by Megan Chance
“He strokes her cheek!” Mary Walcott called out. “He has given her a little bird to suckle!”
“A yellow bird!” another shouted.
“I have no bird,” Susannah whispered.
From the back of the meetinghouse, a woman said, “Did you see the way she calmed that baby in meeting? Why, ’twas the Devil’s song she whispered!”
“She wears the Devil’s clothes! Such a worldly woman!”
“No,” Susannah said—uselessly; the evidence was mounting before her. “These things are not true.”
“How came you into my bedchamber one morning and held me down by my throat?”
For a moment, I thought I’d spoken. They were my words. I saw Susannah jerk around, searching the crowd for me; then, in confusion, she looked beyond me, to the man who’d spoken, to John Londer. The girls fell back as if her glance had pushed them. The constable grabbed her arm to hold her in place.
“’Tis a lie,” she said roughly. “’Tis a lie.”
Hathorne stepped before her, his eyes on fire. “If ’tis a lie, then why do others say the same? What do you say to the same accusation by your own brother?”
If John Londer’s words had been a shock, Hathorne’s were more so. I felt the stares of my neighbors, their speculation, their fears realized, and then I felt Susannah look upon me. I was a coward, a man who had just escaped the clutches of the Devil with his clothing still burning. I could not bring myself to look at her.
Hathorne pressed on. “What say you to this horrible act of witchcraft?”
“’Twas a dream he had. A dream only.”
“A dream?” Hathorne asked with the full crush of sarcasm. “A dream, you say?” He swiveled on his heel. “Lucas Fowler, did you not say that this woman possessed you in your sleep? Did you not say that she held you down for nearly an hour with a strength so prodigious you could not move? Did you not say she disappeared through a window that was locked when you went to bed, but then it was opened?”
Slowly I looked up. I kept my gaze on Hathorne, though Susannah wavered like a wraith behind him. “Aye,” I said quietly. Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw Charity standing there, waiting, and I said with a stronger voice, “Aye.”
“Did you not say that she came back to your home one day, after gathering flax, and though there had been a terrible rainstorm, she was not wet, not even her boots?”
I nodded. I remembered it well, though I’d attributed no power to it at the time, not until Corwin had said something during my deposition, and I suddenly remembered. “Aye. ’Tis true. She was not wet, though the horse was.”
I saw Susannah’s confusion, and then she glanced at Charity, who began to shake and pant as if her breath would not come, and I saw something come into Susannah’s eyes, a memory quickly shielded, a lie, and I felt a strange hopelessness, a despair I could not name.
Charity clutched her throat. Her eyes rolled back in her head.
“Turn her away!” Corwin shouted.
“Not yet,” Hathorne said. “Take the woman to the afflicted girl.”
The constables each grabbed one of Susannah’s arms, leading her from the bar over to Charity. Susannah did not resist when one of them pressed her hand down upon the linen cap covering Charity’s hair.
The moment she touched my daughter, Charity quieted, as did every voice in that room. I stared at her in disbelief. There was a familiarity to her calm that I recognized. I remembered bringing William Griggs to the house only to find my daughter sound asleep, a blissful, strange, and even sleep. The realization of what Susannah must have done hit me. I looked up at her in horror.
“You made her sleep,” I said, and she recoiled a little, as if stunned by what she saw in my face. “When I left for Griggs, ’twas you who made her sleep. What spell was that? What spell is this?”
“There was no spell,” she said. “She was tired. Such fits tire her—”
“How know you this?” Hathorne boomed out.
I saw the panic in Susannah’s eyes. William Griggs came forward from beneath the gallery and said, “She told me she cared nothing for how many witches there were in the village. She told me the Devil has only what power she gave him.”
“I said nothing like that,” she protested weakly. “You misheard. Lucas, tell him. Tell him the truth of what I said.” She reached for me, but the constable’s men dragged her back to the bar, and the girls cried out all around me, so I sat in the midst of a mad frenzy.
“Do you not see how they are tormented?” Hathorne shouted. “You are acting witchcraft before us. Why have you not a heart to tell us the truth?”
“I am innocent,” Susannah cried. She struggled against the constable as if trying once more to see the girls.
“Turn her away!” someone called out.
“Have you not given consent that some evil spirit should do this in your likeness?”
She shook her head. The girls did the same. Elizabeth Hubbard’s motion was so grotesque it seemed her head might twist off. With a cry, William Griggs pushed through the crowd to get to his niece.
Charity was unmoving now, cast under Susannah’s spell, in a trance.
“No, no,” Susannah said. She sounded desperate, caught. “I am innocent of this. I am no witch.”
“They say ’tis your likeness that comes and torments them and tempts them to write in the book. What book is it that you tempted them with?”
“There is no book. I know nothing of it.”
“Tell us the truth!” Hathorne thundered. He brought his fist down on a nearby table so hard Ezekiel Cheever jumped. “How came these persons to be so tormented? Why do they charge you with doing so?”
Susannah swayed, as if her strength had left her, as if she would have fallen without the constables holding her.
“She’s going to swoon,” Joseph Herrick said.
