“By the planets, you’re a minister after all!”
“Not technically so, not yet.”
“But well on your way.” He toasted to Jeremiah’s health.
“And to yours, sir.” Jeremy got the distinct impression that Ingersoll, among other elders and deacons, had been asked to throw theological questions at him, and then to report back to Parris on how well or how poorly Mr. Wakely performed. Perhaps it was not so. Perhaps it was all in his imagination, but it certainly seemed so—for at every turn some elder was picking at some bit of religious quibble intent on a solution out of Jeremy’s mouth.
“And to providence!” declared Ingersoll, who had poured himself a rare dram for this time of day.
“And to the continued health and wellbeing of-of the village and all in it, sir.” Again they toasted and soon their pints were drained.
“Well, I’ve yet to put up today’s notices,” said Ingersoll, his beard glistening with the ale that’d passed over the bristles. He lifted a handful of notices along with hammer and tacks. Jeremy saw the usual notices: births, deaths, and all the minutia in between: taxes, weddings, a newly foaled pony, a calf born with two tails and three legs to Mr. Putnam, an illness befalling Betty Parris having been lifted by the Grace of God, signed by Reverend Parris, and a dog gone mad alongside a small notice of a mine collapse that’d killed two men outright, a third after being dragged out, and several injured. This notice listed the names of the dead alongside the injured. The final notice that caught Jeremy’s gaze had apparently been up for some time—the official notice of excommunication of one Sarah Goode. Staring at the order from the church assize of one Samuel Parris, Jeremy said, “Some things never change, do they?”
“Oh but Jeremiah, if anyone deserved banning and shunning, it’s that wild, mindless, foul-mouthed woman. It’d be a blessing if she’d leave—join all the sinners in Rhode Island.”
“The place for all spiritual lepers, yes, and she deserves it no less than my mother and father?”
Ingersoll looked stricken, but he quickly continued posting the new notices and tearing away the old. Jeremy could let it go, but he instead added, “The subject of Rhode Island came up then, too.”
“Two entirely different situations, Jeremy. You can’t compare the need we have of ridding Salem of this Devil’s whore to-to . . .”
“This is why Reverend Parris took her child from her? The first step in ridding the village of old Goody Goode?”
“No one’s called her Goodwoman for a decade. She once did only white magic, yes, sure. I even partook of her services from time to time, but Jeremiah, nowadays . . . well she’s turned to black magic.”
“The black arts or love, take your pick, either is reason enough to excommunicate a neighbor, eh?”
“Love? Ah, as in the love between your father and step-mum.” Ingersoll banged the last tack into the last notice he’d put up. He turned and with the hammer upraised, stared straight into Jeremy’s eyes and said, “I voted against that sour business, Jeremy. You must know that.”
Jeremy held his gaze. “No . . . no, I never knew that; I assumed everyone was equal to the task of driving my father out.”
“’Twas far from a unanimous decision.”
“News to me.”
“You were young.” The big man shrugged. “The young assume everything.”
“Too bad we didn’t have a cannon back then, eh?”
“You were a good watchman and mate.”
“With a cannon, I might’ve fired one off at the meetinghouse door.”
Ingersoll stood mute at this a moment before bursting out in laughter.
Jeremy slapped him on the arm. “Look here, my calling on you this morning is twofold, Lieutenant Ingerstoll.” Jeremy held out a folded piece of paper to Ingersoll.
“A notice from you, Jeremy?”
“Notices, actually, two from—”
“Say no more. Reverend Parris.” Ingersoll’s wide jaw quivered.
“Are you all right, Mr. Ingersoll?”
The big man frowned and shrugged. “The man has taken up half my board.” He indicated the other notices. “What’s it now?”
“He does strike me as a . . . contentious man.”
“A single word that sums ’im up, sure.” Ingersoll then read the latest notice from Parris.
“A brief announcement of my being his apprentice,” muttered Jeremy. “The other regards his daughter.”
“I’ve already a notice regarding his daughter’s recovery.”
“This is no recovery; Betty’s had a relapse.”
