Winds of Salem (16 page)

There was never a lack for work on the Putnam farm. The birds chirped in the trees and insects screeched and hopped as Mercy and Freya strode along the grassy path one day in early May. They held their baskets at their hips. They arrived at the potato field and stared out at the endless rows, daunted. It was already growing hot. Thomas Putnam had tasked them with the entire field.

“It’s bigger than I thought,” remarked Freya.

“Yeah, well, you know Mr. Putnam…” Mercy blew at a strand of hair.

Each girl took a row, kneeling in the dirt, and set about uprooting the spuds with their spades. They worked quietly for an hour, focused on getting as much done as they could. Freya wiped the sweat from her brow and neck. At the rate they were going, they would never get this entire field and everything else done today. Perhaps they could do a third of the field if they were lucky. There were the blackberries, ripe for the picking, that needed to be turned into preserves, not to mention housework.

“I have a crick in my back,” said Mercy, placing her hands there as she pressed her chest forward.

“We will be standing soon enough,” said Freya, squinting.

“Mr. Putnam must be crazed in his intellectuals if he thinks
we can get it all done in one day.” Mercy did a double take at her friend.

“What is it?” asked Freya.

“Don’t you ever grow weary of it all? You are always smiling, Freya.”

Freya realized she
was
smiling and felt a bit embarrassed. “Why, I have a lot to be happy for. For one, I have you.” She chucked a couple of potatoes into her basket and grinned.

Mercy shook her head. When their baskets were full, they brought them to the edge of the field, where they emptied them in a bin. In the evening a farmhand would come around with a wagon on his way back to the farm. Mercy scuttled sideways on her knees to move down the row. “I have been working as far back as I can remember, ever since I was a wee girl. Yea high.” She placed her palm at her breast.

Freya giggled. “That small, eh?”

“I came out of my mother’s womb working, sister! A basket on my hip.” She knitted her brow. “Poor Mother, God rest her soul. Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for the employment, and to the Putnams, and for walking on the rightly path of God, but I do get weary of it from time to time. My body aches and my burned hand always hurts.” She closed and opened her scarred, dirt-caked fist. Her face suddenly took on a grave expression and she shook her head. They went back to work, silent and pensive for a while.

They had their differences, but Freya cared deeply for Mercy. Whenever Freya placed a hand on her friend, she could feel Mercy’s suffering, a great rushing river of sorrow. She felt the terror and powerlessness of a girl hiding as the violence took place, trembling at the sound of the blood-curdling screams of her family. She saw the chaos, the peeling of skin from flesh as if from a fruit. She felt all the panic and guilt of a girl escaping a
fire in which the rest of her family perished behind her. Freya wished she could conjure some sort of nepenthe for Mercy to help her forget her past, but she did not know of one. It was ironic since she herself could not recollect her own past, try as she might.

Although there was something she could do to give her friend a little respite. It
was
very dangerous but her heart went out to the maid. She could bear it no longer. It would be just another of their secrets, she decided.

Freya pressed her hands to her thighs and stood. She waded across the clumps of dirt and reached out a hand. “Come, my dear, I want to show you something.”

Mercy glanced up at the proffered hand. “We really do not have time to tarry, sister.”

“Do as I say,” Freya said gently.

“What is there to show me in an ugly field of dirt and potatoes. Have you struck gold?” She laughed, but took Freya’s hand and let herself be pulled to her feet.

“You must promise you will tell no one!” Freya said.

Mercy snickered. “Why do you look so grave?”

Freya patted Mercy’s shoulder. “You mustn’t be frightened.”

“You know me. I have seen it all. Nothing frightens me anymore.”

Freya brought her friend to the border of the field, where the trees would hide them from prying eyes. She made sure no one was near. First, she had to create a pocket to enclose them. She murmured the right words, and she felt the shift and electricity fill the air. A euphoric feeling swept over her, making her entire body tingle.

The wind swept around them, singing through the trees, raising dirt in the field. It was as if a hundred invisible hands had set to work. The spuds lifted from the earth, filling the baskets,
plopping into the bins. Time leaped from one moment to the next, jarring and jagged. The bins overflowed. The wind stopped, and the dust settled.

Freya clapped the dirt off her hands. “Tell me that was much easier!” She smiled at Mercy, who was ogling her.

“It isn’t possible!” she said, breathless. She ran to the edge of the field, Freya right behind her. Mercy fell to her knees, throwing her arms over a bin. “A miracle!”

“Yes!” said Freya.

Mercy gazed at Freya in awe. “You are a witch!”

“There’s no such thing!” Freya said.

Mercy grinned. “Of course there isn’t!”

Next came the blackberries. Rather than getting nicked and bloody hands from the thorns, the berries plucked themselves off the brambles, falling into the girls’ baskets. Five lovely jars of preserves were made in the blink of an eye. The house was cleaned, spotless, and ordered within minutes without either of them lifting a finger. After dinner they put the children to bed, and once the entire family had turned in, Mercy and Freya whispered back and forth from their rope beds in the hall. Mercy wondered at the multitudes they could do in so little time and with nearly no effort on Freya’s part.

“We mustn’t get carried away,” Freya warned. “We need to continue doing things the old way. We cannot get caught. You know what I am now, Mercy, and you know what they do to people like me. They will hang me if they knew the truth. They say this is the devil’s work, but I am certain—deep in my heart—it isn’t.”

“I don’t believe one word of it either, Freya. It is God working through you. God making miracles through my dearest friend.” She reached for Freya’s hand. “Does it make you weary?”

“Quite the contrary. It feels marvelous!”

The girls were quiet for a while.

“I cannot sleep,” said Mercy.

