Susannah Morrow (46 page)

I stared at him in dumb surprise.

“A week ago, they confiscated Proctor’s property. They left his maidservant with the care of Proctor’s five children and not
even a pot to cook in. George Corwin took it all, sold the cattle at half price, killed some.”

“George Corwin?” I asked.

“Nephew to the magistrate,” Lucas said wryly. “He was made high sheriff a few days ago. There’s no love lost between Proctor
and the rest of the village. They say he’ll hang as a convicted witch—’tis only a matter of time before his property belongs
to the crown, and ’tis certain enough that they’ll take it now. Is this the work of clearer heads? Is this what I have to
look forward to? Do you know the maid they gave Proctor’s children to?”

I hated to ask the question. “Who?”

“Mary Warren. Charity’s friend. One of the girls who accused Elizabeth Proctor of witchcraft.”

“Mary Warren?” I frowned at him in confusion. “But…but she is here. I heard her two nights ago. She’s been accused of being
a witch.”

“Aye. When she protested the accusation of John Proctor, the girls turned on her as well. ’Tis said he has been a father to
her. She cannot have liked to see him arrested.”

“But…they questioned her here. Last night. I heard it all. She says she is not a witch, that the girls lie.”

“Who knows the truth anymore? The world’s gone mad, Susannah. Do not forget this. Nothing is as it should be.”

“What of Jude and Faith?” I asked. “What of Charity? What will become of them?”

“Faith is still at Hannah Penney’s. Tom Putnam has promised to see Jude there as well. No harm will come to them. And Charity…Today
was the first time I’d seen her since she told me of her vision with Judith. She stays still at Ingersoll’s. They have made
my daughter…a stranger to me.”

He rested his forehead against mine, and I felt something wet drop onto my cheek. He was crying. “You should not have done
it,” he whispered to me. “I would not have asked it of you. I did not want it.”

“’Tis too late now. ’Tis done.”

“They will not let you rest until you reveal others; you realize this? If you do not reveal others, they will hang you. How
long can you toy with them, Susannah? They are not foolish men.”

“Until I can think of a way to save us both,” I said.

Lucas sighed. “’Tis in God’s hands now.”

“’Tis in our own hands,” I corrected him. “It always was.”

T
HAT NIGHT, THEY BROUGHT THE NINE OTHERS IN, SO NOW THERE
were fifteen in a cell meant for four. There was not enough bedding; Jem and Richard brought in straw and spread it around,
wadding it to serve as beds. Lucas shared my pallet. In the midst of so many other people, we were as an island, alone.

The next morning, Sam Nurse came to deliver blankets and scowled at me in contempt. He’d no doubt heard of my confession.

I watched as Lucas went with Sam to a corner, where they huddled together, talking. I heard a rustling on the pallet above
me, and Giles Corey came down to use the slop pail. When he came back, I expected him to climb to his pallet again, to join
his wife, but he stopped before me. “So you’ve confessed,” he said. The force of his contempt was formidable. “Who’e you dragged
down with you, witch-bitch?”

I gave him no response, and felt a guilty satisfaction as Giles Corey shrank away.

In the corner, Sam rose, and Lucas with him. They clapped each other on the shoulder, and then Sam called for Jem and the
door opened and he was gone without a look in my direction. Lucas turned to me, dismay and sorrow hard upon his face.

“What is it?” I asked him. “What news did Sam bring? Are the girls…Oh, tell me ’tis not bad.”

Lucas sank onto the pallet. “’Tis Charity. When she heard they arrested me, she had such fits they could not stop her.” His
voice went toneless, a dull recitation, a listing. “She tried to throw herself into the fire, not once, but many times; she
hurt her wrist in trying. She also vomited pins and a key, and bit her tongue so her mouth was full of blood. She stares now
into space and will not see or speak to any living thing. Sam said”—here Lucas’s voice broke—“she is insensible. Her mind
is…”

“You cannot leave her to them. Lucas, you must tell Sam to take her away. Surely the Pooles will care for her until you can
bring her home again—”

“You have more faith than I,” he said. “Shall any of us ever leave this place except by dying?”

