Tituba of Salem Village (6 page)

Later Tituba heard him reading aloud to the mistress. She listened to the rise and fall of his harsh voice and frowned. He was reading a list of the things he wanted from the farmers in Salem Village. He was to own the parsonage. The congregation would supply him with firewood. He was to be paid partly in money, partly in provisions.

The mistress said in her faint, whispering voice, “You think they will agree, Samuel?”

The master said, “Certainly. They have had trouble with all their ministers. They are a stiff-necked people and they can not get any one else. I am better qualified than the ones they’ve had. In the end, they will agree to my terms …”

That night Tituba told John what the master was asking—he would own the parsonage; he would have his firewood supplied.

John shook his head, “The talk in the tavern is that he’d better take the Salem Village Church. Whether they agree to what he asks or not. They say he won’t get another offer any time soon. Folk don’t like him.”

Then John said, “You remember Pim, the boy that was stowed away on the boat with us? Well, he had to go to sea with the captain of the
Blessing
to work off his debt. The
Blessing
docked again this morning. The captain don’t want him. The captain sold him to one of those farmers from Salem Village.”

Tituba said, “They sell white people here in Boston?”

“Well, not really sold him. He’s bound out. He’ll be free when he’s twenty-one. You should have seen him. The captain had him by the ear there in the tavern, and nobody would buy him or even bid on him. His red hair was against him. Some of the merchants who looked him over said he’d been marked by the devil with that carrot-colored hair. The man who got him from the captain of the ship didn’t have to pay much for him.”

Tituba shook her head in disapproval. “It doesn’t seem right.” Boy with red hair, thick curly hair, broad shoulders, big strong hands, lively eyes—boy like that sold to someone?

John said, “Oh, he won’t mind. All those apprentices and bound boys and bound girls cheat the master, steal from the master, burn up his house, spoil his goods—and then finally run away. Not many of them stay till they’re twenty-one. From the way Pim glared at the captain and the cool way he stared at the man who bought him—he won’t stay with that man until he’s twenty-one. His new owner is Deacon Ingersoll—he runs the ordinary in Salem Village.”

Tituba poked the fire, sighed, said, “That’s a woman’s work—work in a tavern. It’s not fit for a man or for a boy.”

The master made another three-day trip to Salem Village. While he was gone, Tituba found herself singing or humming under her breath when she was working. She told stories to the children. She sat outside in the door-yard with a child on each side of her, Betsey leaning against her, warm, relaxed, Abigail sitting up straight, a little way off. She talked about the island—how the water felt warm, caressing when you swam in it; how delicious the fruit was, picked right off the trees; how they cooked outdoors behind the house; how the kitchen faced the bay, so that even during a storm it was like having a picture in front of you every day, a picture that changed—just a glance out of the window and you saw a new picture.

Here in Boston you couldn’t see out of the windows in winter. They were so covered with frost it was like a curtain suspended in front of the glass, on the outside. She pointed out that now that summer was here, you still couldn’t see the street clearly. The glass was a bluish-green and filled with places that looked like bubbles. It made everything in the street look as though it were underwater, in a place where there was a strong current and a great many air bubbles in the water so you couldn’t see through it.

When the master returned, he said he didn’t know whether he wanted to be the minister in Salem Village. Some of the people in the parish had told him bluntly they thought the requests he had made were unusual. He summed up his feeling about them by saying, “They seem an ungodly people.”

Though his return put an end to all outward signs of merriment, it did not diminish Tituba’s joyous response to this season of warmth. The weaver’s big room was even pleasanter in summer than it was in winter. It had been warm and cozy in the winter; it was cool in summer. He had the back door opened wide, and there were small gardens on each side of the walk behind his house. There wasn’t much land, but it was very carefully cultivated. She had never seen one patch of ground made to yield so much.

Every afternoon she worked in the weaver’s garden, hoeing, weeding, for the sheer pleasure of it. He gave her vegetables when they ripened—string beans and peas, and, later in the season, corn and carrots and turnips and pumpkins.

