Children of Salem

BOOK THREE

Chapter One

Circumstances in Salem and its environs moved rapidly during June, far too fast for Jeremy or anyone to make any further proper appeals. Twenty days after the hanging of Bridget Bishop, the cantankerous innkeeper with as foul a mouth as any sailor in Salem Harbor, five more accused, arrested women were judged guilty in the Court of Oyer & Terminer—among them, Rebecca Nurse.

The others on the June 30^th list of recalcitrant guilty were Sarah Goode, to no one’s surprise, Susannah Martin of Amesbury, the vixen who’d caused Henry Carr to hang himself twenty years before—or so Anne Carr Putnam said; Elizabeth How of Ipswich, and Sarah Wilde of Topsfield. Along with the accusations of the Salem seers against her, Goode had been condemned on the word of her eight-year-old, mentally distracted child Dorcas. All of the other accused had stood adamant against the court as had Goode—most of them cursing the court, the judges, and their accusers in no uncertain terms.

Rebecca Nurse alone had maintained her calm resolve, and she’d even blessed her accusers and the judges. She had insisted that “This court and the magistrates and ministers, including Mr. Parris, are all misguided, and your deliberations are not guided by the hand of God but those of Satan himself, who, in my opinion, has orchestrated the entire delusion fallen on Salem.”

The judges pounded their gavels and held firm to their seemingly honest values and well-intentioned viewpoints, and superstitious beliefs, and entrenched customs which masked their hidden motives from the mob. At the same time, the official attitude that’d become so entrenched in Salem could not be so well hidden from those Parris called the ‘dissenting brethren’.

Judge and Major Richard Saltonstall voiced the ruling of the court deciding Mother Nurse’s fate along with her four ‘covenant’ sisters. “All of these women whose hearts are turned to stone against us by the Dark One,” he said after gaveling for silence, “all four are guilty of witchery and murder, offenses punishable by death. Sentence of hanging to be carried out on nineteen July, 1692.”

The date was set—less than four months since Rebecca’s arrest, She, along with three others found guilty to be hung at Watch Hill—which the common man had dubbed Witch Hill. For Jeremy and the Nurses present at the trial wherein Jeremiah Wakely had tried again to introduce the history of animosity between Sister Putnam and Susannah Martin as well as the animosity of three years between Reverend Parris and the Nurse family, but he was drowned out by the hue and cry of the afflicted children who had now perfected their act.

An opposing wail and hue and cry against the injustice of it all fell on deaf ears, and it drew the glaring eyes of the seer children, who seemed to be taking names of those who disagreed with the court.

On leaving the courtroom, the meetinghouse converted into a venue for the Boston authorities, the same venue as Rebecca’s excommunication, Jeremy cautioned the others to remain calm.

“Calm? Calm?” asked Ben.

Joseph agreed. “Damn it, man, we have only twenty days between now and Mother Nurse’s being summarily executed by these swine who—a”

“Keep your voices down,” pleaded Jeremy as the seer children, all smiles, passed from the meetinghouse and down the street, all with a lilt in their step. “Tweny days, which means we’ve got a lot of planning to do.”

“I say we uncover the weapons back of the wagon and take her now!” Ben looked from Jeremy to the other Nurse men.

“You’d fail, Ben,” Serena stood with Jeremy.

“Look round us,” added Jeremy to which the others studied the number of armed guards and militia. “Putnam has seen to it we dare not.”

Serena nodded. “There’re too many of them right now.”

The family, Serena and Francis included, watched Mother Nurse being loaded into the jail cart to be returned to her cell. Ben made a move for a weapon, which lay beneath a blanket back of the wagon, but his brother-in-law, John Tarbell, placed his huge paw atop Ben’s. The two stared long into one another’s eyes, and for a moment everyone thought Ben was going to tear the gun from hiding and start firing and making demands, but he hesitated under Tarbell’s firm hand and words: “We all know ’tis time to act, Ben, but Jeremy’s right.”

Jeremy repeated the litany that he’d preached for days now should the verdict go against Rebecca, as most on their side never believed she could be found guilty. “We need a plan, we must act as one, and we must act with great caution.”

“And we do it by cover of night.”

A hundred sets of eyes in the village watched he Nurse contingent leave peacefully for their farms. The accusations had caused warrants and arrests against many of their clan as it had the Parkers, the Proctors, and others who’d stood by and read into evidence their belief in the piety and true heart of Rebecca Nurse, Goodwives Easty and Cloyse, as well as Elizabeth Proctor and others.

Some villagers expected retaliation against those who’d sworn out arrests, those who had carried out arrests, and quite possibly the magistrates themselves, if not Reverend Parris and villagers who supported Mr. Parris. Among them Thomas Putnam, who’d surrounded himself with more and more militiamen, recruiting many young boys in his camp as well. Some as young as fifteen and sixteen joined the standing militia. In fact, not since the Indian Wars of that murderous, marauding King Phillip had the colony seen so many militiamen drilling daily on the green and firing off that damnable cannon, which as the Nurses, Eastys, Cloyses, and Tarbells rode in their wagons and on their horses from the village, was fired off as if in jubilation of the verdicts handed down today.

Jeremy shouted to his new family, “What expedient measures they take—firing cannon and shot at the very invisible enemy they claim no one can see but the children. Next they will have little girls firing muskets and that bloody cannon at flying broomsticks!”

But no amount of rancor or anger from Jeremy roused a word from the others as each was lost in his and her own thoughts, their attention wrapped about the cursed verdict against Rebecca. Finally, Serena said in so quiet a voice as to seem a butterfly—and yet she was heard by all over the sound of the wagon wheels—“If they can condemn our Mother then no one—no one is safe!”

Even so, there would be no retaliation against any enemy today, not from the Nurse men, or from any of those who’d chosen to marry into the now tainted family. Not today. Today old Fancies Nurse, looking as if a tree had caved in on him and having seen his wife condemned and to be publicly hung alongside the likes of Sarah Goode, had gone mute and sad beyond words. He led his sons, sons-in-law, and remaining daughters-in-law homeward, passing Corey’s Mill—now taken by the authorities like Bishop’s Inn, and next they passed Proctor’s well-located establishment.

“If they don’t get Proctor’s place next,” muttered Ben through gritted teeth.

“It’ll be your place, Pa,” finished Joseph.

“Aye, going for the Nurse lands,” agreed Serena.

“Was their first and largest goal from the beginning,” finished Jeremy.

The procession looked like a funeral parade.

Chapter Two

Nurse Home, late evening, July 11, 1692

With Mother Nurse’s execution date set, this determined Jeremiah Wakely on a path to break the law, as every legal means, strategy, and scheme had been exhausted. He and Serena, with the help of her brothers, planned a prison break and an exit strategy. They must move under cover of darkness when they made their way toward the village jailhouse, knowing they could not wait any longer as the moon meant to increase in size and brightness over the next two weeks, and that no night beyond this one would be as good cover.

They also had it on good authority that Mother Nurse had been returned to the village lockup to await hanging on the nineteenth.

At Francis’ home, where he’d been convinced to wait this out, the Nurse men, Jeremy, and an insistent Serena, using topographical maps that Jeremy had finagled from the courthouse, planned Mother Nurse’s rescue.

Jeremy had pleaded that Serena have nothing to do with the dangerous jail break, that she ought to be nowhere near them when it happened. She would not be reasonable, and would not hear of remaining behind. “Mother will need me,” she insisted.

And she said it dressed as a man, and after the laughter of the others, there was nothing more to be said.

Together now, Ben, Joseph, Tarbell, Serena, and Jeremy made their way by wagon toward the village. As Joseph was an expert horseman and could keep an animal quiet during a thunderstorm, he was left with the wagon at a stand of trees, hidden from prying eyes, while the others made their way afoot to the sound of Joseph’s saying, “I should be with you.”

They had studied every gulley, ditch, and outcropping the geography around the jailhouse offered, and with the jailhouse having been smartly placed northeast at some distance from the rest of the village—so as to not be offensive to the eye, the marauders believed they had a good chance of success.

However, the maps were old, and they didn’t indicate just how ruddy and rough the ground back of the jail had become. Pitted would be a kind word for the place. Some of the men lost their footing, slipping, ankles in jeopardy. Rock outcroppings had sprung up with each new spring here—a peculiarity of all New England. Everyone was soon moving a great deal more cautiously, their efforts slowed down. They meant to get in and out before any sign of dawn.

Tarbell and Ben led the way as both knew the area better than the others.

They’d all agreed that no amount of money could persuade the jailer to look the other way, not with so many eyes on the accused and anxious for the upcoming hangings. In fact, Weed Gatter feared showing any kindness whatsoever to the guilty ever again after Williard’s arrest; he feared he’d set the accusers after him, which made perfect sense. If they could bring down a sheriff, a jailkeeper would be child’s play.

Gatter had said when Jeremy had last spoken to him, “I want naught to do with them afflicted children. My god, man, they’re sendin’ Mr. Williard ’imself to the gallows.”

Ben’s information had led them to one conclusion, that Gatter and any deputies with him at the jail must be dispensed with first. However, no one wanted any killings to go on. To this end, they’d brought gags and plenty of rope.

Just ahead of them, Jeremy and Serena heard the thuds and thumps of a scuffle that was over almost as soon as it’d begun. Tarbell tied Gatter fast and dragged his form to the nearby bushes, tossing him unceremoniously into hiding. From the sound of it, Gatter thought himself being attached by a band of witches.

Ben suddenly jumped a second man who’d been hired on to help Gatter. This fellow, Fiske, had been asleep when he heard the first scuffle. Ben, recognizing him as the builder of the hangman’s scaffold began beating Fiske mercilessly. Fist after pummeling fist, releasing his months’ long frustrations to bloody the man so fast and completely as to blind him with his own blood.

Jeremy pulled Ben from the man, fearing he’d kill him. “Tie him up!” Serena found the keys that Gatter had dropped when attacked, and she knew the exact large skeleton key that opened the stout oak door with its barred window.

Serena got the door open as swiftly as she had sworn to the men that she could, but she rushed inside too quickly as the stench of the arrested and the interior of this place made her reel and near faint. Jeremy grabbed her, holding on. “Are ya all right?”

“I-I’m fine, now let’s find Mother.”

They’d argued against using any lanterns for fear lights would bring attention to their jailbreak.

“What’s going on here?” came a male voice from the black interior.

“Is that you, Sheriff Williard?” asked Serena.

“It’s me, yes.”

Ben poked his head in and shouted, “We’re here to free you all. The door stands open. Run! Find the forests! Run for your lives.”

“It’s the Devil’s court himself that’s locked ye up here,” added Tarbell through a window. “Run!”

Part of the plan was to put the authorities to work chasing down escapees who’d gone in every direction, which would give them time to secret Mother Nurse to Connecticut along with Jeremy and Serena.

“Is that you, Serena? Ben?” It was Mother Nurse, struggling to her feet.

Serena and Rebecca embraced.

“There’s no time! We must hurry!” Jeremy pushed them toward the door. Others were shakily making their way out the single door and into the guiding hands of the Nurse men who urged them on. Some fled but slowly, near incapable of walking. Others stepped out but leaned against the exterior walls from so long without proper nourishment or hope. Some just wanted to breathe real air. Williard, one of the more robust of the prisoners, raised his one good hand and shook with Ben and Tarbell in turn, thanking them and apologizing for having played any part in Rebecca’s arrest.

“She speaks highly of you, Mr. Williard,” Serena told him. “Now Mother, come with me and Jeremy.”

Some thirty or more had rushed away for the tree line, but Rebecca balked at the door. Urged on, she stepped through to freedom and fresh air. She took in a deep breath. Still more prisoners came out behind her, some of these men and women making their way in a zigzag fashion toward escape. “Away from the village,” Jeremy had to tell one daft woman. “Go that way. Find the fields of Salem Farms, Swampscott, Back Bay.”

Mother Nurse sat on Gatter’s three-legged stool, which passed for the jailer’s office. “I’ve the King’s throne now, eh?” she jested.

“If we must carry you, Mother,” began Ben, wrapping his arms about her, “you’re coming with us.”

“We’re spiriting you out of Essex County,” added Tarbell.

“It is over with me, Ben, Serena, John, you others. Over and I’ve made my peace with Our Lord to die for this His cause.”

“God has not cause here, Mother!” Serena tugged at her.

“Don’t be foolish!” Ben pulled and pushed.

“Ah but God has all to do with this, and He’s chosen to put it on me. I’ll not run nor humble myself, nor forsake His bidding. If it weren’t true, what has all these months’ suffering been for—for all the incarcerated, excommunicated, and guilty by false accusation? We, the stone hearts?”

“You can’t martyr yourself to this cause, Mother Nurse,” Jeremy’s anguished plea made her smile up at him.

“You’re a good man, Jeremiah Wakely; truly you are! And a fine son. Francis has told me how wonderful you are to my Serena. Ben, John, you all must think not of me but of your own safety and futures. If there’s to be an end to this madness, you men must lead the way. You can’t do that from behind bars.”

“But you can?” shouted Serena, out of patience.

“Enough, Mother!” Ben lost his temper. “Enough of your pious words. The time for words is over. Now get up and come along!” Ben’s tears freely came.

Tarbell approached Rebecca. “I’ll take you over my shoulder if need be.”

Rebecca raised a hand to halt Tarbell. “Hold. You’ll do no such thing, John. I won’t be dragged from my promise to God like a sack of potatoes over your shoulder—by any of you! Hear me? Do You?” She grabbed the keys from Serena, rushed back inside her prison and threw the door closed behind her, locking them all out.

Ben shouted for her to stop, and he tried a grab but too late. Rebecca had successfully locked both herself and the keys within.

“What’re you doing, Mother?” Serena was at the barred door, nose to nose with Rebecca. “Give me those keys.”

“It’s over, and you’ve done your kindness for others. Now go!” Rebecca lifted the keys to their eyes, but she held them away from anyone’s grasp. “I’m staying put.”

“But they’ll hang you certain!” Ben rattled the bars. “In eight days, Mother!”

“A fate delivered to my doorstep by God, Ben, Serena—please accept His will.”

“God would not have you die so, Mother.” Serena’s tears threatened to blind her. “Suppose you’re wrong, Mother?” asked Ben. “Suppose you’re wrong?”

“I tell you it is true.”

“What? What is true?” Serena banged the unforgiving bars.

“In my useless old age—my last days—He has put me to a final test of faith as sure as Abraham and Job. But it is not for you, Serena, nor my sons, nor Jeremiah to suffer this. Go now! You endanger yourselves terribly!”

“And Father? What of Father?” Serena leaned in against the locked, impenetrable door.

Jeremiah put his arms about Serena, her heaving sobs absorbed into his palms. “Rebecca refuses to come away with us.”

“No, Mother, I don’t care what God’s whispered in your ear! You must give yourself up to us, now!”

“To let us decide for me?”

Serena turned to Jeremy, beating his chest with her fists! “Jeremy, she’s out of her mind! Do something!”

Jeremy had watched the woman he loved go back and forth over this issue of whether her mother had a right to her belief and faith and stand, or that Ben was right—that Rebecca was like a child and unable to make sound decisions any longer. The strain had taken an enormous toll on everyone who loved Rebecca but Serena and Ben in particular. The two of them were her babies over whom Rebecca had always doted and had never before said no to.

“She’s clear of mind, Serena,” Jeremy firmly said now, “and it’s a path she clearly wants to take, and she holds the key.”

Serena went to Tarbell. “Why didn’t you grab her up over your shoulder, John? Rather than just talk about it? If you had, she’d be with us now! And we’d be home and boarding for Connecticut.”

“I-I-I’m sorry, Serena.” Tarbell looked like a bear that’d been shot.

“No, John! Sorry’s not enough!” Serena stood a head shorter than the big man. She then turned on Jeremy again. “And you? Why couldn’t you’ve grabbed her before she closed that door?”

“Stop it, daughter! Go from here, all of you. Please, Serena.”

Ben pushed Serena so hard she fell. Jeremy stood toe-to-toe with Ben and Tarbell, who’d together lifted a log cut into a bench. They rammed the thick, metal-belted door once, twice, three times without a dent.

“Hold on, you men.” Jeremy had helped Serena back to her feet. “Mother Nurse’s wishes must be respected, Ben. It’s the last thing your Father told us! That if she refuses to come of her own volition—”

“I won’t let her commit suicide.” Ben stood, eyes ablaze, hands wrapped about the bench.

“Let me go, Ben, John!” Mother Nurse began pounding the other side of the solid door.

“It’s no good, Ben,” said Jeremy. “Your mother’s mind is set on one course alone, and the damnable noise you’re making, and if Fiske comes around, we’re all marked men!”

“You shut up, Wakely! You don’t know a damn thing! Been wrong every sep of the way.”

“Listen to him, Ben!” Rebecca reached through the bars on the door as if trying to touch her youngest son. “This is my fight, Ben! Now you all must leave me to it! You as well, Serena, Jeremy, John! Get yourselves free of this place, all of you!”

They heard men on horses coming toward the jail. It appeared from this distance, to Jeremy, that more prisoners were being escorted, arriving from Boston some seventeen miles away.

