Susannah Morrow

by Megan Chance

  So I married her, and I never had cause to doubt the decision, even when it proved that her womb was weak and inhospitable. ’Twas God’s will, and I came to accept that, though I had wanted a big family. In the end, I was even grateful for it, because I proved to have as faulty a heart as her womb was rocky. I loved my children from the moment they came bloody and squalling from Judith’s body, and I was afraid of how I would have sacrificed anything for their delicate little souls.

  Had I indulged them as I wished, there was no doubt they would turn to evil, and so I kept a firm hand and kept my love for them under the strictest rein. I did not even let Judith see how I revered them, because I was ashamed. In that love, there was no room for God, and so I knew it for the blasphemy it was. I knew the basest nature of my soul was that I loved my children more than I loved the Lord.

  One night, as I gazed upon their sleep, I looked up in the doorway to see Judith watching me with sorrow in her eyes.

  “You must come away, Lucas,” she’d whispered to me. “Before God punishes you for such pride.”

  I had come away without looking again at my daughters, and I hardened my heart when Judith comforted them and smiled upon them. She was their mother, but I…I was their spiritual teacher, and it was my responsibility to deliver them safely and reverent to the Lord. I could not take the chance that, in my love, I would not ask enough of them. As time went on, it grew easier, and though I knew the progress of their spiritual development, their physical and emotional growth was like a closed book to me; I knew them as my children, and yet I did not know them.

  And so now, Judith’s death frightened me, not just because I was afraid of what I would become without her quieting touch, but because I saw the way Charity and Jude looked at me, with fear and grief and hope in their childish expressions. I knew they would turn to me and that, unless I married again shortly, ’twould be my duty to guide them through this time and further, into young womanhood, and I was ill-equipped for the task.

  I should have been stronger, but I was afraid. In those first days after Judith’s death, when ’twas my task to take my daughters in hand, I left them to Susannah. I should not have, but I could not bear my own grief or that my daughters should see it, even as I counseled them every night to celebrate their mother’s passing.

  And so, the day that Susannah came to me in the barn, where I spent my hours shaving white pine to a smooth, burnished shine and building a coffin tight as a drum, I was too distraught to do what I should have done: send her back to London.

  I was sweating and dusty, and at the sight of her in her bright green bodice and brown skirt, I felt awkward and coarse. I straightened from the plane and dusted off my hands.

  “What is it? Is something wrong? Are the children—”

  “The children are fine.” She came fully into the barn, pausing to look through the dark gloom at the shadows of plows and yokes, the felling ax and pitchforks and saws hanging from hooks set in the wall. There were no windows; the only light came from the open door and the two betty lamps suspended from hooks on the wall, which I had to watch constantly for fear the drippings would overflow the holding plate and start a fire.

  “What is it?” I said.

  “Judith is gone now,” she said. “I’ve been wondering about your plans.”

  “My plans?”

  “Aye. For the girls.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “’Tis simple enough. You’re a man alone with two young daughters—”

  “Three.”

  She nodded. “Three. But Faith is at the Penneys’ until she’s weaned. For her, there’s naught to think about yet, but the other two…Will you send them out?”

  I thought back to the plans I’d had to send Charity to the Andrewses’ home, and how she’d cried and screamed. I had not been able to bear the thought of sending her away, but I’d thought ’twould be best for us all—’twas a sin to keep her so close to me, selfish pride. I remembered Judith’s soft words. You have not taught her well enough, perhaps, my husband. ’Tis clear she has not learned reverence or obedience. Will you send her to the Andrews family to show them how lacking her education has been?

  Now I looked at Susannah and shook my head. “No. They are my daughters. They shall stay with me.”

  “Is that what is best for them, do you think?” There was censure in her voice, and the familiarity of it was intolerable.

  I spoke as coldly as I could. “’Tis kind that you came to visit your sister, but, as you’ve said, she’s gone now. There is no reason for you to trouble yourself further over my family.”

  “They’re my nieces—don’t forget.”

  “Though they’ve not had sight of you till now.”

  “It was not my choice.”

  “Then whose?”

  She did not answer me. I turned my back to her in hopes that she would take my meaning and walk away.

  “When my sister wrote and asked me to come, she spoke of trouble,” she said.

  “Aye, she had trouble enough,” I said. “A fallen womb and a baby she was afraid would die.”

  “There was that. But I’m speaking of something else.”

  “There was nothing else.”

  “Why would she tell me of it, then?”

  There were inferences in her tone that I didn’t understand, an accusation I couldn’t decipher, and it made me angry. I looked at her. “What did she tell you? Come now, Sister, I’m curious to know. What trouble did she describe to you?”

  “None. That is what puzzles me.”

  “Perhaps she told you of nothing because there was nothing. Just her own troubled mind. She had dreams that the baby would die. Did she tell you this? Had she a premonition of her own death?”

  “As much as any woman has,” Susannah returned, “when childbirth is so troublesome.”

  I turned back to my work. “Aye. ’Twas all it was, then.”

