“I’ve asked if you can stay at the governor’s house when we reach Massachusetts,” he informed her.

“There’s no need. I’ll be going on to Salem.” When he gave her a look, she added, “I lived there once.”

“You were fortunate to leave it.” He studied her. “But you’ll still go?”

“There are things I need to accomplish there.” She’d come to enjoy his company, and said a bit more. “Save a life, win a life.”

“Whose?” he wanted to know.

“For you? Every woman who will not be hanged. Each of their souls will be saved by you, and all that is righteous will come back to you.”

“And you? What’s in it for you?”

“I have a daughter in Salem.”

“I see.” Joost van der Berg looked out at the hilly green landscape. They would spend one night at an inn in Connecticut, but he was beginning to see there was no hope for him. Maria wore a gold ring, and when he’d asked if she was a married woman, she told him only that it was indeed a wedding ring, a very old one, fashioned in Spain. “You’re such a logical woman, I’m surprised,” he said to her. When Maria gave him a look, he laughed and said, “You clearly believe in love.” Van der Berg was a reasonable man who felt sentiments and passions could be tamed and cured, as diseases were, and that raw emotions were nothing more than a nuisance. He had always believed that madness could easily be born from an excess of feeling. That was what happened in Salem. People’s emotions had gotten the best of them, and jealousy, hatred, and fear had turned into self-righteous vengeance.

“Love is many things to many people,” Maria said.

“It either is or it isn’t,” the doctor responded. Maria smiled. She enjoyed arguing with this man, a great believer in the rational mind. A fly was buzzing around and now the doctor reached to catch it in his hand. “This creature exists. We can hear it. Touch it. See it with our own eyes. Can we do the same with love?” He was, in his own way, arguing that she should spend the night with him, that such an engagement was the logical conclusion of minds that were so in tune. He was not afraid of a woman who was his equal, both in his bed and in his life. “Would you say it was fate that brought us together, or simply that it was the practical outcome of our interests? It’s sensible that such a connection leads to desire.”