“Tell everyone in the family that I am on solid ground, of sound mind, and answering God’s will,” Rebecca continued. “Now, go!”

Ben kissed his mother’s outstretched hand, holding on. She’d dropped the keys in the darkness behind her, and using her other hand, she hit Ben for his trouble. “Go! Now! Remember I love you all.”

“You’re asking us to leave you to certain death.” Ben stood frozen, unable to leave her.

“True Ben, but a death meted out for me by God. It is His will, and His will be done.”

“Damn the God that asks this of you!” Ben shook his mother’s outstretched limbs.

She slapped Ben even harder across the face. “Do not mock my God, Ben.”

Ben cowered. “I’m sorry, Mother, it’s just so hard to-to walk away and leave you here in this hole.”

“Just do it. Be a man for me, son. All of you, go before you’re found out! My worst nightmare is that they’ll have cause to arrest my children. Go now, all of you!”

The men on horseback, a jail cart pulling behind them, were coming in sight of the jail. “We mustn’t be recognized,” Jeremy cautioned the others, pulling Serena off.

Tarbell and the others followed. Ben finally rushed to catch up.

“This way!” Jeremy pointed. “Safest retreat! Follow my lead.” He’d taken Serena by the hand, guiding her off into the night.

Serena looked back at her mother, a sense of guilt and confusion threatening to overwhelm her. “Don’t look back, Serena.” Jeremy tugged her onward thinking of the biblical story of Lot and his wife.

They were followed by Ben and Tarbell, and soon searching again for Joseph who’d been elected to stay with the horse and wagon to keep close watch there and to keep the animal calm. They had emptied out the jail, but they’d failed in their objective—to free Mother Nurse.

No one made another sound save their footfalls as they made their way back to the hidden wagon and Joseph.

By now the men who’d arrived with the new prisoners were reviving Weed Gatter, and his deputy, Fiske, and Gatter could be heard moaning and cursing and assessing the damage and losses at the jail. The words ‘bloody hell’ wafted up to their ears, and Jeremy thought he heard Fiske cursing something about being set upon by a covenant of powerful witches.

When they relocated Joseph, and he saw that they’d returned without his mother, he went a little crazy until Tarbell and Ben sat on him and calmed him to a chorus of his shouting, “I knew I should’ve gone!”

Jeremy shushed them as men were beating the bushes now in search of the escapees, and they were getting near.

The Nurse clan and Jeremy climbed onto the wagon and quietly, sadly the group made its way back toward Francis’s home. “How’re we going to tell the old man?” Ben wanted to know.

Serena didn’t miss a beat. “We tell him the truth.”

“What, that you botched the whole of it?” asked Joseph.

“Look here, Joseph!” shouted Serena. “You weren’t there, so ya dunno what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, you’re off the hook,” added Ben. “Ya know nothing of it!”

“Joseph,” began Jeremy, his heart filled with sympathy for them all. “Somehow your mother sees this ordeal as giving meaning to her death.” This made the others look at Jeremy. He shrugged and gave them a look that loudly said—well it’s true. “Mother Nurse knows she’s dying—has since the beginning of this sordid affair.”

“What’re you saying. Wakely?” asked Tarbell as the wagon rolled on, striking a rock but not slowing.

“I’m saying, she thought she might die last winter. She believes—”

“That God saved her for this trial before sending the Reaper.” Serena squeezed Jeremy’s arm where they sat in the rear of the wagon. “I suppose in some way that . . . she has no choice.”

The wagon moved on. Not long after, they heard horses coming in their wake, night riders eating their dust as if after them here on the road. Men with torches and guns suddenly raised up all around them in the darkness, and their leader, Sheriff Herrick, shouted, “You aboard! Pull to and stop!”

Joseph, driving the team, had no choice. Ben’s fingers were on the hidden weapons. Serena held tight to Jeremy’s arm, and Tarbell stood up in the wagon and shouted, “That you, Sheriff? What’s the trouble?”

“Tarbell?”

“Aye, ’tis me and some of my family.”

“And have you come from the jailhouse in the village now?”

Some of the others on horseback grumbled and made remarks, wondering why Herrick wasn’t simply throwing them in irons. But Herrick quelled them with a single blast of his rifle skyward, startling men and beasts. Joseph had to quell the jittery team, getting down from his seat to do so.

Herrick asked of the people in the wagon, “Why’re you out past the court’s curfew, all of you?”

“Curfew?” asked Tarbell.

“Aye, curefew, man!”

“But I don’t think it applies beyond the boundaries of the village, Mr. Herrick,” Jeremy countered.

“Who is that, speaking?” It was Thomas Putnam in his uniform still.

“Why it’s Jeremiah Wakely,” said Bray Wilkins beside Putnam. “That imposter priest. He’s behind this matter at the jailhouse!”

“What matter at the jailhouse?” asked Tarbell. “We know of no such matter?”

“Where’re ya coming from, then?” demanded Putnam, holding a gun on them.

“We’ve just come from the family plot to pay respects to the dead. Went there a bit late but it was on the spur, ya see.”

“Family plot?” asked Herrick.

“Take them under suspicion!” shouted Putnam at Herrick.

“Hold on, all of you! This is a civil matter, and I am in charge, not the militia. So you’ll not be taking orders from Mr. Putnam, not tonight, not here and not now.”

This only calmed the men somewhat. Jeremy could literally feel their enmity and venom as if in waves passing over everyone in the wagon, and he worried terribly for Serena, and he was angry with himself for allowing her out with them. So far, she was being taken for a man and being smart enough to keep silent.

“Okay, I want you men to sound off, and Nigel here will take your names, and if we need speak to you by light of the sun, we’ll come find you then. Now sound off!”

“John Tarbell!”

“Ben Nurse!”

“Joseph Nurse!”

“You know me,” said Jeremy.

Serena cleared her throat and sent up a coughing jag, to which Jeremy said, “Young Killean Wakely, my half brother visiting from Woburn.”

“Put him down, too,” ordered Herrick.

“We only stopped at the cemetery plot,” said Ben. “We’re returning from John’s home to my father’s place.”

“Coming from a birthing party!” added Joseph, returning to the reins and his seat beside John. “Tarbell’s done fathered another one again—or haven’t ye heard?” He slapped Tarbell on the back and the two laughed good-naturedly. “Makes four, right, John?”

Tarbell spoke with a drunken slur. “Plenty of Canary wine!”

“So you mean fellows had naught to do with breaking out prisoners down at the jail?”

“A jailbreak? Tonight?” Ben sounded amazed at the notion.

“You may search our wagon, but you’ll find naught but a few jugs of whiskey,” Joseph added.

“Gotta keep Tarbell happy the way you do a bear!” Ben joked.

When the night riders didn’t laugh with Ben, he shouted, “All right then, do you see any prisoners here? Go ahead, search the wagon! We’ll get down and you can have at it.” Ben leapt off and onto the dirt path.

“If we were to break anyone from jail, it’d be our dear, sainted Mother,” Joseph added. “Do you see Mother Nurse here?”

“Fact is,” replied Herrick, giving the wagon and its occupants a cursory look, “your mother was one of a few who didn’t escape the jail.”

Jeremy had noticed a number of prisoners too sick or too depleted to stand much less run from the jail. He spoke up. “If we’d had any notion there’d been a jailbreak ahhh . . . do you need men to help you, sir?”

The men with Herrick grumbled at this, and there was a brief discussion before Herrick returned with, “We’ve enough men, but thanks for the offer, Mr. Wakely.”

Jeremy and the others instinctively knew the others did not trust them. “Well then if you’re satisfied, Sheriff,” said Joseph, “we’ll be on our way.”

Ben, seeing his bluff had worked, leapt back onto the wagon.

“Yes, be off,” said Herrick.. “But when these escapees are caught, if they should point a finger at you Nurse men, you will be arrested for aiding and abetting fugitives, some of whom have been condemned as witches.”

“And good luck to you.” Jeremy waved Herrick and his men off.

The moment Herrick and his men rode out of earshot, Serena whispered, “You’re the consummate liars Ben, Joe! And you, my husband. So I am now your brother?”

“Half brother!”

She lightly thumped him and laughed.

“I’m sorry about your mother, dear heart. Really I am. I’d hoped that faced with our all of us well intentioned children of hers, putting our lives on the chopping block that . . . well she’d change her mind and come with us.”

“My prayer too. Unanswered.”

“You have to admire her determination and faith.”

“I do. Still it saddens me.”

“She’s dying for her faith,” muttered Ben, who’d gone solemn.

“There’re worse things to die for,” Jeremy assured the others.

Serena dropped her head and her weight against him. Jeremy held her close.

“She’s already dead.” It was Ben, still full of self-recriminations at having failed this night.

The rest of the trip home was uneventful and silent. Each of them had gone to their thoughts, and their thoughts were cast in fear.

Chapter Three

July 19^th came like a fast wind. Rebecca and the four others to be executed with her stepped from the jail and clambered up the boards laid over the muck by Gatter, boards leading up and into the jail cart. It’d had a former life as an ox cart, but with modifications, the huge, creaking wooden wheels now carried an entire metal cage forged of wrought iron. Flat bars as thick as a man’s arms. Now the Witch Cart as it was called was filled with the five to be sent to heaven or hell depending on what an onlooker believed. The cart seemed to rattle, but this noise came of the shackles around the ankles and wrists of the accused. A new order since the jailbreak was that prisoners be kept in chains at all times.

And so the noisy, rattling of chains filled the air with each turn of the wheels on the cart pulled by two oxen provided by Judge Corwin. The cart bounced over rough terrain and trundled off toward Watch Hill and the gallows—at times looking as if it might tilt completely over. When the cart would teeter on the verge of tilting, Anne Putnam, Mercy Lewis, Mary Wolcott and other girls who’d joined them in accusing so many people of witchcraft would shout and scream that they saw a crowd of other witches—invisible to the general public—trying desperately to knock over the cart to impede its progress and stop the hangings.

To be sure, the villagers had turned out in droves to witness what might happen next; everyone was curious for one reason or the other. Most curious to see if the accused might not at the last break and shout out their guilt and beg for the milk of human kindness and the olive branch offered by the judges and the ministers: that if the guilty but state their crimes and name names of others equally guilty of bewitchments and murder, that they would be spared. That their stone hearts could be melted, and that they could be rehabilitated to the love of Christ and God, and the hatred of the Antichrist.

Many another in the holding cells across the colony had repented, so why not these facing the rope—minutes now away?

Other villagers came in the hope of seeing the witches hung no matter what they confessed. Still others came to see the result of their handiwork—among them Reverend Samuel Parris, while others came to bid loved ones a final adieu even if from a distance, like the proud and upright Nurse family.

The sky, a brilliant, blinding mix of sunshine, blue, and scattered pure white cloud looked down on the falling-apart ox drawn cart. Children chased alongside the jail cart, some throwing clumps of dirt and rocks at the accused within, and a crowd the likes of which Salem had never seen awaited the cart at its destination below Mr. Fiske’s finely wrought gallows with its equally spaced six platforms of which only five would be put to use today.

Suddenly, Sarah Goode raised a fist to them, cursing the children who dared throw rotten eggs and apples and tomatoes at the bars, splattering ugly juices onto the condemned. The celebrated children capable of seeing into the Invisible World of Satan only shouted back, ridiculing Goode and the others in the cart.

Rebecca Nurse knew of the Invisible World only from her reading about it in books—one of them penned by Increase Mather. She believed the notion had a place in every Puritan text. But at no time in the history of Essex County or the Massachusetts Bay Colony had anyone seen into this world—certainly not to the degree and accuracy of determining that an invisible witch held a knitting needle dripping with blood, one that she plunged into children who then fell into a dead faint.

But for now, Rebecca must concentrate on God’s glorious other world—also invisible to men, also taken on faith alone, that place where she was staring at the entire time where she stood in the cart—skyward. She took in the azure expanse of it, and the inviting clouds that seemed to be opening up and beckoning her within. The crowd around her had faded into nothingness.

People seeing her in a sort of trance began to point and speak of Witch Nurse’s looking so at peace. Hearing this going around, the chief accusing children began to call it not peace but an attempt to contact an army of witches to descend upon them all.

Rebecca heard none of this; she was beyond it, above it. The idea that she was in God’s hands and would soon be in God’s house controlled her entirely now, and it was in this frame of mind that she remained calm and in an attitude of acceptance and prayer, which many in the crowd both recognized and understood. Among these the entire contingent from her large, extended family—many of whom, Serena and Jeremy among them, felt a sense of overwhelming pride in her and peace for her, as if they together all sent up a shared prayer and each word was the same.

Whereas Goode, and to a lesser degree the other women condemned to die this day, presented a picture of hatred and rancor as they engaged the crowd, cursing at them all as if dealing with a single rabid animal they must destroy if by no other words than a dying woman’s curse, Rebecca conveyed as gentle a nature as a lamb led to slaughter but without the innocence; rather in her eye was a knowing look when she did chose to scan the crowd—a look that said, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” It was an attitude she’d preached to the others in the cell with her this entire time, and she had given hope and faith beyond the gallows to any number of her converts behind bars, and in fact, she had even converted her jailer, Weed Gatter—or so it was being bandied about. In fact, those who shared the cart to the gallows with her had all taken her teachings as Rebecca, no matter her excommunication and condemnation before the authorities and her accusers remained a teacher of the Good Book. And the only soul that had not been touched by her and converted to the faith that kept Rebecca strong in the face of this horror tale remained Sarah Goode.

The others in the cart now bowed their heads and began to pray with Mother Nurse. They prayed now for a speedy end.

Their accusers got to the foot of the gallows ahead of the cart, awaiting them. The accusing children and many adults who’d accused the condemned continued to scream in torment and agony at the foot of the gallows. Some wallowing in the mud and shouting that the invisible cohorts of the condemned were trying to suffocate them in the mud. It turned into a mud romp and a mud fight, the stuff being slung over the heads of those crowded nearest the afflicted children.

Seeing this from where they stood on a buckboard at a good distance, Jeremy said to Serena, “Blood and mud pies they will have and laugh in private to make fools of us all.”

Serena held an arm around her father, who had insisted on being on hand. As had Joseph and Tarbell. Ben had gotten on a horse and had ridden in the opposite direction, and no one knew where he might end up this day.

“Sad day in New England when nothing short of hanging five women can end this suffering,” Francis said, his eyes raining tears.

“Goodwife Nurse has lived a lie!” shouted Anne Putnam Senior, her eyes wild, her voice giddy, her clothes covered in mud that continued to fly, thanks to her daughter and the others.

“She’s a murderer! Same as Goode!” shouted Thomas Putnam, his uniform splotched from the mud slinging as well.

“She’s flying over the gallows!” screeched Mercy Lewis, pointing overhead and circling. “Do you see? Can you not see her invisible shape!”

“There, there!” They all pointed to the top of the gallows and the treetops and many saw a strange, preternatural wind moving the leaves.

“Evidence it is! “ shouted Mary Wolcott. “Evidence Mother Nurse has sent her invisible demon through the bars to chase after us!”

Mercy Lewis screamed, “Belying the hag’s false serenity!”

“Look you all here!” Anne Putnam Junior held up a knitting needle dripping blood to the sunlight. “She’s stabbed me with it, here!” She held up her underarm, displaying a splotch of blood.

“She done stabbed me in my petticoats!” added Mercy, showing a bloody splotch on her clothes.

The accused by now were ordered from the cart and onto the gallows steps. Soon they lined the gantry, facing the crowd.

Goode shook rattling chains and her fists at the crowd and laid on a terrible curse on them all but in particular, she signaled out Reverend Samuel Parris. “May your life dry up like bone, and may your progeny curse you forever!”

Rebecca raised a single hand and the crowd silenced their booing of Goode to hear her soft words. “I forgive you, one and all. You know not what you do.”

This slowed the cries for blood for half a minute until Anne Putnam Junior fell over in a dead faint. Other of her young colleagues in the business of seeing into the Invisible World of Satan screamed and chanted that Mother Nurse did it. Mercy shouted, “That Nurse witch has struck Anne down by use of her invisible other shape!”

The crowd chose once more to join in the chant to hang the witches.

The nooses had been placed over each of five heads now covered with grain sacks, save for the two most callous of the witches, according to the children—Goode and Nurse, who had both declined the blindfold, each for a different reason. Opposing reasons—Goode so she might face her accusers and continue cursing them with her evil eye and to spit venom at the crowd; Rebecca because as she cried out, “I will meet my Maker as I am.”

Reverend Parris in a show of mercy, pleaded for a final time for the condemned to petition him for mercy, to recant any oaths they’d given George Burroughs and the Antichrist, to save their souls by way of confession. None shouted for Parris’ so-called mercy, and Goode, seeing a bucket of water at her feet kicked out and sent it splashing over Parris’ black coat and face. Goode giggled and shouted, “The water is like my curse on ye, Samuel Paris—a stain on your soul! Reverend!”

The trap below Goode was pulled hard by the hangman as if anxious to shut her up; in that instant, Sarah Goode danced on air, body fell and yanked so hard as to crack her head on the underside of the platform—a crack loud enough to bring a groan to many in the crowd. The crack and subsequent snap of her neck swapped prominence with one another. Her legs didn’t kick long as she was almost instantly killed, but her body continued an eerie twitching to the shouts of the crowd. Clapping rose from the accusers.

