Jeremy bowed dutifully, reminding himself of the role he played here, one of the contrite apprentice to Mr. Parris, his mentor. At the same time, he recognized Captain Thomas Putnam as a key player in current village and church politics, and the likely role he played in fanning the gossip of this current ‘curse’ afflicting the parish. Mather had filled Jeremy in on who stood to gain and who stood to lose by Parris’ continued appointment as minister. While Anne and Thomas Putnam stared stupidly at Jeremy, it took some shrinking for him to appear a mere pawn in village affairs. At the same time, Reverend Parris busily worked to convince the Putnams to allow his apprentice across their humble threshold.

Jeremy only half heard Parris’ words ending with, “The young man is here to observe and learn how I minister to my congregation. That is the extent of his interest.”

“To study in the Word?” Thomas Putnam asked, nodding as if he knew the answer to begin with.

“To one day become an ordained minister.” Jeremy tried to meet Putnam’s eye but found it impossible as the man’s eyes looked everywhere but in Jeremy’s direction.

Putnam pulled Parris inside and closed the door on Jeremy. Through the cracks and crevices, Jeremy caught snatches of conversation inside.

“Mercy can’t stay,” Mrs. Putnam flatly stated.

“She’s corruptin’ little Anne,” added Mr. Putnam in a raised voice.

“Give it time, Thom.”

“She’s caused my wife tears, Sam.”

“These matters take time . . . patience . . . but in time.”

“You talk to the wench. You warned her.”

“I will talk to her, of course.”

Putnam whispered something Jeremy could not make out.

Parris grunted, hemmed, hawed, and muttered, “Would I’ve brought ’im if I thought ’im that?”

Putnam stood back and went to the window where he raised a hand and gave a nod to Jeremy, a gesture meaning everything’s all right. He then cracked the door, saying, “Whatever you say, Mr. Parris.”

Parris stuck out his index finger and curled it in the gesture that said for Jeremy to enter.

Jeremy felt a surge of excitement and a bit of pride that held tight rein on. After all, in the space of hours, he’d won the confidence of the minister and had gotten past a deacon’s threshold. He recalled having told Mather how wrong he was for this assignment, but perhaps the Mathers and old Higginson had been right after all—that in fact, he’d do well in Salem Village…after all.

Jeremy soon met Mercy Lewis who was called and told to come down from the loft room overhead. Little Anne Putnam Junior followed Mercy down, quaking on quill pen legs. Parris made a lecture of it, a sermon directed at Mercy, insisting the girl follow Mrs. Putnam’s teachings and orders without complaint or backtalk. He then blessed both girls and the household, making a rather quick affair of it all. In fact, Jeremy hardly got a look at Mercy or Little Anne, as she was called, save for Anne’s eyes—like two large seedless grapes; no light seemed able to reflect from those eyes.

Chapter Six

They saw other parishioners about the village during the day as well, and Parris took Jeremy to the meetinghouse to show him the place, and by day’s end, they’d returned home to a meal of mostly hot vegetables and rabbit stew. The household remained peaceable all evening, and once again Tituba slept in the barn, despite Mrs. Parris’ offering a corner of her bedroom, but Mr. Parris would not hear of “such an arrangement”, while Mrs. Parris countered with “and you think her sleeping in a cold barn with the livestock is a proper arrangement?”

Again Jeremy offered to take the stall in the barn, but Parris stood adamant about the sleeping arrangements.

The following day felt like an absolute déjà vu sequence for Jeremy, as at breakfast, once again, there came a clamor at the door, yet another message sent by Mrs. Putnam for Parris to come to her aide—again citing Mercy as the cause of her distress.

And so together, Jeremy and Parris again traversed the common for the Putnam home. Along the way, this time, Jeremy decided he must confess something to Parris and he used the term confess.

“Confess? What are you talking about, man?”

“I’m sorry, sir, if it displease you, but you should know something about me, Mr. Parris, about my past.”

This stopped their progress, as Parris, looking perplexed, asked, “Your past?”

“In reference to how I know the history of the parish? You thought me so studious the other day and I confessed not. . . as it will become general knowledge once certain parties recognize my return to Salem—”

Parris right hand shot up to silence Jeremy, and white-faced, he near whispered, “Recognize you, Mr. Wakely?”

“I was previously a citizen here, sir, years ago. It’s why—”

“Citizen? Here?”

