Susannah Morrow (41 page)

I was in the midst of a dream where I was waiting on a great hill for Lucas to come, and through the fog I saw his shadow
upon a horse. I heard him call my name. Then ’twas as if I were yanked back, falling, and I startled awake to find a man bending
over me, his rummy breath in my face, his fingers gripped tight around my arm.

“Now, now,” he whispered. “Wake up, dearie.”

I was groggy, still sleep-fed. For a moment I was not sure where I was. I felt his weight against me, his hand at my hip.
The straw of the pallet was hard and scratchy against my cheek. The man laughed in my ear, and I remembered suddenly: I was
in jail, and this was Jem, the jailkeep, and his hands were all over me. I gagged and rolled, trying to get him off me, but
he stuck like a tick, all hands. My rolling had only managed to put me on my back, and him on top of me. He laughed again
and relaxed, holding my wrists, his body full on mine.

“Don’t touch me,” I said.

“Not so fast, not so fast,” he said. “Just makin’ sure you’re awake is all. Nothin’ more.” But he wriggled his hips against
me, and I felt the hard ridge of his cock between my legs.

He was stronger than I, even as thin and scrawny as he was. I closed my eyes and burrowed deep within myself, waiting for
Jem to pull up my skirts and be done with it. But he only pressed himself against me, humping me through our clothes, and
whispered, “Aye, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? Well, I ain’t bewitched by you like them others.”

Still, he lay upon me until I felt him jerk and go still; then he rose, pulling at his breeches, and I heard him move to the
stool again and settle upon it. Then I heard him laugh, and I felt the end of a long, sharp, pointed stick. “No sleep for
you tonight, lady fair,” he said, and his laughter echoed like a demon in my head. “Tell me, when does your familiar come?”

When Jem finally left, early in the morning, I fell into a shallow, restless sleep that could not have lasted more than an
hour, perhaps two. When I heard the cell door opening, I dragged myself awake, expecting to see my tormentor. Instead, I saw
a man I didn’t recognize, who wore Jem’s key ring at his waist. He was followed by two women and a greasy-haired man of middle
years.

The man with the key ring was older than Jem, with graying, sandy brown hair and no front teeth. “This here’s the one,” he
said to the other. “Make short work of it, will you? I’ve got things to do.”

The other man and the women came inside. The women were matrons, dressed in homespun, with the caps upon their heads nearly
hiding the color of their hair. The man was dressed in patched breeches and a vest so stained ’twas hard to see what the color
had been—and in the dimness, impossible to tell in any case.

He stopped just inside the door and looked at me, and then a grin moved over his pock-marked face. “Now then, are you sure?
I was led to believe ’twas an old woman.”

Jem’s replacement shook his head. “This is the witch.”

“What is this?” I asked, bewildered by their talk. “Are there more accusations? Are you victims as well?”

The man laughed. The women looked faintly horrified. At the cell door, the man with the key ring snorted. “Didn’t Jem tell
you they’d be comin’?”

“No. Where is Jem?”

“Sleepin like a babe,” he said. He winked at me. “You wore ’im out last night, for sure.”

I ignored that. I looked to the strangers in my cell. The man was carrying a leather bag, which he set aside, and I began
to feel a sick foreboding. “Who are you then?”

“I’m a surgeon,” he said. “These two women are my assistants. Please stand.”

I drew back into the shadows of the bed. “Why?”

“We’ve been asked to search you.”

“Search me? For what? I’ve nothing but my clothes.”

“Stand,” he said again. When I made no move, he glanced at the new jailkeep, who sighed and came reluctantly over.

“Come on, gel,” he said, pushing past the still-silent women. He jerked me from the bed so hard I gasped and cried out. “Stand
up for the man, or I’ll hold you still for im.”

I stood with as much dignity as I could muster—a dignity that lasted only as long as it took for the women to set upon me.

