Children of Salem

Chapter Eight

Across the land stretching to the village, at the Thomas Putnam home, Mrs. Putnam, Anne Carr, was trying desperately to find sleep—alone again—and again listening to the voice of her dead brother, Henry.

“I killed myself for her, because of you, Anne,” Henry’s voice held no emotion despite the terrible words he’d left her with on his deathbed that night twenty years ago. Why now? Why return to me now, all these years later? She could not fathom it—unless he meant to warn her of impending doom. Why does he put images of us as children in our father’s house in Salisbury into my head?

“The girl was a witch, Henry!” she shouted at his ghost now again as she had so many years before. “She’d’ve used you up! A witch! And she never loved you, Henry, not like I did.”

She saw snatches of their incestuous affair, images he pressed upon her mind with his renewed vigor and presence here today. Now little Anne up in the loft had been caught doing much the same with the servant girl. Perhaps it ran in the blood, this awful sin of sins. She’d finally convinced Thomas to remove the offending Mercy Lewis from their home despite her daughters rantings and pleadings that she keep Mercy, that Mercy was more ‘mother’ to her than she!

It only sealed the need, her saying that to her own mother. So Mercy was gone, sent off now to the home of Bridget Bishop, and there Mercy had, if rumor were true, fallen into another of her newfound fits and had in a vision seen where that Bishop woman kept her voodoo dolls—dolls stuck full with pins.

The authorities had ransacked Bishop’s Inn and had found the witchcraft makings jammed behind some loose bricks at the hearth in the basement. Exactly where Mercy had sworn they’d be. Thomas had confided the story the night before, and he added how proud he was of Mercy, and that Mercy was heroic to do as he and Reverend Parris had asked—to go into that witch’s lair to unmask her. Bishop was now back in a cell where she belonged. Imagine a woman running a road house like that.

“You were a weak boy, Henry,” she said to the specter standing at the foot of her bed now—not really standing but floating there. In morning light, a shaft of it bathing him in brilliant jeweled life like nothing she’d seen before—as his visits had always been in dead of night before, but now he was being damned insistent, saying, “Anne . . . a-and you were cruel.”

“And you a feeble excuse for a man, like Thomas now! Damn you, I had no hand in your dying. I-I—”

“Death by broken heart, Anne.” She heard his voice inside her head, as if behind her, whispering in her ear. Yet his shape remained in the shaft of light at the foot of the bed.

“Nonsense. You fell sick of the fever.”

“Broken spirit.”

“Nonsense.”

She felt his weight on the bed now, as if a cat had leapt onto it, and the feel of it crept up alongside her, and she shivered. She denied any guilt in her brother’s end. “That Martin girl is still a witch, an old one now, and she give you not one thought! Not like I do!”

“You’re the real witch,” came Henry Carr’s ghostly reply like a whisper of smoke. Coils of his breath wended their way into her ear, just how she’d taught him to lick there. His breath and odor filled the corridors of her mind in search of a home.

“Get out of my head and my bed!” she screamed but somehow her scream came out dull and trapped in her throat.

“I starved myself near to death for her love, not for yours.” She felt him spooned against her body now. “Hung myself for our sins, sister.”

“It was for your own good I kept you from that witch, Henry. I never meant anything but good for you.”

“You mean for you.”

“I loved you.”

Then he was gone. It was all she ever needed to say to Henry’s spectral form to have him leave, to say three simple words—I love you.

Had Thomas been in bed beside her, Henry wouldn’t’ve come, and she’d’ve been safe from yet another visit, but her husband had that fool venture with Bray Wilkins going on again. So he’d taken his cane and bad ankle up that way tonight, despite her pleas. She’d long ago confessed her nightmares were more than mere dream, that her brother Henry paid her regular visits saying the same thing over and over.

Half awake and relieved with Henry’s departure, Mrs. Putnam tried to sleep on a bit more. However, she continued with some difficulty as her breath would catch, and her body would go stiff. So stiff that breathing came hard, and this would simulate death, and she’d find her mind and body inside a coffin, and from within she’d be screaming, “But I’m alive! I’m not dead! You can’t bury me!” She’d scream this at the top of her lungs with no result. No one could hear, and no one came to dig her out.