“Me neither!” There was so much more Freya wanted to show Mercy. It was nice to no longer have to hide for a change. An idea came to her and she turned to her side to face her friend with a dreamy expression.

“What?” Mercy lifted her head.

Freya’s bare feet landed on the flagstone floor, and the bed swung as she sat upright. “There is something else I must show you. Quickly!”

The girls went quietly, careful not to wake the house. Barefoot in their linen shifts, their hair loose, they set out for the woods, but not before Freya grabbed a broom on the way out.

They flew over Salem, the cobalt night glittering with stars.

chapter twenty

Raise the Roof

It was barn-raising day on the Putnam farm, a merry occasion. Nearly the entire community of Salem Village had come to help. The men hammered away. Soon they would lift the structure. They had been working since dawn. Eventually, everyone would cheer, and then they would break to eat, drink, and mingle. Once the food was served and the shadows grew longer and the villagers let down their guards, no longer watching one another like hawks, perhaps Freya could find Nate and slip off to the woods with him, unnoticed. His words echoed in her head again: “I have harbored a deep desire to be with you, to
know
you…” She trembled at the thought of knowing him and wondered how soon they would be married.

For now she and Mercy helped set up the row of tables in the shade of the trees at the edge of the forest, where the goodwives of the village, along with household servants, would present their specialties—a village potluck. Roasted pig. Venison with maple syrup. Pork, apricot, and prune pie. Beef stew with peas, carrots, potatoes in a thick, sweet wine sauce. Stuffed fowl. A cornucopia. To drink, plenty of ale, cider, and wine from Ingersoll’s Tavern.

Freya arranged the bread she had baked, all the while stealing glimpses of Nate out on the barn’s foundation, where he and
James labored. The front of Nate’s shirt was damp. His hair fell over his face as he swung the hammer. She imagined what it might feel like to run her hands beneath his shirt, to feel the hidden strength and hollows of his body.

He had not once looked in her direction, almost as if he were avoiding her. But surely he could show his affection now that he had asked for consent and she had given her hand. Then again, Mr. Putnam said no one was to know, so maybe he was only following his dictate.

Still, Freya was suddenly irritated by everything—the smell of food, her tight, heavy bodice, the incessant chatter of women gossiping around her, talking unkindly behind each other’s backs while smiling in each other’s faces. She felt hot and itchy, damp under the arms. She batted at a fly buzzing in her face.

Reverend Parris’s Caribbean slave, Tituba, walked over, and Freya recognized her from the meetinghouse, standing with the reverend’s children in the gallery. She handed Freya a fan made from leaves. “Something we do in Barbados. The leaves are not as big here as they are on my island. Here they are rather small and sad. But it will keep you cool and scare away meddlesome flies.”

Freya laughed, taking the fan. “Most kind of you,” she said. She was glad for the distraction. They chatted pleasantly for a while, and Freya noticed some of the goodwives—even Mercy—giving them the eye.

She knew they were thinking it was not befitting for her to talk to a slave, let alone one who was considered a savage, the devil’s servants themselves. Most of the villagers already thought it strange that the reverend had not just one but two slaves: Tituba and her husband, John Indian. Servants, even indentured ones, were standard—but
slaves
! The villagers accepted the reverend’s eccentricities because, after all, Thomas Putnam had seen to having him ordained as the village minister.

Freya ignored the watchful stares. She was laughing at something Tituba had said, happy to have made a new friend. She showed Tituba the array of bread she had baked, fat ones with golden crusts, pieces of bacon and corn inside, rosemary ryes, and loaves made with oats and herbs.

The men began to raise the structure, and the women moved away from the tables to gather around the barn and cheer.

Tituba and Freya remained at the tables. The Caribbean maid reached out for Freya’s hand and studied her palm. “You have a way with the hearth, with creating. Your hands possess magic,” she said.

Freya smiled but said nothing.

Mercy appeared and Tituba quickly dropped Freya’s hand.

“What are you doing?” Mercy said, pulling Freya away. She glared at Tituba, who lowered her eyes.

“I am sorry, miss,” the slave apologized.

“Mercy!” chastised Freya. “Neither she nor I have done any harm!”

“What is this?” Mercy demanded as she reached for the fan made of leaves Tituba had given her, plucked it out of Freya’s grasp, bunched it up, and threw it to the ground.

Freya stared at the crumpled fan in the grass. The village folk had begun to chant as the men heaved the structure upright. Until now, Freya and Mercy had never quarreled. Freya’s face turned red and she quaked all over, from anger or hurt she wasn’t sure.

“I best take my leave,” said Tituba, who left them alone.

“I’m very sorry,” Freya called to her as Mercy continued to glower at the slave’s back.

Mercy tugged at Freya’s arm. “A word with you!” They took a path into the woods, whispering hurriedly back and forth as they trudged along the path.

“Those are the people who slaughtered my family!” said Mercy.

“Mercy, Tituba is from the Caribbean… she is not Indian,” Freya pointed out.

“They are all savages! They are evil! They consort with the prince of sin and darkness.”

“Tituba and her people did not slaughter your family!” said Freya. She’d had enough. They stopped in the path. The light spilled through the trees, dancing on their dresses. “I care about you greatly, Mercy. You are like a sister, and I understand how you feel. What happened to you and your family was an atrocity, but that has nothing to do with Tituba. She is just like us, a servant.”

Mercy laughed at this. “You are naïve, my friend.”

Freya knew there would be no persuading the stubborn girl. She sighed, dropping her head, and when she spoke her voice was full of compassion. She knew Mercy would never recover from the horror she had seen. It was etched on her body, with the scars on her face and mangled hand. “Forgive me,” she said. “I am sorry I hurt you.”