Hathorne said, “’Tis said you were an actor, on a stage. Is that where you met the Devil?”
“I am not a witch,” she insisted. She sagged; one of the constables caught her against him.
“Take her away,” Hathorne said finally. “We’ll question her again later.”
I stood there helpless, watching as they pulled her down the aisle so she stumbled and tilted, her hair loosened from her struggles, tumbling over her shoulders.
I should have been relieved. ’Twas over. I had done my duty; I had supported my daughter and rid the village of Susannah’s wickedness. Though I had fallen to temptation, I had redeemed myself now. Surely God smiled upon me at last.
Yet I could not forget the expression on Susannah’s face as I had said the words to condemn her. And I thought how odd it was that I had done this thing, this thing my daughter and my neighbors had wanted from me, this thing that should send the strength of righteousness bursting over me, and all I felt was a dull aching at my temples, an impatience over my daughter’s screams, a sense…this terrible sense…that I had betrayed us all.
PART THREE
SUSANNAH
—Persuasion—
Men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth—often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.
—Hypatia of Alexandria
Chapter 31
LOCKER AND HIS MEN LIFTED ME ONTO MY HORSE AND FASTENED the chains to the saddle. I still heard the screams of the girls in my head; Hathorne’s face filled my vision yet, with his intense eyes and long jaw—a demon in the flesh. But the worst of it…Ah, the worst was Lucas.
Lucas, the man who had lain with me and held me and known me. Lucas, offering proof of my supposed covenant with Satan.…Dear God, I could not fathom it. I had suspected that Charity would speak against me, and her friends, but I had not expected it of Lucas, though I knew I should have. His torment had been too real, his despair over his daughter heartbreaking, and I knew.…He’d had no choice but to believe Charity.
Knowing thi
s did not make my anguish more bearable; it only made me angry that I had not seen it before, that I had been so unprepared.
I had been afraid when they came to the house to arrest me. I had been afraid standing in that room, facing my accusers. But now I knew terror. I had told myself that the villagers were reasonable people, and if they were not, then certainly the magistrates would see the truth. But there were no reasonable people—the whole village was in the grip of this horror. I should have seen these things; I had seen these things. Last night, when Nicholas Noyes took me to Putnam’s house and those girls had screamed that my specter was roasting a man over the fire—I had known what would happen. I should have run then from this town, and yet I had not wanted to be a coward. I had thought that together, Lucas and I could dissuade them.…
How foolish I had been. I had no friends here; I had depended on Lucas for everything; I had depended on his love for me. Now I could not help but remember the other night, when I’d longed for his comfort and he had told me bitterly to go into town to find a sailor. Those words came back to me, echoing of another time, of other words said nearly the same way. You’re better fit for a whore than a wife. I saw again Geoffrey standing contemptuously at the door, watching as I packed my things to go to Robert, and now I wondered if perhaps ’twas true, what he’d said. What would I have seen had I dared to look deeper into Lucas’s eyes—his love for me, or something else?
I sagged in the saddle. The horse stepped into a pothole and stumbled; the movement jarred me and I bit the side of my tongue. I cried out and Locker turned in his saddle to see, and then turned back again without a word.
We were going to town—I knew that. To jail.
But when we finally stopped, it was before a large, many-gabled house of dark wood. The constable dismounted and tied his horse.
“Where are we?” I asked in confusion. “Why have we stopped? Is this the jail?”
“’Tis Judge Corwin’s house,” he told me.
Corwin’s house. I had a sudden vision of the man, smaller than his counterpart, watching intently from the magistrates’ table in the meetinghouse while Hathorne strode like an actor throughout the room. “Why?”
“More questioning,” Locker said, coming back to unfasten the manacles from the saddle. This time, he took my arm to help me from the horse—if he had not, I would have rolled off the animal and lain helplessly in the street; I was so cold and exhausted I did not think I could make my legs work. The iron of the manacles froze the skin at my wrists. They were too large, so the rough edges balanced painfully against my bones, and so heavy ’twas an effort to lift my wrists, so I no longer tried.
He forced me up the puddled path to the house, and rapped sharply on the door. ’Twas answered by a young girl—a servant or a daughter.
“Constable Locker,” he said.
She stepped back to allow us entry. “The judge said to meet him in his study.”
She led us inside and turned sharply up a dark and narrow set of stairs. The constable pushed me ahead of him, propelling me up the stairs, because I could barely pick up my feet to move. The girl took us into a small room that held a desk and shelves of books and two chairs.
“They should be here shortly,” she said, lighting a rack of candles. She went to the small window and drew the curtains, and I felt the sting of nerves, because the only reason for it, I could think, was to hide us from view.
I turned to Locker. “What else can they want from me? I answered all their questions.”
He told the girl to fetch some beer and waited until she left, closing the door behind her, before he said to me, “They have only just begun.”
I stared at him, dismayed, and he smiled. “We’ve taken more testimony against you than any of the others. There’ll be questions yet.”
“I cannot answer more questions,” I told him.
