Robert Walker: Children of Salem

It appeared the decrepit minister had broken off their meeting, and he’d so hoped to inform Higginson of the many misgivings bouncing about in his head—to confess his strong ties with the Nurses and Serena, to plead for a postponement, and to bring in another man for this employment. It was as if Higginson feared just this might occur—as if the wiley old gentleman had surmised that Jeremy might question his mission, and so the old man chose to stay away and leave him no counsel.

“Nothing I can prove, mind you,” he said to Dancer, “but it certainly feels we’ve been prematurely abandoned, girl. Perhaps events beyond Higgison’s control’ve taken over.”

He now saw in the distance the whole of Salem Farms—the lands stretching along the Ipswich Road and the valley, the most prominent being the Nurse family compound and homes.

He’d meant to avoid the Nurse family home, but how? It stood between Salem Town and Salem Village, and their land holdings had increased enormously in the decade he’d been away—as he’d kept an eye on the court records. The Nurse family compound had in fact quadrupled, making any effort to go around out of the question. The Ipswich Road would take him to within feet of the front porch of the old homestead, whereas the back road, the cow path, also cut through Nurse property, but it was the lesser of two evils tonight.

Jeremiah stood high in the stirrups now, allowing himself a moment to stare down at the old main house. Beautiful old place really, and it held many memories for him.

The original home sat nestled in the crook of a split forge, roughly the shape of an anvil. It stood sentinel between the Frost Fish and Crane rivers, tributaries of a peninsula stretching from Salem Harbor and the seaport. These waterways made the land rich and easy to work, affording two speedy avenues to harbor trade, even when frozen over. Anyone living along the Ipswich road had that avenue overland. The Nurse-Cloyse clan had the Ipswich road and the waterways, as did Giles and Martha Corey with their nearby gristmill at the terminus of a third tributary of the Woolston River called the Cow House.

Jeremiah recalled playing about the Corey mill with Serena and her brothers; recalled how Serena loved to watch the giant wheel turn with the force of the Cow House current. The memory created a sad refrain in his mind’s eye: the image of children at play on that last day he’d gone splashing in the Frost Fish with Serena, the beautiful, youngest Nurse daughter. He recalled a glorious memory of them canoeing, too, sometimes with one or more of her brothers at hand, and her father or mother watching from shore.

With the breeze tugging at his hat and cape, Jeremy gave a thought to a time when the Nurses had informally made him one of theirs. For years he’d helped them work this land. This after Jeremiah’s excommunicated father, a poor dish turner by trade, had died of consumption—or had it been of a broken heart?

Jeremiah’s father, John Wakely, had died a few years after the loss of his second wife to cholera. Her death came shortly after the villagers voted to shun their family for his father’s having married outside the faith—to a French woman no less. Jeremiah’s birth mother had died in labor, a not uncommon end in the colonies.

“’Twas the Nurse family took me in, Dancer.” Jeremiah spoke to his horse, stroking the mane. “Showed mercy they did. But at the time, I was so damnably angry at the world. I threw it back in their faces.” His memories turned to regret. “Hurt everyone who loved me, especially Serena.”

Even her name caused his heart to stir. People in Salem, and Puritans in general, named their children after desired traits: Piety, Charity, Chastity, Fidelity, Serenity. Men were saddled with Biblical names from Moses to Solomon, Ezekiel to Abraham, but saddled too often with Prosperity, Industry, Honor, Loyalty, Alacrity, Remorse, Steadfast, Wisdom, and Increase—qualities praised in biblical text. Go forth and Increase as certainly Mather had with thirteen children, despite the large percentage who’d not made it to manhood. Mather’s certainly increased around his middle over the years, to be sure! Jeremy laughed aloud at the thought.

The problem with naming an infant such a thing as Redemption was that it asked mere men to live up to such names. With these thoughts and biding time for Higginson’s arrival, Jeremy said to Dancer, “I’m a lucky one, eh girl? No Industry for me! All I need do is spread word of dreadful tidings!” Jeremiah’s reference was to his namesake, a biblical-doomsday-prophet , the man who had foreseen the captivity of the Israelites in Babylon and the fall of Judah and Jerusalem. Salem itself derived from Jerusalem , meaning place of peace . “What an irony there is in that? And why am I talking to you? What does a horse know of irony?

So…here I am alone again . Holding tight to the reins, he dismounted. Dancer snorted and scratched at the ground when suddenly her head came up, ears pricked. What did she hear? Higginson approaching? But just as quickly, the horse settled back to searching the bare earth here for tufts of grass to feed on. Jeremy stroked her neck and back to soothe her jitters. Perhaps the wind had frightened her as it’d begun to whip his cape and burn his exposed skin. A light dusting of gritty, hard snow and sleet had begun to add to his misery as well.

Under the moon, which came and went, he again scanned for the old minister but saw no clue. Instead, his eye fell on the light at the Nurse home, and he imagined the warmth of the once familiar hearth down below in the lush green meadow. A life he’d forfeited. Dancer tugged at his hold, pulling to nibble at grass shoots about her hooves. Jeremy imagined that his horse must be curious as to why they’d held here, in the middle of nowhere with a cold night becoming colder by the minute, and her master staring out across the empty land. Dancer’s forelocks had relaxed, but her skin remained lathered from the long ride and a visible chill rippled through her. Jeremy imagined the horse must think their journey at an end, that they’d remain here, finished for the night.

Growing more and more impatient and dubious of Higginson’s coming, Jeremy thought of how long he’d been working for the Boston authorities—seven years now.

Jeremiah had left Salem to seek out a wider world and a trade, and to become worthy of Serena’s hand, worthy in her parents’ eyes, and not just some ‘foundling’ or stable hand. He kneeled and lifted a handful of dirt in his black glove, allowing it to sift through his fingers. “Home it is…yet it never was.”

Along with his musings, the biting night air began to chill, and a light dusting of feathery snow began to trickle down, large flakes contrasting sharply against the black minister’s cloak he wore.

He let go the reins, rose and clamored high on the altar-shaped pinnacle of stone, his boots slick. From this vantage point, the wind cutting, biting, he stared out at the road, hoping to see movement toward his position. “Nothing. Where the deuce is that man?”

How much longer do I give it before deciding that, for whatever reason, the minister isn’t rendezvousing with the likes of me after all . Perhaps the man was sick and abed. Poison crossed Jeremy’s mind like a shooting dart, followed by another evil of a worse kind. Something had certainly kept him away, but Jeremy didn’t want to believe that Samuel Parris of his agents bright enough to have caught on, at least not yet.

“Perhaps old Nehemiah came earlier and we simply missed him,” he suggested to the horse and leapt back to earth from his stone perch. “Else the man fell asleep over his brandy at the fireplace.” Rumor had it that Higginson enjoyed drink, and why not? He was on his last leg. “Likely be of little help in this stew he’s stirred up!”