Boston, Massachusetts
July 18
1692
A
flurry of voices traveled down the grim hallway, a young woman’s in rapid and emphatic discourse with a sullen male. The prisoners in the narrow, grimy cells lining the passageway raised their heads, listening. The volume rose, then dropped, and the sound of clattering keys signaled the opening of the door at the far end of the hallway. Dirty faces pressed against the small openings at the top of the heavy cell doors: here George Burroughs, a deposed minister in the Village, his hair grown weedy and long; there Wilmott Redd, a plump fishwife from up Marblehead, her usually merry face now thin and drawn.
Mercy Dane looked on the faces with sorrow, slipping a thick, hard biscuit through each cell slot. She had not known how much to bring; Sarah Bartlett told her it was best to bring too much. Hands extended from the cell door openings, grasping at the meager sustenance, most of them too exhausted even to utter thanks. Mercy made her way slowly down the passage,
distributing her bread, finally stopping at the last cell at the end. She peered through the slot in the cell door and could just make out two figures huddled in the darkness: what looked like a little girl balled up in the far corner, clad in only a stained undershirt, and a woman sitting up, her head leaning against the stone wall, her back to the door. The floor was scattered with a thin layer of straw, and the stench of mold was almost overpowering. The cell was barely lit by a small, barred rectangular window high overhead, all available sunlight blocked by the boot heels of a loiterer standing in the street.
“Mama?” Mercy whispered through the cell door. The leaning figure inside the cell did not move. Glancing around her to ensure that she went unobserved, Mercy raised her hand to the lock on the cell door and whispered a long string of Latin words. A blue glow swelled from the inner depths of her palm, warm and crackling, and it pressed outward from the surface of her skin to envelop the rusted metal of the lock. When the glow subsided, Mercy pressed her fingertips against the heavy wood of the door and felt it yield to her pressure. She edged through the open crack, shutting it silently behind her.
“Mama?” she whispered again, creeping nearer the huddled figure on the floor. When she reached the fragile woman in the cell, she dropped to her knees and placed a gentle hand on her mother’s shoulder. Slowly Deliverance turned her head to face Mercy, the light of recognition flickering in her eyes.
“Mercy?” she asked, blinking. “But how did you…” She trailed off, clutching her trembling daughter to her chest. Mercy buried her face in Deliverance’s neck, winding her arms around her waist and breathing in the soothing feeling of her mother’s skin.
“I told them I ha’ come to settle the bill they sent,” she said, her voice muffled in the folds of Deliverance’s collar. “Then with some technique, I made them let me pass.”
Deliverance stroked the long hair that tumbled down Mercy’s back, rocking her a little. She smiled. “And where did you find the coin for such
a feat?” she asked. In her voice, Mercy heard that Deliverance was proud of her.
“Goody Bartlett helped me,” Mercy said. “Lent me the money and her bay mare, too. I brought biscuits.” She produced a few hard lumps of bread from the sack that she was carrying. “Shall I give one to Dorcas?” Mercy looked worriedly over at the tiny girl lying immobile in the darkness on the opposite side of the cell, eyes closed, thumb between her lips. “And where is Goody Osborne?”
“I’ll feed her when you’ve gone,” Deliverance said. “None too settled when others approach, is that little one.” Her voice was sad, resigned. “And Goody Osborne, she has no more worries in this world. God took her to Him some three weeks ago.”
“When I’ve gone?” Mercy echoed, meeting her mother’s tired eyes. “But, Mama. ’Tis all arranged. You’re to come with me.”
Deliverance looked on her earnest daughter’s face and laughed weakly. She reached a hand forward to cup Mercy’s flushed cheek, and at her touch, Mercy could feel the depths of Deliverance’s resignation.
“Oh, my daughter,” Deliverance said, the corners of her mouth just turning up. “You know I cannot go.”
“But you can!” Mercy cried, grasping her mother’s wrists. “The warden sleeps from the physick I gave him, and I ha’ learned the charm for managing the locks! We’ve only to go, Mama!”
“And leave the others? Them being innocent of a crime which, you must see, I ha’ committed?” Deliverance asked, searching her daughter’s face for understanding.
“Committed?” Mercy asked, sitting back on her heels.
But sure she is distracted
, Mercy thought.
In these many months in prison her mind must ha’ gone as well
.
