Dark Time: Mortal Path (2 page)

A death, a birth going bad, a fire…

Susannah’s heart pounded in her throat as he crossed the room and went to the door. She heard the front door’s familiar squeak as it swung open, but now it sounded sinister to her.

Patience! Something’s happened to her.

There was a buzzing in Susannah’s head, and she was dizzy. She heard men’s voices from the other room, but couldn’t make out the words because of the buzzing. Her dread grew as boots slapped the floor, coming in her direction, the men standing all too soon in the doorway. Three figures were backlit by the fireplace glow, with their faces darkened. She was breathing hard, open-mouthed, staring.

“Susannah!” Her husband’s shout broke the frozen moment. “They’re here to take you away!”

Two burly men pushed into the room after him. They were men she knew, villagers she’d known all her life.

Take me away?

Susannah pulled the blanket up and held it protectively below her chin, covering herself and her baby. Nathan crossed the distance toward her in the space of one of her gulped breaths. He threw himself across her legs, holding her down, holding his wife and child where they belonged.

“They say you’re a witch. Your healing, those herbs…You’ve been accused, Susannah.” Her husband stared at her from the foot of the bed. The flickering light painted his cheeks faintly red, but his eyes—his eyes were dark holes in his face. “You’re not a witch. Say you’re not a witch!” His voice bounced from the walls of the tiny bedroom and seemed to come at her from all sides at once.

She tried to use her voice but fear constricted her throat. All that came out was a low moan.

The men shoved Nathan aside and moved toward her. She gripped the blanket, her fingers locked around the cloth. She was tugged from the bed, dragging the blanket with her. Each man put an arm under one of her elbows, and she was propelled across the room, her feet barely touching the floor. At last a scream, a terrible wail, burst forth from her, and she twisted in their grasp toward Nathan. At the sound, her husband collapsed on the bed and buried his face in her pillow.

S
usannah huddled in the corner of the dark, windowless room, awaiting execution. The place smelled of damp dirt and the covered bucket in the corner that held her wastes. It was cold. No warmth drifted through the tightly closed door from the fireplace in the jailer’s room.

It had been three days since the men came at night, three horrible days filled with fear, pain, and betrayal. There had been a trial. Her accuser, a young village woman named Alice, pointed at her across the room, and gave details of afflictions she’d suffered from Susannah’s practice of witchcraft. There wasn’t a bit of truth to it, but Alice played her part grandly, crying, shivering, thrashing her limbs, and shrinking away pitifully if Susannah looked at her.

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Not only was Alice afflicted, but she testified that she had overheard Susannah planning to slaughter her husband and use his blood in the practice of witchcraft.

Nathan wasn’t given an opportunity to speak on Susannah’s behalf. As her husband, he couldn’t be expected to give unbiased testimony. Friends and family turned from her, caught up in the swift-moving drama and willing to believe baseless accusations instead of trusting their inner feelings. Every accidental hurt Susannah had ever caused was paraded in front of the crowd and seen to support the claim of witchcraft. When Patience shook her head and left the room in tears, Susannah’s heart broke. She cried out, and was swiftly gagged before she could utter any “curses.”

The jailers callously mishandled her during the trial, and no one seemed to notice or care. More than once she’d been shoved and had landed hard on her belly, denied even the comfort of cushioning her full womb from the fall. Her arms were tied behind her back and her fingers were wrapped together with rope to prevent her from making evil signs.

In her prison, in the middle of the night, birth contractions shook her body. Her muscles cramped and the tendons of her neck strained under her skin. Her hands clenched into fists, the fingernails cutting into her palms. Sweat drenched her clothing and her dark hair clung to her forehead and cheeks. It wasn’t her time, she wasn’t due until the harvest, but her baby was coming now. When she could breathe after each contraction, she screamed for pity, for a midwife to help her give birth, for someone to save the life of her baby. The jailer stopped his ears against the malevolent cries of a witch.

Hot blood rushed from between her legs. She could smell it in the dark. She was a healer who had helped midwives with births, using herbs and hot water, offering a hand to squeeze and comforting words.

