by Megan Chance
Tituba stepped back. “Come in,” she said in a soft, Barbados-accented voice.
Susannah held up a basket she was carrying. “I’ve brought bread,” she said, “and a portion of fish pie.”
“’Tis kind of you, madam,” the slave said, taking the basket as we passed. She ushered us all inside and then closed the door. And the room seemed suddenly very dark before us. Parris came out from the hall, running a hand through his long, dark hair, looking distracted and harried, gray-faced, sleepless. He glanced at us, obviously startled, and then quickly composed himself when I took off my scarf and hat and he saw who I was.
“Brother Fowler,” he said. I thought he seemed nervous. “You’ve come to see them, of course. Everyone has. Come in.”
“We’ve not come to make things more difficult for you,” Susannah said. “Is your wife home?”
“Upstairs,” the preacher said, gesturing vaguely to the steps. “She cannot bring herself to get out of bed. This has been…most dreadful for her. Most dreadful.”
We followed him into the hall. I heard Jude say, “Charity, you’re too slow!” and Susannah’s quiet “Come, Charity. Don’t tarry so.” I focused only on what was before me, and tried not to feel my usual indignation over how Parris had managed the ownership of this house that should have belonged to the village.
A fire was raging in the hearth. Parris’s other slave, John Indian, was unloading wood into a pile beside, and I caught Parris’s resentful, sideways look to me. “’Tis the last of the firewood,” he whined. “I don’t know what we’ll do. The winter is so cold.…”
Then I saw the two girls sitting on the settle, which had been turned away from the fire. The two of them, the little child and the older girl, sat side by side, almost too still.
’Twas then I realized there were others in the room. Four other villagers: John and Nathaniel Putnam, Joseph Porter, and Mary Sibley. They stood back, nearly against the walls, in a state of suspension, as if awaiting the start of a performance they were not sure whether to dread or appreciate. The feeling of apprehension was such that we barely acknowledged each other; Joseph Porter made a light wave. Mary Sibley bustled over to Susannah. I heard her whisper: “Have you come to see it? I’ve only just got here myself.”
I felt Jude come up behind me, close against me, and Charity on my other side. They were both terrified, and I did not blame them; this atmosphere courted terror. The house was in shadows, with the only light coming from the fire and one or two candles and that which came thin and pale through the windows.
Parris went over to John Putnam. The parson had a Bible in his hand now. He said in a low voice: “I’ve been reading scripture to them, to no avail—”
“No! No!”
There was not one of us who did not jump. ’Twas the little girl, Betsey, who moaned and fell to the floor, where she began to bark—sharp, quick barks like a small dog—as she crawled on all fours around the settle.
I instinctively drew back against the wall, holding my daughters in place behind me.
“Dear Lord,” Mary Sibley murmured. “Oh, my dear Lord.”
Charity grabbed my arm, her icy fingers squeezing so I felt the press of her short nails into my skin.
I didn’t know what to say, how to offer comfort. The little girl was horrifying to behold, but her affliction was nothing compared to the older girl, who began to scream, “You shall not have me! No, I say!”
John Putnam rushed to help her, but she pushed him as if he were no more than a child. He backed away in startled bafflement. The moment he did, she rose from the settle and began to walk around it, half bent, murmuring words I could not understand, some ridiculous language, babble in rhymes.
Nathaniel Putnam approached Abigail Williams warily, but she seemed not to see him. When he tried to bar her way, I thought she would walk over him. He moved back quickly, and turned to us as if we should have the answers. “What is she saying?”
“’Tis a terrible illness,” Parris said.
On the floor, little Betsey whimpered and crawled into the darkened space beneath the settle. Her big blue eyes were wide and frightened, as if she saw something the rest of us did not. Charity’s hand tightened on my arm, hurting now. When I glanced down at Jude, she was too still, too watchful, taking it all in the way she did everything, with that almost fatalistic acceptance that worried me no less now than it had at her mother’s death.
