“Of what, I’d like to know,” she said.

“Do you see how she is? Prideful,” the constable muttered to his brother constable. He would have caned her then and there if he hadn’t been so afraid of her powers. He did have the nerve to tear off the amulet she wore, with Cadin’s feather inside; and when she protested, he insisted her distress was proof of witchcraft. They led her away in chains they’d attached to the cuffs. She was informed she was being taken to the jail. In the morning, she would be brought to the courthouse.

“I have a child!” Maria protested. “You cannot separate us.”

Faith had followed them, clinging to the skirts of her mother’s nightclothes. The child was very quiet and pale. She did her best to recall the remedies and enchantments she’d seen in the Grimoire, but nothing suited this moment, other than one dark spell that caused flames to arise on the ground when you tossed down six black stones. But she had no such stones, and she was too terrified to call up any of the magic from Agrippa’s Occult Philosophy that had been carefully transposed into the Grimoire.

“I don’t know which words to say,” she told her mother.

Maria silenced her girl with a warning. “Say nothing.” She could already tell that any words they spoke would be used against them, and even a child might be considered an emissary from the sinister world these men imagined to be everywhere. “They will get what they deserve.”

“Do you hear this witchery?” the first constable said to his brother. They stuffed their ears with grass so they could not be further bewitched.

Maria had no choice but to take Faith with her, as women who were confined to prison often did. She had once passed the jail, a small wooden building on a leafy corner of Federal Street, and had heard childish voices from within, and the crying of babies. What sort of world is this? she had wondered. This second Essex County was in many ways worse than the first.

As they walked on, Maria took note of a woman standing on the path, a hood draped over her head to stave off the chill of the evening.

“What brings you here?” the first constable asked the woman who’d appeared in the field.

“I’m just a simple neighbor,” the woman said. “I cherish my town and am here to see a good result from tonight’s events.”

The woman now came to walk side by side with Maria. She was Martha Chase, who was at the heart of the events now conspiring. “I’m here for your sake, sister.” Martha was plain and pale and her mouth was set, but there were bright spots on her cheeks, perhaps caused by excitement or fever or perhaps a bit of both. She threw Faith a look and her gaze softened. “You don’t want them to take the little girl as well.”