“Out the house? Now?”

“Hold on, sir,” started Jeremy. “I don’t wish to displace anyone.”

“She’s a Barbados black, Mr. Ahhh . . . Wakely, or are you blind and deaf?”

“Even so—”

“My servant. I’ve had her for years.”

“Still, I’m the newcomer here and—”

“Are you questioning my judgment already, young man?”

Samuel Parris had eyes as black as grapes, but no seeds showed in them, not even so much as a twinkle in the lantern light; light which otherwise filled the small rooms here, creating giants of their shadows along with the pinching odor of whale oil.

Tituba did not question her master. After a furtive glance at Jeremiah, and a look of anger flaring up behind the minister’s back, she trundled out, clutching a single woolen blanket and a straw-tick pillow. Parris watched her go down the steps into the drifting snow and icy rain.

“There, Mr. Wakefield, now you have a place below the stairwell.”

Jeremy thought to correct him but decided not now. Instead, he stared at the space below the stairs vacated for him. It looked large enough for a big dog. “Still, I need to stable my horse before retiring, sir.”

“Yes, yes, of course, but steer clear of the servant. She has a dislike for strangers, us ahhh . . . white men in who wear the cloth in particular.”

“Is she not civilized? Christian?”

“Trust me, I’ve done my level best to make her so, however, you can never be sure of the pagan mind. Most inscrutable.”

“I know nothing is harder than to convert a heathen, sir.”

“Clings to her Barbados superstitions.”

“I see. I’ll do then as you suggest.”

“I’ll have the door unlatched for your return. Again, avoid the woman.”

“As you wish.”

“She is a . . . mischief-maker, Mr. Wakely. You are forewarned. Make no small talk with Tituba.”

“As you wish, sir, and as I am fatigued to the bone, all I want is a bed.” Jeremy laughed and stepped back outside and onto the porch knowing that his mandate from Mather dictated that he indeed talk to Tituba. He wondered what, if anything, Tituba knew, overheard, or saw of the comings and goings in the parsonage home, what merchants or ships’ captains she might speak of. Hearing Parris behind him at the door, he repeated the name as it sounded to him, “Ti’shu-ba, yes, to be sure, I’ll not speak with the black woman.”

Chapter Four

The entire time Jeremy spent in the stable unbridling his mare, he felt the cold and icy stare of Tituba Indian square on his neck. She may’ve created a bed of hay, but at least one eye studied him from every angle. He hadn’t a clue what was going through her mind, but he imagined it a complete tale, one he’d like to hear.

After all, this soft-spoken, cat-padding little woman had been around Samuel Parris for more years than most of his flock. She’d come with him and his wife and child from their last known residence, Barbados, where general knowledge had him trading in his sea legs to become a trader, a businessman.

Does Tituba hold the key? She appeared to both fear and hate her master. Not the best of relations.

Jeremy had an enormous task facing him. What had drawn this former merchant of Barbados to Salem? Not the mere promise of the parsonage and its damnably small apple orchard and rickety out buildings? There had to be more.

Jeremy thought of how Parris had ordered the black woman out of her bed as if she were a detested cur. And that look the servant had shot the minister when he turned his back on her—pure, unadulterated hatred and venom.

How that venom came to be, wondered Jeremy.

A great deal could be learned—and thus reported—about a man just in the manner of how he handled those in his care, and those he called his servants, and those he called his congregation.

Jeremy had uncinched and unbridled the horse, and he now placed the saddle on a rail. He used his own bedroll to place across Dancer’s back.

“May I have it?” asked Tituba in a surprisingly resonant, deep voice that filled the small outbuilding.

“May you . . . have what?”

She pointed, her nail like a talon. “Your saddle, Massa . . . ”

“My saddle?”

“For my head rest with pillow.” She lifted her pillow.

“You miss Barbados?” he asked as he placed the saddle where she’d created a bed of hay.

“I do . . . my family all there. My baby, too.”

“You left your baby in Barbados?” Jeremy was incredulous, and he heard Parris’ warning again at the back of his head. “Don’t talk to the woman.” All the more reason to speak to her.

“Dead baby . . . dead an’-an’ buried.”

“I . . . I’m terribly sorry. I can imagine no worse torture on earth than to lose a child.”

“There can be worse.”

“Really?” Jeremiah squinted at her. “Such as?”

Her eyes met his squint. “Not never holding your child, ever.”

“I . . . I don’t understand.”