Then the odors would fill her lungs. Choking, pressing odors of earth and earth worms, spiders, centipedes, vermin, all coming into the coffin with her, sniffing her, and crawling all over, until she screamed even louder.

It was Henry’s doing. Whatever he posited in her ear with his breath brought on the night horrors, until her shakes and screams would finally awaken Thomas, who’d shake her into consciousness and raise her from the coffin and the abyss—but Thomas was tired of the night work, and he was not here now!

She sat bolt upright this time, stiff and sweating from her struggle to regain reality without Thomas’ help or Anne’s help or Mercy’s help. At one time or another all three had shoved, pulled, pushed, hit and screamed at her to awaken her from the night terrors.

Something always crawled into the coffin bed with her, something sitting on her chest, a succubae or incubi, some demon from Hades sure . . . sitting there and stealing her breath, and hoping it could take all of the breath of life she possessed. The creature of night had stayed over in the light. Damn fearless of Henry. Much more courageous as a spirit than he had been in this world. And now he was haunting her daughter as well.

Little Anne raced into the room, looking ever so much like her mother when she was Little Anne’s age where she lived in Salisbury, the last time Anne Carr Putnam had felt any happiness. She bundled her daughter into her, beside her, holding tight. Both were crying now. Mother Putnam shouted to the morning, “How long? How long do I endure this curse!”

# # # # #

Jeremy rode into Salem Town to take the pulse of the harbor people and to hopefully see Reverend Higginson. The town on the ocean bustled with activity and commerce, not unlike Boston. His immediate thought was: you’d never know there was a thing out of kilter or wrong beneath the surface here.

Jeremy stabled his Dancer as the horse needed grooming, and he walked among the people of Salem Town, cautiously listening to the idle conversation among workmen, fishermen, ladies at market, but no one here was talking about the awful business going on in nearby Salem Village—another similarity to Boston.

The only unseemly, untoward indication of the “village problems” appeared the jailhouse—filled beyond its capacity as with Boston and any other community that had so much as a holding pen.

He went across the common where children played at games and climbing trees. No longer wearing the black uniform of the clergy, he was seen as a mere stranger here by most. He crossed the street to Higginson’s church and nearby home, skipping over the trench at mid-street which carried sewage to the ocean.

Carriages and wagons of commerce passed him by, people waving at one another. There was an airy hospitality about Salem Town that he’d never felt in the village, not even years ago as a child. The village temperament had always been summed up in one word in his mind: somber.

That much hadn’t changed in all these years.

At the church, he ran into Reverend Nicholas Noyes, who treated him with cool diffidence, no doubt knowing Jeremiah’s true nature of deceit and deception as summed up by Mr. Parris. “I am in search of Mr. Higginson.”

“He is in meeting with important men of Boston, and I’m sure you were not invited,” replied Noyes, his eyes narrowing into slits that didn’t hide the fact they were rat’s eyes, beady and skulking.

“Where is this meeting?”

“At the Reverend’s home, gathering about his sickbed. The old gentleman is not long for this world.”

“More’s the pity,” replied Jeremy, thinking, More’s the pity that his passing will leave you in charge of the largest congregation in the area.

Jeremy left for Higginson’s residence, and once there, he was barred from entering. Inside the Boston visiting judges, Stoughton, Sewell, Addington, and Saltonstall had the old man cornered—not hard to do. No doubt attempting to have him sign something while in a weakened, perhaps delirious state, Jeremy feared. And most certainly hoping for his blessing on the court they intended to operate out of Salem Town and Village—a special session of the Court of Oyer and Terminer: to hear and determine.

No matter what story he gave, Jeremy could not get past the guard, Sheriff Williard. “Sorry, Mr. Wakely, but I have my orders.”

“Williard, how can you justify arresting Mother Nurse of all people?”

“I don’t make the warrants, Mr. Wakely, I only carry them out.”

“And the warrant against Mother Nurse? Sworn out by whom?”

“Putnam’s name was on it along with several others. Fiske for one as I recall.”

“It’s an evil injustice to have that woman sitting in that pigsty you call a jail.”

“”I agree with you there.”