Abigail twisted, and Charity jumped and screamed, and buried her face in my back. I glanced over to Susannah and saw the way she was watching us—Charity, me, Jude, and not the afflicted girls. I felt Charity’s sobs at my back, and I took her hand and pulled her firmly away.
I saw how shaken she was, how she trembled. “’Tis a passing illness. The doctor will find a way to treat this, I’m sure.” I glanced to Parris. “Have you called Griggs?”
The pastor looked startled at my question, and then confused, nervous. “No. No, not yet. I was…We were hoping ’twould pass.”
“There must be something you can give them.”
“Aye, there’s something,” Mary Sibley said thoughtfully. “Though I doubt the doctor will think of it.”
“Quiet, woman,” Joseph said—the first time he’d spoken since he’d greeted us. “Watch what you say.”
Mary Sibley pressed her thin lips shut and shook her head, and I was glad that Porter had quieted her. I did not want to hear what she thought. There were suspicions growing in my own mind. This was not an illness I’d ever seen before. It looked more like—
I cut off the thought, refusing even to form the word in my head, to consider it. I grasped Charity’s hand tightly and murmured a prayer against evil, because I felt it palpably in this room. I caught Susannah’s glance and motioned to the door. “We should be leaving now,” I said to Parris.
He nodded, distracted still, and said, “Aye. Good day, then,” as if we’d simply met on the street and were not sharing this horrifying spectacle.
“I’ll go with you,” Joseph Porter said. “I can bear this no longer.”
No one made a move to show us to the door. Parris was too busy clutching his Bible and looking helpless, John Indian had disappeared out the back door, and Tituba only stood back against the wall and watched us go.
I held my daughter’s hand more tightly. I was afraid—for her, for my world, which seemed lately to be changing too fast around me. I thought—absurdly—that if I did not release her hand, she could not grow into this woman I’d begun to see in her face, none of this could affect her.
“’Tis worse than I’d thought,” Joseph said from beside me. He adjusted his cape, pulling a scarf more closely about his face.
“What is it, do you think?” Susannah asked quietly.
Joseph ignored her and looked to me. “We’d best be careful. ’Twould be best if the committee did not meet for a while.”
“Aye.” I understood too well. ’Twould not be a good idea to bring attention to ourselves, not now. I felt a threat in the wind as Joseph trudged off over the icy path, and I led my family home.
Chapter 20
MY INSTINCT TO KEEP TIGHT HOLD OF MY LIFE AND THOSE IN IT only grew as the hours after our visit to the parsonage passed. When we arrived home, Charity was quiet, but there was an energy to her stillness that was unsettling. Her gaze was faraway, but strangely focused, as if she saw something beyond us that no one else could see.
That night, when I sent the girls to bed after quiet prayers and readings from scripture, I lingered over the fire, reluctant to go to my own bed, to twist and turn in the silence of my thoughts.
I put another log on the fire, though it was late already. I took a poker to it, watching the dry bark catch and spark, sending the flames rushing higher until I felt their heat. My mind was full of too many things: Indian attacks and little Betsey Parris twisting her head to bark, my own weaknesses and my daughter’s troubled eyes. Judith seemed to stare at me from the fire, her face contorted by the flames, and I imagin
ed I heard her contempt over how badly I’d handled things in her absence.
So lost was I in these thoughts that when Susannah said my name, I jumped, losing hold of the poker; it clattered on the stones of the hearth.
“Forgive me,” she said. “I did not mean to…You look so…”
I bent to pick up the poker, and set it at the hearthside.
“You seem always so alone, Lucas. I have wondered at why that is.”
“I am rarely alone,” I told her.
“Perhaps that is the lie you tell yourself.”
I shrugged. “I have two children, and…you…in my house. The Village Committee takes up much of my time.” I looked away from her, back to the fire, back to my imagining of Judith’s condemnation. The worm of conscience twisted in my head. Above all keepings, keep thy heart, and yet I had not, could not.
