The noise coming up off the road roared loudly now, loud enough to cause her to look up to determine just who and how many were passing when she saw the awful sight of what had come to be called the witch cart.

It cranked and creaked from side to side, looking as if it might topple and break apart at any time—else remove itself from its wooden wheels. The old oxen pulling it looked disinterested and weary at once. Riding horseback around the empty jail cart, were Herrick, the same men who stood by him in the village, along with Reverend Nicholas Noyes, and trailing alongside rode four of the celebrated ‘seer’ children.

As the ominous parade went by, the children in particular stared long and hard at Serena where she sat below the trees. The young girls all rode white horses, and they whispered among themselves, giggled, and pointed their terrible accusing fingers at first the house and then in Serena’s general direction.

Reverend Noyes, his nose lifted high, noticed the disturbance among the children on white chargers. He reined in his dark mare and gave a stern look to Serena as if following the awful gaze of little Anne Putnam, whose scrawny frame atop such a large horse looked ludicrous to Serena. Get that child a pony, she heard herself thinking.

The entourage continued onward toward the east, toward Salem Town. Serena wondered who might the little brigands be after today. It appeared Mr. Noyes had some enemies in his parish now who needed to be brought down.

Soon after the noise of the witch cart and the band of people around it had subsided entirely, Serena stood and made her way back toward the house. Nowhere safe, she had told Jeremy, and now her home felt like the largest target of the evil in control here, like a bull’s-eye for the accusers. Her father’s rashness this morning had only made it more so.

She feared they’d simply chosen to not stop for her on the way to the harbor, but had every intention of picking her up on their way back—especially if they failed to find any witches in Salem Town. She imagined, and it seemed so, that Herrick carried blank arrest warrants in his britches so that if one of the nasty little prophets should make an accusation on the road, that he’d be prepared. Noyes would be the name on the warrants today. “Proper procedure be damned!” she shouted to the trees. “In the face of immediate danger, in war, action must be taken. Witchcraft must be met with a suspension of basic human rights and laws of normalcy.”

All this while Parris and to some lesser degree, Thomas Putnam had faded into the background, and the law nowadays was based on some notion of an invisible nature. How terrifying, she thought. How barbaric. How far from sane rule have we come?

Serena hadn’t long to learn an answer to her question.

The accusing children returned before dusk, and they sat at Serena’s gate like vultures. Francis brought up the blunderbuss, pointing at the men on horseback and those horrible children pointing their combined fingers at Serena, calling out that she sent needles into their eyes and ears and in private places. Then Sheriff Herrick read the warrant before his men and several ‘witches’ already humbled and squatting behind the bars in the jail cart.

Serena wrested the gun from her father. “They will kill you, Father!”

“I can’t see you taken away a witch!” he cried out. “Not a second time, Herrick! You’ve killed my wife! Now you wish to sanction the murder of my daughter?”

“There is nothing I can do. The warrant is made out. I only follow orders.”

“Parris’ orders? Noyes? Those damned children!”

“Father, go to John’s place, please!” She hugged Francis tightly to her. “I’ll not be the cause of your dying here today.”

“Where is Wakely?” asked the old man. “If he were here and Ben were here, we’d have a turkey shoot sure. They’d not let you be dragged off a witch!” He grabbed his chest, his face stricken with pain, jaw slack. He slid from her grasp, heavy and unable to stand.

“His heart!” Serena looked to Herrick and Noyes and the others for any sign of sympathy or help but none came. “He needs be helped inside! Will you help me get him abed?”

“It’s a trick!” Anne Putnam raised a fist skyward. “A witch’s trick!”

Herrick ordered two men to help get Francis inside and in a bed.

“I can’t leave him alone like this, Mr. Herrick, please.”

“Told you it was a trick!” shouted Anne.

Herrick ordered one of his men to stay with Francis, a second to alert John Tarbell to come to the house to see to him.

“Does that suit you, Good-daughter Nurse . . . ah, Mrs. Wakely?”

“You’ve known me all your life, Mr. Herrick, and I’ve given you no more cause to suspect me a witch than did my mother. Soon they will be asking you to give up your mother, your sister!”

Herrick quietly replied, “I won’t go the way of Williard.”

“And you know him to be an honorable man, and yet he is to be hanged tomorrow along with my aunt!”

“I must obey my orders, ma’am.”

“Yes, I’m sure you do.”

Serena was escorted to the jail cart, the same as had been used to humiliate her mother before her. “You’re all transparent liars, all of you! You won’t be happy until you’ve stolen our lands!”

“Get in there, now!” Herrick’s anger showed on his face. “I’ve collected no lands or buildings, mills or inns, young woman. And I’ve not been paid my rate for two months!”

Inside the cart, the entire world changed. Serena’s home became smaller and smaller, cut into sections by the bars she gazed through. She no longer had to imagine what her mother had faced, what she had gone through; she was now living it.

The other three women in the cart appeared as normal as Serena could imagine. She had no personal contact with any of them in the past, but they looked like housewives, bakers, mothers, sisters, nieces and daughters. None looked or acted like the addled Sarah Goode or the vile-tongued Osborne, or unwashed Martha Carrier—the dregs that her mother’d been jailed alongside. These arrested looked like respectable, kindly, perhaps saintly women like her mother, like herself.

No matter. They were all on the way to Gatter’s ugly black hole in the village as it had been emptied, the prisoners there housed in the newly built Soddy-jail built by those now making a living off the misery of neighbors. Many another prisoner had by now been carted off to other villages and to Boston, all awaiting time on the court docket in Salem Village and Salem Town now.

