Children of Salem

At the Parris home

Jeremiah had returned to the parsonage home when a silvery moon slipped from behind smoldering indigo clouds to rain down a pale pink light over the apple orchard where, without looking for it, he thought he saw an animal scurrying, something large yet quick. A deer perhaps? At the same time, this eerie peripheral movement at the edge of his eye instantly recalled Tituba’s testimony of a coven beyond the orchard—which news Parris or Putnam had scattered, and it had grabbed hold of the public imagination. A tale that’d taken on new, weighty and exaggerated detail. The tale of hundreds of witches now, as it took that many to be so bold as to steal Sam Parris’ sword and fruit, and now his child from him. Details of how these creatures, in league with Satan, had spewed their chewings into Tituba’s face while they’d beaten her with hot pokers as she bravely refused to make her mark.

He squinted and went closer to the tree line and forest, and most certainly saw definite shadows in human shape. This was not the swaying of trees, or mere moonlight reflection against the waving branches and thickly clumped bushes. This wasn’t animal movement either, but human. More than one.

Now they dashed as he stepped into the orchard to have a closer look. Long, thin shadows, but hardly adult. Yes, most of these scurrying people were the size of elves, leprechauns, or children. Despite the length of the shadows they cast, these were village children, girls, he guessed from the giggling and unintelligible chatter getting farther away.

From inside the Parris home, Jeremy heard the continued distinct wailings of two girls behind a second floor window—Betty and Mary. Their wailing momentarily pulled his eyes to the lighted second floor pane. When he returned his gaze to the wood beyond the orchard, he saw nothing, no one. But scanning the ground around the orchard and house, he found the telltale naked foot and shoe prints, and he put two and two together.

Other village children had dared Parris’ wrath to approach the house in an effort to get a look at the afflicted girls through the windowpanes. There was even a ladder left lying at the base of the house. Then, the children hearing and seeing Jeremy’s approach—a black-clad man coming at a quick pace straight for the house—had panicked and ran. He may well have been mistaken for Parris.

“Enough to terrify any child,” he muttered, and then heard a straggler lift from the earth near the barn and strike out across the orchard like a terrified field mouse. “Bugger off!” he shouted to encourage this final mouse to go home and to bed.

“This time of night,” came a feminine voice behind him. It was a harried-looking Mrs. Parris.

“Breaking curfew to dare witches strike them, it would appear,” Jeremy replied.

“Seems, despite what my husband says, the village children are unafraid of the contagion.”

The horrid wailing from inside the house signaled Mrs. Parris to return to her daughter and niece in their sickroom.

Jeremy entered the home to the chorus of suffering above. Jeremy grabbed up his bedroll and saddlebag, which held any notes remaining. He’d posted all of his earlier notes to Reverend Cotton Mather.

He’d wisely prepared for this day, and almost all of his things were packed. Part of him felt he’d failed miserably. He’d not had the tenacity and patience of a spy who must swallow everything thrown at him. At least not in dealing with so intolerable a man as Samuel Parris . . . and not in the face of what was happening here.

Still, another part of Jeremy felt he’d done a remarkable job. After all, he’d begun to understand what drove the man, and he’d gotten self-damning words in the man’s own handwriting placed into the public record now that Judge Hathorne meant to file the man’s lethal sermon and prediction into evidence on the side of reason and logic over superstition and syllogisms during the hearings set for Goode, Tituba, and Osborne. Perhaps it would take three sacrifices at Salem before peace was restored, and perhaps Fate had dictated it be three from the first. Sad that even now men must have their sacrificial lambs.

To be sure Goode had brought this fate down around her own ears, and Tituba was no innocent either. As for Osborne, he knew not except that the woman had, for years, brought suspicion on herself.

Then there was the part of Jeremy that must concern himself with his own sanity and safety, that part of him simply wanting out of this man’s sphere of influence, out of this village of broken and sad people—and out now!

To get back to the arms of his love, to bask in Serena’s love and warmth and kindness. It was what he wanted above all things now that his duty to Mather had been fulfilled. Now that the truth sat square on the proverbial table for all to partake of. He must also race to the Nurse compound for another reason, to warn Serena and her mother and father of the depth of danger her mother and her aunts faced thanks to Parris’ accusations along with those he had, Jeremy believed, nursed out of Little Anne Putnam and her mother—that the midwives attending the Putnam birthings through the years had actually been on hand to slyly kill the very infants they pretended to usher into the world. A diabolical tale if ever there was one.

To a chorus of shrieks that might be cats stuck between the walls of this home, all coming out of Betty Parris and Mary Wolcott’s sickroom, Jeremy rushed from the dark house. He wanted out before Samuel Parris should return. He wanted no more confrontation with the man. To this end, he rushed for the barn and his horse, perhaps the only creature at the moment in this place that he might speak openly and honestly to without fear of retribution. In fact, in the current climate, perhaps the only safe place to unleash pent up emotions and opinions, was the ear of a horse, cow, or family pet.

Jeremy wasted no time saddling Dancer. As quickly as he could effect his escape from the parsonage, Jeremy was in the saddle and racing out the barn door when suddenly, his mare reared back on her haunches at the sight of Samuel Parris, who’d very nearly been run down and killed but had leapt and fallen to safety at the last moment. Jeremy left the minister lying in a hard-frozen pigsty of mud, not slowing, racing toward the Nurse family compound, unaware that he horse’s hooves sent up great gobs of dirt and mud in the wild dash from the Salem Village.