This clapping continued as Susannah Martin’s form dropped, and Mrs. Putnam swooned, fainting straightaway to Little Anne’s terrifying revelation that even in death, Susannah Martin’s spectral self had stabbed her mother. She held up a bloody hand to prove it. The hand was discolored with red and the brown of dried mud.

The third trap flew open and Elizabeth How fell kicking, her death rattle drowned out by further clapping and cheering. The fourth trap went and with it Sarah Wildes whose overlarge eyes had always marked her as a witch in Topsfield. Those same eyes now grew as her throat was stretched and she kicked until no more movement was left, and yet some in the crowd said her eyes remained alive and staring and emitting an evil on anyone who stared too long into her gaze.

Only Rebecca remained and some cried out from the crowd, urging her to return to her former pious life, to give up her coven names, and to repent of her evildoing. But it was as if Rebecca could neither see nor hear any of them, including Parris, until her gaze skyward came down on him. For a long, silent moment, with Parris halfway up the gallows stairs, their eyes met. In that moment she seared his soul with a smile, and Samuel Parris had one realization that made him stumble from the gallows.

“What did she say to you?” Putnam asked him.

Deacon Ingersoll grabbed hold of Parris who seemed to have become dazed—perhaps bewitched at the last by Rebecca Nurse. “Did she say something? I could not hear over the crowd and the accusers!”

“No, she said nothing.”

“The eye? She gave you the evil eye?”

“I-I’m all right. None of them can touch me,” he lied. Deep within his soul, Parris had felt a painful truth, that he had just looked into the eyes of one of the chosen among them—someone who from the beginning of time—had her name in God’s book; he realized she was innocent of every single accusation raised against her. He realized that it was the first time he had considered the woman completely without guilt, and that she was bound for the place every Puritan prayed for, and he also realized at the same moment that he was not. That his soul was trapped here and in perdition if not Hades.

# # # # #

From the distance that they chose to safely maintain, the Nurse family watched the inevitable tragedy unfold at the gallows, seeing the condemned summarily killed one after the other while armed militia and guards stood all around to prevent any disturbance of this officially sanctioned murder. And they had seen the moment between Mother Nurse and Samuel Parris, and how disturbed he appeared as he stumbled off. He did not stop but rushed away, going back toward the village in his black uniform, alone. He did not turn back and did not watch when the final platform was dropped, its hinges crying out.

Rebecca had lost a great deal of weight while in prison, and when she fell, her weight was not so taut on the rope as the others, all of whom were heftier. As a result, Rebecca suffered longer—so long, in fact, it was no longer fun for the more sober among the crowd, especially when they watched the blood spilling over her lips and marring her clothing at what seemed the very spot where Christ had been pierced by a Roman spear while he suffered on the cross. In fact, someone shouted, “She is a martyr to this madness! She is closer to God and Christ than any man, woman, or child here!” The voice sounded like some drunkard, but in a moment Serena and Jeremy realized it was Ben! He had come with a wagon, the rear decked out with blankets and a pillow like an oversized coffin. He drove through the crowd, parting them and placing the bed of the wagon as close to his mother’s body as he could. Tarbell and Joseph rushed to join him, and by now Ben had a huge knife in hand, making his way beneath the gallows, and shouting through the drop, “You, bloody hangman! You cut her down or I will!”

For some time the crowd had fallen silent, as they’d been watching Rebecca’s considerably slower death throes. None of them had ever seen five witches hung all in a row, nor anyone take so long to die in this manner as Mother Nurse. Some thought she may have escaped death somehow.

Herrick, Putnam, and a small army of armed men had also moved in on Ben when they saw the knife and understood his intentions. Others held back Tarbell and Joseph at gunpoint. By this time Jeremy had leapt into what was building to a fight.

“The magistrates have ordered the condemned remain here!” Herrick challenged Ben below the gallows, holding a smooth bore gun on him, the men within two feet of one another.

“What do you mean, remain here?”

“They’ll swing here until nightfall. It’s my orders.”

“You filthy barbarians!” he shouted loud enough for all to hear.

“It’s a matter of example,” replied Herrick. “An example to anyone who turns to the dark arts and—”

“My mother is no witch and never was!”

Jeremy had somehow managed to meander and zigzag through the crowed to get to Ben. He stepped between Ben, brandishing the knife while Herrick pointed his deadly weapon on one side, and Ptunam—itchy finger at the ready—on the other side. Jeremy had no weapon and he held both hands in the air. “No one need get hurt here.”

“Tell your kinsman here, Mr. Wakely,” began Herrick, never taking his eyes off Ben, “the bodies of the hanged witches remain swingin’ on the rope the rest of the day.”

“But these are mothers, sisters, aunts here,” Jeremy pleaded. “Haven’t you taken enough of this man’s dignity and soul?” Jeremy pointed to Ben.

“We’ve orders—until dusk.”

“At which time, we can take Mother Nurse’s remains home, Ben,” Jeremy said, trying to defuse this situation.

“Don’t misunderstand me, Mr. Wakely,” countered Herrick.

“What? What’re you saying?”

“We cut them down at dusk, but the bodies remain here—as with Bishop’s body.”

Jeremy saw now that a huge, communal hole had been dug back of the scaffolding—a common grave. In fact, he saw the decayed forearm and hand of Bridget Bishop looking at first like the exposed root of a tree. “You can’t be serious!”

“It’s our orders, man!” shouted Putnam from behind Jeremy, making Jeremy wheel around to face Thomas.

“Have you men no heart left?”

“This is not up to us. We just take orders.” Putnam looked as if he might fire at the least provocation. “Now if you two are bent on standing in the way of official business, we in the militia and Mr. Herrick’s office, we cut the ropes, and we guard against the witches coming back to life or being carried off and buried in consecrated ground.”

“What is the point of not turning over the dead to their families?” Jeremy persisted.

“Example,” Herrick repeated.

“A condemned witch—which is what these five are,” added Putnam, “go to Hell together, right here at the foot of Watch Hill.”

“Look, it’s not anything we wanted; it’s what the judges and the ministers have said.”

“Left in shallow graves? You know there’re wolves hereabout, pigs, vultures.”

“Forget about trying any reason with these Christians,” Ben said to Jeremy. He threw the knife with such speed no one realized it until it twanged inches from Putnam’s eyes where it had dug deep into the post beside him. “Come on, Jeremy.” Ben charged from beneath the gallows, climbed behind the reins on the wagon with Jeremy beside him, and pulled away. Joseph caught up and leapt onto the back and extended a hand to Tarbell who, in turn, followed suit.

“The bastards!” Ben shouted, tears freely flowing as they rushed from the throng.

# # # # #

Serena stood far back on a hill watching the charade, her heart crushed by the events, glad only that she’d managed to talk many of her nephews and nieces to stay away from the executions. Francis leaned against her as if he might faint; seeing his beloved executed in this manner was unbearable, and she had done all she could to keep him away even to the extent that she would stay back with him. However, her father insisted as he still held onto the belief that at the last moment, those who had set his wife up in this false business would simply be unable to follow through—not with Rebecca. The others maybe, but not Rebecca.

Serena had watched the incident with Ben racing in for their mother’s body, and she’d feared they might lose Ben as well, and perhaps even Jeremy when she watched him rush down toward the gallows along with Joseph and Tarbell and other Nurse men who’d come to see this horrid injustice unfold. She now breathed a sigh of relief on seeing Ben, Jeremy, and the others race off in the wagon, unharmed and not arrested.

Serena wrapped a blanket around her father, who, despite the heat, was shivering as if with chilled, and sitting him beside her, she tore off in the wagon, rushing from this place and wishing to put the ugly images behind them, but also anxious to reunite with Jeremy and her brothers. They soon did reunite on the road back to Francis’ home, what had been Rebecca’s home. When Jeremy saw Serena racing her team to catch up, he told Ben to slow his horses. In a moment, the two wagons were alongside one another on the wide Ipswich Road.

“Tonight,” Jeremy shouted to the others and stood to shift his weight, and then to leap from the one wagon to the other to rejoin Serena and Francis. “Tonight at first dark, we go in and get our Mother Nurse.”

“You do that, but we’re taking Father home,” Serena told the brothers in the other wagon.

Jeremy kissed and hugged her and said, “I’m going, too.”

“There are three of them, and they hardly need your help.”

“I need to do this, Serena.”

She kissed him. “You frightened me once already today. I thought sure Putnam was going to shoot you.”

“He hadn’t the nerve.”

“If you must do this, Jeremy, and I think you must—come back to me safe, and keep the others safe.”

Jeremy nodded and leapt back onto the other wagon. Without a word, every man aboard knew what they wanted and how they would go about it.”

# # # # #

They waited in a nearby wood for nightfall. When it came, they waited longer still. When they determined everyone was gone from Watch Hill and the gallows, the brothers crept back to that awful place where they had seen their mother perish so horribly for no other reason than her abiding piety.

Without benefit of torches or light beyond the half moon going in and out of clouds like a galleon at sea, they came upon the bodies sprawled and stiff, limbs akimbo in the pitted, stony hole dug below the gallows and poorly covered over. At some point, someone in official authority was supposed to have come along and thrown dirt over the pit, to give the condemned a semblance of a burial. But so far that hadn’t happened. Instead, a handful of shovels had worked here and that was that.

Jeremiah and Serena’s brothers, going amid the bodies, saw first the ungainly, monstrous, gaping, toothless mouth of Sarah Goode as if shouting into eternity. Jeremy practically tripped over her in the dark. Recalling that Goode was first to fall, they followed the trail of body parts and clothing and soon located the others, all easier to pass, as their faces remained obliterated by the grain sack hoods. They made their way over the rocks and the exposed roots, stumbling until all stood over the remains of Rebecca Nurse—horribly contorted.

Shakily, tentatively each man found a hold on Rebecca while Jeremy tore off the remainder of the noose still round her neck like a fallen halo. A distant sound of thunder like drums rose at that moment, and in the sky over the too distant ocean, they watched lightning strikes.

In a solemn, silent processional, the men hefted the surprisingly light Mother Nurse overhead. One of her arms was erect and stiff, her fingers reaching skyward for as if grasping at her eternity. Anyone who saw these four men carrying the silhouetted figure against the lightning strikes must think it strange.

The four brothers took her homeward to be buried in a private plot of land prepared for her in a place they believed no one would ever find, and yet a perfect place for Rebecca. It’d been Serena’s idea as to where to bury their mother—at Rebecca’s favorite tree, her circle. It would become her final resting place, and until the upturned earth offered no clue to outsiders, the grave would be placed under the largest of the picnic tables.

When they arrived at Francis and Rebecca’s home, Francis and Serena raced out to meet Rebecca in her homecoming. Her extremities had relaxed, and she no longer seemed quite so contorted. Francis only concentrated on her features, and with a handkerchief he wiped away dirt from her gray head. Serena dabbed at her face with a wet cloth, and soon the gentle and familiar features returned, and she appeared in a deep and peaceful slumber.

Tarbell, tears in his eyes, excused himself. “We’ve a coffin to make, Joseph, Ben.” The three of them went for the barn and the tools necessary. Jeremy held Serena close and Francis started a conversation, not with them, but with his beloved, and without having to be told that it was private, Serena led Jeremy away to allow Francis time alone with Rebecca.

Before they got to the porch, from behind them, they heard only sobbing.

Before dawn broke, a ceremony over Rebecca’s remains was performed, during which Francis broke down. The same men still fatigued from the previous day’s horrors, and from “robbing” the authorities of one of their murdered ‘witches’, and building a proper coffin sang Rebecca’s favorite three hymns. Serena said the Lord’s Prayer, and with the brothers covering the coffin and arranging the table over it, Serena and Jeremy put Francis to bed. The old man had aged exponentially since this terror had first touched his home.

# # # # #

The following morning, and indeed all the previous night, Jeremiah feared for Serena’s safety, feared that she could be accused, feared that she become the subject of a warrant and arrest, and all that followed. They’d all seen the insanity engulf Francis and Rebecca. Poor Francis had become a shell of himself, occasionally shaking a fist at God and condemning Him for the deeds of the men in the village, adding, “Rebecca said it was all due His plan, a plan so inscrutable that not one of us lowly creatures could possibly understand it.” He laughed. “Perhaps in the distant future He will make it clear to generations to come how we allowed children to dictate life and death in Salem Village.”

It didn’t come as a complete surprise to Serena when Jeremy woke her with bloodshot eyes, with a plea. “Come away with me.”

“Do you really think Connecticut is far enough, Jeremy? Was Maine far enough for Reverend George Burroughs?”

It’d become general knowledge that George Burroughs had been returned to Salem in chains, arrested in Casco Bay, Maine, dragged back here, placed on trial, and found guilty, and that he now merely awaited hanging.

When Jeremy didn’t answer her, Serena climbed from bed and paced their room. “Tell me, Goodman Wakely, where is a safe place?”

He stuttered, unsure what to say. When he did speak, he chose his words carefully. “All I know is that I see the way those deadly frightful girls in the village stare at you, and I want an end to this madness before it takes—” He stopped short.

“Before they take me as they did Mother, and my two aunts?”

“It’s obvious you’re on their death list, and they’ll have to strike me dead to have you the way they got your mother.”

“We can’t just leave. We’ve got Father to think of.”

“We must talk him into going with us.”

She shook her head. “He’ll never leave this land; he’s already told me to be certain to bury him below the same tree as Mother out there. Says after things return to normal that he wanted the boys to build a wrought iron fence around them and to paint that fence white.”

Jeremy again was at a loss for words. He rubbed his hand into the stubble on his face. He’d not shaved in days and a dark beard had begun to form.

“There’s no answer for it, Jeremy. None.”

“Not here, perhaps; perhaps in Boston.”

“Go back there then, Jeremy. Go and learn what you can from that Barbados witch. I know you believe there’s answers there, and I thought you’d have gone before now to seek those answers.”

“I couldn’t leave you alone here, Serena. Last time I left and returned, your mother was arrested and locked away.”

“I will be all right. I’ll stay out of the village.”

“I’d worry the entire time.”

“And if you stay here and do nothing? How worried will you be? And you, like Ben, will likely be shot dead if you’re not more careful.”

“I just don’t feel right leaving you during this awful time.”

“Jeremy, you’ve wanted to question that woman since you saw her in that Boston jail. I wish now I’d encouraged you back then. Listen to me, now! Go and come back to me safely.”

“Promise me then that you’ll not leave your father’s house.”

“I promise! Now it’s early. Go while you have the light. If you get there early enough, you could bribe the guard, have your interrogation, and be back here by morning tomorrow. No one even need know you’re gone.”

“I imagine you’re right.”

“I am generally right, yes. Now go before I change my mind.”

“Or mine.”

“Go, saddle up, Jeremy; I’ll make you a breakfast. Send you off with some biscuits for Dancer.”

Despite the fact her back was to him, Jeremy saw that she was crying. He had held her the entire night. He knew it would take a long time for her wounds to heal.

She was right on one item. Jeremiah had so wanted to have a face-to-face with Tituba Indian. But he wanted to tell Serena that everything was going to be all right, that sensible minds would eventually prevail, but he did not believe it any longer himself. He had no answers. And he doubted he’d find any in Boston either.

Still he wanted to try.

He walked out into the early, busy morning: birds chasing about, squirrels playing tag, butterflies seeking flowers, the sun reflecting off the dewy grass. He went straight for the barn, and once there, alone with Dancer, he allowed himself a wailing moan that came from his gut. Tears followed. He wiped his eyes and bridled Dancer and cinched the saddle, tugging hard. “To Boston then in search of truth,” he spoke to Dancer, who whinnied. “If there be any. Certainly, justice is gone.”

“You’ll find none of it here,” came a voice from behind him. It was Ben in the next stall. He’d been drinking, heavily.

Jeremy went to Ben, recalling him as a tadpole, so much smaller than him and Joseph ten years ago, and now he was bigger than both. Jeremy didn’t know what could be said to soothe how hurt young Ben felt.

Jeremy explained that he needed Ben to look after Serena.”

“Why? Where’re you rushing off to on that charger of yours.”

“She’s a mare, no charger.”

“Where to?”

“Boston.”

“Alone? Why not take Serena with you.”

“She won’t leave your father right now.”

“You’re her husband, man! Just tell her what’s what.”

“Tell me what?” It was Serena with a basket of biscuits and apples in hand.

Chapter Four

In Boston by dusk, Jeremiah tried to find lodgings. The town seemed to have become swollen with people, and he could not find a room with Mrs. Fahey. However, she told him he was welcome to sleep in the barn until he could find something else.

“Why’s it so crowded?”

“Everyone for miles around passing through on the way to Salem.”

“To Salem?”

“To see the trials and executions! Haven’t ye heard? Hey, I thought you and the missus was from those parts.”

“Most awful business for our colonial leaders to have to deal with atop all else,” he replied.

“Wouldn’t you say.”

“Yes, yes! Awful business. And my horse and I, we’ll take that stall in your barn.”

“So where is your lovely wife?”

“I am here on business, and she had to stay behind.”

