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JAMES TREMBLED UNDER the self-righteous wrath of his father’s accusing stare. He’d never been on the inside of the building where they handled the interrogation of the prisoners, and he didn’t appreciate being treated like one. James tried to hide his fear but was sure he’d failed. The Reverend was there as well, his eyes shining fever bright.
“You been sneaking off with that girl down to the river. I want to know what happened down there. What have you been doing with her? You know better than to be all alone with some tramp of a girl, unchaperoned.” His father began, voice rising.
The reverend spoke up, his voice alive with a curious excitement that James found more terrifying and revolting than his own father’s harsh drilling of his person. “Did you touch her? Did she touch you or whisper anything unusual? You need to tell us the truth, son. Witches can make a man forget himself. They are in league with the devil, you know.” He insinuated, voice sly.
James frowned in confusion. He’d never considered that Olivia might be evil. She had touched him and it had felt good. Almost as good as when she let his hands wander where they shouldn’t. They’d been meeting now for a little over a week, in private any chance they got. She still hadn’t caught a fish, but her fingers beneath his shirt on his chest and more felt fine.
“Have you seen any more signs?” James blinked again. Signs of what?
“I’m not sure what you mean father, reverend—” The hand came out of nowhere, landing across the crest of his cheek with a loud crack, the force whipping his head sideways, his ears ringing. It wasn’t the first time his father had used his hands to back up his opinion. Father was a hard man. But the shock of it out of nowhere had his head reeling. Johnathon Corbin felt no hesitancy in disciplining the difficulty out of his only son. He’d have his answers.
“The marks son, tell us about the back of her hands.” The reverend persisted, sweat beading his greasy forehead where his hair hung low, needing a cut. James head was still spinning from his father’s blow. He wished he knew what they were talking about. He cringed, opening his mouth to speak, wincing. His upper lip was split and he could taste the coppery tang of blood. “She has pudgy hands and dots on her face...” he began, still misunderstanding the direction of the conversation that had gotten away from him from the beginning.
“The scales boy, tell us about the scales you saw.” The reverend persisted, voice shaking.
James froze and the fog of confusion cleared all at once as he finally understood the direction of the conversation. They weren’t talking about Olivia at all. They were talking about Elspeth Walsh. His secret—their secret—was safe. He did not need to confess to his father about what had really been happening down by the river. It was too new, the secret private and exciting. Nobody had to know.
Sneaking a peek at his father’s furious countenance, James opened his mouth and spoke. “Well, I saw them, yeah. She told me it was psoriasis. A skin condition that causes her skin to flake and peel? Only, I know Penny from church? She has that and it doesn’t look the same at all. This is the wrong color. And they are bigger, like the size of my pinkie and flat. They look hard, like the scales of a fish.”
The reverend leaned in. “And did she lure you there with promises?” The reverend encouraged.
James thought of Olivia’s warm hands on his body and his breath hitched. “Oh yeah, she has the softest hands...” James cringed again when he realized what he’d said. He shook his head, trying to clear his traitorous thoughts. He rushed on, “I asked why she didn’t use her mother’s concoctions to fix it. She said they didn’t work on what she had. That it was temporary and came and went away.” James looked at their interested faces and smiled, warming to his subject.
“I think she doesn’t cure it because she can’t. It shows up whenever you make her mad or scared. Those potions that her Mama makes? I heard that she uses all sorts of things in them. Poisonous plants.” Their eyes widened and the reverend gasped.
Many of the kind people of Salem had partaken in the various tonics and tinctures Moira Walsh had created to cure them over the years. James went on. “And animal parts. I heard she adds bugs and such to those potions. She creates them in her kitchen. Elspeth collects the ingredients from her secret spots in the woods where no one else goes.” He lied smoothly, beginning to enjoy himself as well as the avid attention of his horrified audience.
The reverend puffed himself up self-importantly. It was as they’d feared. Jonathon Corbin looked at his young son, strong and strapping. “It’s a splendid thing Isla Thompson came to us with the information when she did. I hesitate to wonder what might have happened to you in her presence if we hadn’t caught it when we did.”
James worked to school his features to appear more frightened than he was. He’d wondered how they’d come by their suspicions.
His father sneered, his expression self-righteous and justified, “Elspeth Walsh is a witch, and probably her mother too. You are grounded until she goes to trial. I don’t want you anywhere near her, do you hear?” He thundered.
James ground his teeth, secretly fuming. Well, damn. How was he going to continue to meet with Olivia if he was grounded? He hadn’t thought that one through.
#
THE ELDERLY WOMAN HELD out gnarled arthritic fingers to deposit the coin in my hand as I handed over the small stoppered bottle. “Dab a few drops on your wrist at bedtime. It should help with the pain. During wet weather you can do a few drops in the morning when you wake.”
