“He’s hardly noticed you’ve been gone,” Mercy said, glancing that way.
“Still—”
“Sit, Charity. We did not mean to scare you.”
I sat again, knowing they would laugh at me if I walked away. “I’m not frightened.”
“’Tis nothing to be afraid of. Only harmless sport.”
They all laughed again, but there was a nervousness to it this time. I told myself there was safety in friends and plunged
in. “What’s harmless sport?”
They quieted. Mary wrapped her hand around a noggin of cider and pulled it close as if to drink, though she did not taste
it. She grew very serious. “If we tell you, you must swear not to repeat a word to anyone.”
“So you’ve said already,” I said. “I have not gone away, have I? So I must agree.”
Mary looked at me for a moment, those cat’s eyes of hers seeming to glimmer and grow sharp in the candlelight. Then she glanced
around the table, at mousy Mary Warren, and Mercy’s hollow eyes, and finally to Betty. “Very well,” she said. “But we cannot
tell you here, and not today.”
“Why?”
“Not on the Sabbath.” She laughed softly. Her voice lowered so I had to strain to hear. “’Twould be a sin to talk about it.
Meet us at the parsonage tomorrow afternoon.”
I was confused. “Why the parsonage?”
Mercy snickered into her hand. “You’ll see when you get there.”
Mary shushed her. “Tell your father you must take something to Mistress Parris. A loaf of bread or a pail of beer. She’s ill,
you see. The parson will probably be out. He usually is.”
“Tomorrow afternoon,” I repeated slowly. I saw the hidden message in Mary’s gaze, the unspoken
don’t disappoint us.
It reminded me of the dares Mary used to throw at me: “You haven’t the courage to do it, have you, Charity? Such a mealymouthed
girl you are.…”
I gave Mary a little nod, and then her mouth tightened and her gaze swept past me and up. When I turned to follow it, I saw
my aunt standing behind me, her cloak put aside now that the tavern was warm and stinking from so many bodies; the clothes
she wore were startling among the muddied greens and browns and blues of my neighbors—a bodice made of scarlet paragon and
heavy skirts green as the richest pine tree. Even in the dimness of the ordinary, those colors were so vibrant and bright
they were almost blinding.
“Your father’s sent me for you,” she said, but when I glanced past her to where my father still talked ardently with Francis
Nurse, I knew she lied.
“I haven’t heard the drum,” I told her. ’Twas insolent of me to speak to her in such a way; even Mercy Lewis looked surprised
by it. Mary did not take her gaze from Susannah. She stared at those beautiful colors as if fascinated by them.
My aunt laid her hand on my shoulder, a gentle pressure that was insistent just the same. “You’d best come, Charity.”
’Twas a mother’s touch, a mother’s quiet scold, and I resented it. I jerked my shoulder away, but not violently, just enough
so she would feel it and know I did not want her there. She let her hand fall softly back to her skirt, seemingly undisturbed,
and smiled at my friends, and I saw how that smile took them, how they were captured by it—so beautiful it was, on that face
Satan had smiled upon.
It snared even Mary, though she recovered sooner than the others and gave me a satisfied look that reminded me of the rumors
I knew now were true. I bade my friends farewell.
My father looked up as my aunt and I approached the table. “Your mother wished you away from those girls,” he told me. “You
will follow her desires in this.”
Francis Nurse said in his low, gruff voice, “Insolent wenches. Tom Putnam deserves those two he has.”
I was saved by the sound of the drum summoning us back to the meetinghouse.
I could think of little else during the afternoon service. Master Parris continued his sermon, and I tried to listen, but
my mind kept turning back to Mary. I knew my father was right. I should stay away from my old friends, but today I realized
how much I’d missed them, how lonely I’d been.
The light outside was fading when the sermon wrapped to a close, and the list of my neighbors’ sins was read, their punishments
decided on. The list was a short one this week, only two: an overly gossipy Hannah Dow was suffered to be put in the stocks
for an hour for telling tales about her neighbors, and the miller’s apprentice sentenced to three hours in pillory for overcharging
a buyer and lying to his master about it. Once the prayers over their souls were said, Goody Penney handed baby Faith to my
father, and he went up to the front of the church to have the pastor baptize her.
