by Megan Chance
She had looked for solace with her friends, and they had told fortunes with simple tricks that were in themselves a terrible sin, and that sin upon all her others cast her into an icy barrenness so great she could not see for the blackness of it. She had watched me fall, too, into the Devil’s spell, even as she had fought to save me. And now she could no longer see her mother’s spirit, and she was terrified as she had never been.
“I cannot see the end of it, Father,” she said finally, burying her face once more in her hands. “I cannot see the end.”
I could not bear to see her this way, nor to think of what Judith and I had done to this sensitive girl. I touched her hands, and when they fell away from her face, I told her, “God cannot punish you for feeling His torments so deeply, my dear. You are not bound for Hell. This will all end, and not in some eternal flame, I promise you.”
“’Tis not a flame, Father,” she said simply. “’Tis ice, and dark. ’Tis a great cold shadow over my heart.”
“‘Yea,’” I quoted softly, “‘though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.’”
She glanced away. “When I accused those in Salem, was I doing His work? Or the Devil’s?”
I let out my breath in a long, slow hush. “I don’t know. I ask you again: What did you intend when you called out those names, Charity? Was it the truth you said? Or was it all lies?”
She looked at the floor and went quiet—for so long, I thought she would not speak. Then, finally, she looked at me, and there was a bleak sadness in her eyes. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I cannot say.”
’Twas a truth I understood, though she could not have known it—she was still so young. What we believed, what we wished to believe, the uncertainty of experience…We were never far enough from our own minds to see things as they really were. What was dream, what was truth, and what was only rationalization…
’Twas sometimes safer left unknown.
Chapter 40
I MISSED THE TIDES OF SALEM. HERE, THERE WERE TIDES, YET…IN this town, those tides did not belong to me. I had grown with the rhythms of Salem. In my mind, I haunted its streets. I was a free man here, freer than I had ever been in Salem, and yet I felt as if my life was half undone, as if it had always been so, even before Judith had died, even when I had owned my own farm and made my living turning pieces to fit together for spinning wheels. There had ever been a hollowness I had tried to fill with God. ’Twas my sin that He would never be enough, that I was a man with flesh-and-blood desires who needed a partner for this journey. Would He condemn me for that when my hours on this earth were over? Or was this God I’d been taught to revere not the same God who’d laid out my life, who knew already the beginning and the end, and every path in between?
I needed devotion and time for those questions; I was too busy to do more than ask them now. My days were caught up in working at the mill, in caring for my daughters, who were the singular joy in my life. I had begun purchasing wood from the mill, and I borrowed what tools I could and bought others. In the middle of our lodging-house room, I began again to work the trade I loved. In the late evenings, I would sit by the light of a candle while I listened to the soft breathing of my daughters, and work the wood until it was smooth and shining. I fashioned a cupboard for our clothes, another chair, and then a piece to sell. As the summer went on, and the news of Salem drifted in through the open window, I worked my worries and my fears into pine and oak and thought of Susannah. I wondered if she was still alive, if she had died already—who knew what news tomorrow might bring? When I’d heard that they had convicted and hanged poor Rebecca Nurse, I was afraid; when a month later came the news that George Burroughs and John Proctor had been hanged as well, I began to dread the sunrise. Surely soon, they would turn to the confessed witches. But I heard nothing of those who had confessed; it seemed they had disappeared into the stone and mud of the prison. There was only word of more and more accusations, stretching to Andover and Topsfield, even to Boston, where incredibly, Captain John Alden, the son of our founder, was accused. I heard of farms neglected as relatives spent long hours visiting those in jail. Despair settled over all of New England; my own sent me often to the window, as Charity had gone before, staring out beyond the narrow roads and roofs of this town, out to sea, as if I could see through the miles.
“You are not well, Father,” Charity told me one morning in late September, when she woke to find me sitting exhausted at the table, turning a spinning-wheel rod over and over in my hand. Even the sight of her, at peace now—as the stretch of days had made her—did not cheer me. On the pallet, little Faith roused and murmured, and Charity scooped her up and carried her to me.
“You do not sleep,” she said. “You hardly eat. You put me in mind…”
Of myself. I heard the words she did not say, and I looked up and put aside the rod, taking Faith into my arms. “There is nothing to fear,” I reassured her. “I am well enough.”