Even the master, who mostly ignored what he ate, spoke of how tasty the meals were now that there were fresh vegetables.

It seemed to her that she had barely become accustomed to the warmth, to the pleasure of stepping outdoors without bundling up in shawls and heavy cloaks, when the days began to shorten and it was cool after the sun went down.

Then one evening in early September when she came back from the weaver’s, she found the master and the mistress and the children quite excited. The farmers from Salem Village had called again, and this time they had hired the Reverend Samuel Parris. It seemed to her that the smell of barnyards lingered in the keeping room.

The mistress was sitting up in bed, smiling and talking to the master and to the children.

“We’ll have our own house and there will be plenty of room,” he said.

“Is it a big house?” Abigail asked.

Betsey said, “Will I have a room all my own?”

Tituba said, “When will we leave? How long will it take to get there?”

“We leave in November. It will take us all day to get there.”

“Is it a big house, Uncle Parris?” Abigail asked again impatiently.

“Well, yes. But more important than that, it will be ours. We will own it.”

“We’ll own the house, Samuel?” the mistress asked doubtfully.

“Yes,” he said briskly. “They’ve agreed to it. Those five farmers who came the last time agreed to it. I’m to have my firewood, and two thirds of the salary will be in provisions and one third will be in cash. I will have a deed to the parish house and land. It’s a very good arrangement.”

“I never knew a parish to deed the parsonage to the minister,” the mistress said.

“That’s what these people have done. The paper I drew up reads that ‘we will give to Mr. Parris our ministry house and barn, that and two acres of land next adjoining to the house.’ I’m to be their minister for the rest of my life. Because it says, ‘that Mr. Parris take office among us, and live and die in the work of the ministry among us.’”

Tituba thought he sounded as though he were reading from the Scriptures; his voice had slowed and taken on a note of solemnity. He said, “Let us pray,” and she felt as though he thought he was already in the meetinghouse in Salem Village.

September, October, November—it seemed no time at all, and the air had turned cold again; the water in Boston Harbor no longer sparkled—it had a dull grayish look, and on some days it was almost black—and the wind blew harder and harder. During those three months the mistress and the two little girls talked unceasingly of Salem Village and the parsonage they were to occupy. Tituba said little about it—she agreed that no matter what the parsonage in Salem Village was like, it would be better than the first floor of this tiny house in Boston, a cramped place to live and a noisy one, too. When the doors and windows were open they could hear all the sounds of the street, and they were so close to the wharf that there was a great deal of coming and going past their door.

This would be the third move she’d made—the first one from the cane fields to the home of Mistress Susanna Endicott in Bridgetown, Barbados, and then from Bridgetown to Boston, and now from Boston to Salem Village.

They left Boston on the fifteenth of November, 1689. They had the loan of three saddle horses; their bundles and boxes followed in a cart. John supported the mistress in front of him; Abigail rode on a pillion behind her Uncle Parris; and Tituba held Betsey in front of her. Tituba wrapped the shawl around both of them; close together like that, they were both warm. She thought, she’s six years old now, but what a small, light-boned creature she is—like a kitten.

After they left the outskirts of Boston she found herself glancing back at the mistress. True, John was big and strong, and had strong arms and broad shoulders, so that the mistress could lean back against him, but it seemed like a long difficult journey for a sick woman and a tiring one for two little girls. She had suggested that the master hold Abigail in front of him, much as John was holding the mistress, and just as she was holding little Betsey. But he said, no, his arms would get too tired, and he had to hold the reins, and the mare he was riding seemed excitable.

Tituba started to say, “But the child’s arms are going to get very tired—” and then bit her lower lip hard to remind herself not to argue with her master.