Deliverance shifted, adjusting the position of her back against the stone wall of the cell with a soft grunt.
“Then you
did
kill Martha Petford?” Mercy asked, face growing stricken and confused.
“Ah! No,” Deliverance said, shaking her head. “Not I, though ’tis no surprise I am not believed. For she
were
bewitched, you see. Of a sort. And the physick that I chose spoke to the wrong ailment.”
“But why?” Mercy asked, baffled. “Who would seek to kill a child?”
“None but the most wretched and hideous of devils. But think on it, Mercy. How come you to call something by bewitchment?” She watched her daughter, eyebrows drawn down over her pale eyes. “The suffering needs be caused by some certain malefactor, and not by mere happenstance or divine Providence. And yet the malefactor mightn’t know wherefore he does what he does, nor even the means by which it is enacted. The error lies in looking for the ill
intent
, and not contenting oneself with treating the effects.” Deliverance closed her eyes, resting for a moment and swallowing. “A man need not be a sorcerer to bring bewitchment upon a suffering soul.”
“Mother,” Mercy said, “I don’t attend. Who was the malefactor, then, for little Martha?”
Deliverance opened her eyes again, and Mercy thought that they looked marginally duller, as if their glitter were being gradually tarnished by fatigue and undernourishment. “Why, Peter Petford, of course,” she said, voice thick.
Mercy gasped. “Goodman Petford!” She sat balanced on the balls of her feet, her lips parted in shock.
“Through no knowledge of his own,” Deliverance added. “Poor, long-suffering man.”
“But how?” Mercy demanded.
“When I first arrived at his daughter’s sickbed, I thought her to be suffering from common fits. Or maybe she were malingering, a sad little thing entreated to maintain the household at too tender an age. And her with no mother neither.” Deliverance brought a fragile hand to her forehead, seeming to massage away the unpleasant memory. “I fed her a mild tincture for the nerves and prayed o’er her, thinking some warm tonic and soft words should bring her round.” She heaved a sigh, her thin chest rising and falling
with the effort. “Rarely ha’ I been so wrong. It were saturnism withal. Brought about by too much lead, like to ha’ leached from poor pots into her victuals. Her fits worsened whilst I were with her, and though I spoke some better charms to combat metals and poisonings, it were altogether too late. And the poor child died.”
“Saturnism,” Marcy breathed, eyes widening with comprehension.
“Aye, for Saturn be the planet of lead, as Mercury be the planet of quicksilver. I see you’ve kept up your studies, clever girl.” Deliverance smiled at her daughter.
“You saw which pots then?” Mercy asked.
“A few—some crockery with chipped leaden glaze, though naught to be sure. It accounts for his great distraction, as well. What kills a child in great fits and torments drives a grown man’s senses well away. And perhaps it undid Sarah Petford, too, she being dead some months afore the girl fell ill.” A great swath of sadness wiped across Deliverance’s face. “So Martha were bewitched, of a sort, but there were naught to do withal. Shall I ruin the aggrieved father with the truth? Move him from distraction to utter destruction, and with none like to pay me heed?”
“But then you are innocent, Mama. You tried to minister to Martha, not to harm her,” Mercy insisted. “We must tell Governor Stoughton! He is a learned man. He must hear reason when it is spoken to him.”
“None on the Court be well disposed to the hearing of reason, I’m afraid,” Deliverance said. “They are gripped with fear for their own reputations. So long as those wild girls cry witchcraft, ’tis impolitic for the court to do otherwise. And while the girls taste power through their fancy and their petty manias, the trials will continue.”
Deliverance shut her eyes again, resting a hand on Mercy’s knee. “May Christ in His infinite mercy forgive them.”
“But you
must
come with me, Mama,” Mercy cried, her voice growing shrill. “It were a grave injustice otherwise.”
Deliverance laughed, her face grim. “Injustice?” she repeated. “By that wall the very picture of injustice lies.” She gestured to the ruined,
broken little girl lying chained to the opposite wall. “There be no diabolism to witchery—to say that alone approaches sacrilege—but a witch I be nonetheless. How can I vanish and leave innocents to die in my place?” She stroked Mercy’s cheek, bringing her daughter’s chin up so that their eyes met. “What would such an action indicate about my immortal soul?”
