Susannah Morrow

by Megan Chance

  The music was lively and haunting. She played expertly, as one born to the instrument, as if ’twas her voice that came from it, and we were all silent, watching the firelight play across her face, watching her hands move across the keys without effort or strain, the oddest chords easy to hold.

  I knew suddenly and without doubt where she’d got the instrument, who had taught her to play it. Judith’s words came to me: She left him for an actor. He was a lead player, I think, and she said he was handsome. He must have been, to turn her head.

  Susannah had told me his name. Geoffrey. Geoffrey. I hated the sound of it. I pictured him, fair to my darkness, brawny to my sinew. I pictured him bringing her the instrument, sitting behind her, helping her hands move over the keys, showing her each note while she leaned back into him, laughing, kissing.…

  I must have made a sound, because suddenly she glanced up at me, catching my gaze. I saw her start—’twas the only misstep she made, a single discord—and then she looked down again.

  If Susannah was aware of the currents in the room, she showed no evidence of it. She began another tune, and this time, she sang in a low, clear voice that perfectly matched the instrument. “Under the greenwood tree, who loves to lie with me—”

  Charity’s gasp was so loud we all turned to look at her, but when the others turned back again, I did not—’twas fear I’d heard in my daughter’s sound.

  She was still by the window. Her fingers fumbled with the edges of her shawl; she pulled it closer and closer as if she were freezing cold, though it was already wrapped so tightly about her ’twas a wonder she could move within it. She was staring out the window. ’Twas as if she were talking to someone, though there was no one there. She was trembling.

  I left the table to go over to her. I leaned close to whisper, “Are you ill, child?”

  My daughter glared at me as if she did not know me. Her hands grasped convulsively at her shawl. “Ill? No. No.”

  “Do you not like the song?”

  Her eyes went wild. “I won’t listen to it!” She jerked back from me as if I’d touched her, when I had not even lifted a hand. “I won’t! I shall not!”

  Susannah’s hands came down on the keys, discordant and then silent, so that Charity’s words lingered there in echoes. Charity reached for my hand, the shawl coming loose to half fall off her shoulders. “You cannot be fooled, Father, can you?” she pleaded. “You cannot be fooled?”

  “Fooled by what, Charity? Fooled how?”

  She dropped my hand and shook her head, frenzied again, be fore she burst into tears and ran from the room, past the table and my neighbors, up the stairs, leaving me to stare helplessly after while Jude followed her.

  “She hasn’t felt well.” Susannah’s voice was soft in the sudden silence. When I looked at the table, I saw that they were all looking at her, confused, bleary-eyed. The mood had changed. Discomfort, tension…Francis Nurse unclenched his hand from his tankard and rose.

  “We should be going,” he said. “’Tis late, and much to do on the morrow.”

  “Aye.” Joseph nodded. He got to his feet as well, and gave a small bow to Susannah. “You play beautifully. I would be delighted to hear you again some time. For now…I thank you for the unaccustomed treat.”

  They left then, disappearing together into the darkness.

  I watched as Susannah covered the virginal again, leaving it there on the end of the table while she collected the tankards and took them to the washtub near the fire.

  “What ails her?” I asked.

  She was quiet for a moment, as if debating whether or not to speak, and this made me angry. So I said again, “What ails her? I am her father. You’re keeping something from me. ’Tell me.”

  “I confronted her this morning,” she said.

  “Confronted her? Over what? You speak in riddles.”

  Susannah sighed. She turned again to face me, leaning back against the tub, resting her hands on its rim. “I told her that I’d found Samuel Trask.”

  Chapter 18

  “SAMMY?” I ASKED, MUDDLED, NOT UNDERSTANDING. HIS NAME seemed to come from nowhere. “You found Sammy?”

  “In Andover,” she said. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a creased piece of paper. “I’ve a letter from his master.”

  “From his master?” I frowned at her, even more confused. “Why? Why were you searching for him?”

  “Have you forgotten the five pounds?” she asked.

  “The five pounds?” It came back to me then, the strange entry in the ledger. “Aye. Judith gave him the money. ’Tis all I need to know.”

  “But why? The reason—”

  “The reason is with her, and she is with God,” I said. “’Tis enough that she had one.”

  Susannah put the letter again into her pocket. She stepped toward me. “You are not an ignorant man. Why do you close your eyes to this?”

  I watched her warily. “I don’t understand you.”

  “There was something between Samuel and Charity. I know it.”

  “She’s a child.”

  “Did she seem a child to you tonight?”

  “Aye. One in the midst of a nightmare.”

  “A nightmare about what, Lucas?” Susannah came closer still. “Do you not wonder why she is so afraid? This trouble Judith wrote me of…I thought ’twas you. I know now ’tis not, but I wonder…”

  “You think she wrote of Charity?”

  “What else could it be?”

  “A hundred things,” I said.

  She made a sound of exasperation. “I don’t understand why you refuse to consider this. Is there something else I don’t know? Some secret?”

  “Secrets.” I threw up my hands. “There are no secrets in this house.”

  “I tell you there are.”

  The conviction in her voice stopped me cold.

