George Burroughs has been sentenced to hang. He and five others. None of them are witches, I am certain of that. But they will hang as if they were.
There is no word from Samuel.
John Peter does not come to the cottage anymore now that Papa is gone. I know why he does not. He is protecting my name. It is a very dear thing I should be glad of it, but I am weighed down by loneliness.
I wish Papa had seen to my marriage before he left me.
I miss Papa.
I miss John Peter.
I miss being happy.
I have not been to the Village since Papa’s passing. I do not want the Village leaders to see me and remember that I am alone at the cottage. They will ask when Samuel will be here.
I have no more meat or potatoes or flour.
John Peter’s sister, Sarah, brought me honey and some bread. She made the bread. John Peter sent the honey. She told me he was stung a dozen times getting it for me.
She asked about Samuel too.
I think John Peter may have asked her to ask. I can think of only one reason John Peter would want to know when Samuel will be here. He wants to talk to him. Ask him something.
It makes me smile just thinking of it.
The honey is as sweet as Heaven.
George Burroughs and four others were hanged today. The innkeeper John Proctor was among them. His wife is still in prison, and in her womb, their child grows.
If I had not promised my papa I would attend, I would not have been anywhere near Gallows Hill today. I would not have heard the sound of the ropes pulling taut, the anguish in the throats of the innocent, or the awful silence when the ropes went still. I would have been in my tree writing a story about water nymphs and secret treasure. I would not have to wonder how to cleanse my mind of the five swinging bodies, the relaxed feet, the tilted heads, the slow swinging back and forth. God, help me.
Goody Trumball told me a petition signed by thirty-two persons and which attested to Rev. Burroughs’s innocence was brought before the court before his hanging There would have been thirty-three signatures if Papa had been alive to sign it. I would have signed had I known about it, but Papa would not have wanted me to. And one of George Burroughs’s accusers is said to have recanted. But Rev. Burroughs was hanged nonetheless.
As the noose was placed around his neck, George Burroughs looked out upon the crowd. He saw me. For a moment his eyes held mine, telling me to be brave. How did he know I was afraid? Then he opened his mouth and proclaimed his innocence to everyone. And after he had done this, he began to recite the Lord’s Prayer. His voice was large and full, and as he spoke, the birds hushed to listen. The mouths of the villagers fell open as though they were struck dumb. Rev. Burroughs recited the prayer of the Lord in full, without hesitation, something we have been told a witch or wizard cannot do.
There was much rumbling in the crowd then, and for a moment I thought perhaps reason had broken through the cloud of deception. Perhaps the people could at last see Rev. Burroughs was not in league with the Devil after all. But then Cotton Mather jumped onto the platform so that all could see him and shouted that Rev. Burroughs had been convicted in a court of law, and that the Devil himself can appear as an angel of light. I looked away when the ropes fell.
The bodies were tossed down into the rocks like the others had been. I did not stay to watch. I felt eyes on me as I turned away. Goody Dawes. Goody Harding Prudence’s eyes. Esther’s eyes. I heard Goody Harding whisper to Goody Camden that she knows my cousin Samuel has not arrived and it is a disgrace to the entire Village that I live alone. I pretended I did not hear her.
I did not see John Peter. But I did not look for him.
I walked past the cemetery on my way back to the cottage. Grass is starting to grow on Papa’s grave. It is hard to tell where new earth meets old.
The air is thick with mosquitoes and heat and the squeeze of death. Goody Trumball came by today with a leg of lamb for me, and it was all I could do to look at the bloody mass and take it with a grateful heart.
She asked if there was word from Samuel. She knew I had not heard from him. If I had, I would have told her the moment she stepped inside the cottage. She asked because her husband will ask if she asked. Are people so daft that they think a man on a ship gets letters by post every nooning? Who can say if Samuel even knows Papa has died? Perhaps he has not received my letter. Perhaps his ship has not yet left Liverpool. Perhaps it will be weeks before my letter finds him.
Goody Trumball told me I must stay with them until Samuel comes. But I cannot leave the animals, and the Trumballs do not have a barn big enough for two of everything and two dozen more chickens. And who is to say someone might not come and claim the cottage as theirs while it stands empty? What would Samuel do then, if he arrived to find I had lost all the animals and left the cottage empty so that anyone could take it?
“You cannot stay here alone,” Goody Trumball said, her voice kind. But I told her I am not alone. I have Lily the milk cow and Henry the goat and my father’s horse and all the chickens and the birds and the owl that lives in the barn and all the fairies in the glen that I write about. She did not want to hear about the fairies. She bade me to silence.
“Do not speak of fairies and writing, Mercy, not even to me,” she said. Her voice was then not so kind.
She insists I come. What am I to do?