“I see.”

Leaving for the barn, Jeremy felt badly that he could not feel safe even with a wonderful person as Mrs. Fahey. The colony had become a place where no one could trust anyone it seemed—and for good reason.

Jeremy bedded his horse down, and after a bite to eat, he wandered to the jail. When he neared the place where he had last seen Tituba, he found the jailer. “My name is Wakely, and I take it you are the man in charge here.”

“I am guv’nar. What can I do for ye?”

“You’ve a prisoner inside—”

He burst out laughing. “Aye, I have a few!”

“Ah . . . yes, well,” began Jeremy showing a wide smile to convince the man he actually thought him humorous. “I am interested in one prisoner in particular named Tituba? Tituba Indian? She is a Barbados black.”

“I may have such a prisoner, but tell me, young fella, what business have ye with me prisoner?”

The man looked like a sailor who’d become too old to work aboard a ship any longer; he even had a peg leg. His breath was rum, hair gnarled like hemp. His eyes shone in the dark like those of a younger man, blue-gray with a dancing light there. He was a far cry from Gatter or Gwinn back in Salem.

“I wish to pay her jailer.” This got his attention well. “That is make a payment against what is owed.”

“Well now, that is good business, sir.”

“But for my trouble, I’d like words with the prisoner.”

“Ahhh . . . I’m not supposed to allow it, sir.”

“I see . . . well then I’ve no reason to make a payment against her debt if I can’t speak to her.”

“When you say speak to her, can it happen through the bars, sir?”

“With you looking on?”

“Nay, with me the other side of the wall, sir. It’s just that I’m told no one goes inside, Mr. Wakely. No one but the authorities, you see.”

“But I’m a barrister myself.”

“Aye, perhaps so, but you’re not on me list.”

“I’ll take the barred window then, Mr. Ahhh . . . ” Jeremy held out two Massachusetts Bay silver dollars. “On account.”

The toothless old sailor smiled wide, accepting the silver with eyes lit. “It’s Abraham, and you’re a true patron, sir, a true humanitarian.”

“Find her and send her to the window, then, Abraham.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jeremy waited at the window in question, the bars like rusted iron pipes well salted and blasted by the sea air, as it looked out on the ocean—no doubt causing many inside to long for that horizon. Jeremy peered in, and the odor—wafting out to him—caused a coughing jag. Covering his mouth with a handkerchief and nearly doubling over with the stench, the barrister not on the list straightened to come face to face with Tituba. Her features were cut in half by the darkness and fractured by the bars. In the weak light, her features thus sliced presented an appearance of multiple mirrors at work, any one of which might be called skewed.

“Mr. Reverend Wakely? Is it really you?”

“Yes, Tituba. I’ve questions for you.”

“I am no evil witch.” She began crying. “I didn’t hurt the baby.”

“The baby?”

“Betty, Betty Paris. I never hurt the child. It was Goode.”

“But you didn’t stand in Goode’s way; you knew of Goode’s plans for Betty.”

“I didn’t know.”

Jeremy saw that fear had for these many months ruled the woman. The truth was no longer an option. She feared it could get her hung. And why shouldn’t she fear him and his questions? “Do you know that Goode is dead? Hanged?”

“Dey tell us when Bishop be hanged. Dey tell us when Goode, Nurse, and three others be hanged, yes. Dey tell us one day we all be hanged but not burned.”

Jeremy recalled the only case in New England when a so-called witch was burned at the stake. It was some years before right here in Boston, but the woman was not burned to death because of her suspected witchcraft but rather due to the age-old belief in religion and law—may the punishment fit the crime. The Boston servant, a good deal like Tituba as she was a Barbados slave, had set fire to her master’s house. The fire had claimed the entire family—mother and children included. The judges, Saltonstall and Stoughton among them at the time, ruled the woman deserved the fate of her master and his family. Thus the single known burning of a witch on these shores.

“Tituba, tell me about the other baby.”

“Other baby?”

“Yes, your child.”

“My child?”

Jeremy handed her a clean kerchief, which lit up her eyes. She took the prize and wiped at her tears before hiding it in her bosom. “Your child, yes, the one you once hinted at—the one you said your master took from you the way he’d taken Dorcas away from Goode.”

Her features changed visibly. A dark anger painted her brow, and the fulcrum of her anger came glaring out at Jeremy from her black eyes. She squeezed the bars, her mouth frothing from illness and disease. “I die in dis place, wid him out there—” she pointed past his shoulder—“big man who kill witches and Satan men. Him who kill my baby.”

“You hinted as much, but have you any proof of it, Tituba? That Sam Parris murdered your infant?”

“Only my word, worth how much?” She snorted a short burst of nervous giggles. How much before? How much now?”

“Tell me everything you remember—every second, every mother’s instinct and emotion when you asked him about the infant that very first time.”

“I had hard time wid de birthing; hours wid de pain. So much, I faint.”

“Faint?”

“He give me opium.”

“Opium?”

“Like he use all de time in Barbados—and a strange drink.”

“Opium and a strange drink?”

“From de doctor he pay. Doctor make drink.”

“Were you at all aware of your surroundings when the baby was delivered?”

“No, no! I not never see de child.”

“Not even afterward?”

“No, not once.”

“Your child was delivered while you unconscious?”

“Un-con-see-us?”

“While you were asleep?”

“Asleep, yes.”

Jeremy imagined it an abortion. You don’t knock out a pregnant woman with opium and other concoctions if you want to deliver a baby. “Were you sore? Did the doctor cut you?”

“Cuts, yes. Plenty blood. Sore and sick. Long time.”

“You saw no evidence of the child at all?”

“I wake up and doctor gone! And my baby gone! Mr. Parris, he tell me baby dead.”

“Do you recall the doctor’s name?”

“Cabbage. No Cobb. No Cable. Yes, a man named Caball.”

“Had you ever seen this doctor before there in Barbados before?”

“No not never. Mr. Parris say Caball is from de ship.”

Jeremy shook his head. “What ship?”

“It from England, he say, and he say Dr, Caball knows best.”

“I see. Don’t suppose you recall the name of that ship?”

“Elizabeth—like Mrs. Parris.”

“Good, good! Ships’ records could be consulted, but finding this particular ship and doctor could take months if not a year. Still if Parris were confronted with the ship and the doctor’s name, he might just give himself away. The irony of Parris’ having aborted a child hadn’t escaped Jeremy, as the accused had been charged with murdering infants.

“I beg massa,” Tituba went on, “beg him to let me see my baby—dead even—to hold it, but he tell me, ‘No’, and he show me de ugly face like you see he make.”

“Yes, I’ve seen it.”

“He-He tell me it not best thing for me to see de baby. Say it be bent here—” she indicated her head, “and it buckled here—“she indicated her body. Tell me he axe de doctor to take it away. Say it for my sake.”

“I see. And it was his child, Tituba?”

“His child, a son.”

“A boy. He told you it was a boy?”

“No, doctor say.”

“When did this doctor tell you this?”

“I hear him first time I wake. I see dem talking.”

“Who?”

“Massa and doctor. Doctor say, ‘It a boy’. But massa yell at him to get rid of it.”

“Don’t make it up as you go, Tituba. I only want the truth.”

“Dis be de truth! I saw and heard like in dream.”

Or a drugged state, Jeremy thought. It has the ring of truth, and Tituba seemed to have no guile about this story. All the same, Jeremy felt paralyzed. It amounted to hearsay. Hearsay from a black woman and a prisoner no less, herself accused of aiding and abetting Goode to attack the minister’s daughter through machinations of witchcraft, one who may or may not soon face the gallows—if she did not die of jail fever first. She looked awful in her unbathed state, and her tattered clothes reflected a shredded will and all her former fiery soul seemed lost.

The story of Anne Carr Putnam’s having a decades-old grudge between her and Susannah Martin had not moved the court or anyone in authority. What good would this information provided by Tituba Indian do?

Jeremy looked again into the bottomless black eyes of the Barbados native. The woman perspired, retched, and grew more tired before his eyes.

“I’d’ve thought Parris would have had you released and placed onboard an outgoing ship for Barbados or anywhere by now.”

“He try but no ship will take a witch on board.”

Sailors were more superstitious than the inhabitants of Salem Village, Jeremy realized, and he pictured Parris attempting to bribe a ship’s captain to stow her away in a hole someplace but unable to come up with the certainly high price that would have been exacted.”

Tituba laughed. “Master forgot another promise.” Jeremy assumed she meant precisely what he was kicking over in his head. “Tituba, if we could find this doctor in Barbados . . . Are you sure of his name?”

“Only one white doctor in Barbados—Noah. Dr. Noah. Dis other man go away.”

“Noah—sounds like a first name. Do you know his full name?”

“I only know name on sign—Dr. North.”

“Noah North?”

“Yes, Noah North.”

“That could be of great help, Tituba. Thank you for speaking with me.” Perhaps North knew something of Parris’ dealings with the mysterious doctor or murderer, who came ashore from the Elizabeth that night.

“Can you help me?” Tituba now asked, her right hand wrapping around Jeremy’s. It pulled a thread of pity from Jeremy. So far as he could see, she was a victim several times over, and likely to die of consumption in this place.

“If I can get the Governor to listen to your story, perhaps you’ve helped yourself. Have faith in God, and hold firm to your innocence.”

“Then I will die here.”

“I’ll do whatever I can to keep that from happening, Tituba.”

She grasped his hand tighter with what little strength she had left. “Thank you, Mr. Wakely. You are good man.”

The entire time she had her hand on him, Jeremy worried he’d catch some awful death-dealing disease from her, and one reason he’d given her the handkerchief was so she’d cover her mouth before coughing on him. He pulled away and kept his hand at his side. Mrs. Fahey had plenty of lye soap back at the barn along with a pale of water. But even as his mind filled with the fear of being ravaged by some nasty disease, his heart went out to the once proud little woman.

Abraham, the jailor, retuned from his smoking and pissing the other end of the jail and said, “I can give ye no more time, ‘’less you have more coin for a crippled old salt, Mr. Wakely.”

“We’re done here, but I have a question for you.”

Abraham instantly presented his palm. “If I can be of service, sure it is.”

Jeremy handed him a half crown that he bit into and pocketed. “What question is it, sir?”

“Has any minister come to you to ask that you seek a berth on an outgoing ship for this black prisoner, Tituba? Perhaps to take her off to Barbados?”

“Well ahh . . . I think that’s two questions.” He again held out his hand like a cup held by a beggar.

Jeremy frowned and slapped a sixpence into the hand this time, making Abraham wince. “So there has been someone here for her, correct?”

“Yes as you seem to already know.”

“A minister who came in the night?”

“Much like yourself, yes.”

“What do you mean like me?”

“Young fella come in the night.”

This didn’t sound like Parris. “Did you catch the man’s name?”

“Said he was from Salem. Let’s see. Overheard the woman insultin’ the reverend before it was over.”

“Insutlting him how?”

“Kept saying it was noise, all noise or something like that.”

“Noyes! Of course. Doing Parris’ dirty work these days.”

“Sir?” Abraham watched Jeremy march off, his steps heavy. Now all he need do is ask around the docks at ships that had made any contact with Barbados to determine if any captain might have any information about a Dr. Noah North in Barbados or a so-called Dr. Caball—a possible ships’ doctor. Most ship doctors were little more than butchers and most hadn’t proper training as medical professionals, and the seagoing men who came and went in such seaports as this talked a good deal about their experiences at sea, and they were a surprisingly tight-knit group. It was not altogether farfetched that someone in Boston, possibly at the nearest pub, might have some knowledge of Caball or North or both.

It wouldn’t prove all elements of her story to determine this fact, that Drs. North and Caball existed and that this Caball fellow would have access to opium and perhaps laudanum—the strange drink. If he could prove enough facts, provide elements of doubt about Parris’ past and present motives, his immorality with respect to his own child, the question of aborting a child in order to hide it from public notice, then who knows, perhaps Governor Phipps might take heed at last to the level of conspiracy and mendacity let loose in Salem.

Jeremy rather doubted that taking Tituba’s story to the judges and magistrates— now so afire with witch-hunt fever—would do a whit of good.

He rushed back to Dancer and the barn and his bed for the night; rushed to the lye soap and water. He concentrated mostly on the hand that Tituba had touched and held onto between the bars. He scrubbed until the skin felt raw. He scrubbed until he felt comfortably sure that he’d stopped any possible spread of her sickness to him. The idea that disease could be stopped or slowed in its tracks by soap and water was as old as the Ten Commandments, precepts ordering cleanliness alongside those that ordered men to consume no uncooked meat.

Dancer watched him, seeming to understand his fear.

When Jeremy’s head hit his cushioned saddle, sleep came quickly to his exhausted mind, sleep orchestrated to the sounds and the odors of the barn, far easier to take than those emanating from the jail. Still, even in his sleep, he missed Serena and hated being away from her, and still he worried first about her safety, then how he could learn more about this mysterious Drs. North and Caball, and thirdly, how he could get an audience with Phipps. Then he recalled how the governor’s wife had gone about the windows of the jailhouse with biscuits and rolls for the prisoners. She’d been banned from doing any further good for the accused, or so he was given to understand.

It might take weeks, possibly months to gain an audience with the governor, but what of the governor’s wife? Just how sympathetic to the cause of the imprisoned on these charges of witchcraft was Mrs. Phipps?

His thoughts and troubled sleep led him from the governor’s mansion back to the jail across the street, where Tituba Indian might die at any time. She had been a chief accuser, pointing at others, and having given herself anew to God by ‘confessing’ her witchcraft and her association with the Black One, Satan, she had been spared the fate that Goode Bishop, Nurse, and the others had found at the end of a rope. Any accused person who did as Tituba had—turned on other prisoners, naming names—was, so far, spared the death sentence, unless the accused publicly recanted the confession and assistance to he court, which had occurred many times over now as well.

Jeremy’s last thought before dozing completely off was of an imaginary Samuel Parris arranging to rush Tituba from her cell to a waiting outbound ship for Barbados. But this swiftly changed to his rushing her off to a waiting grave he’d dug in the woods.

She could go the way of her child, he told himself. A secret, improper burial bought and paid for—no psalms read, no songs sung, no sanctified ground, and no questions asked.

Jeremiah’s sleep settled into a dream about a man who had an unwanted child by his slave, a struggling businessman in a seaport town far from any civilized world, yet the unwanted pregnancy and child would be an embarrassment—even here. The child in the dream was drowned off the end of a dock like an unwanted kitten inside a gurney sack, the body thrown to the kelp bed and the ever-hungry fish.

That was murder even in Barbados.

Chapter Five

In Jeremy’s absence from Salem, from all accounts that he heard—both verbal and written—the lunacy continued at full gallop. More accusations, more warrants sworn out, more arrests, more trials, more hangings in the offing. Including that of Sarah Cloyse, Serena’s aunt and Rebecca’s sister.

Jeremy had a letter posted from Serena, and this news was corroborated by her pained questions: “What did Mother die for? Was it for nothing? Where is God, Jeremy? Where is justice?”

Sarah Towne Cloyse’s name had come up on what had come to be called The Black List, the list of arrest warrants—as did untold numbers of people, men and women, who’d signed one or both petitions that’d circulated on behalf of Rebecca Nurse and Elizabeth Proctor. Those who dared stand up and affix their names to petitions for mercy and attesting to good character were now being systematically accused and arrested.

More jails were being built. The officially sanctioned madness continued without an end in sight.

Serena had signed both those petitions, as had her father and brothers—as had Jeremy. It felt as if the walls of the world, the colonial boundaries, were closing in on them all. It felt as if no one was safe. Serena had been right about that.

I should have thrown Serena across a horse and made her go with me to Connecticut, he told himself on finishing her letter.

As a result, Jeremy stepped up his efforts to gain an audience with the First Lady of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Mrs. Phipps. It was proving difficult. It’d been Governor Phipps who’d signed off on the Court of Oyer & Terminer; it’d been by his edict that Sir William Stoughton, Major Saltonstall and the other Boston judges of the General Court go to Salem to fight the witches, demons, warlocks, and Satan on that ground. He’d been quoted as saying, “Let us take the fight to the monsters in their lair.” And it felt as if Mrs. Phipps had not only been sanctioned by her husband and banned from any show of mercy to the accused and arrested, but that she’d been informed about Jeremiah Wakely—just who he was and how he had called the court sitting at Salem unlawful, and that any attempt on Jeremy’s part to see her must be rebuked. In fact, Wakely was characterized as a crackpot, an imposter, and a larcenous miscreant.

Jeremy imagined all of this maligning of his character had kept Mrs. Phipps from seeing him. Days and nights went by without an answer, and Jeremy feared he’d again fail.

“When are the next executions in Salem?” he asked the newsman he’d worked for on a part time basis.

Mr. Horatio Spurlunkle handed him today’s pamphlet. On the cover the frightening news stared back at Jeremy:

Aug. 5, 1692 – Six more accused of witchcraft found guilty. Execution set for the 19^th for George Burroughs, former Salem minister and sometime minister, Casco Bay, Maine; John and Elizabeth Proctor, man and wife of Salem; John Williard, former Salem sheriff; George Jacobs Senior of Salem; Martha Carrier, a goodwife of Andover. These six are condemned by the Court of Oyer & Terminer to die on the gallows.

