“I have a bad feeling,” said Serena, joining them, “that Goode is up to no good. I’ve seen her coming and going toward Swampscott, and what’s out there but isolation?”

Francis lit his pipe. “They say she’s spreading as much venom about the parish and Parris as she can.”

“Venom, eh?” Serena helped her mother to the porch swing.

“In the form of cursing Mr. Parris and the parish house.”

“That parish house surely needs no more curse on it than it already has,” replied Rebecca, swinging now with Serena softly pushing.

“Too true! Found out by previous occupants!” She held back a laugh.

“Nothing funny about that, girl!” decried Francis, turning on her. “You’d think the village parish house haunted.” Francis puffed on his pipe. “Burroughs, Bailey before him, and Deodat Lawson—all stricken in one foul measure or another.”

Serena shrugged. “Maybe the parsonage is haunted.”

“And now?” asked Rebecca, “Everyone believes it’s Parris’ turn, I suppose.”

Francis exhaled smoke into the night sky. “I suppose everyone does.”

Serena bit her lip. “He’s not helped his cause with his last several sermons, I can tell you.”

“I can’t believe you continue to go down to hear such self-indulgence as you’ve described—either of you,” said Rebecca. “The man has no shame.”

“I go because I remain a deacon there and Parris has most of the elders and deacons in his pocket.”

“Give it up the, Father!” countered Rebecca.

“I will fight this business ’til—”

“Until Parris manages to replace you, Father?” asked Serena.

“Ah, and he likes calling me stubborn!” Rebecca laughed. “But what about, you, Serena?” Rebecca busied herself with releasing ties from her hair. “Why do you go to hear Parris?”

“I go to support Father, of course! The only deacon left to stand against the man.” Serena had begun to put her mother’s thin hair into a fresh bun. Such activity between them had become so routine that no words were needed.

“Careful, Francis,” began Rebecca, “else some of that village poison will spill in our cups.”

“Careful it is. Steady as she goes.”

“Are you speaking of me now?” Rebecca laughed.

“Yes, and off to bed with you both,” he said, “wherever you choose to lie your head.”

“Not me,” countered Serena, going to the end of the porch and leaping off. Her parents knew where she was off to—the stables. “I’m going for a ride before bed.”

“Why do you wish to worry us so?” asked Francis. “Look at you in Ben’s old chaps and hat. Riding astride a horse like a man!”

“Let her go, old man!” Rebecca scolded so that Serena didn’t have to argue with her father.

“She’s got in this habit of…of wandering the night, Mother. Looks bad.”

“To whom? And why do we care?” Serena burst out, wishing she hadn’t.

“If it’s so proper, young lady, then why not ride in daylight?”

Serena rushed out and shouted over her shoulder from the porch, “I won’t leave the property. Promise.”

Alone now, watching their youngest disappear into the barn, Rebecca asked, “Will you come into my bed tonight, Francis?”

“Ben’s bed?”

“Ben’s room, yes.”

“I will.”

They embraced, neither seeing young Serena watching from the stable where she saddled her horse. She’d gotten into the habit of riding the property each night, weather permitting. She climbed onto her horse, Nightshade, and she soon galloped in the general direction of the river—riding as freely as any man might and in the manner of a man. She meant to follow it for a while, turn and return home and to a bed warmed well by now, what with her having placed the bed coals beneath. The evening ride was her way of finding some peace and beauty in life, and riding beneath the stars and planets on a clear night felt like freedom.

From inside the house, Serena’s aging parents heard the hooves of her thundering horse as she raced off.

Chapter Twelve

The following morning

Jeremiah Wakely walked with a bounce in his step, and he felt the eyes of the villagers on him, step for step, as he made his way across the main thoroughfare for Ingersoll’s Ordinary & Inn. On Sabbath Days long before the village had erected a parsonage and a proper meetinghouse, Ingersoll’s stood in for the official gathering place. Ingersoll’s Inn continued yet as the center of village life, commerce and conversation, news and gossip, and in more than one sense spiritual libation. In 1692 far more imbibing from the keg than from the bible went on here. And it was the place to post a letter, which was Jeremy’s goal.

The exterior hadn’t changed save for a new sign in bold giant letters, reading: Ingersoll’s Ordinary, Apothecary & Inn. As he approached the front doors, Jeremiah recalled that it’d always been a hodgepodge, somewhere between an apothecary (filled with elixirs and rubs from plants to bear grease) and a dry goods and millinery shop sharing space with an alehouse. Some said the place reflected Nathaniel Ingersoll completely.

