“Dr. Noah North is my father, and he would have had nothing to do with aborting a birth and covering it up. Certainly not for Mr. Parris, and certainly not for money.”
Jeremy felt numb. It had come to this, another dead end. As she stepped from the coach, reaching back for his notes, which he surrendered, he said, “Then it was all between Parris and this ships’ doctor, Caball. Have you any knowledge of him?”
She shook her head. “I have not. Now please, this interview is over.” She told the coachman to return Jeremy to the North End at the center of commerce in Boston, “Drop him wherever he wishes.” She then looked back at Jeremy. “I will share all of your suspicions with my husband, Mr. Wakely, but if he disbelieves it . . . it will go no further. After all, it is on the word of a servant woman and a prisoner of the witch hunt. He is not likely to trust her or you.”
“And you, Mrs. Phipps? Do you trust me?”
She slammed the coach door and gave the order to the driver to move off.
Jeremy dropped his head in his hands. “Her father is Dr. North. Damn this tired world for its ironies.”
When Jeremy got down from the carriage and watched it turn around and go back the way it’d come, the jailer rushed to his side. The old sailor whispered under his hand, “Sir, if you want the black woman, I won’t stand in your way. You can take her.”
“Take her?”
“Any friend of the Governor’s can have his will here, sir.”
“You will turn Tituba over to me?”
“I will, yes.”
“How much do you require for her release?”
“Nothing, sir. I’m sure down the line, a reward may come but tonight . . . tonight she is yours.”
Jeremy finally understood the man’s meaning. He thought Jeremy wanted Tituba for the night. “Look here, do you know of any ships making for Barbados tonight?”
“Barbados? Tonight, sir?”
“Yes, tonight . . . tomorrow.”
“That’d be Captain Hypplewaite, sir.”
“Can I find him at the docks?”
“At the Red Lion, likely this time-o-day.”
“I’ll find him. Have a word with him.”
“And the black woman, sir?”
“I’ll be back for her, yes.”
The lecherous look in the old jailer’s eye and his toothless smile said that he’d finally found a pot of gold. “Cleaned up, she’d be my choice, too, Mr. Wakely.” He laughed and slapped Jeremy on the back.
With little hope of changing any minds here in Boston, Jeremy set out to help at least one of the victims in all this insanity—Tituba. He had little trouble locating the loud, heavy-drinking Captain Obadiah Hypplewaite, a garrulous pirate of a man. Jeremy bought passage for one to Barbados, telling the captain he’d bring this ‘cargo’ by cover of night, and that it wouldn’t do for anyone to see the woman.
“And once we land in Barbados?”
“You give her two silver pieces, and she finds the remnants of her family and life, a free woman.”
“So you’ve got religion and wish to free your slave, eh?”
“Yes, and that is all you need to know,” Jeremy lied and placed six pieces of silver before the captain. He then displayed the two silver dollars that belonged to Tituba. “Please, it will be all she has in life; you must see she gets it. I must trust you implicitly, Captain.”
The old sea dog’s eyes lit up. “Well then, you have my word and my blessings, son. It’s a horrid thing, this slavery business people’ve gotten themselves into. Meself, I won’t take slave cargo comin’ in from the Ivory Coast.”
Arrangements were made. Jeremiah got a confused Tituba to Mrs. Fahey’s barn where Mrs. Fahey discovered them, and for a moment thought the worst. When Jeremy confessed his plan, she leapt into the scheme without hesitation, ordering Jeremy out of the barn. She bathed Tituba and found a change of clothes for her before she allowed Jeremy back.
Captain Hypplewaite’s ship came after a hearty meal for Tituba, and when Jeremy told her it the
As he made his way back to Mrs. Fahey’s barn, Jeremy wondered at the wisdom or foolishness of his actions. If it came to light, he could face dire consequences—and for all her compassion, Mrs. Fahey was also known for spreading news and gossip, not to mention how upset Abraham was going to be in the coming days. “But I couldn’t’ve done otherwise,” he told himself. He had given up any thought whatsoever of Tituba’s ever becoming a witness against Parris or the witch hunt in general. After all, it appeared he’d failed with the Governor’s wife.
He planned on returning to Serena at first light empty-handed.
Chapter Six
A broken man, Francis Nurse felt he had nothing to live for now that Rebecca was gone. Despite his love for his children, he longed to join Rebecca. He toyed with suicide, but in his heart, more than anything, he wanted to do what Ben had wanted to do all along—put a hole in Samuel Parris.
He put together his small carriage, pulled by a single horse, and unbeknownst to anyone, he drove into Salem Village.
He searched the streets, the steps of Ingersoll’s place, the parsonage, now dark and empty save for Parris somewhere inside. Parris had been unable to locate nor return his wife and child to the village.
Francis pulled to within shouting distance of Parris’ window and door, waved a gun and dared Parris to show his face at the door. Parris did not come out. He was in fact not home.
Sheriff Herrick and several other armed men circled the old man, coaxing him to calm down and go back the way he’d come just as Serena rode in on her mare. She rushed to join her father, talking him into a reasonable posture. “Please, Father, please. I can’t lose you, too, now!”
Francis studied his daughter. “You are so beautiful, my child. You have your mother’s eyes.” He appeared not to know where he was or that he held a weapon in his hands.
Serena took the gun gently from him. Herrick and his men watched with interest as she climbed down, fetched her horse, tied her to the back of the buggy, and then returned to take the reins. She turned the small carriage around and guided it past Ingersoll’s, the Putnam home, and onto Ipswich Road, pointed toward home.
When she arrived back home with her father, she managed to get him into bed on her own. No one else was around. The place had become hauntingly deserted since Mother Nurse’s execution and the secret burial. Ben had been sent away, as his language against the court and the ministers had become so seditious as to put him under suspicion. It’d taken great and long-suffering arguments from Serena and Francis to get Ben to disappear for a while.
After getting her father settled in, Serena stepped out onto the porch, her mind a jumble of fears for Francis. He’d acted as if out of his head. Going down into the village to murder Mr. Parris on sight, and his behavior on the carriage seat. She feared his mind going.
“Some bustling noise rose up from the nearby road that went by the house, but she paid little heed to it. The Ipswich Road was a main thoroughfare between Salem Town and Village, and it was ever restless except in the wee hours. Instead, Serena wandered out toward the huge stand of oaks, the meeting tables set out below them, one covering the fresh earth below where her mother’s remains lay in secret.
She pulled herself onto the table, her feet on the bench, and head in hand, she began to cry. She missed Jeremy terribly and worried about him, too. She’d had nightmares of his being accosted in a dark Boston alleyway, robbed, and left bleeding on the cobblestones.
She recalled the night they sang hymns over Rebecca. Only the most immediate family members and John Tarbell knew her remains were here and not in the pit below the gallows, which’d been covered over. It appeared no one knew of the ‘theft’ carried out by the Nurse men. At least not yet.
When she thought of the last meal they’d all shared here with Mother Nurse still among them, the day Serena had held the blunderbuss trained on Jeremy, she recalled an underlying melancholia that had hold of her mother.
