Susannah Morrow

by Megan Chance

  He led me into the low-ceilinged hall with its vast fireplace and pristine wooden floors. Already at the tableboard were the others, even Joseph Putnam, whom I’d thought to beat. “So I’m the last,” I said.

  “Not by much,” Joseph assured me. “I’ve only just arrived. How do you, Lucas?”

  “As well as I can,” I answered him, coming to the table.

  “Ah, well, ’tis a difficult time, I imagine. ’Tis good you’ve a woman to help you,” Daniel Andrew said. I saw him glance to Joseph Porter and the look that passed between them, and I felt my own face burn. So they, too, had been talking of her—my own friends.

  “For a time,” I told them, taking my seat. Francis handed me a tankard of beer. “Where’s Rebecca?”

  “She’s been feeling poorly of late,” Francis said. “’Tis the wet.”

  “Aye. ’Twill be a bad year for it too, I fear; I can feel it in my bones,” Joseph Porter said, rubbing his graying beard.

  “’Tis a bad year all around,” Daniel said glumly. He was a young man still, a lawyer who served as selectman in Salem Town as well—the only one of us who did. He ran his hand through his reddish hair and shook his head. “And this thing with the church looks to grow worse still.”

  I took a sip of beer. “How so? Tell me, how did the elders take our refusal to assess Parris’s salary?”

  They each looked at the other—I was the only one who had not been at the last meeting. “What is it?” I asked, alarmed. “What has happened?”

  “’Tis why we’ve called the meeting,” Francis told me. “The church has filed suit against us.”

  “Against whom?”

  “The committee.”

  “But that’s ridiculous.”

  “So I’ve told them,” Daniel put in. “But they filed the complaint with the County Court last week.”

  “Who’s signed it?” I asked, though I knew already who ’twould be.

  “Nate Putnam, Tom Putnam, and Thomas Wilkins,” Daniel said.

  ’Twas the answer I’d expected. “Tom’s like a dog with a bone,” I said.

  “’Tis enough that we are against the pastor, that my brother should be for him,” Joseph Putnam said with a small smile. “Tom would sooner see me dead than agree with me. Uncle Nate’s no better.”

  “It would be easier if you were the only reason,” Francis said. “But you were too young to be the start of this dispute.”

  “What do we do then?” Daniel asked. “I must warn you, ’tis our own pockets at risk here. If the council were to decide in their favor, we could be fined for neglecting our duties.”

  “What are the chances of that?” I asked.

  Daniel looked glum. “I wish I could say they were bad, but the County Council is impatient these days with any who take issue with rules laid by the General Council. And the contests between the town and the village are well known and numerous. I fear our luck cannot be good.”

  “But the principle—”

  “They’ve no patience with the high-minded,” Daniel interrupted sharply. “They’ll see only that we’ve refused to assess the tax for Parris’s salary—and that is our main duty as a committee, mandated twenty years ago.”

  “The man cannot remain,” Joseph Porter said angrily. “Demands for firewood, demands for gold at the pulpit, and that just the start. Lucas, you have said that he demanded gloves at dear Judith’s grave, and others have said the same. Gloves! As if this were Boston! Parris’s biggest concern is for his own comfort. ’Tis obvious he cares little for his congregation. He has already broken his covenant with us.”

  “They won’t see it that way.” Daniel sighed. “But I shall do my best to persuade them, you know this.”

  We all nodded, a few said “aye,” but the news Daniel gave was bleak indeed. I was incensed by it, and voted with the others to stay our course—the principles we stood for were worth the threat of any fine.

  During the meeting, I had forgotten all about Susannah, about the argument we’d had, but the moment we rose from the table to leave, those thoughts returned.

  I did not look forward to going home. I took my time about it, though I had things to do, another spinning wheel yet to finish, and a cupboard for a man in Salem Town. Susannah’s worries about Charity nagged at me. Again I felt the full weight of the responsibility Judith had left on my shoulders, and the relief of knowing Susannah was there to help was suddenly no relief at all. My conscience was sore and troubled. I came out of the woods to the path leading up to the house and saw Charity standing there outside our door, staring at me as if she’d seen the Devil in my shadow.

