Susannah Morrow

by Megan Chance

  “She cannot know what she wants—or what is good for her.”

  “Then pray to her,” Susannah suggested, giving me a small smile. “But do so quietly.”

  I looked back into Faith’s face. Her howling hurt my ears, and I was desperate to make her quiet, and so I took Susannah’s advice, though I did not want to. I leaned close to my daughter’s ear and whispered a psalm. At first, they were just words, the poetry of God’s song. But then the Windsor tune came to me, and I heard it winding through my voice, a song to God in my voice alone. It had never sounded so fine in the meetinghouse, with all my neighbors joining in. Though I had never thought I had an ear for music, I remembered the tune far better than I’d expected. I sang it for her.

  Faith began to quiet. I was amazed she could hear me through her tantrum, but she did. Her little eyes opened, and she stared into my face as if trying to see it for the first time, as if ’twas not clear to her. Her sobs died away, seemingly bewitched by my voice.

  She was a beautiful child, apple-cheeked, round-faced, with a fuzz of dark hair peeking from beneath the simple soft cap she wore. She was a satisfying weight in my arms, and I lost myself in her face the way I’d lost myself in all my children, enchanted by the way she stared up at me, by the cooing of her soft little mouth, the fat fingers that reached up, trying to grab the hair on my chin, misjudging the distance. She was no longer crying, but her tears left tracks on her cheeks, still glistening in her tiny lashes.

  I forgot the others. For a few moments ’twas only Faith and I who existed in this world, and I felt myself falling in love with her the way I had not allowed myself to do before now, the way I had with Jude before her, and Charity. I felt the emotion grow in my heart until there was room for nothing else. When she made a bubbly, tiny noise at me and reached again for my bearded chin, I smiled at her. I would have sworn I saw her smile in return.

  And then…Then I felt a shift of movement beside me; I saw a flash of muted color, and I remembered where I was. I glanced up to see Susannah staring at me. She had seen my pride. She had seen my weakness.

  “You have a good smile, Brother,” she said.

  I did not know what to say to her. When she reached out her arms to take Faith away, I hesitated. Susannah smiled, and there was no wickedness in it, but only consolation.

  “Come now,” she said again, with the slightest nod of her head, a nod that led my eyes inescapably to Hannah, who was frowning as if she thought I was no fit guardian for such a tender soul, and I realized in a slip of strangeness, in an incongruity I could not reconcile, that Susannah was trying to guard me from Hannah’s greedy eyes.

  I gave Faith into Susannah’s hands. I released her as if it meant nothing. But when she was gone, I felt cold; I felt the impression of her solid little body still in a fading warmth against my skin. I looked at Susannah, at the way she held Faith, the way she rocked her. My daughter gripped Susannah’s finger, cooing in a happy sound, while Susannah murmured back, their own language, one I did not know or recognize. I knew I could never send Susannah back to London. For better or for worse, she was here now, and part of my family. Whatever temptations the Devil put to me, I would have to battle on my own.

  Chapter 17

  THE NEXT NIGHT, AS I FINISHED EVENING PRAYERS, I NOTICED AGAIN how reluctantly Charity took herself off to bed. I watched her go, the hesitant shuffle of her feet, the strange, strained submissiveness of her posture, and my worry grew.

  I did not realize how long I stood staring after her until Susannah said from the fire, “She grows ever worse.”

  We were alone. The circumstance surprised me—how had that happened without my realizing it? “She and her mother were close.”

  “So you’ve said. I think ’tis more than that.”

  She was watching the now-empty stairs. I saw only her profile, but she seemed thoughtful; she wore a little frown.

  Then she turned to me, and the beauty that lived on her face was muted and soft. She seemed uncertain when she asked me, “How well do you discipline your children?”

  I hesitated, uncertain what to tell her. Reluctantly I admitted, “Judith was the better parent when it came to that.”

  “Did she beat them?”

  “She was not so indulgent as I.”

  “Indulgent?”

  “If my children are not submissive enough before God, the fault is mine, not Judith’s. She was determined in that.”

  Susannah looked at me for a moment, and then she began to laugh. “What a fool,” she said, shaking her head, laughing still, mocking me.

