“If it’s so proper, young lady, then why not ride in daylight?”

Serena rushed out and shouted over her shoulder from the porch, “I won’t leave the property. Promise.”

Alone now, watching their youngest disappear into the barn, Rebecca asked, “Will you come into my bed tonight, Francis?”

“Ben’s bed?”

“Ben’s room, yes.”

“I will.”

They embraced, neither seeing young Serena watching from the stable where she saddled her horse. She’d gotten into the habit of riding the property each night, weather permitting. She climbed onto her horse, Nightshade, and she soon galloped in the general direction of the river—riding as freely as any man might and in the manner of a man. She meant to follow it for a while, turn and return home and to a bed warmed well by now, what with her having placed the bed coals beneath. The evening ride was her way of finding some peace and beauty in life, and riding beneath the stars and planets on a clear night felt like freedom.

From inside the house, Serena’s aging parents heard the hooves of her thundering horse as she raced off.

Chapter Twelve

The following morning

Jeremiah Wakely walked with a bounce in his step, and he felt the eyes of the villagers on him, step for step, as he made his way across the main thoroughfare for Ingersoll’s Ordinary & Inn. On Sabbath Days long before the village had erected a parsonage and a proper meetinghouse, Ingersoll’s stood in for the official gathering place. Ingersoll’s Inn continued yet as the center of village life, commerce and conversation, news and gossip, and in more than one sense spiritual libation. In 1692 far more imbibing from the keg than from the bible went on here. And it was the place to post a letter, which was Jeremy’s goal.

The exterior hadn’t changed save for a new sign in bold giant letters, reading: Ingersoll’s Ordinary, Apothecary & Inn. As he approached the front doors, Jeremiah recalled that it’d always been a hodgepodge, somewhere between an apothecary (filled with elixirs and rubs from plants to bear grease) and a dry goods and millinery shop sharing space with an alehouse. Some said the place reflected Nathaniel Ingersoll completely.

The first visit to Ingersoll’s that Jeremy had made, when he’d pushed through the creaking, swinging doors, old, heavyset Nathaniel Ingersoll, having heard of a Wakely who’d come to apprentice under Reverend Parris, rushed at Jeremy with open arms. “God blind me if it isn’t you! Jeremiah Wakely in the flesh.” Ingersoll had then lifted Jeremy off his feet with a bone-jarring bear hug. “What a bully young man you are! And you’ve turned to the ministry! Wonderful news!”

And now entering this morning, he got just as warm a welcome as ever. Ingersoll came around the counter and shook his hand and introduced him to some men who seemed disinterested.

“Good to see you, too, Mr. Ingersoll.” A twinge of guilt laced Jeremy’s words. “You’ve hardly changed in all these years.”

“Liar! A kind-hearted boy you always were, but I’m forty pounds more, and me jowls are flab! But you, now, that’s change indeed! What a temperate man you’ve become!”

“Ten years and you don’t look a day older, really, sir.” Ingersoll did seem ageless, a huge round man.

“Harrr! We’re all fortunate for each day God grants us, Jeremiah! Let me pour you a cup of ale.”

“That does sound good, yes.”

Jeremy approached the bar, and as Ingersoll went for the ale, but the big bear stopped in his tracks, turned and with a wide-eyed look of confusion on his bearded face, he lamented, “Oh my, but if you’re ordained a minister, and me a deacon now, I’ll have to call you Mr. Wakely, now won’t I?”

“It’s not come to that yet, sir.”

“Then I’ve leave to call you—”

“Jeremy will do, as always, Mr. Ingersoll.”

Ingersoll smiled from behind a squirrel’s nest of a beard. He threw back his head, the wild shocks of hair flying like Medusa’s curls, and he laughed the laugh of Neptune. He had always been a mainstay in Salem Village, but how wonderful a pirate he’d’ve made, Jeremy recalled thinking as a child. Some things never change.

As Jeremy watched his old overseer pour ale, it seemed time had stood still.

The counter here, which doubled as a bar at one end, a cutting board at the other, remained as always the same. Stools stood at this end, brooms, yardsticks, scissors, and bolts of cloth cluttered the other. The room spread out wide, the rear of it a large affair with ten-foot high dropped beamed ceilings. All of the finest spruce, but the caulking showed age and water seeped in here and there. Mildew collected in corners, and the seeping rainwater on stormy days and nights must be collected in buckets and pails.

The lion's share of the store was turned over to fresh produce, fish and fowl, beaver and marmet pelts, bolts of cloth, as well as carpentry tools and farm and garden instruments. Along one wall traps of every size along with hunting and fishing equipment, as well as buckets and mops, and the most characteristic element Jeremy remembered from his youth—the large stand of brooms all in a circle at the center. Nor had he forgotten the taffy and hard candy jar on the counter alongside the pickled eggs, vegetables, nuts, and berries. And all of it was set aglow by the huge fireplace at the end of the room.

“So it is Deacon Ingersoll these days?” asked Jeremy, taking a dram of ale.

Ingersoll looked stricken. “It’s no easy task, let me tell you.”

“You’re having to referee between Mr. Parris and his flock I imagine.”

“Half or more of his flock, yes.”

Ingersoll was always easy with local news and gossip himself. “Who leads the dissenting faction?”

“Francis Nurse and his wife, Rebecca.”

“Really?” This took Jeremy aback. “I thought it Tarbell, Proctor maybe.”

“More her than Francis, actually, and some say Rebecca’s fallen ill as a result of bedeviling our minister.”

“Ill? How ill?”

“Been abed all winter she has.”

“I see.” Jeremy read the notices on the bulletin board pinned there and forgotten. One was a call to the Militia Company, which was to meet and parade about the village the next day. “Are you still with the militia company, sir?”

