A Break with Charity: A Story about the Salem Witch Trials (Great Episodes) Read online

  "I hear she reads the leaves of tea."

  "In the reverend's own house?"

  "Aye."

  "And you thought I wanted..."I could not even finish the sentence.

  "I thought ye were seeking out Tituba to tell ye when brother William will be coming home."

  The idea hung in front of me like a bright candle, lighting up the bleak winter afternoon. "Such things are forbidden," I said again, but my voice was weak this time.

  She smiled down at me. And between her smile and the beating of my own heart, desire was born. And the night was separated from day. "God reveals all things to us in His own good time," I recited, knowing it was what Mama would say.

  "God is ofttimes busy elsewhere. And we must satisfy our own yearnings by whatever means we can until He turns His face to us again."

  " 'Tis the Devil's business," I said sharply.

  She shrugged. "If my own brother were missing at sea, I'd do all I could to ease the pain in my heart."

  "They wouldn't have me inside," I argued.

  "Have ye asked?"

  "They don't like me."

  "Might I ask why?"

  Without realizing that I was doing so, I continued to confide in her. "Because my father is a merchant with twenty-one vessels to his name. And because I live in a fine three-story house in Salem Town and not here in the village. And because we eat from pewter and have many servants. But I don't care. There isn't a decent one of those girls in the lot."

  She nodded, agreeing. "Then why are ye about here so much? It's three miles from Salem Town to this place."

  "I deliver goods from my parents' shop. But not for the king's shilling. Mama sends needed items to the poor of the village."

  "She allows ye to go about with that horse and cart and deliver them alone?"

  "No. I usually have our maidservant Ellinor with me. But she was down with quinsy throat this morning, so I came alone."

  "And ye just happen to stop at this spot all the time to rest your horse," she said.

  "If you must know, yes, that's why I stop here, Goody Bibber," I said.

  She sighed. " 'Tis a shame, the way we lie to ourselves and come to believe it," she murmured.

  "I'm not lying to myself, Goody Bibber."

  "Odd, then, that when I came up behind ye before, I did hear ye thoughts. Enough to know ye is heartsore because they won't let ye join them."

  I stared up at her, an angry retort on my lips. Then I saw the slow and benign smile spread across her face, making it almost beautiful in spite of the wrinkles.

  "Mayhap ye don't care about the girls. But ye care about Tituba now that I've told ye what she's about, I can see that. Why don't ye ask John Indian to let ye in the back door?"

  I looked to where she was pointing. Across the expanse of snow-covered ground that separated us from the parsonage, I could see John Indian, Tituba's husband, chopping wood outside the back door. The steady blows of his ax carried on the cold air and then grew distant as I pondered.

  Why, yes, of course! The girls usually took their leave after about an hour. I didn't need them to gain entrance. I was, after all, Susanna English, and our family had never needed anyone's help to gain entrance anywhere.

  The thought of my family, my parents, filled me with foreboding. Surely, asking Tituba to read her tea leaves and conjur with sieve and candles to tell me the future would be trafficking with the Devil. What if my parents found out?

  Mama would be heartsick. As for my own dear honored Father English (as William and my older sister, Mary, and I called him), well, I knew he was far too enlightened to believe that the Devil was roaming the hills and dales of Salem, as so many others believed these days.

  Storms at sea, English pirates seizing his vessels, a cargo of molasses gone bad, Indians attacking his ketches bringing fish back from Newfoundland: these things my father considered natural plagues that beset one in his trade, not visitations from the Devil.

  My father's ideas often put him at odds with the town magistrates, selectmen, and ministers. Mama said he was better understood by the merchants of Boston, where he had many friends. Boston was a place of ideas. But ideas were never encouraged in Salem.

  For this reason, and because he was loyal to the Church of England, my father would not go to Salem Village Meeting on the Sabbath. He rowed across the bay to St. Michael's Episcopal in Marblehead when weather permitted. And when it did not permit, he prayed alone in the privacy of his home, where he often went about saying there was no religious freedom under the Puritans.

