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As they rode back to Serena’s home, Serena began making plans for their future together. “You know why I took you to my brother Francis Junior’s old place?” she asked at one point, talking nonstop and skipping from subject to subject. “Do you?”

“To get in out of the storm, of course.”

“Of course,” she repeated in a mocking tone. “How thick is your skull?”

“What?”

“Typical man.”

“What?” He shrugged beside her where they rode atop horses that bumped one another as they sauntered along.

“We didn’t avoid a storm, silly! More like we leapt into one.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not following you, Serena.”

“Jesus take you! Look here, the old place is lovely but abandoned, sad and-and useless it is, you see, but—”

“I dunno? We made good use of it.” His smile spread wide.

“I mean with Francis gone, it’s been no good to anyone.” She’d earlier explained that the eldest son had gone off to farm in Connecticut. “Sitting up there on that knoll all to its lonesome.”

“The house? You mean the house?”

“Yes, the house! Aren’t you paying attention?”

“It did feel an unhappy house until we entered.”

“Exactly what I am driving at, Jeremy.”

He wondered exactly what she meant.

Serena went on as they cantered. “It ought be a useful place, useful to the Nurse compound, I mean, and what with you back and our feelings for one another unchanged, and-and—”

“Serena, are you proposing we . . . that you and I make a home of the house?”

“Think of the memories we’ll always have there, and besides, it needs a family.”

“Whoa . . . just slow down a moment.”

“Slow down what?”

He grabbed her reins and halted both horses. “Serena, I do love you, but I’m not likely to become a farmer or a father anytime soon.”

“I didn’t propose you become a farmer or a father—anytime soon!”

“If I were to accept the gift of a house on the Nurse property, then I’d be expected to work the land just as the Tarbells and the Cloyse men, and—”

“Well now, is that such a bad thing? I mean, you’re not going into the ministry, and you’re done chasing shadows down in the village, I should hope.”

“Chasing shadows?”

“Shadowing Mr. Parris then.”

“Serena, I have no intention of settling here in Salem, however—”

“However much I want it?” she asked, glaring at him. “As for me, I haven’t any intention of leaving home with the likes of you.”

“And why not come away from this cursed place with me?”

“It’s home, Jeremy. Has been all my life, and there’s mother and father to think of, and such a thing as family. But I suppose your never having had any real family, that family doesn’t mean anything to Jeremiah Wakely, now does it?”

“That’s hardly fair!”

“Your father brought it on himself, Jeremy; his own grief brought him down, not the village.”

Jeremy wasn’t prepared to hear this coming from her. “You really believe that?”

“I do.”

“And my mother?”

“Two things marked her more than her French blood, Jeremy.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“Illness marked her and her being an unrepentant Catholic; she would not disavow her Papist past. That’s what my mother told me.”

“What’re you saying? That my father put himself in the grave and pulled over the lid because he loved her?”

“Food was brought to the jail. Mr. Ingersoll, my mother, Reverend Deodat Lawson, and others tried to help him, but your father starved himself to death.”

“In debtors prison, left with a broken heart, and me a boy unable to affect a thing.”

“The food Mother took to him, Jeremy, it rotted beside him.”

“His fast was a protest, Serena!”

“To protest his wife’s treatment, I know.”

“He protested their withholding halowed ground for her burial.”

“That wasn’t your father’s entire protest.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“It was all to denounce Governor Andros, at a time when no one was speaking out against that tyrant.”

“Governor Andros?”

“Yes, for his being a liar and a thief, stealing from the church coiffures.”

“To lay down and die for a belief and for love at once . . . A protest beyond what the villagers did to him? I never knew.”

“Now you know, so perhaps the entire village isn’t to be painted with black tar.”

She reached across the divide between them and took his hand in hers.

Jeremy dropped her reins, returning control of her animal. “Still, Serena, though I love you, the idea of settling down on this land and becoming another farmer under your father’s hand, and in this village, it just isn’t appealing. I have larger plans.”

“I want to hear these larger plans then.”

Jeremy laid out his every movement from the night he met with Cotton Mather and Reverend Higginson until now, but this history only made Serena more adamant in her desire to see him out of such intrigue.