The rest of the article could be summed up in a phrase that’d become all too common: Brought in guilty and condemned.

“Mr. Sperlunkle, when will this madness end?”

“Not until someone in high office begins to question the sanity of it all, among them the blasted ministers and magistrates themselves! Not to mention the confounded governor!”

“Or Phipps’ wife.”

“Isn’t there anyone in all of Salem with any sense, Jeremy?”

“Perhaps Reverend John Hale of Beverly where the seer children have been taken to root out even more evil and witchery there. I’m sure when all this began, he had no notion they’d be paraded through his town to point out old women with warts on their noses.”

“They are paraded on white horses through communities like God’s chosen, and one finger points at a man or woman, and he is arrested!”

“Yes, well, you see, the seer children can ‘see’ into the Invisible World so that the witches can no longer hide behind respectable aprons!”

“Speak of respectable! Look. It’s her.” Sperlunkle stared out his office window.

“Her who?” Jeremy joined him at the window, looking out over the bold lettering.

“Mrs. Phipps.”

“On the street? Where? I must—”

“No, it’s her carriage, there!” Sperlunkle pointed. “At the jailhouse again.”

“Disobeying her husband?”

“It would appear so, yes.”

“I must see her, speak to her.” Jeremy rushed for the jailhouse. As he made his way toward the beautifully dressed, proud Mrs. Phipps, he saw that her servant held two large baskets stuffed full with sweat meats, and that a pale of clean drinking water with a dipper trailed after in Abraham’s hands. The jailor must be making good money, today, Jeremy thought as he’d made no effort to stand in Mrs. Phipps way, and the lady of mercy—known for her compassion and generosity and kindness, passed rolls and biscuits through the bars to waiting hands and anxious eyes. As Jeremy came near, one of her servants grabbed him.

“Unhand me! Lady Phipps!” Jeremy called out. “I must speak with you, please! It’s urgent!”

Horatio Sperlunkle had joined Jeremy, and he threatened the second coachman with a cane. It appeared there would be a row in the street when Abraham shouted, “Mr. Wakely, it’s you is it?”

On hearing his name, Mrs. Phipps gave Jeremy a second look, staring hard and sizing him up. She was acquainted somewhat with Sperlunkle and his paper as well, and now she shouted, “Jonas! There’ll be no violence! Let Mr. Wakely be.”

Jeremy approached her and bowed. “I am Jeremiah Wakely. You have my petition for an audience, ma’am.”

“I do.”

“Have you read it, my lady?”

“I have.”

“Time is of the essence.”

“Your words were most intriguing and mysterious. You say you have evidence of the motives of Reverend Samuel Parris. I confess, I would like to hear more, but I can’t promise you anything will come of our speaking.” After all, I am not the governor, only his wife went unspoken but understood.

“I understand, but—”

“You might do well to petition to see the Governor himself.”

“I prefer to take my chances with you, Madame.”

She sighed so heavily that her dress rose an inch above her bosom and resettled. “Ride with me. In the coach,” she indicated the opened door that Jonas now held for them, a glare in his eye. She added, “It may be best you impart these dark secrets while in my carriage than at the mansion. The walls have ears there.” She gave a quick glance to Jonas, a bird-beeked, hungry-eyed looking fellow. Shakespeare’s Cassius, Jeremy thought, but without the Senate seat.

“Excellent,” Jeremy said as he settled into the cozy interior. “It is more than I had hoped for.”

She sat across from him, her dress taking up most of the room inside. With the door shut, she lifted a small parasol and tapped the roof. In a moment, the single-horse carriage pulled away from the jail, and through the slit in a drape at the window, Jeremy caught a fleeting glimpse of Abraham and Horatio beside one another with amusement and amazement on their faces.

It was as if once again fate had stepped in.

# # # # #

Inside the carriage, which from what little Jeremy could tell, was on its way back to the Governor’s home, he feared he had but the coach ride to convince Mrs. Phipps of his beliefs. To this end he launch right in. “First, you must know that I do not support the court in Salem.”

“So I have heard.”

He didn’t miss a beat. “Then you know I believe they have not only arrested hundreds who are innocent but they’ve hung some who are innocent, principally Rebecca Nurse.”

“To whom you are related, yes?”

It was not an unprecedented moment for her; Mrs. Phipps had entertained a number of previous petitions for leniency and mercy. “I understand your position, Mr. Wakely, and I admire your candor and fervor. Nowadays, it takes a brave man to speak out. Do go on.”

“I spoke with one of the first arrested, who is here in your jail in Boston.”

“Mr. Parris’ black servant, this Tituba Indian you mentioned in your petition to me. I must admit, Mr. Wakely, I was intrigued the moment I saw your name affixed to it.”

“So my ill-gotten reputation precedes me? I am not surprised.”

“Your name has come up on occasion at the mansion.”

“My name?” He noted her half smile.

“You have many enemies among the judges and ministers, Mr. Wakely.”

“Don’t think me after some sort of personal vengeance against Parris, madam. I am only interested in right and the law.”

“Ah, it’s justice you seek?”

“An end to the injustice in Salem, ma’am.”

“And you say you have vital information that might lead to an end to the injustices? And that you found it here in Boston.”

Jeremy nodded. “I’ve written down my allegations against Parris—allegations of deception, murder, and cover up long before he arrived in Salem.”

“Before Salem? Tell me more about this Barbados connection. It’s all rather like a Greek play.”

She was indeed intrigued, and this made Jeremy study her for any guile.

“I have met Samuel Parris on two occasions,” she admitted in a deep whisper, “and I put nothing past the man. But my husband is not such a good judge of character.”

Jeremy nodded. The carriage hit an area of bumpy cobblestones. They would soon be at a standstill at the mansion, and Jeremy knew their interview would be over. He wondered now if she’d disobeyed her husband to feed the prisoners as a cover to see Jeremy for this discussion.

Jeremy told her all that he suspected, and all that Tituba had imparted. He finished with, “I am only sorry that you could not hear it from Tituba herself. She convinced me of her sincerity, and it has the ring of truth.”

Mrs. Phipps had sat stolid, her features unchanging. She hadn’t even flinched when Jeremy spoke of how Tituba’s child had been discarded like so much garbage. “The ring of truth,” she repeated the phrase.

“You’re not convinced?”

“Mr. Wakely, oddly enough Governor Phipps and I spent some time on Barbados.”

“You did?”

“When Parris ran his enterprise there. I always found it odd that he’d become a minister in Salem.”

“And Increase Mather could not find any evidence of his having been ordained a minister at Harvard.”

“I’ve made inquiries regarding this too.”

“Then I have an ally in you?”

“No.”

“No?”

“Dr. Noah North is my father, and he would have had nothing to do with aborting a birth and covering it up. Certainly not for Mr. Parris, and certainly not for money.”

Jeremy felt numb. It had come to this, another dead end. As she stepped from the coach, reaching back for his notes, which he surrendered, he said, “Then it was all between Parris and this ships’ doctor, Caball. Have you any knowledge of him?”

She shook her head. “I have not. Now please, this interview is over.” She told the coachman to return Jeremy to the North End at the center of commerce in Boston, “Drop him wherever he wishes.” She then looked back at Jeremy. “I will share all of your suspicions with my husband, Mr. Wakely, but if he disbelieves it . . . it will go no further. After all, it is on the word of a servant woman and a prisoner of the witch hunt. He is not likely to trust her or you.”

“And you, Mrs. Phipps? Do you trust me?”

She slammed the coach door and gave the order to the driver to move off.

Jeremy dropped his head in his hands. “Her father is Dr. North. Damn this tired world for its ironies.”

When Jeremy got down from the carriage and watched it turn around and go back the way it’d come, the jailer rushed to his side. The old sailor whispered under his hand, “Sir, if you want the black woman, I won’t stand in your way. You can take her.”

“Take her?”

“Any friend of the Governor’s can have his will here, sir.”

“You will turn Tituba over to me?”

“I will, yes.”

“How much do you require for her release?”

“Nothing, sir. I’m sure down the line, a reward may come but tonight . . . tonight she is yours.”

Jeremy finally understood the man’s meaning. He thought Jeremy wanted Tituba for the night. “Look here, do you know of any ships making for Barbados tonight?”

“Barbados? Tonight, sir?”

“Yes, tonight . . . tomorrow.”

“That’d be Captain Hypplewaite, sir.”

“Can I find him at the docks?”

“At the Red Lion, likely this time-o-day.”

“I’ll find him. Have a word with him.”

“And the black woman, sir?”

“I’ll be back for her, yes.”

The lecherous look in the old jailer’s eye and his toothless smile said that he’d finally found a pot of gold. “Cleaned up, she’d be my choice, too, Mr. Wakely.” He laughed and slapped Jeremy on the back.

With little hope of changing any minds here in Boston, Jeremy set out to help at least one of the victims in all this insanity—Tituba. He had little trouble locating the loud, heavy-drinking Captain Obadiah Hypplewaite, a garrulous pirate of a man. Jeremy bought passage for one to Barbados, telling the captain he’d bring this ‘cargo’ by cover of night, and that it wouldn’t do for anyone to see the woman.

“And once we land in Barbados?”

“You give her two silver pieces, and she finds the remnants of her family and life, a free woman.”

“So you’ve got religion and wish to free your slave, eh?”

“Yes, and that is all you need to know,” Jeremy lied and placed six pieces of silver before the captain. He then displayed the two silver dollars that belonged to Tituba. “Please, it will be all she has in life; you must see she gets it. I must trust you implicitly, Captain.”

The old sea dog’s eyes lit up. “Well then, you have my word and my blessings, son. It’s a horrid thing, this slavery business people’ve gotten themselves into. Meself, I won’t take slave cargo comin’ in from the Ivory Coast.”

Arrangements were made. Jeremiah got a confused Tituba to Mrs. Fahey’s barn where Mrs. Fahey discovered them, and for a moment thought the worst. When Jeremy confessed his plan, she leapt into the scheme without hesitation, ordering Jeremy out of the barn. She bathed Tituba and found a change of clothes for her before she allowed Jeremy back.

Captain Hypplewaite’s ship came after a hearty meal for Tituba, and when Jeremy told her it the Endurance was bound for Barbados—her childhood home, she wept while hugging Jeremy to her. Jeremy said his final goodbyes, seeing her stowed away below decks in the hands of the sober Captain.

As he made his way back to Mrs. Fahey’s barn, Jeremy wondered at the wisdom or foolishness of his actions. If it came to light, he could face dire consequences—and for all her compassion, Mrs. Fahey was also known for spreading news and gossip, not to mention how upset Abraham was going to be in the coming days. “But I couldn’t’ve done otherwise,” he told himself. He had given up any thought whatsoever of Tituba’s ever becoming a witness against Parris or the witch hunt in general. After all, it appeared he’d failed with the Governor’s wife.

He planned on returning to Serena at first light empty-handed.

Chapter Six

A broken man, Francis Nurse felt he had nothing to live for now that Rebecca was gone. Despite his love for his children, he longed to join Rebecca. He toyed with suicide, but in his heart, more than anything, he wanted to do what Ben had wanted to do all along—put a hole in Samuel Parris.

He put together his small carriage, pulled by a single horse, and unbeknownst to anyone, he drove into Salem Village.

He searched the streets, the steps of Ingersoll’s place, the parsonage, now dark and empty save for Parris somewhere inside. Parris had been unable to locate nor return his wife and child to the village.

Francis pulled to within shouting distance of Parris’ window and door, waved a gun and dared Parris to show his face at the door. Parris did not come out. He was in fact not home.

Sheriff Herrick and several other armed men circled the old man, coaxing him to calm down and go back the way he’d come just as Serena rode in on her mare. She rushed to join her father, talking him into a reasonable posture. “Please, Father, please. I can’t lose you, too, now!”

Francis studied his daughter. “You are so beautiful, my child. You have your mother’s eyes.” He appeared not to know where he was or that he held a weapon in his hands.

Serena took the gun gently from him. Herrick and his men watched with interest as she climbed down, fetched her horse, tied her to the back of the buggy, and then returned to take the reins. She turned the small carriage around and guided it past Ingersoll’s, the Putnam home, and onto Ipswich Road, pointed toward home.

When she arrived back home with her father, she managed to get him into bed on her own. No one else was around. The place had become hauntingly deserted since Mother Nurse’s execution and the secret burial. Ben had been sent away, as his language against the court and the ministers had become so seditious as to put him under suspicion. It’d taken great and long-suffering arguments from Serena and Francis to get Ben to disappear for a while.

After getting her father settled in, Serena stepped out onto the porch, her mind a jumble of fears for Francis. He’d acted as if out of his head. Going down into the village to murder Mr. Parris on sight, and his behavior on the carriage seat. She feared his mind going.

“Some bustling noise rose up from the nearby road that went by the house, but she paid little heed to it. The Ipswich Road was a main thoroughfare between Salem Town and Village, and it was ever restless except in the wee hours. Instead, Serena wandered out toward the huge stand of oaks, the meeting tables set out below them, one covering the fresh earth below where her mother’s remains lay in secret.

She pulled herself onto the table, her feet on the bench, and head in hand, she began to cry. She missed Jeremy terribly and worried about him, too. She’d had nightmares of his being accosted in a dark Boston alleyway, robbed, and left bleeding on the cobblestones.

She recalled the night they sang hymns over Rebecca. Only the most immediate family members and John Tarbell knew her remains were here and not in the pit below the gallows, which’d been covered over. It appeared no one knew of the ‘theft’ carried out by the Nurse men. At least not yet.

When she thought of the last meal they’d all shared here with Mother Nurse still among them, the day Serena had held the blunderbuss trained on Jeremy, she recalled an underlying melancholia that had hold of her mother. Somehow, Rebecca had known that this storm of madness in the village was coming but how? Now and in fact ever since Rebecca’s arrest, their home had become a sad place, and these tables silent. It felt like an eternity ago that the large, extended family had gathered as one. And now Rebecca’s two sisters were behind bars, and one of them condemned to execution.

Serena tried desperately to pray for her sick father, but she felt unsure if she wanted him free of the illness or free of this troubled world; she wondered if his heart could only be lighted again by joining her mother. At the same time, she wanted to hold onto him. Both thoughts made her feel a sense of guilt—guilt coming of two unresolved thoughts, each coming unbidden and colliding.

The noise coming up off the road roared loudly now, loud enough to cause her to look up to determine just who and how many were passing when she saw the awful sight of what had come to be called the witch cart.

It cranked and creaked from side to side, looking as if it might topple and break apart at any time—else remove itself from its wooden wheels. The old oxen pulling it looked disinterested and weary at once. Riding horseback around the empty jail cart, were Herrick, the same men who stood by him in the village, along with Reverend Nicholas Noyes, and trailing alongside rode four of the celebrated ‘seer’ children.

As the ominous parade went by, the children in particular stared long and hard at Serena where she sat below the trees. The young girls all rode white horses, and they whispered among themselves, giggled, and pointed their terrible accusing fingers at first the house and then in Serena’s general direction.

Reverend Noyes, his nose lifted high, noticed the disturbance among the children on white chargers. He reined in his dark mare and gave a stern look to Serena as if following the awful gaze of little Anne Putnam, whose scrawny frame atop such a large horse looked ludicrous to Serena. Get that child a pony, she heard herself thinking.

The entourage continued onward toward the east, toward Salem Town. Serena wondered who might the little brigands be after today. It appeared Mr. Noyes had some enemies in his parish now who needed to be brought down.

Soon after the noise of the witch cart and the band of people around it had subsided entirely, Serena stood and made her way back toward the house. Nowhere safe, she had told Jeremy, and now her home felt like the largest target of the evil in control here, like a bull’s-eye for the accusers. Her father’s rashness this morning had only made it more so.

She feared they’d simply chosen to not stop for her on the way to the harbor, but had every intention of picking her up on their way back—especially if they failed to find any witches in Salem Town. She imagined, and it seemed so, that Herrick carried blank arrest warrants in his britches so that if one of the nasty little prophets should make an accusation on the road, that he’d be prepared. Noyes would be the name on the warrants today. “Proper procedure be damned!” she shouted to the trees. “In the face of immediate danger, in war, action must be taken. Witchcraft must be met with a suspension of basic human rights and laws of normalcy.”

All this while Parris and to some lesser degree, Thomas Putnam had faded into the background, and the law nowadays was based on some notion of an invisible nature. How terrifying, she thought. How barbaric. How far from sane rule have we come?

Serena hadn’t long to learn an answer to her question.

The accusing children returned before dusk, and they sat at Serena’s gate like vultures. Francis brought up the blunderbuss, pointing at the men on horseback and those horrible children pointing their combined fingers at Serena, calling out that she sent needles into their eyes and ears and in private places. Then Sheriff Herrick read the warrant before his men and several ‘witches’ already humbled and squatting behind the bars in the jail cart.

Serena wrested the gun from her father. “They will kill you, Father!”

“I can’t see you taken away a witch!” he cried out. “Not a second time, Herrick! You’ve killed my wife! Now you wish to sanction the murder of my daughter?”

