Susannah Morrow (16 page)

“Ah. Is that what you want to do then? Tell him?”

“I was disobedient. ’Twould be best for me to take my punishment and pray for forgiveness.”

She was quiet for a moment. “Your punishment,” she said thoughtfully. “Does your father punish you often, then?”

I heard that criticism again in her voice, and I said hotly, “’Tis necessary sometimes.”

“Oh?”

“Children have an evil nature—”

“I see. But you are not a child, Charity—or so you’ve said.”

I was suddenly confused. I was not sure what she wanted. Warily I said, “There is no one truly good among any of us. We all
must fight our debased natures however we can. We carry Adam’s sin—”

“I know the text, Charity,” she said. “What I don’t know is what you believe your sins are, or why they frighten you so that
you think you deserve a beating for them.”

I went cold.

“Or perhaps,” she went on thoughtfully, “it’s not a beating you feel you deserve, but damnation itself.”

“That isn’t true.”

“Those girls—your friends—do they care about you, Charity? Or is it just that they want someone who will do whatever they
ask? Today, ’tis not much—a stolen bodice. Tomorrow, what will it be?”

“Mary didn’t want me to steal it. I was only borrowing it for the night.”

“Aye. This time. What shall it be the next time? Two nights? A week? Shall I open my trunk one day to find half my clothes
gone?”

“I would never do that.”

“Maybe not. Or maybe you would. Do you even know that yourself?”

I thought of Mary saying,
Perhaps I’ll need it another few days, or a week,
and
I would hardly ruin my chances to ever borrow it again.
My hands were sweating now where I gripped Susannah about the waist, and I had to fight the urge to push away from her and
jump down and run. I felt the woods closing in around me, crowding my head with wiry branches that pulled and tore so that
I could barely think. My fingers began to tremble. I tightened my grasp to hold them still.

Susannah did not seem to notice. “For your own sake, Charity, you should do as your father asked and stay away from those
girls. I know your mama felt so too.”

It did not take much longer to reach my father’s fields and the road leading past our house. As we reached the footpath that
cut through the trees to the clearing, Susannah pulled Jack to a stop. She turned in the saddle to look at me.

“I’ll say nothing of this to your father,” she said to me, “and you should not, either. There’s no need for a beating, not
today. He thinks you’re feeling unwell, and Jude has promised to keep quiet.” There was an intensity in her dark eyes that
seared me. “This is what I want you to do: Stay here until I get to the house. I’ll call him to the barn to help with the
mule, and you run inside. Go upstairs and stay there until I call you down for supper.”

It was a lie she wanted me to tell. A terrible lie. But the darkness was crowding my head, and I could not think, and her
eyes held me. She had to peel my fingers from around her waist because I could not let go, and she had to help me down. Even
then I stood so helplessly that she grabbed my arm and gave it a little shake. “Do you hear me, Charity?”

“Aye,” I said.

And so I waited. I hid behind a tree and waited while I listened to the dull thud of Jack’s hooves going up the path, the
snap of branches as they caught on Susannah’s skirt. I heard her call, “Brother! I’m having trouble with the bridle. Can you
help me?” and the thud of the door as it opened and closed. Next came my father’s voice. “You’re dry. Did you find shelter,
then, during the storm?” She said, “Why, the storm missed the flax field completely,” and then their voices trailed off as
they went into the barn, and I ran. I ran up the path and into the house, and though I saw Jude sitting at the table, and
saw how she looked up at me when I came in, I said nothing to her. I ran up the stairs and into our bedroom, where I went
to the window and looked out on the woods, barren and shadowed. The trees seemed alive to me, bending as they were in the
wind, their branches wicked and stretching, and within them was a movement, a shadow. I caught my breath and meant to step
away, to turn my gaze, but I couldn’t. Before my eyes, the shadow became a presence; it grew weight.

Mama’s specter.

She gestured to me, and I saw her speaking, though I heard no words, and as I tried harder and harder to listen, the spirit
grew more desperate. ’Twas as if she were trying to reach me, but could not. The trees were crowding ever closer, penning
her in, curling wicked hands about her.

I watched the spirit struggle, and I knew: ’Twas because of me. ’Twas my sin giving strength to those branches. My sin holding
her here. The power of my lie, the way I’d given in to Susannah once again…

I heard my own sobs like a faraway moaning, and long after the vision disappeared, and I heard my father and Susannah come
in again from the barn, I could not take my eyes from the place where I’d seen the spirit. The trees were like a living darkness
in my head.

’T
WAS MY GREATEST SIN THAT, EVEN AFTER THE THINGS
I’
D SEEN
, the warnings I’d had, I was too weak and afraid to defy Susannah. When she called me down that night, I pretended I had
been ill. My stomach was in such knots that I did not have to feign a lack of appetite. When my father sat us down to prayers
and lessons that night, my guilt was so great, I thought I truly would be ill. I felt guiltier still when he dismissed me
after a few minutes, saying, “You’d best go up to bed, Charity. You look as pale as death.”

The truth was, in spite of my guilt, I was grateful for his reprieve. I could not sit there and listen to him and know that
he knew nothing of what I’d done this afternoon. His prayers of damnation would have been better. I wished Susannah had never
found me, that I did not have to look at her quiet face and see my own secrets hiding in her eyes.

The very air in the house had changed—I felt the evil in it. The next morning, I woke to the first snow, powdering the barren
trees and dusting the ground. The worst cold of winter had begun, but it was nothing compared to the cold I felt in my bones.

When I finally dressed and went downstairs to see Susannah bent over the samp kettle and Jude already working on her sampler,
I paused there on the step and wished I did not have to go down. When Father came from the parlor, ’twas all I could do to
say good morning to him.