Susannah knew the blood was wrong. She cried out her anguish, but no one came.

Please, if my baby dies, let me die here with him.

She couldn’t control the urge to push. With her back against the cold stone wall and her legs drawn up, she bore down. Her screams echoed in the room again and again, as she strained and rested. One last mighty push and the infant slipped out onto the floor.

Susanna lay down next to the small body. In darkness as deep as a cave’s, she could see nothing, but she could feel that the baby was flaccid, unmoving. Hope dying in her heart, she did what a midwife would do for a baby who appeared dead—try to share her own life with it. She placed her mouth over the baby’s mouth and nose and breathed out in small puffs. Each time she lifted her head, she willed the baby to draw breath and begin crying.

After a while she stopped trying. Tears streamed down her cheeks and onto the still form, and she thought she felt the baby’s soul fleeing the place of its miserable birth.

Contractions squeezed her womb and the ragged afterbirth slid onto the bloody floor. Unwelcome cramping stopped the flow of blood from her body, keeping her from dying with her baby. Susannah longed to pick her daughter up from the floor that was fouled with dirt, blood, and afterbirth.

She rested her head next to Constanta and tugged, for the hundredth time, on the bonds on her wrists that kept her from pressing her daughter to her breast.

The heat left the small body and the soft, perfect arms and legs locked into the stiffness of death.

The next morning the jailer opened the door to check on his charge. Susannah blinked as clean sunlight spread over the floor of the room. She gazed at Constanta, looking for the first and last time at her baby. Her daughter had dark, curly hair like her own. In the hours since the birth, Susannah had come to think it was a good thing that her daughter died quietly, here in this room with someone who loved her.

Constanta wouldn’t have to suffer the fate of being burned alive.

The jailer recoiled in horror at the blood and at the dead infant lying next to the witch and slammed the door. A midwife came and gathered the baby in a blanket and shoveled the afterbirth into a bucket, but made no effort to comfort or clean Susannah under the jailer’s watchful eye. Susannah cried wretchedly, her body shaking. When the jailer turned his back, the midwife smoothed Susannah’s hair and rested a palm against her forehead in a fleeting gesture of empathy. Then the woman stood and carried away her burdens.

My baby, my Constanta.

After that, Susannah’s grief was hot and wordless. She rocked herself back and forth, back and forth, feeling a phantom baby suckling at her breast.

When she was forced to leave the room, her dress sagged over the soft belly of recent childbirth and the blood had dried, stiffening the cloth. Her appearance shocked the assembled townspeople. There was 7 z 138

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a thick silence as Susannah was tied to a post, a freshly cut trunk that would outlast the fire. She twisted her wrists hard, feeling the bite of the rope into her flesh, drawing fresh blood. Her hands were slippery with it. With no past or future that she cared to think about, the narrow present of heartbeat to heartbeat was all that was left for Susannah.

Her body was drenched in sweat, but it wasn’t clean sweat from honest work. She was bathed in mortal fear, anger, and bitterness. Even if she could slip free of the stout rope, it wouldn’t make any difference. Young men were standing by to catch her if she succeeded. And what was there left for her anyway? She tried to console herself with the thought that her husband still loved her, but she was haunted by the emptiness in his eyes that night in the bedroom as she was dragged away.

So long ago. A lifetime ago. Constanta!

The voice of the magistrate droned on.

“Whereas Susannah, wife of Nathan Layhem of Trenton Village of the County of Essex at a special Court of Oyer and Terminer was arraigned on two indictments for the Crime of Witchcraft upon the body of Alice, daughter of John Hobbs and Rebecka, wife of John, and on one indictment of Petty Treason for plotting the death of her husband…”

The glares of the gathered villagers struck her as if they were casting stones. Among them, hands on hips, face flushed, mouth leering, stood Alice Hobbs, the afflicted young woman who had cried out from the torment of Susannah’s evil craft. Or so Alice had claimed. It was a lie.