  “Even so…” She paused for long enough that I looked at her again. She was staring at the board beneath my hands, her expression thoughtful. “Even so, I think I shall stay on a while. Do I have your permission to do so?”

  “My permission?”

  “’Tis your household.”

  “My household is like any other. Family requires no invitation.” I needed help with my daughters until I was ready to find a new wife. And Susannah was family; ’twould be a sin to throw her out. “You’re welcome, if you choose to stay. But this is not London. ’Tis not the life you’re used to. You would do well to think on this before you decide.”

  “I’ve thought on it well enough,” she said, and I heard her triumph when she left me, as if she felt she had won this battle between us, as if she were girding herself for war.

  Chapter 14

  THERE WERE THOSE WHO QUESTIONED THAT I LET HER STAY: AFTER all, she was beautiful enough that no one could fail to see it. And after Faith’s baptism, when Susannah quieted the child with such skill, there was gossip about her place in my household, despite the fact that she was Judith’s sister, and therefore my own. I know this because Samuel Nurse was a good friend and was quick to quell such gossip when he heard it, and then warn me of what was being said. But though Susannah’s beauty was a distraction, I was relieved she was there to take responsibility for my children. I had other duties to attend as well: Earlier in the fall, I’d been elected to the Village Committee, and now village politics consumed many of my hours.

  Chief among our problems was the pastor, Samuel Parris. In the twenty years since Salem Town had given its permission to build a meetinghouse, the village had wallowed in the controversy surrounding it—chiefly, who was to be the first pastor, and who would make the choice. By the time Judith and I had arrived, the warring had already split the village in two. The situation was hindered by each successive pastor, bad choices all, each himself an agent of dissension. As each failed to bring peace to the village, that division only widened. None was an ordained minister; those who wished to take Commun
ion had to go into Salem Town each Sunday. ’Twas a relief when the village was given permission to form a church, but that relief was marred by the minister the village chose to ordain. I—along with many of my neighbors—believed Samuel Parris was not worthy of the office.

  I was not the only one to find Parris an unpleasant man. The negotiations surrounding his hiring had been difficult and adversarial—we should have known then that he would serve our village poorly. But Tom Putnam was his greatest supporter, and a man of some influence, negative though it may be, and we’d had few other choices; Salem Village had a well-deserved reputation for contention. Until Samuel Parris, we had never kept a minister longer than a year or two.

  In my less charitable moments, I believed that the village deserved Samuel Parris. We villagers had not been able to reach accord with each other for years. I was as guilty as the rest, though I tried to love my neighbor. In this, again, Judith was my teacher, for she was unfailingly kind to all, and understanding when I could not be. How many times had she said that men like Tom Putnam were their own worst enemies, and that he should be pitied for his bitterness rather than blamed. I tried, but ’twas difficult for me to bear more than a few moments in his company. Tom was a discontented man who wanted the village to sever all ties with Salem Town—something I could not countenance. Much of my business came from the town; I should be destitute if Putnam had his way. So though I attended Salem Village church, I kept my membership in Salem Town, where I took Communion. I could not see Samuel Parris as my conduit to the Lord—such a man as that, so rigid and merciless, who argued unceasingly for a greater salary, who preached bitter and divisive sermons, who demanded gold candlesticks for the altar when the meetinghouse itself seemed ready to fall apart at the slightest breath of wind.…This was not a man I felt worthy to lead any congregation.

  Judith did not agree with me on this. She did not relish the long trips to Salem Town for Communion, and she was one of the first to join the village church. After my initial attempts to lead her to a better path, I did not attempt to stop her when she told me her desire to transfer her membership from Salem Town. She was my wife, not my slave, and her soul knew already what would serve her best.

  But I had to follow my own heart as well. I did not trust Parris or like him. I had refused to pay my taxes for his salary for months, as had many of the other villagers. When I was elected to the Village Committee, along with Francis Nurse, Daniel Andrew, Joseph Putnam, and Joseph Porter—all men with little love for Parris—one of our first decisions was to assess no tax for Parris’s salary. This was no hasty decision; we had discussed it for months. We had used more subtle means to urge him toward resignation before now, but all our efforts had either gone unacknowledged or been bitterly contested. Now we’d lost our taste for subtlety.

  Judith was angry at me for my part. ’Twas important, she said, that I lead the girls by example, and how was she to say that I took no part in village conflicts when it was clear I was involved? Yet in the end, she bowed to my arguments, though I know she did not agree with me.

  Perhaps she was right; I don’t know. What I do know is that in those first weeks after her death, I grew more and more troubled by the growing divisiveness in the village, yet my own worries made me step away. I was concerned only with how I was to bring up three girls without a mother’s guiding hand. I knew vaguely of what was progressing; I knew that the church elders had requested that the committee levy a tax for Parris’s salary. I knew Joseph Porter was adamant in his refusal. I thought ’twould end there. I hoped it would. But a week later, Francis Nurse called for an urgent meeting of the committee.

  The day we were to meet, I woke early. But when I came out of the parlor, Susannah was already awake and at the hearth.

