There was a rapping on Maria Owens’ door the following night. It was late and dark and the frogs were singing, as they did each spring. It sounded for a moment as if Cadin had returned, but when Maria woke she saw that the flame in the fireplace burned black, and she knew there was evil outside. She stood by the door in her white nightdress, reciting a spell of protection, but whoever had come was still there. It was then that she felt the same chill she’d had when Thomas Lockland and his brothers rode across Devotion Field with murder in mind. She took the wooden box of salt she kept in a bureau, then poured a thin line along the walls and the door. But the salt evaporated in a white cloud as soon as it was laid down. Nothing would stick; it was too late for protection. Keeper had begun to growl and scratch at the door.

“Tie up that dog of yours,” a man shouted.

Tell a witch to bind a wild creature and she will do the opposite. Maria opened the window at the back of the house. “Go,” she told Keeper. The wolf refused to move. He would listen to one voice alone. Faith had been woken by the ruckus and she sat up clutching her doll, terrified by the shouting outside.

“Tell Keeper to run,” Maria told Faith. She knew he would fight to the death to protect the child, and she sensed the men outside would be grateful for any excuse to shoot him. “It’s for his own good.”

Faith asked the wolf to go, and he reluctantly leapt through the window, tail between his legs. They could hear him out in the woods, howling. It was at that moment that Maria wondered if she shouldn’t have sent Faith with him, as Hannah had sent her away. But it was too late to reconsider. The door was flung open by a constable with an axe in his hand, for he’d been ready to break it down. As Maria was about to utter a curse, sending them on their way, to hell if need be, the constable grabbed her, though he wailed when he did, his jabbing fingers burning from the heat of her flesh. The second constable now had the opportunity to snap iron cuffs on her wrists. This is how a witch was caught, while she worried over her child, and fought off one man, forgetting there was another. The men saw a pile of books Maria had bought while in Boston, and collected them as evidence. Then Maria was taken barefoot, in her nightdress with no belongings, pushed out the door into the night as her child choked back tears.

Fate is what you make it, or you will be what it makes of you.

“You damn well burned me!” the first constable cried. Blisters were rising on his hands where he’d grabbed her. He didn’t dare touch Maria again. “You’ve rightly been accused.”