“That’s right. Makes sense.”

“Aha, then it appears your Judge Hathorne has now tried and condemned more witches in New England than any man living or dead, making him cunning, correct? And if a man be cunning . . . eh?” asked Wardwell, pulling at the bars again. “And from all I hear, he’s not found a one of us arrested wrongly . . . not one innocent, despite the lies to the contrary.”

“He is a good man and judge!” shouted Putnam.

“I have heard that Giles Corey is dead,” said Wardwell, his voice calm now.

“Dead? No, arrested . . . but not dead.”

“Crushed to death from punishment, when they tired of his not pleading. He would not plead before the court, neither innocent nor guilty. He stood mute.”

“I know of all that, but he’s not been killed.”

Herrick shouted back from the point position he’d taken, “Wardwell is correct, Mr. Putnam, Corey died of his stupidity. I am told he shouted for his jailers to load on more stones until the weight of it, with his jailers jumping onto the door laid atop him crushed the life from him.”

“Dead of torture,” added Wardwell. “An odd fellow. Friend of yours, Thomas?”

Herrick added, “Died lying prone between two unhinged doors, an interrogation technique approved by the court.”

“Doors?”

“One laid beneath him, the other overtop him.”

“Giles . . . the big oaf? Dead?” Putnam had not believed Corey any sort of witch man. “Sounds as if the fool brought it on himself.”

“Yes but not so dumb, really. He did it to protect his family’s holdings,” explained Wardwell over the noise of the ox cart over the rutted road. “They wanted his mill and land on the river, like they want my shop in Andover and the lands I hold.” He laughed again. “I should be so dumb as Giles. The court’s already seized my holdings on account of my pleading innocent.”

“Corey would not plead one way or t’other,” explained Herrick.

“So they crushed his throat from his head!” shouted Wardwell.

“Shut up, Wardwell!” Herrick rode back. “You want my boot again?”

Wardwell ignored this. “Now if they want Giles’ holdings, they’ll have to start over with his children, arrest them. The fools arrested his wife, but she has no share in his holdings, but ’twas through her torments they got her calling him out a wizard.” Again Wardwell’s laugh filled the darkening woods like a call to Satan. “Looks a bit o’ murder for money, now don’t it?”

“Stop that kind of talk right now, blacksmith!” Putnam lashed out at the bars with a horsewhip. Suddenly, Putnam’s horse missed a step and sent herself and Putnam off the road and into a gulley, Putnam taking a nasty fall, and another powerful gust of wind swept over the scene.

Captain Putnam’s uniform was torn and the man was bleeding as he climbed up out of the ditch long after his horse had recovered the road.

“Didja see that, Herrick? Eh?” called out Putnam.

“Aye, I saw it.”

“Witchcraft e’en from behind bars, enchanting my mare that way! Herrick, did you see it? Did you? Wizard put a hex on my horse, he did!”

Chapter Thirteen

Soon the ‘afflicted’ child celebrities’ began pointing their deadly, accusing fingers at anyone who had ever said an unkind word to them or theirs, or anyone who had used them badly in any manner. The targets being arrested daily now, included shop owners, innkeepers, mill and lumber workers, and one rumor had it that Deacon Nathaniel Ingersoll angered one of the children and was called out at a cunning wizard himself, but somehow this allegation was quashed by officials, and it went no further.

It remained that certain families and folks who owned choice holdings along the Ipswich Road were most in danger of facing a warrant sworn out against them, and in all subsequent arrests, the ‘geography’ of witch accusations began to take on a well-defined appearance. These accusations remained in Jeremy’s eyes an obvious wrong in and of itself, an indicator that greed tainted this holy war and witch hunt. And that it had been driven by the elections. Elections that had overwhelmingly supported the witch hunters, the incumbents.

“It’s the politics of witchcraft that fuels this ugly fire,” he told Serena where he lay in bed beside her, the darkness outside peeking through the drapes in the room that Ben had vacated for them.

She stroked his cheek where they lay under Francis’ roof. “It’s become obvious that the have-nots are pointing at the haves.”

“Yes, afraid so. Seeking answers to the so-called terrible affliction.”

“I’ve seen the terrible affliction put upon the village’s precious, innocent children, and it is an awful sight.”

