Susannah Morrow (32 page)

“You are sending me out?”

I took a deep breath. “Aye. Now that your mother—”

“You cannot make me leave you. You cannot take me from my mother.”

“You are leaving me only for a short time, and your mother has been taken from you already,” I reminded her gently. “You are
closer to her in her place in Heaven—”

“She is not in Heaven,” Charity said.

“She is with God, child. She was too good not to go.”

“She is not there, I tell you!” Her voice rose, high, shaking. “’Tis my fault she stays. Every day, I hear her voice! ’Tis
my fault. ’Tis my sin that holds her.” She was shaking badly now, her face gone so pale there was no color, her eyes wild.

“Charity—”

“’Tis evil that’s here now. I could not keep it from her. I will not let it take you. I can’t leave you here alone.”

“I am hardly alone. There is Jude, and Faith is just next door. Your aunt is here.”

I thought Charity would swoon. I reached for her, but she grabbed the edge of my desk, steadying herself. “’Tis how she wants
it. To be alone with you. To corrupt you…”

“Child, I do not understand you.”

“You cannot make me go!” She screamed the words. “I will not go!”

It took all my strength to say calmly, “You will pack your things, and be ready to go to town on Saturday next. I will hear
no more about it.”

“No. No, you don’t understand.…”

“I understand well enough. You are my daughter. You will do as I say.”

“But…But you need me. Father, you don’t understand. There is…evil…here.” She put her hands to her face and crumpled before
me, sobbing.

“Charity,” I said, softening my voice, “you must believe I am doing everything I can to keep Satan from you—”

She only shook her head and raised her tearstained face to mine. “I am already lost. ’Tis you who must be careful, Father.
’Tis you.”

I
HAD NOT SEEN SUCH PANIC IN THE VILLAGE SINCE THE FEAR OF THE
recent Indian attacks. Goody Osborne had been named as the third witch. The old woman had long been the village scandal:
She had lived in sin with her indentured servant before she finally married him.

There were those who saw Satan in every shadow; they told tales of how Goody Good had bewitched their cattle and how strange
and terrible beasts followed Goody Osborne about, only to disappear upon closer examination. And Tituba…Was she not an Indian,
too, if only one from the West Indies? They practiced wicked and horrible things there: spells to bring illness, to call up
Satan, to tell the future.

I kept my family as far from the terror as I could. Charity did not leave the house, even to milk the cow. I kept her busy
studying scripture, and it seemed that since I had told her I planned to send her out, she applied herself with fervor. She
spoke no more of evil; she kept from the window. ’Twas as if she were my daughter again, and the frightened girl of the other
night an impostor.

When Good and Tituba and Osborne were arrested, I was relieved, along with the other village folk, but it was not over so
easily.

The children did not recover; they complained still of torments. And now there were two others added to the afflicted, and
these names frightened me more than the others: Mary Walcott and Mercy Lewis. Both of Thomas Putnam’s house. Both friends
of Charity’s.

I did not tell my daughter this. I prayed for the week to hurry by so that I could send her away to Salem Town and peace.
The Saturday Daniel Poole and I had agreed upon could not come quickly enough. The accused witches would be examined before
they were committed to prison to await trial. If Charity were still here, I would not be able to keep her from rumors, which
had a way of riding the very air. I hoped this questioning would wait a few days—at least until after I’d sent her away.

But I was too late. Monday afternoon, I came into the house to find Hannah Penney already there, a grim look on her face as
she nursed little Faith. Susannah stood at the hearth, looking stunned, and Jude whimpered and tried to escape from Charity,
who held her tight against her side.

“What is it?” I asked.

Susannah said, “Hannah has told us that the examinations are to take place tomorrow at Ingersoll’s.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Aye.” Hannah nodded. “John Hathorne will come from town for it.”

“Perhaps he can bring sense again to this confusion,” I said.

Charity’s fingers were frozen around Jude’s little arm.

“Let your sister go,” I told her.

Charity looked frightened. “She must sit here by me. Jude, be a good girl. Sit still.”

