“They can’t be serious!” she protested.
But both women nodded unhappily.
“It’s worse than that,” Eleanor told her. “The Proctors have been arrested, both John and Elizabeth. John roared like a bull, I can tell you, but it did no good.”
“And Rebecca’s sister, Sarah Cloyse, was arrested.”
“They’re all being sent to Boston to await trial.”
“Oh, God!” Brianna gasped, sliding to sit in the deacon’s pew.
“There’s been talk, Brianna,” Eleanor said.
“Talk?” She looked sharply at the two.
“You have not been cried out against, but your name has been bandied about. They say that you do not believe in witches, and you think the whole thing a travesty.”
“That much is true,” Brianna said bitterly.
“You need to leave here,” Sarah suggested. “For now, anyway.”
Brianna lifted her hands. “We cannot! It would kill Robert to try and ride away now.”
The two women sat with her and commiserated with her. No—she could not leave. Robert was too ill to undertake a journey.
Brianna promised to stay close to home and talk to no one.
By the end of April, Sarah and Eleanor were back. Mary Warren, John Proctor’s servant girl, had tried to withdraw her testimony against John. No one would accept her retraction as truth. She had tried to talk until she had become so harassed and confused that she had gone into one of the most violent fits ever seen.
The list of arrests was growing longer. Old Giles Cory, a man almost eighty, had been taken, among others.
“Brianna—you must do something. They say that one of the girls muttered Robert’s name.”
“Robert’s!” Brianna repeated, stunned.
“Is there nothing that you could do? What about taking a sea voyage? Perhaps that air would be good for Robert.”
“That Captain Treveryan still lingers near. Maybe you could go on his ship.”
Her heart slammed like a heavy weight against her chest. Sloan was still there. Sloan—who would understand.
She couldn’t see him; she couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t.
But what kind of a fool was she? The finest people in the community were being arrested on the flimsiest of evidence. If they came for Robert, what would she be able to do?
“Thank you for coming,” she whispered to Eleanor and Sarah.
“What are you—”
“I’m going to try to leave Salem,” Brianna replied, wincing miserably. I’ll go and see that—uh—Captain Treveryan and ask for passage.”
Chapter 16
It was not to be as simple to see Sloan as Brianna had hoped. It would be a week before she could do so. Eleanor knew that he was staying in the neighboring town of Lynn, but not exactly where. Sarah found out at the ordinary that Lord Treveryan was a guest at the home of Lord Turnberry, a man of inestimable means—and Brianna brooded that she would probably not get past the front door if she didn’t get a message through to Sloan first, asking if she could see him.
Sarah came to her rescue again. When a delivery boy brought mail to the ordinary, Sarah saw to it that he brought Brianna’s note requesting an audience back to the home of Lord Turnberry.
Brianna spent a miserable night wondering if her request would be answered. It had been more than two years now since she had seen Sloan. Was it possible that he had forgotten her?
