“What’re you doing, Mother?” Serena was at the barred door, nose to nose with Rebecca. “Give me those keys.”

“It’s over, and you’ve done your kindness for others. Now go!” Rebecca lifted the keys to their eyes, but she held them away from anyone’s grasp. “I’m staying put.”

“But they’ll hang you certain!” Ben rattled the bars. “In eight days, Mother!”

“A fate delivered to my doorstep by God, Ben, Serena—please accept His will.”

“God would not have you die so, Mother.” Serena’s tears threatened to blind her. “Suppose you’re wrong, Mother?” asked Ben. “Suppose you’re wrong?”

“I tell you it is true.”

“What? What is true?” Serena banged the unforgiving bars.

“In my useless old age—my last days—He has put me to a final test of faith as sure as Abraham and Job. But it is not for you, Serena, nor my sons, nor Jeremiah to suffer this. Go now! You endanger yourselves terribly!”

“And Father? What of Father?” Serena leaned in against the locked, impenetrable door.

Jeremiah put his arms about Serena, her heaving sobs absorbed into his palms. “Rebecca refuses to come away with us.”

“No, Mother, I don’t care what God’s whispered in your ear! You must give yourself up to us, now!”

“To let us decide for me?”

Serena turned to Jeremy, beating his chest with her fists! “Jeremy, she’s out of her mind! Do something!”

Jeremy had watched the woman he loved go back and forth over this issue of whether her mother had a right to her belief and faith and stand, or that Ben was right—that Rebecca was like a child and unable to make sound decisions any longer. The strain had taken an enormous toll on everyone who loved Rebecca but Serena and Ben in particular. The two of them were her babies over whom Rebecca had always doted and had never before said no to.

“She’s clear of mind, Serena,” Jeremy firmly said now, “and it’s a path she clearly wants to take, and she holds the key.”

Serena went to Tarbell. “Why didn’t you grab her up over your shoulder, John? Rather than just talk about it? If you had, she’d be with us now! And we’d be home and boarding for Connecticut.”

“I-I-I’m sorry, Serena.” Tarbell looked like a bear that’d been shot.

“No, John! Sorry’s not enough!” Serena stood a head shorter than the big man. She then turned on Jeremy again. “And you? Why couldn’t you’ve grabbed her before she closed that door?”

“Stop it, daughter! Go from here, all of you. Please, Serena.”

Ben pushed Serena so hard she fell. Jeremy stood toe-to-toe with Ben and Tarbell, who’d together lifted a log cut into a bench. They rammed the thick, metal-belted door once, twice, three times without a dent.

“Hold on, you men.” Jeremy had helped Serena back to her feet. “Mother Nurse’s wishes must be respected, Ben. It’s the last thing your Father told us! That if she refuses to come of her own volition—”

“I won’t let her commit suicide.” Ben stood, eyes ablaze, hands wrapped about the bench.

“Let me go, Ben, John!” Mother Nurse began pounding the other side of the solid door.

“It’s no good, Ben,” said Jeremy. “Your mother’s mind is set on one course alone, and the damnable noise you’re making, and if Fiske comes around, we’re all marked men!”

“You shut up, Wakely! You don’t know a damn thing! Been wrong every sep of the way.”

“Listen to him, Ben!” Rebecca reached through the bars on the door as if trying to touch her youngest son. “This is my fight, Ben! Now you all must leave me to it! You as well, Serena, Jeremy, John! Get yourselves free of this place, all of you!”

They heard men on horses coming toward the jail. It appeared from this distance, to Jeremy, that more prisoners were being escorted, arriving from Boston some seventeen miles away.

“Tell everyone in the family that I am on solid ground, of sound mind, and answering God’s will,” Rebecca continued. “Now, go!”

Ben kissed his mother’s outstretched hand, holding on. She’d dropped the keys in the darkness behind her, and using her other hand, she hit Ben for his trouble. “Go! Now! Remember I love you all.”

“You’re asking us to leave you to certain death.” Ben stood frozen, unable to leave her.

“True Ben, but a death meted out for me by God. It is His will, and His will be done.”

“Damn the God that asks this of you!” Ben shook his mother’s outstretched limbs.

She slapped Ben even harder across the face. “Do not mock my God, Ben.”

Ben cowered. “I’m sorry, Mother, it’s just so hard to-to walk away and leave you here in this hole.”

“Just do it. Be a man for me, son. All of you, go before you’re found out! My worst nightmare is that they’ll have cause to arrest my children. Go now, all of you!”

The men on horseback, a jail cart pulling behind them, were coming in sight of the jail. “We mustn’t be recognized,” Jeremy cautioned the others, pulling Serena off.

