by Megan Chance
I jerked away, turning my I back to her. My disappointment gathered in tears. I thought she would touch me, she would say something, and I waited.
She did nothing. I was so tight and still I thought I could feel even the movement of the air. I heard her sigh, and then she relaxed again into the bed, and before long I heard her soft breathing again in sleep.
It was a long time before I relaxed as well. I saw my mother’s face again, and then the quickness of the change—her face on Susannah’s body, her spirit in Susannah’s heart—but this time I understood what the spirit was trying to tell me. ’Twas a warning. My aunt Susannah was wicked; she would guide me only closer to Satan’s arms. Your heart is an open door, Charity. Do not let the Devil in.
I pushed aside the blankets and dressed hurriedly, then went downstairs into the darkness. I heard my father moving around in the parlor, up early, as I was. I built up the fire and put breakfast on, and when he finally came into the hall, looking haggard and sleepless, his eyes red-rimmed, he sat beside me at the table and said gently, “Good day, child” while we ate and waited for Susannah and Jude. I thought of telling him what I’d seen, of the things about Susannah that I knew now, but he seemed so distracted and distant I could not bring myself to do it. I kept my thoughts to myself as my sister and aunt came down, and we made our way to meeting.
The meetinghouse stood in the middle of a big clearing, with forest behind it, and Ingersoll’s Ordinary next door. The watch-house loomed across the street, its thick walls manned always by one of the village militia, flintlock at the ready. The meetinghouse was one place I always felt safe. If Salem Village had a heart, this building was it, though there were those—including my father—who said it was the rotten center as well.
It had been many years since the meetinghouse was something to be proud of. The heavy shutters hung at loose angles now, and at least two of the windows were broken out, covered over with boards. It was on the edge of swampland, so throughout the summer, mosquitoes swarmed both inside and out. Now the swamp was still and cold; the few brown leaves remaining on the trees spun to the ground, whipped by a fierce late-autumn wind. Tattered pieces of paper—announcements of wedding banns and sales, new laws and births—fluttered from the nail-pocked wall beside the meetinghouse door. The latest announcement, of Mama’s death, was ruffled from melting frost, but not torn, not yet. My father’s handwriting was still distinct and dark as ever, the iron gall ink unfaded.
My father led us to the door. Behind him went my aunt, who carried two foot warmers, the coals inside glowing meekly through the holes punched into the hardwood. Goody Penney stood just outside, holding baby Faith wrapped tightly in blankets and clasped close to her chest. When my father greeted her, she held the baby out to him, saying something I could not hear. He shook his head and backed away, and so she held the babe to my aunt instead.
Susannah put the foot warmers on the ground and reached for the child. “Ah, how precious she is,” she murmured. She cuddled Faith so closely I could not see the baby’s face, nothing but the peek of a little gray wool-clad foot. Susannah looked up at Goody Penney, and her face was alight again, as if some sun somewhere resided inside of her, but I knew it now for what it was. I watched her carefully and bitterly. “How does she do, Hannah? Is she a good child?”
“Oh, there’s none better,” Goody Penney replied. “She’s a good eater, that one is. Better than my own babe.”
I did not like the way my aunt held her. I did not like how easily she’d taken the child. The Devil was crafty, and Faith was so vulnerable now. I glanced at my father, not believing he could be deceived by her, but his face was carefully expressionless, and I knew she had fooled him.
Susannah handed the babe back to Goody Penney as if she were loath to let go of her, and I saw her eyes lingering on Faith as the goodwife tucked the blanket back around and made little clucking noises to quiet her.
“We’d best go inside,” Father said. “The service will be starting.” Then he left us, moving through the crowd to his place on the west side, where the men sat.
Anxiously I hurried after, drawing Jude with me and leaving Susannah to follow. Here was a place where God was sure to heed my prayers.
The shadows of the meetinghouse were barely eased by the weak light coming through the windows and the single candle burning in the sconce next to the pulpit. Heavy ceiling beams were indistinct in the gloom, the unmatched clapboards of the walls aging badly and irregularly, so that one looked cast in darkness while another seemed touched with light. Beneath the galleries on either side, the room was so dim ’twas hard to see the faces of the people sitting there.