  My father always set great store by freedom. But he was always well respected in Salem, nevertheless, and considered a good neighbor, a man to call upon in times of trouble, a man with a clear head, a man of firm purpose.

  And of course, folks in Salem always remembered the time he stood with his fellow countrymen in Boston in 1689, when the people sent Sir Edmund Andros, who was then governor, to be imprisoned in the dungeon at Castle William in the harbor.

  In Massachusetts Bay Colony, the people had for years been coining their own money and ignoring the navigation acts passed by Parliament and, in general, showing too many signs of being independent. So, in 1684, the Crown took away our charter to punish us.

  That charter was second only to the Bible to us because it guaranteed us our land titles. Then the Crown gave us Andros as governor.

  He passed harsh taxes and said our land titles were no longer valid now that the charter was gone. So the people imprisoned him in 1689. And my father was one of the men to help draw up our Declaration of the Gentlemen, Merchants, and Inhabitants of Boston and the Country Adjacent, and he stood with the people when it was read aloud.

  People marked well that my father did that. Just as they marked well that he put up the money for the journey, on the frigate Nonesuch, of the Reverend Increase Mather of Boston. So he could go to England and get us a new charter.

  Of course, my father predicted that matters would get worse before they got better between us and the Crown. And we would pay dearly someday for this freedom we so cherish. But he blamed our troubles on neither God nor the Devil.

  The sound of a horse's whinny brought me to my senses. Yes, I decided, my father was a man of advanced ideas, but I knew that even he would not approve of trafficking with the Devil.

  So, then, I would just have to be sure that neither he nor Mama found out, wouldn't I? For I had, by that time, determined to get in to see Tituba. And if she could give me some good word about William, I would go away satisfied. I would take that good word and keep it as medicine. I would hold it close to me in the middle of the night and tell no one else of it.

  "Goody Bibber." I turned to tell her of my decision, but she was nowhere in sight. Gone. I peered through a curtain of snow that I hadn't even realized was falling. How long had I been standing there musing? It was getting on to dark.

  There were no footprints. And for a moment I pondered whether she had truly been there or I had dreamed it. Before I could consider the question further, however, I was covering the ground between myself and my horse and cart, to fetch a twist of tobacco for John Indian.

  And that is how it started with me. That began my part in the madness that came to our village in the year 1692. But I had no idea of what would transpire once I got in the back door of the parsonage. All I knew was that Tituba told fortunes. And that I wanted to know if William would be coming back to us. Or was he lost, forever, at sea.

  William, my beloved older brother, who was always laughing, always bringing joy into the house and lovely trinkets back from his travels for my sister, Mary, and me. Coral shells, books, even bolts of silk from France or England, in colors no one ever saw in these parts. And that one could not get, even in Boston.

  I could no longer bear not knowing about William. If, indeed, God was busy elsewhere and did not have time to reveal Himself to the folk of Salem Village, then I would have to satisfy my yearnings by whatever means I could, until He turned His face to us aga
in.

  I did not know at that time that the only face I would help bring close to us in Salem, by satisfying my yearnings, was not God's but the Devil's.

  2. Tituba

  JOHN INDIAN DID not seem surprised to see me. He went right on chopping wood as I approached.

  "Wonderin' how long it would be before you came over to visit, little missy," he said.

  I hugged my cloak about me. He was a tall man, and I stared. I had never been this close to a blackamoor. I knew they worked in the best houses in Boston. Ships often came into Boston Harbor carrying their human cargo, having first brought rum to the slave traders on the coast of Africa and bartered it for blackamoors. Or sometimes they brought the slaves to the great plantations of the West Indies and traded them for sugar and molasses, which they would then bring home to make into more rum.

  "You knew I was out there?" I asked.

  "See you all the time." He gave a gentle laugh. "Pondered on when you would walk over. Told Tituba, 'There's a child out there wants in.' Why don't you come with the others, missy?"