“I’ve seen root cellars in better order than these jails in Salem Village and Town.”

“I’m not talking about the jails,” said Williard.

Jeremiah looked at the man’s dejected features. “You mean you agree that Mother Nurse is wrongly accused?”

“I do! From the beginning.”

“But you arrested her, and old Francis was struck down in the bargain.”

“I had me orders, and it was Herrick struck the old man.”

“So that absolves you?”

“Look you here, I’m not asking for absolution!”

“You were following orders, and it wasn’t your fault, eh?”

“I can tell you this, I don’t like any of it, and I fear it’s going to eat us all alive. One thing’s sure they’re right about.”

“What’s that?” Jeremy studied the man for any sign of guile but found none.

“That it’s the work of the Antichrist—all of this setting neighbor ’gainst neighbor.”

“And who among us is cause of that?”

“For my money?” He inched closer and whispered, “That blackhearted minister in the village and his lackeys.”

“My sentiments exactly, but he’s now gained the ear of the judges, and they’re now whispering in Mr. Higginson’s ear. I tell you, I must see the judges. I have evidence against Parris.”

“A bit late in the day. All right, Mr. Wakely, what have you?”

Jeremy mentioned the land squabbles, the map, and the Parris sermon.

“Is that it?” Williard was skeptical. “See here, sir, the climate is bad for any man who does not go along with the river that’s plunging forward now in the direction that the judges and—”

“So it is foul, the climate in Salem, don’t I know as does Francis and John Proctor.”

“John Proctor needs follow Nurse’s calm, else isn’t long he’ll lose his freedom.”

“You’ve taken the man’s wife in custody. What do you expect?”

Williard gritted his teeth and whispered, “I tell ya, Proctor’ll be next if he doesn’t stop talking against the ministers and the magistrates. You, too, if you don’t step lightly.”

“Is that a threat, Sheriff?”

“No, ‘’tis the nature of the beast at the moment. Take the advice or ignore it at your peril, sir. Now truly, you should leave these premises.”

“We’re all of us called freemen, citizens of the Crown,” persisted Jeremy, “yet we’re to hold our tongues and to watch where we step?”

“That is the way of it, sir, for now.”

“So you will go on serving warrants?”

Williard looked Jeremy in the eye. “I have little choice. Don’t judge me, Mr. Wakely.”

“I stand in judgment on no man, Mr. Williard. I have had great respect for the law all my days, but not what I see unfolding in Salem. Now as I am going nowhere, will you let me pass?” Jeremy could see movement at one window, which he guessed to be Higginson’s bedroom—else the old man had earlier employed men to remove his bed to a front room.

Williard stood straight and raised his withered arm. “You know I cannot allow you inside.”

“Yes, orders. I see.” Jeremy raised his hands in the universal gesture of surrender. He turned on his heels and marched off, going for the stables to fetch Dancer. He’d gotten all the answers he expected in Salem Town. He wondered if he dared go into the village.

# # # # #

Jeremiah did indeed ride into the village on his white horse, tethering Dancer outside Ingersoll’s two-story Inn across from the meetinghouse. The numbers of people in the village and inside Ingersoll’s astounded him, as on entering, he saw a jovial-faced Ingersoll too busy pouring ale from kegs for his patrons to notice the arrival of any one man, including the now infamous Jeremiah Wakely. Every table was filled with twosomes and foursomes. “How’s business?” Jeremy asked, stepping to the bar.

Jeremy overheard snippets of conversations in the room.

“A doll in the wall?”

“Stuck full with nails, they say.”

“I heard it was pins.”

“Thank God she’s under lock and key now.”

To Jeremiah’s inquiry about business, Ingersoll laughed loud and raucously and waved a free hand as he poured Jeremy a pint. “You’re not blind. It’s wonderful.”

“Never seen the place so full. Looks downright small in here.”

“Been this way for days.”

Jeremy didn’t recognize all the faces. Obviously, people were flocking into the village and to Ingersoll’s in hope of seeing the bewitched and enchanted children, who could be attacked by any object at any time thanks to the invisible enemy. Then he saw Mercy Lewis darting about from table to table, telling tales of torture and suffering. He overheard the words ghost, spirit, Betty Parris, suffering, and torture repeatedly. Then he saw Mercy lift a man’s pewter cup and drain it in one fell swoop.

