Children of Salem

Dorcas. “I didn’t ask for this trouble between your father and me, child,” she told the doll. “Twas all his doing! First excommunicating me from that damned church, and then stealing my Dorcas! And cloakin’ it in the goodness of his parish duties! Lying swine. Sold my Dorcas into slavery is what he’s done! Money changed hands!”

She jammed another long needle into Betty’s likeness. Tearfully, Goode cried out, “The sins of the father are visited ’pon the child! Not my rule! Not my sins.”

She heard the doll whisper, I understand, Goodwife Goode.

Goode rammed another needle into the doll.

The doll winked at her under the candle glow as if to add, Father’s left you no choice.

Chapter Two

Watch Hill, outside Salem Village, same time

Jeremiah Wakely in black riding cape reined in his pale horse and brought the gray-speckled mare to a soft trot. He and Dancer rounded the base of the gravelly hill that Jeremy recognized as Watch Hill. Must be careful . . . discreet. He urged the horse now up the gentle slope beneath the moonlight. Must arrive in Salem Village without notice. “Perhaps an impossibility?” he asked the horse, leaning in to pat the animal.

As Jeremiah and his horse Dancer scaled the ancient hill, he wondered if it had not been a mistake to make this pact with Mather. Wondered if he shouldn’t ‘ve told both ministers the previous night—and in no uncertain terms that he was…what? Uncertain? “Hardly strong enough language for what ails ye tonight, eh, Wakely?” he spoke aloud to himself in the cold night air. Any moment now, he expected to see Higginson coming up the other side of this wretched hill, but so far no sign of the man.

In a pace that stirred so much emotion in Jeremy, he wondered if the Mathers, and now Higginson, had not placed their confidence in his ability to remain neutral and above the fray possible. An attitude necessary to accomplish what amounted to a conspiracy against Reverend Parris. Am I the right man for this affair? Suppose the others are wrong? Suppose I’m the worst possible choice for this grim and complicated undertaking? Am I up to it?

Then there was the fear that had welled up and engorged his heart with every hoof beat bringing him closer to Salem and Serena. His mind played over this fear…played over the moment that he’d most assuredly again lay eyes on her.

The feel of the white steed beneath him sent a slow and easy rhythm through Jeremiah. A calm had settled over man and horse after the full gallop from Boston. Nonetheless, Jeremiah could feel the animal’s heart racing still—a kind of chant, reminding Jeremiah of his mission, its gravitas and significance. More rumor than fact but in earlier attempts to unseat Samuel Parris, people had fallen gravely ill and others had died—some said of poison, some pointed to poisoned thoughts, while others cried witchcraft! After all, a minister who practiced magic was not altogether unheard of in Salem as people there recalled Reverend George Burroughs who on occasion had performed magic tricks and displays of so-called superhuman strength at the altar.

Coincidence or not, the latest and most outspoken of Parris’ critics was none other than Rebecca Nurse, Serena’s mother, who—if word could be believed was herself abed with a condition bordering on death. Of course, there might be no connection whatsoever, but it smelled mightily to some, and it raised suspicious minds to a fevered pitch, especially as Serena’s father, Francis, had also been an outspoken member of the group opposing Parris. Odd for certain, yet not surprising that Serena’s family—serious churchgoers—would be in the thick of any parish business. It amounted to yet another reason why Jeremy questioned his ability to pass fair judgment one way or the other.

Regardless here he was, poised to enter the fray himself. And regardless of how he was selected or why, he’d soon enter that cursed village of ill memory; enter it along a dirty cow path west of Ipswich Road.

Man and horse reached the summit of Watch Hill, a place where once, as a boy Jeremiah Wakely worked for the village and room and board at Deacon Nathaniel Ingersoll’s Inn and Apoethcary. As a scrawny boy, Jeremy guarded the entire expanse of what had been called Salem Farms. He stood watch, prepared to torch a bonfire and to ring a huge bell so large it’d been mounted on a heavy oaken frame. Jeremy had been proud in those days— acting as eyes and ears against the then troubling pagans of the bush as Ingersoll, his overseer, had routinely called the native Massachusetts Indians.