“Thank you dear, my Douglas swears by this stuff. He suffers from the same pains as I do. Old fingers can’t do near what they could even five years ago. This helps the pain. I’m knitting again. Haven’t been able to do that in so long.”
I smiled as she walked away, but the purposeful strides of a man from the far side of the open market barn door caught my eyes. He walked towards me in a direct line. The straight stride and cocky swagger reminded me of his son, James. My heart started thrumming wildly in my chest as a feeling of dread swamped my senses.
A Slight lift of my lips in greeting was all I managed. “May I help you, sir?” I started. He didn’t return my smile, his eyes cold and mean. He stopped directly in front of my table, cutting in front of a customer who jerked back in surprise and quickly changed his mind and direction. He wanted to be nowhere the magistrate Jonathon Corbin was. I sympathized.
I felt the eyes of neighboring booths and other patrons as they looked on in curiosity. They wanted to know what his presence meant just as much as I did.
“Elspeth Walsh?” he questioned, voice harsh and grating.
“Yes?” I asked, twisting my hands in my apron, fear causing my voice to come out as a high squeak.
“You are hereby under arrest. You are wanted for questioning on suspicion of blasphemous activities, encouraging loose morals in our young men, and the pursuit of illicit activities not limited to dabbling in witchcraft and being in league with the devil.”
My mouth fell open and I tried to wrap my mind around what he’d accused me of, but the shock and horror were so big all that came out was a high gasp of terror. This isn’t happening.
Only it was. He reached forward and grabbed my upper arm and hauled me forward. The box of berries I’d been about to sell fell from nerveless fingers and tumbled over the small plank table and onto the dusty earth. Ruined, I thought inanely in disbelief; he has ruined my berries.
He didn’t bother to restrain me, his beefy hand encircling my arm with bruising force was plenty of incentive as he hauled me along and I struggled to keep up, skirts twisting and tripping me up. With no consideration for the shocked and appalled looks being sent their way he marched me down through the streets of Salem towards the courthouse and the room set up special there for the interrogation of would be witches. Pedestrians scrambled out of his way and I caught the eyes of the believers, with their pinched expressions and terrified eyes. Others sent me furtive glances filled with sympathy and sorrow. Not all believed I was evil, but no one dared speak on my behalf either.
By the time we arrived, my breath came in heaving pants, the effort to hold back what I was exhausting as my fingers tingled and my palms burned like they were on fire. I wasn’t a witch. I had no claim to such magic. What I would become, if I lived long enough, was so much worse than any of them could have imagined. It wouldn’t do to let him see evidence of my ‘skin condition’ that was really anything but. I’d already let my dragon out to play too many times, my foolish temper and fear conspiring against me to give others a glimpse of what I was that they were not.
I stumbled up the steps of the courthouse. My eyes rose and clashed with Finn’s horrified gaze, only fifty yards away and wide with shock. I gave a quick shake of my head. He couldn’t get involved. Nothing good would be served by him attempting to step in. Not with so many witnesses waiting for proof of what I was—or wasn’t. He started in my direction, eyes gleaming gold with suppressed rage before he froze, glancing behind as Aidan and Fergus said something to him, bringing him to a jerky halt.
Inside the sweltering building they took me down a short hall and thrust me inside a little box of a room with no ventilation. A roughhewn table and two chairs made up the only furniture. I fell into the hard wooden seat, my legs threatening to give way as I lunged back away from the looming Magistrate.
He didn’t bother to take the other chair, instead; he slammed a booted foot onto the seat and towered over me with feral satisfaction. “So, Miss Walsh. You know why you are here, I presume?”
I shivered. I didn’t want to know. “I have no idea why you drug me away from my vegetable stand and down through town in front of all the moral citizens of Salem.”
His smile turned calculating and cruel. “Oh, but I think you do, witch. You and your clever ways, luring my son away in secret, fornicating in the darkness, trying to steal his soul. Was it to be a gift to your familiar—to the devil himself?”
As frightened as I was, the mention of James sparked my temper. So he had told anyway, trying to make trouble for her to hide his own indiscretions. “I didn’t follow him to the river. He followed...” I began.
“So you admit it! You were down by the river with my son!” he thundered, leaning in.
I flung myself back against the wall, as far as I could go, itching furiously at my legs through the linen of my dress and apron. My entire body felt like it was on fire. The need to hold it all back was making me dizzy with the effort.
“Did you touch him? He confessed that you did. What wickedness did you deliver to his person?”
I stared at Johnathon Corbin in horrified fascination. It didn’t matter, I realized. Whatever I said would fall on the deaf ears of a man and town who wasn’t willing to hear it. Still, I tried.
“He touched me. He kissed me... James tried to grab...”