“Aye and I’m nowadays Lieutenant Ingersoll.” The man beamed far more at this label than at being called a deacon.

“That’s grand news.” Jeremy knew him as a terrible shot.

“They’ve turned over the artillery to my care. I’m in charge of the unit.”

“Artillery?”

“Yes, we’ve a cannon now.”

“A big one, I hope.”

“A twelve-pounder, Jeremy! Come from Barbados with the new minister.”

Jeremy replied in mock toast, thinking, the man comes with a cannon to barter for the parsonage? “Mr. Parris brought a cannon with him?”

“He’s a wise enough fellow, our new minister.” Ingersoll laughed, picking up on the innuendo. “He was in the metal business in Barbados. Had an interest in a foundry there.”

“Wise, eh? He’s been in the parish for three years, yet everyone calls him the new minister, including you.”

“Ah! Well, only to distinguish him from the old minister. The former that is.”

“Burroughs, yes.”

“Now there was a minister could put away the ale and canary wine. What a fine wake he threw for his dear departed.”

“A wake he paid for behind bars?”

“You’ve kept an ear to our doings then, have you, Jeremy?”

“I have, sir, yes.”

“Morbid curiosity?”

“Simple curiosity, actually. How you jailed your own minister for nonpayment of debts has had wide purchase, sir.”

“There’s no denying we’re an unhappy, sour, melancholy lot here in the village.”

Jeremy lifted his ale to this to Ingersoll’s continued laughter.

“On the whole that is.” Ingersoll dropped the mirth and his gaze for an uncharacteristic moment of sullen thought, eyebrows twitching like black wholly worms.

“All but you, Mr. Ingersoll,” Jeremy attempted to help him from the moment of pain he seemed to be reliving. “I never knew you to be melancholy.”

“Come see me round three in the morning.”

“The Devil’s hour?” Three AM being the inversion of three PM, the traditional time of the trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. As with all Christian ritual, Satan had his twisted and sometimes turned-upside-down version, Satan as Father, Satan’s son, Satan’s own Holy Ghost. Satan mocked every Christian belief and ceremony.

And so troubled minds abounded at 3AM. Jeremy had certainly awakened to the noise resulting at that satanic hour emanating from Parris’ room.

“Aye, we’re all a bit crazy at that hour, e’en more than at the witching hour.”

“The stroke of midnight, yes.”

“Why do you suppose evil spirits and followers of pagan religions and Satan keep to such a rigid time clock, Mr. Wakely?” Ingersoll’s emphasis on Mr. Wakely was said with a wink.

“Ah, a test of my studies, Deacon?”

“Just a question to a budding minister and spiritual guide is all.”

Jeremy smiled at the deacon’s addressing him as a spiritual guide. “Perhaps it’s allowed by our Maker as He allows Satan to roam among us—to drive us into temptation, to test our mettle as they say?”

“By the planets, you’re a minister after all!”

“Not technically so, not yet.”

“But well on your way.” He toasted to Jeremiah’s health.

“And to yours, sir.” Jeremy got the distinct impression that Ingersoll, among other elders and deacons, had been asked to throw theological questions at him, and then to report back to Parris on how well or how poorly Mr. Wakely performed. Perhaps it was not so. Perhaps it was all in his imagination, but it certainly seemed so—for at every turn some elder was picking at some bit of religious quibble intent on a solution out of Jeremy’s mouth.

“And to providence!” declared Ingersoll, who had poured himself a rare dram for this time of day.

“And to the continued health and wellbeing of-of the village and all in it, sir.” Again they toasted and soon their pints were drained.

“Well, I’ve yet to put up today’s notices,” said Ingersoll, his beard glistening with the ale that’d passed over the bristles. He lifted a handful of notices along with hammer and tacks. Jeremy saw the usual notices: births, deaths, and all the minutia in between: taxes, weddings, a newly foaled pony, a calf born with two tails and three legs to Mr. Putnam, an illness befalling Betty Parris having been lifted by the Grace of God, signed by Reverend Parris, and a dog gone mad alongside a small notice of a mine collapse that’d killed two men outright, a third after being dragged out, and several injured. This notice listed the names of the dead alongside the injured. The final notice that caught Jeremy’s gaze had apparently been up for some time—the official notice of excommunication of one Sarah Goode. Staring at the order from the church assize of one Samuel Parris, Jeremy said, “Some things never change, do they?”

“Oh but Jeremiah, if anyone deserved banning and shunning, it’s that wild, mindless, foul-mouthed woman. It’d be a blessing if she’d leave—join all the sinners in Rhode Island.”

“The place for all spiritual lepers, yes, and she deserves it no less than my mother and father?”

Ingersoll looked stricken, but he quickly continued posting the new notices and tearing away the old. Jeremy could let it go, but he instead added, “The subject of Rhode Island came up then, too.”

“Two entirely different situations, Jeremy. You can’t compare the need we have of ridding Salem of this Devil’s whore to-to . . .”

“This is why Reverend Parris took her child from her? The first step in ridding the village of old Goody Goode?”

“No one’s called her Goodwoman for a decade. She once did only white magic, yes, sure. I even partook of her services from time to time, but Jeremiah, nowadays . . . well she’s turned to black magic.”

“The black arts or love, take your pick, either is reason enough to excommunicate a neighbor, eh?”

“Love? Ah, as in the love between your father and step-mum.” Ingersoll banged the last tack into the last notice he’d put up. He turned and with the hammer upraised, stared straight into Jeremy’s eyes and said, “I voted against that sour business, Jeremy. You must know that.”

Jeremy held his gaze. “No . . . no, I never knew that; I assumed everyone was equal to the task of driving my father out.”