Ingersoll looked stricken, his tongue silenced. “I prayed her illness at an end.” Ingersoll shook his head and his hammer. He stripped away the older notice and tacked up the new one which read:
To All Whom It Concern dated this day of March 11:
Please you everyone in the parish pray for my little Betty as she’s had a relapse and your minister and the physician seeing my child doth fear her under attack by forces of darkness. Dr. Porter has corroborated this diagnosis. The forces of evil are using the child to get at your minister, as they haven’t the nerve to directly attack a man of God. Again I ask for prayers, and those of your families—not for me but on behalf of my beloved daughter, so as to beat back the invisible enemy.
Yours in all sincerity,
Rev. Samuel. Parris
“A lot of sickness going round this winter?” asked Jeremy.
Ingersoll solemnly nodded. “For a time, I feared the plague’d returned.”
“Betty was up and about yesterday, but I looked in on her while her father kneeled and prayed at her bedside. She was flush with a scarlet hue. The family is distraught to say the least.”
“All on the heels of his brave challenge to that witch, Goode.”
“I was with him when she laid on a curse. She was angry,” explained Jeremy, “over his having taken her child from her.”
“Prelude to banning her entirely from our midst. I’d say it’s a clear case of an eye for an eye.”
“Eye for eye?”
“Child for child. He takes hers, she his—” Ingersoll pointed to the notice he’d tacked up as if it perfectly summed up the situation. No need of another word.
“You can’t really believe that?” asked Jeremy.
“Aye, indeed I do, as do many who parade through here. We all thought seeing Mr. Parris walking about with his whole family intact these last few days that . . . well it was taken as a favorable sign indeed! But now this.” He banged a fist into a post, shaking loose some goods.
Jeremy stared at the request for prayers posted by Parris, which somehow seemed more about him than the child. “Perhaps if we all pray for the child?” began Jeremiah, noticing others filing into the Inn and remembering the role he was playing. “Perhaps her condition will then improve.”
“Of course, Mr. Wakely,” replied Ingersoll. “Of course.”
Jeremy handed Ingersoll the pouch of notes he’d come to post to Boston. His understanding was that Increase Mather’s eldest son, Cotton, would be reading and responding to his correspondence. Ingersoll promised to get his packet in the mail and on its way to Boston by afternoon.
Jeremy and the old Watch Hill militiaman shared a hug before Mr. Wakely left, tipping his tri-cornered hat to those entering. Behind him, he could hear the buzz and whispers surrounding his arrival, and the news of young Betty’s having “fallen to an awful curse.”
# # # # #
On the boardwalk outside Ingersoll’s, Jeremy was struck by the lack of growth in the village after all these years. He contemplated the stagnation of the place when an ox drawn cart pulled to within shouting distance, and the man on the seat—a giant of a fellow shouted, “Kindlin’, fire wood!”
The two-wheeled cart had seen better days as had the ox, tired from two decades of pulling the giant. Jeremy recognized the six-foot-four Giles Corey instantly. Who could miss him? He and his wife, Martha, ran a nearby mill on a prosperous stre
tch of Ipswich Road. Kindling wood was a sideline. The Coreys’ lives, and those of their children, had been turned over to that mill; they literally fed every four-legged beast in both the village and the town with their secret formula meal and grist, said to have discarded, crushed fish heads in the recipe. They also produced rice, corn, and other grains bagged for human consumption. Jeremy recalled a joking Ingersoll ten years before saying, “Them rough Coreys could be grinding anything into their mill sacks!”
“Like what?” Jeremy had asked at the time.
“Dunno . . . seashells maybe . . . maybe glass . . . rat dung for all anyone knows!”
“Ugh! You think so?”
“Who’d know?”
For this reason, any time an animal came up sick, and sometimes when a person came up ill, the Coreys were looked askance at, but the look often followed a price haggle as well.
Ingersoll pointed out who Jeremy was to Giles Corey, repeatedly saying, “You surely remember Jeremiah. But Corey, still sitting on his lumbering cart, scratched his head, shook it, and said in a booming voice, “I know ye not, Mr. Wakely, and I owe no man nothin’ beyond common court’sy, and some aren’t deserving of that.”
