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.