  "They won't allow it."

  "If we waited all our lives to do what was allowed, we would never do anything, now, would we?"

  Strange talk for a slave. But he seemed like so much more. His speech was perfect. Surely they weren't all like him. His shirt was bursting its buttons from his exertions, and the gray woolen doublet seemed tight, as if his tawny brown flesh would break free at any moment.

  He set aside the ax and picked up a clay pipe. Smoke from the pipe curled over his head as he considered me. I kept my eyes on the bit of bright red fabric that stuck out of his pocket. We didn't see much color in these parts. All frippery in dress was forbidden. And color was frippery.

  Why, the whole village was now shunning Bridget Bishop because she had made herself a red bodice.

  "Where did you learn to speak the king's English so well?" I asked.

  He laughed. "I don't credit the king for it, child. 'Twas my former master taught me. I was born and raised on a plantation in the West Indies. Met my Tituba there."

  Yes, I decided, the West Indian place of birth would account for his good diction, his musical manner of speech.

  "But my master's luck went bad. We were far up on inland waters, you see. Our overseer, who had dealings with ships' captains, told my master that pirates had plundered many of his cargoes. Truth was, our overseer was in league with the captains, stealing the profits. My master's health went bad. Debts mounted. His wife ran off with the overseer. My master had to sell off his slaves. The Reverend Parris bought me and Tituba."

  I absorbed all this in silence.

  "You look cold, child. Did you come to see Tituba, now? Or just to stare at me?"

  I blushed, for I had been staring in a manner that was most unseemly.

  "You have no blackamoors at your house?" he asked.

  "My father doesn't abide the slave trade. He refuses to traffic in human souls."

  He nodded, while puffing the pipe. "Your father is a good man. Have you no servants?"

  "We have fifteen servants."

  "Fifteen!" He mused. "Your father must be a wealthy man."

  "He brought many from the Isle of Jersey, where his father came from," I explained. "His forebears took refuge there when they fled France. My father brings many servants across the water so they can gain entrance to this land. The men work four years and the women seven, to pay for their passage. Then they are free. May I see Tituba now, please?"

  He laughed again. "You want your fortune told? Like the others?"

  "I would meet with her," I said. "Would she see me when the others leave? Will they let her speak to me?"

  "They do not tell Tituba what to do. No one tells Tituba what to do. I told her it will bring trouble to us all if the reverend finds out about her fortune-telling. She only laughs. Why don't you come into the back passageway, child, and wait? It's much warmer there, and I can smuggle a cup of tea out to you."

  I accepted his kind invitation and followed him inside.

  Tituba stood in front of the large hearth in the company room, where a crackling fire burned and good things bubbled in pots. She was wearing a bright red turban around her head while she scoured pewter mugs with sand. Skeins of wool were piled in the corner, and a yellow cat dozed at her feet.

  With its high, leaded windows and white plastered walls, its rubbed furniture that gleamed in the firelight, the room was a smaller version of our company room at home.

  "So you have come to see me at last. Let me take your cloak. It is wet at the edges. Here, sit by the fire."

  Gratefully, I sank down near the fire's warmth and accepted a mug of hot cider. She offered me warm cornbread with butter on it. And then, before I knew what she was about, she set a light scarf over my shoulders. Her hands, strong and sure, kneaded the tight muscles at the back of my neck.

  I felt completely coddled, and my cares receded. The whole world blurred at the edges as I succumbed to her ministrations.

  Yet, inside me, a warning bell went off. Physical pleasure like this went against the Puritan code. In my house, Father hugged my sister and me occasionally, and we always pecked Mama on the cheek before retiring for the night, but affection was not bandied about. Yes, when William came home from a long sea voyage he always hugged me and Mary. And sometimes lifted us right off our feet. But William was boisterous and world-traveled. Therefore, he was forgiven such displays.

  But before I could bring myself to resist the touch of her hands, she moved away. "And why did it take you so long to come, then?"

