Wicked Girls (18 page)

Mercy does not answer

when I knock on her door.

“'Tis but Ann,” I say sweetly,

and push open the door.

“What do you want, Ann?” she asks.

She and her room look like a hailstorm

furied down upon them.

“What can I do to help?” I ask her.

“Nothing. Leave me rest,” Mercy snaps,

and turns from me. “I must think.

We have more trials and hangings,

but we must stop harming the innocent.

We must have strategy.

Oh, my head does ache.”

I purse my lips to whistle in Wilson

but stop before sound escapes my mouth.

I inch to Mercy's side and stroke her hair.

“There must be something
I
can do,” I say.

She brushes off my hand.

“I know you mean to help,

but just go home, Ann.

Leave me my peace.

I will see you come 'morrow.”

I turn to leave.

“Will you not come back home, Mercy?

Mother misses you, Father too.

I miss you most.”

“I know that you do,” she says,

and rushes me out the door.

Even though he sits still and peaceful

as a river on a windless day,

I growl at Wilson.

Though he gnarls not one tooth,

I still kick him: “Stupid dog.”

He yelps, and I muzzle the devilish thing.

Ingersoll's smells of rot,

week-old bones aboveground.

I hold my sleeve to my nose.

“I seen not a specter,”

I say. “Has anyone
honestly
seen one?”

None speaks.

“This must end.”

I say it bold.

Silence. The drip of a leaky roof,

the pant of canine tongue.

Abigail smiles. Margaret seems

to almost nod, and Elizabeth clasps

my hand.

Ann shakes her head.

“Have you all gone mad?”

she finally says. “We shall return

to nothing, if we are not seers.

The Lord has chosen us

to be guides, and we shall do so

as long as the Lord permit us.”

“We are not chosen to see.

We have been choosing who to see.

And who are we to choose?

This must end.”

I pound the table.

Ann grabs my arm

rough enough Wilson barks,

and the few folks in Ingersoll's

eye us. “Giles Corey.

You are made ill by Goodman Corey,”

she orders me like a servant.

I shake free of her

and march sure-footed

out of that grave-digging hole.

Elizabeth stares out my window.

“It is too quiet,” she says.

I wave her off, pull the brush

through my locks,

but when I listen

the night has lost

its hum and chirp,

no horse hooves sound,

no wind shakes the branches.

We hear the front door

bang open and the Constable

brush off his boots.

He thumps into his seat

at the table. I push Elizabeth

away from the door,

so that my ear presses against it.

“The committee went to see

the kin of those witches.”

I know the voice, but cannot

place the speaker.

Elizabeth's hand twists the doorknob,

but I stop her from opening the door.

Constable says, “They suffer.

I think Reverend was right

to leave the Nurse family be.”

An insistent tap tap tap

at the door, and another

enters the house.

Elizabeth's body arches.

Her skin pales, just listening

to the new footsteps, the drag

of her uncle's cane.

“If he knows I am here,

he will beat me raw.”

Elizabeth slumps to the ground.

“Worry not, we will sneak

you home faster than your uncle

can travel. Hush now!” I say.

“How fare all in Andover?”

The man whose voice

I still cannot recognize asks Doctor Griggs.

“They have caught not only

scarlet fever, but the young girls

be afflicted by witches.

Witches are coming out

everywhere to overtake

Essex County, it seems.”

Doctor Griggs lowers himself

creak by creak into a chair.

“All more reason why we must talk

to our brethren not attending church.”

The mystery voice grows larger now,

powerful enough I wonder if the speaker

be not one of the magistrates.

Constable stands with a dull thud.

He bangs his head on the low ceiling beam

above the table as he always does.

“All these witches in Andover

I hear do confess to signing

the Devil's book,” he says.

“Who is with the Constable

and Doctor Griggs?” I ask Elizabeth.

She shakes her head.

“Well, never to mind,” I say.

Elizabeth grabs my arm.

“The Devil's Affliction

is spreading across the county?”

I shrug. “How can that be?”

Wilson gnarls his teeth at me.

I drag him to Ingersoll's,

where Elizabeth and Margaret

and Abigail do congregate.

“What are you doing with Mercy's dog?”

Abigail asks, and pets the beast.

Wilson nuzzles her hand.

“I would not touch him

were I you. This dog be Charlotte Easty's

familiar.” I nod my head.

Margaret lowers her voice to a hush.

“You know 'tis a lie.

Wilson be first your father's dog

and then be Mercy's.” Margaret signals

Wilson to come to her side, and he does.

I huddle the girls around me.

“Mercy talks a fool lately

about quitting our accusations.

She needs be taught a lesson,” I say.

“But you don't mean to hurt Wilson.”

Elizabeth now hugs the ratty fleabag.

“Oh, Elizabeth. 'Tis but a dog;

your fits have sent
Christians

to Gallows Hill,” I say.

Elizabeth motions Wilson to leave

with her, tears channeling down her cheek.

“Are you so quick in your boots

to return to Doctor Griggs and his beatings?

Your home is here with us.

Give up that dog and sit down,” I command.

Margaret rises to rescue the dog.

“Forget not, Margaret, Mercy be not your friend.

She be always before your enemy.

Why defend her? What bind has she to you?”