’Twas then I heard the opening of the front door, and voices, the heavy clomp of boots and the low murmur of the servant girl. Corwin was here, along with someone else—perhaps even a few others, by the sound of it. I pressed back anxiously into my chair. The men were up the stairs in a moment, pushing into the small study: Jonathan Corwin and the preacher Nicholas Noyes.
Jonathan Corwin closed the door behind them, and the room became immediately dark and stuffy. No sooner had he closed it than the servant girl returned with the beer.
Corwin took it from her and poured beer into tankards and passed them around. I found myself leaning forward, my throat suddenly dry. I had not had a drink in several hours.
They did not pass one to me. I looked at Corwin. “Please,” I said, “might I have a drink?”
Corwin paused in the midst of gulping from his tankard. He looked at me over the rim, and then set it down. “You’re thirsty?”
“Aye. It has been a long time—”
“Did you hear her?” He looked at Noyes. “She’s thirsty.”
Locker and Noyes stood as if made of stone, studying me as if they feared I would turn into a demon before them. Corwin turned to me. “If you desire a drink, why do you not conjure one up? Surely the Devil would appease your thirst.”
I closed my eyes briefly in quick exhaustion. Dully I said, “I have no covenant with the Devil.”
“Why do you not tell the truth? We know that you do. We have testimony from several men who claim you visited them in their rooms in the night, that you were wearing a red bodice. Mary Walcott claimed that you bewitched Robert Proctor with that bodice. Your own brother—”
“They are wrong,” I said quietly. “I have never visited with any of them. I did not bewitch Robert Proctor.”
“There is an entire congregation that will say you used your demon spells to quiet a baby in meeting. Is that not true? What Devil has given you such spells?”
“’Tis not true. I know no demons.”
“Your niece says you have used the demons of the air to find her and follow her.”
“She is mistaken.”
“Do you accuse her of lying? Do you accuse these other poor, afflicted girls of lying?”
I glared at him. “They would know best if they do. Why do you not ask them?”
He recoiled as if I’d struck him. Then he leaned close so I could smell the scent of beer on his breath, and my mouth went dry in want of it. “Lucas Fowler, your own sister’s husband, has said you have bewitched him.”
I turned away, determined to hide from them my hurt.
“What say you to that?”
When I didn’t answer, he took a long draught of his tankard. Then he shoved that cursed beer close so I could smell it.
“Your spells made butter come. Samuel Shattuck says you walked by his son one day and the boy went into fits and has been ill ever after. What say you to this?”
“I do not know Samuel Shattuck and his son.”
“What of Annie Putnam—do you know her?”
“I know of her. I have never spoken to the child.”
“What of the day you were taken to her house, and she fell into fits and claimed you were roasting a man over the fire?”
I glanced to Nicholas Noyes, who stood silently watching by the door, his expression tight. I said, “I was nowhere near the fire.”
“Can you deny ’twas your specter tormenting the girl?”
“I did not see what she saw.” I gestured to Noyes. “Nor, I think, did the pastor.”
Noyes’s lips thinned. “I saw a child being dragged into the flames. I know it took two grown men to keep her from throwing herself upon them.”
“I am not strong enough to drag Mercy Lewis into a fire,” I retorted. “To drag two men as well would be impossible. I cannot imagine that my specter would find it any more likely.”
“So you admit you have a specter.”
I had been staring at Noyes. Corwin’s words were so quick, I was flustered. “No…I mean—”
“How often does your specter meet with Satan?”
“I have never met—”
“How often does the Devil come to you?”
“I—”
“Why do you not tell us the truth? Why not confess?”
The smell of the beer tormented me—I was so thirsty ’twas hard to think. “There is nothing to confess.”
“Can you deny you quieted the child in meeting?”
Wearily I said, “I cannot deny it.”
“Do you deny urging your niece to lie?”
I tried to swallow; my throat was so dry I coughed.
Corwin’s eyes bored into me. “Do you deny it? Do you deny that you do not listen to the prayers said in your own house, but disdain the word of God instead?”
The questions pounded me, another hour, two more. I stopped trying to answer. My head spun so, I thought I would swoon if I did not have a drink. Corwin kept that beer just out of my reach, close enough to see it. He refilled it twice, and smacked his lips noisily and greedily as he drank. The preacher stood back, watching, interjecting a question here and there. Locker said nothing, but went to the window, where he pulled back the curtain now and again to look out.
The world was fuzzy and gray before my eyes, Corwin’s face distorted, when he finally stood in exasperation and gestured roughly to Locker.
“Take her to the jail. Fetch the surgeon and tell him I want a search done tomorrow with female witnesses.”
Locker pulled me to my feet. I stumbled, falling into his chest, and he pushed me away more forcibly than he needed and yanked me from the room and down the steps again, out into the cold. ’Twas nearly dark now, the air freezing. This time, he did not bother to put me on the horse, but led me down the street, dragging me by my chains like a horse on a lead rope while I tripped and fell on the rough, muddied road.
When he finally stopped, I was filthy from feet to hips, and it was clammy, cold mud that cut through my cloak and my skirts and petticoats to my skin.
