“Now Ingersoll’s isn’t a large enough playground for them, they must do their antics at the meetinghouse!” he angrily relayed to Rebecca.

All the same, a sense of impending doom had settled in over the Nurse home, and Rebecca and Francis had begun to worry and to miss Serena. Other family members had begun to shun them for fear of being named in an indictment. The numbers coming to Rebecca for bible readings in her room had been dwindling, and now she knew the reason why.

“No man knows his time,” Francis was philosophizing and smoking his pipe at the same time where they rocked on the front porch, listening to birds and squirrels that chased about the trees. April had brought warmth and a pleasant breeze tonight.

“Nor any woman,” Rebecca had added to the rhythm of her slowly rocking back and forth. “As with Israel.”

Francis nodded knowingly. The couple knew every biblical story forward and backward.

Rebecca added, “I’m recalling one of Reverend Higginson’s favorite verses.”

“What is that, dear?” He patted her hand.

The stars lit a clear sky overhead. Insects set up a chorus all round them.

“The stork in the heavens.”

“Ah-yes.”

“The stork knows her appointed time; the turtle and the crane and the swallow,” she continued, rocking lightly. “They all know the time of their coming.”

“I think there is more?” he asked, setting his pipe aside, working to recall the words. “Oh, yes, ‘but my people know not the judgment of the Lord’.”

She snorted. “I think Reverend Parris knows not the judgment of the Lord, but he will one day. One day, we all will.”

“Aye to that indeed.” Francis stood and straightened the shawl about her shoulders and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

“I confess one worldly vanity I cannot escape, Goodman Nurse.”

“And what might that be, Goodwife?”

She hesitated a moment, “Aside from my affection for you, old man, I feel deeply for my children and grandchildren, and I have too much loved Sabbath Days.”

“Not the worst of worldly vanities,” he said and chuckled. He had spent time aboard ships at sea before settling down as a young man, and he had seen true cruelty and true vanity side by side.

“I mean that I care so much for the word, and I wish we’d never left Salem Town sometimes; that we had made our lives there—for the reason I would have seen more of Mr. Higginson’s preaching and less of Parris.”

“Tsk-tskk-tskkk, such a horrible sinner you are!” he joked. “A small vanity, Mother,” he repeated.

“Spring. I truly did not expect to see another spring.”

He put his arm about her from behind, shaking her a bit. “Those nightmares you’d had, eh?”

“Wasting away all winter in my bedchamber, I thought my heart would break, and how you and Serena waited on me! As if a child, urgh! I am no child.”

“You were under an affliction but praise God, now you’re cured.”

“By what magic, I know not, save prayer.”

“And time, the healing of night and day.”

“Now I’m tired of letting my ailments dictate. Pain or no, I choose to live. Besides . . . ”

“Besides?” He squeezed her arms.

“I hold conversation with God, Francis, in my heart.”

“I am quite aware of that!”

She shushed him, wishing not to be interrupted.

He came around and faced her.

“I hear no booming voice in my ear or head, Francis . . . nor am I called by name by Him, but I am moved by Him. Do you understand?”

“Of course, I do.”

“Of course? Then will you accept my word when I confide this.”

“What? What is it?”

“I am convinced that I was spared from dying in that little room upstairs for . . . for some coming ordeal?”

“Coming ordeal? You mean this business of an indictment against you and your sisters as witches? Hold on!” He paced the porch now, hands going through what little hair he had left. “You can’t think God wishes this on you, that your neighbors shun you, excommunicate you, cheer and clap at the idea of you in chains and treated like-like . . . well, no better than Sarah Goode?”

She took a long, deep breath. “All I know for certain, Francis, is that I’m spared the one ignoble death for perhaps—”

“Ignoble?”

“There is nothing noble in dying broken-spirited. I once believed there were things in my life . . . things I valued beyond all measure, which, no matter what, could never be taken from me. But I was wrong; vain in the extreme. Francis, there is nothing in this life that cannot be taken from us.”

“To think thus is melancholia, dear. That is all.”

“If God wishes to humble us,” she paused in a long sigh, “then it is by taking the very gifts he’s bestowed.”

