Parris blanched. “Verily…next to nothing, in fact—but plenty of gossip since, which is how I’ve always taken it.”

To test the man’s responses further, Jeremy took it a step further. “I thought not; perhaps had you done your homework before accepting—”

“This chat is at end, Mr. Wakely.” He indicated the small crowd in the street gathered around them. Too many prying eyes and ears. But when Parris stepped ahead of Jeremy, the younger man could not help but couch a grin. At the same time, Parris, and to a lesser degree, Jeremy, faced a terrible greeting when the ragged, bottle and rag woman of the village, the crone Sarah Goode blocked their path. She held a crooked old Shillelagh like a wand, and with the walking stick, she punctuated the vile, angry curse spewing from a near toothless mouth. “May your hearth belch fire to burn your house t’ground, Parson!”

“Get from my sight, woman!” shouted Parris, continuing past the obstacle with Jeremy keeping step.

But the wrinkled old woman pursued, chanting. “May your black servant cut your throat as ya sleep! ‘Cause ya stole and sold her baby like you did mine! For pieces of eight!”

Parris grabbed up a huge dirt clod and hurled it at the woman, barely missing.

“May your wife wither and dry up like a diseased cow!”

Parris rushed at her like an angry dog, baring his teeth. “And may God strike you down for the witch you are!”

“If God loves justice, it’ll be you struck down!”

“Your own daughter,” spewed Parris, “Dorcas, she told me of your dark contract with the Devil.”

This did not in the least slow Goode. “And may your child suffer the torments of Hell, till you give my Dorcas back!”

Jeremy feared he’d have to intervene somehow, as the venom between these two threatened to erupt further unless someone broke off. Parris threatened her under his breath. “I swear out a warrant and have you arrested, ye old—”

“Mind my words!” warned Goode. “Return my Dorcas or face my curse on ya and all ya hold dear!”

“The curse of God upon you, hag, bitch!” cried Parris.

“Aha! Swearin’ like a common sailor!” She cackled a sound that filled the street and brought people to their windows and shop doors. “Ya’ll heard ’im . . . swearin’ at a poor old woman now are ya?”

“Foul, filthy creature!” Parris grabbed for her cane, but she snatched it away at the last moment.

“You men in black, all alike.” Goode gave Jeremy a look from head to toe. “Deceivers!” She then pointed her cane at Jeremy and shouted to the maddening crowd, “I seen this one come to the parsonage by cover of night! Him on a white charger, but we all know the Devil does take a pleasin’ form, and that horse looked at me with one eye belongin’ to Beelzebub, or Belial sure ’nough!”

“Shut your ugly hole, you witch!” Parris belted back.

“You may have others fooled—” Goode pointed to her left eye—“but not these eyes.” She ambled off, disappearing between the livery stable and Ingersoll’s Ordinary & Inn. Bottles tied to her, dangling about neck and hips, rattled as she moved off, and yet neither Parris nor Jeremy had earlier heard her approach. Parris remarked on how uncannily the old woman had taken them unawares. Then he waved it off, saying, “Devil take her.”

The battle over, his flushed features softening, Parris waved at someone in the Putnam house at the window on the ground floor. Another window displayed two children’s faces pressed against an attic window.

Jeremy wondered if the children had seen the altercation in the street between Mr. Parris and Witch Goode. But for now, he found himself on the doorstep of Mr. and Mrs. Putnam, where on the inside they could hear faint, whispered yet highly charged argument.

# # # # #

After several raps on the oak door, Parris and Jeremy still stood on the doorstep of the Putnam house—a modest, two-story saltbox-styled cabin home. From all appearances, Jeremy felt that a rather dreary, dark interior awaited within if and when someone opted to open the door and welcome them in. Samuel Parris vigorously knocked on the Putnam door again. “We are come!” he shouted at the door. “Come at your bidding! Hello, inside the house!”

The door creaked in on rusted hinges to reveal a fire at the hearth in the common room, but Jeremy felt only the coldness of this place engulf him. A grim couple stood apart from one another, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Putnam. The man a scarecrow figure with bloodshot eyes, the wife a dried up, frail-looking stick figure herself, her eyes ringed with darkness, and at the center of each—a frightful, unfathomable deadness. How deep can melancholy go, Jeremy silently wondered. How strong can its grip become? He knew it intimately, but gauging by this woman, Anne Carr-Putnam Senior, he’d merely scratched the surface of depression in those darkest hours when he’d given up Serena.

“Welcome, Reverend Parris,” said Thomas Putnam. “Welcome to our humble home.”

Understatement, Jeremy noted, a familiar characteristic of people hereabouts to understate the obvious.

“And do tell,” said Thomas as if the spokesperson here, “who is this young gentleman in your company?”

Suspicion, Jeremy noted in the tone of the otherwise welcoming words and accompanying smile, as the Putnams awaited Parris’ introductions.

Parris formally, stiffly introduced Jeremy as his apprentice, being sure to add that Increase Mather himself had sent Jeremy “to be among us, to be my helpmate, and to apprentice in the Lord’s work under my tutelage. I have a letter signed by Mather to the effect, Thomas, Goodwife Putnam.”

Jeremy bowed dutifully, reminding himself of the role he played here, one of the contrite apprentice to Mr. Parris, his mentor. At the same time, he recognized Captain Thomas Putnam as a key player in current village and church politics, and the likely role he played in fanning the gossip of this current ‘curse’ afflicting the parish. Mather had filled Jeremy in on who stood to gain and who stood to lose by Parris’ continued appointment as minister. While Anne and Thomas Putnam stared stupidly at Jeremy, it took some shrinking for him to appear a mere pawn in village affairs. At the same time, Reverend Parris busily worked to convince the Putnams to allow his apprentice across their humble threshold.