  Charity is troubled. There was a moment, something I saw in my daughter’s gaze that made me think Susannah was right, but then it passed. I wondered if I’d truly seen it.

  Charity said, “Father, a word with you. I’m afraid we have been cruelly deceived.”

  She had always been an imaginative child, a dramatic child. Now her words were so serious, so grave, and there was an intensity in her expression that I suddenly realized I had not seen for many years, and I wondered why. Had it simply been that she had outgrown the days when a broken go-cart had brought paroxysms of grief, or a dusting of snow exclamations of awe? Or was it something more, something I’d missed?

  She was talking again, too quickly to understand until she said, “She’s an actress, Father. An actress.”

  “Charity,” I said, in that way I’d used often when she was just a child, trying to calm her through a tantrum or tears. I took her elbow to make her listen. “Who is an actress? Whom do you accuse?”

  I had thought she would name one of her friends, or perhaps someone from outside the village or on the Ipswich Road. I did not expect it when she said, “Susannah.”

  I was stunned. Then I realized the rumors must have followed Susannah already to Salem Village. I wondered how that could be, who could have known.

  It was some moments before I realized I was holding Charity. I had not held her this way since she was a baby, and I hoped God would forgive me for keeping her there a moment more. Then, I knew I could not spoil her. ’Twas my duty to keep her strong.

  Gently I pushed her away, and told her the truth in the kindest words I could. “Your aunt is no actress, Charity.”

  She was a child, caught up in a melodrama of her own making. Sensitivity was her flaw. The world would tear her to pieces if I could not give her the strength to fight it, so I made my voice hard and put an end to her accusations and her exaggerations, and then I left her.

  But my daughter’s wounded expression did not leave me. Her words echoed in my head, along with the image of my neighbors talking among themselves, that glance Joseph Porter and Daniel Andrew had exchanged. The rumors were in the village now, and I knew I must do something to stop them. For my daughters, I told myself. To protect their innocent bodies from insinuations of wickedness. To keep their futures unsullied. For my daughters.

  Chapter 15

  I WAITED UNTIL AFTER OUR EVENING PRAYERS, UNTIL THE CHILDREN were in bed. ’Twas a dark night, and the house seemed darker still, the encroaching shadows creeping through the windows to crawl across the floor, the firelight an uncertain bulwark against it. I lit a candle, and then another. When Susannah looked at me in surprise, I took up one of Jude’s boots and my cobbling kit and made to repair it. “There is not enough light for this,” I told her.

  “I welcome it,” she said as she scrubbed the trenchers. “It seems that here…’tis always so dark. I’m surprised you’re not on your way to bed yourself, Brother.”

  “I’ve shoes to repair.”

  She paused a moment, and then said, “Aye,” and I thought I heard the knowledge of my lie in her single word. I wondered why I hadn’t just said the truth, why I was hesitating. I was here because I had to talk with her; why not discuss this and be done with it the sooner?

  “And…” I turned Jude’s boot over in my hand, noting the wear of it, the stretch of a seam, the way the dark impres
sion of her little foot marked the leather. “And too…I wish a word with you.”

  “Ah. Without the children hearing?”

  “Aye.”

  “How important this must be, then, to spare them the sound.”

  I looked up to see that she faced me. She held a trencher before her like a shield. It was still wet, and water dripped silently onto the brick hearth; its sound was lost in the crackle of the fire.

  “They’ve been wounded enough by it already,” I said.

  “Wounded?” She frowned. She set aside the trencher and came toward me, pausing at the end of the table. “I don’t understand.”

  “When I returned today, Charity told me that she’d heard rumors in town.”

  “Rumors? Of what?”

  “Rumors that you tread the boards.”

  “Oh.” She sagged onto the end of the bench; I felt the rock of her weight, the steadying of the bench beneath it. “I cannot believe that would have followed me so far.”

