Susannah Morrow (8 page)

“Oh, there’s none better,” Goody Penney replied. “She’s a good eater, that one is. Better than my own babe.”

I did not like the way my aunt held her. I did not like how easily she’d taken the child. The Devil was crafty, and Faith
was so vulnerable now. I glanced at my father, not believing he could be deceived by her, but his face was carefully expressionless,
and I knew she had fooled him.

Susannah handed the babe back to Goody Penney as if she were loath to let go of her, and I saw her eyes lingering on Faith
as the goodwife tucked the blanket back around and made little clucking noises to quiet her.

“We’d best go inside,” Father said. “The service will be starting.” Then he left us, moving through the crowd to his place
on the west side, where the men sat.

Anxiously I hurried after, drawing Jude with me and leaving Susannah to follow. Here was a place where God was sure to heed
my prayers.

The shadows of the meetinghouse were barely eased by the weak light coming through the windows and the single candle burning
in the sconce next to the pulpit. Heavy ceiling beams were indistinct in the gloom, the unmatched clapboards of the walls
aging badly and irregularly, so that one looked cast in darkness while another seemed touched with light. Beneath the galleries
on either side, the room was so dim ’twas hard to see the faces of the people sitting there.

Some time ago, I had graduated from the back of the gallery where the children sat, and Jude was so quiet and well-behaved
that Mama had always kept her with us. Now I did the same. Our family was not rich, but Father had served on the Village Committee
many times, and Mama had worked often with the minister for Charitable Causes, so we’d been seated only a few pews from the
pulpit. We were in the center, so we did not have the high sides on each end to lean on—though it did not much matter; the
tithing-man would not be slow to jab any leaners with his long pole, and he was diligent in his walk up and down the aisles.
From where we sat, I could see almost everything in the meetinghouse except the back, where people sat in darkness.

Susannah put the foot warmers on the floor at our feet, but it was so cold already that even through my worn boots I could
barely feel them. ’Twas dank and musty, and the smell of damp wood and mildew and wet wool filled my nose. The wind whistled
in a high pitch through the boards covering one of the windows, and the candle on the pulpit flickered and smoldered. We settled
ourselves in, laying rugs over our legs and sitting up straight on the backless benches, and gradually the voices faded and
muffled. When it was quiet, and Deacon Ingersoll stood from his place below the pulpit to call out the psalms for us to sing,
I bowed my head and tried to find God’s voice through the muffled darkness in my soul.

I sang without listening; I hardly heard Master Parris’s sermon, so focused was I in my own search for the Lord. When Master
Parris finished the morning service with another prayer, I looked up at the huge hourglass before Deacon Putnam. A little
over two hours had passed—it had been a short sermon, and I had not yet found relief or comfort.

Faith’s baptism would be in the afternoon service, and now we were left to ourselves for the two hours until it began. As
I followed Father into the cold sunshine, I heard people talking about where they would go, what they would do. Those who
had come a long distance had their horses stabled in the shelter on the swamp-side pasture. Most would go to Ingersoll’s,
just as we would, as we always did. Mama had always packed a meal, which we ate in quiet on what passed for a green in front
of the tavern, dodging the sheep Lieutenant Ingersoll sometimes kept there. I had not brought any food this day. When I’d
tried, Father said we would buy something at the ordinary.

When we stepped through the doors at Ingersoll’s, I saw Mary Walcott and Betty Hubbard huddled around a long table, along
with skinny, mean-spirited Mercy Lewis, who was also a servant for the Putnams, and Mary Warren, who worked for the Proctors
in the tavern they ran off the Ipswich Road. My old friends were laughing together while the church members at the tables
around them frowned disapprovingly. When my family came in and Betty caught sight of us, they laughed again, more loudly,
and bent to whisper among themselves.

I looked away. My father glanced to them, and then to me. “They are silly girls, Charity. You should count yourself blessed
that you are no longer among them.”

It warmed me that he had noticed, and it raised that yearning in me again. But when I turned to him, he was already looking
away; I was already forgotten.

He led us to a table where many of our neighbors were already gathered: Francis Nurse among them, who was our neighbor Samuel’s
father, and who served on the Village Committee with Father. Susannah smiled, catching them effortlessly in her light. Wickedness
had such power. Before long, she had the women snared in the telling of her late-autumn sea voyage.

I didn’t listen. I could think only of the snickerings that had greeted us when we walked in. Even now, I felt my old friends
talking about us in the little prickling of the hairs on the back of my neck. I could not bear that Mary’s whispers were true.
I remembered my defense of Susannah with embarrassment, and I did not want to have to admit I’d been wrong.

I did not have any intentions of going near them. It was only that I could not sit still any longer and watch my aunt charm
my neighbors while knowing the truth about her. I meant only to wander over to the windows overlooking the green—it was not
my fault the ordinary was so small, or that the girls sat so near the door. But once I was close, I did not move. In spite
of everything, seeing them made me feel lonely, and that loneliness was a curse, I knew—Mama had warned me about it.

I stared out the tiny diamond windows onto the farmlands below, the village spread before me like the wrinkles of God’s hand,
but I saw nothing. Despite my best intentions, I moved closer to Mary Walcott. It could have been habit, I suppose, but the
truth was that I had always felt drawn to her. Mary had a way about her, a disarm, perhaps, or maybe it was just the way she
opened up and listened as if you spoke God’s pure word and she was thirsting for the sound. It had taken me years to learn
that she gathered the things I said close and never forgot them, that she doled out my secrets like treasures to the others,
that she led me places I did not want to go simply for the sake of having something to talk about. She had held me tight as
Job held his conviction, and when I’d finally realized it, ’twas hard to get loose from her.

