Susannah Morrow Read online

  This book is a work of historical fiction. In order to give a sense of the times, some names or real people or places have been included in the book. However, the events depicted in this book are imaginary, and the names of nonhistorical persons or events are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance of such nonhistorical persons or events to actual ones is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2002 by Megan Chance

  All rights reserved.

  Warner Books, Inc.,

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  First eBook Edition: April 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-446-56016-0

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  PART TWO

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  PART THREE

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  PART FOUR

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Author’s Note

  To Kany, Maggie, and Cleo

  Without you, there is no story

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’d like to thank my family for their encouragement and support—both financial and emotional; the ever-wise Kristin Hannah, for her unswerving faith in me; Marcy Posner, who believed in this book from the first moment she saw it; Jamie Raab, whose editing and enthusiasm have restored my faith in the publishing business; and Frances Jalet-Miller, for her incisive and enlightening comments. Also deserving of thanks are Jill Barnett, whose generosity is unwavering—I owe her a huge debt; Liz Osborne and Jena McPherson, who traipsed the countryside and haunted bookstores for me, among other things; and Elizabeth DeMatteo, Melinda McRae, and Sharon Thomas, who restored my spirit more often than they know.

  And finally, I’d like to thank Patricia Krueger, a truly inspiring teacher who went far above and beyond the call of duty, and Barbara Dolliver, who took the time every other Thursday to teach a fledgling writer her craft—to these two women, my thanks are long overdue.

  From her side the fatal key,

  Sad instrument of all our woe, [Sin] took;

  …then in the keyhole turns

  Th’ intricate wards, and every bolt and bar

  Of massy iron or solid rock with ease

  Unfastens.…

  She opened, but to shut

  Excelled her power; [hell’s] gates wide open stood…

  —John Milton

  Paradise Lost

  Not to believe in witchcraft is the greatest of heresies.

  —Heinrich Kramer & James Sprenger

  The Malleus Maleficium

  PART ONE

  CHARITY

  —Delusion—

  We walked in clouds, and could not see our way.

  —John Hale

  A Modest Enquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft

  Chapter 1

  Salem Village, Massachusetts—October 22, 1691

  I DREAMED THE BABY DIED.

  The vision was still with me when I woke, sweating and uneasy, into a night gripped by a shrieking nor’easter. I told myself there was nothing to fear as I lay listening to the pine shakes on the roof clattering and creaking. The boughs of the great oak outside our front door crashed in the wind.

  The room was cold, too dark even for shadows. In the trundle bed, my little sister Jude slept on, untroubled. But then, Jude was not like me; she did not hear souls screaming in the wind. She was only six, too young to know the horror a nor’easter could bring: animals lost and shattered houses, men drowned at sea. At fifteen, I knew all these things, and so the storm gave power to my dream.

  I did not ignore premonitions. No one I knew did. God sent us signs all the time; ’twas a sin to scorn them. The wheat blight of a few years ago, the scourge of smallpox that raced through our town, a bird not nesting as it should…These were marks of His displeasure, and I was a good Puritan girl who knew to pay attention. But I did not know what to do about this one. I crept from bed, shivering as I worked my way by feel and memory toward the bedroom door. I was trying to decide whether to wake my mother, when I saw light come through the seams of the floorboards.

  ’Twas too early for anyone to be awake.

  The floorboards were thin—a single layer only, with cracks between that gave a clear view of downstairs. I knelt at the widest of them, pressing my eye close to the floor to see. I saw my mother bending to the fire, and my father sitting at the nearby tableboard, pulling on his boots with hurried motions.

  The wind howled, and before I knew it, I was out of the bedroom and hurrying downstairs.

  I stopped on the bottom step and stayed in the shadows. My mother’s back was to me as she laid a fire in the huge hearth, and my father was not looking in my direction as he protested in a quiet voice, “…I don’t have time for that now, I’d best go if I’m to make it back today.”

  “’Tis not dawn yet,” my mother said. “We’ve hours ahead of us.” The flames leaped; she straightened and backed away, her huge belly outlined now in the light. She was not in labor, not yet. I sagged against the wall in relief. The baby was not due for another month, and everything was fine. It had only been a bad dream, no premonition.

  Then she gasped. One hand went to her belly, the other clutched the mantel. I could not keep from crying out. Horrified, I put my hand over my mouth to stifle the sound. Too late. My parents both looked toward where I stood in the shadows of the stairs.

  “Charity?” my mother asked softly. “Is that you, child?”

  I hurried toward her. “Oh, tell me ’tis not the babe coming already.”

  My mother smiled. I knew she meant to be reassuring, but I saw her strain. I saw her hope and her fear. “Aye.” She reached out and held me close enough that I felt the movement of the child through her skirt. Her hand rested lightly on my hair, and I closed my eyes, comforted at the feel of it, at her familiar smell—fire smoke and the mint and sugar she burned on the hearth to scent the room. She nodded to my father, who still sat at the table. “Your father’s going to town.”

