Susannah Morrow (35 page)

“I…I don’t understand,” she whispered. “This has been a strange night. Let us take comfort from each other.”

I recoiled, staring at her in disbelief and horror. “Do you not understand? The comfort we’ve taken in each other is what
led to this. How many more signs must God give us before we end this sin?”

“No, Lucas, I…I will not let you do this.”

“’Tis not your choice! I have had
enough
of this. Dear God, my daughter is tortured by the Devil, and we have let him in. How can you speak of taking comfort?”

“Please, Lucas.…”

’Twas as if she could not stop herself. She touched my hair, and when I made to jerk away, she came closer, letting her hand
fall to my cheek. Impossibly, improbably, I felt desire. That she should have this power over me, that she could make me want
her now…

I grabbed her hand, stopping her. “No. This must end.”

There was desperation in her eyes. “I will not let it.”

I saw the warmth in her gaze, and because of that, I wanted to hurt her. I gripped her wrist harder and said, “I suggest you
go into town for your needs. There are dozens of sailors there eager to oblige.”

I saw shock in her expression, and then pain, and I threw her from me and turned away, feeling a terrible satisfaction as
I left her standing there. I went, without a backward glance, to the parlor, where I shut the door tightly behind me, closing
her out, dismissing her.

I leaned against the door for a moment, then forced myself to look at my daughter, who slept painlessly and well. I went to
her side, where I stayed the night through, praying for salvation.

C
HARITY WOKE WITH THE LATE DAWN
. S
HE HAD SLEPT NEARLY
motionless the night through, and I dared to hope that perhaps last night had been only a passing fit due to momentary shock.
I waited anxiously for the moment she opened her eyes.

When she finally did, I was not even looking at her. I was staring blankly at the window. It wasn’t until she said “Father”
that I realized she was awake, and I jerked around to see her.

Her eyes were clear; there was no delusion there. I grabbed her hands and mumbled such a quick prayer to God that I barely
knew the words I said, only that they were heartfelt. “Charity, you are yourself.”

She frowned a little, and when the worry and fear came into her expression, my heart sank—I had been relieved too soon. I
saw when the remembrance hit her. She glanced around, to the door, the bedcovers, and seemed to shrink inside herself. She
pulled her hands from mine. They were trembling as she raised them to her face and moaned, “Oh, I am too late. I am too late.
I saw what you did, and so did Mama. She said that you could…you could tell wickedness…that you could…fight it, but you cannot,
can you?”

“’Tis one thing to tell wickedness, Charity, and another to fight it. I am only a man—”

“You promised…to keep the Devil from this house. You promised to help me fight him. Only yesterday, you promised it.”

“I know,” I said. I felt the tears coming to my own eyes. “I know.”

She was crying so hard she could hardly say the words. “Has God left you then, Father? As He has left me?”

“He has not left you.”

“‘If Christ hath no possession of thee, thou art possessed by the Devil,’” she quoted softly.

I grabbed her hands and held them fast. “We will pray. We will go to meeting, we shall fast in humiliation. This…bewitchment…that
has come over us—we will send it away. I promise you this. Charity, my dear, I promise it.”

“You cannot keep your promises. The Devil has already corrupted you.”

I wanted to deny her, bur to deny would have been a lie, and I could not do that, either. I stared at her, wordless, undone.
I rose and stepped away from her, turning from her accusing countenance.

“You will not even deny it,” she said—such misery, such desperation.

I sighed, beaten. “Aye, I will not. There is weakness in every man, and the Devil has found mine. I would that you had not
seen it.”

I could not bear to see her reaction to my words. Instead, I stepped to the parlor door and went into the hall. Jude and Susannah
were coming down the stairs, and I stopped short, caught—my weakness both before me and behind me. My daughters, Susannah…

“Lucas,” Susannah said. “What has happened? Is Charity…?”

“She’s well enough. As soon as she’s ready, we’re off to Ingersoll’s.”

“Lucas, you can’t—”

I glared at her. “’Tis none of your concern.”

“Aye, it is,” she said, coming to me. When I stepped away, she said in a quick and desperate voice, “You are a fool if you
do not hear this.”

“No,” I said. “I was a fool before. Look what your counsel has brought us. ’Tis time I listened to someone else.”

“You’ve been quick enough to take the blame for this. I wonder that you do not want to affect the cure.”

“And you have taken no blame at all,” I pointed out. “Which of us is wrong? Dear God, my daughter is ailing; you have tormented
me for weeks with your concern. I would think you would be anxious to see her well.”

“I am. But this is not the way.”

For a moment, I wavered. Then I heard Charity stirring in the room beyond, and I knew my answers must come from God alone.

I said, “I’m taking her to Ingersoll’s.”

“You cannot do this. Please, Lucas. Take her to town. The Pooles want her—”

“The village needs her more.”

“There are others who can do that work. Would you sacrifice your daughter to this…this madness?”

“I will be with her. There’s no need for further sacrifice.”

Susannah hesitated. She glanced back at Jude, who had gone to the fire, and I closed my eyes in dismay, for in my distress
I’d forgotten she was even there.

“Then I will come with you,” Susannah said.

I did not argue with her. When Charity and I set out for Ingersoll’s, Susannah and Jude followed.

The mud and ice of the ordinary green was overflowing with people, the tavern door left open. Villagers lingered in the doorway,
talking in loud and animated voices while they waited for the examinations to start in the meetinghouse next door. The smell
of beer and roasting meat hung heavy in the damp air. There was anticipation and anxiety too—for every neighbor who greeted
me solemnly, there was another alight with excitement, as if this were some merry entertainment.

