At Gallows Hill, my eyes met with Dr Griggs. It was dusk but there heat still clung to the air. We heard the creaking of the cart coming up the hill and the horses’ hooves sounding thud, thud in a rhythm. The horses tired and slowed. The cart started to rattle as the whip made the horses climb again. I looked at the women’s faces, which were desperate. Their hands were tied behind them. Old Rebecca was helped out first. Her legs and skirt were tied with rope just above the ankles. She was carried to the ladder leaning on the maple tree and helped halfway up the ladder as she would have stumbled without their help. We heard Rebecca Nurse shriek out in her old croaky voice.

‘Oh Lord, help me! It is false. I am clear. For my life now lies in your hands. Will not my five grandchildren ever see me again; will not my eight children ever bless me again? How my husband will fret.’

I asked her to repent but she just shook her head. Twenty villagers had signed a document attesting to her good conduct. I read it.

‘She hath brought up a great family of children and educated them all.’

I showed it to the sheriff, who didn’t even bother to read it.

‘Read that petition. You are obliged to do that,’ said her husband Francis.

‘You are obliged to do so when half the village has signed it.’

The sheriff turned his back to him.

Francis Nurse, old and gnarled, suddenly took the cuff of the sheriff, and said, ‘Read it, you godless man, read it, or is all you’re thinking is to be quickly out of here so you can sit on a pint of alcoholic cider or go riding with your friends?’

I made motion for him to stop but then thought he had to let out his anguish and nothing would make any difference at all. Besides, old Francis was probably right. I looked over to Dr Griggs who was studying his shoes.

‘She is innocent for she hath been a good woman all her life, instructing us in Bible truths. You cannot do this to her,’ said one of her daughters.

The sheriff wore a snarl on his face and ignored the outcries. A noose was placed over her head and neck. The hang rope was attached to a limb of the maple tree. Then the hood was put over her face. The grandchildren started to scream. The sheriff kicked the ladder away and in the seconds of shocked silence, the sound of her neck snapping was heard as the rope went taut on the tree limb. Her body fell and bucked. It was a gory dance of death. The sound of sobbing was heard. The words ‘why, why, why?’ echoed from her children and grandchildren. A mummer of discontent ran through the crowd.

I was devoured by guilt. How clever of the sheriff to hang Rebecca Nurse first in this bout of hangings. Hope in any other women would be quashed. All of them had said they were innocent. They all knew they could be saved from hanging if they confessed but they did not. They left family members behind who would miss them and their services. I could not believe that Rebecca Nurse was a witch and were the other women innocent as well? What have I done in seeking to rid this dammed village of evil only to create more of it?

The sweet voice of Elizabeth Howe followed. ‘God knows that I am innocent … My husband is blind. Will you burden my daughters with an extra burden?’ Elizabeth’s face showed anguish yet her body was calm.

‘No girl was afflicted by me. No girl so accused me.’

Her daughters wept. Her blind husband stood, his face wrapped in confusion.

‘Do not take this good woman away from us.’

A murmur ran through the crowd. ‘Do not take this good woman away from us.’

But the lack of evidence or the plight of her family made no difference to the sheriff. Her family saw the same gory ritual and heard the crack of her neck.