Only the Stars Know Her Name Read online

  251 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10010

  Text copyright © 2019 by Amanda Marrone

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Yellow Jacket and associated colophon are trademarks of Little Bee Books.

  Manufactured in the United States of America LAK 0719

  First Edition

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-1-4998-0890-2

  yellowjacketreads.com

  For Kerry Malloy, big sister extraordinare

  —AM

  CONTENT

  CHARACTERS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  FOR FURTHER READING

  CHARACTERS

  VIOLET: Born in Salem, Massachusetts, to Tituba and John, Arawak Indians enslaved by Samuel Parris. Although raised in the same house as the children in the Parris family, Violet was considered property and had to work hard. When the two girls she lived with accused her mother of witchcraft, she listened to her mother tell wild tales at the trial. After the witch trials, her parents were sold in 1693 and taken to parts unknown.

  TITUBA: An Arawak Indian from South America, Tituba was captured and taken to Barbados, where she was sold into slavery. Samuel Parris brought her and her husband, John Indian, to Massachusetts, where they had a daughter, Violet. In 1692, Tituba was accused of witchcraft by two of her charges, Betty Parris and Betty’s cousin, Abigail Williams. Instead of denying the charges, she wove a tale of sorcery and pointed fingers that set a wave of other accusations in motion. She later recanted her confession from prison, claiming it had been beaten out of her by Reverend Parris. When the governor of Massachusetts pardoned the accused, the reverend refused to pay her bail, and Tituba was sold from her jail cell, along with her husband, to an unnamed man. They never returned to Salem.

  JOHN INDIAN: Husband to Tituba and father of Violet; enslaved by Samuel Parris. He was sold along with his wife after the Salem witch trials.

  REVEREND SAMUEL PARRIS: Husband to Elizabeth Parris, father of Thomas and Betty, uncle of Abigail Williams. Born in London, Parris took over his father’s sugar plantation in Barbados, where he purchased Tituba and her husband, an enslaved man, John Indian. In 1688, Parris was appointed the Puritan minister to Salem. Known for his cold demeanor, the reverend was not well liked there and had frequent contract disputes and arguments with the community.

  ELIZABETH PARRIS: Wife to Samuel Parris, mother of Thomas and Betty, and guardian and aunt of Abigail Williams.

  BETTY PARRIS: Daughter of Samuel and Elizabeth Parris. She was cared for by Tituba, alongside her cousin, Abigail Williams, and Tituba’s daughter, Violet. After suffering fits and visions, Betty accused Tituba of bewitching her and Abigail.

  ABIGAIL WILLIAMS: After her parents died, Abigail was sent to live with her relatives, the Parrises. She was raised by them and cared for by Tituba. Like Betty, she suffered from fits and claimed to be bewitched. Once, she thrust her hands into the coals of a fire. Abigail accused Tituba of witchcraft.

  THOMAS PARRIS: Son of Samuel and Elizabeth Parris. Older brother to Betty.

  ELIZABETH PRINCE: Orphaned after her mother, Sarah Osborne, was put in jail for witchcraft and died there. Elizabeth was left in the care of her stepfather, Alexander Osborne. Elizabeth’s mother was among the first three women accused of witchcraft in Salem. Sarah vehemently denied any wrongdoing.

  TAMMY YOUNGER: A teen from Gloucester, who lost her parents when she was young, Tammy worked in various houses as a servant. Tammy was tutored to be a folk woman—to use magic as a healing art or a way to make money—by Martha Wilds; she made her way to Salem to form a coven to use the power and anger inside her, hoping to reach the top of Salem society.

  SHERIFF GEORGE CORWIN: The sheriff signed all of the warrants for those accused and convicted of witchcraft during the trials. Corwin often claimed the property of the accused and split it with his deputies. He was particularly ruthless in the death of Giles Corey—a man in his late seventies—who was pressed to death under a great weight of rocks.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Devil came to me and bid me to serve.

  —TITUBA, FROM COURT TESTIMONY, 1692

  Salem, Massachusetts

  April 1693

  As I neared Salem Village with Mistress Parris, I wondered if Mama might be back when I got home. Had she been freed from prison? Was she already settled into her familiar routine? Maybe her apple cakes would be sizzling in the pot?

  It had been months since all the accused had been acquitted by none other than Governor Phips, so surely, she would be home by now.

  She had to be.

  As the cart bumped along the road, I hugged my arms around myself and pretended they were Mama’s arms.

  It had been so long since I’d felt her arms around me. So long since she braided my hair or slipped a sugar candy in my hand when no one else was looking.

  Most of all, I missed Mama’s voice. I missed hearing about her people, the Arawak, and the mystical creatures that inhabited their land. Though she had been bought by Reverend Parris in Barbados, Barbados was not her home. She said she would wish on the North Star every night that she could turn into a dolphin so she could dive into the ocean and be back on her shore in a short day’s swim.

  But Mama was not a dolphin, and Barbados was where she worked hard until the reverend forced her to sail north to Massachusetts, where the work and the winters were hard.

