Tituba of Salem Village (9 page)

“Against the pastor or anyone else,” he replied quietly.

“How?”

Deacon Ingersoll shrugged. “If she comes again—feed her. We all feed her and her children. It is better that way, believe me.”

Then they were gone, too. Tituba left the doors open to air out the room, to rid it of the smell of Goody Good. It would be cooled off, but it would smell fresh like the keen, crisp fall air instead of vilely like Good.

She stepped outside. She would help John and the children bring in wood, help build the woodpile against those cold winter days.

She started to walk away from the house and stopped because stepping delicately around the side of the house, tail straight up in the air, came a young cat. As Tituba looked at him, he sat down, washed his face, cleaned his whiskers. She thought, Why that’s a money cat, a good-luck cat. He was black and dark gray and yellow, though the yellow was almost orange. He was a short chunky cat, round-headed, nicely proportioned, and his fur had a very sleek look.

When he saw Tituba he walked over to her and brushed against her skirt, tail up in the air, walked around her, purring. She leaned over and stroked him. She would keep him. She would say nothing about him to anyone. She would simply keep a cat. If the master objected she’d say they had to have a cat because of the field mice—they’d soon be living in the house. The cat looked up at her and his eyes were huge—they looked as though they had no bottom—great, clear pools of light amber.

“Come, Puss,” she said. He followed her into the house. She fished some tender bits of codfish out of the big black pot and put them in a shallow wooden bowl, near the hearth. He ate hungrily but very daintily, and occasionally he stopped to purr. After he finished eating, he mewed and scratched at the door. She let him out and didn’t see him again until the next day.

The master was so upset about the firewood and the visit of the committee from the church, he hurried through the evening prayers. And then he told them to sit down by the fire while he read to them what the committee told him was in the church record book. He had made a copy of it:

“Eighteenth of June, 1689—it was agreed and voted by general concurrence, that, for Mr. Parris, his encouragement and settlement in the work of the ministry amongst us, we will give him sixty-six pounds for his yearly salary—one-third paid in money, the other two-thirds parts for provisions; and Mr. Parris to find himself firewood, and Mr. Parris to keep the ministry house in good repair; and that Mr. Parris shall also have the use of the ministry pasture, and the inhabitants to keep the fence in repair; and that we will keep up our contributions, and our inhabitants to put their money in papers, and this to continue as long as Mr. Parris continues in the work of the ministry amongst us, and all productions to be good and merchantable. And, if it please God to bless the inhabitants, we shall be willing to give more; and to expect, that if God shall diminish the estates of the people, that then Mr. Parris do abate of his salary according to proportion.”

There was silence in the room when he finished. Betsey Parris, who had been staring at the fire, seemed to have gone to sleep; Abigail yawned openly and rubbed her eyes, though she knew these signs of boredom irritated her Uncle Parris. John put another log on the fire.

The master crumpled the paper in his hands. “This house is mine,” he said. “They said it was to be mine. Now they say keep it in good repair as though it was still theirs. And they say, ‘Mr. Parris to find himself firewood.’ I was to have my firewood given to me.”

John rearranged the logs. He glanced at the master and then looked away. Tituba moved towards Betsey. She was sitting on the settle and, though her eyes were open, she seemed to be asleep. Tituba bent over her, touched her gently on the wrist, and increased the pressure a little. The child stirred and sighed, and said something that Tituba couldn’t understand.

“Best get the children to bed. Come, Betsey,” she said firmly. Betsey shivered; then she stood up, and taking hold of Tituba’s hand, they went towards the stairs. Abigail followed them.

Tituba glanced back over her shoulder at the master. He was staring into the fire, saying, “‘Mr. Parris to find himself firewood.’”

Chapter 7

It was a month before Mary Sibley expressed approval of the size of the woodpile John built behind the minister’s house. Day by day it grew bigger until it was a truly handsome structure, sweet-smelling, neatly arranged. The big backlogs for the keeping-room fireplace were stacked together, as were the smaller logs for the other fireplaces. Then there were sticks of hard wood to keep the fire going, and a pile of kindling—lightweight wood, twigs and chips that would burn quickly and easily if the fire needed freshening.

