by Megan Chance
“Aye,” she said quietly. “He made the black man tremble. He has made all the witches tremble in fear.”
“What of your aunt?” Danforth asked. “Did he make her tremble?”
“She trembles at nothing. Even God does not frighten her.”
Danforth turned to me. “Is this true? Are you so evil that God cannot frighten you?”
I met his gaze. “The Devil has promised me solace and eternal life. I have no fear of God.”
“Which others have you consorted with? Who else here is a witch?”
“I am new to this place. I don’t know their names.”
“Abigail Hobbs has said there are witches’ Sabbats, whereupon you gather to drink red wine and eat red bread. She says there is a wizard there who performs the sacrament in a terrible parody of Christ. She has seen you there. She says you sing so they can dance. That you sing the Devil’s songs.”
“Aye, she does!” Charity called out. “She does sing the Devil’s songs!”
“Tell us,” Danforth urged, coming closer. “Do you sing the Devil’s songs?”
“Aye. I…have sung.”
“At these Sabbats?”
“I have sung at places you would not approve of.”
“What else happens at these meetings?”
I hesitated. Every eye was turned toward me. “There are huge fires built, bodies swung over them to burn, and then there is music and dancing; there is feasting while the flames rise and flicker. We eat meat that looks red in the firelight, and there is much laughing and singing.”
“And this…This is the witches’ Sabbat?” Danforth asked.
“This is Guy Fawkes Day,” I said.
The courtroom erupted in chaos, but for Mary Walcott, who kept knitting. I caught her gaze, and I saw how it burned with hatred, and all I could feel for her was pity. Horrible pity, that she should be so trapped here, that she should be so desperate—
“Enough!” Danforth shouted. “You toy with us, madam, as the Devil bids you.”
I was allowed to say nothing more. Danforth gestured to the constable, who dragged me back hard from the bar of justice; the crowd was rising and shouting. In this chaos I was taken away.
They pulled me out into the street, where the people shouted at me and pushed. Someone threw an apple, which hit me on my cheek so hard tears came to my eyes. Another threw a half-rotten cabbage that exploded where it hit my hip in slimy leaves and the smell of corruption. Locker did not handle me gently. I tripped and stumbled, and my hair fell into my face—’twas tangled and dull, with a foul smell, but I could not move it from my eyes; he would not let me stop, and he held the end of the chains so I could not lift my arms.
But in spite of this, I felt victorious. I had saved Lucas from arrest. I had managed to manipulate them well enough to save my lover’s life.
Jem took my chains from Locker and led me down into the dungeon again. When he twisted the key in the lock, he began to chuckle, and I stared at him in confusion as he pushed open the door and shoved me inside.
And then I saw what had caused his amusement.
Lucas waited for me with the others.
He was in chains.
Jem closed the door behind me, and I heard the lock. I fell to my knees. “Lucas,” I whispered. “My God. Oh, my God.”
I felt his hands on my shoulders as he knelt before me, and then he lifted his arms over my head so he could hold me close.
“Why are you here?” I asked desperately. “I cannot believe…Why are you here?”
“They’ve accused me of being a witch,” he whispered.
“But ’tis not possible. I told them I’d bewitched you. I told them—”
“’Twas over from the moment I withdrew my testimony. Before you even confessed. ’Twas nothing you could say to change it.”
“It cannot be. I will not let them do this.”
He gave me a bitter smile. “You knew it too, Susannah. You saw the way they looked at me. I had thought…I had hoped my reputation would save me, but I should have realized.…If even Rebecca Nurse could be arrested, what chance did I have?”
I wanted to cry. “I cannot believe this. Surely this will end. Surely someone will see. There must be clearer heads—”
“What clearer heads, Susannah?” he asked fiercely. “Where shall they be found? The preachers believe. Magistrates believe. Did they tell you they arrested nine others? Including Mary Easty, Rebecca’s other sister?”
I stared at him in dumb surprise.