“Aye, we shall. There must be someone, Lucas, who will hear what we have to say—”

Lucas laughed; ’twas a terrible sound. “You have not been in the village for months, Susannah. You cannot imagine what ’tis
like there. Suspicion everywhere; ’tis like a terrible tide that cannot be turned. There will be no quick end to this, I promise
you. It only grows. Sam said Locker confiscated my land. The animals, my tools…’Twas all taken and destroyed or sold. He took
everything in the cellar and storage room. He poured the cider and the beer into the yard. The property I have poured my sweat
into for the last sixteen years is forfeited to the crown.”

“How can that be? You have not been convicted.”

“Since when does that matter? ’Tis what happened to Proctor. I was not…quiet. After Charity told me her vision of the murders…I
was more outspoken than I should have been. I should have known, but…but I have lived in this village for too long; I believed
in rational men. I had forgotten my part. I forgot who I was, the enemies I’d made.” His expression was grim. “’Tis almost
certain I will be convicted, Susannah. You should know this. Convicted and hanged.”

I stared at him in disbelief. “’Tis because you were on the Village Committee—is that your meaning? You believe this is deliberate?
That the girls are naming their enemies?”

“If it didn’t start that way, it may end so. You heard Mary Warren’s confession. And Sam said people are beginning to talk;
’tis a feeling about that perhaps the girls are being led. They don’t even know some of these people they’re accusing. Bridget
Bishop, for one, never laid eyes on them. And George Burroughs.”

“Who is he?”

“One of the first ministers of the village,” Lucas said. “He and Putnam were long at odds. He’s in Maine now. They will have
to go a long way to find him. But they may. ’Tis said…The girls say he’s the leader of the witches. The wizard. Sam says that
even Joseph Putnam is afraid. He told Tom that if a single member of his family was accused, he would come after him. But
still he keeps a horse saddled and ready, and a loaded gun.”

“Then there is hope. As long as there are doubters—”

“Susannah, don’t hope for that. There are too many who believe. The deputy governor believes. At first, even I did not doubt
the truth of the things these girls say.”

“They would leave your children orphans?”

“If I am a witch, ’tis better I do not raise them.”

“But you are not a witch, Lucas.”

“Aye.” He sighed. “There is evil here. There are none who deny that. And I have already contributed to it. My daughter is
an accuser. You are here because of me.”

“Don’t say that. I did not take care to understand this world of yours.”

“This was the life I chose for myself,” Lucas said, “yet, when I think of it…Do you know that I have never heard my children
laugh?”

“’Tis the village—”

“No.” He shook his head. “No. Sam’s children laugh. I have heard Daniel Andrew’s sons roar with pleasure. ’Tis me. I have
been afraid, and I have taught my daughters to be the same. ’Tis too late to change things, I know, but I wish—”

“’Tis not too late,” I told him, and those words became my promise to him.

An hour later, Richard came to get me, and I was questioned once more in a still-empty jail cell on the upper floor—not by
the magistrates this time, but by the preachers instead. They were gathering information to implicate others; I knew that,
and I gave it to them the best I could. They were most interested in the details: The Devil’s Sabbat especially fascinated
them. I told them the story of the last supper, fashioning it as I went in shades of red and black, giving them the Devil.

I did all this, and thought only of how to help Lucas, what to do. I was driven by it. As the days passed, he returned from
his own examinations, weary and bloodless, without even a sight of his daughter to ease him; his worries were transparent
beneath his skin. I burned to free him, and when they arrested four others amidst hailstorms that rocked the end of April
like God’s icy tears, and New England received the news that Increase Mather was nearly arrived with a new charter and a new
governor—the Indian fighter, William Phips—I knew I had not much time left. With a new charter and a new government, the trials
could be set.