  But Mama still remembered her homeland and she’d seen more beautiful things than the people around here could ever imagine. Above all, Mama was a storyteller. She brought those strange lands to life, coloring the often-gray, unforgiving place we lived in bright, tropical sunsets. So vivid and delicious were her stories, I imagined them as dreams she’d plucked from my head and dipped in sweet molasses. And when winter months chilled us to our core, Mama warmed us with sky-blue waters and chattering monkeys eating fruit ripe for the picking all the year long.

  Like the mischievous monkeys Mama spoke of, Betty, Abigail, and I always laughed at her stories, but mostly we marveled at the magic she said could foretell the future or reveal our one true love.

  “Mama Tituba,” Betty once asked, “will I marry Edward Hutchinson or Joseph English?”

  Mama smiled, her full, brown cheekbones rising. “Those the boys who caught your fancy today, Betty?”

  We laughed because, even at the tender age of nine, new boys were always catching Betty’s fancy. Mama made sure Mistress Parris was nowhere in sight, and then carefully cracked an egg on the table. With skill, she plopped the white of the egg into a glass of water. W
e all peered into the glass to watch the white twisting in the liquid, waiting for Mama to make her proclamation.

  “Looks like a horseshoe,” Mama whispered finally. “Edward Hutchinson was selling a foal with his father just a few days ago; surely, he’s your man.” Mama brought the glass to her lips and swallowed its contents in one gulp. “But don’t be telling your mother I wasted an egg on the likes of that boy, or there’ll be hell to pay.”

  We gaped at Mama for using such language and then dissolved into new fits of laughter. Despite the different colors of our skin, despite having been born of three different mothers, we three girls lived under Reverend Parris’s roof and—for a time—felt like sisters. We were bonded by Mama’s tantalizing secrets so exciting from our everyday life, and we spread her stories to the girls in town and made divining potions of our own out of sight of watchful eyes.

  We reveled in it all until we didn’t.

  One day, Betty and Abigail started telling stories of their own—dark ones—about Mama and other people. When that happened, folks were sent to Gallows Hill.

  Many of them died.

  Mama’s stories were as light as the hint of salt in sea air, but after Betty’s and Abigail’s fits and finger-pointing, Mama started telling new tales that set the hair on the back of our necks on end. She talked of meeting with Satan himself and signing the Devil’s book.

  I’m still not sure I know the truth about how Betty and Abigail came to be afflicted. I still can’t believe Mama had any part in it, but Mama confessed to having done just that.

  It is something that weighs heavily on me. How could things ever get back to the way they were when Abigail and Betty remained carefree and Mama sat in jail close to thirteen months now?

  I bit my lip. I had watched Mama tell those terrifying stories in front of the judge in the meetinghouse. My heart had raced hearing the words coming out of her mouth. Words of witchcraft and the Devil and flying through the night on poles.

  I had watched girls pointing at things I couldn’t see. I watched them claim that friends and neighbors were poking them with sewing needles and sending out their spectral selves to wrap their hands around their necks.

  And then I watched as Mama was loaded into a cart with Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne to be taken to jail in Boston—all three of whom Betty and Abigail had accused of bewitching them.

  “Serves the reverend right, bringing Indians into our town,” Mistress Putnam had said to Mistress Lewis as if I weren’t standing but three or four steps from them.

  Mistress Lewis smiled slyly. “That Tituba sure taught him a lesson, though. He could have hired any number of local girls to work for him; he got what he deserved!”

  Mistress Putnam narrowed her eyes at the crowd around us. “I suspect there shall be more in town who get what they deserve before the week’s end.”

  My stomach felt punched by those words. No one in Salem knew Mama and Papa were Arawak except the Parris family—Mama and Papa were forbidden to talk about it and only did so when the reverend and mistress were not at home or out of earshot, but we were just Indians to everyone because we had brown skin. We were just Indian because that was the name Reverend Parris gave us. But I knew being Arawak or Indian didn’t have anything to do with witchcraft. Besides, of the three women being carted away, Mama was the only Indian.

  One could almost believe Sarah Good was a witch, though. She was begging around Salem with her five-year-old daughter in tow, muttering curses under her breath at even those who had a loaf of bread to share with her. That her young daughter was later accused, well, that was harder to reconcile.

  But Sarah Osborne was more troubling—she had been ill in bed for over a year—too ill to even come to church services. Could a woman so sick as to miss services be out flying through the night on a pole or dancing in the woods with the Devil?

  Could a woman who was so ill that she lasted but nine weeks in jail before her heart gave out really have been a vessel for the Devil’s work?

  And what of Mama? Yes, she had cracked eggs in water and made predictions. She had told me of her people, the Arawak, and their connection to the visible and non-visible worlds. She told me of the souls resting in the trees and rivers, and that rainbows formed a bridge between the earth and sky. She talked of the spirits of the forests, the Opias, who only came out at night. She talked of all these fantastical things, but not once had she ever mentioned the Devil.