Tarbell and the others followed. Ben finally rushed to catch up.

“This way!” Jeremy pointed. “Safest retreat! Follow my lead.” He’d taken Serena by the hand, guiding her off into the night.

Serena looked back at her mother, a sense of guilt and confusion threatening to overwhelm her. “Don’t look back, Serena.” Jeremy tugged her onward thinking of the biblical story of Lot and his wife.

They were followed by Ben and Tarbell, and soon searching again for Joseph who’d been elected to stay with the horse and wagon to keep close watch there and to keep the animal calm. They had emptied out the jail, but they’d failed in their objective—to free Mother Nurse.

No one made another sound save their footfalls as they made their way back to the hidden wagon and Joseph.

By now the men who’d arrived with the new prisoners were reviving Weed Gatter, and his deputy, Fiske, and Gatter could be heard moaning and cursing and assessing the damage and losses at the jail. The words ‘bloody hell’ wafted up to their ears, and Jeremy thought he heard Fiske cursing something about being set upon by a covenant of powerful witches.

When they relocated Joseph, and he saw that they’d returned without his mother, he went a little crazy until Tarbell and Ben sat on him and calmed him to a chorus of his shouting, “I knew I should’ve gone!”

Jeremy shushed them as men were beating the bushes now in search of the escapees, and they were getting near.

The Nurse clan and Jeremy climbed onto the wagon and quietly, sadly the group made its way back toward Francis’s home. “How’re we going to tell the old man?” Ben wanted to know.

Serena didn’t miss a beat. “We tell him the truth.”

“What, that you botched the whole of it?” asked Joseph.

“Look here, Joseph!” shouted Serena. “You weren’t there, so ya dunno what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, you’re off the hook,” added Ben. “Ya know nothing of it!”

“Joseph,” began Jeremy, his heart filled with sympathy for them all. “Somehow your mother sees this ordeal as giving meaning to her death.” This made the others look at Jeremy. He shrugged and gave them a look that loudly said—well it’s true. “Mother Nurse knows she’s dying—has since the beginning of this sordid affair.”

“What’re you saying. Wakely?” asked Tarbell as the wagon rolled on, striking a rock but not slowing.

“I’m saying, she thought she might die last winter. She believes—”

“That God saved her for this trial before sending the Reaper.” Serena squeezed Jeremy’s arm where they sat in the rear of the wagon. “I suppose in some way that . . . she has no choice.”

The wagon moved on. Not long after, they heard horses coming in their wake, night riders eating their dust as if after them here on the road. Men with torches and guns suddenly raised up all around them in the darkness, and their leader, Sheriff Herrick, shouted, “You aboard! Pull to and stop!”

Joseph, driving the team, had no choice. Ben’s fingers were on the hidden weapons. Serena held tight to Jeremy’s arm, and Tarbell stood up in the wagon and shouted, “That you, Sheriff? What’s the trouble?”

“Tarbell?”

“Aye, ’tis me and some of my family.”

“And have you come from the jailhouse in the village now?”

Some of the others on horseback grumbled and made remarks, wondering why Herrick wasn’t simply throwing them in irons. But Herrick quelled them with a single blast of his rifle skyward, startling men and beasts. Joseph had to quell the jittery team, getting down from his seat to do so.

Herrick asked of the people in the wagon, “Why’re you out past the court’s curfew, all of you?”

“Curfew?” asked Tarbell.

“Aye, curefew, man!”

“But I don’t think it applies beyond the boundaries of the village, Mr. Herrick,” Jeremy countered.

“Who is that, speaking?” It was Thomas Putnam in his uniform still.

“Why it’s Jeremiah Wakely,” said Bray Wilkins beside Putnam. “That imposter priest. He’s behind this matter at the jailhouse!”

“What matter at the jailhouse?” asked Tarbell. “We know of no such matter?”

“Where’re ya coming from, then?” demanded Putnam, holding a gun on them.

“We’ve just come from the family plot to pay respects to the dead. Went there a bit late but it was on the spur, ya see.”

“Family plot?” asked Herrick.

“Take them under suspicion!” shouted Putnam at Herrick.

“Hold on, all of you! This is a civil matter, and I am in charge, not the militia. So you’ll not be taking orders from Mr. Putnam, not tonight, not here and not now.”

This only calmed the men somewhat. Jeremy could literally feel their enmity and venom as if in waves passing over everyone in the wagon, and he worried terribly for Serena, and he was angry with himself for allowing her out with them. So far, she was being taken for a man and being smart enough to keep silent.