Serena shouted, “Who invited you here, Mr. Wakely? And on this of all days?”

“I-I came to offset any talk of…” he fought for a rational explanation of his being here in her yard. “That is surprise regarding my having arrived, arriving as I have, you see.” He indicated his minister’s garb.”

“Take yourself off our land!”

“Serena, I didn’t want any gossip reaching you—that is before I should have the opportunity to inform you myself.”

“Such kindness! After ten years, Mister Wakely—or is it Reverend Wakely?”

“I’d hoped to speak in private.”

“Well it’s just too late for that.”

“Too late?”

“It’s all I’ve heard for the past twenty-four hours, Mr. Wakely. How you’ve materialized.”

“I am sorry, Serena.”

“You’ve far more to apologize for than . . . than anyone here has time to hear, sir.”

Jeremy gritted his teeth and looked again at the man he assumed to be Serena’s husband. He was handing their frightened child to a woman Jeremy recognized as Serena’s older sister, Becca. The child curled up in Becca’s arms.

Finally, Ben Nurse stood and shouted, “Any reunion was bound to be rocky.”

“And hello to you, Ben, Goodman Nurse, Mother Nurse.” Jeremy removed his minister’s black hat. “I’d hoped a reunion would go well.”

Foolish thought, said their combined stares. But Ben stepped forward and shook his hand and added, “Welcome home, prodigal. Beautiful horse!”

“You may’ve changed, Jeremy Wakely,” said the elder Nurse, Francis, grinning, indicating Jeremy’s outfit. “But Serena hasn’t. Not a whit.”

“Now if you please,” Serena said, gun still upraised. “I’m asking you to leave.”

“But I wish to speak to you, privately,” he persisted, half expecting her husband to come at him now.

“We-we have spoken,” sputtered Serena, “and-and since you’re now Samuel Parris’ boy—”

“Apprentice, not boy.”

“—y-you might know that there aren’t many of us fond of the village minister.”

“I’ve learned that much, yes.”

“That man is working at being the village puppeteer, and—”

“Puppeteer?”

“—a-and now that you’re in his employ, we are not interested in anything you might care to say, Mr. Wakely.”

“Please, Serena. I just want to talk.”

“Talk? You dare to talk of talk to me? Where was the talk when ten year ago you disappeared without a word?”

“I tried to see you, but the storm prevented—”

“Ahhh, it’s a storm kept you away ten years!”

“The flooding, remember?”

“Your timing hasn’t improved.” She shook her head, the big gun wavering with the movement. “I waited….” Her voice choked off.

“I had to see you, to know you are well and happy.”

She gritted her teeth and fought to gather her poise. “We are having a family gathering, and you, sir, are not welcomed. This is family only, and you are not . . . family, now are you?”

Jeremy glanced again at the young Serena look-a-like and hiking his head toward the child, he muttered, “Obviously, you didn’t wait too awfully long.”

Serena’s features scrunched at this. Confused, she looked at Becca’s daughter, Selene, her niece. It was a family chant how much Selene looked like her Aunt Serena. Serena put it together that Jeremy assumed her married to a Tarbell and that Selene was hers. She finally said, “You have a nerve if you think—oow! If you will, please just go, Jeremiah Wakely, now!” Again the gun came up, its smooth wide bore the size of a tuba.

He’d never heard such bitterness in her voice—not even when he’d accidentally made her slip from a boulder into the Frost Fish at its coldest when they were children. He climbed on his horse to the protests of some in the clan who shouted for charity. Joseph Nurse called out to Serena, saying, “Put that gun down before it goes off!”

Becca Nurse was whispering in Serena’s ear, while Ben cried out, “Stop acting the fool, sister, and talk to ’im.” An aunt called out, “Invite the young man to sit and eat, Serena! After all, he’s still your Jere, and we all know it’s true.”

She turned on her brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles, the blunderbuss coming round like a cannon. Everyone gasped, ducked, and pulled children down again. Serena shouted, “All of you! Keep out of my affairs.”

“Auntie Serena won’t shoot us!” shouted the girl that Jeremy had taken for Serena’s daughter.

Jeremy, astride Dancer again, was stunned on hearing the Serena look-a-like call her Auntie. He raised both hands overhead in the universal gesture of defeat. “I want no family dissension!”

“Then leave our home!” shouted Serena.

Francis, aghast at the treatment of the apprentice, kept moaning, “What’re you doing, child?”

Rebecca was now whispering in Serena’s ear. “This is not any way to get a man.”

“No, no arguing on my part,” Jeremy assured everyone. “So if it pleases you, I take my leave and am sorry to’ve interrupted your feast.” He then whispered to Serena, “I had no idea you were celebrating.”

“How would you know anything about us?” Serena again held the blunderbuss on him.

“I’ll be at the river, Serena.”

She looked as vacuous and stunned as her little niece’s doll.

“The hollowed out tree, where we once played as children.” They’d shared their first and last kiss there as children.

The flash in her green eyes told him he’d finally said something right, something she could respond to. “You’ll get off our land is what you’ll do!” she shouted after Jeremy who turned his horse and loped off. Anger rising, Serena fired off the old turkey blaster into the afternoon sky, providing fireworks for the feast, the blast startling Dancer to rear on hind legs. A handful of dark powder clouds from the gun played now above the feast, the odor snipping at everyone’s nose like the tincture of gossip. Serena knew they’d all be talking about her and Jeremiah Wakely for weeks to come after this. Give the biddies among them something to chew on.