Some time ago, I had graduated from the back of the gallery where the children sat, and Jude was so quiet and well-behaved that Mama had always kept her with us. Now I did the same. Our family was not rich, but Father had served on the Village Committee many times, and Mama had worked often with the minister for Charitable Causes, so we’d been seated only a few pews from the pulpit. We were in the center, so we did not have the high sides on each end to lean on—though it did not much matter; the tithing-man would not be slow to jab any leaners with his long pole, and he was diligent in his walk up and down the aisles. From where we sat, I could see almost everything in the meetinghouse except the back, where people sat in darkness.
Susannah put the foot warmers on the floor at our feet, but it was so cold already that even through my worn boots I could barely feel them. ’Twas dank and musty, and the smell of damp wood and mildew and wet wool filled my nose. The wind whistled in a high pitch through the boards covering one of the windows, and the candle on the pulpit flickered and smoldered. We settled ourselves in, laying rugs over our legs and sitting up straight on the backless benches, and gradually the voices faded and muffled. When it was quiet, and Deacon Ingersoll stood from his place below the pulpit to call out the psalms for us to sing, I bowed my head and tried to find God’s voice through the muffled darkness in my soul.
I sang without listening; I hardly heard Master Parris’s sermon, so focused was I in my own search for the Lord. When Master Parris finished the morning service with another prayer, I looked up at the huge hourglass before Deacon Putnam. A little over two hours had passed—it had been a short sermon, and I had not yet found relief or comfort.
Faith’s baptism would be in the afternoon service, and now we were left to ourselves for the two hours until it began. As I followed Father into the cold sunshine, I heard people talking about where they would go, what they would do. Those who had come a long distance had their horses stabled in the shelter on the swamp-side pasture. Most would go to Ingersoll’s, just as we would, as we always did. Mama had always packed a meal, which we ate in quiet on what passed for a green in front of the tavern, dodging the sheep Lieutenant Ingersoll sometimes kept there. I had not brought any food this day. When I’d tried, Father said we would buy something at the ordinary.
When we stepped through the doors at Ingersoll’s, I saw Mary Walcott and Betty Hubbard huddled around a long table, along with skinny, mean-spirited Mercy Lewis, who was also a servant for the Putnams, and Mary Warren, who worked for the Proctors in the tavern they ran off the Ipswich Road. My old friends were laughing together while the church members at the tables around them frowned disapprovingly. When my family came in and Betty caught sight of us, they laughed again, more loudly, and bent to whisper among themselves.
I looked away. My father glanced to them, and then to me. “They are silly girls, Charity. You should count yourself blessed that you are no longer among them.”
It warmed me that he had noticed, and it raised that yearning in me again. But when I turned to him, he was already looking away; I was already forgotten.
He led us to a table where many of our neighbors were already gathered: Francis Nurse among them, who was our neighbor Samuel’s father, and who served on the Village Committee with Father. Susannah smiled, catching them effortlessly in her light. Wickedness had such po
wer. Before long, she had the women snared in the telling of her late-autumn sea voyage.
I didn’t listen. I could think only of the snickerings that had greeted us when we walked in. Even now, I felt my old friends talking about us in the little prickling of the hairs on the back of my neck. I could not bear that Mary’s whispers were true. I remembered my defense of Susannah with embarrassment, and I did not want to have to admit I’d been wrong.
I did not have any intentions of going near them. It was only that I could not sit still any longer and watch my aunt charm my neighbors while knowing the truth about her. I meant only to wander over to the windows overlooking the green—it was not my fault the ordinary was so small, or that the girls sat so near the door. But once I was close, I did not move. In spite of everything, seeing them made me feel lonely, and that loneliness was a curse, I knew—Mama had warned me about it.
