Jiles Corey was furious, partly at himself, but mostly at the rest of the community.

He had let slip a small piece of information about his wife Martha's past, and now that

had snowballed into a massive attack on her character, and he was going to stop it.

Martha and Jiles Corey hadn't been married for a long time, and he wasn't even her first

husband, although that wasn't unusual in a day and age when people died often and quickly

from any manner of illness.

No, her first husband had been a man named Henry Rich, and together they had raised one

son named Thomas.

But Martha had a secret.

She had another son, one that was born three years before her marriage to Henry Rich in

1680.

Born out of wedlock, mind you, and fathered by a local slave.

And while she and Henry raised Thomas, their white and proper son, inside the road home,

this older son, Ben, lived in a local boarding house where Martha would visit each day and

see to his needs.

So when the very first examinations took place back in early March, and Tituba, Sarah Good

and Sarah Osborne were dragged into the meeting house to account for the accusations leveled

against them.

Jiles Corey knew that it was only a matter of time before they came for his wife, which

hunts always began with the outsiders and the rulebreakers, after all.

So he stormed out of his house that very same day, ready to go defend his wife's name

in the meeting house if it ever crossed someone's lips.

...