I could not remember how or even if my father had held Jude when she was a baby. My mother loved babies, and she held them
close, and so I suppose he never had to. The way he held Faith now showed how unpracticed he was. The babe squirmed in his
arms, and his hold was awkward and loose, as if she were a feral cat ready to bite and scratch and he was wary but trying
to be gentle.
Father had no sooner reached the front of the church than Faith began to cry. By the time Master Parris began to speak, she
was wailing with all the strength of Heaven, so loudly that it was hard to hear the parson’s words as he entered her into
God’s kingdom and welcomed her in Christ’s name. The minister raised his voice, and she cried louder, until he was red-faced
and stumbling. The water he sprinkled her with only made her howl. In the back gallery, children who had already been squirming
began to cry and whimper as well. Father looked confounded. Nothing he did seemed to soothe her; Faith only jumped and wriggled
in his arms, and her howls grew into high-pitched screeches.
Goody Penney hurried up the aisle, and my father looked shamefacedly relieved as he handed the babe into her arms. The goodwife
pulled Faith closer and bounced her gently, but my baby sister was not to be comforted this day. Not even when Goody Penney
undid her bodice and tried to latch the babe to a breast. Faith only turned her little head away and beat her tiny, mottled
fists against the air.
I saw Goody Penney mouth the words:
Come now, child, come now.
She jounced and bounced, and Faith screamed, and the minister fumbled with the Bible and tried to find his place.
Had my father done so much as look helplessly at me in that moment, I would have rushed to his aid and held my sister close
and hummed to her my mother’s lullaby. I know she would have quieted for me. But he did not look at me, and so I sat hot and
red-faced on the pew as those around began to look at Jude and me as if we were somehow to blame for our sister’s ill behavior.
It was Susannah my father looked to.
When she went hurrying forward, I was stunned. When she took Faith from Goody Penney without a word and held her close, I
wanted my sister to scream her protest with all the strength she held in her tiny chest. I imagined how Susannah would be
unable to calm her. I imagined my father having no recourse but to turn to me. I would go up there and she would go silent
in my arms, and my father would look at me with gratitude and love.
“Scream, Faith,” I told my sister in a whisper too soft for anyone to hear. “Keep screaming.”
Instead, she quieted. The moment Susannah touched her, Faith went still. Her cries dissolved into soft hiccups, and my aunt
bounced her gently against her shoulder, patting her back in soft rhythm as though Faith were just one in a long line of babies
that Susannah had comforted. I heard sighs around me, and the tension in the meetinghouse eased into relief. One or two women
laughed and whispered together as if to say,
Ah, yes, I remember how it was,
and the men grumbled among themselves and shifted in their seats.
My father’s face was soft with gratitude and relief. I was so cold I could not feel my skin. I turned to glance through the
congregation, and met a pair of hazel cat eyes, and a thin smile. I knew then that I had a safe place to go, someone to turn
to, someone who understood.
Mary was not fooled by my aunt Susannah.
The next day, my father left early in the morning to deliver a spinning wheel. ’Twas almost too easy to make the excuse to
my aunt to go to the parsonage. Mama would never have let me go without a hundred questions, and even then she would no doubt
have taken the bread to Mistress Parris herself and left me to watch Jude. But Susannah did not question me; she only bade
me take a pie to Mistress Parris as well.
The wind itself seemed to lend speed to my feet as I left the house. It was cold, with the sure touch of winter, the clouds
leaden and low and the smell of snow and ice in the air. I drew my hood closer about my face and pulled my basket up against
my chest to ward off the wind as I cut across the fallow cornfields. ’Twas a little over a mile to the parsonage, which was
just beyond Ingersoll’s, hidden in the trees. The short path from the road was rocky and closed in by darkness. It gave way
after only a few yards to a clearing with the ministry house in the center, and orchards and garden and barn beyond.
The house was a large one, with its four rooms and its lean-to, and I knew many villagers who resented that only eight lived
within a house large enough to hold many more. There were those—my father among them—who resented that the deed to the land
and house had been given over to Master Parris in spite of the fact that there had been a resolution that it should be forever
held by the village. It was one of the reasons I had not been to the parsonage for a very long time, why I would not have
been here now had my father been at home.
