Children of Salem

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.

It’s time, Jeremy told himself, time I go to see Serena. The real Serena, and to bite back my anger and to keep a civil tongue, and to wish her every happiness. Had no right to harbor the fantasy that she would be here waiting, pining for me all this time. Still an angry, flare up of a thought bedeviled him and erupted in words: “Judging by the age of her daughter, Serena didn’t pine long.”

“Massa done beat poor Mary ’til her back bleed,” Tituba calmly informed him as if speaking of the weather and without halting in her work. She had picked up a pitchfork taller than she, and she pitched some hay before Dancer who gobbled and crunched on it.

Jeremy stopped cinching Dancer and took the pitchfork from her and sat it aside. “What did you say?”

“Massa drew blood. Made her scream veddy bad. Here! Look.” She led him to a stall beside hers. “Look, look there.” She pointed at the blood splotches in the dirt and hay.

Jeremy could see that they were fresh—from this morning.

He looked to see splatters of blood in the hay and dirt where Tituba pointed. “Tore her dress.” Tituba said in his ear. “Shame her.”

“My God.” Jeremiah returned to Dancer and cinched the saddle tight. He wondered how much was exaggeration, how much truth, but the blood was obvious. Tituba shadowed him.

“And den he beat her b’cause . . . b’cause Massa afraid he wants her—to touch her and lay wid Mary. So he say she, ‘Mary! You got de Devil in you! I gots to beat it outta you for temptin’ me!’”

“Careful of such accusations, Tituba Indian.”

“My real name not Indian. Real name he can’t say, so he call me Indian on de papers.”

“I see. Then what is your real name?”

“Ti’shuba L’englesian.”

“French?”

“French enough; like you.”

The remark made him wonder who’d passed that bit of family history onto her, but he was too busy at the moment to consider the gossips.

“How is Mary now?”

But she slinked away from Jeremy when she saw Parris’ approaching shadow at the door. Knowing she hadn’t time to look properly busy, she began to chant a Barbados song. She twirled in dance as if to entertain Jeremy with anything but gossip and news of Mary’s having been beaten.

Jeremy turned to see that Parris stood in the doorway to the barn.

“Off with you, Tituba!” he shouted. “Now, into the house!”

Tituba stopped cold and rushed past him and out.

“That servant wench’s become my cross to bear,” said Parris. “I warned you about her; she’s not right in the head. Pay no heed to her.”

“She says you beat and shamed Mary mercilessly.” Jeremy pointed to the blood.

“She exaggerates. It’s what Ne’gras with French blood do.”

“You mean lie.”

“Lie, cheat, steal. Warned you about her; she’s not right in the head. Breaks into fits!”

“Are you referring to her song and dance?” Jeremy had seen nothing else from her approximating fits.

Their eyes locked. The senior man asked his apprentice, “Have you been asking about my history among the villagers, Goodfriend Jeremy?” It sounded as if he knew the answer. Ingersoll and others had conveyed the news.

Jeremy knew not to lie. “I am as curious of your history here as any stranger might be, Samuel, my good friend and mentor.” Jeremy hoped that his ruse was not completely undone.

“So your purpose in interrogating the elders is to learn my history with the parish?”

“I have learned it, sir.”

“Ingersoll fill you in?”

“Among others, yes.”

Jeremiah set his foot in the stirrup and lifted onto Dancer, throwing his leg over the horse. He looked down on Parris from this height and realized just how small the other man truly was. “Each day, Samuel, you seem to have new suspicions and doubts over my being here. Perhaps it is not working out; perhaps I should return to Boston and request another parish.”

“I’ll happily tell you when it is no good between us, not you, Jeremy. It’s up to me to say when you can return to Boston.”

Dancer stirred as if she might rear as Parris had hold of her bridle and was yanking hard at it.