“A week ago, they confiscated Proctor’s property. They left his maidservant with the care of Proctor’s five children and not even a pot to cook in. George Corwin took it all, sold the cattle at half price, killed some.”
“George Corwin?” I asked.
“Nephew to the magistrate,” Lucas said wryly. “He was made high sheriff a few days ago. There’s no love lost between Proctor and the rest of the village. They say he’ll hang as a convicted witch—’tis only a matter of time before his property belongs to the crown, and ’tis certain enough that they’ll take it now. Is this the work of clearer heads? Is this what I have to look forward to? Do you know the maid they gave Proctor’s children to?”
I hated to ask the question. “Who?”
“Mary Warren. Charity’s friend. One of the girls who accused Elizabeth Proctor of witchcraft.”
“Mary Warren?” I frowned at him in confusion. “But…but she is here. I heard her two nights ago. She’s been accused of being a witch.”
“Aye. When she protested the accusation of John Proctor, the girls turned on her as well. ’Tis said he has been a father to her. She cannot have liked to see him arrested.”
“But…they questioned her here. Last night. I heard it all. She says she is not a witch, that the girls lie.”
“Who knows the truth anymore? The world’s gone mad, Susannah. Do not forget this. Nothing is as it should be.”
“What of Jude and Faith?” I asked. “What of Charity? What will become of them?”
“Faith is still at Hannah Penney’s. Tom Putnam has promised to see Jude there as well. No harm will come to them. And Charity…Today was the first time I’d seen her since she told me of her vision with Judith. She stays still at Ingersoll’s. They have made my daughter…a stranger to me.”
He rested his forehead against mine, and I felt something wet drop onto my cheek. He was crying. “You should not have done it,” he whispered to me. “I would not have asked it of you. I did not want it.”
“’Tis too late now. ’Tis done.”
“They will not let you rest until you reveal others; you realize this? If you do not reveal others, they will hang you. How long can you toy with them, Susannah? They are not foolish men.”
“Until I can think of a way to save us both,” I said.
Lucas sighed. “’Tis in God’s hands now.”
“’Tis in our own hands,” I corrected him. “It always was.”
Chapter 36
THAT NIGHT, THEY BROUGHT THE NINE OTHERS IN, SO NOW THERE were fifteen in a cell meant for four. There was not enough bedding; Jem and Richard brought in straw and spread it around, wadding it to serve as beds. Lucas shared my pallet. In the midst of so many other people, we were as an island, alone.
The next morning, Sam Nurse came to deliver blankets and scowled at me in contempt. He’d no doubt heard of my confession.
I watched as Lucas went with Sam to a corner, where they huddled together, talking. I heard a rustling on the pallet above me, and Giles Corey came down to use the slop pail. When he came back, I expected him to climb to his pallet again, to join his wife, but he stopped before me. “So you’ve confessed,” he said. The force of his contempt was formidable. “Who’e you dragged down with you, witch-bitch?”
I gave him no response, and felt a guilty satisfaction as Giles Corey shrank away.
In the corner, Sam rose, and Lucas with him. They clapped each other on the shoulder, and then Sam called for Jem and the door opened and he w
as gone without a look in my direction. Lucas turned to me, dismay and sorrow hard upon his face.
“What is it?” I asked him. “What news did Sam bring? Are the girls…Oh, tell me ’tis not bad.”
Lucas sank onto the pallet. “’Tis Charity. When she heard they arrested me, she had such fits they could not stop her.” His voice went toneless, a dull recitation, a listing. “She tried to throw herself into the fire, not once, but many times; she hurt her wrist in trying. She also vomited pins and a key, and bit her tongue so her mouth was full of blood. She stares now into space and will not see or speak to any living thing. Sam said”—here Lucas’s voice broke—“she is insensible. Her mind is…”
“You cannot leave her to them. Lucas, you must tell Sam to take her away. Surely the Pooles will care for her until you can bring her home again—”
“You have more faith than I,” he said. “Shall any of us ever leave this place except by dying?”