  But if what she said was true, how could she have done all those things without me noticing? Every night I heard her breathing in bed next to Papa, and every morning her boots were polished with not a hint of mud or forest leaf stuck to them.

  The day the sheriff took Mama and Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne away in the cart, I watched Sarah Good’s daughter try to pull from her father’s hand to chase after it.

  Sarah Osborne’s daughter, Elizabeth Prince, fell to the dirt road and cried out to her mother, begging her to confess. My mother’s brown eyes landed on mine and she held her head steady and high. She ran a finger down her curved nose that looked just like mine and then touched her full lips. She pointed to me as if I could somehow feel that kiss, but I wasn’t sure I even wanted to, not after everyone in town had heard what she had done from those very same lips.

  I wanted to hang my head in shame for thinking such thoughts, but I stiffened my spine and kept my head high, sure that this was all some sort of bad dream—a dream I was still waiting to wake up from. Because how could Mama really and truly be a witch?

  I guess that this is my story, a story I am trying to figure out the ending to.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I do not know that the Devil goes about in my likeness to do any hurt.

  —SARAH OSBORNE

  Thoughts of stories and Mama consumed me as Mistress Parris and I continued our ride back to Salem Village. We’d been near eight weeks caring for her brother’s family in North Gloucester after the birth of a new boy. With five other children full of phlegm and bile, my days were full, but the long hours kept my mind from dwelling too deeply on my troubles.

  I grabbed hold of the cart’s side planks as it bumped along a part of the road mired in washboard ruts. Mistress Parris sat at the lead with her son, Thomas, and grabbed his arm to steady herself.

  Thomas was a year older than me, and at age fourteen, he no longer paid me any mind except to make sure I darned his socks and that his monthly bathwater was warm.

  The nearer we got to the parsonage, the heavier my heart weighed. I took in the greenery growing quick and lush along the path and gave praise to spring and its renewal to us all, but thoughts of being home without Mama made it hard to be truly thankful.

  Many nights in Gloucester I dreamed that Reverend Parris had changed his mind and paid Mama’s jail fee and she’d be waiting for me when we arrived back home. I dreamed I’d walk through the doors and she’d take me in her arms. It was a small hope that kept me going these last few weeks, though I knew deep down that even if he wanted to help, the reverend’s salary would never have any extra coins. And even if he had, it was unlikely he would use them on Mama.

  Chickadees flittered in the brush along the road and they reminded me of Mama; never pausing—happily chattering all day. I knew I would have to be satisfied with Papa’s quiet company. In some ways he was like the reverend; they both seemed to have no great affection for children. Papa was more like a blue heron, though, moving slowing and thoughtfully along the water’s edge, focused on completing his list of daily chores. Reverend Parris, with his pointed nose and steely eyes, reminded me of the red-tailed hawk: strident and hard and ready to tear flesh from the bone with its sharp beak.

  At least I knew I could always count on a weary smile from Papa after bedtime prayers, and when the candle was blown out he’d remind me that even though Mama wasn’t here, the North Star was shining down on her same as us.

  Papa seemed to do his best talking after the candle was out. I suppose it was because he was finally free to le
t his mind ponder on his family without the reverend’s list of chores cluttering his head.

  Some nights, as sleep would just be taking hold, I’d hear Papa whisper about finding some extra work to earn money. Maybe more hours in Mr. Ingersoll’s tavern, or being skilled with a hammer and nail, he might be sought out to repair our neighbors’ fences and barns. He had plans to get Mama back, and as I’d drift off he’d whisper, “Patience is a virtue, Violet.”

  I had been more than patient and I hoped that while I was away he’d been able to find that extra work. It seemed all I had these days was hope, and I prayed on that bumpy road that he’d earned the money to buy Mama her freedom.

  When we finally pulled up to the parsonage, it was early evening, and though I was sure Papa would be back from gathering wood, I was careful not to show my excitement and neglect my work. The reverend, stony-faced as always, came out to greet us. I slung my satchel over my shoulder and took hold of a basket of parsnips and potatoes we’d been sent home with, nodded a greeting, and then brought them into the house.

  I was thankful Betty and Abigail were nowhere in sight, but disappointed Papa was absent as well.

  As soon as I’d stored away the root vegetables, I asked Mistress Parris if I could be excused to my room to recover from our long trip. She exchanged a look with the reverend that sent a nervous tickle bubbling up in the pit of my stomach.

  “Sit down, Violet,” the reverend said, pointing to the bench by the fire. “And, Thomas, please bring in some kindling.”

  Thomas left, but not before giving me a sideways look.

  Gathering kindling was one of Papa’s jobs since the town’s people stopped catering to the reverend. As Thomas left, the nervous bubble in my stomach traveled up my spine.

  The reverend motioned to the bench again, but my feet seemed to be stuck to the floor with pitch. The parsonage was too quiet, and all I could think was that something had happened to Mama—that she took ill in that jailhouse in Boston, or even died.