When I awoke, I was here. I felt the iron chain on my ankles first, then the brackish taste of blood in my mouth, then the chill of a stone floor.
Mary Easty is here. Martha Corey is here, in another room. There are others. They have all been charged with witchcraft.
And so have I.
The others watch me as I write. I cannot tell what they are thinking. Mary Easty said when I am done writing I should hide the diary in the straw where I sleep. She said it isn’t safe for me to keep it in my secret pocket.
There is only a little sunlight each day in this cell. It falls across the stone floor in the late afternoon hours. So I am told. I do not know. It is only my first day.
29 August 1692
I am tired. I do not want to write, but I must. I was brought before the magistrates today to be examined. They laid their charges against me. I prayed to God to give me a clear voice and sound mind to answer them, because as I looked at those mere men, I could see they did not wish evil against me. They simply believe what has been said of me is true.
They do not design evil, but they do not recognize it, either.
They brought forth my storybook and bade me explain how I came by such spells. I asked how they came by property that did not belong to them. But they would not answer me this.
“How came you by these spells?” the magistrates asked.
“Read the pages and you will see they are naught but stories,” said I.
“Stories of the Devil!” said one.
“Nay, stories of simple things: fairies and woodlands and princesses.”
“And talking birds!” said another.
“’Tis only a story,” said I. “Aesop told a story of a talking lion and a talking mouse and no charge of devilment was laid upon him. Christ the Lord told stories!”
“Do not take the name of the Lord in vain, woman!”
“I do not take it in vain. The parables of Christ are stories.”
“There are no parables of Christ in this book. Who taught you to write such stories?”
“No one taught me. They came from within me.”
“From the Devil!”
“No!”
“Why do you torture Prudence Dawes?”
“I torture no one!”
“The shape of Mercy Hayworth appeared to her above her bed and bade her sign the Devil’s book.”
“I know nothing of the Devil’s book, and I have never been in Goodman Dawes’ house.”
“And what of your familiar spirits?”
“I know of no spirits.”
“You speak unto birds.”
And on it went.
I answered every charge and still they came at me with more. And more and more.
When I thought at last they were through with me, I heard noise at the back of the meeting room and then the voice of goodness. I shuddered to hear it.
“She is no witch!”
John Peter.
He was bid to be silent. He shouted all the more. I dared not turn to look at him.
“She is no witch. She is no witch! If Mercy Hayworth be a witch, then so am I. So be all of you!”
My heart quaked within me. I saw the eyes of the magistrates narrow as they glared at John Peter where he spoke far behind me. I could see their thoughts aligning He who defends a witch …
I could not keep the tears from coming. And still I dared not turn to look at him, not with love in my eyes. He shouted again that I was not a witch. I saw Prudence turn her head from John Peter to me, and then I heard him being escorted out of the room, shouting my innocence all the way.
Prudence dropped to the floor and began to writhe in front of me.
“She bites me! She pinches me! She chokes me!” Prudence screamed.
“Why do you torture this girl?” the magistrates asked.
But I could not speak. Two words tumbled about my head and within my anguished heart, and I would not say them.
John Peter. John Peter.
I cannot write anymore. The light has the left the room.
30 August 1692
Shame is again keeping me warm in this dank cell. Today I was made ta strip naked before old women and midwives who poked and prodded the secret parts of my body, looking for a Devil’s teat, for some abnormal protrusion where I suckle familiar spirits to nourish them and become one with them. My stomach churns just writing the words. I could barely stand while these women moved about their task, these women whom I have known all my life.
One of them, Widow Treaves, guided me from my mother’s womb eighteen summers before, washed the body she now hovered over. She brought forth Thomas as well. And the tiny sister that did not live. The widow’s eyes met mine for only a second, and in those gray pools she said to me, “What else can I do? I am bade to look.”
They made much of a little brown circle under my arm, a tiny thing the color of tree bark. I have always had it. Mama told me long ago it was a kiss from God given to me as I left Heaven to be her little girl.
One of the old women asked me what it was. I told her. The women looked at one another, clearly measuring the truth of my words. I should have said it was naught but a spot I had long forgot I had. They believed it was a kiss, but not from God.
If this were not agony enough, the women in my cell whisper that John Peter has come under the eye of the magistrates. Prudence will certainly not accuse him; she is enamored of him. But she does not have to accuse him. There were plenty of observers in the meetinghouse who heard him defend my honor. He who defends a witch …
I am awash in troubling thoughts.
I cannot write anymore. I must save my ink.
1 September 1692
My worst fears are taking form. John Peter is to be examined. If the magistrates believe me a witch, there is no hope for him.