“There is nothing I can do. The warrant is made out. I only follow orders.”

“Parris’ orders? Noyes? Those damned children!”

“Father, go to John’s place, please!” She hugged Francis tightly to her. “I’ll not be the cause of your dying here today.”

“Where is Wakely?” asked the old man. “If he were here and Ben were here, we’d have a turkey shoot sure. They’d not let you be dragged off a witch!” He grabbed his chest, his face stricken with pain, jaw slack. He slid from her grasp, heavy and unable to stand.

“His heart!” Serena looked to Herrick and Noyes and the others for any sign of sympathy or help but none came. “He needs be helped inside! Will you help me get him abed?”

“It’s a trick!” Anne Putnam raised a fist skyward. “A witch’s trick!”

Herrick ordered two men to help get Francis inside and in a bed.

“I can’t leave him alone like this, Mr. Herrick, please.”

“Told you it was a trick!” shouted Anne.

Herrick ordered one of his men to stay with Francis, a second to alert John Tarbell to come to the house to see to him.

“Does that suit you, Good-daughter Nurse . . . ah, Mrs. Wakely?”

“You’ve known me all your life, Mr. Herrick, and I’ve given you no more cause to suspect me a witch than did my mother. Soon they will be asking you to give up your mother, your sister!”

Herrick quietly replied, “I won’t go the way of Williard.”

“And you know him to be an honorable man, and yet he is to be hanged tomorrow along with my aunt!”

“I must obey my orders, ma’am.”

“Yes, I’m sure you do.”

Serena was escorted to the jail cart, the same as had been used to humiliate her mother before her. “You’re all transparent liars, all of you! You won’t be happy until you’ve stolen our lands!”

“Get in there, now!” Herrick’s anger showed on his face. “I’ve collected no lands or buildings, mills or inns, young woman. And I’ve not been paid my rate for two months!”

Inside the cart, the entire world changed. Serena’s home became smaller and smaller, cut into sections by the bars she gazed through. She no longer had to imagine what her mother had faced, what she had gone through; she was now living it.

The other three women in the cart appeared as normal as Serena could imagine. She had no personal contact with any of them in the past, but they looked like housewives, bakers, mothers, sisters, nieces and daughters. None looked or acted like the addled Sarah Goode or the vile-tongued Osborne, or unwashed Martha Carrier—the dregs that her mother’d been jailed alongside. These arrested looked like respectable, kindly, perhaps saintly women like her mother, like herself.

No matter. They were all on the way to Gatter’s ugly black hole in the village as it had been emptied, the prisoners there housed in the newly built Soddy-jail built by those now making a living off the misery of neighbors. Many another prisoner had by now been carted off to other villages and to Boston, all awaiting time on the court docket in Salem Village and Salem Town now.

Serena shared glances with each of the other so-called witches in the cart. What has Jeremy to return to now? Now I am gone the way of Mother. Arrested, thrown into the same jail where Mother spent her last days. That vile place run by that vile man who claimed that he had been saved by her mother but who would not say so publicly.

# # # # #

The following day, August 19^th, 1692

From inside her jail cell, Serena heard the village crier’s voice wafting down to her as he called out the names of those condemned to die today: George Burroughs, George Jacobs Senior, John Proctor, John Williard, Martha Carrier, and Samuel Wardwell. She breathed a sign of relief as her Aunt Sarah Cloyse and Mary Easty had not been included on today’s calendar.

“Mrs. Proctor must have won her claim of pregnancy,” Serena told the other prisoners. It had taken her the entire night to get used to the odors in the communal cell.

“We should all be so lucky,” replied Martha Corey—who’d been in the village jail now longer than anyone, and whose ‘confession’ had gotten her husband arrested and dead from torture. She’d also managed to lose control of her land and property, the mill. She’d been one of those who’d escaped the night Serena, Jeremy, Ben and Tarbell had opened the jail, but she’d been run to ground, caught, and returned. She now said unbidden, “Your mother, Serena, is sore missed. She led us all in prayer here.”

Another prisoner added, “A wonderful soul was she.”

“Thank you, Goodwife Corey, Goodwife Nels.”

Giles Corey had laughed at the antics of the accusing children, and he’d publicly joked that if any witch lived in Salem, it was his wife. This had led to Martha’s arrest, and angry, she in turn spoke out against Giles as a witch man. After he had been arrested, he’d sought to keep his mill and lands for his sons. He hit on the little known right of an Englishman faced with accusation could plead innocent, guilty, or put in no plea whatsoever. He would ride it out on a plea of No Plea. If he chose to remain mute, he decided, they could not take his property, and once this witchcraft nonsense passed, he’d be set free having lost nothing.

Unfortunately, the judges ordered the man be made to plea, and to do that, they left the methods to the sheriff and his men. Corey stood mute against the fear of his property’s being confiscated. He’d seen how the goods, provisions, cattle, crops planted, home, and lands of others had been taken by the court. Much of the accused’s cattle and provisions had been sent to auction in the West Indies—Barbados in particular.

Someone, and Serena had a pretty good guess as to whom it might be—Jeremy—had counseled Corey to remain the deed holder to his mill and lands, grain sacks, provisions, and animals that he could refuse to enter a plea of innocence or guilt. For one night, Jeremy had explained to Serena about this an old English tenet that a man had the right to stand mute. For a long time, Giles had done just that. He’d been hauled before the judges several times, and each time he simply refused to enter a plea. This behavior stymied the court and its plans to seize Corey properties.

So when Giles Corey, giant and simple man, refused to state himself guilty or innocent, the judges were thrown into a quandary. They had to consult their dusty law books to determine how to proceed. Meanwhile, they held Giles in one jail, his wife in another—so as to have no opportunity for Martha’s becoming pregnant as had occurred with the Proctors.

One by one, the crackling gunshot noise of the opening traps at the gallows reported back to the jail. One, two, three, four, five, six. Six more executed, bringing the number to twelve condemned ‘witches’ executed by official ceremony.

Over the months of this horror, Serena had seen a brave John Proctor, like her father, speak out and write eloquently for appeal to mercy and forbearance and understanding and time. First for his wife, secondly for Serena’s mother, and finally on his own behalf before going to the gallows in her place. Serena had read some of his writings, and for a country farmer, his language had moved her to tears and to hope. He had made her father believe in hope as well. He’d been a strong voice for reason and time, but those who’d condemned both John and Elizabeth Proctor had condemned his words as evil and twisted in purpose as well. Their chief first accuser among the children had been Mercy Lewis, followed by Mary Wolcott—both of whom had been, at one time or another, maidservants in the Proctor home.

At every turn, Serena saw only frustration and loss.

And where is Jeremiah? Has he made any headway in Boston whatsoever? God help him. God help me.

Chapter Seven

Jeremiah had been held up in Boston when Dancer had shown signs of hobbling rather than trotting. He had pulled up and taken a look at the leg Dancer favored. Blood oozed from her left-front hoof. On close examination, he saw that the horse needed a fresh shoe as stones had gotten under the older shod work. The stones had worked into the flesh.

As it must be done, Jeremy returned to Boston, located a smithy, and decided to have all four hooves shod. It meant another day in Boston, but now he was back in the vicinity of the Nurse home.

He now stood on a high rise overlooking all of Salem Farms, rising up on his stirrups, peering through his spy glass for any signs of life down at the Nurse home, any sign of Serena in particular. But the stillness and darkness of the place even now in early sunlight created an odd, painful fear in his chest, a feeling of déjà vu, as in the time he and Serena had returned only to learn that Rebecca had been taken. Nothing looked normal down there.

His immediate thoughts and fears raced to Serena.

He settled back into the saddle and drove toward the house. Dancer felt good beneath him, as if happy to see home as well.

When he pulled up at the gate and tied Dancer to, he noticed that the gate had been broken off its hinges. He rushed up the stairs only to be met by big John Tarbell, a look of terrible pain coloring his face. “It’s bad news, Wakely. Bad news all round.”

“Serena? Where is she?” He rushed past and inside the dark interior.

“Father Francis is dead.” Tarbell stood behind him.

“I hear no wailing, no one!”

“The house is empty save for me and now you.”

“And Serena? Where is my wife, man!”

“Taken.”

“Taken?”

“She was arrested as a witch yesterday.”

“Yesterday I was supposed to be here! Damn me!”

“You couldn’t’ve stopped them taking her, and Francis died trying. His heart gave out. I think he could not see his daughter done the way of Rebecca.”

Jeremy stood staring at Tarbell, unable to believe all this had come about only in the past twenty-four hours. “Ben?”

“Away.”

“Joseph?”

“Walking around in circles.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s walking a petition for Serena, door to door. And there was another hanging yesterday as well—John Proctor among them, along with Williard.”

“Both the Proctors? And Williard?”

“Mrs. Proctor survived, but John, the others on the list, Martha Carrier, George Burroughs, Old Jacobs, Williard, yes, and a man who bravely stepped forward when they were going to go ahead with the execution of the pregnant Elizabeth Proctor.”

“A brave man who stood in for her?”

“They really wanted to use all six of those traps this time,” Tarbell muttered.

“Who stood in for Mrs. Proctor and her unborn child?”

“Samuel Wardwell.”

“Known since I was a lad as the Wizard of Andover.” Jeremy went back outside, unable to look on the sad sight of Francis Nurse’s corpse any longer where Tarbell and Joseph had laid him in a newly built coffin. From behind him, Jeremy heard Tarbell say, “We intend burying him alongside Rebecca.”

“One secret that has been kept around here,” Jeremy muttered, staring out at the spot where Rebecca lay. “The bastards are decimating our family, John.”

“Not sure what that means, but I can guess.”

Jeremy leaned into the railing here on the front porch. His heart sank as the sun rose higher, realizing how horrible it must be at this moment for Serena. “So side by side they hang a minister and a wizard,” he said and coughed out an angry laugh.

Tarbell stood alongside him. “And they would have killed an innocent babe, had not the wizard stepped forward.”

“Aye. They’ve their own notions of innocence and guilt these days.”

“No doubt the unborn child will make a witch once free of the womb.” Tarbell spat.

“And Serena? Where’ve they taken her? Which of their bloody holes?”

“She sits in the same jail her mother once occupied.”

“Damn them! Damn them all! I’m going for her!”

Tarbell grabbed him and shoved him against a wall. “Not by day, and not alone, brother.”

It was the first time any of the Nurse boys or brothers-by-marriage had called Jeremiah brother. “What do you propose?”

“I propose this time we do what we failed doing last time.”

“Right, good!”

“We carry her out of there, and you, sir, you take her as far from here as you can.”

As Mother and Father had asked me to do, he silently chastised himself. “I shouldn’t’ve gone off to Boston. I should’ve taken Serena and disappeared.”

“Right . . . right. Look, man, she wouldn’t go without Francis in there, and he wouldn’t leave Rebecca out there.” He pointed to the stand of oaks.

“Away to Connecticut then, once we have Serena back.”

“We may follow,” replied Tarbell.

“We’ll take new names, and once there no one will know us.”

“The fools behind this terrible mischief have allowed the children to reach too far in their accusations.”

“Are you saying those in control of the bratty accusers have lost any control they may’ve once had?”

“Most certainly true with this latest mad accusation.”

“Against whom?”

“Against Mrs. Hale of Waverly.”

“Not the minister’s wife!” Jeremy grasped his brother by the arm.

“Yes, the terror at Reverend Hale’s doorstep now.”

“My god, but then perhaps the lunacy will be at an end. I mean if they can call out that dear lady, a minister’s wife . . .”

“All the same, you and Serena must disappear.”

“But imagine it. They’re accusing Mrs. Hale of rank witchcraft? Mrs. Hale? John Hale’s wife?”

“Some are already backing off it as a case of mistaken identity on the astral plane, as things can be confused for those who see into that damnable Invisible World they speak of. How’s that for a laugh?”

“I can’t recall a time when we could laugh, John. But if this is true, then Hale himself must see the error—the horrible error of it all. This acceptance of spectral evidence, the madness of it.”

“We can only pray. But as I said, the adults who stand behind the children —those bloodthirsty children—are recanting this accusation for them.”

“Why would they point a finger at Mrs. Hale of all people?”

“She has taken up the same cause as Mrs. Phipps.”

“The governor’s wife?”

“Yes.”

“What cause is that?” Jeremy wildly imagined Mrs. Hale telling people about an unaccounted for child in Barbados, a child killed by Parris and a mysterious Dr. Caball.

“The cause of feeding the accused—same as Serena did here, and Mrs. Phipps is known for in Boston.”

“I see.”

“Mrs. Hale made a habit of visiting the jails with loaves of bread baked in her own kitchen.”

“Pity and mercy are now cause to accuse others?” Jeremy shook his head and watched as some men made their way toward Salem Town with what few goods they had to barter with today.

“No big surprise, really. Look at how many people who’ve signed petitions have come under arrest.”

“She’s a brave lady then, Mrs. Hale.”

“And a lady of great distinction. But then so is Serena and Rebecca and her sisters.”

The two men found some ale and toasted to Francis. After a time, Tarbell said, “Mr. Hale has gone about denouncing any such notions of his wife—and in doing so—”

“Has himself been called out at warlock?”

“Yes.”

Jeremy thought about this for a moment. “You know, John, this turn of events could work to our advantage. Mr. Hale is widely believed a pious, honest man who is what he is and has no secret life.”

“You mean like that old man in there? John Proctor, Sheriff Williard, and the black smith, Samuel Wardwell? A man who sacrificed his life for that of an unborn child and its mother?”

“Aye, I know,” Jeremy conceded. “I too well know. But it is a hope.”

“I trust to hope no more—nor should you, Jere.”

Jeremy nodded firmly and finished his ale. “Tonight we go for Serena.”

“It will be just the two of us.”

“Ben?”

“Has left the county, and there’s no time to send word.”

“And Joseph?”

“I think he is on the verge of a breakdown. It’s best we keep this simple.”

Jeremy shook hands with Tarbell. “Then we do this together.”

“If I have to kill that damnable Gatter, we will free Serena.”

“I want to see the old man.” Jeremy went for the corpse where he poured a third ale and placed it on a table within arms distance from Francis. “He loved his ale.”

“No reason why he shouldn’t enjoy it in the hereafter,” agreed Tarbell.

Jeremy poured more for John, and the two drank all day, awaiting dusk. “Do you think the old man knows we’ll enter him where he wants to be?” Jeremy asked, standing over the open coffin.

“I think so, and I’ll drink to it.”

Jeremy joined him in the toast. “And do you think Francis knows we go to save Serena and take her to her future tonight?” Everything awaited darkness.

Tarbell raised his ale cup again, “Aye, he must know—and I’ll drink to it!”

# # # # #

After entering Francis Nurse’s remains beside his beloved Rebecca, Jeremy and John armed themselves and started on foot with three horses saddled and walking behind. One horse for Tarbell, Serena’s favorite mare, Star, and Jeremy’s Dancer. They made their way via a backwoods cow path that soon put them within sight of the jail where they peeked through the brush. It felt like familiar ground.

“Whatever it takes, we come away with Serena.” Jeremy recalled having been held up by Dancer the night before. For now he felt glad that he’d had all four shoes replaced. Had he been here when they’d taken Serena, he felt reasonably sure that he’d’ve been shot to death in his struggle with Herrick and his men. He’d be under the earth with Francis and Rebecca by now.

This witchcraft madness had already cost the lives of countless citizens, most of whom lay dead and buried, victims of consumption or one jail fever or another. Serena could contract such a death at any time. Jeremy meant to free her at any cost, and together they’d ride all night if necessary to find a safe harbor in this land.

They tied the horses beneath a stand of trees, leaving them at a safe distance to graze on the grass in a silent hollow, a place where a man might picture gnomes if not hobgoblins stepping in and out of hollowed out trees.

The two men filled with ale, rum, and courage borne of anger followed the contour of the gulley—a regular wash in rain times. The path led to the rear of the jail. As they neared, Jeremy cautioned Tarbell as they heard the voices of men paid to care for the needs of the incarcerated—Gatter for sure, perhaps the younger Will Fiske, the son of the elder Fiske, who’d turned in his badge to sit on the jury judging the accused.

“I hope we don’t have to kill no one,” whispered John, “but if I must . . .”

Jeremy nodded. “Agreed. Whatever it takes, we leave with Serena.”

They inched closer amid the dark shadows, rushing for the back of the jail. With no window this side of the shoddy place, this meant no way to communicate with Serena. The only barred windows were at the front of this oven. Little wonder the stifling odors, the stale air, and the rampant sickness inside. Jeremy’s heart felt ripped and trampled upon just imagining what Serena had endured.

He inched along the back of the jail now, finding the corner at one end while Tarbell went for the other. Their plan was to synchronize the moment each made his move. To this end, Jeremy looked around the corner. He saw no one, but he watched the ups and downs of a flaring fire that burned out front of the jail for light as much as for roasting meat. He took in the cooking odors. Imagined how the odor must affect the poorly fed prisoners who’d been here for months. He also knew that the jailers routinely butchered and fed on livestock belonging to those incarcerated to, in a manner, pay themselves for their efforts.