“Our land, our home?”

“Francis, no! There are many more precious things than this house. Francis, our best traits He can rob us of—as he robbed Job—to turn us against ourselves. We already see it with our loved ones not coming today.”

“That’s not God’s doing but Parris’.”

“Even Parris is His instrument, as are we, Francis, and still you don’t understand.”

“Understand what?”

She worked to stand and he helped her to her feet. When fully erect, she snatched his now unlit pipe from his mouth and held it to his eyes. “Imagine this is your integrity, Francis, and not a piece of clay!”

“All right.”

“Now imagine me God.”

He chuckled at this.

She dropped his favorite pipe and stomped it, crushing it into a rock-strewn dust there on the porch. “Now your God has crushed your integrity. Suppose He next destroys your faith—all your faith in Him, Francis? What then?”

Francis was still staring at his shattered pipe when she added, “Even our faith in Him, Francis, He will test it—and He will do all in his power to tear it from us.”

“Parris?”

“No, God. God will try to take it from us. He alone controls all.”

Francis stared into her eyes, his features a mask of confusion. “What’re you saying, Rebecca?”

“I am saying that I’ve been returned to my faith.”

“But you never lost it.”

“But I did.”

“I never saw it.”

“During my illness.”

“Sure you cursed for your torments, but—”

“I denied Him; denied it all close to the end when I felt He had brought such suffering and loss on me. Do you recall I didn’t know who you were for a time, didn’t recognize Serena, Ben, no one?”

“I know but you are well now.”

“”It was returned to me, Francis. All given back, but it comes now at a price.”

Francis looked even more confused than before.

She clenched his hands in hers. “When they come for me, I will prove my faith and love of Him beyond all things. I will never deny My Father. I love Him . . . even beyond you, Francis, and you must allow it. You must not fight me on this.”

“You are speaking of a divine ordeal, but these fools, liars and thieves--they will come for you with shackles! There is no divinity in this blasphemy of theirs.”

“The divinity is within me, Francis. It’s a test, don’t you see?—the greatest test of my life, and I shall prevail.”

Francis went to his knees before her, unable to answer. Taking her in his arms, the two of them rocking under their combined weight.

“And I will use Him right this time, Francis. I-I have the strength within.”

“That is not in question, my love.”

She lifted his face to hers. “Old man, it’s fated—as surely as Christ sacrificed for us ”

Francis cleared his throat, his voice quaking. “Are you saying you’re somehow chosen? As-as some sort of martyr to this madness in the village?”

“Call it what you will, but it will come to our door.”

“No.”

“We both know it’s true.”

He could not hold back the tears that came freely to him now. She comforted him and said, “My time is approaching, and you must prepare yourself and hold firm to your faith in both Him and in me. Now hold me tighter.”

He was mute before her. He shook with the pain of imagining what might happen, but as in all things, he did what she asked, tightening his hold.

She held him firm for several minutes.

“Stubbornness has always been your way, woman.”

“And how has it served us? My father desperately tried to keep us apart, remember?”

“Stubborn,” he repeated and found a curt laugh.

“Especially in matters of faith and love,” she agreed. “I was stubborn until father finally accepted the idea of us—and you so fresh from the sea, you smelled of brine.”

He pulled back and looked her in the eye. “It must’ve been distressing for the old man—marrying you off to a sailor!”

They laughed together.

Then he solemnly said, “I’m sorry that you faced a loss of faith up in that room alone.”

“It’s a thing a person does alone, but in my heart now, I know I’m never alone. Not completely. At least, that is to say, never again.”

“I love you beyond all reason.” The rocking chair creaked with his weight over her.

“And I you, Francis, but promise me one thing now.”

“Aye and that being?”

“You will not lose the land in any move to bribe them. I will not have myself saved from this madness only to see our children and our grandchildren turned off our farm. No matter what they promise or barter with, including my life.”

“I…I don’t know that I can make that promise. You just said yourself that no house, no property is so important as a man’s integrity.”

“This is true for us, Francis—you and me! And you must do all within reason, within the law, but do not stoop to their level, and do not barter away our children’s futures for what little time I have left in this place, please!”