Susannah Morrow (40 page)

I closed my eyes briefly in quick exhaustion. Dully I said, “I have no covenant with the Devil.”

“Why do you not tell the truth? We know that you do. We have testimony from several men who claim you visited them in their
rooms in the night, that you were wearing a red bodice. Mary Walcott claimed that you bewitched Robert Proctor with that bodice.
Your own brother—”

“They are wrong,” I said quietly. “I have never visited with any of them. I did not bewitch Robert Proctor.”

“There is an entire congregation that will say you used your demon spells to quiet a baby in meeting. Is that not true? What
Devil has given you such spells?”

“’Tis not true. I know no demons.”

“Your niece says you have used the demons of the air to find her and follow her.”

“She is mistaken.”

“Do you accuse her of lying? Do you accuse these other poor, afflicted girls of lying?”

I glared at him. “They would know best if they do. Why do you not ask them?”

He recoiled as if I’d struck him. Then he leaned close so I could smell the scent of beer on his breath, and my mouth went
dry in want of it. “Lucas Fowler, your own sister’s husband, has said you have bewitched him.”

I turned away, determined to hide from them my hurt.

“What say you to that?”

When I didn’t answer, he took a long draught of his tankard. Then he shoved that cursed beer close so I could smell it.

“Your spells made butter come. Samuel Shattuck says you walked by his son one day and the boy went into fits and has been
ill ever after. What say you to this?”

“I do not know Samuel Shattuck and his son.”

“What of Annie Putnam—do you know her?”

“I know of her. I have never spoken to the child.”

“What of the day you were taken to her house, and she fell into fits and claimed you were roasting a man over the fire?”

I glanced to Nicholas Noyes, who stood silently watching by the door, his expression tight. I said, “I was nowhere near the
fire.”

“Can you deny ’twas your specter tormenting the girl?”

“I did not see what she saw.” I gestured to Noyes. “Nor, I think, did the pastor.”

Noyes’s lips thinned. “I saw a child being dragged into the flames. I know it took two grown men to keep her from throwing
herself upon them.”

“I am not strong enough to drag Mercy Lewis into a fire,” I retorted. “To drag two men as well would be impossible. I cannot
imagine that my specter would find it any more likely.”

“So you admit you have a specter.”

I had been staring at Noyes. Corwin’s words were so quick, I was flustered. “No…I mean—”

“How often does your specter meet with Satan?”

“I have never met—”

“How often does the Devil come to you?”

“I—”

“Why do you not tell us the truth? Why not confess?”

The smell of the beer tormented me—I was so thirsty ’twas hard to think. “There is nothing to confess.”

“Can you deny you quieted the child in meeting?”

Wearily I said, “I cannot deny it.”

“Do you deny urging your niece to lie?”

I tried to swallow; my throat was so dry I coughed.

Corwin’s eyes bored into me. “Do you deny it? Do you deny that you do not listen to the prayers said in your own house, but
disdain the word of God instead?”

The questions pounded me, another hour, two more. I stopped trying to answer. My head spun so, I thought I would swoon if
I did not have a drink. Corwin kept that beer just out of my reach, close enough to see it. He refilled it twice, and smacked
his lips noisily and greedily as he drank. The preacher stood back, watching, interjecting a question here and there. Locker
said nothing, but went to the window, where he pulled back the curtain now and again to look out.

The world was fuzzy and gray before my eyes, Corwin’s face distorted, when he finally stood in exasperation and gestured roughly
to Locker.

“Take her to the jail. Fetch the surgeon and tell him I want a search done tomorrow with female witnesses.”

Locker pulled me to my feet. I stumbled, falling into his chest, and he pushed me away more forcibly than he needed and yanked
me from the room and down the steps again, out into the cold. ’Twas nearly dark now, the air freezing. This time, he did not
bother to put me on the horse, but led me down the street, dragging me by my chains like a horse on a lead rope while I tripped
and fell on the rough, muddied road.

When he finally stopped, I was filthy from feet to hips, and it was clammy, cold mud that cut through my cloak and my skirts
and petticoats to my skin.

Before us was a building that looked too small to be a jail. ’Twas a single story only, with clapboards worn as gray and colorless
as the sky. Just behind it was a narrow band of flat land and weedy hillocks and bog, the stinking wet mud and shallow water
of a tidal river. “This cannot be the jail,” I said.