“Come now, you must remember Jeremy! He was my boy, my servant for long years, even stood watch on the hill with me some nights.”
“Ah! I do recall a lad . . . somewhat.” He continued scratching his head. Corey’s face was that of a moose, and here was the bear, Ingersoll, talking to the moose, Corey.
“That doesn’t seem to be working,” said Ingersoll. “Try scratching your oxen’s head—maybe that’d jar your mem’ry, Giles!” Ingersoll laughed at his own joke.
Corey climbed down, went to the oxen’s front and did scratch the beast’s head. “Oh yes, now I remember in full, but you know what, Nathaniel . . . and no reflection on you, Mr. Wakely, but what my ox here says is—and I quoth the ox: ‘More of piety and another minister shovelin’ it in this cursed place we don’t need’—or so he says.” He pointed at the ox, its eyes registering a dumb stare.
“I hope to do some good here, Mr. Corey,” said Jeremy as the giant lumbered into Ingersoll’s in search of ale.
“I’ll take my dram now, Nathaniel. Or do I need take my coin up the road to Bridgett Bishop’s Inn?”
Ingersoll shrugged and rushed back to his bar, the swinging doors going in and out behind the men. Jeremy marveled at the fact that Corey made Ingersoll look small.
Meanwhile, the village was filling up, carriages, wagons, and horsemen tying up outside the village meetinghouse. Something’s afoot. Having crossed the street on his way back to the parsonage, Jeremy noticed one of the wagons entering the village carried members of the Nurse and Towne family. In fact, now that he looked with more care, all the people converging on the meetinghouse were Nurse-Towne folk. He recognized many of them as Serena’s brothers, and each had a family of his own in tow.
Others among them were the Cloyse clan, the family that Rebecca Nurse’s sister and some of her children had married into. Each group stopped only momentarily at the meetinghouse, entered, and left as if to offer a prayer, but many a basket was carried in and left for the minister in lieu of monetary payment of his rate. Most of it bushels of nuts and other produce. One Nurse man stopped at Ingersoll’s to place a notice there. Ingersoll met the man outside. They exchanged a few words and the notice was passed to Ingersoll but not immediately put up on the overcrowded board.
A cold wind swept through main street and anyone riding an open cart or wagon was bundled up against the lingering chill air.
Jeremy returned to stand beside Ingersoll who watched the Nurse clan with interest. He’d both dreaded and hoped to see Serena among those coming in for meeting. He assumed she’d have children and a husband, married long before now. He was tempted to ask Ingersoll just to confirm his thoughts, but instead, he asked, “What’s the notice that fellow handed you just now?” Jeremy indicated the note in Nathaniel’s hand.
Ingersoll turned it over to Jeremy who read:
Let it be known throughout the village that Mother Rebecca Nurse has overcome her long illness, and that she wishes to convey her sincere thank you to all in the village who prayed for her health and a return to her former vigor as a woman of God and one who ministers and does the work of a goodwife, mother, and one who puts God before all she loves and holds dear, as without His blessing none of her joys would be in her grasp. However, as age and health does not permit Goodwife Nurse to attend meeting and has kept her away from the parish ministry, she continue to invite any and all who wish to be on hand for Sabbath Day prayers in her home to please continue to visit as before.
With all my heartfelt best to all,
Rebecca Nurse
It was not unusual for people to refer to themselves in the third person when writing. “You seem reluctant to put Mrs. Nurse’s notice up, Mr. Ingersoll.”
“The board is a wee overfull.”
“Still I detect a hesitation on your part for a finer reason.”
“Finer reason?”
“You seem pained to make room for the notice.”
“Mr. Parris will dislike this news.”
“News of a Mother Nurse’s regaining health and heartiness?”
“No, no! Not that, but that the Goodlady still urges villagers to come to her for Sabbath Day prayers.”
“But if she is not well enough to seek the Word here, it stands to reason. Besides, does he—Parris—control the free-flow of information nowadays?”
Ingersoll gritted his teeth. “No, he does not. I am postmaster here.” He then searched the board for items to discard, and he immediately tacked up Rebecca Nurse’s announcement, but the wind turned it into a flapping flag.