  She looked over her shoulder, and the firelight came into her face. “Brother, come, sit down. I’ve breakfast almost ready.”

  “I’m to the Nurses’.”

  “Certainly the meeting will wait until you’ve supped.”

  I did not expect her attempt to dissuade me, and I had no argument ready. She was right; ’twas early yet. Joseph Putnam would be coming from some distance as well. I had plenty of time.

  So I sat. She turned back to the fire. I sought some idle bit of conversation, but nothing came to me. In my life, I had never been so tongue-tied by a woman. Even when I had first been so impressed with Judith, I had never found myself lacking for words. I was ashamed of it.

  I pulled the pitcher toward me and took a deep, full breath of bitter hops and malt in an attempt to clear my head.

  “Are you well, Brother?” she asked, and I looked up to see her standing at the side of the table, her expression sharp.

  “Aye,” I said.

  She set a trencher of samp before me and sat across from me with her own. I heard her soft chewing, her quiet swallow, and stared down at my own food. When I heard Susannah say, “I’ve been worried about Charity,” the words seemed a foreign tongue, so distracted was I.

  “She seems troubled,” Susannah went on. “Does she not seem so to you?”

  “Troubled?”

  “I’ve awakened several times in the night to see her staring out the window. There is a…distraction…about her.”

  “She has always been an imaginative girl.”

  “And you think that’s what this is?”

  “She has been sensitive of late. Judith believed ’twas merely growth pangs.”

  “Growth pangs?” Susannah laughed, but ’twas not an amused sound. “’Tis something different than that, I’ll warrant.”

  “You should know better than her own mother?”

  “I was a girl once. I am not blind.”

  “Neither was Judith,” I said sharply.

  Susannah nodded as if in agreement, but she was not finished; I saw her hesitation. “Has Charity a suitor?”

  “A suitor? She’s but a child.”

  “Have you looked upon her lately, Brother? She’s a young woman already—perhaps more than that. She has a worldly look in her eyes.”

  “That is absurd.”

  She only tilted her head at me. “Is it? Look closer, then.”

  I thought of my daughter, of her pale blue eyes lit with adoration, and I remembered when she was but six, how she used to attend me in the barn until her mother put a quick end to it and started her on needlework. “You’ve known her less than a month, and yet you think to tell me—who has known her her whole life—about the look in her eyes?”

  “I recognize it,” Susannah said stubbornly.

  “Aye. So you would.” My words were deliberately cruel, and when she flushed, I felt both satisfaction and shame.

  “How often do you tend to your children, Brother, except to discipline them?”

  I stared at her in disbelief. “Do you accuse me of neglect?”

  “You would know best if that is true.”

  “I am with my children nearly every hour. I do not take my duty to their souls lightly.”

  She waved her hand, a quick dismissal. “That’s not what I mean. Did you know that she is seeing those friends of hers again?”

  I went blank. Those friends of hers. Then I remembered the day of Faith’s baptism, Charity sitting with those worthless girls at the table at Ingersoll’s, Judith’s words ringing in my ears. We must keep her busy enough that she does not have time to tarry with them. “I have asked her to stay away from them,” I said.

  “Well, she has disregarded you in this.”

  “She’s a dutiful girl,” I said angrily. “That you accuse her of disobedience—”

  “Oh, Lucas, now ’tis you who’s blind.”

  There was contempt in her words. I thought of the stories Judith had told me of her sister, and as I looked at her now, those things were not hard to believe. I pushed aside my trencher and got to my feet. “You’d best watch your words, madam. You have no place to judge me or my daughters.”

  “You misunderstand. I didn’t mean to—”

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p; “When you left your poor parents to chase after that yeoman’s son, did you mean to cause them such humiliation? Did you think twice about what they would do without you?”

  She blanched. “You know nothing of it,” she said in a strained voice.

  “Nor do you know anything of this,” I told her. “I shall tend to my daughter in my way.” I went to the door, grabbing my cloak from its hook and slinging it over my arm, not bothering to fasten it about my throat until I was out of the house, and she was far behind me.

  As I led Saul to the path, I tried to forget her words, but they stayed with me. I began to wonder: Had I been neglectful? Was my eldest daughter moving beyond my reach? I decided no; how could she be? I was with my children every evening for prayers and readings. Susannah knew nothing of this household. She was but a temporary visitor.

  It seemed a short distance to the Nurses’ house, so lost was I in my thoughts. Francis’s home was one of the finest in the village. It stood at one of the highest points, and the land was gentle and rolling down to the meadow, its stone walls and rail fences well kept, as were the orchards that reached to the pine and birch forest beyond. The flax patch was full of cut flax rotting away in the wet in preparation for gathering. Francis Nurse was elderly now and his wife frail, but between them they were more industrious than many of my neighbors.

  I led the horse to the barn and then made my way up the long, curving path to the house and knocked upon the heavy oak door studded with nail heads. I stared up at the sundial carved into the wall above it until Francis opened the door. “Ah, Lucas, ’tis good you’ve come. Come in.”