If I confess I am a witch, they will let me live. But I am not. How can I say I am a witch when I am not? And if I confess, John Peter will be in greater danger. If I do not confess and yet am found a witch, he will face the same fate as long as he defends me.
And he will defend me. This I know with all my heart.
There is only one way to save him.
If I can find a a way to get a letter to the magistrates …
I cannot use more ink for my own thoughts. There is something else I must write.
God be with me.
2 September 1692
The deed is done. The letter has been written. I pray the magistrates care only about its contents and nothing for its author. I pray that what has so easily been believed before will be believed yet again. It should not prove difficult.
3 September 1692
I was brought before the magistrates today. I should have been trembling, but I saw they had my letter and their eyes were fierce with dismay. They believed the letter. Its words, untidily formed and misspelled so they would not be recognized as mine, had done what I asked of them. They fed the madness.
It was easy to give the letter to another girl in the cell with me. I bade her drop it on the floor of the meetinghouse when she was called to be examined and to let no one see it dropped. I told her a life would be saved if she did this. She agreed.
When I stood before them, the magistrates glared at me. One of them held my letter in his hands. “Why do you bewitch John Peter Collier?” he asked.
I said nothing.
“By which spell in your book do you bewitch him?”
Again I was silent.
“We have come by a letter, the writer much afraid to state his name for fear you will bewitch him as well. The writer has heard you gloating over your witchcraft and your power over John Peter Collier. You have bewitched him! Confess it!”
I could not answer yes. I could not answer no. So I gave them the answer they truly wanted to hear.
“I am no witch.”
And then I did something I knew would seal John Peter’s fate.
And my own.
I fiddled with the brown spot under my arm.
The magistrates saw it. So did the women who examined me.
John Peter is safe.
5 September 1692
The girl who carried my letter knows Prudence Dawes. She asked me what I had done to Prudence to torture her.
I told her I loved the man Prudence loved.
Evening
What would we do for love?
Would we imagine we are pricked with pins and blades? Would we writhe on meeting room floors, desperate to believe our challenger is indeed evil?
Would we convince ourselves that what could be true is true?
Would we write letters damning ourselves to save the beloved?
Yes.
6 September 1692
Someone said John Peter demanded to see me, but he is believed to be held captive by my evil spells, and he was sent home.
9 September 1692
We were sent for. They lined us up and pronounced their judgments. I am to be hanged. Goody Corey, Goody Easty, and four others as well. I do not know what else to write. When I try to form letters, I see only the face of John Peter.
I should have liked to be in his embrace one more time. But then I would want it again after that. As I do now.
10 September 1692
I dreamt last night of the rope tight around my neck. I could not breathe. I could not take in air to scream. I felt the hand of evil upon me, pulling on the rope. I awoke to the whispered shouts of the women in my cell who share my fate.
“Wake up, Mercy,” said Goody Easty. “’Tis only a dream.”
Sleep would not return to me.
11 September 1692
I am making a list of what awaits me. The list does not begin with the rope.
1. The Lord Jesus
2. Mama
3. Papa
4. Thomas
5. My baby sister
6. Heaven
7. Peace
I do not hate Prudence Dawes. If I hate her I cannot set my mind on these seven things. Is Prudence Dawes evil? No, I think not. She has been deceived. She truly believes I am a witch. She can believe it because she wants it to be true. She loves John Peter.
The magistrates do not love John Peter, but they love believing themselves in the right. And they fear the responsibility that is akin to being right.
13 September 1692
John Peter came to the cell last night. I heard his voice at the window above our heads, the one where sunlight visits us. He called my name. I could not see him, it was too dark and the window too high. I could only see his hand reaching through the tiny opening. I wanted to run to him, but my chains would not let me. I could only reach up to his fingertips and touch them with my own.
“Are you warm? Are you fed?” he asked. “Have they hurt you?” His voice was strange, like he was swallowing shouts of rage.
His fingers were warm. I thought of how these fingers reached for the straw in my hair, how they dried my wet hands the day my papa died, how they rested under my chin the day he kissed me.
“Mercy, do you hear me?” he asked.
“Yes, always, John Peter.”
“I will not let them harm you!” he said, his voice racked with anger.
I could say nothing I made my fingers kiss his.
“I will not let them!”
And then there were other voices outside the window, and his fingers were snatched away from mine. I heard him cry out my name as the jailers dragged him from the window.
Mercy.
Mercy.
Mercy.
Sleep runs from me.
17 September 1692
Nine more are to be hanged. There is weeping all around me. And anger. And fear.
I close my eyes and see my writing tree. Lily. Henry. I see the little copse of firs at the Trumballs’ cottage, the place I called Remembrance, where I promised I would remember peace.
