by Suzanne Weyn
Aakif was being carried off in an open cart along with the other nine. His eyes were locked on me, and there was such pain in them.
With a harsh yank, Reverend Parris pulled me away, toward the waiting carriage.
AT FIRST I WAS SO DOWNCAST THAT EVEN THOUGH WE traveled through the busy streets, I didn’t see much of Salem Town. Mary Carmen had figured out the cause of my sorrow because I had told her of my past and how I’d come to be in Salem. She kept a consoling hand on my arm all the while.
As we went, I couldn’t help but be aware that the stores and taverns of the dirt streets were becoming less densely spaced. Soon we were in farm country. It was breathtakingly beautiful land, though the buildings were plain and wooden, often unpainted, lacking any ornamentation or charm. Likewise, the people we passed were plainly dressed in brown and white. The women all wore white bonnets.
The reverend’s parsonage was built of wood and sat on a low hill. It was three stories high and had a chimney at the center of the gabled roof. A large maple sat to the side, its red and orange autumn leaves almost completely stripped bare.
We were brought in and introduced to Reverend Parris’s wife, Elizabeth, a stern, unsmiling woman, and their three children — Thomas, the oldest at eleven; nine-year-old Betty; and a toddler named Susannah. While Susannah played on a straight-backed, uncomfortable-looking couch, the two older children stood with their eyes cast down and their arms to their sides. Despite the presence of children, I could tell this was a household with little laughter in it.
“Hello. My name is also Betty,” I introduced myself to the pretty little girl with blond ringlets.
She continued to gaze down at her plain brown boots, refusing to look at me.
“Elizabeth, I heard a most interesting thing while in town,” Reverend Parris addressed his wife. “My father’s former associate, the cloth merchant Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek, has come to Salem on business, and I am considering offering him my hospitality on my father’s behalf.”
“I know Mr. Van Leeuwenhoek!” I cried excitedly, thinking of how he might help me find my way back to England. At the least, he might have news of my father and Kate. “Could we go there?” I begged Reverend Parris. “He could possibly assist me in getting home.”
Reverend Parris’s expression clouded as he considered this. “You were promised to me as a servant. My cousin has traded your service in exchange for payment of a debt he owes me.”
I couldn’t believe it. “He had no right to give me to you.”
“Of course he did. Are you not his indentured servant? I have a sugar plantation in Barbados and there it is common practice to give servants in payment of debt. My cousin knows this.”
“No!” I cried. “I am no indentured servant.”
Reverend Parris dismissed my worries with a wave of his hand. “Let us not trifle over this now. You and Mary Carmen here will have a means to an honorable livelihood and that is what truly matters.”
“I will prepare the house for your associate’s arrival,” Elizabeth Parris said to her husband.
“No. Maybe not,” Reverend Parris considered. “On second thought, he has become a man of science and may no longer be a man of religion. It would not do to have him in this house.”
“Please let me seek him out!” I implored passionately.
He scowled at me severely. “Speak no more of it.”
I was about to entreat him again when he turned away from me to speak to his wife. “I will bring Mistress Mary Carmen to meet Thomas Putnam,” Reverend Parris told his wife. “He has need of a serving girl.”
Mary Carmen and I flew at each other, hugging. Our lovely friendship was coming to an end — at least temporarily. I didn’t know what I would do in this foreign place without her to talk to. “Be calm, young mistresses,” Elizabeth Parris counseled, gently pulling us apart. “You will see each other again at market and other places.”
That was a consolation; I hoped it was true. “See you soon, Betty-Fatu,” Mary Carmen bid me with sadness as Reverend Parris steered her out the door. Leaning close, she whispered, “We will find a way to contact your Dutch friend. Be assured.”
I nodded and was indeed assured. I’d grown to trust Mary Carmen as a true and resourceful friend. Together we would come up with some plan. Waving once more, I watched her depart with Reverend Parris.
