She pulled away and paced the length of he barn. “He’s put Mother and so many away on the altar of his own bloody hands—and now one woman has been hung to death on the allegations begun in his parish, and my mother is next!”

“It’s why I need to talk directly with Tituba. To confirm my suspicions.”

“But can you be sure she is still in Boston?” asked Serena.

“I fear Parris arranged for her incarceration in Boston in hope of seeing her aboard a ship to leave the colonies altogether.”

“She’s being called an accuser rather than a witch these days. An innocent who tried to save the minister’s daughter.” Serena laughed at the distinction.

“Part of her deal with Parris, perhaps, for pointing the way.”

“Bastards all!” Francis’ fingers turned white with the grip he had round a pitchfork. “Just interested in seeing forfeits of property going back into the commonwealth so’s they can divvy it all anew.”

“I’ve no doubt of it,” replied Jeremy. “Behind the scenes, large properties are being prepared to go to the ‘heroes’ of this debacle—Corwin, Hathorne, Porter, Putnam, Wilkins, perhaps Ingersoll, and most assuredly the Boston magistrates and Reverends Noyes and Cotton Mather.”

Serena sighed heavily and nodded. “Ample incentive for getting confessions from the accused.”

“And paying no heed to your fact-finding, Jeremy, with respect to the Martin woman and Anne Putnam.” Francis jammed the pitchfork into a bale of hay.

“Nor petition after petition.”

Jeremiah stopped Serena’s pacing and stared long into her eyes. “Serena, I know you two are as devastated by the failure of the Boston authorities to alleviate the situation as I am. I’ve one final appeal in writing to Major David Saltonstall, the most rational judge on the Court of Oyer & Terminer, and the last man on the court who appears to have doubts over the use of spectral evidence.”

“Alleviate it, ha! The Boston judges of the high and mighty General Court?” Serena seemed to have stopped listening to Jeremy. “Those swine have made it exponentially worse. Have you not heard? Bridget Bishop was hung yesterday.”

“Yes, we’ve all heard, and it’s terrible news,” began Francis, “but Jeremy says there may be a silver lining to it.”

“Silver lining, indeed? Where? At Watch Hill, at the gallows they’ve built there to accommodate six hangings at once?”

Everyone fell silent; the only sound that of the patient breath of horses and cows in the stalls. Jeremy finally broke the silence. “Rather sudden on the part of the judges to hang Bishop now. Their first arrests came in late February or was it early March. Tituba, Goode, followed by Osborne and only then Bishop whom they released for lack of evidence only to make a re-arrest on the say-so of Mercy Lewis who likely planted the so-called Bishop doll in the woman’s basement.”

Serena shoved him. “So tell me, Mr. Expert, why just one of all the accused hung? What’s behind this mystery.” Serena looked into his eyes. “It’s prelude to more hangings, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps not.”

“How can you say that? Are you gone blind, Jeremy?”

“Often a single public display of this nature, as I told your father . . . well it can have a dampening effect on those making the allegations and adding to the fire. One thing to accuse your neighbor, have her jailed, excommunicated even. Quite another to kill her in some sanctimonious public execution.”

“So Jeremy’s told me this was the case in Connecticut,” Francis said to Serena. “One hanging appeased the mob.”

“Aye, true it was.”

“Pray that Bishop as the sacrificial goat fills their need for blood, eh?” Serena shook her head. “Else this bloodlust continues.”

“It may be the best we can do at this point.” The moment he said it, Jeremy realized how lame it sounded.

“The best we can do? The best we can do?” came her mocking chant. “We should get Mother free of their clutches before she is hung next!”

Jeremy watched her march away from him. The strain of events had taken a horrible toll on Francis, on Serena, and on their relations. He feared Bridget Bishop’s hanging would not be enough for the likes of Parris and Putnam or others who stood to gain property, position, and reputation as witch hunters in Salem. That this situation was far, far different than the one he’d faced in the provinces. Still, he held out a glimmer of hope that the key to ending the mayhem and officially sanctioned murder was locked away in a cell in Boston, and the name of that key was Ti’shuba.


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 30th 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.