Tituba of Salem Village (3 page)

Then he saw her looking at him. He leaped on her so suddenly that he took her breath away. She thrust him away from her with a vigorous push, and he jumped at her again, trying to put his hard hands across her mouth to keep her from screaming.

She was breathless, panting, and finally she managed to gasp, “Stop it. What do you want?”

He watched her warily, obviously prepared to jump on her again. He said, “I’m starving.”

“Here,” she said, and held out a piece of the hard dry bread. He ate it so fast that she wondered he didn’t choke on it. She handed him the piece of bread from which she’d taken a bite, and the salt beef. He hesitated. She said, “Go on, take it. I’ve eaten all I want. Are you a stowaway?”

He nodded and kept chewing. Then he swallowed, swallowed hard again to force what must be hard lumps of bread and beef down his gullet. “I came from London on a ship, all safe and secret,” he said. “I thought the ship was headed for the Bay Colony. That’s where I wanted to go. Instead I landed in Bridgetown. So I hung around the dock until I found a ship going to Boston, and I hid on board. I ate all my fodder days ago, and I’ve got to have food or I’ll die.”

“What’s your name?”

“Pim,” he said, and he shivered suddenly and his teeth chattered. “Could you get me something to drink?”

There was gruel in the cabin. The mistress never ate it all; she always left half of it. Tituba thought, I could bring him that, and if I can get hold of John, he could get water for the boy.

“I’ll bring you something,” she said. “I’ll knock three times against the side of the boat. That means it’s safe to sit up.”

She found John and told him about Pim, persuaded him to get water and more of the hard dry substance that served as bread. Though she explained this was for a stowaway, she didn’t tell him where the stowaway was hiding. John didn’t ask. They both knew he talked too much; he told things without meaning to. He liked to talk to people; he tried to entertain them and amuse them, and he could mimic them—the exact tone, the lift of the eyebrow, the movement of the hands, and the speech—word for word exactly what they had said, whether it was a man or a woman or a child. Once he started doing this, he didn’t sort out in his mind what he was to repeat and what he was to keep silent about. Because he had this strange gift, he simply went on repeating what a person had said.

John brought food and a blanket from the cook, explaining that the cook said he was glad to know there was a stowaway aboard and that he hoped he reached Boston without being discovered. Somebody ought to be able to get something for nothing from the miserable owners of this miserable brig. John leaned backward slightly, so that he looked fat like the cook. He had his arms akimbo; placed squarely on his fat hips, and he pursed his lips slightly, and from the way he held his head down a little and thrust forward, he seemed to have a double chin. He said, “‘Take the poor stowaway boy a good supply of salt beef, and plenty of water, John. Give him my blessing.’” He chuckled. “‘The brig is called the
Blessing
. We’ll make it a blessing in deed as well as name.’”

Every night Tituba took food to Pim, the stowaway. The night before they were to land in Boston, she looked around the deck carefully and cautiously before she knocked on the side of the longboat where he was concealed.

She handed him bread and salt beef, saying, “We’ll be in Boston tomorrow. Good-bye and good luck to you.”

“Thank you.”

She turned away from him quickly, feeling that someone was watching. She thought she caught a glimpse of Abigail’s long dark skirt. But she wasn’t certain. Betsey would have been afraid to go on deck at this hour. It had to be the bright-eyed Abigail.

When she entered the cabin the mistress was asleep, her breathing barely discernible. Though Betsey was in bed, she was still awake. Tituba thought how strange it would be to live in a place where it was so cold that you went to bed with more clothes on than you wore during the day. Betsey wore a nightcap, and there were two quilts and a heavy blanket on the bunk, and she still looked pinched and cold. Abigail was knitting, head bent over her work with an intense air, as though she were thinking of her knitting and nothing else, and working at it very hard so that it would be perfect.

Tituba thought, I don’t believe she’s been sitting there all the while. She’s been on deck. She touched one of Abigail’s hands—it was icy cold. She touched her hair—it was damp, as though she had been standing somewhere where the salt spray could hit her.

“Come,” she said, “it’s time you were in bed. We will be in Boston tomorrow.”