“Aye, we shall. There must be someone, Lucas, who will hear what we have to say—”
Lucas laughed; ’twas a terrible sound. “You have not been in the village for months, Susannah. You cannot imagine what ’tis like there. Suspicion everywhere; ’tis like a terrible tide that cannot be turned. There will be no quick end to this, I promise you. It only grows. Sam said Locker confiscated my land. The animals, my tools…’Twas all taken and destroyed or sold. He took everything in the cellar and storage room. He poured the cider and the beer into the yard. The property I have poured my sweat into for the last sixteen years is forfeited to the crown.”
“How can that be? You have not been convicted.”
“Since when does that matter? ’Tis what happened to Proctor. I was not…quiet. After Charity told me her vision of the murders…I was more outspoken than I should have been. I should have known, but…but I have lived in this village for too long; I believed in rational men. I had forgotten my part. I forgot who I was, the enemies I’d made.” His expression was grim. “’Tis almost certain I will be convicted, Susannah. You should know this. Convicted and hanged.”
I stared at him in disbelief. “’Tis because you were on the Village Committee—is that your meaning? You believe this is deliberate? That the girls are naming their enemies?”
“If it didn’t start that way, it may end so. You heard Mary Warren’s confession. And Sam said people are beginning to talk; ’tis a feeling about that perhaps the girls are being led. They don’t even know some of these people they’re accusing. Bridget Bishop, for one, never laid eyes on them. And George Burroughs.”
“Who is he?”
“One of the first ministers of the village,” Lucas said. “He and Putnam were long at odds. He’s in Maine now. They will have to go a long way to find him. But they may. ’Tis said…The girls say he’s the leader of the witches. The wizard. Sam says that even Joseph Putnam is afraid. He told Tom that if a single member of his family was accused, he would come after him. But still he keeps a horse saddled and ready, and a loaded gun.”
“Then there is hope. As long as there are doubters—”
“Susannah, don’t hope for that. There are too many who believe. The deputy governor believes. At first, even I did not doubt the truth of the things these girls say.”
“They would leave your children orphans?”
“If I am a witch, ’tis better I do not raise them.”
“But you are not a witch, Lucas.”
“Aye.” He sighed. “There is evil here. There are none who deny that. And I have already contributed to it. My daughter is an accuser. You are here because of me.”
“Don’t say that. I did not take care to understand this world of yours.”
“This was the life I chose for myself,” Lucas said, “yet, when I think of it…Do you know that I have never heard my children laugh?”
“’Tis the village—”
“No.” He shook his head. “No. Sam’s children laugh. I have heard Daniel Andrew’s sons roar with pleasure. ’Tis me. I have been afraid, and I have taught my daughters to be the same. ’Tis too late to change things, I know, but I wish—”
“’Tis not too late,” I told him, and those words became my promise to him.
An hour later, Richard came to get me, and I was questioned once more in a still-empty jail cell on the upper floor—not by the magistrates this time, but by the preachers instead. They were gathering information to implicate others; I knew that, and I gave it to them the best I could. They were most interested in the details: The Devil’s Sabbat especially fascinated them. I told them the story of the last supper, fashioning it as I went in shades of red and black, giving them the Devil.
I did all this, and thought only of how to help Lucas, what to do. I was driven by it. As the days passed, he returned from his own examinations, weary and bloodless, without even a sight of his daughter to ease him; his worries were transparent beneath his skin. I burned to free him, and when they arrested four others amidst hailstorms that rocked the end of April like God’s icy tears, and New England received the news that Increase Mather was nearly arrived with a new charter and a new governor—the Indian fighter, William Phips—I knew I had not much time left. With a new charter and a new government, the trials could be set.
But worse than that was the news of Charity. Sam Nurse came as often as he could, and told us that Charity had lapsed into blank-eyed silence. She refused to take anything but broth. She was already nothing but bones. Now she was dying. I watched Lucas change with the news. I watched the desperation and the horror in his eyes; I watched the pounds drop from him. Though I begged him to eat, ’twas impossible to swallow the prison food: black cabbages, sweet potatoes crawling with maggots, corn rotten with borers. On Sundays, we were given a treat: a heavily salted soup made of a single ox bone boiled in water with dried apples.
