Susannah Morrow (28 page)

When we reached the parsonage, it seemed both too long and too short a time, and I hesitated, trying to right my unsettled
thoughts, trying to shake away my preoccupation before I knocked upon the door. It was opened by the Parrises’ slave woman,
Tituba—an anomaly in the village, and one of the reasons I believed Parris was not the man of God he fashioned himself to
be. To own another human being, even one who was inferior, was anathema to most of us.

The woman’s gaze swept over us, and I opened my mouth to tell her why we were here just as I saw her eyes go to Charity. Her
gaze rested on my daughter, only a brief moment, but I saw there recognition, and something else—bitterness, perhaps, though
I was not sure of that. It startled me enough that I believed I must be wrong.

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.

M
Y 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 imagined 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.