“You may’s well post it,” Jeremy said as Ingersoll worked to get a second tack into it. At the same time, the notice flailed wildly with another gust of wind that threatened to whip it from its recently found moorings.
Ingersoll grunted as he drove a third tack into the notice. He then pointed at a notice on the Meetinghouse door. “I may’s well post it, as her boys’ve posted it on the yonder.”
Jeremy squinted and made out a few other notices posted on the meetinghouse door. “I see it. When did they begin posting notices at the door?”
“Since Parris.”
“There’s a lot of new things here since Parris.”
“Jeremy, if you stay long, you’ll learn that there is BP and AP.”
“Sir?” Jeremy’s face could not mask his consternation. “BP, AP?”
“Before Parris and After Parris.”
Jeremy laughed even as he mulled this over. What had life been like for parishioners here before Samuel Parris? But he kept the thought to himself and said to Ingersoll, “Well, Deacon, I bid you adieu.”
“A-Adieu, why yes, of course,” replied Ingersoll waving him off.
Momentarily, he found himself standing on the village green at a communal water pump, a horse tied to a post gently nudging him so that it might reach the grass beneath his feet.
For the hundredth and one time, he wondered, What am I doing here? What’d I get myself into?
When he looked up from his shoes, Serena Nurse came into his vision. A child. She was still somehow ten years old, and for a moment so was he. It was ten years ago. No . . . hold on, his brain corrected him. This can’t be Serena. Despite what my eyes say.
The young girl stared off into space as if her eyes followed some distant bird, and her carefree manner and profile, her carriage and bearing—all Serena. It must be Serena’s daughter. Of course and why not? She had married, had a child—if not more than just this one traveling with her uncles and aunts.
Jeremy felt a well of anger rising in him for what Serena had done to him—or rather what she had failed to do for him. Wait for his return. Sure it was a long time, a decade, but she’d loved him just as surely as he’d loved her—and he had been faithful to her memory. Obviously, she had not.
Jeremy had
been walking in a small circle on the village green, where most people seeing him may intuit that he was working on some deep, philosophical question or sermon, give his clothing. He felt eyes on him and came to a halt only to find Serena’s daughter staring at him. Unlike the adults, her stare remained fixed as if she were studying him intently.
She could have been my child, he told himself.
The girl smiled at him now from where she stood in the back of a buckboard. She seemed fascinated and then she waved. Even her small hand was Serena’s hand.
Why should the child be enraptured of me, he wondered and remained flat-footed here as if caught, as if found out. But that was impossible. The child could know nothing of him whatsoever. Perhaps she stared at the uniform–the black garb of his chicanery. After all, it was an outfit children were trained to respect no matter the man wearing it.
Ironic in the extreme, he thought—here with Serena’s little off-spring not fifteen yards away and boring holes into him—that I should be dressed in the cloth of the church in an effort to unmask a man professing to be a minister of God who, in Reverend Increase Mather’s assessment might be a fake.
The girl broke her gaze and was now sitting on the Nurse wagon. Even the way she sat with hands cradling a rag doll in her lap, shoulders arched, her back straight. It left no doubt this spitting image belonged to Serena. She peeked over her shoulder to see if Jeremy was still there, and when she saw that he remained staring at her, she manipulated the doll’s arm and hand to wave at him.
Jeremy pulled away from the evidence of his eyes, his heart feeling the stab of pain and loss he’d so feared. It was true, despite his inmost prayers. Serena was lost to him forever.
He broke away in a near run so fast was his step, going for the dark parsonage where he might hide his emotions behind that awful curtain in that terrible cubbyhole he found himself living in.
Chapter Thirteen
Jeremiah had decided even before making it to the parsonage house to instead saddle his gray-speckled white horse and ride for the Nurse home instead of hiding away like a cur kicked to the street. He muttered as much to Dancer, and even as he worked to saddle the horse, his mind racing with thoughts of Serena’s betrayal, he watched Tituba Indian going about her small corner of the barn. She’d continued to sleep in a stall since Massa Wakley’s arrival. She’d made the stall as comfortable as possible, turning hay bales covered in thick woolen blankets into a bed.
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