Susannah Morrow (17 page)

Susannah said, “Five pounds. ’Tis a lot to give an apprentice.”

“Aye,” he said grimly. “What could she have been thinking?”

“Could the boy have stolen it?”

“’Twas not like him to do such a thing.”

“But you say he disappeared. Was that like him, then?”

Father shook his head.

“Then perhaps stealing was a new skill as well.”

“Judith would have told me if he’d stolen it. We had no secrets from each other.”

’Twas all I could do to keep my face expressionless. Susannah looked at me, and I had again the sense that she somehow knew
my thoughts. “Do you know something of this, Charity?”

“What would she know?” my father asked. “She’s a child.”

“So you say.” Susannah’s expression was pensive.

“Who knows what the coin was for? Judith was a compassionate soul; perhaps she saw him leaving and gave it to him to buy some
bread. She’s in the grave now, so we shall never know.” My father said it with finality, and I thought with relief that it
was done. But Susannah did not take her gaze from me, and I knew she saw something that my father did not.

I could not eat after that. My father finished his breakfast and left to go into the village. I turned then to face my enemy.
The table was cleared, and Jude was bent again over that sampler. Susannah sat beside her, nodding as Jude showed her some
stitch, but my aunt was watching me.

“Go to the cellar and fetch some onions, would you, Jude?” she asked my sister.

“But I want to show you—”

“Show me later.” Susannah laid her hand gently on Jude’s. “If I don’t start dinner soon, we’ll have to eat samp again.”

Jude was oddly obedient. When she was gone to the cellar, Susannah turned back to me.

“It seems strange that your mother would give five pounds to an apprentice, does it not?”

“Perhaps he told her he was going to market, and she asked him to bring her something.”

“Aye.” She nodded slowly. “But he never returned with it, did he? And your father says he was not a thief.”

I said nothing.

“What do you know of this, Charity?”

“You claim to know my heart so well—read it for yourself.” I threw out the words, but then I was strung tight waiting for
her answer, afraid that she would say the truth and show me for certain what a friend of the Devil she was. I wondered what
I would say if she did, what I would do.

She gave me a long, strange look, and said quietly, “I see. I think I begin to understand this trouble your mama wrote me
of.”

I did not understand what she meant, and I didn’t like how unsettled I felt when she said it. I twisted my shaking hands into
my skirt, and tried to blink away the trees crowding again into my mind, the vision of Mama’s specter struggling within them.

The knock on the door startled us both. Susannah jumped a little on the bench before she gave me a questioning look and rose.
“Who could be out in this weather?” she asked. When she went to the door and pulled it open, there was Mary Walcott standing
outside, shivering in her dark gray cloak, her eyes burning.

Susannah bade her come in, and Mary did, though I saw how reluctant she was. Her gaze went to me, and I nodded back in acknowledgment.

“Would you take some cider?” Susannah asked. “Or something warm? ’Tis a long way to come, and cold.”

“No, thank you, ma’am,” Mary said. Her voice was polite but frosty. She pulled the bodice from the folds of her cloak and
laid it on the table. It was bundled and wrapped far more neatly than when I’d brought it to her crumpled into a ball. “I’ve
come to return this.”

“Ah, yes, the bodice,” Susannah said, as if she’d forgotten all about it. She lifted it and unfolded it onto the table, and
I was startled at how lifeless and ordinary it looked in her hands—as plain as the sad-colored one I wore now. There was no
light dancing across the silky fabric, no shine to its nap. In the candlelight, the red looked dull and dark—there was nothing
special about it at all.

I glanced at Mary and wondered if she was thinking what I was: It had cost us far more than it was worth. Her expression was
sullen; I saw the way she watched Susannah spread out the sleeves and finger the cloth, looking for damage or soil.

“I didn’t hurt it. I was as careful as if it were mine,” Mary said.

“But it was not yours, was it?” Susannah folded the bodice again and left it there.

“No, ma’am. ’Twas wrong to take it.”