“Silence! How dare you try to blaspheme my son and try to twist the blame?” By then he’d leaned in so close that a fine mist of spittle hit my cheeks and forehead in fine threads of wet stink.
It was all too much. I felt my tenuous hold on any control slipping. The first ripple of pain coursed along my skin, split the skin and fine blond hairs over the back of my hands forming a sparse carpet of brilliant bronze. They flattened to disk-like scales beneath the long sleeves covering my arms. I moaned in panic, trying to hide my hands in the heavy folds of my skirt.
But Jonathon Corbin hadn’t forgotten what his son said about anger and fear bringing on the reaction. That she couldn’t control it. He noticed her actions immediately, reaching forward and snagging her by the shoulder and propelling her forward as the chair tumbled backwards and crashed against the wall. He snagged her wrist, fingers digging deep as he hauled her up to the flickering lantern light. His eyes lit with feverish determination. “There, the mark of the devil. I knew it!” he screamed.
He flung me away from him with a grin of rabid satisfaction. A calculating look entered his eyes. “I think maybe we should have your mother in to join you. What do you think, Elspeth Walsh, is she as guilty as you are? Maybe you plan it together, the both of you?”
I couldn’t prevent the gasp of realization from leaving my lips. Tears of mortification and rage dampened the curve of my cheek and threatened to fall. “Leave my mother out of this. This is about me, no one else is a party to your twisted imagination.” I spat in desperation.
“Well, maybe she’s guilty of the same, and maybe she isn’t. I guess that’s all going to depend on you, isn’t it?”
I stared at him in dull confusion. Whatever was he prattling on about now? I was done, and maybe my mother as well. They’d already hung at least three people that I knew of over evidence a lot flimsier than what he had on me. “See, I think you lured my son down to the river to have your way with him, to trick him into giving up his soul. I think that’s what happened. I won’t have you running my son’s good name through the mud, filling the citizens of Salem’s heads with the misguided belief that he is accosting their women. My son plans to marry well, his reputation must be above reproach for that to happen.”
I felt all the air leave my lungs in a heave of despair. I saw what this was. It was a no way out. The first tear fell and I didn’t bother to wipe it away. I didn’t answer him, but he took my silence for all the answer he needed as he pushed himself upright away from the chair.
“Come on Miss Walsh, I have a cell set up just for you. Don’t get too comfortable there though, you won’t be in it for long.”
#
NO MORE THAN A MATTER of days went by before he was right and I found myself alongside the four others of us that had somehow fallen into this nightmare of false accusations and spreading lies. We sat before the Court of Oyer, before a jury of our peers. The humble townsfolk of Salem that were too afraid to have an opinion that might argue against the preaching of the good Reverend Parris or any of his constituents. We were damned and we knew it, our heads bowed and our minds trying to wrap around the insanity of what was happening.
I was on the stand.
“Elspeth Walsh, you stand accused of practicing witchcraft to lure the innocent and of using your wiles to seduce James Corbin down the path of wickedness in the devil’s own image.”
The words droned on, sliding with all the sharpness of a razor over my skin, slicing my emotions bare. I sat frozen to my chair in disbelief, eyes staring in horror at the room filled with spectators, come to see what excuses or supposed proof the already guilty might come up with to refute what they already knew would be the outcome.
I lost count of the number of ‘witnesses’ willing to testify to my supposed guilt. Many had been loyal customers of my mother’s for years. In the back of my mind I noticed the furtive glances they sent towards the avid jury, and the loyal members that sat on the board of the Court of Oyer. They hadn’t, most of them, volunteered to take the stand. But fear of reprisal had loosened their tongues, leaving their words open to attack from the shark like attorneys and fervid magistrates.
“Do you deny that you were with James Corbin on the bank of the Green River two weeks ago on the 21st of July?”
“No, but...” I protested.
“You threw yourself in his arms...” Reverend Parris interrupted.
“No, he...” I denied.
“You kissed him, led him on,” he persisted, eyes alight with malice.
“He kissed me, grabbed my arm.” I shouted, the sound weak and barely audible.
“Ah, the arm. The mark of the devil,” stated John Hawthorne, replacing the good reverend.
“Psoriasis, a skin disease, nothing more...” I explained.
“Lies! We know what psoriasis looks like. Show us your arm, Elspeth Walsh. Show us now lest you be held in contempt by this court for spreading falsehoods to the righteous people of Salem.”
My face was cherry red with anger and frustration as I hid my hands behind my back. With a glare of self-righteousness, John Hawthorne reached forward and snagged my wrist. He pulled it forward and with his other hand, ripped the sleeve that covered my arm midway up my arm, thread and hand-tatted white lace sliding away to expose my freckled skin, covered in iridescent bright copper scales. “I give you proof of the devil’s mark,” he crowed triumphantly to the gasping crowd.