  I turned into the parlor. “I will not stand here to be insulted.”

  “No, no, you misunderstand.”

  She stopped me with a touch, pressuring me to turn again.

  “I didn’t mean you were a fool, Lucas,” she said. “I meant I was. I have been a fool.”

  I was confused. “I…don’t know what you mean.”

  “I came here because Judith led me to believe you beat her.”

  For a moment, her words distracted me from her presence. I thought of my soft wife with her stone-hard core. “Why would she say such a thing?”

  “She did not say so—at least not plainly. I’m afraid I assumed ’twas what she meant.” Susannah gave me a small smile. “I am relieved to know it was not true. I had thought…Well, it doesn’t matter.”

  “You had thought what?”

  “She had written to me of trouble, and I had believed…Our father used to beat us, you see, and the way she wrote…’Twas how we used to talk when we were maids. In secrets.”

  “Your father…” I frowned at her, trying to comprehend this thing I had not known. Judith had said nothing of it to me. Certainly Susannah was exaggerating. “’Tis the duty of every father to discipline his children.”

  “Shall he beat them until they’re bloody, then? Until they cannot stand? Did you never see the scars on your wife’s back and wonder at them?”

  “Of course,” I said quietly. “She said ’twas a fall from a horse.…”

  “We were too poor for horses,” Susannah said. “Had you looked close enough, you would have seen it.”

  The images came into my head before I could stop them: Judith lying stiffly on her back, the chemise she refused to remove shoved up to her hips, breasts covered, life closed off while I took my own wretched pleasure.

  “What is it? Lucas?”

  I blinked. “’Twas nothing,” I said brusquely. “I…You must know, I never laid an angry hand on her or my children.”

  She nodded. “I know that now.”

  We stood there silently and still.

  The Bible slipped in my hand, and in catching it, I broke the spell. I backed away. “Good night,” I said, and then, without waiting for her reply, I turned into the parlor. I was so distracted that I didn’t realize until I’d shut the door that I’d closed it in her face.

  I could not seem to stop watching her. I would be coming to the house from the barn, and instead of going in, I would go to the window and try to find her. I could never see her clearly; that was the point of it. She was a figure distorted by thick and rippled glass, cut into planes by the lead panes, diamond shapes of muted color and form shifting as she moved. She was a spirit that had no body and little shape, a figment purely drawn of my own imagination. I didn’t understand how she could be so compelling; she who had such a lamentable history.

  I could think of only one way to keep from giving in to this temptation of watching her: I took myself off for a few days. The heavy snow of the last week eased and turned to rain and the temperatures rose. The ground heaved and thawed as if ’twas spring already in mid-January. The roads turned to quagmires, mud thick as glue. It was hard to travel, but I made as many deliveries as I could before the ice and snow came again. God had seen fit to give me a respite, a time to strengthen myself, and I took advantage of it gratefully.

  I managed to stay away from the house for several days. But to be away from home was
wearying, and I was tired and my mind heavy when my errands were done and I came to the village again. ’Twas only luck—or divine interference—that made me take the road past the Proctors’ tavern; luck and the wish to lengthen my journey, though I would not admit that. It was how I ran into Daniel Andrew.

  “How glad I am to see you, Lucas,” he said, walking over at my wave. “I stopped by your house, but your sister said you were out, and that she did not know when you would return.”

  “I’d errands in town.”

  “Ah.” Daniel made a heavy sigh. “Francis has called another meeting of the Village Committee.”

  I was surprised. “Has the court decided?”

  “No. No. ’Tis just that…Parris has been making demands again. ’Tis the lack of firewood, and the cold of this winter…”

  “What would he have us do?” I asked bitterly. “Find a forest to cut for him?”

  Daniel shrugged. “I swear ’tis easier to deal with a horde of contentious selectmen than this one pastor.”

  “A meeting, then,” I agreed. “Where?”

  “Rebecca has worsened,” Daniel said. “She has requested quiet, so we won’t meet there. Putnam’s too far—”

  “My house,” I said quickly. “We can meet at my house.”