Mary Sibley came often to look at the woodpile. Every few days she would shake her head and say, “With a house this size and with a sick woman upstairs—most unusual to have a sick woman upstairs—ye’ll need a pile of wood almost the size of the house. Ye’ll have to be forever cutting wood just like a beaver, John Indian.”

There was a month of good weather. During that month, John cut wood until as he said, “I’m chopping and sawing even in my sleep.” But he found time to do other things, too. He repaired the barn roof, replaced the missing hinges on the barn door. He made new parts for the big loom. This was slow, tedious work. He stopped frequently to ask Tituba, “What is this part supposed to do?” Then later, “Does it do it now?” Before he finished repairing the loom he said, “Someone who knew how to use a loom fixed this one so it wouldn’t work.”

Sometimes when she was weaving she would try to envision the person—a spiteful man? a spiteful woman?—a bent-over figure, carefully wrecking the loom.

When Mary Sibley found that Tituba knew how to spin, she brought flax to be spun. She exclaimed over the fine, strong linen thread that Tituba produced on the flax wheel.

She said, “Tituba, if ye’ll spin thread for me, I’ll set the pastor up with hens and a cock.”

So before the first snow, there were hens clucking about the barnyard, and there was a cock that crowed early in the morning. They had fresh eggs to eat. She cooked the first one for the mistress.

The hens enlivened the barnyard. Puss, the money cat, enlivened the dooryard, too. He grew fat and sleek and round. Betsey and Abigail fed him tidbits—choice portions of fish or beef. They stroked his fur, told him how handsome he was and how clean.

During the day, he sat outside near the back door. If Tituba came out to gather eggs or to bring in wood, he walked in and out under her long dark skirt, as though he were deliberately smoothing the fur on his back by letting the skirt brush over him gently. She talked to him, too, murmuring to him. When he looked up at her and blinked, she half expected him to answer her. His light brown eyes were green in the center—it was like looking into glass balls—only the color kept you from seeing all the way through them.

He was gone all night. Tituba had tried to keep him in the house, but he mewed and scratched at the door until she let him out. Late in the morning he would appear at the back door. He looked as though he had been in the very heart of the forest, in a far-off mysterious place, which he could not share with her. There were unspeakable secrets in his eyes, even his fur seemed to reject her hand.

“It will soon be so cold, Puss,” she said to him reproachfully. “You will not roam through the forest at night. You will stay in the house and hug the hearth, as a cat should.” She wrapped her shawl around her head and shoulders before she ventured outside early in the morning.

In the meantime they acquired a skittish brown mare and a placid brown-and-white cow. This meant the master could visit the outlying farms because he had a horse to ride, and the family would have milk. But they would lose John. For in exchange for the loan of the mare and the gift of the cow, John had been hired out to Deacon Ingersoll.

When John saw the animals he frowned. “What are we going to feed them?”

“We’ll have hay and grain,” the master said. He explained that he would ask the ratepayers to supply him—they were supposed to provide him with whatever he needed.

The farmers brought enough hay and grain to last through the winter months.

Tituba missed John during the day. The master was away from home a great deal. Even if he’d been there, he wasn’t much help. He was better at reading and writing than he was at lifting heavy logs or carrying pails of water from a well. He couldn’t even carry a bowl of gruel upstairs to the mistress without slopping it over, and his exclamations of distress and surprise when the hot gruel hit his hand only upset the mistress.

John came back to the parsonage at night. But he would only be able to do this while the weather was good. When the winter storms came, he would have to stay at Ingersoll’s.

A week later the weather turned very cold and windy. Tituba let the little girls stay by the fire in the keeping room until John came back from Ingersoll’s. When he came in, Puss came in with him, tail up in the air, purring when he saw Tituba, behaving exactly as though he were accustomed to spending the night in the keeping room. He sat in front of the fire and washed himself carefully.

“Tell us about Ingersoll’s ordinary. What is it like?” Abigail asked.