I could not understand what they were doing—testing my arms, I thought, running their hands over my hips, looking for something.
Then I realized they were undressing me, unlacing my bodice, unfastening my skirt, and I began to struggle against their hands.

“Be still,” one of the women said crossly, slapping me hard. The jailkeep held me so tightly I could not move. When the women
slid off the sleeves of my bodice and chemise, I felt the heat of shame work its way over my face. They stripped me bare,
so ’twas nothing but my skin against the cold dampness of the prison; I stood there before four strangers completely naked.

The surgeon came forward. “Lift your arms,” he said, and made me raise them over my head, though I was weak and could not
hold them that way without trembling. The women stepped forward then to hold them there, to hold me still while that man ran
his hands over my body. He pinched my nipples, pulling them, twisting them. I heard his breathing go fast and coarse, and
smelled the onion and smoke smell of him, the grease of his hair. I wanted to struggle against him, but the women and the
jailkeep held me still, and I was too exhausted to do more than flinch when his hand lifted my breast and he bent so close
I felt the heat of his breath on my nipple.

I had a mole there, a little fleshy thing. Now he pulled it, gently at first, then harder. He held out his hand, and one of
the women dropped her hold on me to fish in her pocket. She pulled out a small packet of pins, which flashed in the lamplight,
and held one out for him. He took it, and I gasped as he pierced the mole with it. He glanced up at me. “Does that hurt?”

I turned away from him. He wiggled the pin again, until the flesh went numb and I felt nothing, not even when he pulled it
loose. “Looks to me like a teat,” he said. “She don’t feel a thing.”

The women bent close. “Aye,” one said breathlessly. “Look at how it seems it has been suckled upon.”

“’Tis dry now,” said the other. She glanced up at me. “When did your familiar last eat?”

I understood now, what they were looking for. Preternatural teats, used to nourish a witch’s demon familiar. “I have no familiar,”
I said. “’Tis just a mole.”

They ignored me. The surgeon rose and looked again at my breasts. “You see how fresh and full they are now? We shall check
them again in the evening to see if they have changed.”

“There is no need,” I said. “They look as they ever do.”

“Bend over,” the surgeon said.

“I will not,” I told him.

The jailkeep grabbed my breast, squeezing it so hard tears came to my eyes, and said, “Bend over for the doc, lest you want
more o’ the same.”

I could not fight them, and as I bent and grasped hold of the edge of the bed, I lost the will to do so. I felt that surgeon
at me, probing into my deepest parts until I was beyond humiliation or feeling. I barely knew when it was over, only that
they were gone, and I was left alone in the darkness.

’T
WAS LATER THAT DAY, OR THE NEXT MORNING—
I
HAD NO NOTION
of time in this dank and forgotten place—that they put the chains on me again. “The girls complain still of your specter
pinching them,” Jem told me. “They say ’tis because you’re unchained that your spirit is free.” He yanked the end of the chain
to a place near the bed where there was one of many metal rings embedded in the stone, and chained me to it.

The chain was short; I had barely room to get to the bed, and when I was there, I could lie in only two positions comfortably.
I was too exhausted to care. I was grateful to be alone, to finally rest. Sleep was all I could think of, all I wanted.

As the days passed, my hours were broken only by the jailkeeps bringing me food or poking me awake to watch for my familiar.
I was not taken for another examination, though I had expected and dreaded it. I began to feel as if I were sinking into darkness—I
was confused and disoriented. I thought often of the night I’d left Lancashire for good, the last time I’d seen my sister
before our ill-fated meeting here. How I’d lain waiting until my parents fell asleep, until I heard the quiet, even rise and
fall of Judith’s breath, how quietly I rose from the straw pallet so that I would not wake her. Earlier I’d gathered my few
belongings into a sack—a second bodice, an apron, two pairs of stockings—and hidden it away behind a barrel of salt meat.
I’d made no noise as I retrieved it, but I heard Judith stir, and I froze until she whispered, “I will tell them you left
early to see the parson. ’Twill be hours before they think to look for you.”