Deliverance’s eyes bored into Mercy’s, and for the first time, Mercy realized that she could not carry out her plan. How could she have thought otherwise? To ask her mother to cast aside eternal life and the hope of divine salvation, that they might have a few paltry years together in this one? The realization caused Mercy to confront her own selfishness, and her temples flushed with shame.
I am a wretched girl
, Mercy thought, detesting herself, for though she knew what needs must happen, she nevertheless yearned for her mother to come with her still.
As these unpleasant thoughts battled together in Mercy’s mind, crumpling her face, she felt her mother toying gently with her hair. “Now, listen to me, my daughter,” Deliverance said, her face grave. “I’ll have you leave from Salem Town. I’ll brook no argument.” She held up a hand, staving off Mercy’s sputtering objections. “You’ll see from poor Dorcas that the Court enjoins to look for malefaction within families. You’re to go.”
A vision of her life as it was soon to come unfolded before Mercy: a long stark corridor, empty and void. Everything that she knew was in Salem Town: her friends, her mother’s friends, her meetinghouse. Her father was buried there. Soon enough, her mother would be, too. At this thought her lip started to tremble, and the beginning tremors of panic began in her belly and sent malevolent shoots up behind her ribs, down her legs, into the hands that were clutching and unclutching at her apron.
“Daughter,” said her mother, once again gripping Mercy’s chin and forcing her to meet her gaze. “We’ve a plan. Our house I sold to Goodman Bartlett these many months ago, after Mary Sibley come to us, remember? I saw some of this in the egg-in-water, but knew not precisely when ’twas coming. The proceeds I used to order a little house built up Marblehead way,
that’s nearly done. ’Tis on Milk Street, the end of a long lane alone, well hidden in the woods.”
While Deliverance spoke, confusion, surprise, and fear warred across Mercy’s face as she struggled to keep up with what her mother was telling her. The house? It was sold? Sold these six-odd months ago? But she knew no one in Marblehead!
“I’ll have you take the receipt book, and the Bible, and be gone,” Deliverance continued. “You can take Goody Bartlett her bay mare. Goodman Bartlett, he being informed of our plans, can help to remove the furniture when Providence allows.”
Mercy stared into her mother’s face and in it read the absolute immobility of her will. She wished, not for the first time, that she could be as forthright as her mother was. So she was to be on her own—after tomorrow, she would be well and truly alone. Mercy wrapped her arms around herself, trying to force her fear and panic into submission.
“Mercy,” Deliverance said softly, reaching out to trace her fingertips over her daughter’s dampening, trembling face, “it is written in the New Testament, in Matthew, that God came down and spoke to Peter, saying that upon this rock shall his church be built.” She smoothed Mercy’s eyebrow with her thumb, and smiled.
“It is you who are Peter, my daughter. You who are the stone on which the church is built. For through you may His power in all its infinite goodness be felt upon the earth. And so you must not pass your days in fear and recrimination. You must endeavor to secure your safety, and then you must not forbear to resume your craft, for it is God’s work that you do.”
“But, Mama,” Mercy said, voice breaking, overcome with how small, weak, and powerless she was in the face of all that was to come.
Deliverance shushed her, placing a finger on Mercy’s lips with a firm shake of her head. “Enough. I’ll have you go tonight. I’ll not have you come to the western hill tomorrow.”
At this Mercy buried her head in her mother’s lap and began, silently, to
keen. They sat that way for several hours, as the tiny window overhead grew dim, and then dark, and then a thin, watery gray.
T
HE CROWD ON THE WESTERN HILL OF
S
ALEM
T
OWN HAD BEGUN TO ASSEMBLE
hours earlier. Somberly clad men and women milled about with a false seriousness arranged on their faces to mask their overweening excitement. Voices mixed together, each speaking in a register slightly higher than usual, blending into a grating, screeching miasma of self-righteousness and anticipation. Clusters of women dug into pockets tied at their waists, swapping tough bread and cheese. A band of children scampered around the legs of the adults, chasing one another, emitting happy screams. Under the heat of the afternoon the mud that had been churned up by boots and horse hoofs since well before dawn hardened into deep, riveted crusts, crumbling under ever more feet until beaten into a powdery dust that rose through the crowd, staining dresses, streaking faces, and casting a gray pall over the sun. In the distance, rising from within the haze of dust and the buzzing populace, stood a narrow wooden structure, consisting of a slender platform topped with a high wooden plank, from which hung six snaking lines of heavy rope.