“Lil’ scamps got me ale!” shouted the man, whose fellows at the table with him laughed. “Child’s got no right to it, and no manners!”

Still, no one else took Mercy to task for it. In fact, she repeated this at another table between tales of how she’d led authorities to the voodoo doll found behind the brick wall in Bishop’s Inn, and tales of how the dead brothers and sisters of Little Anne Putnam cried out for vengeance.

Ingersoll noticed that Jeremy was taking an interest in this newfound freedom that Mercy Lewis had discovered since her bewitchment. “She’s one of the seers now, Jeremy.”

“Last time I saw the young lady, Sam Parris wrung her neck to get the devil out of her, and now this, and you allow minors your ale?”

Without saying another word to him, Jeremy made Ingersoll uncomfortable, the innkeeper erupting with, “The ale helps them see into the secrets of the witches. It’s a proven fact, it is.”

“Ah, I see, and you believe that? A spirit for a spirit, eh?”

Ingersoll tried to match him with his own lame joke. “They’re not called spirits for nothing. Drink up.”

He frowned at Ingersoll before taking a sip.

“Mr. Parris says a little Canary Island wine simmers the girls, too. Says give ’em what they want.”

“Says that does he?”

“Says it’s for the good of us all that they see clearly and make no false accusations, you see.”

This is like being inside a nightmare, Jeremy thought. “And you believe whatever Sam Parris says?”

Ingersoll gritted his teeth, cracked as they were.

Jeremy raised his voice for others to hear as well, saying, “Tell me, Deacon Ingersoll, how is it the poor little children of the village still suffer attacks from witches who are behind bars and in chains?”

Thomas Putnam, at the bar, shouted, “I’ll tell you, Mr. Wakely, neither bars nor chains stop a witch’s flight if she is in her witch’s attitude.”

“You are telling me that Bridgett Bishop or Tituba Indian all the way from Boston, or Goody Goode can go out of their chains from behind bars and continue to torment children?”

“We all know that they can and they have, repeatedly, while you, sir, have abandoned these parts.”

“Goode, and Osborne are no longer in Salem jail,” said Ingersoll to Jeremy.

“Where then?”

“Removed to Boston after being found guilty by Hathorne and Corwin.”

“Why move them to Boston?”

“The jails here are overfull.”

“Ah, yes, and that doesn’t tell you people something?” Jeremy tried to decipher the real reason the first three accused were sent off to another venue, why not Rebecca and Mrs. Proctor? And other more deserving and recently arrested villagers? Then it dawned on him. Room was being made in order of who had been excommunicated first, second, and so on. Ministers and magistrates working in tandem. He could imagine the bargain struck by Parris: “I excommunicate them first, your honors, and you’ll gain their confessions far easier, and should they remain recalcitrant—a judgment will be that much easier for the people to swallow.” Or something to that effect. Guilty until proven innocent—it was the law.

Some at the bar talked of taking bets on which of the accused found guilty would remain stonehearted and unrepentant, and so be the first to hang.”

Ingersoll belatedly added to what Putnam had earlier said. “The very witches sittin’ in Gatter’s jail, Jeremy, they come each night and torment Betty Parris and some of our other children. They can go invisible, slip from their bodies, and make havoc. They’ve Satan on their side.”

“I had a toad in my house other night with the eyes of woman staring up at me,” added Putnam. This statement sent up a gasp among the others, and it ignited a litany of such eyewitness accounts.

“I saw the ugliest spider that’d built the largest web I’ve ever seen in my barn.”

“We had a mouse in our cellar.”

“We were visited by a centipede, the biggest I ever laid eyes on.”

“Are you men serious?” asked Jeremy. “Do you hear what you say?”

This silenced the others.

Jeremy knew he was stepping dangerously over thin ice. “Look, gentlemen, if a witch is capable of going outside her body, escaping bars and chains, and just as capable of possessing say your body, Mr. Ingersoll—“this made the man visibly tremble –“then why on earth would this same witch return to Gatter’s stink hole?”