Mrs. Parris led me into the kitchen where I met a very beautiful native Indian woman with light brown skin and thick black hair caught up in a topknot. I guessed that she might be around thirty. “This is Tituba, our house slave,” Mrs. Parris said.
Tituba nodded to me with grave dignity. Her high-boned face revealed nothing of what her inner thoughts might be.
“Tituba and her husband, John Indian, originally worked as slaves on our sugar plantation in Barbados,” Mrs. Parris added. “We brought them to Salem with us when the reverend decided to move his commercial interests to Boston, and then later when we came here so he could pursue his ministerial calling.”
The word slave hit me with all its force. How could these Puritans think of themselves as so godly, yet still keep people in slavery? The hypocrisy was more than I could stand. I was sickened by it.
Mrs. Parris conducted me up three flights of stairs to where the rooms were much smaller and the ceiling lower. The quarters were unpainted and plain. Much of the space was taken up with shelves laden with supplies — pots, dishes, and the like. “These are the servant’s quarters,” she announced. “We have made space for you in Althea’s room.”
We entered a room barely large enough for the two narrow beds and one dresser. On the right-hand bed, two young girls sat together. They had an odd deck of cards spread out on the bed.
One was a pretty girl of about ten, with dark, expressive eyes. She possessed delicate, slim bones and was dressed plainly in brown with an apron. “This is Althea Delaney,” Mrs. Parris explained. “We are hosting her while her mother recovers. Her role is to be playmate to my daughter Betty.”
The other girl was rather plump and about eleven, with pointy features and light brown, wavy hair. Her dress was also brown, the material finely woven. “Betty, this is my niece, Abigail.”
Althea greeted me with a sunny smile that I found very endearing. Abigail also smiled, but I found her expression to be almost arrogant, with something that struck me as insincere and made me feel she was not to be trusted. I attempted to read into her mind. I heard the words, Must not let her see the cards.
My eyes darted to the spread-out deck on the bed. Mrs. Parris followed my glance and was immediately alarmed. She seized upon them, appalled by what she saw. “Are these … these … fortune-telling cards?” she demanded, scooping them up.
“I want to find out what my future husband will be like,” Abigail spoke brashly.
“Where did you get these?” Mrs. Parris demanded.
“In the rye field.”
“The rye field! Here?! At the parsonage? These cards were in our very yard?”
Abigail nodded. “I think they belong to Tituba. She has a deck like that.”
Mrs. Parris took Abigail by the arm and dragged her quickly down the hall. I looked to Althea, who seemed frightened.
“I told her we should give those back to Tituba,” she said.
“What will happen now?” I asked.
“Depends on if Missus tells Reverend Parris. He’ll beat Tituba if he knows those devil cards were in the house. But Mrs. Parris doesn’t always report every disturbance to him.”
“Why do you call them devil cards?” I asked.
Althea shrugged her slim shoulders. “I don’t know. That’s what the Parrises think of them. I don’t see any harm in it, but anything to do with magic bothers them a lot. It’s against their Puritan religion.”
From downstairs, I could hear the shrillness of Mrs. Parris’s scolding. Though I couldn’t discern her exact words, her fury was fierce.
“That’s good,” Althea told me, relief in her voice. “Once Mr
s. Parris gets it out, she doesn’t tell the reverend. When she complains to him, the punishment is much, much worse.”
I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of household I had fallen into.
That night I went to bed heavyhearted and exhausted from the work that the Parrises had put me to right away. After scrubbing the kitchen floor, I was assigned to clean the wooden counters in the kitchen. I fed the chickens their evening meal and then assisted Tituba in winding sheep’s wool on a card. Supper was a watery stew, which I ate with Althea, Tituba, and John Indian in the kitchen. We ate in near silence, each of us tired from the day’s toils.
By the time I was dismissed, all I could think about was sleeping. Sweet, young Althea Delaney slept on the bed across from me, twisting and turning in her restless slumber. I wondered if the light from the full moon pouring onto her bed was keeping her from settling down.
