Jeremy and the old Watch Hill militiaman shared a hug before Mr. Wakely left, tipping his tri-cornered hat to those entering. Behind him, he could hear the buzz and whispers surrounding his arrival, and the news of young Betty’s having “fallen to an awful curse.”

# # # # #

On the boardwalk outside Ingersoll’s, Jeremy was struck by the lack of growth in the village after all these years. He contemplated the stagnation of the place when an ox drawn cart pulled to within shouting distance, and the man on the seat—a giant of a fellow shouted, “Kindlin’, fire wood!”

The two-wheeled cart had seen better days as had the ox, tired from two decades of pulling the giant. Jeremy recognized the six-foot-four Giles Corey instantly. Who could miss him? He and his wife, Martha, ran a nearby mill on a prosperous stretch of Ipswich Road. Kindling wood was a sideline. The Coreys’ lives, and those of their children, had been turned over to that mill; they literally fed every four-legged beast in both the village and the town with their secret formula meal and grist, said to have discarded, crushed fish heads in the recipe. They also produced rice, corn, and other grains bagged for human consumption. Jeremy recalled a joking Ingersoll ten years before saying, “Them rough Coreys could be grinding anything into their mill sacks!”

“Like what?” Jeremy had asked at the time.

“Dunno . . . seashells maybe . . . maybe glass . . . rat dung for all anyone knows!”

“Ugh! You think so?”

“Who’d know?”

For this reason, any time an animal came up sick, and sometimes when a person came up ill, the Coreys were looked askance at, but the look often followed a price haggle as well.

Ingersoll pointed out who Jeremy was to Giles Corey, repeatedly saying, “You surely remember Jeremiah. But Corey, still sitting on his lumbering cart, scratched his head, shook it, and said in a booming voice, “I know ye not, Mr. Wakely, and I owe no man nothin’ beyond common court’sy, and some aren’t deserving of that.”

“Come now, you must remember Jeremy! He was my boy, my servant for long years, even stood watch on the hill with me some nights.”

“Ah! I do recall a lad . . . somewhat.” He continued scratching his head. Corey’s face was that of a moose, and here was the bear, Ingersoll, talking to the moose, Corey.

“That doesn’t seem to be working,” said Ingersoll. “Try scratching your oxen’s head—maybe that’d jar your mem’ry, Giles!” Ingersoll laughed at his own joke.

Corey climbed down, went to the oxen’s front and did scratch the beast’s head. “Oh yes, now I remember in full, but you know what, Nathaniel . . . and no reflection on you, Mr. Wakely, but what my ox here says is—and I quoth the ox: ‘More of piety and another minister shovelin’ it in this cursed place we don’t need’—or so he says.” He pointed at the ox, its eyes registering a dumb stare.

“I hope to do some good here, Mr. Corey,” said Jeremy as the giant lumbered into Ingersoll’s in search of ale.

“I’ll take my dram now, Nathaniel. Or do I need take my coin up the road to Bridgett Bishop’s Inn?”

Ingersoll shrugged and rushed back to his bar, the swinging doors going in and out behind the men. Jeremy marveled at the fact that Corey made Ingersoll look small.

Meanwhile, the village was filling up, carriages, wagons, and horsemen tying up outside the village meetinghouse. Something’s afoot. Having crossed the street on his way back to the parsonage, Jeremy noticed one of the wagons entering the village carried members of the Nurse and Towne family. In fact, now that he looked with more care, all the people converging on the meetinghouse were Nurse-Towne folk. He recognized many of them as Serena’s brothers, and each had a family of his own in tow.

Others among them were the Cloyse clan, the family that Rebecca Nurse’s sister and some of her children had married into. Each group stopped only momentarily at the meetinghouse, entered, and left as if to offer a prayer, but many a basket was carried in and left for the minister in lieu of monetary payment of his rate. Most of it bushels of nuts and other produce. One Nurse man stopped at Ingersoll’s to place a notice there. Ingersoll met the man outside. They exchanged a few words and the notice was passed to Ingersoll but not immediately put up on the overcrowded board.

A cold wind swept through main street and anyone riding an open cart or wagon was bundled up against the lingering chill air.

Jeremy returned to stand beside Ingersoll who watched the Nurse clan with interest. He’d both dreaded and hoped to see Serena among those coming in for meeting. He assumed she’d have children and a husband, married long before now. He was tempted to ask Ingersoll just to confirm his thoughts, but instead, he asked, “What’s the notice that fellow handed you just now?” Jeremy indicated the note in Nathaniel’s hand.

Ingersoll turned it over to Jeremy who read:

Let it be known throughout the village that Mother Rebecca Nurse has overcome her long illness, and that she wishes to convey her sincere thank you to all in the village who prayed for her health and a return to her former vigor as a woman of God and one who ministers and does the work of a goodwife, mother, and one who puts God before all she loves and holds dear, as without His blessing none of her joys would be in her grasp. However, as age and health does not permit Goodwife Nurse to attend meeting and has kept her away from the parish ministry, she continue to invite any and all who wish to be on hand for Sabbath Day prayers in her home to please continue to visit as before.

With all my heartfelt best to all,

Rebecca Nurse

It was not unusual for people to refer to themselves in the third person when writing. “You seem reluctant to put Mrs. Nurse’s notice up, Mr. Ingersoll.”

“The board is a wee overfull.”

“Still I detect a hesitation on your part for a finer reason.”

“Finer reason?”

“You seem pained to make room for the notice.”

“Mr. Parris will dislike this news.”

“News of a Mother Nurse’s regaining health and heartiness?”

“No, no! Not that, but that the Goodlady still urges villagers to come to her for Sabbath Day prayers.”

“But if she is not well enough to seek the Word here, it stands to reason. Besides, does he—Parris—control the free-flow of information nowadays?”

Ingersoll gritted his teeth. “No, he does not. I am postmaster here.” He then searched the board for items to discard, and he immediately tacked up Rebecca Nurse’s announcement, but the wind turned it into a flapping flag.

“You may’s well post it,” Jeremy said as Ingersoll worked to get a second tack into it. At the same time, the notice flailed wildly with another gust of wind that threatened to whip it from its recently found moorings.

Ingersoll grunted as he drove a third tack into the notice. He then pointed at a notice on the Meetinghouse door. “I may’s well post it, as her boys’ve posted it on the yonder.”

Jeremy squinted and made out a few other notices posted on the meetinghouse door. “I see it. When did they begin posting notices at the door?”

“Since Parris.”

“There’s a lot of new things here since Parris.”

“Jeremy, if you stay long, you’ll learn that there is BP and AP.”

“Sir?” Jeremy’s face could not mask his consternation. “BP, AP?”

“Before Parris and After Parris.”

Jeremy laughed even as he mulled this over. What had life been like for parishioners here before Samuel Parris? But he kept the thought to himself and said to Ingersoll, “Well, Deacon, I bid you adieu.”

“A-Adieu, why yes, of course,” replied Ingersoll waving him off.

Momentarily, he found himself standing on the village green at a communal water pump, a horse tied to a post gently nudging him so that it might reach the grass beneath his feet.

For the hundredth and one time, he wondered, What am I doing here? What’d I get myself into?

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.