Bonfire and bell were long gone now. In their place a scorched area of earth that looked for all the world to be the remnants of a pagan dance altar what with that familiar spike of a boulder squarely in it. Jeremy took in the old place even as he cursed the apparent absence of Nehemia Higginson. He had expected the creaky old minister to have taken the easier approach on the northwest side in a comfortable buggy, but no sign of horse, buggy, or minister. Groaning aloud, he scanned the distance all round from the top of Watch Hill. No sign whatsoever of the aged minister reported back.

It appeared the decrepit minister had broken off their meeting, and he’d so hoped to inform Higginson of the many misgivings bouncing about in his head—to confess his strong ties with the Nurses and Serena, to plead for a postponement, and to bring in another man for this employment. It was as if Higginson feared just this might occur—as if the wiley old gentleman had surmised that Jeremy might question his mission, and so the old man chose to stay away and leave him no counsel.

“Nothing I can prove, mind you,” he said to Dancer, “but it certainly feels we’ve been prematurely abandoned, girl. Perhaps events beyond Higgison’s control’ve taken over.”

He now saw in the distance the whole of Salem Farms—the lands stretching along the Ipswich Road and the valley, the most prominent being the Nurse family compound and homes.

He’d meant to avoid the Nurse family home, but how? It stood between Salem Town and Salem Village, and their land holdings had increased enormously in the decade he’d been away—as he’d kept an eye on the court records. The Nurse family compound had in fact quadrupled, making any effort to go around out of the question. The Ipswich Road would take him to within feet of the front porch of the old homestead, whereas the back road, the cow path, also cut through Nurse property, but it was the lesser of two evils tonight.

Jeremiah stood high in the stirrups now, allowing himself a moment to stare down at the old main house. Beautiful old place really, and it held many memories for him.

The original home sat nestled in the crook of a split forge, roughly the shape of an anvil. It stood sentinel between the Frost Fish and Crane rivers, tributaries of a peninsula stretching from Salem Harbor and the seaport. These waterways made the land rich and easy to work, affording two speedy avenues to harbor trade, even when frozen over. Anyone living along the Ipswich road had that avenue overland. The Nurse-Cloyse clan had the Ipswich road and the waterways, as did Giles and Martha Corey with their nearby gristmill at the terminus of a third tributary of the Woolston River called the Cow House.

Jeremiah recalled playing about the Corey mill with Serena and her brothers; recalled how Serena loved to watch the giant wheel turn with the force of the Cow House current. The memory created a sad refrain in his mind’s eye: the image of children at play on that last day he’d gone splashing in the Frost Fish with Serena, the beautiful, youngest Nurse daughter. He recalled a glorious memory of them canoeing, too, sometimes with one or more of her brothers at hand, and her father or mother watching from shore.

With the breeze tugging at his hat and cape, Jeremy gave a thought to a time when the Nurses had informally made him one of theirs. For years he’d helped them work this land. This after Jeremiah’s excommunicated father, a poor dish turner by trade, had died of consumption—or had it been of a broken heart?

Jeremiah’s father, John Wakely, had died a few years after the loss of his second wife to cholera. Her death came shortly after the villagers voted to shun their family for his father’s having married outside the faith—to a French woman no less. Jeremiah’s birth mother had died in labor, a not uncommon end in the colonies.

“’Twas the Nurse family took me in, Dancer.” Jeremiah spoke to his horse, stroking the mane. “Showed mercy they did. But at the time, I was so damnably angry at the world. I threw it back in their faces.” His memories turned to regret. “Hurt everyone who loved me, especially Serena.”

Even her name caused his heart to stir. People in Salem, and Puritans in general, named their children after desired traits: Piety, Charity, Chastity, Fidelity, Serenity. Men were saddled with Biblical names from Moses to