“You are troubled,” Susannah said.
“I am amazed you are not.”
“What we saw today…Do you think it real?”
“Aye, I think ’tis real,” I said. “Who would do that willingly? Who could?”
“The mind can conceive of many things, I think.”
“They are but children.”
“The youngest one, yes,” Susannah agreed. “But the elder…I think you do not give children their due, Lucas. Did you not invent things when you were a child?”
In my memory, I saw an ill-kept hovel, roof thatch falling through in big, rotting patches, icy rain puddling on the dirt floor. I saw a street filled with ailing chickens and scrawny goats, so thick with sewage that my legs were filthy and dotted with sores that never healed. I saw darkness and close spaces; I felt again the press of my knees drawn up to my chest as I huddled in a corner, hearing my stepfather’s footsteps, the crack of a bottle against the door frame. “No,” I said.
She said, “I see,” as if she suddenly understood something. I wondered what she knew of me, and for a moment I tried to imagine what Judith must have said, what kind of sieve she’d strained me through to give her sister the portrait she thought would most impress. I already suspected that what I knew about Susannah Morrow was only what Judith had wished for me to know. How much was true, how much merely fiction—things she needed to believe for herself, ways of living with whatever had come between them: the yeoman’s son, their father, a lifetime of slights and pleasures, of little hates, little loves.
“Wherever I turn in this village, I see fear and trouble,” Susannah said.
“’Tis not so hard to understand. This is not London. We are in a wilderness here, with enemies to fight.”
“Most of them of your own making. This is what I fear, Lucas: This is all some great lie, some game. Children can be so easily led—”
“Can they?”
Susannah lowered her voice. “I looked at Abigail today, and I saw Charity. Can you deny that what’s been happening here is similar?”
She had read my thoughts. “I won’t deny it. I’ve thought of little else all night.”
“You must stop it before it becomes worse,” she counseled me. “Is there someone you know in Boston? Someone you trust?”
“In Boston? Why?”
“For Charity’s sake, I think you should send her away as soon as possible. To a place where no one can fill her head with lies.”
I frowned at her. “I don’t know.…”
“Ah, Lucas!” She took a deep breath, obviously frustrated. “I am afraid. I’m afraid that if you do not send her out, she will destroy herself. She should be with someone who can watch over her soul—”
“That job belongs to her father.”
“But you are here.” She gestured to the room. “You belong to this village, and they hold you. If you sent Charity to a God-fearing family in Boston, perhaps she would heal. Everything here must remind her of Judith. And those girls…I do not trust them, Lucas. I’m not saying Charity is a liar. But what if she believes in lies? What then? Please, Lucas. Please. Send the girl out. ’Tis what’s best for her.”
As much as I wanted to protect my daughter, to lead her to her rightful relationship with God, I knew I had already failed in that. “Aye,” I whispered. “’Tis best. I will send her out.”
I felt Susannah’s relief. “Do it quickly, Lucas.”
I looked up at her. She was staring at me, and our gazes met and held—too long a moment, too short—before she turned reluctantly away. “I’ll wish you good night,” she whispered.
When she was gone, my troubles came back with a suffocating weight, and I wanted her calm certainty and her belief I wanted her back with a desperation that frightened me.
I resolved to ride to town the next morning to find a place for Charity, but ’twas snowing so hard, such a distance was impossible. I did not like the delay, but it could not be helped. I took comfort in the fact that no one else would be traveling, either. There would be little chance for the illness in the parsonage to spread.
But later that morning, as I chopped wood in the barn, a snow-covered Francis Nurse came to see me. He was red-nosed, haggard, and worn. “What is it, Francis?” I asked sharply. “Is Rebecca…?”
“Still not herself, I fear,” he said. “But no, that is not why I came.”
“The court? Has there been a decision?”
“Not that, either.” Bluntly he said, “Griggs went to look at Parris’s girls.”
I felt ill. “And?”
“He says ’tis bewitchment.”