’Twas summer in New England, yet in this prison, there was still winter dark and barrenness. The days passed; Increase Mather arrived in Boston, along with the new governor. By then, George Burroughs, the minister Lucas had talked of, had been arrested, along with several others. Mary Warren had recanted once again, no doubt desperate to regain her status as one of the afflicted after three weeks in prison chains. She was one or Burroughs’s chief accusers now. I had heard there was a total of thirty-six imprisoned, but the number changed daily, and showed no signs of slowing. The others in the cell with us talked in hushed trepidation about when the trials would begin, what would happen once the governor learned of what had passed here in Salem, but I did not let myself worry over such things. I was a confessed witch; I would hang soon enough. I had grown accustomed to the thought.
But I could not let Lucas die.
’Twas two days after Increase Mather returned that I finally determined how to save him.
I had been lingering by the cell door while Lucas slept, when I heard a rustle in the hallway, and a giggle and a groan that were not of suffering but of pleasure.
I glanced out the barred window, wondering who satisfied themselves in the hallway instead of seeking privacy elsewhere. Soon I saw the edge of a skirt come into view, and I leaned closer to see out. ’Twas a pretty, buxom girl with her cap askew and her bodice laces loosened. She giggled again as whoever she was with pressed her against the wall. Jem, I saw. ’Twas Jem, with his sweetheart.
I was immediately annoyed, and then I saw how she pushed him away, still hesitant as he pulled at the laces of her chemise, and I saw then the color of the skirt she wore—a bright leaf green, a color too bright and vain for this place, and the idea came so fast into my head ’twas as if I’d been struck with it. Quickly I went to the bag Hannah had brought me all those weeks ago and rifled through it until I found what I was looking for. The cursed red bodice.
I took it with me back to the cell door and slapped my hand against the bars. “Jem! Jem, come here!”
He buried his face in the girl’s neck.
Jem!
She pushed at him a little. “Shouldn’t you s
ee to them?” she asked.
“I’ve other things to rend to now,” he said, leering at her.
I slapped the bars again and kicked the door. “Jem!”
The girl pushed him again, and Jem sighed and stood back, jerking at his breeches as he came to the cell door. “What the hell do you want? I ain’t your servant boy.”
“I’m in need of help,” I said.
The jailkeep cursed, then unlocked the door with a fierce twist. He turned to the girl and said, “You want to see the witches up close, Pru?”
She hesitated, but I saw in her eyes that vulgar curiosity, as if we might change before her eyes. Jem held open the door, and she slipped inside, keeping back against the wall, gasping a little when she saw the people inside, lying as they were in nearly every foot of space.
“They’re like animals,” she whispered in a wondering voice.
I could not help myself. “Aye,” I said, raising my hand at her like a claw. “And if you get too close, we’ll eat you up.”
She gasped again, pressing hard to the wall. Jem only laughed. “What d’you want?” he asked me.
“I’ve spilled something on my dress. I need you to unchain me so I can change,” I told him. Then I held out the scarlet bodice, holding it as best I could, angling it so the girl could see.
Pru made a little sound, like a mew; with relief and satisfaction, I saw how she stared at that bodice, with pure longing, with something like reverence. I had seen the same look in Mary Walcott’s eyes. Jem had bent to go through the keys on his ring, but when he heard her sound, he looked up.
I held out the bodice. “Would you like to touch it?” I asked Pru. “The material is exceedingly fine.”
She glanced at Jem. She did not want to come near me, I saw that, but neither could she resist the lure. Carefully she stepped forward, touching the sleeve of the bodice, just barely, and then she touched again, lingering this time.
“Tis paragon,” I said. “From London. Made by Madame Bertrice. Do you know her?”
Pru shook her head. “I’ve never seen London.”
“She has a fine shop. This was made for me, but I have lost so much weight.…” I sighed. “’Twas once quite lovely.”