He started at my voice, as if his mind had been in some far distant place. “I trust you’re well today,” he said. “You look
better.”

There was concern in his eyes, a warmth that in my guilt I could not bear. I twisted my hands into my skirt when they began
again to tremble. “Aye,” I whispered.

Susannah pulled the samp kettle off the fire. She brought it to the table and set it down with a thud, and then ladled the
mush into trenchers. My father went to the window, and I felt his restlessness as he stared out at the falling snow.

“Charity, come to the board,” Susannah said. “Jude, put away the sampler and eat. Hurry now before it gets cold.”

Mama had never had to urge Jude twice to set down her sewing. But now Jude sighed and lingered over the linen before she finally
laid it on the table. I saw the knots and frayed threads of the upper portion, the first few letters of the saying Mama had
designed for her, messy and uneven, torn out and redone ten times or more:
Judith Fowler is my name/England is my nation/Salem is my dwelling place/and Christ is my salvation,
and I saw with surprise that the letters beyond those first few were perfectly done. Not a single knot, the stitches careful
and even, and I felt a terrible hopelessness at the sight. How could I fight this? How could I fight Jude’s obvious pride
in her work now or Susannah’s patience with her? What could I say—’twas the Devil’s art that made Jude’s fingers so nimble
now, that Susannah’s soft and patient instruction was not mentored by God?

I came to the table, and Susannah pushed my trencher toward me. When I looked up to take it, our eyes met, and I saw her satisfaction
at the knowledge that I was in her power at last, and my hands trembled so I could barely pick up my spoon to eat.

At the window, my father said, “’Tis a light snow. It should stop soon.”

Susannah glanced up. “Then you’ll be going to the village after all?”

“Aye. There’s another committee meeting.”

Village politics again. No doubt it was that distracting him this morning.

“Perhaps you should take Charity with you,” Susannah said.

I looked up in surprise. I did not know whether to be grateful or disturbed at such a plan. My guilt was so huge, another
hour with my father would be misery. But then again, I longed for the reassurance of him—to feel his quiet presence leading
me safely through the trees, to try to tell him again how dangerous Susannah was.

“Charity has chores to do. There’s no reason for her to go into town.”

“She can pick something up for me,” Susannah said. “I took my bodice in to have Mary Sibley sew on a piece of lace. It should
be finished by now.”

My father shook his head. “Send her to get it when there are other errands to run. ’Tis a waste to walk in only for that,
and the meeting could take a few hours.”

“I really do need the bodice,” Susannah said.

My father looked at her, and I felt something move in the air between then, disturbing and strange, a struggle I did not understand.
But I recognized the clash of wills, and though I did not know what Susannah’s purpose was, I felt a terrible dread—and I
knew that if she changed my father’s mind, I would be very, very afraid.

My father’s voice was firm and unyielding. “Not today.”

I was greatly relieved when he refused her. She had not influenced him yet; his will still belonged to God. Susannah looked
at him as if debating whether to push him, and then it seemed her decision was made; she let it lie, and I was so glad I thought
everyone must see. I looked down into my trencher to hide my smile.

She changed the subject. “I’ve made some headway with the account books.”

I took a bite of samp and let the meal linger on my tongue.

“That’s good news,” my father said.

“’Tis not so difficult to decipher as I thought. There are a few names written that I cannot attach significance to yet. Israel
Porter, for one.”

“For wood,” my father said. “He owns the sawmill.”

“Ah. I knew there was a reason. Sibley?”

“We traded him half a hog for some corn last fall.”

“There’s one more”—Susannah reached into her bulging pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper torn from Mama’s almanac—“ah,
here ’tis. Samuel Trask. Who is he? I’ve not heard of him.”

I choked. My father looked at me in quick concern and then away again when I grabbed my cider to help me swallow.

“Sam?” he asked, his brow furrowed in puzzlement. “Why would he be in the accounts?”

Susannah shrugged. “I don’t know. Who is he?”

“My apprentice. He ran off a few months ago.”

“Well, this was”—Susannah checked the scrap of paper again—“Judith paid him five pounds in September. She has it listed as
the eighth. When did he leave?”

“The ninth,” my father said. “He disappeared on the ninth.”

I stared down at my trencher, and a memory pushed into my head—not of Sammy, but of my mother. My mother on the day I’d told
her that I loved him, that I wanted to marry him.
But you’re just fifteen, Charity,
she’d said.
What can you know of love?
I told her I had given myself to him, thinking the truth would force her to find a way for Sammy and me to be together. There
would be no other choice. What we had done was a sin—it could only be undone with marriage.

Now I saw again the anger on her face that startled me. And though her voice had been calm, her words had hurt.
My dear child, don’t you understand what you have done? Remember what I’ve told you? Satan has found an open window in you—you
have gone and let him in! This is a mistake. You cannot marry Sam; you must understand that.

That was all, no reasons, nothing more, no matter how I cried. I had thought she would change her mind—how could she not,
after what I’d told her? But there had been no opportunity. The next morning, Sam was gone, and Mama had dried my eyes with
soothing touches and calming words.
’Tis better this way, Charity. You will come to understand it when you’re older. He was not the man for you—if he loved you
as you say, ’twould have taken more than five pounds to send him on his way.

She had promised to keep everything secret, and I was heartbroken at both Sam’s leaving and how easily I’d mistaken him. The
depth of my own wickedness horrified me, and I had been grateful to her for saving me from sin, and for keeping safe my fathers
opinion of me.

And now, it seemed, it was all come to naught, and I had Susannah to thank for that too. Feeling numb, I glanced up at her,
at my father. I waited for him to see the truth in my eyes at last.