Now I gnawed on the hard crust of bread I’d taken from our table and pretended to listen to other conversations, to smile
at other people. But when Betty Hubbard looked up and motioned me over, I barely hesitated. I glanced behind me to see my
father embroiled in discussion with Francis Nurse, and my aunt listening intently to Goody Sibley. Only Jude was watching
me, and I did not worry about her.

I told myself I would stay only a moment, not even long enough to answer their questions, and I went over to the table. Mary
Walcott looked up with that sly look, while plain-faced Mary Warren only nodded hello, and Mercy Lewis raised her thin dark
brow as if she were surprised to see me here.

“Charity,” Betty said as she spread butter thickly on her bread, “tell us what you think. Do you not find it strange that
Mistress Parris looks so pale all the time? Why, today I hardly thought she could walk herself down to her pew.”

“She’s sickly.” I shrugged. “’Tis nothing new.”

“My uncle says she’s not as sickly as she seems.” Betty was Dr. Griggs’s niece, and she often went with him on his visits.
“He says ’tis something strange going on there.”

“She’s weakening day by day,” Mercy Lewis threw in. She leaned forward so her bony elbow rested on the table, and her dark
eyes looked huge in her gaunt face. “Withering away, they say. Perhaps she’s being poisoned.”

“Poisoned?” I was shocked by the suggestion. “Surely not! Why, she’s the preacher’s wife.”

The others giggled. Mary Walcott hid her smile behind her hand. There was something else here, something they all knew and
I did not, and I wondered what it was. But Mary was mischievous, and the rest had nothing better to do than stir up trouble.
’Twould be better for me to be far away from it.

I started to turn away. I heard Mary whisper in that goading way, “Ssshhh! Don’t tell her! She’ll go running to tell her papa.
She doesn’t like to keep things from him, do you, Charity?”

Across the room, my aunt laughed. I saw my father look at her, and I saw something in his face, something that was gone so
fast I had no time to know what it was, to even guess, though it left behind this little flutter in my stomach that I didn’t
like, that made me nervous.

I heard myself say in a dull voice, “What secrets do you keep now, Mary?”

“Ooh, she doesn’t approve,” Betty said.

“I suppose she can’t help it.” Mercy’s tease was mean and low. “Her father’s pious as a minister.”

“Not any minister I know,” Mary Walcott said.

Here, they all laughed as if it were another joke they shared. Their cackling made my skin feel too tender, as if the slightest
touch might bruise me. I had grown used to my life without them these last months. I had grown used to spending my days with
my mother, catering to her as she ran the household from her bed. It had been like a signal from God, Mama had told me, her
needing me just at this time, just when I needed to turn from my friends.

But if God had been watching out for me, then why had He taken my mother? Why allow the Devil to send Susannah to tempt me?
It had been hard to leave Mary and the others. If my mother had not taken so ill, I am not sure I would have been able to
keep myself from them.

They were all leaning over the table, heads close, still laughing, and God help me, I wanted to be part of it. I had felt
so alone in the four days since Mama died.

“What is it?” I asked. “Why do you laugh so?”

“Why, I don’t think we can tell you,” Mary Warren said—but without the meanness of the others. This Mary was more like me,
more a mouse than a leader. She was shy and good-hearted for the most part, so I took her words to mean that she was afraid
to tell me, not that she meant to torment me with secrets.

“I won’t say a word,” I promised.

Mercy shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

Betty sighed. “It’s well known that you can’t keep a secret, and with—”

“Wait,” Mary Walcott said. Betty stopped, frowning prettily at her, and Mary’s eyes went narrow and considering, as if she
were thinking, but that was an act, I knew her well enough to know. Mary never said or did anything without first planning
it well. She patted the bench beside her. “Charity’s been so good caring for her mama these last months, ’tis unworthy of
us not to welcome her back into our circle when she most needs us.”

I looked at her warily.

She smiled at me. “Come, Charity. Sit with us.”

“You aren’t going to tell her, are you, Mary?” Mercy whined.

“Well…perhaps Charity could help us.”

She knew how to draw me in. She knew I would not be able to walk away from a statement like that. I sat down beside her, and
with that one motion, I was part of them again, so simple, just like that. I felt their camaraderie tightening in a web around
me, holding me there. I was so weak, after all.

How easily I fell.

“Y
OU MUST PROMISE NOT TO SAY A WORD
, C
HARITY
,” B
ETTY CAU
-tioned.

Mary Warren looked pale and uneasy. Her gaze darted through the room as if she feared someone would hear us and come running.
“My master will beat me, should he find out.”

“There are worse things than a beating,” Mary Walcott said disdainfully.

Mercy nodded. “Aye. Hell would be worse.”

“Hell?” I asked. “What are you talking about?”

“’Tis not us who courted the Devil,” Betty said. “We’re not to blame.”

“Quiet.” Mary’s whisper was so hard that the others stopped and stared at her. “Are you mad, Betty? Look around you.”

Betty flushed and pushed nervously at a loose blond hair. “Mercy started it.”

Mary didn’t yield. “The two of you will get us all a beating if you’re not careful.”

I changed my mind. I wanted no part of this, whatever it was. All this talk of Hell and secrets…I had enough sins to answer
for already. I could not afford to add another.

I think Mary saw that on my face, because just then she smiled and leaned close, patting my hand reassuringly. “Never fear.
Betty is not herself today. Dr. Griggs locked her in the cellar yesterday without dinner, and she has not quite recovered.”

“’Twas an accident,” Betty murmured.

“A few hours without food would do you good,” Mercy said meanly.

I glanced toward the table where my family sat. My father had not noted my absence, nor I think had my aunt. But Jude was
watching me with wide eyes and a little frown. I started to rise. “I should get back. My father will be missing me.”