Jeremy only half heard Parris’ words ending with, “The young man is here to observe and learn how I minister to my congregation. That is the extent of his interest.”

“To study in the Word?” Thomas Putnam asked, nodding as if he knew the answer to begin with.

“To one day become an ordained minister.” Jeremy tried to meet Putnam’s eye but found it impossible as the man’s eyes looked everywhere but in Jeremy’s direction.

Putnam pulled Parris inside and closed the door on Jeremy. Through the cracks and crevices, Jeremy caught snatches of conversation inside.

“Mercy can’t stay,” Mrs. Putnam flatly stated.

“She’s corruptin’ little Anne,” added Mr. Putnam in a raised voice.

“Give it time, Thom.”

“She’s caused my wife tears, Sam.”

“These matters take time . . . patience . . . but in time.”

“You talk to the wench. You warned her.”

“I will talk to her, of course.”

Putnam whispered something Jeremy could not make out.

Parris grunted, hemmed, hawed, and muttered, “Would I’ve brought ’im if I thought ’im that?”

Putnam stood back and went to the window where he raised a hand and gave a nod to Jeremy, a gesture meaning everything’s all right. He then cracked the door, saying, “Whatever you say, Mr. Parris.”

Parris stuck out his index finger and curled it in the gesture that said for Jeremy to enter.

Jeremy felt a surge of excitement and a bit of pride that held tight rein on. After all, in the space of hours, he’d won the confidence of the minister and had gotten past a deacon’s threshold. He recalled having told Mather how wrong he was for this assignment, but perhaps the Mathers and old Higginson had been right after all—that in fact, he’d do well in Salem Village…after all.

Jeremy soon met Mercy Lewis who was called and told to come down from the loft room overhead. Little Anne Putnam Junior followed Mercy down, quaking on quill pen legs. Parris made a lecture of it, a sermon directed at Mercy, insisting the girl follow Mrs. Putnam’s teachings and orders without complaint or backtalk. He then blessed both girls and the household, making a rather quick affair of it all. In fact, Jeremy hardly got a look at Mercy or Little Anne, as she was called, save for Anne’s eyes—like two large seedless grapes; no light seemed able to reflect from those eyes.

Chapter Six

They saw other parishioners about the village during the day as well, and Parris took Jeremy to the meetinghouse to show him the place, and by day’s end, they’d returned home to a meal of mostly hot vegetables and rabbit stew. The household remained peaceable all evening, and once again Tituba slept in the barn, despite Mrs. Parris’ offering a corner of her bedroom, but Mr. Parris would not hear of “such an arrangement”, while Mrs. Parris countered with “and you think her sleeping in a cold barn with the livestock is a proper arrangement?”

Again Jeremy offered to take the stall in the barn, but Parris stood adamant about the sleeping arrangements.

The following day felt like an absolute déjà vu sequence for Jeremy, as at breakfast, once again, there came a clamor at the door, yet another message sent by Mrs. Putnam for Parris to come to her aide—again citing Mercy as the cause of her distress.

And so together, Jeremy and Parris again traversed the common for the Putnam home. Along the way, this time, Jeremy decided he must confess something to Parris and he used the term confess.

“Confess? What are you talking about, man?”

“I’m sorry, sir, if it displease you, but you should know something about me, Mr. Parris, about my past.”

This stopped their progress, as Parris, looking perplexed, asked, “Your past?”

“In reference to how I know the history of the parish? You thought me so studious the other day and I confessed not. . . as it will become general knowledge once certain parties recognize my return to Salem—”

Parris right hand shot up to silence Jeremy, and white-faced, he near whispered, “Recognize you, Mr. Wakely?”

“I was previously a citizen here, sir, years ago. It’s why—”

“Citizen? Here?”

“Yes, you see my father’s shop on North Ipswich Road—”

“You have family here?”

“Family, no. History, yes.”

“Riddles I can’t abide, Mr. Wakely. Speak plainly, as plainly as that witch who confronted us t’other day.”

Jeremy planted his feet, causing Parris to halt and meet the younger man’s flame blue eyes as Jeremy spoke firmly, enunciating each word: “I am striving toward clarity, sir, if you will but—”

“Clarity indeed? So you have a history with this parish, and you are just telling the this now?”

“I do. I mean, yes. That is, I did.” Jeremy’s jaw quivered as he bared down on his teeth.

“And from your tone and grimace, it would seem a foul history?”

“Not not unlike your own, sir.”

As if by providence, they wound up at the old chestnut tree again, and both men wondered at the appearance of what appeared the very same raven as before. It seemed either coincidence or sign. “Go on, Jeremy,” urged Parris.

“Reverend Deodat Lawson oversaw my father’s excommunication.”

“My God.”

“And by extension my own, so far as I was concerned.”

“The son is not necessarily heir to the sins of the father,” said Parris thoughtfully.

“He is if he’s in Salem, sir.”

“But you must’ve been a mere boy at the time.”

“Yes, sir . . . a runner for Mr. Ingersoll’s Inn, and I did sit watch a number of times up yonder at—”

“Sit watch?”

“Yonder on Watch Hill with Mr. Ingersoll nights.”

“Aye, I see. The same Ingersoll as is now one of my deacons.”

“Not so at the time, but had he been, I’m sure he’d have opposed what they did to my father and stepmother.”

Parris now stared into Jeremiah’s hard-set eyes, searching the gray orbs. “Your parents then moved off? To the settlements along the Connecticut? Or rather Maine, I suppose.”

“My natural mother died giving me life. My stepmother contracted the fever and died here, but being not of the faith, she was refused burial in the parish cemetery—as was my father for having dared married out of the faith.”