  “I tell you there are,” she said again, quietly. “I have been thinking perhaps ’twould be best to…send her out. There is something here that frightens her, something…” She shook her head in puzzlement. “I don’t know what. But I think…I think ’twould be good for her to be in another place for a while, perhaps in town.…She needs a place to heal, Lucas.”

  Her words were startling in their bluntness. I hardly knew how to answer her. “To heal? From what?”

  “From her mother’s death, if nothing else.”

  “Where better than here? With her family?”

  “She’s troubled here. I don’t think…Ah, Lucas, you do not help her. I, think…I think you may even make things worse.”

  I felt as if I stood outside a darkened window, trying to see the figures within, sensing movement and light, feeling only danger. “Why?” I whispered.

  “Because I think Charity is sick with guilt.”

  “What possible reason could she have—”

  “I think she was in love with Samuel,” Susannah said. “I think she may have been…intimate…with him.”

  I was stunned. Charity was only a child, and a godly one. Samuel had been nearly twenty, too worldly to take notice of a young girl. He had to know I would never allow it. Yet…there had been Judith’s warnings too.…

  I refused to think of it. Angrily, I moved toward Susannah, advancing as she backed away. “I don’t want to hear such lies about my daughter again. I will not have it. Not in this village, nor in my house.”

  She lifted her face to me, and there was anger in her expression now too. “’Tis a pity you cannot control me the way you control yourself, isn’t it, Lucas? Did you control my sister as well?”

  “I did not need to. She was a good mother and a godly woman.”

  “And she was lying to you. She knew about Charity and Samuel. ’Tis the only explanation for the money. She gave him five pounds to run away.”

  “Quiet!”

  “Your daughter is not a child. She’s nearly a woman grown—”

  “I won’t hear it.”

  “You had better hear it. Twill be dis
aster if you do not.” She was against the wall now, unable to back any farther away. “She needs guidance, Lucas, not—”

  “Enough!” I raised my fist, meaning to hit the wall, and she jerked away, closing her eyes and turning her head so violently I heard the thud of her skull against the wall.

  I realized in a moment what she’d thought: I was about to hit her. That knowledge stole my anger in shock and sick dismay; of its own accord, my fist opened, my palm slapped uselessly against the planks just above her head.

  Her eyes opened. She glanced at me, and then looked at my hand, my fingers curling against the wall.

  We stood so close her hair caught on my sleeve, fanning like a spiderweb between us.

  “My God,” I whispered, my own voice, yet not my own. It seemed to come from a dream. “My God, do not tempt me this way.”

  She looked up at me, a look so candid it caught my breath—and I knew: She felt what I did. I did not mistake it. Perhaps it was that frankness that cut through the binds of feeling. I only know that when I saw her expression, I thought of Geoffrey and Robert. I thought of the yeoman’s son. They stood between us, a queue of men who had trod this land before me, and each smiled and mocked: Go ahead. She wants you to take her. Go ahead, and I was suddenly sickened. At her. At myself.

  “You have me trapped, Brother,” she said quietly, moving her head so her hair loosened from its catch on my sleeve.

  I let my arm fall; I backed away. When she eased quickly past me, I bowed my head. “Forgive me,” I murmured, words for myself more than her, low enough that I did not think she could hear.

  But I heard her stop. When I looked up, it was into her pitied expression. “’Tis your daughter who needs it, not I.”

  The next morning, I waited at the table until Charity came downstairs.

  She stopped when she saw me, and she had the strangest look on her face, as if she were relieved to see me, yet horrified as well. She looked ill; there were red chilblains on her chin that I had not noticed yesterday, bright against her pale, gray skin. It seemed her hands must always be cold, because she wrapped them convulsively in her skirt.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” I told her. “Come and sit.”

  She hesitated, then sat silently across from me at the board.

  “Susannah tells me you’ve been often to the parsonage.”

  She said something, a bare sound I could not understand.

  “You must know how I would feel about such a thing,” I said. “What is there that you have such need of? If’tis spiritual guidance, then ’tis better found in town. Let me take you there. Nicholas Noyes is a far better pastor—”

  “No,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “’Tis not…’tis not that. I…I have been…seeing to…She’s ill.…” Charity let the words sink into silence. Her shoulders shook from the movements of her hands in her skirt. Her brow was wrinkled in worry; her thin upper lip disappeared into the fullness of the lower; her chin was set.

  She was not telling me the truth, I realized with a shock. She was dissembling. There was something more here. But then she looked up at me, and more startling even than her lie was the expression in her pale eyes. I saw fear there—if not fear of me, fear of something.

  I frowned at her, trying to understand the mysteries of her face, and in that moment, it seemed to coalesce before me. Every separate feature was pressed with the faint likeness of her mother, though finer—it put me in recollection of my own mother, and I realized in surprise that I had never seen that in her before. More than that, I realized ’twas a woman’s face I was looking at. A woman’s face. She’s not a child. She’s a woman grown.

