The Shape of Mercy (26 page)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

But I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

As I lay there, warding off thoughts of hooded men and a wooden platform and a loop of rough rope, I made myself think about what I
did
know. I was fairly certain I had an answer for Esperanza. I knew why reading the diary made Abigail sad, made her think of the gardener’s son.

Mercy had given all for love. Her very life.

Abigail had given away nothing. I didn’t know why. Maybe it wasn’t about money, like Esperanza said, but surely there had to be a question of status. Abigail was an heiress. The man who proposed to her was the son of a gardener. Abigail must have felt obligated to choose between the life she knew and the man she loved. I was convinced Abigail now saw her choice as incredibly selfish and damning, and so every time she read the diary, every time she came to face to face with what Mercy had done for love, Abigail was reminded of the mistake she made.

That much I was sure of.

I let my eyelids close and felt my body relax. I tried to think of happy things like the ocean at dawn, hydrangea blossoms, and walking the aisles of a three-story bookstore with an iced mocha in my hand.

Sleep overcame me within seconds.

I did not dream.