Jeremy flung the door wide and grabbed Serena in his arms. They held onto one another for some time until Tarbell said in their ears, “You two come along. We must be out of here, now!”

But Serena pulled away and rushed at the unconscious figure of Gatter, and with a swift kick, she bloodied his face. “Bastard!”

“Come away, Serena!” Tarbell handed her over to Jeremy.

“What’s this all about?” Jeremy stared from Gatter’s grimace to Serena.

“Not now!” Tarbell rushed off. “Follow me!”

As they left the jail door standing open, everyone inside able to gather strength began pouring from the gaping black hole. Jeremy noted that all of the escapees went away from the village lights—all save one. A woman he did not know. But busy, Jeremy guided Serena, following in John’s footsteps, back to the horses. Halfway back to the waiting animals, gunshots rang out.

The three of them instinctively ducked and hid away. Looking back through the brush, they saw the fire of muskets. Men had come to the aide of the jailers already, but how? How had they learned of the jailbreak so quickly with both Gatter and Fiske hogtied and unconscious?

Either someone had come to check on them or one of the escaping prisoners had gone directly for help, hoping to curry favor with the authorities. Jeremy realized it might well be the figure he’d seen rushing toward the village, the man or woman who’d informed on them.

If true, Serena, Jeremy, and John were in more trouble than ever; if someone knew they’d come for Serena in particular, this woman may well’ve recognized Tarbell or Jeremy or both—in which case the first place authorities would come looking was the Nurse home.

“We ride all night if necessary,” Jeremy told the other two.

“You two, yes,” replied John. “Not me. I have my family to attend to first.”

“But suppose they go to your place?” Serena grabbed John by the arm. He hugged her tight.

“Go with all due caution then, John.” Jeremy pulled Serena from her brother by marriage. He guided her to her horse. She threw her arms about the horse’s head, moaning, “Oh, Star. It’s so beautiful to see you.”

“Climb on,” Jeremy insisted while he bodily lifted her into the saddle.

“Get on your way, both of you!” Tarbell urged them on. “And tell me nothing of your plans, Jeremy. I will find you in future. Now go!” He slapped Star’s rear and she raced off as Jeremy stepped into his saddle and followed. Their initial direction would send them by the Nurse home. So far as Serena knew, her father waited there, and she’d want to say goodbye.

Jeremy pushed Dancer to catch her, and soon he came alongside, slowing her speed with an upraised hand. “Serena! There is bad news you must hear.”

“Father? How is he?”

“He . . . he is with your mother now.”

She swallowed hard, tears forming. “I want to see him.”

“No, dear. His body is with your mother’s, and so seeing him is no option, and going there could lead to a discovery of the graves. We should not stop at the home at all but take the west road to the territories.”

“Connecticut?” she asked.

“Connecticut, yes. Anyone asking in Boston will be told by Mrs. Fahey, the jailor at the prison, and others, that I booked passage to Barbados. They’ll be looking for us to’ve escaped to the West Indies.”

“Clever ploy.” The West Indies typically meant a stopover en route to Europe.

Jeremy smiled at the compliment. “I only hope that it works. Buys us time. Now we must ride hard.”

“What of money for needs along the way?”

“John found a box of silver coin in your father’s room. Says it’s now your dowry.”

“I was so afraid when you didn’t come; so afraid I’d be stripped, searched by them for the Devil’s mark, excommunicated, found guilty at the court, and hung at the gallows.”

“None of which will ever happen now. I swear to you, no one is taking you from me. Ever again!”

“Ever?”

“Ever, yes.”

They rode for the western black sky ahead of them, a cloud of dust thrown up behind them. They soon passed the once proud Nurse homestead where she pulled up to stare one last time at the stand of trees out front between house and gate where her mother and father lay.

“John says in time they’ll plant flowers, put up a fence and headstones.”

“In time. You mean if this feverish witch hunt is ever at end?”

“Serena. I have it on good authority the accusers have overplayed their parts.”

“What do you mean?


“They recently accused Mrs. Hale of Beverly of the hideous crimes they uttered against your mother and now you.”

“The minister’s wife at Beverly? Madness. There is no more pious and worthy woman in all the colonies together. This persecution is pure hypocrisy! All of it!”

“An hypocrisy from the beginning, agreed!” He turned her gaze from the trees and the tables at her former home and onto his eyes. “I have talked to Mrs. Phipps, have tried to get her to get the governor to intervene, but I fear I’ve failed.”

“I’m sorry, Jeremy. I know you’ve done everything humanly possible.”

“As did your father, John Proctor, your mother in her sacrifice.”

“That filthy jailer offered me freedom if he could touch me.”

That explained her kicking Gatter as she had. “I should have allowed you another kick.”

“And to think the man was going about like a bandy rooster, telling people that Mother had converted him to Christianity.”

“Forget about him—and all of them in the village.”

“And Sarah and Mary? What of my aunts?” Neither Sarah Cloyse or Mary Easty had been in the same jail as Serena.

“I was referring to the evil allowed to go on in the village by the people there. It has always been a place cursed, and never more than now.”

They rode on at a hard pace.

Chapter Eight

The deceased Giles Corey who had died while under torture left three sons and a wife, Martha. Martha Corey learned of her husband’s awful death on the same day she was officially condemned after a court appearance, the day after Giles’ death, September 17th. Martha Corey had the dubious distinction of being at the top of the execution list. On the list of condemned that day with Martha were Margaret Scot of Rowly, Wilmott Redd of Marblehead, Abigail Hobbs of Topsfield, Mary Parker, Abigail Faulkner, Mary Lacy, and Anne Foster all of Andover—said to be followers of Wizard Wardwell.