  “Perhaps you were not so guarded as you thought.”

  Her look was sharp. “This did not come from me. It has brought me enough trouble. ’Twas long ago, in any case. Scarcely worth mentioning.”

  “Not for someone.”

  “Aye.” She looked thoughtful. “Aye. ’Tis true enough.”

  “Then who?”

  “Did Charity hear it herself? From Judith? From you?”

  I shook my head, startled at the thought. “We hardly mentioned you.”

  She made a quick little breath. I saw I’d hurt her, and the ache was strange upon her face, an expression I had never thought to see on her. I knew more about Susannah Morrow than she could have believed—Judith did not lightly release old hurts, even when she loved. This I knew: Susannah had a discontented spirit; she had long ago lost her way to God. That it mattered to her what she’d left behind had never occurred to me before that moment, not until I saw the quick downcast of her glance, the careful folding of her hands in her skirt.

  “Have you brothers or sisters, Lucas?” she asked quietly.

  “Only one brother now. I think.”

  “You think?”

  “It has been many years since I’ve seen him—”

  “Where is he?”

  There was an odd insistence in her voice. When I looked at her in puzzlement, she pressed on. “Do you hear from him?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Not since coming to New England.” Though in truth, it had been much longer than that. I had left home when my only remaining brother was barely five—I would be surprised now to find he even remembered me. I could but hope he lived still, though even that I was not sure of, given my stepfather’s brutal nature. My mother, I hoped, had died long since. I wanted a safe and good eternity for her, who had been so beleaguered on earth.

  But these things I did not say to Susannah. They were not her concern, and I did not trust her reasons for wanting to know. So I was silent.

  “Have you told your daughters of them—of your family?”

  “My family is scattered to the winds. What remains of them, I’ve no wish to rediscover.”

  “Do I fall into that same sentiment, then?”

  I sighed in impatience. “’Tis pointless to—”

  “No,” she said firmly. “You said that you and Judith did not speak of me to your daughters. Were you so ashamed?”

  “Aye. Aye, of course.” I gestured to the room. “Look about you. This is a pious family, a God-fearing one. There is no room for wickedness here.”

  “And I’m wicked.”

  “Can you say you are not?”

  “I was never an actress.”

  “You lived with actors,” I accused. “You fornicated with them—”

  “With one,” she said. “With a single man. His name was Geoffrey.”

  I laughed disbelievingly. “And then you moved on to another.”

  “Robert was no actor. He was a cobbler.”

  “You lived with him.”

  Her eyes flashed. “Aye. I did. I loved him.”

  “But you never married him. You never married any of them.”

  She rose and slapped her hand hard on the table. She leaned close. “I have known men like you, Brother. Always the first to cast stones, always the first to cry out sinner. Then you sneak home to gratify yourself in a dark corner and take out your frustrations on anyone who crosses you. Do you think I don’t know what you are? Do you think I don’t know that ’twas you Judith wrote me of?”

  “Me?” I stared at her, angry now. Without thinking, I grabbed her wrist, holding her away. “I gave Judith no cause to complain. And why she would trust her dearest thoughts to you, when you so easily betrayed her, is a mystery to me.”

  “It seems most things are mysterious to you.”

  She made no move to push me away or jerk from my hold. Then the anger left her eyes, and something else came into them, something that startled me.

  ’Twas as if I’d been blind, and suddenly my gaze cleared. I dropped her wrist. “Forgive me,” I whispered. I sank onto the bench, my face buried in my hands. “Forgive me. I should not have said those things.”

  “Nor I.” She sounded shaken.

  I did not look at her. I heard her move away. I heard her at the hearth, raking up the fire.

  “I shall…put these words behind me,” she said, her voice so quiet I was not sure at first that I’d heard her. “There is no need for us to be at arms.”

  “Aye,” I agreed. “’Tis forgotten already.”

  “Good. Then…I’ll say good night.”

  “Good night,” I said.

  She paused another moment, and then she nodded and went up the stairs, leaving only the sound of her step behind.

