Of course, it was a lie men told themselves to help in accepting the rough and primitive world into which their parents and grandparents had deposited them.

Jeremy and Serena married in a quiet ceremony at the North Church, a Reverend Stiles having been pressed into service to do the honors on a weekday. The best man was a deacon of the church, called last minute, along with a lady of the church to act as witness, and Serena still talked about the kindness of these strangers and how they had all cheered and clapped for the young couple.

Jeremy had purchased a pair of gold bands with what amounted to nearly the end of his meager funds, so while in Boston, he’d done some work at the local newspaper office, where he wrote a column under an assumed name, denouncing the witch hunt at Salem as “a fabrication with underlying motives too despicable for polite society to imagine.” Quite soon after the publication of his first “dispatches” from Salem as he called the pieces written under the pseudonym Alastair Cantwell, he was fired and the column running in the pamphlet-sized paper shut down as seditious and libelous.

Jeremy had been enraged by this, and he had fought with his editor, Horatio Sperlunkle, but the pressure from somewhere in a powerful seat proved too great, and so he’d been without sufficient funds now for a few days. But worse than the loss of money was the suppression of truth. Still, funds were a worry as soon, he and Serena would have nothing for the rent.

They continued to board at a Mrs. Fahey’s who charged a reasonable and fair rate. In fact, she stopped them in the hallway and insisted Jeremy take back half the rent she’d charged him before they’d become man and wife. Jeremy put up resistance, thinking it odd until Mrs. Fahey conspiratorially said, “I can’t charge a man for an unused bed. Now you two just take back the half.”

Mrs. Fahey, a stubbornly curious and naturally observant Boston lady had determined a great deal about Jeremy, Serena, and their situation. If Jeremy weren’t sure of her good nature and open heart, he might have believed the woman a spy if not a witch! Conniving busybody she was, yes, but as it turned out in a good way, he’d determined, so he long before now had settled on the term meddler to cover her interest in the newlyweds.

She did not appear to be reporting back to anyone save her small dog, Harry, she called him, after her late husband, who’d died at sea some years before. At breakfast this morning, Mrs. Fahey insisted that the two of them—newly minted husband and wife—go down to the piers and do her marketing for her, claiming that she must make beds and that she felt nauseous and unlike herself, ending with, “Certainly can’t ’spect me to suck in all them fishy odors at the pier? I’d likely vomit in public, a thing a lady must never do, correct, Serena? They take you for a witch, a lady losing her godly graced food.”

The notion was that if the food was graced, then a true witch’s stomach couldn’t abide it and must hurl it back.

“Daft fools that they are!” Mrs. Fahey said of the belief. “Now a man, he might throw up in public all he wants, anytime he wants—and who’s to blame? A witch-man’s entrails? No, indeed! Must be other spirits—Rum!” She cackled with an infectious laugh, Serena and Jeremy joining in while a gruff fellow with the stern look of a good Puritan, a banker by trade, also boarding at Fahey’s, sat stiff and not in the least amused.

Mrs. Fahey lit into the Mr. Stone-gruff-Puritan, saying, “You don’t find that strange or peculiar in the least, Mr. Davenport, eh? Not so much as a snicker or a frown outta ye? Come now, why should a vomitin’ woman not’ve gotten into the rum! Haaa!”

The banker pushed back his chair, stood, said not a word, but disappeared with hat and cane in hand, going on his rounds.

“He goes about saying he’s a banker, but what he truly is? He’s a collector for a banker.”

“He’s got the nature for it,” suggested Serena.

Mrs. Fahey burst into laughter at this. Jeremy didn’t think it so funny, but Mrs. Fahey’s laughter was, and so he joined in again.

“I didn’t mean to disparage the man,” added Serena.

This only made the house owner laugh more.

“Whatever did I say?” Serena looked to Jeremy for help.

“You’ve precisely summed the man up, dear Goodwife.” Jeremy reached across the table and took her hand in his.

“So will the two of you collect up the produce and catch I require for the day?” Mrs. Fahey laid several silver coins on the table—this to make the purchases, and anything left over . . . “ she pulled forth a Boston bill, money minted for city use only.

“We can most certainly do your shopping for you, Mrs. Fahey,” began Serena.

“But we’ll not take your charity,” added Jeremy.

“Charity? Charity is it? To pay an honest wage for honest work?”

“Picking out vegetables, fruits, and fish is hardly work,” countered Jeremy.

“You men!” Mrs. Fahey folded the bill around the coins and pushed it all into Serena’s hand and closed her fist around it. “Show Goodman Wakely here what is work, Serena, and you hold the coin.”

“How shall I determine how much you need from the market?” she asked.

Mrs. Fahey rushed out and returned in an instant with two wicker baskets. “Fill these with enough for dinner and breakfast tomorrow.”

“Consider it done.”

Jeremy and Serena made their way out into a brilliant, lovely morning. Carts, both horse drawn and pulled by men, rattled over cobblestone—many on their way to the seaport marketplace. Life here appeared so much more on kilter than in Salem Village. The sound of horse hooves on stone was joined by the shouting of butchers and fishermen a block away at the piers that extended like giant fingers along the shallows—just as in Salem Town. Here ships from England, Portugal, the Orient, the West Indies, Spain, and France stood creaking about the docks—each under its own flag.

As they entered the crowds going toward the marketplace, Serena asked, “Jeremy, have you had any headway with Mr. Mather and the magistrates?”

“They’ve not entertained me at court, no, and I fear one or more of them behind shutting my column down at the newspaper.”