It was too logical for them.

Everyone at the bar took another long dram from his pint, and Jeremy thought at least he may’ve gotten one among them thinking more clearly when Thom Putnam shouted, “They must have to return to their own bodies is all—for, for nourishment.”

That settled it for anyone wanting to believe in the seer children and invisible evidence.

The enchanted children, as they were also called, had become little celebrities, scryers with the power everyone else lacked, the eyes to see into the Invisible World of Satan. “People’ve traveled all the way from Boston, Jeremy,” muttered Ingersoll in a near whisper. “It’s rather amazing.”

“Amazing? Really?” Jeremy shook his head in disbelief.

“Whatever do you mean, Jeremiah?”

“You have excommunications each night at the meetinghouse, I am told.”

“We do, yes, to punish the wicked among us.”

“One by one, you take the accused before Parris, correct?”

“Well,” Ingersoll raised his hands as if they were clean.

“So that your minister can banish each alleged witch from the congregation by night, and—”

“The sheriff and his men do the takin’.”

“—and by day, the mad play of these supposed bewitched children, yet you’re surprised it draws people like flies to dung?”

“Hold on, now Jeremy. What else are we to do with witches in our midst but to excommunicate them?”

“This presupposes their guilt, sir.”

“Yes, as the law says, guilty—”

“Until proven innocent. I know the law, Deacon.” The innkeeper was right. English law prevailed on these shores. Jeremy gritted his teeth.

Ingersoll launched in again. “Look here, the judges are convening a Court of Oyer and Terminer right here in Salem.”

Jeremy considered this aloud. “So I’ve heard.; meanwhile, the accused are ridiculed and humiliated through the streets and in ceremony in the meetinghouse.” He imagined how bad it’d gone for Mother Nurse. Her worst nightmare, no doubt, to be banished from the church and shunned by all—the worst ordeal of all.”

“They’re only excommunicated after the ecumenical court finds them guilty, Jeremiah.” Ingersoll looked across his bar at Jeremy as if he were mad.

“These arrested are tried then by Parris in the church assize; they go through this barbarous ritual of banishment. Don’t you have any compunction about putting your neighbors through this hell and—”

“Hold on!” shouted Putnam, suddenly at Jeremy’s side. “These witches killed my progeny.”

Jeremy curtailed his anger. Still, he felt a deep pang of spite and hatred for these backwoods villagers—the same as had excommunicated his father for the sin of love and idealism. “Above all else, gentlemen, I hate to see ignorance flourish, stupidity prevail, and injustice the rule of the day.”

The Inn fell silent and Mercy Lewis sidled up to Jeremy, her beady eyes glaring ratlike at him. “You sound upset with us poor village folk, you false prophet!” The girl then pirouetted away from him as if in a dance and alone in her mind.

Jeremy turned back to the bar and finished his drink, wondering how he’d ever tell Serena about what they’d already put her mother through, and how she’d react. “Gentlemen,” began Jeremy, turning again and raising his empty ale cup overhead. “A toast to Mercy here, and all the afflicted children of Salem Village that they may sober up long enough to point fingers at the truly guilty.”

“Watch yourself, Jeremy,” Ingersoll whispered in his ear.

But Jeremy went on: “A rather unusual and smart generation of children here in the village, them who have found a way to punish their elders.”

The others had lifted their drinks at the first half of his toast, but they lowered their drinks by time the toast was made.

“These poor folk sitting as accused witches,” Jeremy continued with his diatribe, these are your neighbors! Accused and not yet tried, and you’re having them brought in chains and humiliated in your meetinghouse? And worse than you are the ministers and magistrates calling together an illegally appointed court.”

“Illegal!” shouted Thomas Putnam, spewing. “That’s a scandalous assertion!”

Ingersoll came half way over the bar despite his girth. “Careful what you say, here, Jeremy!”

“Without a charter—the charter Increase Mather has gone to secure for us, a Court of Oyer and Terminer cannot be called. That’s the law, and those who disobey it are outside the law.”

“That’s nonsense,” countered Putnam. “The judges know the law better’n all of us together. They know what they’re doing.”