“If, and I emphasize if anyone is truly possessed of a demon and in need of exorcism, it is—or hopefully was—little Betty Parris. I saw that awful woman, Goode, with a doll one night soon after I arrived, but at the time I had no idea the significance—not until she accosted him in the street that day at the commons. I should have known then what Goode was up to, and had I sworn out a warrant for her arrest at the time—had her thrown in jail for a witch, it would have ingratiated me with Parris, speeding up my work down there, and it may well have ended any further talk of witchcraft and this hunting the countryside for whole covenants might not have gotten underway! I am the fool in all of this.”

“None of this is your fault, Jeremy! Don’t believe what Mather told you, and stop second-guessing yourself. How could you know at the time that—”

“But again I saw Goode with the doll—a second time, at Samuel’s cabin the night she interrupted us, remember? She’d been scorching the likeness at the hearth before she ran screeching out of the place with it. Perhaps if I’d taken action then—gone to Williard and had her arrested . . .”

“Goode has always been a witch; was raised one, and now her daughter, Dorcas is jailed for one as well—a simpleton. None of this madness is on your head! I won’t hear you say so!”

“I did all I could for Betty and her mother, Serena,” Jeremy mused now, “all the while, Parris was busy feeding his only remaining bed-friends.”

“And who might that be?” Serena was momentarily scandalized.

“Hatred, Suspicion, and Greed. Do you know he continues to chronicle his daughter’s condition—as if it remains a fact she is in Salem and still under her affliction.”

“Keeping a chronicle?”

“Believes one day his notes will be useful. Speaks of writing a treatise on the Invisible World; talks of co-authorship with Reverend Cotton Mather.”

They lay in the dark, the moon peeking in at the window, shards of pale gray light filtering through. “I think you were foolish, Jeremy, trusting in any of them save Nehemia Higginson.”

Jeremy had told her every detail now of how Increase Mather had conferred with Higginson and his son with the plan to get Jeremy into a position to spy on Samuel Parris.

“Serena, I have to again ask you to come away with me.”

“Jeremy, you know that I—”

“Serena, we must leave this cursed place.”

She leapt from bed and turned on him. “I’ll not leave Father and Mother in these circumstances, no. I cannot.”

He got up and crossed the room to where he’d hung his coat. “We have land, a place to go to, and I have completed my work here, and have been offered a land grant in a place where I can hang out a shingle as a barrister and one day become a magistrate.”

She thumped her foot at the window where she looked out on the moon. He joined her and held out the signed deed. She accepted the folded paper with the broken seal and quickly glanced at it and tossed onto the bureau top. “What? Now you’ve gained your payment? Now you wish to run for Connecticut?”

“This is earned over ten years of service! This is no payoff.”

“Coming at this time, it smells the same, and-and if you don’t find it odious, then you’ve closed your senses for the sake of ambition like-like some others ’round here.”

“My ambition is to keep you safe, my love—the same ambition as your mother and—”

“I am not running from this place so long as my mother is condemned a witch! We must continue to fight this, and if it comes to it, we use force, just as Ben and John Tarbell’ve decided.”

A terrible rapping at the door startled them both. Jeremy’s first thought was that the fanatics from the village had come for Serena. The authorities had only to get one of the arrested to state a name and a person would be the subject of a warrant the following day.

“It’s me, Ben! I’ve news for you, Jeremy, Serena!”

Jeremy asked they be given a moment to dress, and when she opened the door; Ben rushed in, his face red, hair wild. “You’re a fool, Jeremy!”

“What’s this about?”

“You thought all along you were sending correspondence back to Boston.”

“I did, sir.”

“To influence the great Mather, or whomever he left in charge.”

“The man opening my mail, yes! What of it?”

“And who might that’ve been exactly? The son? The lesser man, Reverend Cotton Mather?”

“I know that my letters, notes, and observations have had no effect on the younger Mather. Your news is old news to me, Ben, but I’d like very much to know how you came by it.”

“How I came by it? Ingersoll confessed to me.”

“Ingersoll?”

“You did entrust him with your mail, correct?”

“He’s the postmaster, so yes!”

“He’s also in Parris’ pocket and has been for years.”

“Are you saying,” began Serena, “that Jeremy’s sealed letters never arrived in Boston? That Mather had no inkling of Jeremy’s opinions until a few days ago?”