Despite my deep fatigue, sleep wouldn’t come to me. My mind was whirling with thoughts of everything that had happened. A million questions plagued me.
How would I find Aakif again? Was he being beaten? Where was he? Was he thinking of me as I was him? I attempted to use my powers to reach his thoughts, but I couldn’t connect.
And what of Bronwyn? If she had truly been possessed of a demon, where was the real Bronwyn’s spirit? Was it trapped in her body as well? Was it stranded still on the astral plane?
Were Father and Kate indeed lost at sea?
How could I make my way into Boston to contact Van Leeuwenhoek? Would he even remember me? Would he be willing to help me even if I could get to him?
My small room seemed airless and too tight. Pulling on the flat, black shoes Aunty Honey had given me, I pulled my blanket around my shoulders and padded softly out of my room and down to the first floor. Finding my way through the dark but moonlit parsonage to the kitchen, I slipped quietly out the back door.
It was late November and the air was crisp with the snap of coming winter. Pulling the blanket more closely around me, I shivered in the wind as it ruffled all the bare treetops and dried grasses.
The area around the house was a rather small, cleared space with several sheds, an open-sided lean-to filled with various cooking tools and supplies, a chicken coop, and a rustic outdoor table. Several yards behind that, the edges of a grain field abutted the yard.
There was an ominous rustling, louder than even the wind. In the dark it was hard to tell, but I assumed the rustling was from the husks of withered rye, since I’d seen a lot of brown rye fields on our way in.
As I moved around toward the front of the parsonage, I stopped short and then ducked back into a shadow. Awash in moonlight, Bronwyn was standing in the road, wearing a black cape with the hood pulled up. An immense black dog was beside her, snarling and baring its terrifying fangs. Even from my distance I could hear the menacing rumble of its growl. Both Bronwyn and the dog stared fiercely at the parsonage.
Three more women, all in hooded black capes, came down the road. White hair flowed from the side of one woman’s hood. The second woman seemed young, and the third was of middle age.
The three women stood in a line behind Bronwyn and the snarling hound. In unison, they raised their arms, intoning an ominous chant that I could not understand.
The ground under me vibrated and the shutters on the parsonage window clacked as they banged against the outside walls.
I knelt low, terrified that they might notice me observing their weird ritual. Being so close to the humming ground sent the drone of their voices through my body until my teeth chattered from the vibration.
To the right of the parsonage, the huge maple tree began to shake. The ground around it lifted, exposing its massive root system. The shaking extended to the dirt under my own feet.
I began to quiver and I wanted to run but didn’t know where to go, and was even more frightened that these terrifying women would see me.
The shaking grew ever more fierce and frightening until at last the maple crashed onto the front yard, its gnarled roots tipped skyward.
After the tree fell, the humming vibration ceased immediately.
The only sound was a rustling of treetops and the swish of blowing rye husks.
My chest ached from the pounding of my heart. What was going on? What had the ritual been about?
The strange women continued to stand there, observing the downed tree.
Now somewhat covered by the fallen maple, I stole back to the parsonage. What should I do next? Had the Parrises heard the tree go down? Should I tell them what I’d seen?
I didn’t want them to arrest Bronwyn. Even if she was possessed of a demon, I couldn’t risk having her executed or even jailed. How could I help her if that happened?
When I returned to the kitchen, it was aglow with the light from a small candle. It took me a moment to notice Tituba sitting on a stool in the corner, wrapped in an Indian-print blanket. In the dim illumination, I could tell more clearly from her broad features that she was not a native North American Indian but of a different sort, perhaps from the Caribbean.
We gazed at each other for a moment without speaking.
“I saw those demon witches from the window. Some terrible evil has come off that ship with you this day,” Tituba said in a low, quiet voice. “And it has followed you here. Are you in league with this devilish thing?”
“No! You must believe me. No!” I recounted the entire story to her, starting with the wreck of the Golden Explorer. As strange as my story sounded to my own ears, Tituba showed no sign of disbelief. It was almost as if she had heard this sort of tale before.