I stared out the tiny diamond windows onto the farmlands below, the village spread before me like the wrinkles of God’s hand, but I saw nothing. Despite my best intentions, I moved closer to Mary Walcott. It could have been habit, I suppose, but the truth was that I had always felt drawn to her. Mary had a way about her, a disarm, perhaps, or maybe it was just the way she opened up and listened as if you spoke God’s pure word and she was thirsting for the sound. It had taken me years to learn that she gathered the things I said close and never forgot them, that she doled out my secrets like treasures to the others, that she led me places I did not want to go simply for the sake of having something to talk about. She had held me tight as Job held his conviction, and when I’d finally realized it, ’twas hard to get loose from her.
Now I gnawed on the hard crust of bread I’d taken from our table and pretended to listen to other conversations, to smile at other people. But when Betty Hubbard looked up and motioned me over, I barely hesitated. I glanced behind me to see my father embroiled in discussion with Francis Nurse, and my aunt listening intently to Goody Sibley. Only Jude was watching me, and I did not worry about her.
I told myself I would stay only a moment, not even long enough to answer their questions, and I went over to the table. Mary Walcott looked up with that sly look, while plain-faced Mary Warren only nodded hello, and Mercy Lewis raised her thin dark brow as if she were surprised to see me here.
“Charity,” Betty said as she spread butter thickly on her bread, “tell us what you think. Do you not find it strange that Mistress Parris looks so pale all the time? Why, today I hardly thought she could walk herself down to her pew.”
“She’s sickly.” I shrugged. “’Tis nothing new.”
“My uncle says she’s not as sickly as she seems.” Betty was Dr. Griggs’s niece, and she often went with him on his visits. “He says ’tis something strange going on there.”
“She’s weakening day by day,” Mercy Lewis threw in. She leaned forward so her bony elbow rested on the table, and her dark eyes looked huge in her gaunt face. “Withering away, they say. Perhaps she’s being poisoned.”
“Poisoned?” I was shocked by the suggestion. “Surely not! Why, she’s the preacher’s wife.”
The others giggled. Mary Walcott hid her smile behind her hand. There was something else here, something they all knew and I did not, and I wondered what it was. But Mary was mischievous, and the rest had nothing better to do than stir up trouble. ’Twould be better for me to be far away from it.
I started to turn away. I heard Mary whisper in that goading way, “Ssshhh! Don’t tell her! She’ll go running to tell her papa. She doesn’t like to keep things from him, do you, Charity?”
Across the room, my aunt laughed. I saw my father look at her, and I saw something in his face, something that was gone so fast I had no time to know what it was, to even guess, though it left behind this little flutter in my stomach that I didn’t like, that made me nervous.
I heard myself say in a dull voice, “What secrets do you keep now, Mary?”
“Ooh, she doesn’t approve,” Betty said.
“I suppose she can’t help it.” Mercy’s tease was mean and low. “Her father’s pious as a minister.”
“Not any minister I know,” Mary Walcott said.
Here, they all laughed as if it were another joke they shared. Their cackling made my skin feel too tender, as if the slightest touch might bruise me. I had grown used to my life without them these last months. I had grown used to spending my days with my mother, catering to her as she ran the household from her bed. It had been like a signal from God, Mama had told me, her needing me just at this time, just when I needed to turn from my friends.
But if God had been watching out for me, then why had He taken my mother? Why allow the Devil to send Susannah to tempt me? It had been hard to leave Mary and the others. If my mother had not taken so ill, I am not sure I would have been able to keep myself from them.
They were all leaning over the table, heads close, still laughing, and God help me, I wanted to be part of it. I had felt so alone in the four days since Mama died.
“What is it?” I asked. “Why do you laugh so?”
“Why, I don’t think we can tell you,” Mary Warren said—but without the meanness of the others. This Mary was more like me, more a mouse than a leader. She was shy and good-hearted for the most part, so I took her words to mean that she was afraid to tell me, not that she meant to torment me with secrets.
“I won’t say a word,” I promised.