He moved onward to be in position when the moment came. Soon Jeremy was at the front corner of the square, unadorned mud-hole. He held his pistol to his cheek. He’d counted his steps and imagined that John Tarbell was in position by now.

Jeremy gritted his teeth and stepped out into the light. He was in luck. Gatter and Fiske were indeed enjoying a meal of mutton freshly roasted; their attention remained solely on chomping down on the cheap cut of meat—sheep hocks from what Jeremy could see. Each guard was tearing into his meal when Jeremy and John found themselves simultaneously standing back of them. In sync, the brothers-in-law let fly, using the hilts of their pistols to strike Gatter and Fiske.

Both men went down, Gatter into the fire. Jeremy, who’d struck Gatter, pulled the filthy fat man from the ashes, and seeing that he was coming to, he struck him again. The second blow put Gatter under completely. A look at Fiske, and Jeremy saw that John was tying him hand and foot with thick hemp. Jeremy pulled the rope he’d tied about his waist and did the same with Gatter.

They carefully turned them over to face away from the jail. Thus far, neither Jeremy nor Tarbell could be identified. They’d not spoken a word to this end either.

Jeremy rushed to catch up to Tarbell, now at one of the two windows forming the face of the cell. Jeremy had the keys in hand, the same keys that Rebecca had grabbed and locked inside with her that night Serena begged her to come away with them.

He fought with the keys to locate the big skeleton that opened the huge door while John whispered through the window for Serena to come to the door.

“John!” It was Serena’s voice.

“Shhhh!”

“What’re you doing?”

“Use no names,” he cautioned her.

Jeremy flung the door wide and grabbed Serena in his arms. They held onto one another for some time until Tarbell said in their ears, “You two come along. We must be out of here, now!”

But Serena pulled away and rushed at the unconscious figure of Gatter, and with a swift kick, she bloodied his face. “Bastard!”

“Come away, Serena!” Tarbell handed her over to Jeremy.

“What’s this all about?” Jeremy stared from Gatter’s grimace to Serena.

“Not now!” Tarbell rushed off. “Follow me!”

As they left the jail door standing open, everyone inside able to gather strength began pouring from the gaping black hole. Jeremy noted that all of the escapees went away from the village lights—all save one. A woman he did not know. But busy, Jeremy guided Serena, following in John’s footsteps, back to the horses. Halfway back to the waiting animals, gunshots rang out.

The three of them instinctively ducked and hid away. Looking back through the brush, they saw the fire of muskets. Men had come to the aide of the jailers already, but how? How had they learned of the jailbreak so quickly with both Gatter and Fiske hogtied and unconscious?

Either someone had come to check on them or one of the escaping prisoners had gone directly for help, hoping to curry favor with the authorities. Jeremy realized it might well be the figure he’d seen rushing toward the village, the man or woman who’d informed on them.

If true, Serena, Jeremy, and John were in more trouble than ever; if someone knew they’d come for Serena in particular, this woman may well’ve recognized Tarbell or Jeremy or both—in which case the first place authorities would come looking was the Nurse home.

“We ride all night if necessary,” Jeremy told the other two.

“You two, yes,” replied John. “Not me. I have my family to attend to first.”

“But suppose they go to your place?” Serena grabbed John by the arm. He hugged her tight.

“Go with all due caution then, John.” Jeremy pulled Serena from her brother by marriage. He guided her to her horse. She threw her arms about the horse’s head, moaning, “Oh, Star. It’s so beautiful to see you.”

“Climb on,” Jeremy insisted while he bodily lifted her into the saddle.

“Get on your way, both of you!” Tarbell urged them on. “And tell me nothing of your plans, Jeremy. I will find you in future. Now go!” He slapped Star’s rear and she raced off as Jeremy stepped into his saddle and followed. Their initial direction would send them by the Nurse home. So far as Serena knew, her father waited there, and she’d want to say goodbye.

Jeremy pushed Dancer to catch her, and soon he came alongside, slowing her speed with an upraised hand. “Serena! There is bad news you must hear.”

“Father? How is he?”

“He . . . he is with your mother now.”

She swallowed hard, tears forming. “I want to see him.”

“No, dear. His body is with your mother’s, and so seeing him is no option, and going there could lead to a discovery of the graves. We should not stop at the home at all but take the west road to the territories.”

“Connecticut?” she asked.

“Connecticut, yes. Anyone asking in Boston will be told by Mrs. Fahey, the jailor at the prison, and others, that I booked passage to Barbados. They’ll be looking for us to’ve escaped to the West Indies.”

“Clever ploy.” The West Indies typically meant a stopover en route to Europe.

Jeremy smiled at the compliment. “I only hope that it works. Buys us time. Now we must ride hard.”

“What of money for needs along the way?”

“John found a box of silver coin in your father’s room. Says it’s now your dowry.”

“I was so afraid when you didn’t come; so afraid I’d be stripped, searched by them for the Devil’s mark, excommunicated, found guilty at the court, and hung at the gallows.”

“None of which will ever happen now. I swear to you, no one is taking you from me. Ever again!”

“Ever?”

“Ever, yes.”

They rode for the western black sky ahead of them, a cloud of dust thrown up behind them. They soon passed the once proud Nurse homestead where she pulled up to stare one last time at the stand of trees out front between house and gate where her mother and father lay.

“John says in time they’ll plant flowers, put up a fence and headstones.”

“In time. You mean if this feverish witch hunt is ever at end?”

“Serena. I have it on good authority the accusers have overplayed their parts.”

“What do you mean?

“They recently accused Mrs. Hale of Beverly of the hideous crimes they uttered against your mother and now you.”

“The minister’s wife at Beverly? Madness. There is no more pious and worthy woman in all the colonies together. This persecution is pure hypocrisy! All of it!”

“An hypocrisy from the beginning, agreed!” He turned her gaze from the trees and the tables at her former home and onto his eyes. “I have talked to Mrs. Phipps, have tried to get her to get the governor to intervene, but I fear I’ve failed.”

“I’m sorry, Jeremy. I know you’ve done everything humanly possible.”

“As did your father, John Proctor, your mother in her sacrifice.”

“That filthy jailer offered me freedom if he could touch me.”

That explained her kicking Gatter as she had. “I should have allowed you another kick.”

“And to think the man was going about like a bandy rooster, telling people that Mother had converted him to Christianity.”

“Forget about him—and all of them in the village.”

“And Sarah and Mary? What of my aunts?” Neither Sarah Cloyse or Mary Easty had been in the same jail as Serena.

“I was referring to the evil allowed to go on in the village by the people there. It has always been a place cursed, and never more than now.”

They rode on at a hard pace.

Chapter Eight

The deceased Giles Corey who had died while under torture left three sons and a wife, Martha. Martha Corey learned of her husband’s awful death on the same day she was officially condemned after a court appearance, the day after Giles’ death, September 17^th. Martha Corey had the dubious distinction of being at the top of the execution list. On the list of condemned that day with Martha were Margaret Scot of Rowly, Wilmott Redd of Marblehead, Abigail Hobbs of Topsfield, Mary Parker, Abigail Faulkner, Mary Lacy, and Anne Foster all of Andover—said to be followers of Wizard Wardwell.

Very soon after, on September 22^nd, seven condemned witches were publicly executed at the Watch Hill gallows, one having to watch the other six before they got round to her, Martha Corey. Among the executed, a sister to Rebecca Nurse, Mary Easty, Alice and Mary Parker, Wilmott Redd, Ann Pudeator, and Margaret Scot. When prisoners became too ill and unable to stand, they lost their place in line at the gallows, and others condemned by the court were set up in their place on the gallows.

Mary Easty, on the stairs to her rope echoed the words of her sister Rebecca. “I dare not belie my on soul by falsely agreeing to your filthy charges! I know my innocence, which means I know you are all in a wrong way. God help you all if the Lord does not step mightily in—and soon.”

The seer children screamed in agony with her every word as if firebrands burned their eyes and bodies, the screams drowning out Mary Easty’s words for all but save those closest to her.

“It’s of no use, Goodwife.” Martha Corey nudged Mary along. “Reverend Burroughs on this gallows said our Lord’s prayer without a single mistake—”

“I heard the story,” added Wilmott Redd.

“—a thing a witch man’s incapable of doing,” continued Martha, “but they hung him all the same.”

“So save your breath,” suggested Ann Pudeator.

In short order, all of the condemned brought to the rope were executed after Mary Easty’s comments to her Maker and to the men and women of Salem, including some in her extended family who thought her guilty.

# # # # #

A Boston news pamphlet with a circulation reaching a third of the population, one which had been keeping Bostonians apprised of all news coming from Salem regarding the arrests, condemnations, and executions surrounding the recent events concerning the dark arts and the search for witches and warlocks had early on warned that such dark proceedings—accusations and arrests for murder by witchery—could, in time, begin anew in Boston. Horatio Sperlunkle, the editor of the paper informed his readers via the dispatches of an itinerant journalist named Silas Smithington that:

On good authority, accusations (not of this paper’s making) have in fact not only reached so far as Boston but the mansion—accusations maligning the character of Mrs. Elizabeth Phipps. The Salem ‘seer children’ of whom we hear so much success in seeing facts of an invisible and spectral nature, have announced against Governor Phipps’ wife, who, like the wife of Waverly’s Reverend John Hale, has been busy at the jails here in Boston showing mercy and offering sweet meats and drink to prisoners. This outrage against Mrs. Elizabeth Phipps is, in the estimation of this paper, the proverbial final straw.

The pamphlet’s message spread throughout Boston, and depending on the reader, this news was either a sensational revelation of truth or a terrible gossip’s lie that had been stretched out of all proportion. But this, of all the accusations, if a lie, then a lie touching on the highest family in the land, and condemning the First Lady of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. What must the people of Essex County think?

The pamphlet went on to say:

Each of these virtuous, Christian women, Mrs. Hale of Beverly, a minister’s wife, and our Mrs. Phipps of Boston, the governor’s wife, have habitually visited those unfortunate and wretched souls jailed on the charge of witchcraft and murder via the dark arts.

While we here in Boston are not so familiar with Minister John Hale and Mrs. Hale of Beverly, we are familiar with William and Mrs. Phipps. We have seen her kneel to extend prayers and bread, feeding the accused—and we know that mere accusation alone has nowadays become the coin of realm in the court system. Now to have Mrs. Phipps accused of these heinous crimes has placed her in the company of degenerates, murderers, thieves, and other lowly types. If some among us have questioned the extremes we see in Salem Farms, what now would authorities have us do with this extreme accusation?

Perhaps at last this insult to him will garner action from our governor, who may well on hearing this nonsense go from being a man of inaction and knowing nothing of witchcraft matters or how accusations have been handled since March to knowing the truth of these matters! For what Goodman in Essex County, indeed the entirety of the present colonies, who knows his wife intimately to be pure of heart can doubt now that many pure of hearts have been arrested, imprisoned, and perhaps executed among the twenty-one thus far hung in Salem? Are we now to imagine Mrs. Phipps at the end of a rope, summarily executed by the state? A state headed by her husband?

Is there any question or doubt in the mind of our governor as to what these recent accusations against his wife mean? We at this ledger do hope that Minister Hale might come to Boston, seek audience with Governor Phipps and compare his Goodwife with Phipps’ own. That the two men might begin with their ladies’ charitable, munificent, and pious natures, which nature precludes any curiosity or interest in the black arts.”

The paper had been quietly speaking out since Jeremiah Wakely’s secret dispatches had begun showing up. The editor however stopped short of printing the libelous theory of how Reverend Samuel Parris of Salem Village not only instigated and fanned the flames of accusations in the witch hunt for personal gain, along with other ministers and magistrates—including Sir William Stoughton and the Court of Oyer & Terminer. The editor also refused to print the horrid theory that a man of the cloth, Parris, may or may not have killed his own half-breed infant in an abortion performed by a ship’s doctor named Caball docked at Barbados some three or four years before removing himself and his family to Salem.

News of Mrs. Hale’s having been accused had come along with testimonials as to her character. Oddly, the postmark on the news was that of Connecticut—a man named Silas Smithington, but the Sperlunkle knew it was an alias of the outlaw Jeremy Wakely.

Whatever the truth of the matter, all of Boston had this news of Mrs. Phipps’ being a witch now on the tongue. It took the place of concerns of weather, crops, fishing nets and catches, and of cargo coming and going in the harbor, and the normal life of trade in weights and measures and working one’s fields, and clearing woods, and building barns and homes. Concerns that, particularly in Salem, had been let go since the witchcraft panic had begun and snowballed downhill until people were seeing witches everywhere. Now the frenzy, like a disease, had spread to other villages and towns until now it gripped Boston in a most dramatic fashion.

In the Governor’s house, Mrs. Phipps sat her busy husband down, and she insisted he listen to a tale told by a so-called witch and now a reported fugitive and outlaw, a man named Jeremiah Wakely alias Silas Smithington.

“How ever does my lady come by these accounts from this rogue Wakely?” demanded William Phipps, pacing their bedroom.

Elizabeth Phipps sat at her mirror, brushing out her long, golden hair. “By a party who came to me while you were fighting Indians in the territories. A reliable source.”

“That Samuel Parris has played us all for fools, the entire General Court? The Salem judges, Corwin and Hathorne? That Parris’ true intent was land holdings and the court seized on the idea along with vote gathering?”

“You know something of the man I speak of,” she calmly replied and resumed brushing. “A man who has done work for you through Increase Mather, secretive work.”

“Jeremiah Wakely? Who has come under suspicion himself? Who has married into one of the witch families down there?”

She wheeled on him and angrily shouted, “Yes, the same as was sent by Increase Mather into Salem, just before all of this witch hunt business began, yes—orders stemming from you, Mister Phipps.”

“One and the same, yes.” He avoided her eyes.

“Increase, your trusted friend, he spoke highly of this Wakely as I recall.”

“He did indeed. Trusted his judgment.”

“As you did, and yet you take the reports of others against him as fact?”

“He is accused of breaking prisoners out of the Salem jailhouse!”

“And when they come to lock me away in the jailhouse here, William? Will you break me free? What I hear is that Mr. Wakely took back what was his, and it’s rather romantic, his facing a loss of everything—his reputation, his very future, his life for his love.”

Sir William Phipps did not miss the innuendo. “I’d do the same for you, Lizbeth! You know I’d give up everything here—” he swept a hand through the air—“to keep you safe.”

“Wakely told me a horror tale about a child aborted in Barbados by a Dr. Caball, a man I have heard my father speak of—a miscreant who has no education and is no doctor at all but a butcher whose services go to anyone with coin.”

“Tell me then the whole story and how Wakely came by it.”

Mrs. Phipps laid out everything she’d learned about Parris, including his connection to her father and this man, Caball, and the fact these two men conspired to hide Parris’ mistake.

“How do you know this information is correct, Elizabeth?”

“When I was a young girl, my father came home with an infant, a child of mixed race.”

“Really? To raise as his own mistake?”

“He made some peace with Mother about the child, and he and my mother raised the child. I asked mother about it once, and she simply said, “Your father saved this child from a certain death. He is a good man.”

“Then there was no murder in Barbados of this Tituba Indian’s child.”

“No, only what appears to be an attempt that my father learned of and stopped. He must have convinced Parris to allow him to take the child. The mother, in a drugged state and afterward assumed the worst.”

“What became of the child?”

“He was trained in the ways of a man servant, and he is still in my father’s service. His name is Reginald.

“How can you know this is—was—the same child?”

“How can you know that it isn’t?”

“And if this confessed witch, Tituba is telling the truth . . . Parris is not the man he pretends.”

“What will you do, William? What will your office make of my being accused a witch? They strip the witches to search for imperfections on their bodies, calling warts by another name—the teet where suckles a demon or familiar! Will you stand by as you have so long now when they strip—”

“By all that is holy! By God and by my hand, no one will dare touch you, Lizbeth!”

“And when they come for me, armed men of your court system?”

Phipps thought of the scenario and it tore at his heart. “I have my own guard, and they are loyal men. Men who have fought with me in the provinces and the territories against the heathen horde. Men who will kill on my word.”

“But suppose these same men are superstitious and believe the accusations and subscribe to the chosen children of Salem who have now accused me?”

“Lizbeth!” he went to her and kneeled, his head in her lap. “What would you have me do?”

“I have several requests, beginning with an immediate decree to open every jailhouse door and release anyone inside accused of murder or mischief by way of witchcraft.”

“Done! It is done.”

“And you need to hand down an edict that will immediately shut down the Court of Oyer & Terminer.”

“Done!”

“And in time, you must summarily replace Sir William Stoughton as the head of the judges, and possibly replace the entire General Court.”

He hesitated a moment. “In time, yes.”

“And immediately strip these two lesser judges of any power whatsoever to oversee any trial of any sort ever again.

“Done, dear.”

“And to remove from Salem Town a man named Noyes, a minister.”

“Remove a minister of—”

“A man who cannot fill the shoes of your old friend, Nehemia Higginson.”

“And I suppose you also want the removal of—”

“A thing you should have done from the beginning of the growing feud in Salem Village.”

“Remove Samuel Parris.”

“Put it to him. He can hang for high crimes and misuse of his office, or he can disappear.”

“Done.”

