“But these are mothers, sisters, aunts here,” Jeremy pleaded. “Haven’t you taken enough of this man’s dignity and soul?” Jeremy pointed to Ben.

“We’ve orders—until dusk.”

“At which time, we can take Mother Nurse’s remains home, Ben,” Jeremy said, trying to defuse this situation.

“Don’t misunderstand me, Mr. Wakely,” countered Herrick.

“What? What’re you saying?”

“We cut them down at dusk, but the bodies remain here—as with Bishop’s body.”

Jeremy saw now that a huge, communal hole had been dug back of the scaffolding—a common grave. In fact, he saw the decayed forearm and hand of Bridget Bishop looking at first like the exposed root of a tree. “You can’t be serious!”

“It’s our orders, man!” shouted Putnam from behind Jeremy, making Jeremy wheel around to face Thomas.

“Have you men no heart left?”

“This is not up to us. We just take orders.” Putnam looked as if he might fire at the least provocation. “Now if you two are bent on standing in the way of official business, we in the militia and Mr. Herrick’s office, we cut the ropes, and we guard against the witches coming back to life or being carried off and buried in consecrated ground.”

“What is the point of not turning over the dead to their families?” Jeremy persisted.

“Example,” Herrick repeated.

“A condemned witch—which is what these five are,” added Putnam, “go to Hell together, right here at the foot of Watch Hill.”

“Look, it’s not anything we wanted; it’s what the judges and the ministers have said.”

“Left in shallow graves? You know there’re wolves hereabout, pigs, vultures.”

“Forget about trying any reason with these Christians,” Ben said to Jeremy. He threw the knife with such speed no one realized it until it twanged inches from Putnam’s eyes where it had dug deep into the post beside him. “Come on, Jeremy.” Ben charged from beneath the gallows, climbed behind the reins on the wagon with Jeremy beside him, and pulled away. Joseph caught up and leapt onto the back and extended a hand to Tarbell who, in turn, followed suit.

“The bastards!” Ben shouted, tears freely flowing as they rushed from the throng.

# # # # #


Serena stood far back on a hill watching the charade, her heart crushed by the events, glad only that she’d managed to talk many of her nephews and nieces to stay away from the executions. Francis leaned against her as if he might faint; seeing his beloved executed in this manner was unbearable, and she had done all she could to keep him away even to the extent that she would stay back with him. However, her father insisted as he still held onto the belief that at the last moment, those who had set his wife up in this false business would simply be unable to follow through—not with Rebecca. The others maybe, but not Rebecca.

Serena had watched the incident with Ben racing in for their mother’s body, and she’d feared they might lose Ben as well, and perhaps even Jeremy when she watched him rush down toward the gallows along with Joseph and Tarbell and other Nurse men who’d come to see this horrid injustice unfold. She now breathed a sigh of relief on seeing Ben, Jeremy, and the others race off in the wagon, unharmed and not arrested.

Serena wrapped a blanket around her father, who, despite the heat, was shivering as if with chilled, and sitting him beside her, she tore off in the wagon, rushing from this place and wishing to put the ugly images behind them, but also anxious to reunite with Jeremy and her brothers. They soon did reunite on the road back to Francis’ home, what had been Rebecca’s home. When Jeremy saw Serena racing her team to catch up, he told Ben to slow his horses. In a moment, the two wagons were alongside one another on the wide Ipswich Road.

“Tonight,” Jeremy shouted to the others and stood to shift his weight, and then to leap from the one wagon to the other to rejoin Serena and Francis. “Tonight at first dark, we go in and get our Mother Nurse.”

“You do that, but we’re taking Father home,” Serena told the brothers in the other wagon.

Jeremy kissed and hugged her and said, “I’m going, too.”

“There are three of them, and they hardly need your help.”

“I need to do this, Serena.”

She kissed him. “You frightened me once already today. I thought sure Putnam was going to shoot you.”

“He hadn’t the nerve.”

“If you must do this, Jeremy, and I think you must—come back to me safe, and keep the others safe.”

Jeremy nodded and leapt back onto the other wagon. Without a word, every man aboard knew what they wanted and how they would go about it.”