  Daniel didn’t hesitate. “Very well. I’ll tell the others. Shall we meet this afternoon?”

  I agreed, and we parted company. I knew it was absurd, but home was somehow easier to bear knowing that the others would descend on it within hours. The time would pass quickly until then.

  When I arrived home, Susannah was on the floor amidst buckets of soapy water and sand, her skirts hiked and tucked. She had Jude carding wool near the fire. When I came in, I saw Susannah’s surprise and the self-conscious way she pushed her hair from her eyes.

  “Why, Brother,” she said, “I did not know when to expect you.”

  I turned abruptly. “Aye. Well, I am home now. My errands are done, at least for a few days.”

  “Had I known it, I would have had this done before you came home.”

  “Had I known when I was coming, I would have told you.” I glanced around the room, nodding a greeting to Jude. “Where’s Charity?”

  There was silence, and Jude dipped her head and rocked the carding combs as if her election depended on the cleanliness of the wool. I looked back to Susannah, who said, “She went to take bread to the parson’s wife.”

  “The parson’s wife?”

  Susannah was expressionless. “Mistress Parris is quite ill, I understand. Or so Charity has told me. She has been visiting there a great deal lately.”

  It was unfathomable. “She is visiting the parsonage?”

  “Aye.”

  I laughed bitterly. “This is a fine thing.…The Village Committee is meeting here this afternoon to discuss how best to roust Parris from the village, and yet my own daughter is bringing him food—”

  “She tells me Judith went there quite often,” Susannah said quietly. “Or is that not true?”

  That revelation set me aback as well. I had not known it, though it did not surprise me. I sank onto the bench. “I knew nothing of it. But Charity is no liar.”

  Susannah said nothing. She bent again to scrub the floor, and though I did not understand why, I had the sense that there was something more here, that there were things unsaid, though I could not imagine what they might be.

  “Is there something else?” I asked.

  Susannah dipped the brush in the water. She sprinkled sand from the other bucket over the floor before she looked up again. “No, Brother. Should there be?”

  I knew she lied. I knew it, though I did not know how or why. She kept my gaze for a moment longer before she bent again to her work, and I stumbled past her to the parlor, where I built up the fire and sat on my bed staring into the flames, listening to the swishing of her brush upon the floor.

  My neighbors began arriving shortly after dinner, though Charity stayed away. I was angry with her, and I felt betrayed—not just over the fact that my daughter was caring for the parson’s wife, but that Judith had done so as well. It gave a new and bitter meaning to the prayer Parris had uttered at Judith’s grave—I had thought his words hypocritical platitudes, but ’twas plain his compliments of my wife were well founded.

  ’Twas hard for me to concentrate as the committee men arrived, and Susannah took their capes to dry by the fire. I could hardly reply to their talk until the door opened and Charity hurried inside. Her breath came fast, as if she’d run the entire way home, and her eyes went wide when she looked up to see me.

  Susannah said, “Charity, ’tis good you’re back. Fill the tankards.”

  My daughter hurried to do the task, but as she went past me, I grabbed her arm and drew her back. She jerked, and I was surprised to find she was trembling beneath my fingers.

  “Your aunt says you were at the parsonage,” I said quietly, for her ears only. “Is that true?”

  She swallowed hard. Her nod was quick.

  Susannah called, “Charity, the beer.”

  “We’ll talk of this later,” I promised my daughter, releasing her to attend to my neighbors.

  The meeting went well enough. The strain of waiting for the court’s impending decision over the church elders’ lawsuit was palpable, yet we hardly spoke of it. Instead, we talked of Parris’s increasing demands for firewood, his chastisements of the Village Committee in last Sunday’s meeting, the growing discord set by him and his supporters—especially Thomas Putnam—against the rest of us. Last week, Tom had cornered his brother at the smithy and demanded that he change his vote and do what he could to change ours.

  “He used family against me,” Joseph said in wonderment. “He threatened to gather the others—as if they aren’t all already on his side.”

  “This cannot go on much longer,” Daniel said.

  “Parris is a stubborn man,” I put in.

  “He’ll tear the whole village apart rather than walk away,” Joseph Porter agreed.