“So why won’t Cotton Mather see you privately? Secretly if need be?”

“I thought at first simply a matter of his being ill and abed.”

“But now?”

“Now . . . I’m not so sure he’s not been dodging me like the magistrates, Stoughton in particular.”

“But why? If they have your letters and know all that we know, why won’t they look at the sermon you’ve brought?”

“They asked I release it to them, but I would not let it from my sight. I used it to bargain for an audience, but I’m afraid they’ve called my bluff.”

Just then Jeremy saw a bailiff of the court, and he shouted across the street for the man to halt as he rushed toward him, Serena following.

“I’ve missed the magistrates again, haven’t I?” Jeremy asked the thin, frail young man. “What news have you of my petition to see them?”

“Bad news, I fear.”

“What? Say it, man!”

“They are . . .they’ve all gone.”

“Gone? Gone where? On holiday?” Easter was approaching.

“No, gone to Salem.”

“What? They’ve kept me waiting all these many days, only to traipse off to Salem? But why?”

Serena added, “But if they’re in Salem, how can we appeal to them here ?”

The bailiff shrugged, his eyeglasses bobbing with the action. “I am sorry. It was, it would seem, a sudden decision and unanimously held that they go to Salem to see the-the witchcraft firsthand. However, I have something for you, Mr. Wakely.” He snatched out a sealed note. “Was on my way to Mrs. Fahey’s to leave it with you, so this chance meeting is fortuitous.”

“Indeed? What is it, an apology from the magistrates?”

“Oh, no. A note from Reverend Mather.”

“Increase Maher?”

“No, no, no! Reverend Cotton Mather, for your eyes only.” He gave a glance at Serena. “I must make haste now, sir. I’m to join the court in Salem.”

“But why, man, are they moving on Salem Village?”

“Oh, no, sir! They are taking up in Salem Town—better accommodations.”

The bailiff rushed off on seeing Jeremy’s ire rising like a heated poker before him.

Jeremy and Serena examined the note he held now in his hands as if their fate rested within. “Are you going to open it or hope to stare it open?” she asked.

They found a bakery that served coffee and tea, and at a table with the morning sun cascading through a window that faced the eastern shore, Jeremy broke the seal. He read the note—three terse sentences commanding him to come along to the North Church at precisely seven that evening to talk of “dire matters escalating in Salem” and Jeremy’s “failure to avert calamity” there.

Serena read the note and her features became a mask of confusion. “He sounds angry with you.”

“I get that.”

“As if you contributed to the madness back home.”

“He can’t possibly believe that.” Still the cryptic note had him reading between the lines as well. “Nor can you, Serena.”

“I know, I know, but this is no invitation to church, Jeremy. This is an order.”

“God how I wish the man’s father had not left us all in this . . . stew.”

“Do you think his father meant for his son to take on this task? That the elder Mather planned it for his son?”

“I pray not; the son is not ready for it.”

“You’re frightening me, Jeremy.”

He placed his hands over hers and with hot coffee sending up a stream of smoke between them, he said, “I wish I had more foresight. From the beginning, I worried that Higginson and the younger Mather would fail me and leave me with a knife in my back, and I fear it’s coming to pass.”

“But Reverend Higginson could mean you no harm.”

“Not intentionally, perhaps, but through his failing health.”

“And Mather?”

“I don’t know. Will know tonight, however.”

“Let me come with you! I can tell him a thing or two of Parris and the poison he’s spread.”

“It’s all in my letters, and so far as Mather knows, it’s remained confidential, all of it. No, I must face him alone. He’d take great umbrage if I brought you along.”

“Umbrage? Am I some sort of baggage now on your back?”

“I didn’t mean it that way in the least, Serena, please. I must do this alone.”

“What the deuce could he be angry with you about?” she fired back, drawing a disapproving look from others in the bakery. A Goodwife did not speak in such a tone to a Goodman.

“I-I suspect but can’t be sure that it’s my poor handling of the Salem business, the way I walked out of there that night. Like the magistrates, he’s likely heard reports by now from Corwin and Hathorne on how things went . . .perhaps even how I sort of ran down Mr. Parris with my horse. I don’t know, but it’s likely he’s upset that others learned of my association with him and his father. Maybe he blames me for the flurry of arrests in the village, who knows?”

“Then he’s a fool!”

“Unfortunately, he’s not his father, but not for lack of trying.” Jeremy smiled wanly. “God, how I wish Increase Mather hadn’t left us at such an hour,” he reiterated.

“It could be months before he returns from England.”

“Yes, and by then . . .”

“I am so worried about Mother and Father.”

He stood and came around to her, put an arm around her, and immediately drew stares from some who took offense at the show of affection in public. Even so, the shroud of such opinion here in Boston was relaxed compared to that in Salem.

# # # # #

To get to the docks, they could take several avenues; in fact, there was more than a single marketplace. Rather, every dock had a fish market, and around each fish market, a farmer’s stand, as farm families from the surrounding regions brought produce for barter at each pier.

“From atop those trees,” Jeremy began, pointing, “this place must look like a gaggle of geese descended to fight.”

Serena laughed. “But the noise, Jere, it’d chase off any goose.”

They chose a street named Pawtucket where once a park had flourished but had now become a jail site for the indigent and criminal. It was a large facility with windows overlooking the street and from which prisoners reached out for alms from anyone passing by.

Serena hesitated on seeing this sight. “Why’re we here, Jeremy?”