“…trial whereupon she was found guilty by the Jury and sentence of death passed upon her for the Crime of Witchcraft and for the heinous crime of Petty Treason…”

The only affliction Alice suffered from was jealousy. She’d wanted Nathan as her husband, but he’d chosen and married Susannah instead. Alice would try to claim his affection when Nathan was a widower, doubly bereft of wife and child, and in need of the comfort of a woman in his life and in his bed.

And I’ll be nothing but a pile of bones and ashes with my soul moved on, and I’m not done with this
life. I want to live, to see Constanta smile, to grow old with Nathan. I swear I would kill Alice if I could
get my hands on her. She stole my life and soon my husband.

Susannah sent a blast of hatred toward the woman who’d ruined her life. She, a healer, had been driven to hate and to wish death on someone, and to be willing to deal out that death.

She pulled her wrists until pain blackened the edges of her vision. She saw Nathan as if looking through a tunnel. He seemed so far, impossibly far removed from her, even though he stood within the ring of onlookers.

“…by the law of this Colony and of England cause her to burn until she be dead.”

She saw him fall to his knees and weep, overcome with emotion and shock at the horrible meaning of the blood on her dress. There was nothing he could do now but bear witness to her death.

They would have burned my baby alive inside me. They couldn’t even show mercy and wait until
Constanta was born to claim my life. Alice probably told them the baby would be born a witch, too. She
didn’t want my baby around to get between her and Nathan. She wants to be the one to bear his children.

Forgive those who injured me? Never!

Alice smirked as one of the magistrates stepped forward with a torch and touched it to the dry brushwood piled around the post. The brushwood caught immediately. Susannah’s stomach turned and she gagged. Bile burned her from the inside as the fire moved forward.

The heat, oh no, the heat!

She pulled her feet back as far as she could, pressing them against the post, hoping the sturdy green wood would somehow protect her. The fire reached her toes and the scent of burning…
something
filled her nostrils.

I’m going to die. Please, help me, help me, anyone! Help! I want to live!

She shrieked with her mind and her heart and a voice roughened with smoke. Bitterness flowed from her like a defiled river. She screamed her plea again and again, until pain seared her lungs and silenced her. The flames came higher still, and the heat singed off her eyelashes, set her hair afire, and burned her eyes so that she was blind. Coherent thoughts were driven from her mind as the fire began to consume her.

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S
uddenly she was elsewhere. Cold, moist air flowed over her and condensed in drops on her skin as though she were walking through a drizzling rain. Her lungs sucked in air untainted by smoke.

Her hands were free.

She lowered her eyes and found that she was naked. Charred bits of clothing stuck to her in places, but her skin was untouched by fire and there was no blood on her body. She pressed both hands to her soft, sagging belly, confirming her loss for the first time with touch.

They would have burned my baby alive inside me.

She bent over and vomited liquid that burned her throat and mouth.

There was fog all around, thicker than she’d ever seen before, so dense she could barely see down to her own knees. Susannah tried to take a step and found that she couldn’t command her feet to move. She waited for whatever was going to happen next, alone and naked, wondering in a numb way if her baby would be given a decent burial and what Alice and the others were seeing.

Had she vanished before their eyes? That would do nothing but confirm her judgment as a witch.

Not that it matters now.

Lost in mind and body, she let her grief and anger loose and dwelled on them. They circulated through her veins, heating her, making the fine mist turn to steam when it reached her skin. She felt something shift inside as the healing, comforting part of her was pushed into a small corner and locked away. The woman who had smelled her own flesh roasting was no longer the gentle person she’d been, the wife, the near-mother.

How long have I been standing here?

The fog thinned but didn’t clear. Peering ahead, she saw a shape approaching. Wherever she tried to fasten her gaze on it, it slid away. A foul odor came her way, of must and decay, of graves and bones and winter sickness wrapped in the burnt hide of an animal. Malevolent streams of brown and green fog pushed aside the clean air. When the streams came near, they swirled around her as though a huge finger had stirred them. The smell of excrement filled her nostrils. She retched again, bent over and helpless in the throes of her nausea.