He followed Parris inside, both men now chilled to the bone. “I don’t feel right, Mr. Parris, taking a woman’s bed on such a night as—”

“Bah! I’ll hear no more of it, Mr. Wakely, and you’ve got to get control here. You do as I instruct in my house without question or hesitation, do you—”

“I intend to sir, it’s just—”

“No faltering, Mr. Wakely. You are tired…have come a long way.”

“Too true.”

“Get ye then to bed—and I to mine.”

Something about the man and his tone made Jeremy feel like a child being sent off to bed. And fatigued beyond thought, off he went, but before laying down, he closed off the curtain and in the dark, he carefully located his saddlebag and dug into to it. He palmed his inkwell and quill pen, and in difficult circumstances, Jeremy began jotting quick notes to himself in the blank pages of the book he would keep on Reverend Samuel Parris—a book that would eventually find its way back to Mather.

Unable to focus by the weak and flickering candlelight any longer, exhausted from the long day and travel, Jeremy realized his mind and pen were no longer in sync. A quick few words of hope that he was entirely wrong in his first impressions of Parris before he blew out the light, and without knowing it, nodded off and into a fitful sleep.

# # # # #

Jeremy found the cubbyhole below the stairwell dark, dingy, musty, and degrading, a place to keep the house brute, not a place for a man of Jeremy’s stature or frame. In fact, not a place for little Tituba’s frame either. Cramped as a ship’s berth. Part of Parris’ less than subtle method of putting a person ‘in his place’, Jeremy decided. And it did have this affect on the young apprentice.

Given the bed bugs and the odors, he slept fitfully at best.

What little sleep he did accomplish was to the tune of tension pulled taut like a wire, so much that it seemed audible, slicing through Jeremiah’s skull, as this dark house seemed to exhale conflict and breathe in anxiety. Subtle yet present like the distant sound of the ocean waves to shore, or a cradle with an insistent squeak. Most of the night, Jeremy lay stiff, board-like as he played Tituba’s words over in his head so as not to forget, but also in an effort to understand her. When he did come awake entirely, he’d hear a squeak-squeak-squeak. At first he thought it a parrot below a black cloth in its cage walking its floor, pacing on clawed feet.

But after a moment, he realized it was a squeaking floorboard upstairs, one which he assumed Samuel Parris was repeatedly pacing over up in room.

Calming himself, Jeremiah wondered if Parris prayed like other men, or if he prayed differently, or if he prayed privately at all.

Finally, Jeremiah gave up any hope of sleep; instead, he sat up, pulled his saddlebag close, opened it, and located his book. He jotted Tituba’s words down as best he could recall—for the record.

He also jotted down his initial, firsthand reaction to Parris, writing: the man is arrogant, selfish, puffed up beyond his stature, but small in grace and spirit in my humble judgment. I would add….

Jeremy fell asleep over his writing, the quill pen and inkbottle left on the wood floor, his journal lying half under him. He dreamed of his powerful right fist slamming into Parris’ teeth.

The following day, Jeremy opened his eyes on a plump-faced little girl with yellow curls, Parris’ daughter Betty, he assumed. The two stared at one another until she said, “Can I write, too?” She wiped away mucous and her pearl white skin showed blotches of red as if rubbed raw with lye soap, but Jeremy recognized the redness as having done battle with the ague—a fever with coughing enough to turn a child’s insides out.

“You are feeling better?” he asked.

“I am. Can I draw?”

Jeremy realized they were, at the moment, the only two in the house awake. “Oh, oh,” he came to a sitting position. “Your name is Betty?”

“Elizabeth, like my mother I am.”

“Sorry, Elizabeth.” He guessed her at ten or eleven.

“I wanna draw pictures.” She pointed to his pen and ink, her cheeks going wide with her smile. She’s an adorable if chubby doll, he thought.

He tore out a single blank page from the back of his journal. “Draw? Yes, be my guest.”

The little girl took the offering and moved on short legs that pumped fast, taking her to a table where she sat and began work. Jeremy stuffed his journal deep into his bag, stood, stretched, and moved to stand over the girl. Admiring her meaningless markings: Circles within circles, squares, rectangles, and triangles, he softly commented. “Wonderful but what is it?”

“It’s where the witches meet.”

“Really? And where is that?”

“The orchard.”

“Your orchard?”

“Just beyond it, yes.”

