have to wrestle hard with his conscience. Denouncing all of you won’t be easy for him. At least this gives us some time to think.”
Charity despaired. “But in the end, he’ll denounce us, Bri
ssy! You know he will. Witchcraft is all he’s talked about for months! He sees Satan everywhere! Then Mama will—”
“Charity! We have to stay calm!” Bristol caught Charity’s fingers and pulled them from the carroty hair. Clenching her hands, Bristol forced herself to remain steady while her thoughts ran pell-mell through a whirling mind. One thing at a time, she cautioned herself, take one problem at a time. First... Hannah. Bristol agreed with Charity; a thing like this after Noah’s death, after selling the farm, after Charity’s rebellion, would finish Hannah.
“Abigail promised she’d think of something... but what? What? There isn’t anything...” Charity’s voice rose in a thin frightened wail, and she began to shake again. Crimson blotches appeared on her face and arms; her neck flamed white and red.
“I think we can prevent Mama from hearing about this, Charity,” Bristol said slowly, “but I’ll need your help.”
Hope blazed in Charity’s fear-soft eyes. “Anything! I’ll do anything. But what, Brissy, what can we...?”
Quickly Bristol outlined a plan; they’d convince Hannah to visit Aunt Pru. The weather was the worst of the year for travel, and getting Hannah to leave immediately would be a serious obstacle. Charity clung to the idea. She would have agreed to anything.
As soon as Charity could control the shaking in her hands, they approached Hannah’s room and put forth the suggestion. Hannah stared from one tight, pale face to the other. “Are you both mad? Why should I risk my life to visit England? I don’t want to leave home.”
Bristol drew a deep breath; she understood about home. She also understood suddenly how far she’d strayed from her Puritan background. She was about to lie, and felt no regret for it. But lying didn’t come easy. “Mama”—she arched her eyebrow in what she hoped was an expression of surprise—“Have you forgotten? Papa always wanted you to meet his sister and see his birthplace.”
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