Goody Trumball came back today with her husband to fetch me. Goodman Trumball scarce spoke a word to me. I told them that Samuel was surely on his way, though I am sure of no such thing, but Goody Trumball was insistent. “What of the animals?” I said. Goody Trumball said they would make room for Lily and Papa’s horse, but I would have to leave the goat and chickens. “You can come at the nooning each day to feed and care for them,” Goody Trumball said.
I did not want to leave my cottage. I do not want to share Goodman Trumball’s home or board or the air he breathes. But Goody Trumball took hold of my hands, her eyes wet with tears, and told me it is unsafe for me to be alone. I know not what she meant.
There was nothing for it but to go with them.
I had to carry all of Papa’s books and Mama’s little wooden chest. Goody Trumball carried my winter cloak, my woolen stockings, and the coverlet my mama made for her wedding bed. Goodman Trumball carried nothing but the horse’s lead.
I carried my diary in the hidden pocket in my apron with my quills and ink. But I left my book of stories hidden in the barn. Henry the goat will watch over them.
I must sleep on the floor by the cooking fire because Goody Trumball’s two young boys have the ticking by the back door. Goody Trumball and her husband have a room of their own.
I found a quiet place behind the firs that rim the Trumballs’ property. There is a nest of rabbits here and a family of sparrows. I am writing in this quiet place. I shall give it a name so it will be real to me and will be mine. I shall call it Remembrance so I shall not forget what it is to be at peace.
Goody Trumball spoke not a word to me today until Goodman Trumball left the house and took their sons with him. Then she drew me to the fire and spoke as though the walls themselves might care to listen.
“You know good women sit in chains in Salem,” she said. “Once the accusers point a finger, there is no holding them back!”
I nodded and told her I knew this.
She leaned in and whispered, “Prudence Dawes told her mother that you keep a book of stories, Mercy. She told her mother it is your spell book! And that you cast spells on her and Esther Harding to torment them. She said your shape has appeared in the rafters of her house and that your shape has stood over her bed with pins to stab her. Mercy, I fear her mother shall take Prudence to the magistrates. I fear Prudence will tell the magistrates what she told her mother and she shall be believed.”
I could summon no words. No thoughts. I could scarce imagine myself doing such things. I would have laughed had I not seen so many people hanging from ropes.
“Mercy, did you hear me?”
“I am no witch,” I whispered, though in my head, I screamed it.
“Destroy the book, child!” Goody Trumball inclined her head toward the cooking fire. “Put it into the fire and destroy it!”
I pictured my story book in the flames, glowing, burning, disappearing. All my lovely words gone. I shuddered.
Goody Trumball took my shoulders and shook me. “Mercy! Give me the book. We must throw it into the fire. Do you not see? If there is no book, the charges cannot be proven. They will think Prudence lies. We must destroy the book.”
Papa once told me I should burn every stick of furniture in the house to keep warm before burning a book. I should be willing to sit on stones in an empty house before burning a book.
“Mercy!”
“’Tis not here,” I said. “I left it at my cottage.”
Her eyes grew wide. “Where? Where did you leave it?”
“In the barn. With Henry.”
“Henry?”
“My goat.”
Goody Trumball closed her eyes as if they hurt. “Is it hidden?”
“Yes.”
She opened her eyes again. “When you go there today to feed the chickens and care for the goat, you must take the book out of the barn and bury it away from the cottage. Then when it is safe, you shall bring the book here and we shall burn it. But only when I tell you it is safe. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“Say nothing of the book to Goodman Trumball unless he asks you, child.”
She said nothing else because Goodman Trumball came inside then and saw us sitting by the fire with no sewing or spinning, and he frowned at his wife. I made leave to muck out the barn but I am here in Remembrance with my quill and diary. I cannot let Goody Trumball know I have them. She does not know about the diary.
I must go. I do not know if I can do what Goody Trumball says. I can bury my book, but I do not know if I can burn it. It is all that I have left of my father. And my mother and Thomas.
Of me.
Always before, the words would come faster than I could write them. But today I cannot order my thoughts.
I do not know if God has stepped in to protect me or if evil has stepped in to slay me.
I did as Goody Trumball asked of me. I went to the cottage to fetch the book from the barn so I could bury it. But it was not there. Henry was there, and the chickens, but the book was gone.
Did God bend down from Heaven to hide it for me? Did He take it to some hidden place deep in the earth? Or did He burn it Himself with His fiery eye? Are my lovely stories smoke and ash in some holy hearth?
Or did someone take the book?
I do not know. I do not know.
How will I tell Goody Trumball the book is missing?
I am again at the cottage. Goodman Trumball sent me home. Without Papa’s horse. He let me take Lily, though.
This morning before anyone had broken their fast, Goodman Trumball said aloud, as if to a room of observers, that ’Twas not wise for his growing sons to have a young woman in the house who be not their mother or sister. And so I should return home and await the arrival of my cousin Samuel from England. ’Tis plain as day he wishes me gone. But he wishes not to part with my father’s horse. I care not. I am home.