Chapter 2

During the night Tituba could have sworn that the motion of the brig changed and that it was going around in circles, and up and down as well. The master groaned in his sleep, and once he cried out as though he were in pain. Betsey’s breathing was heavy, and she snored as though she were a fat old woman who had something wrong with her throat or her lungs. The mistress was restless; she turned over and sighed, and called to Tituba in her gentle whispering voice, asking for water.

Tituba awakened early, aware that the sounds in the brig had changed. There was the sound of hurried movement. Someone banged on the door of the cabin, saying they would dock later in the day.

It was a sour kind of afternoon. Cold, rainy, and a gale blowing. But the air had a different smell. It had a land smell—even in the cabin. They had to stay inside until the
Blessing
was tied up at the wharf.

Tituba saw little of the wonder of the Long Wharf in Boston. She caught glimpses of other ships, saw piles of goods being loaded, but the rain was like a gray veil, and she could only catch glimpses through it of warehouses and of men moving hastily, trying to rescue goods that were perishable.

She took one little girl by each hand. John carried the small trunks and boxes off the boat, and the Reverend Parris half carried the mistress, supporting her awkwardly. Tituba paused for a moment and looked back; there seemed to be a sudden increase in movement on the deck of the
Blessing
. She stood still for a moment, watching. Two sailors had the redheaded boy, Pim, by the arm, and they were shaking him, and then the captain arrived, and there seemed to be more confusion and movement.

“They found the stowaway,” Abigail said, blue eyes sparkling. “I told the captain where he was hiding.”

“What will they do to him?” Tituba asked John, thinking, So Abigail
was
on the deck last night and knew where Pim was hiding.

John shrugged. “Find him a master with a strong arm.”

“What are you talking about?” Reverend Parris asked.

“They found a stowaway on the brig, master,” John said.

“I hope they whip him soundly. Dreadful thing to steal passage on a vessel. Dreadful. Like stealing a man’s land or his house or his cattle or his money. Come along now or we’ll be drenched. I’ve hired a cart. Don’t keep the man waiting.”

Tituba thought, That boy simply wanted to go from one place to another. I helped him by feeding him and I would do it again. But the master thinks of him as a thief who stole from his betters and who should be whipped.

The master was making hurry-up sounds, clucking almost like a hen, in his effort to get them to the cart he’d hired.

Tituba paused long enough to look back again toward the
Blessing
. The boy was being hustled along the deck. The ship bobbed up and down at anchor, and then there was a heavy gust of wind. Rain descended like a curtain, cutting off the view and obscuring the redheaded boy, the
Blessing
, the Long Wharf.

Tituba tightened the shawl around her head. This was a cold rain. She shivered in spite of the heavy cloak and the warm shawl. John loaded their boxes and bundles into the cart the master had hired. The mistress and the two children got into the cart. Tituba and John and the master walked alongside it. The street was paved with cobblestones. There were houses and shops built right up to the edge of the street. Some of the buildings were stone, some brick, but most of them were wood.

Fortunately they didn’t have to go very far from the wharf, and the master knew the way, but they were thoroughly soaked by the time they reached the small house where they were to live. Then they stood in the street, in the rain, waiting while the master went to the house next door to get the key.

It was a wrought-iron key, and Tituba thought it looked big enough to open the door of a castle, instead of this little two-story frame building. Inside it was very dark and very cold. It smelled of dampness and of smoke. There were two small rooms in the front and a large kitchen, or keeping room, which extended across the back. All three rooms had fireplaces. The largest one was in the keeping room, and there were settles on each side of it. There were no fires in the fireplaces.

The mistress said, “A cold bare hearth in this weather.”

“There is no wood,” John said accusingly to the master.

“We’ll have to buy it,” the master said. “Carts go through the town selling firewood. I don’t know whether, in this rain—” He stopped and frowned, listening. There were footsteps overhead. It sounded as though two people were running and skipping, and then the sound quickened as though they were dancing.

“Where are the children?” the master asked.

Almost as if in reply there was the sound of footsteps running down the stairs, and Abigail and Betsey burst into the room, cheeks flushed, eyes sparkling.