  I pulled away in confusion. “To town?”

  “To fetch your aunt,” Mama said gently. “The Sunfish came in yesterday. She’s waiting.”

  I turned to my father. “W-what about the storm? Who’s to fetch Goody Way? And the others?”

  “You needn’t worry about the storm,” Father said. “You help your mother.”

  I felt panicked. “But I had a dream.…”

  “Hush, hush,” Mama said, reaching for me again. When I pulled away, she sighed. “’Tis only the storm that has you so upset, child. There’s no need to worry. Your father will wake Prudence Way before he goes. She’ll bring the others. ’Twill all work out. ’Tis good you’re awake.
You can help with the groaning cake.”

  I looked to my father. “Can’t Aunt Susannah wait another day? At least till the babe’s born and the storm’s passed?”

  Father gave me a look I knew too well, the one that made me flush and stutter and wish I’d kept quiet in spite of my worry. ’Twas not my place to question him, and I looked away again, wanting still to protest, holding back my words.

  My mother made a hiss of pain.

  “Mama,” I said, “you should sit down.”

  “Standing makes the child come faster,” she said when she could breathe again, and then she smiled, but she glanced over at my father, and told him, “You’d best tell Prudence to come quickly.”

  He stopped. “Perhaps ’tis better if I stay, Judith. Your sister will wait another day.”

  “No, no,” Mama said quickly. “Eighteen years have already passed. I’d not have another needless hour between us.”

  I held my breath, waiting for my father to remember Mama’s other labors, the terrible small graves dotting the thick, wild grass of the burying ground. He will refuse to go. The storm was bad, and Mama’s labors were always so hard, and the babe was too early besides. I willed him to stay with all my strength.

  “I’ll do my best to hurry.” He paused at the door, staring out the window as he grabbed his cloak and his hat. “’Tis as if God put His hand over the sun,” he murmured. Then, in a swirl of movement, he was out into the night, and my mother and I were left alone with the fire and the sizzle of rain falling down the wide chimney, while little drafts of wind sent the thin coarse linen of my chemise shivering against my legs.

  “Get dressed, Charity,” my mother said. “The storm will be over soon, and we’ve the baking to do.”

  As the hours passed into morning, and then into early afternoon, neither the storm nor my dread eased. Even when Goody Way showed with the other women from the village—windblown and shivering, soaked through to the skin—I was not reassured.

  The women gathered around, eating groaning cake and drinking beer from the pewter tankards we’d set on the table, joking and exclaiming over how tall Jude had grown, but for me, a laying-in had long ago ceased to be a celebration, and I wanted them to go home. All I really wanted was for my father to come through that door again.

  He should not have gone. We had not been expecting this aunt I’d never met for another two weeks at least; the Sunfish had made the journey from Dover more quickly than we’d imagined, especially for the time of year. It would not have hurt to make her wait.

  My mother’s pains grew slowly worse; I watched her carefully, waiting for the first sign that something had gone wrong. Experience had taught me that there was always a moment when everything turned, when things went bad, but even as the hours passed—nearly an entire day now, already suppertime again—and my mother’s labor grew harder, and we moved into the parlor where the big bed she shared with my father loomed in the corner, that moment had not yet come. Goody Way had not yet started the slow, worried shaking of her head that had grown as familiar to me as the beating of my heart.

  It grew late again, and I put little Jude to bed; she was a heavy sleeper, and Mama’s screams would not wake her. The storm had begun to ease, and the women drifted away, one by one, fetched by their children or their husbands. Goody Way let them go, because Mama’s labor was dragging on and on, and they could do no more good here. Without them hovering around, shooing me out of the way as if I were a small child instead of a woman nearly grown, I could come close to my mother again. I sat down beside the bed, holding her hand. She gripped my fingers tightly.

  “The babe is fighting me,” Mama said, smiling weakly at me. “It must know the sorrow of the world already.”

  “It sounds like a good strong boy,” I said, hoping it was true. “I should like a brother, I think.”

  Mama started to smile, and then the pain gripped her, and instead she groaned; she squeezed my hand so hard it seemed my bones would pop beneath her grip. Sweat dripped down her face; her hair was wet and coarse with it.

  “Can you walk again, Judith?” Goody Way asked from where she sat at the end of the bed, between my mother’s spread legs. “’Twould help.”

  Mama nodded and grabbed my arm, but the moment she was out of bed, her knees buckled, and I saw the sudden blot of blood color her chemise. I saw her belly ripple and misshape with the strain, and I knew.…This was the moment I’d feared. I glanced up and caught Goody Way’s gaze, and there it was—the slow shake of her head—and I knew my dream was coming true. The babe was dying. I felt sick for the hope Mama had had for it. I did not know if she had the strength to bury another infant.

