The Shape of Mercy (14 page)

When Clarissa shouted at me to “come meet this guy who knows Tom Cruise!” I looked to see if Raul was watching me leave.

He wasn’t.

I lost track of him after that. I spent the rest of the evening keeping a drunk Clarissa on her feet and out of trouble.

We got back to my parents’ house a little after two in the morning. Raul and Cole headed to the game room to play video games. Cole didn’t ask Clarissa and me to join them. It was obvious Clarissa was in no shape to do anything but go to bed. I led her upstairs.

Clarissa slept in late the next morning and missed the guys’ departure back to Palo Alto. I drove them to the municipal airport in Santa Monica twenty minutes away. Along the way, Cole and Raul talked about the party, how much fun it was, and how they’d clobbered every mismatched team that tried to beat them in sand volleyball. I just steered and listened.

“Tell me what you think of
Robinson Crusoe
when you finish,” Raul said as he got out of my car. He handed me a slip of paper. “It’s my e-mail address.”

Cole mussed my hair, told me I should go find a barrette or something, and thanked me for the ride to the airport.

“Bring Clarissa to the next Sorry,” he called as he walked away from the car. “She’s kind of fun.”

Raul lingered just a second longer. “That was nice what you did for Clarissa last night.”

“What?”

“I saw how you spent the rest of the evening watching out for her. She’s lucky to have you for a friend.”

No words would come.

He smiled at me and left to catch up with Cole.

I didn’t stay to watch them take off.

I went to the tavern with Papa to see what Tituba, Goody Goode, and Goody Osborne would say to the charges against them. So large a crowd gathered that we had to move the whole assembly to the meetinghouse
.

I wish I had not gone. It was akin to a nightmare, what I saw
.

There, in front of the entire Village, while Goody Goode shouted her innocence, the afflicted girls began to scream and writhe, twisting their limbs in terrible ways and seeming to choke as if being hung. People rushed to soothe and calm them, and all the while the girls cried that they were being tormented by Goody Goode, though she laid not a hand on them. And when the magistrates bade Goody Goode explain why she did such things, Goody Goode, her eyes ablaze with fear, said it was not she who afflicted the girls, but Goody Osborne!

Then Goody Osborne was brought in and the girls were taken to the back of the meetinghouse so as not to be tortured by her
.

The magistrates asked Goody Osborne with what evil spirit she had familiarity, and had she indeed made a pledge with the Devil, and many more questions. She denied all the charges
.

The afflicted girls fell into fits behind her. It was like a nightmare again
.

Then Tituba was brought in
.

They asked of her the same questions. I could see that Tituba was afraid and desired to give the magistrates whatever they wanted so it would go well with her. They wanted to know if the Devil appeared to her. She told them she thought perhaps he had. The room went silent. They asked her to explain. She said she saw a dark man in the lean-to who bade her to serve him but she said she would not. The dark man told her Sarah Osborne and Sarah Goode hurt children at his bidding and he would have her do the same. He threatened to kill the children if she did not do his bidding. She was asked if anything else appeared to her, and she said she had seen a hog and black dog with the dark man
.

And a yellow bird
.

And a red cat. And a black cat
.

Then Tituba told the magistrates she rides on a pole through the air and Sarah Goode and Sarah Osborne ride with her
.

I, who have an imagination, could see that Tituba was creating a story such as the magistrates, the townspeople, and the afflicted girls wished to hear. The magistrates desired details and would not be satisfied without them. She, who is of a mind to do as she is told by her master, obeyed
.

The girls then fell into more fits, Elizabeth Hubbard being in as agitated a state as ever seen. Tituba joined them, falling into a fit herself
.

Goody Osborne, Goody Goode, and Tituba were led back to the jail
.

I fled the meetinghouse. I did not even care to see John Peter, though I know he was there. Everyone was there
.

I am in my writing tree. Papa stayed in the Village to confer with the menfolk. He will be home soon and will have news
.

I do not want to hear it.

A
bigail was not in the room with me when I stopped for the evening a little after seven. The transcription work that day had been mind numbing. I had to ask Abigail several times to help me decipher words that had faded to ghostly near nothingness. It unnerved her to look down at the diary’s pages. I could see it in her eyes and expression. But she did what needed to be done to help me and then quickly looked away.

At one point she told me just to go with my instincts, that I was certainly a better judge of what Mercy was trying to say than she was.

That didn’t make any sense to me. I had no longstanding familiarity with the diary. I asked her what she meant by it.

“You are practically the same age as Mercy was,” she said.

I told her that didn’t mean anything. Clarissa, my roommate, and I were the same age and had absolutely nothing in common.

Abigail laughed lightly and began to walk away from me. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

Abigail didn’t even know Clarissa. The little she knew about her I had told her. “We’re completely different,” I called to her.

Abigail reached the library door. “That doesn’t mean you don’t have anything in common.”

Then she was gone.

That was an hour ago. She hadn’t come back.