Charity said nothing more, but went to slice bread for breakfast. She called to Jude to rouse herself—the sun was up, and she must go and fetch some water. Faith wiggled in my arms, and absently I set her down upon the floor to play with a ball of knotted string.
I heard Jude leave, and then her footsteps again, the splash of water on the stairs as she struggled with the bucket. She came inside breathlessly, saying, “They’ve hanged eight more. Goody Harrison told me at the well. They hanged Mary Easty too. And they pressed Goodman Corey to death because he would not plea.”
“What of the confessed witches? Is there word of—” I paused, caught by the way Charity turned and stared at me. “What is it? Why do you look at me so?”
Her hand went to her mouth. “I did not understand before.…Oh, forgive me—”
“Forgive you for what?” I asked impatiently. “You speak in riddles.”
“’Tis…Susannah you ask after, isn’t it, Father? The reason you are not truly with us is because…you wish to be with her.”
I was startled to silence. Then I said, “’Tis not so simple, Charity.”
“Tell me, Father—do you love her?”
At the door, Jude went still. Faith chirped on, oblivious and innocent. I half expected Charity to fall into a fit, although she had not done such a thing for months now. I had kept from mentioning Susannah to her deliberately. She had been too fragile at first, and afterward, I grew accustomed to not saying Susannah’s name, and as a habit grows worse the longer ’tis unchecked, the more I’d grown adept at avoiding the subject of her. Yet now I saw an understanding in Charity’s eyes that I hadn’t expected, and I realized—she would be leaving me soon, though she did not know it. Soon she would look up and see a boy standing in the sunlight, and he would take her breath, and she would go with him. She would become the wife of a fisherman, or a cobbler, or a shopkeeper. There were so few hours left now that belonged to me, and the truth was that when they had been mine alone, I had not been watching and so had let them slip away.
And now, ’twas a woman who watched me, and not a little girl, and I owed her the truth, however she might dislike it. “Aye,” I said carefully. “I love her.”
From where she stood, Jude gasped in delight. I could not take my eyes from my eldest daughter.
Slowly Charity sat upon the bench, folding her hands on the table before her. She bowed her head as if in prayer, and when she looked up at me again, I saw wisdom in her eyes—wisdom wrest from darkness.
“Then you must go to Salem, Father. Bring her back to us.”
I did not go immediately; I could not. The terror that had all of New England in its grip was not yet faded—to go back meant my own death, in a town where death had become a daily affair, and I could not leave my girls to be certain orphans. I had no choice but to wait, past Michaelmas and into October, when the summer heat faded slowly, leaving behind colored leaves and morning chill.
Then one night, I woke to see the moon shining in through the li
ttle window, undulating like the reflection of sunlight on water, dappling the blankets that lay across myself and little Faith, who had curled into my side to sleep, her gentle breathing an easy counterpoint to my own. I heard the soft click of the door, and turned my head to see it open, strangely unafraid, unanxious, simply waiting.
’Twas a shadow that slipped into the room and then closed the door. And I knew, without knowing, who it was. I watched as she came into the moonlight, and I saw her—not as I’d last seen her, in a stained bodice and dun skirt that hung loose on her bony slenderness—wearing a bodice of blue with silver lace, cut in the fashion she liked, with slashes in the sleeves and a neckline cut to show her full breasts. She was laughing as she stepped into the room.
I sat up, the blankets pooling around my waist while the babe beside me slept on undisturbed. I reached out, and she came to me, and settled onto my lap, and I felt the warmth of her skin, her solidness. I felt the soft strands of her hair, which fell loose over her shoulders.
“There are days I hear the tides still,” she said to me. “They seem to beat in my heart, and all I can do is think of you. Will there be tides where we are going?”
“There will be tides,” I told her. “There are tides in New York.” She laughed and answered, “Oh, Lucas, how happy we shall be there. Come for me now; I am anxious to see you. Come for me.”
Then she was gone.
I woke, disoriented, distressed, reaching for her, crying out with a longing so sharp ’twas a pain. There was no moonlight playing across the blankets, only the darkness of a heavy-clouded night, but in the shadows I heard the tides she spoke of, Salem Harbor, the river snaking past the prison that came and went as regularly as the hours. I smelled the sea on the air, though the window was closed against it now that the weather had turned; I smelled the start of a storm.