But worse than that was the news of Charity. Sam Nurse came as often as he could, and told us that Charity had lapsed into
blank-eyed silence. She refused to take anything but broth. She was already nothing but bones. Now she was dying. I watched
Lucas change with the news. I watched the desperation and the horror in his eyes; I watched the pounds drop from him. Though
I begged him to eat, ’twas impossible to swallow the prison food: black cabbages, sweet potatoes crawling with maggots, corn
rotten with borers. On Sundays, we were given a treat: a heavily salted soup made of a single ox bone boiled in water with
dried apples.

’Twas summer in New England, yet in this prison, there was still winter dark and barrenness. The days passed; Increase Mather
arrived in Boston, along with the new governor. By then, George Burroughs, the minister Lucas had talked of, had been arrested,
along with several others. Mary Warren had recanted once again, no doubt desperate to regain her status as one of the afflicted
after three weeks in prison chains. She was one or Burroughs’s chief accusers now. I had heard there was a total of thirty-six
imprisoned, but the number changed daily, and showed no signs of slowing. The others in the cell with us talked in hushed
trepidation about when the trials would begin, what would happen once the governor learned of what had passed here in Salem,
but I did not let myself worry over such things. I was a confessed witch; I would hang soon enough. I had grown accustomed
to the thought.

But I could not let Lucas die.

’Twas two days after Increase Mather returned that I finally determined how to save him.

I had been lingering by the cell door while Lucas slept, when I heard a rustle in the hallway, and a giggle and a groan that
were not of suffering but of pleasure.

I glanced out the barred window, wondering who satisfied themselves in the hallway instead of seeking privacy elsewhere. Soon
I saw the edge of a skirt come into view, and I leaned closer to see out. ’Twas a pretty, buxom girl with her cap askew and
her bodice laces loosened. She giggled again as whoever she was with pressed her against the wall. Jem, I saw. ’Twas Jem,
with his sweetheart.

I was immediately annoyed, and then I saw how she pushed him away, still hesitant as he pulled at the laces of her chemise,
and I saw then the color of the skirt she wore—a bright leaf green, a color too bright and vain for this place, and the idea
came so fast into my head ’twas as if I’d been struck with it. Quickly I went to the bag Hannah had brought me all those weeks
ago and rifled through it until I found what I was looking for. The cursed red bodice.

I took it with me back to the cell door and slapped my hand against the bars. “Jem! Jem, come here!”

He buried his face in the girl’s neck.

Jem!

She pushed at him a little. “Shouldn’t you see to them?” she asked.

“I’ve other things to rend to now,” he said, leering at her.

I slapped the bars again and kicked the door. “Jem!”

The girl pushed him again, and Jem sighed and stood back, jerking at his breeches as he came to the cell door. “What the hell
do you want? I ain’t your servant boy.”

“I’m in need of help,” I said.

The jailkeep cursed, then unlocked the door with a fierce twist. He turned to the girl and said, “You want to see the witches
up close, Pru?”

She hesitated, but I saw in her eyes that vulgar curiosity, as if we might change before her eyes. Jem held open the door,
and she slipped inside, keeping back against the wall, gasping a little when she saw the people inside, lying as they were
in nearly every foot of space.

“They’re like animals,” she whispered in a wondering voice.

I could not help myself. “Aye,” I said, raising my hand at her like a claw. “And if you get too close, we’ll eat you up.”

She gasped again, pressing hard to the wall. Jem only laughed. “What d’you want?” he asked me.

“I’ve spilled something on my dress. I need you to unchain me so I can change,” I told him. Then I held out the scarlet bodice,
holding it as best I could, angling it so the girl could see.

Pru made a little sound, like a mew; with relief and satisfaction, I saw how she stared at that bodice, with pure longing,
with something like reverence. I had seen the same look in Mary Walcott’s eyes. Jem had bent to go through the keys on his
ring, but when he heard her sound, he looked up.