In the darkness, I could see nothing of her expression. But I felt her goodwill, and though I hurt at the thought of leaving
her, I did not think of staying, nor of urging her to come with me. “Thank you,” I said.

“Send a letter to me in care of Parson Gibbs. ’Twill be safe with him. I would know where my sister is. I do not want to lose
you.”

“Judith, I—”

“You must go. Godspeed,” she whispered, and as I gave her a quick embrace and turned to go, she said with soft bitterness,
“Tell William…it should have been me.”

’Twas what Judith did best, aiding me with kindness and sacrifice, and then, when I was lulled and vulnerable, stabbing me
with her anger so that I should feel guilt for it forever. I had bought my life with her sacrifice, and she had never let
me forget it. But she was my sister, and I loved her, and I’d always known she loved me.

Yet we had spent more time apart than together. Her letters came irregularly, one or two now and then, or a sudden bundle
of them delivered to me by a sailor or a merchant who’d had them from a trading vessel. I’d envied her life. She had a husband,
children, a new life, while all I had was a set of cluttered rooms and a faithless lover. When I finally left Geoffrey for
Robert, I wrote her that I’d found the man I’d been waiting for, but the truth was that Robert had a grown son and wanted
no other children, not even with the woman he said he loved, and it was not long before I found myself yearning again for
Judith’s life.

When she finally began to write of trouble, I knew it must be bad, because she could no longer contain it. Robert had died
only a month before. I was free to go to her now, to help her—or so I told myself. Perhaps it was only that I’d hoped that
Judith’s family could fill the void I felt.

And it had. When Judith died, part of me went with her. But I was grateful, too, for the opportunity fate had given me. Once
again, my sister’s sacrifice had bought me a life. But I had been clumsy. I had trampled in where tenderness was required,
and now, what had I but a niece who believed I was evil, and a lover who had made himself my enemy?

What can you know of love?
’Twas the question Lucas had asked me, and I knew it was a fair one, because in the years I’d been away from Lancashire,
though I had never lacked for a lover, I had never truly been in love. I had wanted to be, but I chose badly each time, and
my hope that someday I would find what I had been searching for dwindled with every year.

Did I believe what I’d told Lucas, that ’twas as if God had given us a gift—or was it merely that I’d been in the first flush
of promise, when I believed that at last I had found what I yearned for?

I had no answers, and the questions swirled in the dank, stale air around me so that I thought I would go mad.

’Twas more than a week, or so Jem told me, before I realized why I’d been forsaken. It seemed Salem Village was concerned
with its other witches, which multiplied like flies at a rotting carcass. Now they were brought into this dimness one by one—and
with their coming, my own torments eased. I was left alone finally as the keeps and the surgeon turned to the other prisoners.
I could sleep at last, and ’twas only then I found my madness abating, hour by hour, borne away by company and rest. I found
my spirit returning, and with it a will to survive, a faith that soon, some honorable, rational person would call an end to
this. But as I saw the hopelessness in the other prisoners, I began to wonder if there could be such a person in Salem.

Martha Corey came first, disoriented and angry, barely speaking to me as she bore the humiliations I’d borne alone. After
her came a little girl—four-year-old Dorcas Good, whose mother had been removed to the Boston Jail. The child had confessed
to being a witch. When she was given into our care, she cried and screamed curses, but after several hours of such terror,
she climbed willingly into my arms to sleep, her chains clanking against mine. In her quietness, she reminded me of Jude,
and the thought of that little girl made me keep little Dorcas close.

Then came elderly Rebecca Nurse—a woman whose hospitality I’d enjoyed during the Indian scare—and ’twas then I realized that
the world had gone mad.

Perhaps because she was so elderly and so obviously frail, they did not chain her to the wall. They put her into the dungeon,
and she stumbled in the darkness, obviously confused and bewildered.