I went to the heavy front door and took a deep breath before I knocked. I heard no sound from within, and there was no one
about, and for a moment I thought perhaps I had the wrong day, or that this meeting had been a lie, an unkind joke. But then
I heard a shuffling behind the door, and it opened to reveal the dark face of the Parrises’ West Indian slave woman, Tituba.
She was dressed in somber gray, with a stained apron, and the brown skin of her hands was dusted with flour. She did not seem
surprised to see me. Her dark eyes flicked over me; there was an impatience there that shook me. “I-I heard the mistress was
poorly,” I said, stuttering and nervous as if she were Queen Mary instead of just a slave. “I’ve brought bread, and my aunt
sent a pie—”
“They just in there, girl,” she said, her voice heavy with an accent that spoke of Barbados.
She stepped back and motioned me inside. Though I felt her eyes on me again, and I didn’t like it, I did as she said. Even
as gray as the day was, it was brighter outside than in the house. I had to stop for a moment and blink until I could see.
Inside the heavy front door were the steps to the cellar. Beyond them was the hall. I could just glimpse the huge hearth within,
the fire burning hot and orange, though it was as cold where I stood as outside. The ceiling was low, the big summer beam
that ran the length of the house was dark and smoke-stained.
“Go on now,” Tituba said. “You letting the heat out.”
When I stepped into the hall, I saw them sitting at the long tableboard before the fire: Mary Walcott and Mary Warren, Mercy
Lewis and Betty Hubbard, and beside them the Parrises’ youngest daughter Betsey, who was just nine, and her cousin Abigail
Williams, who was eleven. I’d never had much to do with her. She had the coldest gray eyes I’d ever seen. In the corner, the
older Parris girl swept. I didn’t see the little Parris boy anywhere.
They were bent over the table, and not one of them said a word. They were staring into something: a bowl, with a lit candle
flickering just beside it. The room smelled of smoke and dampness. I hesitated, and the slave smiled. “Go on. Go join them,”
she said. “They need only one more to find the Devil himself.”
“The Devil?” Betsey Parris started then, and looked up with a frown on her peaked little face. She looked worriedly at the
slave woman standing beside me. “’Tis not so, Titibee, is it? You said—”
“There be many spirits, child,” the woman said. Her voice went soft and warm. “You need fear nothing today.”
Tituba crossed the room toward the fire, holding the basket I had not even felt her take from me, and the walls seemed to
close in until the room was nothing but darkness and fire with a light glowing in the center, flickering across the faces
of my friends.
Mary sat back with a sigh. “The spell’s broken now anyway, Betsey. You must learn to be quiet.”
“Aye, hush up.” Abigail raised her hand as if to strike the child, and Betsey drew back hard. Abigail let her hand fall with
a nasty smile. “We’ve so little time as it is. You cannot go on ruining everything.”
“You let that child be,” Tituba said from the fire. She had not even turned around. “You got time enough for these spells.”
I found my voice again. “Spells? You’re casting spells? In the preacher’s house?”
“’Tis as safe a place to hide from the Devil as any,” Mercy said with a small laugh.
Mary frowned at her. “Quiet, Mercy.” She looked at me. “Oh, Charity, ’tis nothing as bad as all that. Betty wanted to find
what her future husband would look like. We’re only fortune-telling.”
“Spells are for witches,” I said slowly. “’Tis a sin—”
“If you’ve come to preach at us, you can just go away,” Betty said irritably. “I’m sorry you told her to come, Mary. She’s
spoiling everything.”
“No, no, I’m not spoiling it. But I—”
“Come over, Charity,” Mary urged. “Don’t tell me you don’t want to see the future. Why, I’ll warrant there are things even
you want to know.”
It was still day outside, yet I thought I heard the hooting of a screech owl, the high, mournful sound rising and falling
in the trees beyond the windows. From the corner of my eye, I saw a movement in the shadows—a trick of the light. Goose bumps
skimmed over my skin, and I pulled my cloak tighter about me, reminded suddenly of times long since past, when Mary and I
and some of these others had gone berrying in the woods at the far side of the village and after filling our pails, spent
the rest of the afternoon in the humid shade of the forest, playing blindman’s buff in the shadows. Even in the summer, the
woods were dark as twilight—’twas easy to see an Indian in a shadow and run screaming back to the others in excited fear,
the hairs on the back of your neck prickling, the blood running hot and tingly into your hands and feet.