I hurried Charity through them, into the ordinary, thinking ’twas time to get this over with, though I could not say even
in my mind what
this
was, or what I thought would happen, what I expected to see. I pushed through the crowd, letting Susannah follow with Jude
behind. A short ways into the ordinary, Charity stopped suddenly, yanking on my arm, and I saw that she was staring straight
ahead. I followed her gaze and felt a sinking in my stomach when I saw what she looked at. Her friends. The afflicted girls.

They sat together at a table, crowded around it the way they’d been the day of Faith’s baptism—so long ago now that it seemed
like another world. They were guarded over by Tom Putnam and his brother Edward and Samuel Parris, along with Doctor Griggs
and Nicholas Noyes and John Hale. The magistrates were at a nearby table, eating heartily. The prisoners had not yet been
brought from the jail, and just now the atmosphere was loud and drunken and cast with anticipation.

William Griggs glanced up just then and caught my eye, grimly gesturing for me to come forward.

At the table, one of the oldest girls—Mary Walcott—went suddenly still. She had been knitting; there was already a goodly
length of green fabric trailing across the table. Now her needles stopped their relentless movement. She swiveled hard, staring
into the crowd with narrowed eyes, staring at Charity. My daughter gasped and halted so quickly I nearly stumbled.

The crowd began to murmur—I thought for a moment ’twas because of Charity, but then I heard a shout from outside that grew
in intensity and volume. “They’re here! The prisoners’re here!”

The crowd seemed to turn as one; a wave of noise passed from the door to where the girls sat. A dozen necks craned to see
out the windows. But Charity did not take her eyes from her friends, and so neither did I. ’Twas as if the hand of God came
down upon them in one swipe; in the same moment, the little Putnam girl went stiff and Abigail Williams began to shake and
scream. Mercy Lewis pressed into a corner as if she were being attacked on all sides, swatting at the air.

Through the crowd, I heard a shout—“Lucas, you must take her from here!” Susannah’s voice. In that moment, I realized that
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.

The crowd backed away, soft cries of alarm and concern mixing with the animal noises coming from my daughter’s throat, the
screams of the other girls. I fell to my knees beside her. “No, Charity, no,” I whispered. She had gone boneless where before
she’d been rigid, so I could not keep my hold on her. Desperately I shook her. “Charity. Charity, come back to me,” but it
was clear she no longer saw or heard me. When I looked into her eyes, I saw she was there, but not there, a strange contradiction,
one I could not measure.

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; he could barely be heard beyond a few feet. Parris began to
pray loudly.

My own daughter fought me with every movement. She was making that terrible gurgling sound that reminded me of the first time
I’d seen her thus, on the parlor floor, shaking at the horror she’d seen: her own father fornicating with his sister.…

“She…hurts…me,” she moaned.

“Who hurts you?” I asked desperately. “Who does this to you?”

“She is pinching Charity!” the Putnam girl called out. “Oh, make her stop; please make her stop!”

Noyes frowned. “Who afflicts her? Is it Goody Good? Or Osborne? Is it Tituba?”

“No, no, someone else,” said Annie. “Someone else.”

“Who is it?” Parris asked.

“I do not know. Oh, I do not know.”

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.

I had been looking for her, I realized, and this realization shocked me. My anger over what we’d done had not faded in any
way, yet when I saw her, I was strangely relieved. Jude clung to her legs, her little cap askew, her light brown hair straggling
into her face. Her hold was so tight that Susannah could barely move, but still she came toward me.

Then, suddenly, she stopped. Her gaze went past me, and I turned to follow it and saw that Charity had gone still. Charity
was staring at her as if all the horrors of the world had lit upon Susannah’s face. Then my daughter screamed and curled into
a ball, throwing her arms over the back of her neck as if to protect herself.

Mary Walcott shouted, “Oh, be gone, you wretched spirit!” She stood now at the table, her eyes wide and dark. She pointed
with a knitting needle into the air. “Leave Charity be! Stop hitting her! Oh, look at her prance around—’tis as if she’s on
the stage! ’Tis a red bodice she wears—oh, you vain creature!”

I went cold.

“Who is it?” Parris asked. “Who hits her? Who?”

Charity launched to her feet with such force the crowd swayed back. “’Tis the black man standing beside her. He whispers to
her! Oh, Father, make her stop! Stop!”

“Who is it, Charity?” I asked—I could hardly hear my own voice. “What are you saying?”

Her gaze cast through the crowd. With growing horror, I followed it. With a shaking hand, she pointed to Susannah.

Mary Walcott said, “Leave her alone, Susannah Morrow! Have you not punished her enough?”

The name landed with the force of thunder. I heard it ringing in my ears. I heard Charity’s cry, “Aye, aye, ’tis her!” and
the gasp of my neighbors, Jude’s whimper of dismay. I could not even move. I could do nothing but stand in shock, even though
I had known.…I had known this would come. I had known.…Everything I’d questioned rushed back to me: Charity’s fear of her
aunt, Susannah’s reluctance to bring her here, the way she’d quieted Faith. And most damning…most damning of all: my own inability
to resist her.

I looked at her. She was staring at me as if to find strength from my face, but when I met her eyes, she went pale and shrank
away as if she recognized my thoughts and had no defense against them.

The girls took up the cry: “Susannah Morrow, Susannah Morrow…” I saw her grasp Jude by the hand and step backward into the
crowd. I made no move to stop her as she disappeared. My own confusion was too great; there was even a part of me that urged
her to run.

“Where has she gone?” someone asked, and I realized they were looking for Susannah, and that Charity had taken her place at
the table with the other girls. No longer my own daughter, but belonging now to this crowd, to these accusers, to Tom Putnam,
who listened with a grim expression to her charges.