Pandemonium broke out. Several matronly ladies screamed in terror and one fainted dead away from the shock. Amid the sound of the gavel and the shouts of, ‘witch,’ and ‘devil’s spawn’, among others, the court slowly returned to order.
I bent forward, tendrils of blond hair escaping my bun and falling forward to hide my face from view.
It was a nightmare, all of it. Thank God Da and Mama and my brothers weren’t there to see my shame. To be a witness to my persecution by the people of Salem, many of them neighbors and friends, would have been more than any of us could bear. It was Da that had wisely kept them from the courtroom—to keep his family safe. A dragon—or four—transforming in the middle of the Court of Oyer wouldn’t have done much towards refuting my guilt.
Not that I stood a chance, anyway. One look at the hard-eyed patrons of the courtroom and I knew their minds were already made up about me.
The trial wound into the late afternoon, tensions rising along with the oppressive weight of the heat until breathing became next to impossible. During a brief recess around 4:00, the Court of Oyer disbanded, replaced by the Court of Terminer to call for a verdict and decide the sentence.
Of the seven of us, it surprised me when two were acquitted.
Sitting silent, numb with the rest of them, I listened as the rest of us were sentenced to hang by the neck until dead.
I had less than a week to live. Something else, I realized as we turned and were led away with the other hollow eyed victims beside me, was that hopelessness was its own form of antiseptic, deadening us to our reality. Not a one of us uttered a word as we returned to our cells.
I left the hardened bread and broth that comprised my supper until the gravy on top congealed into a greasy pool that curdled my stomach to look at it. I wasn’t hungry.
I thought of my Da and Mama and my brothers. I’d give anything for one more fight with Aidan. Another argument with my baby brother Finn, who was most like me. Even Fergus, maybe most of all Fergus. Whose presence never failed to calm my fiery temper. I wanted it all to disappear and go away. My family weren’t fools. They’d be biding their time and holding their own council. I needed them to stay as far away from it all as possible and safe. Maybe only one of us had to die so that the rest might live. It would be worth it if they left my mother, sweet Moira, alone.
I sat long into the night, knees pulled up and under my chin, huddling on the lumpy bed with the coarse wool blanket that irritated my skin and staring through the darkness. For once, I consciously called my dragon, willing it to come. If I could change, I could escape. But nothing happened. I wasn’t ready yet, not for a full on change. At my age, doing so was tantamount to an agonizing way to die if I managed it. But I was dead anyway, it was a chance I was willing to take.
When morning came I still sat on the cot, my dragon absent, and still wholly human.
Around 10:00 a.m. there was a commotion outside my window. Despite myself, I was curious. The window in my cell was high on the wall and the only way I had a decent view was by standing on the bed. That was when I wished I hadn’t bothered. I had an unfettered view of Gallows Hill at the end of Main Street. I recalled that two of the hangings were today. I’d managed to look towards the top of the hill just in time to see them place the black hood over the graying hair of the matron they’d found guilty. I remembered her as the elderly poor woman who had had a penchant for gossip and her grandchildren. Perhaps her habit of speaking poorly of those she shouldn’t had caught up with her, I wasn’t sure of the entire story.
I should have looked away then, but some macabre emotion held me still, waiting for the lever to spring. When it did and she fell I heard an eerie moan as the rope drew taut, making an odd screech as the weight of the old woman’s body hit the end. I realized the moan had been my own. Tears I hadn’t been aware of trickled over my cheeks as they moved the next victim, a young woman no older than myself, into position. Then I did look away. But the scream when it came wasn’t from Gallows hill, but from the old woman in the cell two doors down. The sound of an animal in utmost agony and despair.
I curled myself into a ball and sobbed then, as the terror wrapped around me. I didn’t want to die. I had so much living yet to do. Had that been that young girl’s last thoughts too?
I looked down along my arms. The scales were back, the itching the worst it had ever been. I dug at the offending brown disks until blood welled to the surface in several spots where my sharp nails had broken the skin. I hated them. Where were you last night when I needed you?
#
FROM THE CHURCH COURT yard Olivia watched the hangings with several others of the youth from church. As the rope hit its end she winced, looking away. She looked deeper into the crowd to where she could see the Magistrates Johnathon Corwin and his partner John Hawthorne. Beside them stood James. He hadn’t bothered to look her way once, though he had to know she was there. She’d told him she would be. Beside him, Ella Mae, a blond girl her age from church, stood next to him. Apparently her mother hadn’t thought her too young to attend. The two of them looked exceedingly chummy, chatting and smiling.
It had all been for naught. Bile rose thick in Olivia’s throat as the body at the end of the rope gave a last twitch and she nearly lost her breakfast. That would be Elspeth on the morrow, and she, Olivia, was responsible for all of it. It was her fault. She swallowed against the thick knot of shame that formed a hollow pit in her stomach. What have I done?