  Ridiculous. It could not be. She was still a little girl, with plump hands and fine hair.…No, her hands were slender; her fingers were long and tapered. Her hair was thick and straight.…No, no. There had not been enough years, not nearly enough—Sammy and Charity…She gave him five pounds to go.…The thoughts jangled in my head, hard to set straight, incongruous—

  There was a knock on the door.

  I leaped to my feet. Charity started to rise.

  “Stay there,” I ordered. “We have not finished.” I went to the door and swung it open. When I saw ’twas Samuel Nurse standing there—in the midst of heavily falling snow—holding his fowling piece tight in his fist instead of slinging it over his shoulder as was usual, I felt a quick and sudden dread. His nine-year-old son, George, stood behind him, holding at the ready a gun too large for his childish hands, scanning the woods and fields beyond the house as if he expected someone to appear at any moment.

  “Sam?” I asked, frowning in bewilderment.

  “A word with you, Lucas,” he said.

  “Of course.” I stood back to let him in, and George too, who came quickly, glancing over his shoulder. I closed the door and motioned to the table, where Charity sat. I saw Jude and Susannah coming down the stairs. “Have you supped? Can I get you something?”

  “No, no,” Sam said. “We can stay but a moment.” He nodded a greeting to Susannah.

  She stepped forward, a worried look on her face. “What brings you out on a morning like this, Sam? It cannot be good news.”

  “I’m afraid ’tis not.” Then Sam said to me, “There was an Indian attack on Wells a few days ago. One on York too. ’Twas bad, Lucas, from what we’ve heard. Over a hundred captured. ’Tis said that York…” He paused and glanced at my listening family. “’Tis bad.”

  Wells was less than eighty miles away; York was only a little farther. Already we lived in constant terror of Indian attacks or of raiding parties made up of the French woodsmen called Coureurs de Bois. Retaliations, counterretaliations…One attack often led to another, to another, to another. Salem Village was scattered over fields and hills that were undefendable—we were vulnerable to any attack. I thought of the stories I’d heard over the years: the torture of young men, children taken captive and left orphaned. There was not a person in the village who had not been touched in some way. Many villagers had come here from Maine and New Hampshire, where the war was at its worst, and memories of a two-year-old attack on Lancaster—forty miles from here—still retained their power. Seventy of Salem’s best men had been lost there.

  I was suddenly light-headed. “Is there to be a training day?”

  “We’re prepared enough,” Sam said. “Captain Putnam has assigned a double watch for the time being. You and I have been given the evening hours.”

  “We’re to leave our own families unprotected?”

  “They can gather together at my father’s house. They’ll be safe enough there—”

  “Look at the snow,” Susannah broke in. “Surely no Indian will attack today. We’ll be safe enough here—”

  “You’ll go to Francis’s,” I said tersely. “I’ll fetch you from there on my return.”

  “But, Lucas—”

  I gave her a quick glance, meant to silence her, but still it surprised me when she quieted, when she nodded her allegiance.

  “Every man in the village is to bring what extra powder he has to the parsonage. We’ll take it from there to the watchhouse, as it seems the parson has his hands full.”

  “With what?” I asked meanly, unable to help myself. “Cutting his own firewood?”

  “One of his children has suddenly taken ill—”

  “She’s barking, sir,” George cut in. The boy was obviously unable to keep silent; the news was so remarkable.

  “Barking?”

  Sam shrugged. “’Tis what I’ve heard. Or mewing. When Father went over there to tell the parson the news about Wells, the child began climbing under chairs and galloping about on her hands and knees.”

  “Like a dog,” George said. “Mam says they can’t understand her. She’s talking gibberish and such.”

  “Son,” Sam warned. Then he looked at me. “It’s been going on a few days, I hear. Some little fit. The child’s always seemed delicate to me; no doubt she’s overtaxed.”
>
  “Which one?” The words were low, hardly spoken. It was Charity. She was standing now at the table, her fingers clenching the edge as if she might fall without its support. All color had gone from her face. When we all turned to look at her, she said, “You said ‘she.’ Master Parris has two daughters. Which one do you mean?”

  Sam looked confused, but George said, “’Tis Betsey. Betsey’s barking like a dog.”

  Charity sank hard onto the bench. She went so pale I feared she would swoon. “What is it?” I asked. “Charity?”

  She did not answer me. Instead, she put her hands to her face, and her thin shoulders shook as if she were crying. I glanced at Susannah, who looked distressed as she went hurrying over. She put her hands on Charity’s shoulders. “Charity, perhaps you—”

  My daughter wrenched away. “Don’t touch me,” she said. The words came in a low, furious sound. “I know what you are—I know!” She seemed transformed—not my quiet, sweet daughter, but someone else entirely, her face so contorted with anger and fear it did not seem to be her own. She was shaking visibly as she rushed past Susannah to the stairs. We heard her footsteps, the slam of the door.

  Susannah looked as shaken as I felt. “She’s been troubled of late,” she said, and I realized with a start that she was talking to Sam. What must he think of that display, when I myself did not understand it? “And she has been spending much time at the parsonage.”

  “Aye. Well, I wish you luck with her, then,” Sam said. “We’ll come by here this afternoon and walk up to my father’s together. Then, Lucas, you and I can go on to the watchhouse.”