“This is the King’s highest court, and I say again, we are without a charter, and therefore it is illegal for Sir William Stoughton—or even Governor Phipps—to call any such court together, as any result will have no appeal.” Finally, Jeremy was able to speak the language he knew, the law.

Behind him at one table, Jeremy heard a hearty, “Here, here! I guess the King’s permission is too much technicality for a Boston judge.” It was the tall, gaunt John Proctor surrounded by consolers, each with empty ale cup at hand as they’d completed the toast with Jeremiah Wakely.

For a half moment, Ingersoll couldn’t look Jeremy in the eye, but then he glared. “Look, Mr. Wakely, Governor Phipps himself sent Stoughton, Saltonstall and the others to help us out here, and so far as I’m concerned, the King can go to hell with Andros! No sir, I’ll put money on Sir William Phipps’ power in these colonies.”

This sent up a cheer among Putnam and his faction. Putnam then glared at Jeremy and added, “You come in on your white horse and in your minister’s garb a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a walking lie, Mr. Wakely, pretending to be a minister. For all anyone knows, you’re one of them.”

“One of them?”

“A cunning man, a wizard like Andover’s Wardwell.”

“I don’t know anyone named Wardwell, but I assure you, I am no wizard, for if I were—”

“Don’t come into our village and suppose you can tell us what is right and what is wrong.” Putnam stood with fists clenched.

Each man stared down the other.

Ingersoll retook the final ale he’d poured for Jeremy, and he poured it onto his wood floor behind the bar.

The gesture was clear. He was not wanted here.

Another man at the bar, Bray Wilkins, began telling the story of how his maidservant, Susana Sheldon, had been attacked in the night without provocation or warning. “She was chased about the kitchen and the whole house by a carving knife floatin’ in the air—invisible to me.”

“What happened next?” asked another man nearby.

“Why, when it finally was over, the girl fell faint, and I went to her, keeping my wife back, and Susana, she had bloody cuts on her arms, hands, and rents and tears in her clothes—and yet the me wife and me, we never saw no knife.”

The others let out a series of gasps. “Same thing at our house,” said Samuel Fiske, but our girl claimed she’d jammed a knitting needle into the armpit of the witch that gave her torment, and the next day we visited at the jail with authorities to search for the wound to the witch. Made the prisoners strip to display their armpits, and low’n’behold, one screamed out and she had a bloody wound there.”

“How old is magic tricks, man?” asked Jeremy to the man, but before anyone could answer, suddenly and noisily, the handsome John Proctor leapt to his feet, knocking over the chair where he’d been sitting with relatives.

All eyes were on Proctor now, ears pricked.

Proctor, a tall, handsome and imposing fellow came to Jeremiah’s side and defense, and the defense of his wife sitting in Gatter’s jail. “Are you all gone daft? Are you blind men? Do you see any ounce of reason in what you’re doing?” He whirled from man to man as he spoke, as if checking his back for a knife. “Mr. Wakely knows who’s behind this setting neighbor after neighbor like wolves hungry for flesh.”

Proctor settled on an eye-to-eye with Jeremy and said, “You sent dispatches back to Boston—to Mather, correct?” He then suddenly wheeled on Putnam. “When Mather himself comes to this place, and when he deals with the swine here, the fools following Parris’ track, you will find your heads on a stick!”

“Watch what you threaten here, Proctor!” warned Putnam.

Proctor went threateningly to Thomas Putnam. “When my Elizabeth and Francis’ Rebecca Nurse are vindicated, it will be you who will be pointed out for attempted murder.”

“None of the arrested have been cleared by the courts, John,” countered Putnam, glaring at Proctor.

“But you kind neighbors’ve already excommunicated my wife who is pregnant and going through this, and Rebecca, who is ill, and yet you put this madness on her!”

Jeremy saw Deputy Herrick standing now at the other end of the Inn, looking threateningly at Proctor.

Proctor held up a long sheath of paper with names not a third of the way down. “Who among you is man enough to stand with right?” he asked. “If you are, sign my petition for release of Mary Elizabeth Proctor and Rebecca Towne Nurse—to be remanded into the arms of their families now!”