“Aye, it is,” the constable assured me. He jerked me to the door as if I were struggling against him, instead of merely stumbling
over the icy mud of the street.

He went not to the main door, which was padlocked, but to a smaller one off a lean-to at the back. He did not bother to knock,
but ushered me into a dark room barely lit by a single candle. I was assailed instantly with the stink of urine and filth.
’Twould have been bad enough on its own, but mixed in were odors of boiled cabbage and salt herring, and the stench of salt-washed
mud and rot from the river.

“What’s this?”

’Twas a man’s voice, and as he spoke, I saw his shadow rise from a table, and without him blocking the hearth, the room became
light enough to see. ’Twas a tiny place—a hearth, a large worktable, and kegs of what I took to be beer or cider lining the
walls.

“Susannah Morrow,” the constable said from beside me.

“Ah, yeah. We been expecting you, lady fair.” The jailkeep smiled mockingly. He was tall and dark, dressed in filthy homespun,
and his hair was spiky, as if he had not combed it in a goodly while. He wiped his arm across his face, and I saw the grease
on his fingers, and looked beyond him to see the remains of a meal on the table. At his belt hung a ring of keys. “Come on,
then,” he said, motioning for us to follow.

I saw the door then, a door with a massive lock, and suddenly my knees would not bend; George Locker had to push me to make
me move.

“Your friends were sent to Boston Jail yesterday,” the jailkeep said.

“My friends?” I asked.

“Them other witches,” he told me. “Lucky you, you’ll have the cell to yourself for a piece. Not for long, though. I hear them
girls are still calling names.”

He unlocked the door and pulled it open, stopping for a moment to light a lantern before he stepped into darkness. The constable
pushed me again, and I stumbled through, nearly falling, while the jailkeep laughed.

Here, the wet-rot smell of the river was stronger. ’Twas a room about twenty foot square, with three cells bearing a heavy
door and a tiny barred window. Each was very small, and held two bunked beds with straw pallets, and a slop pail. There were
windows along the hall, but they were small as well. It had not been warm in the outer room, though there had been a fire
going, but ’twas a paradise compared to the cold here.

’Twas a horrible place, the most horrible I’d ever seen. But though I expected the jailkeep to open one of these barred doors,
he continued on to another padlocked door half hidden in shadows. He gave me a lewd smile before he unlocked it as well, and
pulled it open.

“Here’s where you’ll be. The witch dungeon.” He laughed; ’twas an eerie sound that echoed in the darkness. The air turned
dank, the kind of damp cold that creeps into bones. Before me were open slat stairs. The jailkeep took them as one familiar
enough with a place that darkness was no barrier, and his lantern lit the way for the constable and me.

Again I balked—I could not walk past my dread. Locker pulled on the end of the chain binding my wrists, and I went. Down,
down, and then into a room so cold and damp and foul I could not believe I was to stay here. It, too, was divided into cells,
some too small even for a child. The stone floors were damp through my shoes, the low-ceilinged walls—made of brick and stone—dripped
moisture that smelled of the mudflats. I heard a scurrying in the shadows, a squeak.

I began to tremble. There were no windows, only heavy iron sconces in the walls meant for lanterns or rushlights.

The jailkeep must have seen my horror. “Don’t worry, lady fair. It ain’t so bad. Sometimes them rats even sleep with you.
They like to be warm too.” He went to one of the larger cells. The key scraped and rattled in the lock; the door creaked as
he pulled it open. He said to Locker, “You want to chain her to the wall?”

Locker shook his head. “There’s no need.”

The jailkeep shrugged. “As you wish.” He turned to me. “But if you be trouble, I’ll put ’em back on you right quick.”

I looked at the constable. “You cannot leave me alone.”

“You won’t be alone,” he said. “You’ve got Jem here to watch you.”

Jem nodded. “I’ll keep a good eye on you, lady fair. You bet I will.”

That frightened me more than the rats and the dark, but I said nothing as George Locker closed the cell door and the lock
clanged shut.

They left me then. Jem took the lantern. I watched that small bit of light grow fainter as they went up the stairs, and opened
the door; then the light was gone, and I was in a darkness so deep I could not even see the denser shadow of myself within
it.