John said that it was the biggest house in the village. The taproom, where people sat to eat and to drink cider and beer, was almost as big as the meetinghouse. Quite often church meetings were held in the taproom. He said that Deacon Ingersoll had a license to sell “beer and cider by the quart on the Lord’s day.” After morning service in the meetinghouse, the farmers and their families who came from a long distance came to the taproom to refresh themselves.

He said that you could get all the news of the Colony right there in Ingersoll’s taproom. It stood on a curve in the road to Andover and Ipswich. Travelers from Boston who were going up into Maine and travelers from all places to the east of the Village stopped there to rest their horses, to eat and drink; some of them spent the night.

“You hear everything,” he said. “Little pieces of gossip. Big important pieces of news. The farmers come there to trade with each other. You know who had a good onion crop and whose cornfield didn’t yield. Fishermen come there to make arrangements to sell a big haul of cod or haddock.”

Everybody worked, serving beer and cider and food. The fires had to be kept going; the hearths had to be swept; bread had to be baked; the bedrooms had to be cleaned.

John said, “Everybody works.” Then he threw his head back and laughed, “Ha! Ha! Ha!”

They all looked at him, surprised. Abigail’s eyes widened; Betsey blinked and said soberly, “Why are you laughing?”

John said, “Everybody works but that stowaway—Pim.”

Abigail said, “Stowaway? What stowaway?”

“That redhead boy, Pim, who stole his passage on the ship we came in. The
Blessing
. Pim is at Ingersoll’s. He’s bound out to Deacon Ingersoll for seven years.”

“Did you know he was on the ship?” Abigail asked.

Tituba got up, stood behind Abigail, looked hard at John, and shook her head.

John said, “In Boston they said he was a stowaway. They sold him to Deacon Ingersoll in the taproom of that tavern where I worked.”

Abigail said, “He doesn’t work?”

“He works some,” John said carefully. Then he laughed again. “But not too much. He spills cider when he pours it. If he fixes a fire, a burning log will come rolling right out on the floor—beyond the hearth to the wooden floor. If he sweeps he sets up such clouds of dust and dirt and ashes that he sets everybody to choking and sneezing and coughing. If he brings in logs of wood for the fires, he falls down with them, and the wood lands on top of people who are eating or drinking. They box his ears. They call him clumsy. They shake him until his teeth rattle in his head—and he still spills things and falls down and breaks everything that’s breakable.” He paused and stared into the fire.

“Tell us some more,” said Betsey.

“I’ll tell you what the place looks like, and then I’ll tell you this song that Pim sings, and then we’ll all be off to bed.” He was silent for a moment and then he said, “The house is big, and it’s set back from the road. It faces to the south, so the sun comes in almost all day. And in front there is an open space; it’s all flat and smooth and covered with grass, and there are no weeds. Deacon Ingersoll lets his sheep graze there, and they keep the grass cropped, and it’s a pretty sight. They call that big open space in front Ingersoll’s Common. Then off to the northeast, not far from the house, in sight of the house, is the blockhouse. They keep watch there against Indians. There’s always somebody there, armed with a firelock. They keep watch day and night.”

He stood up to indicate he had finished talking.

“Will you sing the song?” Abigail asked.

“Oh, yes.” He threw his head back, put his hands on his hips, a big man obviously copying the mannerisms and manner of Pim. It was a merry tune, and the words were loud and clear, and he kept time with his foot.

“Let the world slide, let the world go;

A fig for care, and a fig for woe!

If I can’t pay, why I can owe
,

And death makes equal the high and low.”

“Oh, John,” Betsey said, eyes sparkling, “I didn’t know you could sing like that.”

Abigail clapped her hands together, softly. “Sing it again,” she pleaded, “sing it again. I’ve never heard anything like it.”

John looked questioningly at Tituba. She listened for a moment. There was no sound from the master’s study, so he was probably sitting with the writing box open before him, head bent over, so absorbed in what he was writing that he was deaf to what was going on in the keeping room. Tituba nodded her head.

This time John either sang louder or the rhythmic sound of his foot hitting the floor disturbed the master. The study door opened just as John sang, “If I can’t pay, why I can owe.…”