Chapter Nine

Flyers and town criers went about Boston, Salem, and the colonies declaring the word of the top legal authority in the colony, Governor and Sir William Phipps. He had acted swiftly to quell any possibility of any further defamation of his wife’s character. He also declared a moratorium on arrests for witchcraft, trials for witchcraft, and executions for witchcraft. By carriage, he traveled to Salem, accompanied by Reverend John Hale, their two wives, surrounded by his private armed guard.

Governor William Phipps took a series of meetings with the judges, and especially William Stoughton. He took private meetings with Cotton Mather, Reverend Noyes, Samuel Parris, and he examined letters that rent his heart, letters of appeal for reason and caution both by and on behalf of the executed—Rebecca Nurse, John Proctor, Reverend George Burroughs, Mary Easty, and Sarah Cloyse among them.

Phipps took meetings individually with the seer children only to find himself called out by them as the most clever of all the wizards and warlocks in all of New England, and that he might just be the Antichrist with the Black Bible. In fact, he’d been given the scepter of the Black Minister leading the witches at their black Sabbath, the scepter of the heretic.

Before returning to Boston, Governor Phipps ordered the jails in all of Massachusetts opened and everyone arrested on the say so of the Salem accusers released on the basis of insufficient evidence. This included all those found guilty and condemned to die by the Court of Oyer & Terminer—the very court he’d asked Stoughton to convene. The court he now proclaimed at an end. These decrees were posted on the meetinghouse doors in every hamlet and town, and to be sure, they were posted at Ingersoll’s Inn and Apothecary, and Ingersoll was stripped of his duties as postmaster.

News of Phipps’ finally taking action, while far too late for Rebecca Nurse and nineteen others executed, and one man tortured to death, and some three hundred incarcerated, quickly spread and made the front page of every pamphlet in Essex County. An assessment was ordered to determine precisely how many accused prisoners had died of consumption and disease while in custody, but no exact figure could be established as those accused of witchcraft were numbered in with those arrested on other charges who passed away while in the care of the state.

On the way back to Boston, from behind the curtain within the Phipps carriage, Mrs. Phipps asked, “So what weight do you give, husband, on the documents recovered that Jeremiah Wakely had asked be posted but were never forwarded?”

“So you’ve heard the tale?”

“Not much gets by my attention, as you well know.”

“I’ve seen the vileness behind the parsonage walls, the vileness within this man Parris thanks to Wakely’s meticulous notes. There is this one sermon in particular, and there is a detailed report of a sham exorcism.”

“I should like to see Wakely’s reports some time.”

“They are not comfortable bedtime reading, my dear.”

“All the same, I wish to see them.” The rough road made her slip and slide into him when the wheels hit a particularly bad spot. He took advantage of her being almost in his lap, and he kissed her passionately. She returned his kiss, very much in love with this man. But when she pulled away, she said, “Don’t think you can distract me. I still want to see those reports that should have come to Cotton Mather and then to your hands in the first place.”

“All right,” he conceded to the sound of the creaking coach. “After which the flames will see them.”

“You mean to destroy it all?”

“What good to perpetuate what has happened here. News of what really went on here gets back to England, it will make a mockery of what we’re here to accomplish on these shores, Lizbeth—a horrid mockery.”

“Ah, I see . . . politics?”

“More than politics. It could mean the survival of this-this experiment. We came here to build a New Jerusalem, to glorify God with a paradise on Earth. What will all the enemies of Puritanism make of what’s happened here?”

“Aye, plenty of people want us to fail. Among them my father.”

“The old cussed doctor, yes. He’s never believed in me, has he?”

“Afraid not, and I wish you’d forgive him that. I have.”

“He hasn’t any belief in our dream here in New England, and he has cursed me for taking you away from him.”

It was a sore point in their marriage and had always hung over them. He took her hands in his. “Write to your father in Barbados. Ask him directly about this man Caball and this Reginald’s origins—if you wish to pursue this Parris business any further —which I do not, my lady. Otherwise, it is dropped.”

“What of Parris then—the so-called ordained minister?” The coach again bucked hard and the driver slowed. From above they heard his urgent apologies for the road.

“Parris is done on these shores, Liz. I’ve ordered him out of the jurisdiction of the Bay Colony.”

“But then he will simply go elsewhere and spread his venom in Rhode Island or—”

“Drop it. The man has lost all influence and—”

“Lost his influence? While others’ve lost their lives, William!”

“—and-and any hold he may have had on this parish, including any land holdings he thought he had in Salem.”

“Lost his parish house did he?” She remained sarcastic.

“Including a tract he thought he had that touched on the Frost Fish River, a tract that would have set him up as an ore magnate. Turns out he held an interest in a nearby mine with his relatives here.”

“He should be taken out to those awful gallows we saw on the way in and hung!”

“An eye for an eye? That’s not like you, Liz.”

“If anyone deserves it in all this, if capital punishment means anything—”

“Lizbeth! He fades away quietly from this place.”

“And pays no price?”

“God will repay him in due course.”

“Twenty-one dead that we know of, dead by these witch trials, and he walks away untouched? Is that justice?”

“We are interested in healing at this time.”

“And justice be damned?”

“Justice? There is none to be found here, and-and—twisted justice—is what has got us to this cross.”

She reached out to her husband and with a finger to her lips shushed him for the sake of the carriage driver and gossip. “It’s none of your doing, William. You put your trust in our beloved faith—and in the highest court in the land.”

“I should’ve held faith with you.”

“True but you didn’t; still, recriminations against yourself now are of no use.”

“Should have paid attention to your intuition. Early on you had your suspicions on this matter.”

“Yes, I did, and I predicted it would hurt us all badly in the end.”

“And it has indeed.”

“I will write father in Barbados, but I fear he will not be forthcoming on the subject of his part in hiding the child, but now that so much time has passed, perhaps. Be if true, think how clearly the line is to be drawn from the death or rather near death of an infant by a needle in Barbados to the multiple deaths of infants—so-called by witchcraft and by needle—aborted, here! Coincidence?”

“All the same, any further attack on the ministry and the court can only weaken our government here, Elizabeth.”

“And we can’t have that, now can we?”

He glared at her but was at a loss for words. The coach had maintained a steady pace now as if the driver was being more cautious or curious; it was impossible to tell. All around the carriage uniformed militia—the Governor’s private guard—rode in formation, cheering suddenly. This made both governor and wife look outside where they saw some burly Salem farmers had sent the Watch Hill gallows tumbling down.

Inside the coach, Mrs. Phipps’ expression was of a bittersweet smile. “What of the lands and properties seized by the court?”

“They are in question yet, but I will look them all over with Wilburforce, entertain petitions, attempt to return lands rightfully to those who have lost due to this . . . this—”

“Debacle you may call it.”

He nodded and smiled at her. “That’s a proper word for it.”

She muttered under her breath, “Over three hundred of our citizenry have been jailed in disease-ridden, rat-infested prisons where the numbers of dead have not been kept.”

“Do you know what Sir William Stoughton said to me, Elizabeth?”

“I warned you about that man. I’ve always detested his arrogance and love of power.”

“Do you wish to hear what he had to say then?”

“Of course, I do. I may want to write a book one day.”

“Don’t think of it. A governor’s wife penning a book!”

“So what did he say?”

“He said of his judges, and I quote, ‘We are in one agreement. We have no intention of putting an end to God’s work until every single witch and wizard is found out, confesses—as hundreds have done—or are executed as only a handful have been.”

“So your words to him and the high court fell on deaf ears?”

“Afraid so.”

“Righteous men with a righteous cause are often blinded by their very righteousness. So how will they proceed without a court? If they go against your edict then—”

“Then they will be arrested, and they know it. They have no court overseeing cases of witchcraft no longer.”

“Did you tell them our suspicions against Parris?”

“Only in the most general terms. I didn’t want to cast eyes or aspersions on your father, who some might think this mysterious Dr. Caball.”

She hadn’t considered this and it took her aback, but she dropped it and instead asked, “But you made the point that Parris is an ambitious oaf capable of doing anything to get what he wants?”

“I did; I made that plain enough.” Governor Phipps, a hero of the Indian wars, banged the top of the carriage with his cane, using the signal for speed. The carriage moved faster over the road to Boston and home.

# # # # #

In further public forums, the Governor declared repeatedly that every jail door be opened in a General Amnesty to all prisoners within and specifically anyone accused of witchcraft or murder by means of witchcraft. William Phipps went on to publicly denounce the use of nightmares, ghost stories, or spectral evidence of any sort in any court in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

It was as if cold water had been thrown over an entire land, as if everyone had awakened from a gruesome shared nightmare. A gut wrenching, sobering of the collective mind spelled the end of the hysteria that’d taken the lives of neighbors.

This light-of-day, cold sobering, which began with the accusation of Mrs. Hale and Mrs. Phipps, replaced the out of control power that’d been handed over to the chosen ones—the ‘seer children’—who suddenly were given no more heed than fools and naves.

# # # # #

Jeremiah and Serena had found temporary lodging in a river village along the Connecticut River that was quite the outpost; in fact, the sound of Indian chants and the smell of Indian fires were within earshot and nostril. But it felt like a place of peace, and it proved a place where Mr. and Mrs. Silas Smithington held up as newlywed Goodman and Goodwife striking out on their own, and not fugitives from the now infamous Salem ordeal.

It’d been from here that Jeremy had sent his dispatches to the Boston editor, Horatio Sperlunkle who might or might not publish the lie that he had not fabricated but had nourished instead—that the Salem accusers, those supposedly capable of seeing into the Invisible World of Satan—had called out the name of Elizabeth Phipps—none other than Governor William Phipps’ wife. This time it was Jeremy who fanned the flame.

It’d been a calculated risk, but the idea was hatched when Jeremy had informed Serena of the accusations leveled at John Hale’s wife and at Phipps’ wife, which so reflected Serena’s own experience—feed the needy prisoners and you become a target. He’d closely watched Serena’s reaction, the depth of her confusion and anger and disbelief that Mrs. Hale of all people and that the kindness she had witnessed in Boston from Mrs. Phipps could be twisted so horribly.

After a brief discussion of the absurdity of Mrs. Hale’s having been accused, likening her to her own mother, Serena suggested, “Those damnable accusers have reached too far now. Their keepers gave them too much rope.”

“I doubt it,” Jeremy had disagreed. “We need to feed this accusation against Mrs. Phipps.”

“What? We need to feed it? This woman’s a saint, Jeremy!”

“Like your mother? Your aunts? You?”

“When I was among the prisoners as one of them, Mrs. Hale brought us bread and water and tea at the jail. Risked disease. Risked being stoned, she did!”

“Like Mrs. Phipps in Boston.” Jeremy agreed. “We must make hay of this.”

“How?”

“Leave that to me. Or rather Silas Smithington, Mrs. Smithington.”

“Right, Silas, but how?” she persisted.

They were staying at a boarding house, ostensibly on their way further west. He located his ink and quill. “By the power of the pen, and this time my words will be published.”

“Jeremy, yes, you know people in Boston—that fellow you worked for at the paper.”

Their eyes met. “Are you suggesting that we start our own bloody lie?”

“A lie to defeat their lies, yes—a foul one at that.”

“But suppose it backfires and Mrs. Phipps is actually arrested?”

“Mrs. Proctor was arrested, followed by her husband; Mrs. Corey arrested, followed by Giles Corey; Parkers the same. Mother and her sisters, and had my father not died, he’d’ve gone the way of Mother—to the gallows. And had you and John not freed me, well? If Mrs. Phipps is arrested, it follows that this do-nothing Governor would be facing arrest as well.”

“Then perhaps he might exert power in the right direction?”

“It’s a chance worth taking.”

Jeremy welcomed Serena’s help on fashioning Silas Smithington’s Reports from Salem. They worked on the details together in the silence of the small room they’d rented. They knew it would be months before any repercussions came of their bold news.

And now today they had received news of the bold edicts posted across Essex County and the Massachusetts Bay Colony that effectively put an end to the Court of Oyer & Terminer, the lesser courts, the accusation fever, and to Samuel Parris.

To celebrate, Jeremy took Serena to dine out and they shared a bottle of wine.

# # # # #

As slow as dripping water from a pump, news of the Governor’s having taken action, that he’d finally stepped in and halted the witch trials, filtered to Connecticut, reaching these outer settlements. Even so, both Jeremy and Serena had misgivings about trusting the news, despite their quiet celebration. Soon, however, the word about Phipps’stepping in had taken on more than the sound and feel of rumor.

All the same, for Serena in particular, the feelings of relief mixed with feelings of anger and loss. Like many, she rightfully wanted to know why had it taken so long? The first arrests had been Sarah Goode and Tituba Indian, and from this the arrest of a single third witch, Bridget Bishop, all this in late February and early March, followed by several more arrests in March, and now it was mid-October and the arrests had turned into countless deaths.

“My parents gone, my home desecrated and for all we know now in the hands of the state,” she complained to Jeremy as they packed to move on, going for the land deeded over to Jeremiah Wakely with the hope no warrant officer was waiting for him there. As to Reverend Cotton Maher, as in all things, he had remained out of sight, his head held low.

Jeremy imagined it would take years for Serena to forgive and forget and to move on. He had no words for her. Instead, he held her.

“Tell me about how Father’s burial went, Jeremy. Was the word read over him?”

“Tarbell and I said the Lord’s Prayer over him.” Jeremy didn’t tell her that they’d slurred their way through it, both having drank too much.

“That’s good,” she replied. “I miss them both so very much.”

Jeremy feared her heart might break. He held onto her while she sobbed. “I wrapped him in a shawl your mother often wore; he’d been clinging to it when he died according to John. The shawl still smelled of her.”

Serena only sobbed more at this news. “Thank you, Jeremy.”

“For what?”

“For too many kindnesses to count.”

“From all I could determine of John Tarbell and Joseph and Ben, your family intends to hold onto their land and continue on in Salem. They may have to petition the new court overseeing the redistributions, but they have a good case now. We can go back some time. See them.”

“You, perhaps! I want nothing more to do with the place.”

“I completely understand your bitterness, I do.”

“Do you think me unforgiving? If so, you will have to accept it in me, husband.”

“I accept you fully—as you are, Candlwick; I love you, always.”

“And I you.”

Epilogue

1702, Greenwich, Connecticut

Ten years later, Serena and Jeremiah are sitting down to evening meal when he opens the Connecticut Dispatch, a newspaper in Greenwich, where they have settled on the property deeded over to them by the high court of the colonies in 1692. Serena is raising and selling horses, and Jeremy is the local magistrate, having the respect of the community.

A letter arrives postmarked from Salem Village, the seal indicating NI—that of Nathaniel Ingersoll. The letter is put aside, unopened. Before long, the unopened communication is disturbing their meal. Finally, Serena shouts, “Jeremy Wakely, if you don’t open it, I will and now!”

“Any word from Ingersoll and Salem can wait on my meal; I want no indigestion.”

Serena realizes he wants no reliving of the events of Salem. Still she insists, “Open it, Jeremy. It may well be important.”

“The damn thing can wait till after dinner.”

They argue until she gets her way, and he opens it to learn a startling fact he is reluctant to share.

Serena, seeing the confused look on his handsome features, wrests the note from his hand. In Ingersoll’s tight little script, he writes:

April 4^th 1702

Dear Jeremiah & Serena Wakely,

I thought you should know of this news. That this day, as an adult, Anne Putnam Junior stood unbidden by anyone before all Salem Village parishioners in the meeting house, and the spinster freely confessed to having lied during the entire witchcraft episode. Witchy thing that she is, she begged forgiveness from her fellow villagers. Oddly or perhaps not so oddly, forgiveness was granted Anne. No one else of the accusing girls ever made such a confession, save that time Susannah Sheldon had recanted her accusations against the Wilkinses—but this is the only such recanting after the fact. However, as you recall, during the height of the witch hunt, Mary Wolcott also at one time recanted her accusation in confession, but that she was bullied into recanting her confession at that time.

So I suppose young Miss Putnam did a brave thing in making confession that she wronged so many, and that twenty one died on her and the other girl’s lies—and of course, the behavior of we adults who stood by. I won’t discount that adults were in the thick of it as well.

By the way, Samuel Parris passed away peaceful and content in Sweringen, Ohio where he’d located his family and begun a new life, still preaching to the needy heathens there—his new congregation. We must trust that God has special plans for our Mr. Parris in the next life.

As for myself, I have much forgiveness to seek, and I do so each day here. I wish to apologize to you both for your terrible loses during those darks days. Had we all eyes to see more clearly then, had we purer hearts, the fire that took us over could not have been kindled.

Your friend in all sincerity,

Nathaniel Ingersoll

Jeremy came round and took Serena in his arms as she’d begun to sob with the memories of her mother’s last days, and how her father had died alone. Holding her tight and then tighter, Jeremy thought too of how his own mother and father had died in Salem so many years ago. He thought of the series of ministers whose families had died in that parish, and of how poor George Burroughs had ended his days. He thought of broken paths and crooked turns and gnarled branches, all the fingers of small streams and rivers that had brought him and Serena together here in Greenwich. Here in a life of peace with three children of their own to nourish and protect.

Together in the middle of the room, the lovers gently rocked into one another, until after a moment, they appeared as one.