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 anti-ritual that mocked the rituals of their church, and the bible he held and marked names in was the antithesis of the Holy Bible.

“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 without a Charter. Withheld from us by England since the overthrow of Andros,” continued Parris. “In effect, without rule. We are without rule ourselves! Here where we Puritans have carved out ground for a new Jerusalem, a new and decent place on the face of this scarred old world? A world filled with money-changers and sinners! Why this time and place indeed!”

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 all into the eye of your neighbor and determine if he be friend or foe!” Parris continued. “Which of you live a lie among us? Which of you have broken covenant with your faith, with me, and with God?”

Parris had them in silence once again.

The smallest child and babe had frozen. “No amount of deeds or acts can change the course of God’s greater design. We all know this! Those Chosen among us, they’re not selected tomorrow . . . ” He paused to allow this to sink in . . .“nor yesterday, but at the beginning of time, my brethren!”

Halleluiahs punctuated the single voice that now filled the meetinghouse from entry to pulpit, spilling out the windows and doors.

“We all know the faith!” continued Parris, roaming the large space. “Everyone here knows that he or she, whether elder, deacon, husband, Goodwife, child, or maidservant, that one’s fate is sealed. Sealed not by man or dictum or law but by God. Not even the Harbor Town Council can change that.”

This brought about a mix of laughter and groaning agreements among those remaining.

“But we must ever remind ourselves of these facts,” Parris solemnly reminded them, moving up and down the rows, meeting people in the crowd eye-to-eye. “Outward prosperity, outward show whether the richest merchants in our midst with the greatest number of livestock, and yes, children and grandchildren and friends and relatives—these are no indicators of God’s grace! We all know this from birth, correct?”

The elders erupted with a chorus of amens and corrects, punctuated by the sounds of several young girls in the meetinghouse shouting, “True, too true!” Among these was little Anne Putnam and Mercy Lewis.

“What then is an indication that God shines upon us?” asked Mrs. Putnam, surprising everyone. Women seldom voiced a word in meeting, and in a single day, she’d spoken up twice, emboldened by Parris’ words.

As if emboldened by her mother’s question, Anne Junior began barking in the manner of a dog, growling and going onto all fours, crawling down the aisle, where she went into a sudden, uncontrollable fit—limbs suddenly freezing up, turning to wood.

“My God!” cried out Mrs. Putnam, going to her child and falling over her, covering her with her body. “Harm me, take me, not my child!” she pleaded as if to some invisible person. “It’s Mrs. Bailey,” she called out to others. “James Bailey’s poor wife.”

“Why does she attack your, Anne?”

“She’s angry!” cried the child, Anne. “Come back from the grave, angry that none knew she was murdered, too, ’long with her children!”

The crowd shuddered at these words.

Little Anne continued. “Poisoned by her maidservant and husband, ’long with the children.”

“But why? Why?”

“To run off together—her and Bailey! They were lovers, sinners!”

Ingersoll worked hard to recall aloud, “Who was this maidservant? Try as I might, I can’t picture her, nor recall a name.”

“We’ll scour the colonies to find anyone guilty, so as to return the guilty to justice,” Parris assured his frightened congregation, most now on their feet, prepared to bolt yet holding, curious, hoping to catch a glimpse of the spirit, the deceased Mrs. Bailey that little Anne pointed to in the ether over their heads.

Suddenly Mercy Lewis fell to the floor kicking and screaming that some ugly hag was stabbing her with needles, trying to jam one into her brain and another into her heart. She scuttled across the dirt floor like a crab, and she then grabbed hold of Anne, the two hugging one another now in a mimic of how they held one another in private.

At this, the entire congregation became agitated, some rushing for the exit, some knocking others out of the way for a better look at the suffering children. The screams, shouts, and general pandemonium had turned the once peaceful meetinghouse into a snake pit.

Another Nurse man, Joseph, shouted over the din but no one could hear his words: “What uses would you have us make of this sermon, Mr. Parris?”

No one heard but Anne Putnam who looked up at Joseph Nurse with two chilling speckled eyes of coal and hatred. A stark look of loathing that was not lost on young Joseph Nurse, who, among all the Nurse clan, had heard of the false allegations going around about Mother Nurse.

Chapter Three

Two nights later at the Home of Francis and Rebecca Nurse

Francis had come home from Sabbath meeting on the 16th of April and had relayed all that Parris had said, ending with how he and all the other Nurse men, save Joseph, had stormed from the place in sheer disgust. Only later had the others learned from Joseph how the children had fallen and groveled before the remaining congregation, declaring themselves under attack from invisible forces—witches whirling about like dirt devils invisible to the eye, save those eyes of the children who Parris had immediately christened: the Seer Children.