supported my family!”
This had sent up a wave of halleluiahs, grunts, and affirmations.
“My brethren . . . my brethren, I wish to relate to you a story…a story of betrayal which will explain to you the sudden absence of one Jeremiah Wakely who no longer resides in my home, no longer deserves my concern or respect, and no longer is—nor in truth ever was an apprentice in the ministry!”
Gasps escaped many in the congregation.
“He lied; his entire charade was a lie, and I being a humble man, untutored in the ways of chicanery and masquerade, only two days ago learned only recently his true nature and identity. The man was put on
“Who? Who is behind it all?” asked Thomas Putnam, standing and stating his lines rather dumbly and not so well as he’d practiced.
“I’m glad you ask, Deacon Putnam.” Parris followed with a tale of conspiracy against him, tying Jeremiah’s visit to Salem to a “certain element among us whom I have referred to many times at this pulpit to no avail. Say it with me, one and all.”
With Parris leading the congregation, they all said in chanting tone, “The dissenting brethren. The dissenters. Dissenters.”
“Yes, I believe it so,” added Parris. “The dissenting brethren among us.”
Francis Nurse, who’d dared to show for Sabbath Day, stood at this and shouted, “Mr. Parris, there is no one in this congregation who had any indication or knowledge that Mr. Wakely was anything but what he presented himself as.”
“No one, Mr. Nurse?”
“I am still an elder here, sir, and I am not given to lies or conspiracies of any sort. Nor is my wife, or anyone in
“Does that extend to your sisters-in-law and to the Tarbells, the Cloyses, and the Townes, sir?”
“None of whom had any contact with this man Wakely before his showing up here.”
“Can you say, Mr. Nurse, in all good heart, that no one in your camp asked Reverend Higginson down in the Harbor to arrange for this man Wakely to infiltrate my home like a common thief in the night?”
“I can, sir!”
“That no Nurse, no Cloyse, no Tarbell had any part to play in this spying, conniving man’s coming into my home? My home which is an extension of this church and therefore sacrosanct?”
“I tell you we had no part in any such doings, and with that I am leaving, sir.”
Francis stomped from the meetinghouse, and every son, nephew, niece with him. They left a large hole in the pews they’d occupied. Some were snatched at by other members of the church, and some were scolded.
John Tarbell, a brother-in-law to Francis Nurse, stopped at the meetinghouse door to say, “I’m a simple man. Cut my lumber. Work hard to feed my family, put food on the table. Francis speaks the truth. We are none of us cohorts with this fellow Wakely or Mr. Higginson in any kind of plan to undermine Mr. Parris, although we respect and admire the old minister at Salem Town as we might a grandfather—who by the way lies on his deathbed and is himself no part of this business! That’s all I ’ave to say.”
Parris had shouted after the retreating figures, “You say you’re not in cohorts with these conspirators, yet Wakely has been seeing Francis Nurse’s daughter!”
This sent up a fresh round of grunts, gasps, and a giggle or two from the older children.
“Words got round! It’s true,” added Ingersoll, “but it don’t prove the girl’s family is plotting with Jeremy Wakely.” Ingersoll stood to make his point, and shrugging, he added, “I knew Jeremy was up to something moment I saw him dressed as a minister. He was never comfortable in the role.”
“You didn’t know anymore’n the rest of us about the man,” countered Thomas Putnam.
“You needn’t get belligerent about it,” defended Ingersoll. “I spent more time with him than you. I sensed he was uneasy is all I’m saying.”
“Do you think him the black man spoken of by the witnesses?” asked Mrs. Putnam. “The one who holds the Devil’s book?”
The entire congregation from the oldest man to the youngest child had been raised on the Antichrist, and they all knew that the Antichrist conducted an
“No, Wakely is nothing more than a misguided, used man in a badly conceived plot against me,” countered Parris. “No, the Antichrist serving up the Black Sabbath in those woods has been positively identified!”
This sent up a fresh round of gasps and everyone began searching the features of others.
“Wakley is a pawn for the Boston authorities, but this man I will name, he is a pawn for authorities of Hell itself! Our own deputized authorities are on their way to Maine as we speak to arrest this man! To bring him back to face charges here in what once was his own pulpit!” Parris brought a righteous fist down on his pulpit.
“Burroughs?” asked Bray Wilkins from the back of the room.
“Aye, you’ve deciphered it!” Parris replied as if rewarding Wilkins. “Right and we must ever remain in the right, my brethren.”
“Reverend George Burroughs, a cunning man, a warlock?” asked Thomas Putnam, pretending he’d never heard the accusation before.
“He was a strange sort, after all,” added another parishioner.
“I recall his dancing about like a madman while preaching,” said the carpenter, Fiske.
“As if on hot coals even as he used the word of God,” suggested Anne Putnam Senior.
“Remember his doing cartwheels on the green,” said another.
“Back flips and contortions no man could possibly do without—”
“—Without some strength and agility perhaps given him from-from outside forces.”
“Do you recall the strength he displayed?”
Parris came down to the floor and went to the end of the front pew where he had insisted his wife be in attendance with the sick Betty in her arms. “In mid-sermon, this man Burroughs once lifted this very pew and balanced it on one hand—or so Brother Putnam once informed me.
“And the pulpit itself!” added Putnam.
They all contemplated how Burroughs’ behavior mocked the very meetinghouse he preached in, and how he had once lifted an entire pew while people sat in it. He’d done so, ostensibly to demonstrate, he had said, God’s hand in the biblical tale of Samson and Delilah. He had made the suggestion that the women among the villagers were more cunning than Delilah ever hoped to be.
Suddenly his voice raised several octaves higher, Parris said, “The money-changers desecrated the Temple, and only one man—Christ—one brave man—stood up against them, to cry out against their desecration, and now an ugly desecration has returned to stain this land, and why do you suppose? Why this time? And in this remote place, why should the ruler of all Hades come here to Salem, eh?”
The meetinghouse had fallen silent.
“A good question,” Ingersoll mustered a response.
“Why now indeed? Why not now?” asked Parris. “Why, think on it! We are
It was a moving argument. A strange vapor of energy hung in the air above the heads of the assembled people as their minister had rushed up and down the aisles, bringing home his point. An odor of brine, aging oak wood pews, the sand floor, the mud shuffled in on boots and shoes conspired with the perspiration of the hundred or so assembled here.
“Look you
Parris had them in silence once again.