The first visit to Ingersoll’s that Jeremy had made, when he’d pushed through the creaking, swinging doors, old, heavyset Nathaniel Ingersoll, having heard of a Wakely who’d come to apprentice under Reverend Parris, rushed at Jeremy with open arms. “God blind me if it isn’t you! Jeremiah Wakely in the flesh.” Ingersoll had then lifted Jeremy off his feet with a bone-jarring bear hug. “What a bully young man you are! And you’ve turned to the ministry! Wonderful news!”

And now entering this morning, he got just as warm a welcome as ever. Ingersoll came around the counter and shook his hand and introduced him to some men who seemed disinterested.

“Good to see you, too, Mr. Ingersoll.” A twinge of guilt laced Jeremy’s words. “You’ve hardly changed in all these years.”

“Liar! A kind-hearted boy you always were, but I’m forty pounds more, and me jowls are flab! But you, now, that’s change indeed! What a temperate man you’ve become!”

“Ten years and you don’t look a day older, really, sir.” Ingersoll did seem ageless, a huge round man.

“Harrr! We’re all fortunate for each day God grants us, Jeremiah! Let me pour you a cup of ale.”

“That does sound good, yes.”

Jeremy approached the bar, and as Ingersoll went for the ale, but the big bear stopped in his tracks, turned and with a wide-eyed look of confusion on his bearded face, he lamented, “Oh my, but if you’re ordained a minister, and me a deacon now, I’ll have to call you Mr. Wakely, now won’t I?”

“It’s not come to that yet, sir.”

“Then I’ve leave to call you—”

“Jeremy will do, as always, Mr. Ingersoll.”

Ingersoll smiled from behind a squirrel’s nest of a beard. He threw back his head, the wild shocks of hair flying like Medusa’s curls, and he laughed the laugh of Neptune. He had always been a mainstay in Salem Village, but how wonderful a pirate he’d’ve made, Jeremy recalled thinking as a child. Some things never change.

As Jeremy watched his old overseer pour ale, it seemed time had stood still.

The counter here, which doubled as a bar at one end, a cutting board at the other, remained as always the same. Stools stood at this end, brooms, yardsticks, scissors, and bolts of cloth cluttered the other. The room spread out wide, the rear of it a large affair with ten-foot high dropped beamed ceilings. All of the finest spruce, but the caulking showed age and water seeped in here and there. Mildew collected in corners, and the seeping rainwater on stormy days and nights must be collected in buckets and pails.

The lion's share of the store was turned over to fresh produce, fish and fowl, beaver and marmet pelts, bolts of cloth, as well as carpentry tools and farm and garden instruments. Along one wall traps of every size along with hunting and fishing equipment, as well as buckets and mops, and the most characteristic element Jeremy remembered from his youth—the large stand of brooms all in a circle at the center. Nor had he forgotten the taffy and hard candy jar on the counter alongside the pickled eggs, vegetables, nuts, and berries. And all of it was set aglow by the huge fireplace at the end of the room.

“So it is Deacon Ingersoll these days?” asked Jeremy, taking a dram of ale.

Ingersoll looked stricken. “It’s no easy task, let me tell you.”

“You’re having to referee between Mr. Parris and his flock I imagine.”

“Half or more of his flock, yes.”

Ingersoll was always easy with local news and gossip himself. “Who leads the dissenting faction?”

“Francis Nurse and his wife, Rebecca.”

“Really?” This took Jeremy aback. “I thought it Tarbell, Proctor maybe.”

“More her than Francis, actually, and some say Rebecca’s fallen ill as a result of bedeviling our minister.”

“Ill? How ill?”

“Been abed all winter she has.”

“I see.” Jeremy read the notices on the bulletin board pinned there and forgotten. One was a call to the Militia Company, which was to meet and parade about the village the next day. “Are you still with the militia company, sir?”

“Aye and I’m nowadays Lieutenant Ingersoll.” The man beamed far more at this label than at being called a deacon.

“That’s grand news.” Jeremy knew him as a terrible shot.

“They’ve turned over the artillery to my care. I’m in charge of the unit.”

“Artillery?”

“Yes, we’ve a cannon now.”

“A big one, I hope.”

“A twelve-pounder, Jeremy! Come from Barbados with the new minister.”