Before I met Mercy on the pages of her diary, I dreamed of her. The night before my first day at Abigail’s, I dreamed of a woman wearing a dress like the one I wore in the Thanksgiving play in fourth grade. Dull wool skirt, muslin apron, and a white cap with puckered edges. She sat at a table, a candle burning beside her, writing. I knew she was Mercy, and I knew she was writing in her diary. She bent over a page, her hand flowing across the paper in swirls and slow flourishes as she spun the words with a feather quill. Her features were soft and unfocused in the dim candlelight, and she seemed deep in thought. I moved toward her and she heard me. Her head lifted and her eyes met mine. With the quill poised over the diary, she stared at me, her eyes kind but sad.
She didn’t ask me who I was or what I was doing there. I wanted her to, but she didn’t.
Instead, she looked past me. I turned my head and saw a woman in a chair in another part of the darkened room, sitting amid a pile of books, the titles of which I couldn’t read in the darkness. The woman was asleep.
Abigail.
I looked back at Mercy.
She was gone. The diary was there and the burning candle, but the chair where she had been sitting was empty. The quill lay on the pages with the feather pointed toward me.
Like an invitation to pick it up.
The candle went out and I awoke.
I felt alone, though Clarissa murmured in her sleep in the bed next to me. It took a while before I fell back asleep, and when I did, I dreamed of nothing.
Abigail’s first question when I returned to her sad house surprised me. We settled at a sturdy wooden table in her suffocating library, and instead of asking if I wanted a cup of tea—I could see she had one—she asked if I talked to God.
“You mean, do I pray?” I said. I might have stuttered.
“What is prayer but talking to God?” She lifted a withered hand and flicked her wrist, as if to wave away a cartload of my naiveté.
This wrinkled dismissal annoyed me. I may not have the Durough drive, but I don’t lack the household dignity. We’ve always been quick to defend our intellect. A second or two ticked by as I debated how to answer her. How does the brand-new employee answer the employer’s arguably inappropriate question? I’d never been an employee before. I do talk to God, but I didn’t see how or why that should matter to her.
And what did that have to do with transcribing a three-hundred-year-old diary? Mild irritation gave way to momentary boldness. I looked her straight in the eye.
“Yes. I talk to God.” I said it with such self-assurance. There is a jolt of satisfaction people my age get from answering an elderly know-it-all with confidence.
The corners of Abigail’s mouth rose in slow symmetry. My answer amused her.
Irritation swelled within me. “I don’t see how—”
“And do you believe God talks back to you?” she interrupted.
“What?”
“Do you know what happened to Joan of Arc?” Abigail posed the question as easily as if I had just said, Sure, I believe God talks to me.
“Yes.”
“She was executed. Burned at the stake, I think.” That was all I could remember from high school social studies. I was only a month into my college Western Civ class. We were a ways off from Joan of Arc.
“Yes, she was. Do you know why she was executed?”
I scratched my neck. It didn’t itch. “Well, if I remember right, France was at war with England and she led the French troops. English troops captured her. The charge against her was treason?”
Abigail inclined her head, entertained by my recap, I think. “You don’t remember right.”
“She led troops. She was captured. I’m sure that part is right,” I said, mentally massaging my wounded ego.
“Yes, all that’s true. But she wasn’t executed under a charge of treason.”
I was about to ask what the charge had been when I suddenly remembered why Joan of Arc was executed. “She believed God talked to her.”
Abigail’s eyes seemed to brighten. I had surprised her.
“She was about your age when she died, did you know that? You are nineteen?”
“Twenty.”
“They called her a heretic. A witch. They lit her on fire.”
I shifted in my seat.
“But she wasn’t a witch, of course,” Abigail continued. “Everyone knows that now. She’s a saint. St. Joan.”
“Yes, I remember that,” I muttered.
“Of course, that doesn’t change how she died, how the flames ate her body while she stood tied to a pole.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I said.
Abigail said nothing for a moment, just looked at me. Then she leaned forward. “Do you see all these books?” she asked in a low voice, as if passing on a secret I should keep close to me. Abigail’s books were everywhere, stuffed into shelves, lying in piles, peeking out from under tables. I’d have to have been blind not to see them. I was in awe and afraid for the same reason—there were so many.
And I didn’t care that she had again made a hairpin turn in the conversation. We were leaving behind the burning body of an innocent woman.
“Yes,” I said, looking about me.
“You love books the way I do. You love to write. I know this. That’s one of the reasons I hired you.”
I nodded and waited.
“Mercy Hayworth loved to write too,” Abigail said, tipping her head. “Stories. The once-upon-a-time kind. The men who demanded her execution said she wrote the devil’s words, that her stories were tales from hell, that she was the devil’s scribe. Her writings were proof she was a witch. They were just stories, Lauren. The kind of stories you and I like to read. The kind you like to write.”
She sat back in her chair. “This is why I want you to tell Mercy’s story,” she said. “Mercy was a beautiful young girl who loved many good things. She was wrongfully accused, convicted, and hanged, and no one remembers her.”
“I see.” I swallowed, keenly aware of the muscles in my neck.
“I wanted you to know why you’re doing this.”
“Okay,” I said.
Across from me, Abigail inhaled and exhaled heavily. A cleansing breath. She was ready to move on.
I barely felt my lungs moving, the ghosts of Joan of Arc and Mercy Hayworth hovering at my shoulders, lamenting their ruin.
“Now, then,” Abigail said. “Perhaps you’d care for a cup of tea before we get started?”