The word had dimension and weight; ’twas a word I’d feared, a word I had not allowed myself to even think.
“Is he certain?”
“Aye,” Francis said. The wind picked up, fluttering the thinning gray hair that his hat did not cover. “He’s not told anyone else, Lucas, but the news will soon be out. These things have a way of spreading…’Tis as if the wind itself has a tongue.”
“And Parris…What does he say?”
“He did not seem surprised.”
“I doubt anyone will be,” I said. “Is this not what we all suspected?”
Francis nodded. “Aye. Parris spoke of turning to others for prayer and advice. Perhaps John Hale or Noyes. My guess is he’ll do that right away.”
John Hale and Nicholas Noyes were neighboring ministers, of Beverly and Salem Town respectively. They were both highly respected men, and I knew Noyes well, and admired him—he was pastor of my church in town.
“Of course he will. It cannot be good for him to be seen as a minister who harbors Satan in his house.”
Francis looked at me sharply. “This cannot be good for any of us. If the Devil is here, Parris will do what he can to fight him. His position depends on it. He cannot be seen as the cause of this—do you take my meaning? He will not shoulder the blame, and Tom Putnam will support him.”
I understood too well. Parris had too much at stake; his position was already too tenuous. To be seen as housing the Devil would turn some villagers against him. His only choice was to turn the blame to someone else.
“One of us should be at that prayer meeting,” I said.
“One of us will not be enough,” Francis told me. “If this grows…”
“Will Parris try to keep us from it?”
Francis shook his head. “He must let us come. ’Tis a terrifying thing; others will want reassurance.”
“Then who should go?”
“Not Putnam. His presence will only inflame his brother. And Porter…no. There is too much contention already between their families.”
I regarded him slowly, with dread. “That leaves only you and me, and Daniel.”
“Daniel is a town selectman; ’tis best if he stays clear of this. Thomas and I have had our disagreements, but there are no lingering animosities. And you: You have had no disputes with Parris beyond the committee ones, and…your own daughter has been seen at the parsonage. She’s been seen with those other girls—you have an interest in the proceedings.”
Your own daughter.
I answered steadily, �
�Very well. The two of us, then. When shall the prayer meeting be?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll talk to Parris.” Then Francis sighed. “I had hoped…Ah, well, ’tis one of God’s trials. I had thought myself too old for this.”
“Let us hope it does not get worse.”
“Aye,” he said. “Aye. And…You will be careful, Lucas?”
“Is it possible, Francis? Could it be that Satan has come to the village?”
Francis’s look was long. “What else could it be?”
Chapter 21
’TWAS NEARLY A WEEK BEFORE THE SNOW STOPPED, CHANGING overnight to rain, a new thaw that had trees cracking and icicles breaking from the eaves to plunge into softening snow. The cold was of a different kind now, a dampness that eased into the bones.
Now that the roads became passable again, neighbors would meet, women would gossip, and the news of Griggs’s pronouncement of bewitchment would be embellished beyond recognition.
Thus it was more urgent than ever that I get Charity from the village. But the morning I planned to go, I came into the hall only to see Charity already at the window—her usual post these last days.
I went behind her, trying to find what absorbed her attention. I saw bare trees and snow-covered ground, a crow, the steady drips from icicles hanging before the window. “What is it you see?”
She jumped as if she hadn’t known I was there. Her face went white. “’Tis gone,” she said, rubbing viciously at a new chilblain on her jaw.
I reached out and stopped her hand. “I told you to get some salve for that.”
“I would not take anything she gave me,” she said.
“I have told you that I will not—”
Her gaze leaped beyond me. I glanced over my shoulder to see Susannah come into the room. Charity twisted from my grasp, and then she leaned close. “Do not let her fool you, Father. Please. The Devil wears many pleasing faces. You know this, do you not? You know this?”
“Of course I know it.” I reached for her hand again. She looked startled at my touch, and then afraid. She snatched her hand back and ran from me.