“And wrong to involve Charity as well.”

Mary glanced at me. I said, “I took it of my own free will. ’Twas my choice.”

Susannah ignored me. She kept her gaze on Mary. “I’ve decided there’s no harm done this time. The bodice seems in good condition;
’twas gone less than a day. But I trust this will not happen again.”

“No, ma’am,” Mary said, but insolently this time. Susannah stared at my friend with that thoughtful gaze.

“You’re a pretty girl, Mary,” she said. “What makes you think you need a bodice such as this to catch a boy’s attention?”
She smiled after she said it, and her tone was close and friendly, the kind that made one want to share secrets.

But Mary was not me. Mary was not so easily tricked. I saw her jaw clench. “I was foolish, ’twas all.”

Susannah nodded. “Aye. Well, a word of advice, Mary, from one who knows. The next time, try your wiles on the village boys,
not grown men. You might be more successful.”

“I was successful enough until you happened by. You could have any man in the village. Why must you choose the one I want?”

“The one you want?” Susannah laughed. “Child, you mistake me.”

Mary’s eyes narrowed. “Do I? Do I really?”

“Where’s your mother, that she’s not helping you choose a proper suitor?”

“She’s dead.”

“Well, if she were here, she would tell you as I do: Tend your business close to your home, and you won’t be disappointed.”

Mary snapped her mouth shut. I felt sorry for the next person she met on her way home. She fairly glowered at Susannah. “May
I go now?”

My aunt hesitated; then she sighed and waved Mary away. “Aye. Go on. Show your friend to the door, Charity, won’t you? You’ve
something to say to her anyway, I think.”

I knew what she meant; she wanted me to tell Mary I could not see her anymore. I had no intention of doing any such thing,
but I hurried after Mary, who stalked to the door without waiting. When she slipped outside, I followed after, shutting the
door carefully behind me.

It was freezing. I had on nothing but my dress, and the wind cut through to my skin and blew the wet snow into my face. Quickly
I backed again into the mean shelter of the doorway and rubbed my hands up and down my arms to keep warm.

Mary turned so quickly to face me that her cloak flew out around her legs like wings, scattering snowflakes. Her eyes were
like sparks.

“I see what you mean about her, Charity,” she said. “She’s a demon.”

“I told you.”

“Did you hear what she said to me? As if I were a child! ‘Tend your business close to your home,’” she mocked. “Who does she
think she is to say such things to me? What makes her so righteous?”

“’Tis what I’ve been saying.”

“Did you see the way Robert looked at her yesterday? His eyes nearly popped from his head! Once she left, he hadn’t a single
glance to spare for me. Not one! Before she came, he’d been looking at me as if I were a tankard of beer and he was like to
die of thirst.”

“I saw it,” I said, freezing, rubbing my arms harder.

“You cannot tell me she doesn’t want him too. He’s the most eligible man in the village.” Mary paced, stamping down the thin
layer of snow to the frozen dirt beneath. “She plans to steal him from me!”

“How can you be sure of that, Mary?”

“She does!” she spat at me. “And even if she didn’t, she humiliated me in front of him! She’ll pay for that, I promise it.”

“She’s clever, Mary. You won’t be able to take your revenge by setting loose a cow in a garden.”

Mary had been moving in circles like a crazed thing, but now she stopped, and there was a bitter smile on her face. It froze
me colder than the snow or the wind. It seemed to cut right through me.

I stopped my rubbing. “What? What is it?”

“The spells,” she said.

“What spells?”

“The ones we’ve been doing at the parsonage.”

“What about them?”

“Tituba calls them our English tricks. ‘English tricks,’ she says. ‘You won’t get no spirits with them.’“

Such talk made me nervous. “So?”

“So Betsey told us the other day that Tituba could see the future. That sometimes, when she stared into a bowl of water, the
things she saw came true.”

“You mean she’s a cunning woman?”

“More than a cunning woman, I should think.” Mary came close to me, close enough that I could see the golden flecks in her
hazel eyes. “Abigail says she knows things. Real spells.”