I don’t know what has become of the animals. Papa’s books, Mama’s coverlet. The cottage.
Goody Easty told me the property has been seized. What a strange word. As if my home and its contents were scurrying away in the night and the sheriff apprehended them in an exhausting chase.
There is no word from Samuel. I wonder if he knows I await my execution.
What could he do?
Nothing.
’Twould be best if he came not at all.
I dreamt of John Peter last night. We were on his horse heading south. To the safe place.
21 September 1692
It is cold. I cannot feel my toes. And I am thirsty.
There is but a shaft of cold sunlight left to me so I must write quickly. Our jailers delighted in telling us today that Goodman Corey refused to answer the charges against him. He refused to play to the crowd’s intrigue. So they laid great stones upon his chest, willing him to cry out his innocence or guilt. He would not. More and more stones were placed upon him until his bones were crushed within him and he died, unable even to scream out in pain.
Goody Easty told me a hanging lasts but seconds. “Be glad we shall not be pressed to death or burned. Goodman Corey suffered for two days.” She is trying to be strong for me. Martha Corey, Giles Corey’s wife, is in another cell nearby, and I hear her weeping I wonder if she has heard everything we have heard today.
Goodman Corey was an old man. Eighty years if a day.
I cannot rid my mind of those two words: confess and live. The harder I try to sweep them away, the more they stand their ground in my spinning head.
Will I have one last chance to confess? To give the accusers what they want—my very soul?
I am no witch. I shall not live as one.
And I shall not die as one.
Here is a new thought. Here is what I ponder hour after hour in this darkness.
There is no escaping what awaits me. I will hang. God knows I will hang.
But I fear the anguish. I am afraid for Prudence.
John Peter …
One thing remains that I can do, even in chains.
The ink is nearly gone. Is there enough? Do I have enough? Tes.
There is a new girl chained to the wall with me. She has not yet been examined. The evidence against her is weak. Perhaps she will not be found guilty. Her name is Benevolence and she is twelve, the age I was when Mama and Thomas flew to Jesus. I will hand her my diary, if she is willing, and will bid her, upon her release, to see that it is delivered to John Peter. I wish him to know that I chose. That there was a choice, and I chose mercy.
I pray he will forgive me.
And I pray God will have mercy on my soul.
I am ready.
Thirty
I was alone in Abigail’s house when I completed the diary. It was early Sunday, between two and three in the morning. I had finished reading the diary well before then, but my mind refused to be a dictation machine and simply decipher and type. I read, digested, pondered, and then typed.
It was the only way to get through it.
I read the final three words a dozen times before committing them to digitized image.
I am ready.
I am ready.
Ready for what? Ready to hang? Ready for something else? What had Mercy done in the last few hours accorded to her? What took the last of her ink?
She could have written another letter. Is that what she meant by, “one thing remains that I can do, even in chains”? Did she pen a letter of forgiveness to her accusers? If so, what happened to it? If she slipped it into the diary, which was given to John Peter, did it fall upon him to give the letter to the magistrates?
Or was the letter written to Prudence Dawes? Perhaps that was why Mercy prayed John Peter would forgive her—her last act of mercy was to write a letter of absolution to the woman responsible for her execution. And John Peter, the man who loved Mercy and for whom she had given her life, had been called upon to deliver it.
What had she been afraid of?
My head spun with wanting to know exactly what happened after Mercy ran out of ink.
> After she ran out of time.
The diary didn’t say, but I was certain Abigail knew what Mercy had done with her last hours. Abigail knew I would have questions.
And she asked me to wait until she returned to learn the answers. That meant if I wanted, I could probably find the answers somewhere else. Mercy Hayworth’s name was no doubt floating around Internet search engines just like Sarah Goode’s and Sarah Osborne’s. Would I be able to keep myself from looking until Abigail’s return?
I didn’t know if I could.
I wondered how long it would take to find out what Mercy had done. It likely wouldn’t be mentioned in the legal documents relative to her execution. So who could have known about what she had done in the last hours? Someone in the jail cell with her would have known. Someone like Elizabeth Proctor, whose own hanging had been postponed because she was pregnant. Someone who might have told someone else, and the story of Mercy’s last deed had carried through the decades and centuries.
The possibilities made my head ache, but this time I was too tired to go into the kitchen and take something for it. I crept over to the sofa like I had done the night before and curled up on noisy leather cushions.
I was afraid to fall asleep, though I was exhausted. I was afraid I would dream of her. And I was sure that not knowing the last few details of Mercy’s life would feed the dream machine in my head.
The Shape of Mercy Page 18