’Twas time, I knew. Time to go for her.
When morning came, and with it the wind and the first lashing rain of the season, I kissed my daughters and gave them most of the money I’d saved, counseling them to be frugal, to mind Charity, to wait for me. They each of them laughed with joy when I kissed them good-bye and gave me their blessing and their love. I held those things with me like a shield against the rain as I went to fetch the stabled mule that Sam Nurse had loaned me. ’Twas there I heard the news: There had been a decision to try the confessed witches, but before trials had been scheduled, Increase Mather had spoken to a convocation of ministers in Boston and condemned the trials and the spectral evidence used against the accused. An anonymous letter had been circulating in Boston and Salem decrying the proceedings, raising skepticism and protest. The governor had ordered the trials postponed and no one else imprisoned.
The tide had turned.
I stood listening, thinking of my dream, of how Susannah had come to me, of her call. I heard again her words from long ago—It has felt as if we have always belonged to each other.
A year ago, I had set out in another storm, riding for this very woman through rain that lashed at me and wind that pushed at my back. These laws that God abided by, the ones He had created, did they include such a thing as destiny? Had there been a reason for my finding her, for every moment since, a plan laid down by God for my happiness, for a life fulfilled? Or had it merely been accidental, happenstance, a trick of fate—one road taken, another abandoned? Who had I been fighting all this time? The Devil, as I’d thought? Or God?
The answer lay with wiser men than I.
I turned the mule into the rain, and chose the road that led toward Massachusetts, and Salem Town, and called out for the animal to hurry, to hurry. I had lingered too long already.
She would be waiting.
Author’s Note
Except for the Fowler family, and their neighbors the Penneys, most of the characters in this novel are real. Because this is a work of fiction, their dialogue and their reactions to the incidents in the novel are imagined, based on my readings of seventeenth-century transcripts and other material.
Susannah Morrow’s experiences as an accused witch are based on the experiences of several real-life accused witches, including Martha Corey, Susannah Martin, and Bridget Bishop. In reality, Martha Corey was the fourth witch to be accused. She was tested at the Putnam household, as Susannah is in the novel, and examined and arrested a week later.
By October 1692, nineteen men and women had been hanged as witches, one man pressed to death, and hundreds more imprisoned and/or accused. Estates had been seized by the crown upon the arrest of many of the accused in anticipation of a guilty verdict; children were left behind to fend for themselves or be cared for by neighbors; property was destroyed. By the time the panic ended, the social and economic fabric of Salem Village and its environs had been shredded. Those who had been imprisoned were ordered released in May of 1693, but only after they had paid the bills they’d incurred in prison for food and lodging. For many, this was an impossible debt to repay. Their farms had been left fallow for a year, their children were beggars, and their relatives were already drained financially from attempts to free them. Though many families immediately began petitioning for restitution, it was not until 1710 that the General Court passed an act reversing the convictions (but only for those whose families had specifically petitioned the court), and not until December of 1711 that it granted some restitution to petitioning families.
Samuel Parris remained the pastor of Salem Village. In 1694, he read a statement in meeting where he admitted giving too much weight to spectral evidence. He was ousted from the village in 1697 and replaced by Joseph Green, who did much to mend the rifts caused by his predecessor.
In 1697, Samuel Sewall publicly confessed his guilt over his part as a judge in the trials of the accused—one of the only expressions of guilt or error made by any of those involved in the trials.
The girls of Salem Village, for the most part, disappeared from public records, and little is known of what happened to them.
In 1706, Ann Putnam Jr. apologized publicly for her actions.
She was the only one of the girls to do so.
Abigail Williams began to shake and scream. Mercy Lewis pressed into a corner as if she were being attacked on all sides.
Charity was trembling as one with a fatal fever; her face had gone gray. She slipped from my hold, sagging to the floor with a moan like a wounded animal. Desperately I shook her.
I heard another cry from beyond, and another. The magistrates leaped to their feet; tankards spilled, splashing through the din. Corwin shouted at the crowd to be silent—a useless order. Parris began to pray loudly.
“She is pinching Charity!” the Putnam girl called out, “Oh, make her stop; please make her stop!”
Charity would not tolerate my hands. Desperately I cried, “Will someone not help me?” and saw how they backed away—except for one person. One person, who pushed through the crowd.
Susannah.