Herrick looked around the room, and the room watched him, and no one signed Proctor’s petition. Jeremiah stepped up, took the pen and petition that Proctor held out and made a slow, exaggerated job of it by asking for Proctor’s back. Proctor turned and Jeremy signed the petition he laid between the other man’s shoulders. “It is the only thing for an enlightened man to do. If there be heretics among us, it is not Rebecca Nurse nor Mary Elizabeth Proctor.”

The noisy, busy place had gone silent. No one followed Jeremiah’s example. Herrick called out, “I will have a copy of that list, Mr. Proctor.”

“When it is filled, Herrick, you and Williard can act as buzzards over it.” Proctor stood his ground.

Herrick came close and said firmly in a near whisper, “I’d tread lightly if I were you.”

“Why don’t you try striking me with the butt of a gun as you did Francis?” This news sent up a gasp among many in the room. “Francis Nurse, one of your elders in the church, and they drag his wife from her home.”

“And they make secret plans behind closed doors with the Boston magistrates,” added Jeremy, “and yet we are called freemen and made unwelcome.”

“That’s enough, Wakely, Proctor,” countered Herrick, a bull-shouldered man with a full beard. “Showing disrespect to my office can earn you an arrest.”

“Disrespect? Your office?” began Proctor, his fists clenched.

Jeremy stepped between them. “Mr. Proctor’s only speaking the truth.”

“You keep out of this, outlander.” Herrick, a man with a tick in one eye and yellowed teeth from tobacco, held a finger in Jeremy’s face.

Jeremy calmly replied, “The Boston authorities are this minute working to rob Francis Nurse and Rebecca of their lands.”

“No one here believes your lies, Wakely!” shouted Putnam.

“Shut up! All of you,” ordered Herrick.

“They’re at Higginson’s moving his hand for him so he can sign the order before he’s dead.”

Jeremiah didn’t see the blow coming as, while he spoke, he’d turned to send his message to the four corners of the large open Inn and Apothecary. Herrick’s gun butt had sent Jeremy into darkness and unconsciousness.

John Proctor swung out in reflex, knocking Deputy Herrick senseless. Proctor then helped a dazed Jeremy to his feet. Jeremy came to just in time to see that Sheriff Williard stood over the scene of his deputy bleeding and sputtering at his feet. Then Williard did the unexpected. He snatched off his Sheriff’s patch and threw the insignia at Herrick’s prone body, shouting, “I’m done with this business and this place. Moving off, maybe to Connecticut . . . anywhere I can find peace, and an end to the guilt.”

“You’re abandoning your post at a time like this?” shouted Ingersoll.

Williard, gun in hand, stopped at the door and turned on Ingersoll. “I’m finished with this ugly matter! I haven’t the stomach to arrest one more of my neighbors.” He marched back toward Herrick, still trying to gain his feet, and he snatched out a warrant for arrest. He held out a new warrant that the judges had hammered out to the dazed Herrick and shoved it into his chest. Herrick took the paper to Williard’s saying, “You’ve a liking for this business, Herrick. Take it and be damned!”

When Herrick, still unsteady on his feet, did not readily take the warrant but let it slip. Mercy Lewis grabbed it up, about to read it, when Williard ripped it from her, balled it up and threw it at Herrick. He the stormed out and past Francis Nurse, giving Nurse a sad look of apology as he did so.

Francis Nurse stood now in the doorway; he’d been watching the final moments of the series of incidents here, and his eye fell on Jeremy’s bruised cheek. He rushed in to help Jeremy, while Proctor’s relatives huddled about the three of them and rushed Francis, Jeremy, and John Proctor from Ingersoll’s.

The fat Nathaniel Ingersoll stood behind the bar with a scattergun raised, his hand shaking so that the wide muzzle imitated a gulping fish, but this fish might explode.

As they exited Ingersoll’s, Jeremy saw Mary Wolcott, and Anne Putnam Jr. had joined Mercy along with several other young girls who were among the crowd—as if just appearing out of thin air, yet they must have been moving among the crowd the entire time. Jeremy saw the anger in their eyes and the glances darting among them as if cueing one another. It said they’d be keeping their eye on him and Proctor and Proctor’s kith and kin as well as old Francis Nurse.