Serena had watched the gray-speckled white horse’s hooves come down running, and the mare carried Jeremy off at a gallop. Raucous laughter erupted from Serena’s brothers, sisters, and brothers-in-law. The entire extended family joined in the laughter, all but the child who looked and acted so much like Serena. This shy one pouted instead, angry with her aunt for chasing off the most handsome man she’d ever seen.

“You’re mean, Auntie Serena!” shouted the little one, racing off to hide her face. “Mean and wrong!”

“From out of the mouths of babes,” quoted Rebecca.

Francis Nurse carefully plucked the oversize firearm from his daughter’s grasp. “You’re not overreacting now are you?”

Rebecca placed an arm around Serena, guiding her off for a private word.

The noise and clatter of dishes continued around the tables as neighbors passed by the gate, some with goods on the way to market, some stopping to stare, and some asking about the gunfire. It was obviously a special day, this Sabbath, for the Nurse family. Still, it made no sense to sensible passers-by why people would be sitting about on a cold day amid the snow at some festival of their own making. Frolicking on a day when they ought to be filling the pews at the meetinghouse.

“Hey, you there! What’re you celebrating?” shouted a man named Israel Porter sitting atop his ox cart, not slowing on his way to the village.

No answer came. No one could hear over the clamor of celebration.

Another man named Fiske, a carpenter by trade, also shouted from the road, the same question only louder.

Young Ben Nurse saw and heard these men. He shouted back, “Life! Health! Sunlight, flowers in spring!” He toasted with ale. “But mostly my mother’s wellbeing!”

# # # # #

The neighbors, Fiske and Porter moved on. “Notice they don’t truck with anyone but their own kind, that bunch,” muttered Porter.

Fiske lit his pipe. He carried wood on his back. He had no ox or cart or horse or cow. “Not unlike the Putnams, the Wilkinses, and you Porters,” he muttered. “Clannish, alla ya.”

“Shut up, Fiske.”

Fiske held hand to ear, a bit deaf. “Whatever did ya say, Mr. Porter? What’d ye say?”

“I said, shut up!”

“Last I looked it was a free road we travel together, Mr. Porter.”

“Free road, aye, but one that bedevils a man. Men like us with nothing, Fiske, we got no freedom from work and sweat—not even on a Sabbath. But look at all them folk o’er your shoulder.”

“Can’t do it—not with this load on me back.”

“Them Nurses and Cloyse folk, neither at meeting nor work. Now that’s being a true freeman!”

“I suppose.”

“It’s by design, sir, but by whom is the design writ up?”

“I’m told they are good at working their fields in teams, these three families.”

“And I am asking who or what blesses their efforts?”

“Who or what do you say, sir?”

“I say naught. I am a simple man without answers.”

“Only questions, eh?”

“ Our lot in life.”

“Aye.”

“I ask who smiles on them so to come to their wealth so handily?”

“Why . . . God, of course.”

“Not necessarily so.”

“But if not God . . . then by whom are they blessed?”

“By whom or what, I say. They make a circle of themselves, food in abundance, build a fire in the snow as if to fly in the face of nature and God—all on a Sabbath Day.”

“Do you think it so? This suspicion of yours?”

“Suspicions. I have many. You tell me, sir.”

“Harrr.” Fiske shivered. A-Are you saying? Nay, can’t-magine it’s true.”

“Imagine it, imagine it. Our minister does.”

“No! It’s Mr. Parris’ belief?”

“Aye, ’tis true. Too true.”

They came to a fork in the road. “I-I take my leave here.” Fiske had let his pipe die.

“You live in the hollow near Topsfiled?”

“I do, why?”

“Tell people there what you saw at the Nurse home. Let people draw their own conclusions, as we have.”

“We have? I’ve drawn none, sir, and I think it best left alone.”

“Precisely what cunning folk ask of us. Leave it alone.”

“Then I am a genius. Leave it be is what I say.”

“Fool!” shouted Porter after the man. “Leave it be until it bites your arse, Fiske! Leave it till it overruns us!”

Fiske rushed back at Porter. “What? Until what overruns us? Speak plain, man! I am no riddler.”

At that instant, one of the cart’s wheels unexpectedly and without fanfare other than a creaking scream, fell off. Fiske came around to look at the damage, and Porter leapt down to assess it as well. Porter pointed at the wheel. “That’s what I’m talking about. Right there, Mr. Fiske.”

“Why, it’s a busted axel.”

“Naught a busted axel so much as witchcraft.”

“Witchcraft?”

“Aye! Witchcraft against those like me.”

“Those like you?”

“Men who stand with the minister in Salem Village.”

“Really?”

“Men who bear witnesss.”

“Witness?”

“Dare go near that clan which haf’nough food on their table to feed the whole colony.”

Chapter Fourteen

Twenty minutes passed and Jeremiah climbed from the boulder he’d been sitting on, his horse grazing nearby. She’s not coming, he told himself, going for the horse. He took reins in hand, angry with himself for going to see her when he did—worst possible timing. Should never have barged in that way. It’d been the absolute worst demonstration of bad taste and behavior on his part, putting her on the spot that way. He realized it now and he kicked at the earth to release some of the anger he felt at himself.

Surrounded as she was by family, many of whom no doubt had made her feel ill-at-ease all these years for having fallen in love with the wrong man, and worse, holding on to a false hope that the miscreant might return. A fellow whose history had been sordid at best.

How could she be herself? How could I’ve been so foolish to think it possible with all the naysayers within shouting distance? What bloody chance did we have given my long absence? What kind of fool am I to ride up like that?

He likewise wondered how often had Serena denied any thought of him, denied any love loss over him? How much she surely must’ve worked to repudiate him and disallow any passion for Jeremy? What choice had she but to run him off at the end of a scattergun?