“What do you think we should do?” I asked when I was done.
“Perhaps it will leave,” Tituba suggested.
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Magic is not all evil. There is powerful good magic too.”
“I agree,” I said, thinking of Aunty Honey in her role as Mother Kadiatu, of Bronwyn before this thing took her over, and even of Saint Teresa of Avila. “I know there is good magic.”
“Yes, I am now sure there is no evil in you. Good magic can defeat evil magic — sometimes.”
“Should we tell Reverend Parris what we saw?” I asked. “He’s a man of religion and holiness.”
Tituba smirked bitterly. “He is a man of religion, but he has no holiness. Perhaps those demon hags have traveled here for his soul and not for you at all. I could believe that they have come for him.”
“Then who should we tell? We have to warn the people of Salem that this evil haunts their village.”
“Don’t tell anyone. This village has been beset with many troubles. The farmers have suffered great crop failures. There have been epidemics of diphtheria and smallpox. The neighboring Indian tribes are angry with the treatment they have received, and attack the village regularly. There is much political fighting. Tempers are running hot. We don’t want to enflame them. Who knows what would happen?”
“We can’t stand here and let this evil run unchecked through this town,” I insisted.
“We will watch for these evil witches. If they return, I know magic to dispel them.”
I shook my head uncertainly, not convinced. “This is a demonic spirit of tremendous power,” I told her. “It threw a priest over its head. It spun a huge ship in circles. It killed a nun and caused many of the people on board to fall ill. When I confronted it, the demon knocked me to the ground with its eyes alone.”
Tituba remained unafraid. “My mother died and left me only one item,” she said. “Her book of spells. I have it buried in the rye field and will consult it if the demons return.”
AT DAWN THE NEXT MORNING, I WENT TO THE WELL TO fetch water and saw Tituba’s husband, John Indian, chopping the fallen tree into firewood. He didn’t look up as I passed.
When I returned to the kitchen, Althea was playing with an adorable black child of about three. Althea smiled when she saw me. “This is Violet,” she said. One look at the child’s features told me Violet had to be Titu
ba’s child, the resemblance was so great.
Setting down my full bucket, I shook the child’s small hand. “Hello, Violet. I’m Betty. Where is your mommy right now?” Violet pointed toward a closed interior door at the far end of the kitchen.
“Where does that lead?” I asked Althea.
“It’s a dining room, but don’t go there now,” Althea warned. “Reverend Parris is talking to Tituba.”
Reverend Parris’s voice boomed from behind the door. “Do not lie to me, girl! I am warning you. I will not tolerate lies!”
Instantly, I was at the door listening.
“It is no lie, sir. I say once more — I could not sleep and was standing at the window gazing out. I saw four witches with a snarling demon dog. They employed magic to fell the large maple John now chops.”
“Why would they choose my house for this witchcraft?” Reverend Parris pondered in an agitated voice.
My heart seemed to stop and I inhaled, awaiting Tituba’s response. Would she tell him that the central witch had followed me off the ship and that all the witches had come for me?
“Because you are a man of God, sir,” Tituba replied. “As such, you are the natural enemy of the Devil.”
My heart began to beat again in my chest.
Soothed by Tituba’s flattery, Reverend Parris’s voice became less threatening but just as agitated. “Some discontented member of my congregation has set these witches on me. Maybe several have done it together. There is unrest amongst the flock. I am stern with them for the sake of their immortal souls and they have not the spiritual fortitude to hear it. Last month there was talk of ceasing to pay my salary or make their contribution to the upkeep of this parsonage.”
“Surely those are wrongheaded decisions,” Tituba said.
“Of course it is wrongheaded,” Reverend Parris spoke passionately. “I will preach against it this Sunday from the pulpit.”
The door banged open, pushing me behind as Reverend Parris barreled through, knocking over Althea and little Violet in his hurry. Violet began to wail and Tituba rushed in to lift and soothe her.