Susannah Morrow (25 page)

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 had 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.

The music was lively and haunting. She played expertly, as one born to the instrument, as if ’twas her voice that came from
it, and we were all silent, watching the firelight play across her face, watching her hands move across the keys without effort
or strain, the oddest chords easy to hold.

I knew suddenly and without doubt where she’d got the instrument, who had taught her to play it. Judith’s words came to me:
She left him for an actor. He was a lead player, I think, and she said he was handsome. He must have been, to turn
her
head.

Susannah had told me his name. Geoffrey. Geoffrey. I hated the sound of it. I pictured him, fair to my darkness, brawny to
my sinew. I pictured him bringing her the instrument, sitting behind her, helping her hands move over the keys, showing her
each note while she leaned back into him, laughing, kissing.…

I must have made a sound, because suddenly she glanced up at me, catching my gaze. I saw her start—’twas the only misstep
she made, a single discord—and then she looked down again.

If Susannah was aware of the currents in the room, she showed no evidence of it. She began another tune, and this time, she
sang in a low, clear voice that perfectly matched the instrument. “Under the greenwood tree, who loves to lie with me—”

Charity’s gasp was so loud we all turned to look at her, but when the others turned back again, I did not—’twas fear I’d heard
in my daughter’s sound.

She was still by the window. Her fingers fumbled with the edges of her shawl; she pulled it closer and closer as if she were
freezing cold, though it was already wrapped so tightly about her ’twas a wonder she could move within it. She was staring
out the window. ’Twas as if she were talking to someone, though there was no one there. She was trembling.

I left the table to go over to her. I leaned close to whisper, “Are you ill, child?”

My daughter glared at me as if she did not know me. Her hands grasped convulsively at her shawl. “Ill? No. No.”

“Do you not like the song?”

Her eyes went wild. “I won’t listen to it!” She jerked back from me as if I’d touched her, when I had not even lifted a hand.
“I won’t! I shall not!”

Susannah’s hands came down on the keys, discordant and then silent, so that Charity’s words lingered there in echoes. Charity
reached for my hand, the shawl coming loose to half fall off her shoulders. “You cannot be fooled, Father, can you?” she pleaded.
“You cannot be fooled?”

“Fooled by what, Charity? Fooled how?”

She dropped my hand and shook her head, frenzied again, be fore she burst into tears and ran from the room, past the table
and my neighbors, up the stairs, leaving me to stare helplessly after while Jude followed her.

“She hasn’t felt well.” Susannah’s voice was soft in the sudden silence. When I looked at the table, I saw that they were
all looking at her, confused, bleary-eyed. The mood had changed. Discomfort, tension…Francis Nurse unclenched his hand from
his tankard and rose.

“We should be going,” he said. “’Tis late, and much to do on the morrow.”

“Aye.” Joseph nodded. He got to his feet as well, and gave a small bow to Susannah. “You play beautifully. I would be delighted
to hear you again some time. For now…I thank you for the unaccustomed treat.”

They left then, disappearing together into the darkness.

I watched as Susannah covered the virginal again, leaving it there on the end of the table while she collected the tankards
and took them to the washtub near the fire.

“What ails her?” I asked.

She was quiet for a moment, as if debating whether or not to speak, and this made me angry. So I said again, “What ails her?
I am her father. You’re keeping something from me. ’Tell me.”

“I confronted her this morning,” she said.

“Confronted her? Over what? You speak in riddles.”

Susannah sighed. She turned again to face me, leaning back against the tub, resting her hands on its rim. “I told her that
I’d found Samuel Trask.”

“S
AMMY
?” I
ASKED
, MUDDLED, NOT UNDERSTANDING. H
IS NAME
seemed to come from nowhere. “You found Sammy?”

“In Andover,” she said. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a creased piece of paper. “I’ve a letter from his master.”

“From his master?” I frowned at her, even more confused. “Why? Why were you searching for him?”

“Have you forgotten the five pounds?” she asked.

“The five pounds?” It came back to me then, the strange entry in the ledger. “Aye. Judith gave him the money. ’Tis all I need
to know.”

“But why? The reason—”

“The reason is with her, and she is with God,” I said. “’Tis enough that she had one.”

Susannah put the letter again into her pocket. She stepped toward me. “You are not an ignorant man. Why do you close your
eyes to this?”

I watched her warily. “I don’t understand you.”

“There was something between Samuel and Charity. I know it.”

“She’s a child.”

“Did she seem a child to you tonight?”

“Aye. One in the midst of a nightmare.”

“A nightmare about what, Lucas?” Susannah came closer still. “Do you not wonder why she is so afraid? This trouble Judith
wrote me of…I thought ’twas you. I know now ’tis not, but I wonder…”

“You think she wrote of Charity?”

“What else could it be?”

“A hundred things,” I said.

She made a sound of exasperation. “I don’t understand why you refuse to consider this. Is there something else I don’t know?
Some secret?”

“Secrets.” I threw up my hands. “There are no secrets in this house.”

“I tell you there are.”

The conviction in her voice stopped me cold.

“I tell you there are,” she said again, quietly. “I have been thinking perhaps ’twould be best to…send her out. There is something
here that frightens her, something…” She shook her head in puzzlement. “I don’t know what. But I think…I think ’twould be
good for her to be in another place for a while, perhaps in town.…She needs a place to heal, Lucas.”

Her words were startling in their bluntness. I hardly knew how to answer her. “To heal? From what?”

“From her mother’s death, if nothing else.”

“Where better than here? With her family?”

“She’s troubled here. I don’t think…Ah, Lucas, you do not help her. I, think…I think you may even make things worse.”

I felt as if I stood outside a darkened window, trying to see the figures within, sensing movement and light, feeling only
danger. “Why?” I whispered.

“Because I think Charity is sick with guilt.”

“What possible reason could she have—”

“I think she was in love with Samuel,” Susannah said. “I think she may have been…intimate…with him.”

I was stunned. Charity was only a child, and a godly one. Samuel had been nearly twenty, too worldly to take notice of a young
girl. He had to know I would never allow it. Yet…there had been Judith’s warnings too.…

I refused to think of it. Angrily, I moved toward Susannah, advancing as she backed away. “I don’t want to hear such lies
about my daughter again. I will not have it. Not in this village, nor in my house.”

She lifted her face to me, and there was anger in her expression now too. “’Tis a pity you cannot control me the way you control
yourself, isn’t it, Lucas? Did you control my sister as well?”