Very soon after, on September 22nd, seven condemned witches were publicly executed at the Watch Hill gallows, one having to watch the other six before they got round to her, Martha Corey. Among the executed, a sister to Rebecca Nurse, Mary Easty, Alice and Mary Parker, Wilmott Redd, Ann Pudeator, and Margaret Scot. When prisoners became too ill and unable to stand, they lost their place in line at the gallows, and others condemned by the court were set up in their place on the gallows.

Mary Easty, on the stairs to her rope echoed the words of her sister Rebecca. “I dare not belie my on soul by falsely agreeing to your filthy charges! I know my innocence, which means I know you are all in a wrong way. God help you all if the Lord does not step mightily in—and soon.”

The seer children screamed in agony with her every word as if firebrands burned their eyes and bodies, the screams drowning out Mary Easty’s words for all but save those closest to her.

“It’s of no use, Goodwife.” Martha Corey nudged Mary along. “Reverend Burroughs on this gallows said our Lord’s prayer without a single mistake—”

“I heard the story,” added Wilmott Redd.

“—a thing a witch man’s incapable of doing,” continued Martha, “but they hung him all the same.”

“So save your breath,” suggested Ann Pudeator.

In short order, all of the condemned brought to the rope were executed after Mary Easty’s comments to her Maker and to the men and women of Salem, including some in her extended family who thought her guilty.

# # # # #

A Boston news pamphlet with a circulation reaching a third of the population, one which had been keeping Bostonians apprised of all news coming from Salem regarding the arrests, condemnations, and executions surrounding the recent events concerning the dark arts and the search for witches and warlocks had early on warned that such dark proceedings—accusations and arrests for murder by witchery—could, in time, begin anew in Boston. Horatio Sperlunkle, the editor of the paper informed his readers via the dispatches of an itinerant journalist named Silas Smithington that:

On good authority, accusations (not of this paper’s making) have in fact not only reached so far as Boston but the mansion—accusations maligning the character of Mrs. Elizabeth Phipps. The Salem ‘seer children’ of whom we hear so much success in seeing facts of an invisible and spectral nature, have announced against Governor Phipps’ wife, who, like the wife of Waverly’s Reverend John Hale, has been busy at the jails here in Boston showing mercy and offering sweet meats and drink to prisoners. This outrage against Mrs. Elizabeth Phipps is, in the estimation of this paper, the proverbial final straw.

The pamphlet’s message spread throughout Boston, and depending on the reader, this news was either a sensational revelation of truth or a terrible gossip’s lie that had been stretched out of all proportion. But this, of all the accusations, if a lie, then a lie touching on the highest family in the land, and condemning the First Lady of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. What must the people of Essex County think?

The pamphlet went on to say:

Each of these virtuous, Christian women, Mrs. Hale of Beverly, a minister’s wife, and our Mrs. Phipps of Boston, the governor’s wife, have habitually visited those unfortunate and wretched souls jailed on the charge of witchcraft and murder via the dark arts.

While we here in Boston are not so familiar with Minister John Hale and Mrs. Hale of Beverly, we are familiar with William and Mrs. Phipps. We have seen her kneel to extend prayers and bread, feeding the accused—and we know that mere accusation alone has nowadays become the coin of realm in the court system. Now to have Mrs. Phipps accused of these heinous crimes has placed her in the company of degenerates, murderers, thieves, and other lowly types. If some among us have questioned the extremes we see in Salem Farms, what now would authorities have us do with this extreme accusation?

Perhaps at last this insult to him will garner action from our governor, who may well on hearing this nonsense go from being a man of inaction and knowing nothing of witchcraft matters or how accusations have been handled since March to knowing the truth of these matters! For what Goodman in Essex County, indeed the entirety of the present colonies, who knows his wife intimately to be pure of heart can doubt now that many pure of hearts have been arrested, imprisoned, and perhaps executed among the twenty-one thus far hung in Salem? Are we now to imagine Mrs. Phipps at the end of a rope, summarily executed by the state? A state headed by her husband?

Is there any question or doubt in the mind of our governor as to what these recent accusations against his wife mean? We at this ledger do hope that Minister Hale might come to Boston, seek audience with Governor Phipps and compare his Goodwife with Phipps’ own. That the two men might begin with their ladies’ charitable, munificent, and pious natures, which nature precludes any curiosity or interest in the black arts.”

The paper had been quietly speaking out since Jeremiah Wakely’s secret dispatches had begun showing up. The editor however stopped short of printing the libelous theory of how Reverend Samuel Parris of Salem Village not only instigated and fanned the flames of accusations in the witch hunt for personal gain, along with other ministers and magistrates—including Sir William Stoughton and the Court of Oyer & Terminer. The editor also refused to print the horrid theory that a man of the cloth, Parris, may or may not have killed his own half-breed infant in an abortion performed by a ship’s doctor named Caball docked at Barbados some three or four years before removing himself and his family to Salem.

News of Mrs. Hale’s having been accused had come along with testimonials as to her character. Oddly, the postmark on the news was that of Connecticut—a man named Silas Smithington, but the Sperlunkle knew it was an alias of the outlaw Jeremy Wakely.