Serena shared glances with each of the other so-called witches in the cart. What has Jeremy to return to now? Now I am gone the way of Mother. Arrested, thrown into the same jail where Mother spent her last days. That vile place run by that vile man who claimed that he had been saved by her mother but who would not say so publicly.

# # # # #

The following day, August 19th, 1692

From inside her jail cell, Serena heard the village crier’s voice wafting down to her as he called out the names of those condemned to die today: George Burroughs, George Jacobs Senior, John Proctor, John Williard, Martha Carrier, and Samuel Wardwell. She breathed a sign of relief as her Aunt Sarah Cloyse and Mary Easty had not been included on today’s calendar.

“Mrs. Proctor must have won her claim of pregnancy,” Serena told the other prisoners. It had taken her the entire night to get used to the odors in the communal cell.

“We should all be so lucky,” replied Martha Corey—who’d been in the village jail now longer than anyone, and whose ‘confession’ had gotten her husband arrested and dead from torture. She’d also managed to lose control of her land and property, the mill. She’d been one of those who’d escaped the night Serena, Jeremy, Ben and Tarbell had opened the jail, but she’d been run to ground, caught, and returned. She now said unbidden, “Your mother, Serena, is sore missed. She led us all in prayer here.”

Another prisoner added, “A wonderful soul was she.”

“Thank you, Goodwife Corey, Goodwife Nels.”

Giles Corey had laughed at the antics of the accusing children, and he’d publicly joked that if any witch lived in Salem, it was his wife. This had led to Martha’s arrest, and angry, she in turn spoke out against Giles as a witch man. After he had been arrested, he’d sought to keep his mill and lands for his sons. He hit on the little known right of an Englishman faced with accusation could plead innocent, guilty, or put in no plea whatsoever. He would ride it out on a plea of No Plea. If he chose to remain mute, he decided, they could not take his property, and once this witchcraft nonsense passed, he’d be set free having lost nothing.

Unfortunately, the judges ordered the man be made to plea, and to do that, they left the methods to the sheriff and his men. Corey stood mute against the fear of his property’s being confiscated. He’d seen how the goods, provisions, cattle, crops planted, home, and lands of others had been taken by the court. Much of the accused’s cattle and provisions had been sent to auction in the West Indies—Barbados in particular.

Someone, and Serena had a pretty good guess as to whom it might be—Jeremy—had counseled Corey to remain the deed holder to his mill and lands, grain sacks, provisions, and animals that he could refuse to enter a plea of innocence or guilt. For one night, Jeremy had explained to Serena about this an old English tenet that a man had the right to stand mute. For a long time, Giles had done just that. He’d been hauled before the judges several times, and each time he simply refused to enter a plea. This behavior stymied the court and its plans to seize Corey properties.

So when Giles Corey, giant and simple man, refused to state himself guilty or innocent, the judges were thrown into a quandary. They had to consult their dusty law books to determine how to proceed. Meanwhile, they held Giles in one jail, his wife in another—so as to have no opportunity for Martha’s becoming pregnant as had occurred with the Proctors.

One by one, the crackling gunshot noise of the opening traps at the gallows reported back to the jail. One, two, three, four, five, six. Six more executed, bringing the number to twelve condemned ‘witches’ executed by official ceremony.

Over the months of this horror, Serena had seen a brave John Proctor, like her father, speak out and write eloquently for appeal to mercy and forbearance and understanding and time. First for his wife, secondly for Serena’s mother, and finally on his own behalf before going to the gallows in her place. Serena had read some of his writings, and for a country farmer, his language had moved her to tears and to hope. He had made her father believe in hope as well. He’d been a strong voice for reason and time, but those who’d condemned both John and Elizabeth Proctor had condemned his words as evil and twisted in purpose as well. Their chief first accuser among the children had been Mercy Lewis, followed by Mary Wolcott—both of whom had been, at one time or another, maidservants in the Proctor home.

At every turn, Serena saw only frustration and loss.

And where is Jeremiah? Has he made any headway in Boston whatsoever? God help him. God help me.

Chapter Seven

Jeremiah had been held up in Boston when Dancer had shown signs of hobbling rather than trotting. He had pulled up and taken a look at the leg Dancer favored. Blood oozed from her left-front hoof. On close examination, he saw that the horse needed a fresh shoe as stones had gotten under the older shod work. The stones had worked into the flesh.

As it must be done, Jeremy returned to Boston, located a smithy, and decided to have all four hooves shod. It meant another day in Boston, but now he was back in the vicinity of the Nurse home.

He now stood on a high rise overlooking all of Salem Farms, rising up on his stirrups, peering through his spy glass for any signs of life down at the Nurse home, any sign of Serena in particular. But the stillness and darkness of the place even now in early sunlight created an odd, painful fear in his chest, a feeling of déjà vu, as in the time he and Serena had returned only to learn that Rebecca had been taken. Nothing looked normal down there.

His immediate thoughts and fears raced to Serena.

He settled back into the saddle and drove toward the house. Dancer felt good beneath him, as if happy to see home as well.

When he pulled up at the gate and tied Dancer to, he noticed that the gate had been broken off its hinges. He rushed up the stairs only to be met by big John Tarbell, a look of terrible pain coloring his face. “It’s bad news, Wakely. Bad news all round.”