  "The others wouldn't allow me to come with them."

  "You asked to join them here, and they said no?"

  "Once. I wouldn't ask again. I wouldn't beg."

  She sat down and picked up her knitting. "John, set the wood down and leave us, do."

  He had come in with an armload of wood, which he set on the side of the hearth. He smiled at us both. "I'll be sweeping the snow from the front doorstep and keeping watch," he said.

  She nodded and turned to me. "What is it you want from Tituba?"

  I couldn't lie and say I'd simply come to visit. She knew better than that. Apparently everyone who came wanted something from Tituba. I decided to be as plain in my speech as she was.

  "I heard that you tell fortunes."

  "Tituba only reads what's there in the hand. Tituba tells stories. Tituba makes tea."

  "They say you do magic."

  Her smile was sad. "Tituba only wakes the magic in the heart."

  I had never before heard anyone speak of magic in the heart.

  She continued. "These people here in Salem are harsh. Like the winter when the snows are heavy; they keep winter in their hearts all year round. When Tituba first came to Salem, the Reverend Parris told me why they gave this place that name. Do you know what Salem means?"

  "No."

  " 'City of Peace.' " She frowned. "But there is no peace in this place. There is nothing but hate. The girls who come here hate you because you are of the gentry. Oh yes, Tituba knows this. And the woman who stood out there with you before, in the snow?"

  "Goody Bibber?"

  "Yes, that is the one. She stands out there often, looking at this place. She, too, would like to join the girls here."

  "I didn't know that."

  "Tituba knows. They hate Goody Bibber because she is poor and has no man. Tituba never saw such a place for hate as this City of Peace."

  "How is it where you come from, Tituba?"

  "People hate there, too. But the water is so blue and the sand so white. The coral so pink in the sea. And the birds, oh, they are so brightly colored that you can't tell them from the flowers. And you can't hate long with such beauty around you."

  She went on knitting as she spoke. "Tituba gives little Betty Parris that love which her own mama holds back from her. Children are like flowers. Flowers cannot live without sun. Children cannot live without love."

  "And the girls who come to
see you?"

  "Tituba gives them attention they do not get from anyone else. Of course, some of the girls are no longer children. Yet they are not allowed to be women. They are not married. There is no place for them in this way of life here. Except to do hard work or study scriptures. Their hopes and desires die on the vine. This turns them inward. They are seeking ways out of themselves. So they come to Tituba."

  "But you do tell fortunes," I said.

  "Yes, it brings a little sport into their lives."

  "But you are a Christian, Tituba. I see you in Meeting. Surely you know it is sinful."

  She gave a little laugh. "Everything is sinful to these people. They think love is a sin. All they speak of is the Devil. Tituba knows that if you speak of the Devil enough he will come 'round."

  "Will you tell my fortune?"

  "Why do you want Tituba to do this if it is sinful?"

  "Because I need to know about my brother, William. He's at sea and we haven't had word of him in two months. I must know if he'll ever come home. I can't bear not knowing anymore, Tituba. I don't care if it is a sin!"

  Her smile becalmed me. "You love this brother, William?"

  "Oh yes! We all do. And we miss him so."

  "Love brought you here to Tituba, then. It won out over this fear of sin. This is good. Let me see your palm."

  I showed her my palm. She examined it carefully for a few minutes while she made some murmuring sounds in her throat. Then she shook her head and murmured some more. I thought I would burst with the burden of not knowing.

  "Tell me," I begged.

  "This William, is he fair of hair and blue of eye?"

  "Yes."

  "Does he know how to capture the fancy of the ladies?"

  I thought of the twinkle in William's eye when he hinted at sojourns in Barbados or France or England. "Yes, yes."

  "He will return."

  I gasped. "When?"

  She clasped her hand over mine and clutched it to her heart. "It is not for Tituba to say when. All is not given for Tituba to see right now."

  "Another time?" I asked. "Can I come back another time?"

  She paid no heed to my question. "There is another matter," she said.