In a moment, Betty was mumbling something about having been ill when the second girl from upstairs, perhaps twelve or thirteen, came timidly down to view the newcomer. Once again Jeremy held a staring match.

“You must be Mercy? Mercy Lewis,” he finally said to her.

“Mercy, no!” she shouted. “Mary—my name’s Mary Wolcott. Mercy Lewis’s my cousin like Betty is.”

“Really? And here I thought you Mercy.”

“Mercy’s got sent away,” said Betty over her shoulder. “Father said she was bad.”

“Bad?” he poked at the word.

Mary piped in with, “Uncle beat her, but she stayed bad anyway.”

“And how was she bad?”

“Killed a layin’ hen for no cause,” answered Betty.

“She was sent to live with Mr. Putnam’s family yonder,” added Mary Wolcott, pointing out the parsonage window. “Betty’s father told me she had a devil in her, and if I was bad and didn’t obey, I’d be sent away, too.”

Unsure what to say, Jeremy cleared his throat and muttered, “Another niece, indeed?”

“Oh, yes, he has a passel of us.” Mary’s smile created dimpled balls of her cheeks.

Betty piped in with, “He never claimed Dorcas.”

“Nobody’d claim that brainless child,” countered Mary. “Did you know she eats worms, that one?”

“Dorcas? What happened to her?” asked Jeremy, standing now, stretching in the clothes he’d slept in, uncomfortable with the idea of sleeping in the raw in such close quarters.

“She was put up at the Corey’s place, she was.”

“Corey’s mill on Ipswich road?” he asked.

“At the mill, yes. Maidservant. That’s a laugh. Dorcas is a dummy. She can’t talk right nor hear good neither.”

“I see. Sounds as if Mr. Parris helps out all the village children, eh?”

“He bills ’em out mostly.”

“Bills ’em out?”

“Charges a finder’s fee and a monthly one, too,” explained Mary.

“I see. Rather businesslike of him, I’d say.”

Parris wife and Tituba, as if by magic, appeared in the kitchen along with the sound of pots and pans. Jeremy had no idea how the one got past him from the steps, and the other from the door, until he learned of a back stairwell straight to the kitchen, and a back door opening on the kitchen. The two women sounded amiable enough as they worked to create the morning meal.

Parris was the last to rise, sniffing breakfast. All chatter, all talk, even Betty’s drawing, ended when Samuel Parris entered the living area. He called immediately for everyone to drop to their knees and pray with him, Jeremy included. From a kneeling position, Jeremy saw that Tituba went through the motions, hands raised before her lips as if in supplication.

He determined to do the same. One more thing they had in common.

“Make those who make our lives difficult, God,”—began Parris, his voice like a knife—“make them pay this day with a curse befalling each. They that are sinful. They who withhold my rightful income, my salary, and by extension withhold food from the mouths of all who are present here today, Lord. Smite them all in Thy name . . . amen.”

Finished with the brief, spiteful prayer, Parris broke off the handholding. He rose, saying, “Now let us eat and give thanks for what meager bits we do have, shall we? And then I will formally introduce you all to my young apprentice here, Mr. Wakely, sent by none other than the Reverend Increase Mather himself, children. Sent here to your husband woman, and your father, Betty.”

“And my good uncle,” said Mary with a quick smile.

“Ah . . . and my good Master,” added Tituba, her eyes twinkling at Jeremy as if they shared a secret. It was an almost girlish competing for Parris’ attention, Jeremy felt. He represented a new excitement— something unusual in her day, and he had given her the gift of his saddle for her headrest, and he had shown sympathy for the loss of her only child. Still, she remained as inscrutable as the parsonage door. Although quite a bit more exotic, and handsome for a woman of her age—which he guessed at forty, close to her Master’s and Mistress’ age.

While these thoughts fluttered about Jeremy’s brain, a messenger showed up at the door. Parris grimly received the delivered news and walked back to the dining table. After a dramatic sigh, as yet standing over them, he said, “Jeremy, you’re going to witness for me today—an ordeal.”

“How’s that, sir? An ordeal?”

“I’ve rounds to make. Come along.”

“But where are you going, Goodman?” asked his wife, who till now hadn’t uttered a word.

“The Putnams again.” He held his wife’s gaze for a moment. “In need of me.”

“Nothing good will come of those people,” she muttered, her eyes on the uneaten meal.

“Enough, Goodwife.”

“And that sickly child of theirs, and you putting Mercy in harm’s way by—”