The diary entry for that day had been frustrating to read. I couldn’t
understand what made those girls do what they had done. How could they throw themselves into fits like that? Were they brilliant actors? Were they truly delusional? Were they physically ill? Mentally ill?

I itched to get on the Internet and do some research, but Abigail didn’t have Internet access, and I knew I wouldn’t go back to my dorm and do any sleuthing on my own. I had promised her.

Firstborns and Duroughs are promise keepers.

But I also knew I wouldn’t rest that night if I didn’t have at least a vague idea of what had gone wrong in Salem. I had a sociology test to study for, and I didn’t want these troubling thoughts interfering with the long night of studying I had ahead of me.

I saved the file and walked to the library door. I opened it, planning to look down the long hall to see if there was a light on in the kitchen, thinking I might find Abigail there.

Instead, my eyes met a thin ribbon of light under the sitting room doors across from me.

I crossed the hallway and tapped on the door. Several seconds ticked by before Abigail answered me.

“Come in, Lauren,” she said.

I opened the door. Abigail sat in a high-back wing chair facing a long, empty sofa. She held a cup of tea in her hands. A single lamp burned next to her on a marble-topped table.

“All finished for today?” She didn’t look at me. Her eyes were on the empty sofa.

“Yes.”

“Well, good night, then.”

“Actually I wanted to ask you something before I head out.”

She slowly turned her head to look at me. “Yes?”

“It’s about the fits those girls had. Do you know if they were they real? Did they really have symptoms the doctors could not explain? Or were they pretending?”

Abigail turned back to face the sofa. “They’d be as monstrous as
witches themselves if they were pretending. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

I hadn’t thought of it that way, but it made sense. If those girls were putting on an act, it was incredibly evil. Perhaps that was exactly what I meant.

“Wouldn’t they be?” I said. “I mean, we know how this turns out. Those girls were responsible for so many deaths.”

“Are they the ones responsible?” Abigail’s eyes rested on a satin-covered throw pillow, perfectly fluffed by nonuse. “They never touched the hanging rope.”

“They set everything in motion,” I answered.

Abigail said nothing for a long moment.

“You want to know if their behavior can be explained any other way,” she finally said.

“Yes.”

She turned to face me again. “And you haven’t gone looking for explanations on your own?”

“I told you I wouldn’t.”

She smiled. “So you did.”

I expected her at this point to invite me to sit down with her. She didn’t. She just faced the sofa again.

“A graduate student published an article thirty years ago suggesting the afflicted girls might have eaten moldy grain. There is a plant fungus that, in one of its stages of development, contains a chemical compound similar to one found in LSD. But of course, if these girls from different households were ill from it, then all of Salem should have been too. Certainly the other members of the girls’ families. Plus, as other colleagues pointed out in the same magazine, the girls’ symptoms came and went. A hallucinogenic poison does not know when court is session, but that’s when the girls fell to the floor writhing.”

“So they were faking it,” I said.

Abigail took a sip of her tea before answering. “If you are asking me if I think these girls were victims of a mind-altering fungus, I would say no.”

“And there are no other explanations?”

“Encephalitis would explain some of their symptoms. Before the trials started, that is.”

“But not after?”

“Well, what do you think?” Abigail met my gaze.

“I … I don’t know much about encephalitis.”

Abigail’s smile was wan. “But what do you know about people, Lauren?”

I said nothing. I didn’t know how to answer her.

“I’m not expecting you to answer that. Look, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Besides, you have a test to study for. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She brought her teacup to her mouth. We were done.

I said good-bye, left her, and drove home. Clarissa was out when I got back to the dorm.

I studied for my test until nine thirty, checked my e-mail, then worked on my dad’s project until I could stand it no longer. I googled “encephalitis.”

Abigail was right. An acute inflammation of the brain would explain the seizures, the disorientation, the fever.

But it would not explain how Betty Parris and Abigail Williams fell to the meetinghouse floor in agony, screaming they were being tormented by the ailing Sarah Osborne.

Nothing medical seemed to explain
that.

I got into bed and read a chapter of
Robinson Crusoe
, but I couldn’t concentrate on the words. I turned out the light.

Clarissa didn’t come in until after two.

I wandered in and out of sleep.

Papa bade me go with him again to the meetinghouse. I pleaded to stay at the cottage, but Papa said one cannot pretend that what one does not like does not exist
.

Today, Ann Putnam told the magistrates that the shape of Dorcas Goode, the daughter of Sarah Goode, appeared to her and demanded she sign the Devil’s book
.

The child is four years old!

Tituba then said she has seen names in the Devil’s book
.

I do not think Tituba knows how to read. How does she recognize names?

No one asked her this.

John Peter came for eggs after the proceedings. He asked what I thought of the events at the meetinghouse.

I did not know what to say. I do not know what he thinks.

I told him I fear the Village has lost sight of God and His tender provision.

He paid more than he should have for the eggs. He would not allow me to take less.