Mercy shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
Betty sighed. “It’s well known that you can’t keep a secret, and with—”
“Wait,” Mary Walcott said. Betty stopped, frowning prettily at her, and Mary’s eyes went narrow and considering, as if she were thinking, but that was an act, I knew her well enough to know. Mary never said or did anything without first planning it well. She patted the bench beside her. “Charity’s been so good caring for her mama these last months, ’tis unworthy of us not to welcome her back into our circle when she most needs us.”
I looked at her warily.
She smiled at me. “Come, Charity. Sit with us.”
“You aren’t going to tell her, are you, Mary?” Mercy whined.
“Well…perhaps Charity could help us.”
She knew how to draw me in. She knew I would not be able to walk away from a statement like that. I sat down beside her, and with that one motion, I was part of them again, so simple, just like that. I felt their camaraderie tightening in a web around me, holding me there. I was so weak, after all.
How easily I fell.
Chapter 6
“YOU MUST PROMISE NOT TO SAY A WORD, CHARITY,” BETTY CAU-tioned.
Mary Warren looked pale and uneasy. Her gaze darted through the room as if she feared someone would hear us and come running. “My master will beat me, should he find out.”
“There are worse things than a beating,” Mary Walcott said disdainfully.
Mercy nodded. “Aye. Hell would be worse.”
“Hell?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”
“’Tis not us who courted the Devil,” Betty said. “We’re not to blame.”
“Quiet.” Mary’s whisper was so hard that the others stopped and stared at her. “Are you mad, Betty? Look around you.”
Betty flushed and pushed nervously at a loose blond hair. “Mercy started it.”
Mary didn’t yield. “The two of you will get us all a beating if you’re not careful.”
I changed my mind. I wanted no part of this, whatever it was. All this talk of Hell and secrets…I had enough sins to answer for already. I could not afford to add another.
I think Mary saw that on my face, because just then she smiled and leaned close, patting my hand reassuringly. “Never fear. Betty is not herself today. Dr. Griggs locked her in the cellar yesterday without dinner, and she has not quite recovered.”
“’Twas an accident,” Betty murmured.
“A few hours without food would do you good,” Mercy said meanly.
&n
bsp; I glanced toward the table where my family sat. My father had not noted my absence, nor I think had my aunt. But Jude was watching me with wide eyes and a little frown. I started to rise. “I should get back. My father will be missing me.”
“He’s hardly noticed you’ve been gone,” Mercy said, glancing that way.
“Still—”
“Sit, Charity. We did not mean to scare you.”
I sat again, knowing they would laugh at me if I walked away. “I’m not frightened.”
“’Tis nothing to be afraid of. Only harmless sport.”
They all laughed again, but there was a nervousness to it this time. I told myself there was safety in friends and plunged in. “What’s harmless sport?”
They quieted. Mary wrapped her hand around a noggin of cider and pulled it close as if to drink, though she did not taste it. She grew very serious. “If we tell you, you must swear not to repeat a word to anyone.”
“So you’ve said already,” I said. “I have not gone away, have I? So I must agree.”
Mary looked at me for a moment, those cat’s eyes of hers seeming to glimmer and grow sharp in the candlelight. Then she glanced around the table, at mousy Mary Warren, and Mercy’s hollow eyes, and finally to Betty. “Very well,” she said. “But we cannot tell you here, and not today.”
“Why?”
“Not on the Sabbath.” She laughed softly. Her voice lowered so I had to strain to hear. “’Twould be a sin to talk about it. Meet us at the parsonage tomorrow afternoon.”
I was confused. “Why the parsonage?”
Mercy snickered into her hand. “You’ll see when you get there.”
Mary shushed her. “Tell your father you must take something to Mistress Parris. A loaf of bread or a pail of beer. She’s ill, you see. The parson will probably be out. He usually is.”
“Tomorrow afternoon,” I repeated slowly. I saw the hidden message in Mary’s gaze, the unspoken don’t disappoint us. It reminded me of the dares Mary used to throw at me: “You haven’t the courage to do it, have you, Charity? Such a mealymouthed girl you are.…”