They entered the same heavily wooded area in which she so often had gathered the roots and leaves of plants and herbs, following a trail worn by horses’ feet. She thought with regret of the friends she was leaving—Samuel Conklin, the weaver, and Judah White, the woman she had been forbidden to see again. They went deeper and deeper into the woods. There was an ominous darkness and heaviness about the forest. But it was not silent. Birds flew up with loud squawks and cries of alarm; sometimes there was a loud crashing sound as though a tree had fallen, and then a different sound of branches breaking as though their passage had disturbed some large animal, which was blundering hurriedly through the undergrowth. She listened, strained to hear—was the animal going away or coming towards them? Always overlaying these sounds was the jingle of harness and bit, and the sounds the horses made—occasional neighing if they halted, the snorts and blown-out breath if the pace increased.

They rode through miles and miles of forest. There were great stands of pine trees, junipers, cedar, hemlocks, oaks. Tituba was surprised whenever they came upon an open meadow with tall grass and no trees. Sometimes the sunlight sparkled on a small cove or an inlet. When they found a fresh-water stream, they watered the horses, and they all got down and walked about, stretched their legs, and Tituba gave everybody pieces of johnnycake and salt beef.

Mounting again, they proceeded in the same order with the Reverend Samuel Parris heading the procession. He said they were going north and a little to the east.

Tituba was aware that for most of the route they were near water; they kept coming to little inlets and tiny coves, brooks and small ponds, and sometimes the open sea. Though the horses were mares trained to be ridden, they were held to a jog, jog, jog that Tituba found painfully slow. But the trodden path was rough and uneven, and the sick woman would have been dreadfully jolted by a faster pace.

They passed clearings where there were farmhouses and barns and smaller outbuildings and salt meadows. The houses were far apart, a mile in between, two miles, sometimes three miles. The master knew who owned some of the big tracts of land. He called their names, but they meant nothing to Tituba—she hoped they would soon arrive at their destination. By the time the sun was directly overhead the mistress was so white and wan that it frightened Tituba to look at her whenever they paused to rest or water the horses.

The sun was low in the sky when the master reined in his horse again. “We’re almost there,” he said. “This is the meetinghouse.”

They had come to a clearing in the forest. The meetinghouse stood in the center of it. There were no trees near it. It was a large wooden building equipped with heavy shutters that could be closed over the small windows. A big stone in front of the door served as doorstep. Propped up against the outside of the building was a great timber. It was so huge that Tituba decided it must have been hewn from a very old tree.

“That timber was left there after the meetinghouse was built eighteen years ago. No one has ever bothered to move it. These farmers are a shiftless lot,” the master said.

Picking up the reins, he said, “Just beyond here where the path curves you can see Deacon Ingersoll’s ordinary. We will be riding past it. But we must hurry along for it will soon be dark.”

They jogged along for another mile. They came to a cleared area and he drew up his horse. “There,” he said with a wave of his hand. “There’s our new home—the parsonage!”

They looked at the house in silence. It was a big house, perhaps three times the size of the house they had lived in in Boston. Tituba frowned. She tried to estimate the amount of cleared land—perhaps five acres? There was a barn behind the house, so she could have cows and chickens and geese and start collecting down for a feather tick, and they could have a horse—enough cleared land so the animals could graze—why then was she dismayed? It was the sight of the house that alarmed her. It had a forbidding, desolate air, and if she could have refused to enter, she would have done so. The front door sagged on its hinges; the path leading to the door was overgrown with weeds.

The master got down from his horse, and Abigail jumped down unassisted. The master helped little Betsey to the ground, held his hand for Tituba, and then Tituba and he helped the mistress to the ground. She could just manage to stand up as they supported her under the arms, and then John jumped down from his horse and picked her up. They all headed towards the house, Tituba leading the way. Just as she reached the big stones that served as steps, she stopped.

“What’s the trouble, Tituba? You’re blocking the path,” the master said.

Tituba pointed to the stone steps. “Look!” she said. On the topmost step, centered in front of the door, right in the middle of the step, placed as carefully as if the space inside had been measured, were two hen’s eggs.

The master smiled, and the mistress said in her gentle, whispering voice, “Someone has brought us two fresh egg.”

Tituba said, “I don’t think they’re fresh.”