  Francis sighed. “He has plenty of support. With the exception of Joseph here, all the Putnams are behind him, not to mention many of the other villagers. I’m afraid Daniel is right. If we don’t back down, we could be looking at a war.”

  “We cannot back down,” I said. “Shall we give over to such a man as that simply because he refuses to go? What of Joshua at Jericho? Or David against Goliath?”

  The others murmured their agreement.

  “I’m ready for a war,” Joseph Putnam said with a small smile. “It has been a long time coming.”

  We talked longer about what course of action to take and who should present our case to the court if they required it, and soon the talk turned to other things: the growth in town; the large and splendid homes being built by those who’d made money in trade there; the French spies who were rumored to have been sent out among us; the steady Indian assaults on outlying settlements. Before I knew it, ’twas truly dusk, and our arguments had changed to laughter and joking. I lost track of how many times Charity refilled the beer pitcher. Susannah lifted a pudding from the fire and split it open before us, so the smell or dried apples and raisins and beef with spices filled the air.

  Their admiration for her started slowly, so I was barely aware of it. Daniel Andrew smiled as she leaned over his shoulder to pour a tankard. Joseph Putnam whispered something to her that made her look to the fire and laugh. Joseph Porter watched her as she moved about the hearth.

  Only Francis Nurse seemed unmoved by her—which is not to say she didn’t charm him too; she did. She had a way with people that was comfortable and kind, a characteristic she shared with her sister. There was not a day that passed that someone did not tell me that while they celebrated Judith’s reunion with our Lord, they felt the hole she’d left on earth.

  Susannah would leave the same void, I knew. I saw her moving these men who had wives of their own, and I saw that on her, the Morrow charm had a slightly different effect. Judith ha
d never been coveted by another man; not that I knew—and I would have known. There wasn’t a man alive who couldn’t read the signs.

  But I saw those signs now for Susannah. As the evening went on, I found myself resenting that they could request her attention when I was forbidden it. I hovered over my beer, watching them all in silence. I longed for solitude, but they lingered, now well into that false camaraderie that comes with too much drink. When Joseph Porter said, “Was that a virginal I saw when we came in?” I knew what was coming next.

  I rose. “It grows late. Perhaps—”

  “Lucas, you have not been forthcoming,” Joseph chided. “Where did you acquire a virginal? Which girl plays it?”

  “’Tis not mine.” Charity had been standing by the window. She yanked at the shawl around her shoulders. “I cannot play it.”

  “Then who?” Joseph asked. “Little Jude?”

  “’Tis mine,” Susannah said. She turned from the fire and I sank helplessly back onto the bench. “Are you a devotee, sir?”

  “Hardly that.” Joseph laughed. “It has been a long time since I’ve heard one. There was a girl out on the Ipswich Road who played upon occasion—”

  “Out at Bishop’s Tavern,” Daniel put in. “I remember her. Was she not one of Edward’s daughters?”

  Joseph shrugged. “A distant relation, I believe. She’d come out from England and brought the thing with her. She was not very good, in any case. Can you play, Miss Morrow?”

  “Aye, play for us,” Porter said. “Something to take my mind off these wretched troubles.”

  I would have forestalled her, but the cry for her to play was too loud, and I would have been accused of churlishness had I tried to stop her, so I said nothing.

  She brought the virginal from its place in the corner behind the spinning wheel. It was not large, and not heavy, but she struggled with it. When Daniel jumped up to help her, I envied him.

  Daniel set the thing on the end of the table, and with a flourish, pulled off the canvas covering it. I had seen few virginals here in the country; they were expensive and difficult to master, and though it didn’t surprise me that she should have one, I wondered how she’d obtained it, where she’d learned to play. Not at home, certainly; her parents had been simple farmers, hardly worth more than a few shillings, and this had obviously cost much more than that. The wood was gleaming and polished, with pretty scrolling carved into the edges and along the bottom. There was a delicate holder for music, though she did not use it. Susannah spread her skirts, and with a little bow, she sat at the instrument. Lightly she ran her fingers across the ivory keys, a run of pretty notes. Then she began to play.