Goody Trumball wept when I left, but she did not beg her husband to allow me to stay. The Trumball boys stood as still as statues. I offered my spinning top to the younger one, but he would not stretch out his hand to take it.
Again I carried the books and the little wooden chest. I put the coverlet on Lily’s back and my winter cloak, too, since Goodman Trumball did not offer to assist me home.
I write by twilight so I form my letters in near darkness. My thoughts are flying every direction, and I know not what to make of them.
John Peter called on me today. He came on his horse, but stayed on his mount a stone’s throw from the cottage and from there he beckoned me.
I came out of the cottage and bade him good day. I was so happy to see him. It was hard to walk out to him, as if he were only a neighbor come to bid me good day. I wanted to run. I offered him a drink from our well, but he just looked at me as if I had said nothing at all.
“Have you any other relatives in the colony, Mercy? Anyone at all?” he asked.
My first thought was that he wished to court me. With Samuel still away, he wanted to know whom he should ask, because he could wait no longer. I smiled at him. I could not help but smile at him. “I have Samuel, my cousin. He is expected home soon from England.”
“There is no one else?” He did not smile back at me.
“I have an aunt in Maine, Samuel’s mother, and three other cousins there.”
“I will take you to them. Can you leave now?”
God forgive me, but I laughed. “I have not seen them in three winters, John Peter.”
He swung down off his horse and walked toward me. I saw so many things in his eyes as he closed the distance. Affection. Hope. Longing And fear.
“Let me take you to them, Mercy. Please.” He reached out to touch my shoulder. His fingers moved in a caress that anyone standing in the clearing beyond us would not see. The breath within me stilled.
I closed my eyes but for a moment, and when I opened them, his head was inclined toward me, his eyes shiny as a brook. “Please let me take you to them,” he whispered.
I raised my hand to touch his fingers as they rested on my shoulder. He took a step closer to me. I sensed his dread, and in that moment, I knew.
God did not have my book of stories. The magistrates did.
“Are they coming for me?” I asked.
He nodded once.
“When?”
“On the morrow.” He placed his other hand on my shoulder and drew me to his chest. His arms enclosed me tight. I leaned into that warm place between a man’s neck and chest where a turned head fits like a glove. I could feel his chest rising and falling beneath my cheek.
Time could have stopped for me then and I would not have railed against it. I knew there would never be another moment like that one, where every hope and longing within me was silenced by one embrace.
’Twas my falling tears that counted off the seconds, reminding me time had not stopped but marched ever forward. If the magistrates found George Burroughs in Maine, they could surely find me. And they would know who brought me there.
When I sensed John Peter was about to pull away and lift me onto his horse to flee, I spoke. “The magistrates will know I have an aunt in Maine, John. They will know Samuel makes his home there.”
He hesitated only a moment. “Then I will take you somewhere they cannot find you.”
Such wonderful words. Such unattainable words. I leaned heavily into him. “There is no such place.”
“There are other colonies, Mercy. I will find a place.”
“But I am innocent!” I looked up at him.
He cupped my face with his hands. “As was Rebecca Nurse! As was Elizabeth Howe and Susannah Martin! Reason does not reign in Salem, Mercy. Whatever one crazed soul can say about another is believed.”
“Then why cannot I be believed as much as another?”
“Because ’Tis easier to believe ill of someone than good.”
I did not argue. I knew the moment he uttered it, ’Twas true.
“Gather your belongings,” he said in a voice as soft as bare feet on a dirt path. “I will come for you tonight when the moon is high. We will use darkness for cover. I will take you south instead of north. I will find a safe place.” He touched my cheek, his fingertips brushing across wetness. I leaned into his hand.
He moved his palm to rest under my chin and tipped my face toward his own. He leaned over me and bent his head so that our cheekbones whispered against each other. His lips, warm and soft, met mine.
It lasted only a second, as gentle a kiss as the kind my mother lavished on me when she lived. And all the love I felt in my mother’s kisses I felt in that kiss, and every dream I had ever spun between princes and princesses burst through the confines of story and met me in that moment. This was that divine pairing I saw between my papa and my mama and few others. This was that interlacing of body and soul that spoke of a deeper oneness I had but tasted. I know I will never love another.
John Peter stepped away from me—his hand on my chin the last part of him to leave me—and made for his horse.
“Do not be afraid,” he said as he took to the saddle. “I will come for you.”
“I will be waiting,” said I.
He sped away, and I watched him go until the sound of his horse’s hooves melted into the afternoon.
Even now, as night begins to swallow day, I can still feel his touch on my cheek, his lips on mine. I pray God will go with us tonight. I pray Papa would send me away on John Peter’s horse were he here. I pray there is a place that is not consumed with madness.
I must prepare more ink. The hour grows late.