“You should see upstairs,” Abigail said excitedly. “It’s all one great big room, with a big fireplace in it.”

“What were you doing up there?” the master said severely. “I rented only the first floor of this house. You have no right on the second floor. It sounded as though you were dancing. If I thought you had been dancing, I would thrash both of you.”

“We ran around the room, Uncle Parris,” Abigail said meekly and looked down at the floor. “We were trying to keep warm.”

“And dry ourselves off,” Betsey said.

Someone pounded on the front door. Thieves, robbers? Tituba thought. Was it safe to open a door in Boston? Getting dark. Cold stormy night. Did the Indians ever attack right in the city?

“Tituba, answer the door,” the master said.

She opened the door just wide enough to be able to see out, aware that John was standing close behind her.

“I’m Samuel Conklin, the weaver from next door, ma’am. I’ve brought ye some wood.”

He was a tall man, slightly stooped in the shoulders. His hair was beginning to turn gray. He had his arms loaded with wood. When he saw John he said, “We’ll build ye a fire first, and then ye come next door with me and get ye enough wood to last a few days.”

John and Samuel Conklin built big fires in the fireplaces. Tituba draped their heavy, wet outer clothing in front of the fire in the keeping room to dry out. As soon as it was warm inside, they got the mistress comfortably settled in bed. It had been decided that one of the small rooms would serve as bedroom for the master, the mistress, and the two girls. The other small room would serve as the master’s study. John and Tituba would sleep curled up on the settles in the keeping room.

The next day John went into the woods outside the city to cut wood. Samuel Conklin made an arrangement with a man who owned a horse and cart. John was to cut a load of wood for the master and haul it in the cart; then he was to cut a load of wood for the owner of the cart.

He came back, excited, and with a wondering look in his eyes. “I’ve never seen such woods,” he said. “They go for miles. You could cut wood in there forever and never use it all up. All kinds of trees—big ones—the man with me said they were oak and hemlock, and there’s a cedar forest and there are all kinds of birds. In some places there are so many trees that it is dark—daylight doesn’t reach in. Some of the trees are so big and so old, they made me feel like praying.”

Day after day he cut wood. A load for the owner. A load for the master. He kept piling wood up outside the kitchen until Tituba protested, saying, “You must be trying to supply wood for the whole of Boston. Or do you plan to sell it?”

“No,” John said. “The men that work around the wharf say the winters are fierce. Snow and ice and wind, and so cold that your bones feel like they have frozen. There’ll be weeks and weeks when I can’t cut wood, so I have to build the woodpile so high it’ll last for months.”

Tituba hoped they wouldn’t need all that wood, that the master would soon find a church, and then they would have a house that had more room in it. He said a church always supplied the minister with a place to live. He wanted a church in Boston. He felt that the people needed instruction. Boston had become a wicked city, a heathen city. He said that in many ways it resembled Babylon.

It surprised her that, feeling this way, he should have so quickly hired out John to a tavern-keeper. The tavern was near the Long Wharf, and there was a great deal of drinking and much sinful behavior. She supposed the master was in desperate need of money and perhaps the silver coins he received every week in payment for John’s time there were so important to him it didn’t matter how the coins were earned.

John said the work wasn’t really hard. But it was woman’s work. He brought in firewood and kept huge roaring fires in the fireplaces; he cleaned pewter and swept the floor in the tap room and sanded it, and chopped wood, and did some cooking, and made up beds with fresh linen.

Sometimes at night, in the keeping room, where they slept, he on one narrow wooden settle and she on the other, he fumed about his job.

“Kitchenmaid’s work. Cleaning up after sailors and ship’s captains and mates and whatever the sea casts up in Boston, with their earrings in their ears and their long greasy hair in a braid down their backs, and the mistress says, ‘Ah, John, the captain in the front, take him a hot toddy. And the captain in the back room upstairs wants kill-devil with hot water. And the captain and his lady in the front room upstairs—’” He broke off and snorted. “Lady! You should see ‘the lady’—a brazen hussy walking around barefooted in her shift.”