“N-Nor seeing it.”

“You never saw the child?”

“Not never no.”

Jeremy tried to decipher this; he had a sense that her cryptic words were fraught with meaning. He was about to inquire when Tituba gasped, and her snake eyes fixed him. “Tell me, are you . . . are you de Black Man who comes in darkness?”

“Black Man?”

“De one we keep hearin’ ‘bout in Massa’s sermons.”

“Ah, yes, I mean no! I mean, I see now…understand your confusion, that is.”

“De one who come invisible outta de forest.”

“No, no, Tituba, I am quite human and no spirit or demon or familiar of Satan.”

“De one who makes you sin, and den makes you put your mark in de book—his black book.”

“No, I assure you—”

“A-And once your mark is there, he has your soul, ’less you confess it to God.”

She’s certainly learned the dark side of the Puritan and Christian catechism. “Trapped for all time,” he said, nodding. “I know the belief.”

“For all eternity. So says Massa.”

“Your Master speaks of Satan when he says the Black Man with the Black Book, I know, but I have no book, and I am not black.”

“Yes, de Devil comes lookin’ like a white minister in black cloak.”

Satan may take a pleasing form. Jeremy realized he was dressed entirely in black, from head to toe. “You can be sure, Tituba, I am not Satan or his emissary.”

“Fool!” shouted Parris, standing now at the door, having eavesdropped on them. “I told you not to pay any heed to the heathen. She can’t be redeemed. I’ve done everything. She’s incorrigible. Learns nothing. Nods and nods and says yes a thousand times but understands nothing of Christ or his mercy.”

“I know Christ,” countered Tituba, spitting. “He don’t help me! He take my baby boy!”

Parris ignored this as if not hearing, or as if hearing it too often. “Wakely, I had hoped you’d demonstrate more sense than to get sucked into a conversation about Heaven and Hell with a slave wench.”

“I am not witch!” Tituba came at him. “I am voodoo woman!”

Parris advanced like a jackal and slapped her hard across the face, shouting, “Wench, I said! Not witch!”

Jeremy reacted instinctively, stilling Parris’ hand from inflicting a second blow. He wanted to strike the man and send him to his knees, but such an act would destroy any chance of success here. Instead, he shouted, “It was entirely my fault, Mr. Parris! I should’ve heeded you.”

Parris’ dark eyes bore into Jeremy’s steely gray pools, searching for any sign of deception. With his jaw quivering, and his eyes traveling now to Tituba, he said, “I quite understand, Mr. Wakefield.” There seemed more unsaid between these two than spoken here tonight. Jeremy wanted to hear the minister apologize to the black woman, but he knew that was unlikely.

Instead, Parris spoke now as if nothing had happened. “Now go to sleep, woman, and you, Mr. Wakefield.”

“Wakely, Mr. Parris.”

“Wakely then…come away. Let us all find sleep, shall we, Mr. Wakely.”

Jeremy glanced back at Tituba who wiped blood from her lip onto her nightshirt. He silently looked back at her and thought he saw a crooked smile. Was Tituba secretly pleased at having upset her master? But realizing that Jeremy was looking, her smile instantly vanished.

# # # # #

Jeremy literally followed in Parris’ snow and mud-sucking footsteps as they trudged through the thickening slush back to the parsonage door. Parris missed the excitement at two windows overhead, but Jeremy saw in one an elderly blonde-headed woman, no doubt Mrs. Parris, and at the other second story window two small faces—one a small caricature of Mrs. Parris, the daughter most likely, the other a scarecrow-faced Mercy Lewis, Jeremy assumed. What few notes he had on Parris’ household told him that Mercy Lewis, an orphaned niece, had been taken into the Parris home. His notes had said nothing about the black servant, Tituba. She’d come as a surprise.

Apparently, Jeremy’s arrival, and the subsequent shouting, had awakened the remaining family members. Parris glanced back at Jeremy, preparing to say something, when he noticed where his apprentice’s eyes were focused. Parris stopped and stared at the upstairs bedroom windows. Immediately, the wife, the daughter, and the orphan scampered from Parris’ sight like mice found in the cupboard.

Is everyone terrified of this man, wondered Jeremy. Be damned if I’m afraid of this petty tyrant.

Tituba had revealed a surprising secret, a stillborn child in Barbados . . . and mother denied a moment with her child. This in itself set Jeremiah’s imagination aflame. What more was there to the story?