“Come away from that bed beneath Parris’ stairwell and stay at the house with us. Get to know father and mother again.”

“I’d like nothing better, dear one, but I have to finish what I’ve begun. It’s part of my larger plans—and how did you know I was sleeping beneath Parris’ stairs?”

“There is little goes on in the village that isn’t known by all, Jeremy.”

“Except that I am no minister.”

“Come away now, Jeremy, please before you are unmasked and thrown in the stocks as an imposter.”

“Parris hasn’t the power to affect an arrest on such charges! I have Mather’s backing in this affair.”

“Don’t underestimate what that man is capable of,” she warned.

“I’ve no doubt he is of a vile spirit, but, Serena, I have to finish what I’ve begun.”

She gave him a stern look of disapproval.

“I’ve told you how serious my work is.”

“Is it your plan to be Mather’s lackey for the rest of your life?”

“That’s not fair, Serena. When this is over, I’m promised a judgeship in the colonial province of my choosing, perhaps even Boston.”

“The scars of your past are still dictating your life, Jere.”

“That’s not—”

She snatched at her reins, and her horse reared on its hindquarters in response to her expert signals, and she shouted, “Find me then when you’re finished playing games, Jeremy! When you are once again your own man!”

“A man fulfills the contract he signs!” he shouted after her.

But Serena had galloped off toward home, leaving Jeremy alone with the final weak, winking stars before twilight. He feared losing Serena, feared their love could disappear like the night sky if it were not nurtured with care. He’d felt that way even as they were locked in embrace.

God, he thought, Mather must make good on his promises when all is said and done. He must. He must, and I will.

Then a looming fear filled Jeremiah. Suppose he lost his quiet war against Parris? Suppose he lost everything. Mather’s trust, his appointment, and most of all his fair-haired Serena? Losing her a second time, he’d never again have this gift in hand, and he knew it.

Chapter Sixteen

Salem Village, the night of the storm

Reverend Samuel Parris carefully outlined his argument. Unfolding it point by point to the mesmerized senses of one Thomas Putnam who listened in rapt attention. Putnam, although related to Parris, had great admiration for the other man’s obvious learning and worldliness, and Thomas felt proud that Parris had singled him out for this talk of impending doom about to befall their parish. Thomas straightened his stiff, splintered leg toward Parris’s hearth fire, and he accepted yet another cup of the Canary wine the minister plied him with. “Go on, Samuel, go on,” he muttered.

“There is a coven, Thomas, a witch coven operating under our noses.”

“You don’t say?”

“An entire nest of devil-worshipping monsters in our midst.”

“Who? Who are they?”

“I can’t supply you with all their names.”

“No names?”

“I know two for certain.”

“Aha! and they are?”

“Goode and—”

“No surprise there.”

“And my Indian woman, Tituba.”

“A vanguard for worse yet?” Thomas poked.

“Vanguard, yes.”

“These Satanists’re all about us, you say?” Putnam searched every corner of the dark house that’d been so difficult on every minister who’d ever inhabited the parish home. “I see the wisdom of your point.”

Parris paced. “They dare attack me, Thomas, through Betty!”

“My God, no!”

“And you! Are you blind?”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“Blind to the suffering of your little Anne, and the torments that your wife endures?”

“Of course, not! I see the suffering. Damn it, man, I hear it nightly.”

“But have you given thought to the root cause?”

“Root cause?”

“Think on it, Thom!”

“Do you mean to say . . . ”

“Yes! Nine Putnam children—your progeny—stricken down before they might take hold of life! What else but witchcraft? Murder of the innocent by chicanery.”

“My children . . . murdered by witches?”

“How else do you lose nine innocents, and Little Anne bravely holding on?”

“M-My wife and one living child b-b-bewitched?”

“Bedeviled, your wife and daughter are constantly being attacked in the same manner as my own Betty by-by those who’ve taken your children.”

“No witch can think she can work her magic on you, cousin,” Thomas mused, snatching at his beard. “Yet Goode has made threats against Betty. I heard it.”