Jude squirmed away. “I want Auntie.”

“Come then.” Susannah went over to the bench, and held out her arms, and Jude threw herself into them. Charity’s hand went
to her throat—a simple gesture, but in it I saw again the image of Annie Putnam standing in the hall at the parsonage, her
hands wrapped around her own throat, horror in her eyes.

Charity looked to me. “Is it true, Father? Is it true what Goody Penney says?”

In irritation, I glanced at Hannah, who shrugged and said, “’Tis true enough. Now that they’ve arrested those witches, I pray
there’ll be an end to the afflictions.”

It struck me then, what she had told Charity. “Dear God,” I said, “you cursed woman. Can you not keep your mouth shut?”

Hannah looked stunned. “I have only said the truth.”

“It is true, then, Father?” Charity said. “Mercy? And—and Mary?”

“Aye, ’tis true,” I said brusquely. I gestured to Hannah. “Get back to your own house. Gossip somewhere else.”

“But I—”

“Go,” I told her.

She was sputtering, but she gathered up my daughter and hastened to the door. When she was gone, I said to Susannah, “Until
next week, keep Hannah away.”

“I must see them,” Charity said urgently. “I must see Mary.”

“That is the last thing you shall do,” I told her. “You shall stay here until Saturday, when you will go to town.”

Susannah frowned when I said it, though she said not a word. She went to the fire and I felt her disapproval linger in the
air and wondered why she censured me, when I was doing what she had asked me to do, when I was sending my daughter away. I
felt besieged on all sides, and when Charity lapsed into silence, I was grateful. When she went to the window, I did not say
a word. Four days, I thought. Four days until she was gone to town.

I went to the examinations alone. The frosty breaths and excited talk of fifty or more villagers filled the air while I—with
some other members of the militia, and the constable’s men—stood guard along the road from town. We waited for the magistrates,
then fell into step beside them and held back the crowd as John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin rode to the doors of Ingersoll’s,
where Samuel Parris and Tom Putnam waited to greet them.

“We had not expected such a crowd,” Tom said as we paused at the door. He looked harried and distracted, as if he had passed
a bad night—no doubt he had. “There won’t be room for everyone.”

At this, the crowd began to murmur. There were angry shouts behind me.

“You can’t keep us out, Putnam!”

“We’ve a right to see this!”

Parris stroked his chin. “Aye. ’Tis better if everyone has a chance to see.”

“Is there a bigger building?” Hathorne asked as he dismounted. He was long-faced, with brown eyes, a serious mouth, and an
air of efficiency that seemed to calm the crowd.

“A place not too far away,” added Corwin. “I’ve ridden enough for one morning.”

“There’s the meetinghouse,” Parris said. “We have held the entire village there.”

’Twas an exaggeration—there had never been a time when the entire village had attended one of Parris’s sermons—but no one
argued it. Hathorne and Corwin agreed, and we moved to the meetinghouse. My neighbors filed inside, and we pushed back the
pulpit to make room for a large table brought from Ingersoll’s for the magistrates and the court reporter to sit at. I heard
a roar from outside as the afflicted girls came—there were only the four—Annie Putnam and bosomy Elizabeth Hubbard, young
Betsey Parris and her cousin Abigail Williams—as they were the ones who’d accused these women. The littlest Parris girl looked
frightened, but the rest were calm and clear-eyed as they made their way through the crowd and sat where Hathorne directed
them in the first row of pews.

The meetinghouse was more crowded than it had been on any Sunday or Thursday lecture. The benches were filled; people stood
against the walls. The galleries creaked from the weight of so many witnesses. I stood beside Sam Nurse and Joseph Putnam,
each of us holding a gun, militia-ready.

The crowd fell into abrupt, tense silence, and then a whisper set through the meetinghouse: “They’re here. They’re here.”
There was a commotion outside as the prisoners were brought up. Hathorne and Corwin took their seats at the table, and Ezekiel
Cheever sat beside them to serve as court reporter.