# # # # #


They waited in a nearby wood for nightfall. When it came, they waited longer still. When they determined everyone was gone from Watch Hill and the gallows, the brothers crept back to that awful place where they had seen their mother perish so horribly for no other reason than her abiding piety.

Without benefit of torches or light beyond the half moon going in and out of clouds like a galleon at sea, they came upon the bodies sprawled and stiff, limbs akimbo in the pitted, stony hole dug below the gallows and poorly covered over. At some point, someone in official authority was supposed to have come along and thrown dirt over the pit, to give the condemned a semblance of a burial. But so far that hadn’t happened. Instead, a handful of shovels had worked here and that was that.

Jeremiah and Serena’s brothers, going amid the bodies, saw first the ungainly, monstrous, gaping, toothless mouth of Sarah Goode as if shouting into eternity. Jeremy practically tripped over her in the dark. Recalling that Goode was first to fall, they followed the trail of body parts and clothing and soon located the others, all easier to pass, as their faces remained obliterated by the grain sack hoods. They made their way over the rocks and the exposed roots, stumbling until all stood over the remains of Rebecca Nurse—horribly contorted.

Shakily, tentatively each man found a hold on Rebecca while Jeremy tore off the remainder of the noose still round her neck like a fallen halo. A distant sound of thunder like drums rose at that moment, and in the sky over the too distant ocean, they watched lightning strikes.

In a solemn, silent processional, the men hefted the surprisingly light Mother Nurse overhead. One of her arms was erect and stiff, her fingers reaching skyward for as if grasping at her eternity. Anyone who saw these four men carrying the silhouetted figure against the lightning strikes must think it strange.

The four brothers took her homeward to be buried in a private plot of land prepared for her in a place they believed no one would ever find, and yet a perfect place for Rebecca. It’d been Serena’s idea as to where to bury their mother—at Rebecca’s favorite tree, her circle. It would become her final resting place, and until the upturned earth offered no clue to outsiders, the grave would be placed under the largest of the picnic tables.

When they arrived at Francis and Rebecca’s home, Francis and Serena raced out to meet Rebecca in her homecoming. Her extremities had relaxed, and she no longer seemed quite so contorted. Francis only concentrated on her features, and with a handkerchief he wiped away dirt from her gray head. Serena dabbed at her face with a wet cloth, and soon the gentle and familiar features returned, and she appeared in a deep and peaceful slumber.

Tarbell, tears in his eyes, excused himself. “We’ve a coffin to make, Joseph, Ben.” The three of them went for the barn and the tools necessary. Jeremy held Serena close and Francis started a conversation, not with them, but with his beloved, and without having to be told that it was private, Serena led Jeremy away to allow Francis time alone with Rebecca.

Before they got to the porch, from behind them, they heard only sobbing.

Before dawn broke, a ceremony over Rebecca’s remains was performed, during which Francis broke down. The same men still fatigued from the previous day’s horrors, and from “robbing” the authorities of one of their murdered ‘witches’, and building a proper coffin sang Rebecca’s favorite three hymns. Serena said the Lord’s Prayer, and with the brothers covering the coffin and arranging the table over it, Serena and Jeremy put Francis to bed. The old man had aged exponentially since this terror had first touched his home.

# # # # #

The following morning, and indeed all the previous night, Jeremiah feared for Serena’s safety, feared that she could be accused, feared that she become the subject of a warrant and arrest, and all that followed. They’d all seen the insanity engulf Francis and Rebecca. Poor Francis had become a shell of himself, occasionally shaking a fist at God and condemning Him for the deeds of the men in the village, adding, “Rebecca said it was all due His plan, a plan so inscrutable that not one of us lowly creatures could possibly understand it.” He laughed. “Perhaps in the distant future He will make it clear to generations to come how we allowed children to dictate life and death in Salem Village.”

It didn’t come as a complete surprise to Serena when Jeremy woke her with bloodshot eyes, with a plea. “Come away with me.”

“Do you really think Connecticut is far enough, Jeremy? Was Maine far enough for Reverend George Burroughs?”

It’d become general knowledge that George Burroughs had been returned to Salem in chains, arrested in Casco Bay, Maine, dragged back here, placed on trial, and found guilty, and that he now merely awaited hanging.

When Jeremy didn’t answer her, Serena climbed from bed and paced their room. “Tell me, Goodman Wakely, where is a safe place?”