Abigail sobs, “So Mercy be banished from us?”

I shake my head.

“No. She just needs be taught

a lesson.”

I stare at Elizabeth

as they shoot him,

a creature without growl or bite,

but only lying there in the sun.

The sound of the gun

blocks out all else

as though everything

stops moving except the bullet.

Ann and Abigail nod.

“That's the beast

Charlotte Easty's specter

rode and tortured,” Abigail says.

My sweet dog's blood floods

the ground, pooling

toward Ann's feet,

but she remains unmoved.

The tears burn my cheeks.

“This be wrong,”

I say to Elizabeth.

Elizabeth with her soft eyes

looks to embrace me,

but I shrug away.

“Wilson never did but love.

It be we who do the Devil's work,”

I say.

I run toward my Wilson

but like a root snarling my path,

Ann trips me and says,

“Don't dare touch that dog!”

My face blares red as Wilson's blood.

I leave her and Abigail and Elizabeth.

I march away from them and their stench.

I knock but Mercy

does not respond.

I crack open her door.

Her clothes crumple

over her body, her room

dungeon damp and dingy.

She stands up in her

undergarments;

and, without even

looking at me, Mercy leads

me out of her room.

Elizabeth, Margaret and I

ride to town,

silent as the cornfields we pass.

“Mercy is not herself,”

I say with a slight smile.

“Leave Mercy be,”

Elizabeth snaps,

quick and mean

like an angry gnat,

unlike herself.

I don't look at Elizabeth

the rest of the ride into town.

Before we testify against him,

Judge Stoughton asks Giles Corey,

“How will ye be tried?”

Giles Corey says nothing.

His lips, like great boulders,

will not be moved.

“Will you not enter a plea?”

Judge Stoughton's eyebrows

frown on his forehead.

All the judges look

to one another and murmur;

still Goodman Corey

does not speak.

I look to Mercy for what to do,

but she is not here.

I signal the girls to stay quiet.

“If you do not enter a plea,

that by God and your country

ye are either guilty or innocent,

ye shall be given peine forte et dure.”

Judge Stoughton peers

over his table to meet

Giles in the eye.

Giles nods his head.

“Ye will be pressed to death,”

Judge Stoughton says.

The courtroom chatter

escalates to frenzy,

more noise today than ever before.

Judge calls the day

as he cannot calm the crowd.

Though the mosquitoes

bite fierce and the hour falls

deep in the belly of the night,

I do sneak from the house.

I cannot be contained.

I crunch through the thicket.

I pat my thigh

three times calling

for the ghost of my dog,

the only one who really cared

for me in this town,

now rotting in a shallow grave.

I faint back into leaves

loosed from fat-trunked trees

and bury myself.

I wish to find family

somewhere, even if it's underground.

Isaac be there to watch Giles Corey

die,

the man for whom he rode 'bout town,

petitions in his satchel,

trying to save.

As they do drop heavy stones

'pon Goodman Corey's chest

I clutch my own heart.

Why never did Isaac visit me

or speak to me after

he peeled away my bloomers?

My anger flattened out,

I wish to be back against Isaac's chest.

I be not understanding why

Giles asks for more weight.

I fear well enough the stone

I'd be bearing were the town

to know I sinned out of wedlock.

They send all us home

for the night scares the sky,

and Giles Corey cannot yet be crushed.

My throat's dry as the ground.

The oxcart of eight condemned witches

catches in the road.

Abigail shouts, “The Devil

holds back the wheel.”

Ann nods. “Yea,

the Devil tries to save

his witches from their hanging.”

The cart breaks free of the rut

and journeys to the top

of Gallows Hill.

Elizabeth recites the Lord's Prayer.

Margaret nudges her to quiet,

then directs her eyes to Isaac.

The crowd's breath upon my neck,

I feel no tingles,

no power in my fingers.

The sky above layered with gray,

I cannot tell where the light

comes from or if the sun

shines down at all.

Martha Corey

folds her hands to God.

I pray for swift death,

but she gasps,

for the noose

is not quite tight enough

to break her neck.

Her body convulses like shocks

of lightning flaring the sky

for fifteen minutes.

Elizabeth and I clasp each other

in iron-bound restraint

so we will not run up

and cut her rope.

They noose the last witch,

Samuel Wardwell:

a man I do not know,

have never seen.

He opens his mouth

to proclaim his innocence,

but the executioner's pipe smoke

chokes him and clogs his last words.

The crowd rumbles and storms.

“The Devil stands beside the witch

on the hanging platform.”

Abigail yells above the mob's

mumbles and roars.

I see nothing.

I want to say I see nothing,

that I am tired

and wish to be left alone,

wish to be like the field

left fallow this autumn.

I stay mute now,

but 'tis too late.

What, Lord, have I done?

Reverend Parris

shakes his head at the corpses

dangling by their necks.

“What a sad thing it is to see

eight firebrands of Hell hanging there.”

Ann lifts her chin like a general

and says, “We meet 'morrow

at Ingersoll's.”

“Not I.”

The wind blows behind me,

and hurries me to the Constable's.

I burrow under bedcovers

as if I were among the soil

and the rocks and the worms.

As if I were all bones, no brain,

as rotted on the outside

as I feel poisoned within.