“Tricks.”

“No. Spells, Charity. Like how to bring animals ailing, or to curse—”

“No.” I recoiled. “’Tis asking the Devil for help against himself.”

“Don’t be absurd. ’Tis nothing of the kind.”

The snow was swirling beyond her, flakes falling onto her shoulders, into my face. I said, “There has to be another way.”

Mary shook her head. “It took her less than an hour to read my heart and wrench it from me. How long do you think it will
be before she reads yours, hmm? Do you think she will hesitate to tell your father about you and Sammy?”

Mary’s words hit hard. This morning unfolded before me again, Susannah’s questions, that knowledge in her eyes.
What do you know about this, Charity? Who is Samuel Trask?
My own desperation rose with the fury in Mary’s eyes. The shadows in my head crowded ever closer.

“What do we do?” I whispered.

Mary smiled. In the pale whiteness of the snow, she was a black shadow. “We ask Tituba.”

M
Y FATHER HAD BEEN WRONG ABOUT THE SNOW
. I
T DID NOT LET UP
that day, or the next, and the heavy white flakes grew lighter and drier, the weather colder, so there was a thick film of
ice on the windows, both inside and out. The heat from the fireplace escaped out the chimney and barely touched the room beyond
the first few feet. The only warm place was just before the hearth, but to stand in front of it meant a burning face and a
freezing backside, so there was no truly comfortable place to be but in a thick feather bed.

The snow kept us prisoners in our own house; we could not go outside. So I began the spinning. My mother had taught me well;
I could spin a thread as fine as most of the matrons in the village. Until this winter, I had never minded the chore. There
was something peaceful about spinning, about watching the spindle and the wheel turning round. Last year, my mind had been
full of daydreams as I’d worked. The wind howling past the house had been the whisper of Sammy’s voice, my steps those of
a courting dance. I had no memory of cold air or numb hands—I had been warmed by thoughts of love.

But now I knew those thoughts for what they were: sinful temptations borne by the Devil, and the big wool wheel only reminded
me of all the things I’d done. Still, ’twas a task that allowed me to stand in the same room as Susannah, to study her with
Jude while pretending to concentrate on the spinning. I set myself to work, and beside me, the window glimmered with the light
of winter snow. At first, I did watch Susannah, but ’twas so quiet and so uneventful, that soon I found myself staring blankly
at the wheel again, at the spindle and the thin, taut stretch of wool as it quivered into yarn.

When I heard the laughing, I thought at first ’twas only the hum of the wheel. Then it grew louder and louder, and I looked
up, startled to see Susannah before me, wearing the red bodice and laughing. She reached out for me, and I tried to back away
and could not move; ’twas as if I were frozen there. In desperation, I glanced toward the window, and there I saw my mother,
her face pressed against the pane, her eyes wide, and I saw the black man beside her, holding her tight.

I was suffocating, and the trees crowded in my head, blocking out sound and light. I dropped the wool, grabbing at my throat—

Something clattered, loud and hard, and suddenly the Susannah before me melted away like heat vapors on a summer day. My vision
cleared; I could breathe again. I realized in a single moment that Susannah had dropped the wooden peel, and that she was
standing at the hearth wearing a mossy green bodice and a brown skirt the color of dead leaves. Not red, not that wicked red
bodice. She had not moved from that place.

I glanced slowly at the window, afraid of what I might see. If Mama’s specter had been there, it was gone now, and there was
no sign it had been present. There was no man so black that light could not touch him. Nothing but the white of snow beyond
the glass, cut by the diamond panes into wavering patterns.

I stumbled out of the room and hurried upstairs, desperate to be away.

Once I was in the room that we used for storage, I sat on a powdering tub with my back against the corner and stared out at
the room, at bushels of oats and rye and peas and a bundle of dried codfish hanging from the wall. I longed to restore the
ordinariness of my life. I longed to be just a village girl with a mother and father who loved her.