“Yes, you see my father’s shop on North Ipswich Road—”

“You have family here?”

“Family, no. History, yes.”

“Riddles I can’t abide, Mr. Wakely. Speak plainly, as plainly as that witch who confronted us t’other day.”

Jeremy planted his feet, causing Parris to halt and meet the younger man’s flame blue eyes as Jeremy spoke firmly, enunciating each word: “I am striving toward clarity, sir, if you will but—”

“Clarity indeed? So you have a history with this parish, and you are just telling the this now?”

“I do. I mean, yes. That is, I did.” Jeremy’s jaw quivered as he bared down on his teeth.

“And from your tone and grimace, it would seem a foul history?”

“Not not unlike your own, sir.”

As if by providence, they wound up at the old chestnut tree again, and both men wondered at the appearance of what appeared the very same raven as before. It seemed either coincidence or sign. “Go on, Jeremy,” urged Parris.

“Reverend Deodat Lawson oversaw my father’s excommunication.”

“My God.”

“And by extension my own, so far as I was concerned.”

“The son is not necessarily heir to the sins of the father,” said Parris thoughtfully.

“He is if he’s in Salem, sir.”

“But you must’ve been a mere boy at the time.”

“Yes, sir . . . a runner for Mr. Ingersoll’s Inn, and I did sit watch a number of times up yonder at—”

“Sit watch?”

“Yonder on Watch Hill with Mr. Ingersoll nights.”

“Aye, I see. The same Ingersoll as is now one of my deacons.”

“Not so at the time, but had he been, I’m sure he’d have opposed what they did to my father and stepmother.”

Parris now stared into Jeremiah’s hard-set eyes, searching the gray orbs. “Your parents then moved off? To the settlements along the Connecticut? Or rather Maine, I suppose.”

“My natural mother died giving me life. My stepmother contracted the fever and died here, but being not of the faith, she was refused burial in the parish cemetery—as was my father for having dared married out of the faith.”

“She was of what faith then?” he asked.

“Catholic…of French decent. Father met her in Salem seaport, saved her from the jailer.”

“Save her, indeed? How romantic.”

“She’d been a stowaway on a Portuguese freighter. They turned her over to the courts. My father, hearing of it, paid her jail fines and took her in as an indentured servant but they fell I love soon after.”

“Married a Catholic. Indeed reason for concern, Jeremy,” Parris paused, patting Jeremy on the shoulder, “but to refuse hollowed ground? To excommunicate a man?”

“Deodat Lawson saw it that way, and so did the congregation, almost every man, woman, and child. I was there. Saw them fired up.”

“I am not a scholarly theologian, Jeremy, and I may not know all the tenets of Puritanism and am perhaps wrong in my condemnation of the wrongs done you, but my God…and in this place…” he waved a sweeping hand to take in the village… “in this hovel, any manner of indignity is possible, Jeremy, and while I might myself balk at having a man in my parish marry a Catholic and presuppose he might sit in my church, I would stop short of excommunication and thereby withhold proper burial to one of my parishioners.”

Jeremiah realized two things on hearing this speech come from Parris. One, the man could convince the bark on a tree to peal itself off, and two, in the single emphasized word ‘hovel’ Parris had given himself away. In that single word, he had revealed his utter contempt for Salem—again calling into question why he’d come here from Barbados if not to, as any business-minded man might, strike a better and more lucrative deal. There had to be a larger motive for his moving his family to Salem than to simply preach here, larger still than his having cut so generous a deal with the parish for lands that were not theirs to deed over to him.

More softly now, Parris said, “Then your birth mother alone is buried in our cemetery?”

“Yes and no.”

“More with the riddles. State it, man! You speak like a poet. Say what you mean outright, please.”

“Both my mothers and my father are buried here but two were outside the churchyard fence originally, but from what I’ve seen, the church yard had to expand the boundaries after ten years. It does appear that now all three of my parents are in your cemetery—sinners or no.”

Parris threw his head back and laughed at this, sending the raven flying from its perch, and for a moment, Jeremy glimpsed the man as he must once have been, a hearty hellion bent on drink and life.

“I see,” Parris coughed out a few words between belly laughs. “I begin to see.”

“She being of the Papal faith, and he being an outcast,” continued Jeremy, knowing that if he weren’t forthcoming that Parris would get the story from another source. “Excommunicated on the heels of burying his wife, my mother.”