  I helped my mother back into the bed, and tried to smile. I watched the window and saw only darkness beyond it, and prayed for the shape of my father’s shadow. He did not come, and the hours kept passing, quiet save for the rain and my mother’s groans.

  Goody Way leaned down between my mother’s legs, placing her hands hard on Mama’s belly. “Try once more, Judith,” she said, her voice hoarse with the effort of repeating it. My mother tried, but weakly. Her moan was nearly soundless.

  “Please, Mama,” I whispered.

  Goody Way murmured a prayer before she sat back again, wiping her bloody hands on the towel lying at the end of the bed.

  I stroked back the hair from Mama’s face. “’Twill be all right, Mama.” I had already said those words a dozen times. I looked up at the midwife. “Is there nothing more to do?”

  “Anything else lies beyond my power, child,” Goody Way said softly.

  “What could be keeping Father? He’s only gone to Salem Town.”

  Goody Way shrugged. “’Tis a black night. The roads’ll be mud to the knee. And he’s carrying another person.…’Twill be slow going for his horse.”

  “He said he would hurry.”

  “Five miles to town and back again. Won’t be much hurrying now, I’ll warrant. Your aunt picked a fine time to arrive.” Goody Way shook her head. Loose gray curls fell from her cap to shiver against her jaw. “Your papa can ill afford to be gone just now.”

  Mama groaned again. Her belly rippled—this time faintly, as though the babe inside were growing tired of the fight. Mama opened her eyes. “Is your father…?” Her voice was so quiet it was like a breath.

  I leaned close. “Hush, Mama, hush. He’ll be here soon. Save your strength.”

  “No…’tis too late for that. Is Jude…Is she abed already?”

  “Aye.”

  “Don’t wake her. Just…tell her…” Mama closed her eyes.

  “Tell her what, Mama? Tell Jude what?”

  “I fear…the babe and I…We are…both for God.” I felt the pressure of my mother’s fingers on mine, and I tightened my hold, suddenly afraid to let go. I had known the babe could die, but I had never thought to lose my mother.

  “No, Mama. No—”

  “Tell Jude…be good for your…father,” she said. “You take…care of…her.”

  I tried to keep back my tears, but I felt them now on my cheeks, and my vision blurred. Blurred now, when I wanted so badly to see her clearly. “This is silly, Mama,” I said. “’Tis only a few hard hours. Father’s coming. Any moment. He’ll have Aunt Susannah with him—”

  “He…loves you, Charity. You…remember that. And God…God loves you too. You must…cleave…to Him. ‘If Christ hath…’”

  If Christ hath no possession of thee, thou art possessed by the Devil. I heard the words that she was too weak to say. I knew them already without prompting. She had said them to me nearly every day these last months. I twisted her fingers in mine and said furiously, “Father will be here soon. He’ll be here soon, Mama. Please.”

  My mother’s groan sent the tendons in her throat into stark relief. Had she the power to release it, it would have been a scream. I looked desperately at the midwife.

  Goody Way sighed. She heaved herself from the stool, leaving my mother’s legs flung apart and straining. She cro
ssed the room to the front window.

  “What are you doing?” I cried. “Come back here.”

  “’Tis in God’s hands now.…” She bent to peer more closely out the glass. “Oh, thank the Lord—here they be.” She threw the bloody towel to the floor and rushed to the door.

  Relief made me light-headed. Father was back; nothing bad could happen now. He would not let Mama die.

  “They’re here, Mama,” I whispered. “At last, they’re here.”

  Goody Way flung the door open so hard it banged against the wall. “You’d best hurry, Lucas!” she called out, and the wind whipped her voice right back into the room, along with the rain and a scattering of fallen leaves.

  Through the front window, I saw nothing but rain. I heard my father’s footsteps pounding on the ground outside the house, and another pair too, and then two people were pushing past Goody Way into the room. Outlined in the doorway, against the gray sky, they were shadows clad in dripping clothing that smelled of wet sheep and horse, mud and sweat. I heard the midwife’s quick whispers, and I knew what she was telling them—that my mother would die.

  “Father,” I said, rising to my feet, “’tis not so bad. I—”

  He brushed past me; I doubted he even saw I was there. He was soaking wet, his Monmouth hat sending streams of water onto his face, his cloak dripping pools on the floor at Mama’s bedside. His gloves were black with rain, but he didn’t bother to take one off as he reached for Mama’s hand—the one I’d dropped when he came rushing over. “Judith,” he said, “I’m sorry to be so late.”

  Mama’s eyes fluttered open. I thought I saw the ghost of a smile on her lips. “Lucas,” she said. “My…dear. I am…not afraid.”

  My father motioned to the doorway, sending water drops scattering across Mama’s bedcovers, and there was a desperation in his gesture that matched my fear. “I’ve brought your sister.”

  Mama tried to turn her head. Her face was shiny with sweat, her gaze dull. “W-where? Sus…annah?”