Susannah Morrow by Megan Chance Read Free Book Online Page A

much talk of Indian raids not so far from here.
    No, I would not run. I trudged up to the house. The door was open, and when I stepped inside, I was surprised to see more
     people than I’d thought. In the corner, passing a tankard of beer to Jude and her little friend Polly Martin, was Elizabeth
     Hubbard. I did not have to look far to see Mary Walcott standing just beyond. I backed up a little, hoping to disappear into
     the shadows before she caught sight of me.
    I hit my hip hard on something—a corner, a cupboard that hadn’t been there before. In confusion, I turned around. It was no
     cupboard. There, just inside the door, were two large chests, each heavily carved, brightly painted. On top of one was the
     thing I’d bumped into, something small and rectangular, covered with canvas.
    Slowly I reached out. I pulled back the canvas to reveal keys glowing with the fine polish of ivory—an instrument. It was
     a virginal, and I knew who it belonged to, just as I knew these trunks held clothes brought all the way from London—more clothing
     than I, or anyone in my family, had ever had.
    I looked up, right into the mean gaze of Mary Walcott, who made a little prancing curtsy like a stage player, and I heard
     her voice again in my head.
They say she’s an actress,
and those words seized and took hold—all these clothes, music, an instrument…
    Suddenly I was afraid. I did not know how I should feel or what I should do. I turned to the door and saw my father come in,
     and I waited for him to see these things. He glanced at me. “Are you well, child?”
    When I nodded dumbly, he looked beyond me to the chests, to the virginal keys glistening in the candlelight. I held my breath.
     He looked away again, as if the sight did not distress him—or as if he hadn’t even seen those things sitting there, though
     there was no way to avoid them. He crossed the room to where our neighbor Samuel Nurse stood drinking from the bowl of beer,
     and clapped a welcoming hand on the man’s shoulder as if nothing was amiss.
    I looked again behind me, thinking I’d been mistaken, that perhaps I was seeing things. But the virginal was there. I touched
     one of the keys, unable to help myself. The ivory was smooth and warm, as if it had just been played, when it should have
     been cold, and that was so disconcerting I drew back. ’Twas an evil thing, I knew, but my father seemed unmoved by it, and
     that was so strange I did not know how to reconcile it. Mama had once told me that my father could spot wickedness in any
     man, and I believed that. I knew he saw it in me. Why else did he spend every night drilling prayers into my head, girding
     me against the Devil? If he saw it in me, why could he not see it in Susannah?
    Because it wasn’t there. ’Twas the only answer. My aunt Susannah was no actress; Mary had been passing on vile rumors without
     truth. Gossip spread so easily in this village. Were Susannah a stage player, even my mother’s pleas could not have brought
     her here.
    I looked toward my aunt, who was taking a joint of beef off the fire, reminding me of Mama with every movement, and I was
     relieved. Mary was wrong; there was nothing to fear. The only wickedness in this house was my own.

Chapter 4

    ’T WAS LATE WHEN EVERYONE BEGAN TO LEAVE, BUT THE LEAVING had nothing to do with the hour. I had known most of these people my whole life; tonight their voices had been loud in the
     corners, snatches of arguments I’d heard often these last months falling here and there through the house—rumors that Increase
     Mather had failed in getting the new charter from the king and queen in England, worries about land titles revoked and taxes
     going ever upward because of the war with the Indians and the French—things I cared nothing for. My neighbors could debate
     long into twilight; they had done so many times before, ’twas a favored way to pass the time.
    So it was odd the way those conversations stopped when