  I picked up Jude’s shoe from where it had fallen on the floor and set it on the table, and then I snuffed the candles and made my way in darkness to the parlor, where the bed I’d shared with Judith was a shadow at one end. I undressed and crawled between sheets cold as the grave, without even a bed warmer to ease my way. I wanted the discomfort; I wanted the reminder of mortality, the chill on my soul. But as I lay there in bed, I burned.

  The torment was too much. I rose again and pulled my shirt over my head and went to my desk in the corner. I lit the single, pitted candle and reached for comfort from the stack of books piled on the floor. It opened to the page I knew, a page creased already by the sweat of my fingers: So soon as we rise in the morning, we go forth to fight with two mighty giants, the world and the Devil; and whom do we take with us but a traitor, this brittle flesh, which is ready to yield up to the enemy at every assault?

  I closed my eyes and thought of Judith: her cold hands, the stiffness of her body beneath mine, the forbearance in her eyes. Gradually the fire inside me died. Gradually I could breathe again. I closed the sermon and blew out the candle, then fumbled my way back to my bed, where I drew the curtains closed. I was tired; it was late. I thought I would drift off into deep sleep, but dreams of Judith haunted me until I woke again with the dawn, exhausted past bearing, feeling as Jonas: I am cast out of the sight of God.

  The first snow came, and kept falling, until it was piled by the door, and we were housebound but for the barn. Charity especially seemed to suffer from it. She had grown pale and wan these last weeks, and she seemed distracted, staring out the windows in a daydream when she should have been working, watching me with an intensity that disturbed me. Then, one morning, I woke early. I had been unable to sleep, the bed too cold and too empty, my dreams unresolved and vaguely wicked. Susannah was not yet awake. When I heard the step on the stair, I took the last gulp of beer and made to go outside. From the corner of my eye, I saw it was not Susannah but Charity.

  When I saw my daughter, I stopped. I found myself staring at her, noticing how unrested she seemed, the shadows beneath her eyes, her skin too pale. Suddenly I thought of a conversation from a few days ago, Susannah’s oddly intense question about my old apprentice, Samuel Trask, who disappeared one day wit
hout a word. What do you know of this, Charity?

  I had not been thinking of Sam, nor had I been considering the five pounds he’d taken. But now I felt his presence, and with it, an unsettling connection to my daughter. I remembered Judith standing before me, her mouth moving, the substance if not the words coming to me again, something about Sam, about Charity. “Talk to him, won’t you, Lucas?” she’d asked, and I’d agreed to do so, though I was too distracted with the jobs I’d meant to do that day. So I hardly understood what it was Judith wanted me to talk to Sam about, and I forgot my promise moments after. Now the memory lingered as a faint dread.

  “Good morning, Charity,” I said.

  “Good morning.” She sat at the tableboard and poured some beer into a noggin with a weariness that bent her spine.

  “Are you ill, child?” I asked her.

  She looked up as if the very sound of my voice surprised her. For a moment, she looked as if she might say something, but then she shook her head. “No, Father.”

  I thought I saw her spirit in her eyes, and it seemed broken and hopeless so that it nearly rent my heart. I could not keep from asking, “What troubles you?” Though I was afraid of how she would answer.

  She dragged the noggin toward her, though she did not drink. “How does the Devil come?”

  I had been expecting her to say something of Samuel, and so I was nonplussed for a moment. I frowned. “In many ways. ’Tis our task to recognize him whenever we see him.”

  “I remember when our neighbor told Mama she’d seen him. That he sat on her in the night—”

  I nodded. “A nightmare. When she prayed, the vision left.”

  “But what if it didn’t go?”

  “It did.”

  “But what if”—she took a deep breath—“what if you prayed and prayed, and he did not leave?”

  I should not have been so relieved at her question, but I was. This was nothing to do with Sam after all; ’twas merely my daughter’s worries over her own salvation—a natural result of her mother’s death. “Charity, you must listen to me. Satan’s greatest trick is in making us believe that God is lost to us. Will you give him that power?”