I heard the steady drip of water down a wall, and the squeaking came again, a shuffle in the straw. Carefully I backed away,
remembering where the bed was and moving in that direction, until I felt the rough wood of the bunk against my backside. I
felt along it—just a straw pallet, without a blanket or a sheet. When I sat, I smelled dust and mildew—not even clean straw.
Who knew how many other bodies had slept on it? Still, ’twas not on the ground, and I was grateful for that, though I knew
how rats could climb.

In the lack of any other sound, my own breathing was loud and uneven. I pulled my cloak close about me, but the damp chill
seeped steadily past it. I wished I had thought to bring a scarf, a blanket. I would have given much to have my fellow prisoners
here, even such women as that, both for company and warmth.

I don’t know how long I sat there, trying to keep warm, but finally I heard the scrape of a key in a lock, the creaking open
of the door above the stairs. I saw the faint glow of light coming through the barred window, but then I saw ’twas only Jem,
and the lantern only made plain what had disappeared in the darkness. In the end, I preferred not to see the hell I was in.

The jailkeep smiled again as he came to the cell. I saw he was carrying a bottle, a blackjack noggin, and a bucket that emitted
some foul smell. “Thought you might be hungry,” he said. “You hungry, lady fair?”

He didn’t wait for me to answer. He shoved the pail inside, and then the noggin. “Your friends’re gonna be sorry they missed
this one.”

Cautiously I came from the bed. “What is it?”

“Prison stew. Nothin’ but the best scraps for witches, eh?”

I had been hungry, but when I took the pail and opened the lid, my appetite died. The smell was horrible, the same boiled
cabbage I’d smelled upstairs, along with chunks of something else, pared away and dotted with maggot holes that I could see
even in the dim light of the lantern. “I cannot eat this.”

Jem shrugged. “You’ll be hungry for it soon enough, I’ll warrant.”

I reached for the noggin. ’Twas beer at least; I knew it by the smell. In relief, I gulped it, and then choked at the salt
and pickle taste of it. “’Tis tainted,” I gasped.

“Tis what the prisoners get,” he said. “Drink up.”

I pointed to the bottle. “What is that?”

“’Tis mine,” he said. He held it close to his chest. “This be fine Barbados rum—it won’t be comin’ close to your greedy hands.
Drink your beer.”

I was thirsty—even the beer was better than nothing, and so I drank. Yet it left a dry salt taste in my mouth; when I finished,
I was nearly as thirsty as when I began.

I had barely emptied it when Jem pulled a stool I had not seen from the shadows. He settled it in the corner of my cell and
sat down, leaning back against the wall, setting the lamp on the floor beside him. He uncorked the bottle and took a long
great sip that made my own throat constrict in longing.

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “What are you doing?”

“I been paid to watch you, and that’s just what I’m going to do.”

I gestured to the door. “I can hardly escape.”

“You been accused of a witch. I hear you can send your spirit anywhere. And I got to watch for your familiar, case he makes
a visit.”

“I’m not a witch.”

“They all say that,” he told me. “But I’m guessin’ the best liars be servants of the Devil.”

I stepped back, leaving the foul stew and the empty noggin abandoned, and went to the bed, where I sat again in the shadows.
I sat there for a few moments, listening to him gulp his rum while my thirst raged in my throat and my bladder grew heavy.
I bore it until I could not any longer, and then I got up to use the slop pail in the corner.

“I need to relieve myself,” I told Jem. “Turn away.”

He only smiled and gestured with the bottle. “Go on,” he said, and stared at me unabashedly, until I was forced to pull up
my skirts and squat over that pail while he watched. I retreated again to the bed, humiliated and horrified. There was nothing
to do but curl up on the pallet and try to sleep.

I did not allow myself to think of Lucas or Charity—such thoughts were too painful, too uncertain. Instead, I thought of Jude
and Faith, soothing myself by thinking of the baby’s soft, downy head, her solid weight. Only a few weeks ago, Hannah had
come by and put Faith in my arms, and then sat at the table with Jude while I taught them both a game I’d played as a little
girl, one with sticks thrown into a pile and grabbed up one by one. Now I thought of that time, of Jude laughing and Faith
falling asleep nuzzled against my breast, and the memory warmed me as no fire had ever done; I forgot my thirst. Finally I
fell asleep.