“Bring in the first one,” Hathorne said. He glanced down at the paper before him. “Sarah Good.”

“The bar!” someone in the crowd cried. “Where is the bar?”

I glanced to the front—there was no bar of justice. Putnam rushed forward and put a chair opposite the magistrates’ table,
turning it around for the tall back to serve as the bar.

Hathorne said to the girls, “Turn away,” and each of them did, lowering their eyes as Sarah Good was jerked down the aisle
to the makeshift court. Goody Good was manacled, and the chains seemed too big and heavy on her wrists, though she was not
a small woman. She was large-boned, but too thin, and obviously many months pregnant. Her gray-brown hair straggled into her
eyes, and she was dirty and ill-kempt. ’Twas hard to know which was the dirt of the prison she’d spent the night in, and which
her natural state. She was angry and sullen, muttering to herself as Constable Locker brought her before a crowd that had
fallen into a hushed silence.

She should have been docile; ’twould have bought the crowd’s sympathy, and mine, but she did not submit as they brought her
to the bar and forcibly set her hands upon it. There was nothing but scorn in her eyes as she faced the magistrates. George
Locker and his men stood at either side of her, wary and waiting.

John Hathorne rose slowly, clearing his throat, and pulled at his sleeve before he looked at her. From where I stood, near
the front, I could see his gaze—as scornful as hers.

“Sarah Good,” he began, raising his voice so it echoed throughout the eaves, deep and powerful. “Sarah Good, what evil spirit
have you familiarity with?”

“None.”

“Have you made no contract with the Devil?”

“No.”

“Why do you hurt these children?”

She spat. “I do not hurt them. I scorn it.”

The crowd was silent. I, too, leaned forward, impatient to hear. Hathorne took a step closer. “Who do you employ, then, to
do it?”

“I employ nobody.” Her voice was harsh and strident. “I am falsely accused.”

There was a murmuring in the crowd. I saw frustration in Hathorne’s expression. With a flourish, he turned on his heel, toward
the girls, who had obeyed him to a one in keeping their eyes from the woman.

“Children,” he said slowly, “will you look at the accused? Tell us: Is she the one who torments you?”

Abigail Williams, Parris’s niece, was the first to look. No sooner had she laid eyes on the woman than she screeched in a
high whine. “Aye! Aye! ’Tis her! Oh, why do you torment me, Goody Good?”

At that, ’twas as if Hell itself emptied into the meetinghouse. Plump, pretty Elizabeth Hubbard fell to the floor in a fit;
Annie Putnam pulled at her pale hair as if she would tear it out. Betsey Parris screamed that she was being pinched and bitten.
Some watching rushed forward, trying to help the girls; others ran for the doors. Hathorne cried out vainly for silence. ’Twas
nothing but screaming and crying and the rush of footsteps. The galleries shook and creaked, and I—along with Sam Nurse—grabbed
my gun from my shoulder as if it were some sort of attack—though there was no one to shoot, nothing to do but stand there
helplessly and watch the examinations fall apart around us. Even Sarah Good looked startled and afraid.

Parris yelled, “Turn her away! Turn her away!” Locker rushed forward and forcibly turned Goody Good’s head from the children.

’Twas miraculous.…The girls quieted immediately. Elizabeth and Abigail were in a heap on the floor, and the moment the woman
turned, they rose, breathing heavily, showing pink welts and teeth marks on their arms. Annie Putnam had been collapsed in
Mary Sibley’s arms, and now she stood. Little Betsey Parris was still weeping, but quietly, as one does after a fierce scare.
The entire room seemed to freeze in chaos: benches upended, people halted midrise or in the act of fleeing through the door.
My own heart was racing. At the girls’ sudden peace, the room gradually returned to order, but ’twas a different feel to it
now. The expectation had turned to horror.

Parris, who had seen such affliction for many days now, looked drained. At the table, Jonathan Corwin opened and closed his
mouth like a gaping cod. John Hathorne seemed amazed. When he turned back to Good, ’twas with a vengeance.