The Shape of Mercy

by Susan Meissner

  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.

  Abigail 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?”

&
nbsp; 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.

  Seventeen

  3 March 1692

  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.

  6 March 1692

  Still it goes on, this endless exercise. The Village is mad with interest in the Devil’s ways. Who among us remembers it is God’s ways we are to embrace? Townsfolk see the shape of Sarah Goode in their barns, in their cottages, in their dreams. She comes to them with knives and threats. Ann Putnam now says she saw the shape of Elizabeth Proctor among a company of witches and that Goodwife Proctor proceeded to bite and choke her. I do not know what to make of any of it. Elizabeth Proctor’s husband, Goodman John Proctor, owns a tavern and is wealthy. She is not what anyone would call strange. And she is with child.

  I did not go to the meetinghouse today.

  Papa did not ask me to.

  7 March 1692

  Tituba, Goody Goode, and Goody Osborne have been sent to Boston in chains to await their trial.

  I have no zeal within me for stories.

  13 March 1692

  Mercy Lewis, Mary Walcott, and Mary Warren have joined the ranks of the afflicted. Ann Putnam has accused Martha Corey of witchcraft. Goody Corey is not a foreigner like Tituba, not odd like Goody Goode, and not ill like Goody Osborne. She is a godly woman. She is like any woman of good standing in the Village. And yet the charges are heeded.

  Betty Parris has been sent away to live with family in Salem Town to ease her afflictions.

  I told Prudence Dawes when I saw her at Ingersoll’s that it was wise for Betty to have been sent away. I think Prudence mistook my meaning She looked at me as though I had said Betty was the cause of all the trouble.

  The end of the week came swiftly. By Thursday I was halfway through March in Mercy’s diary. I finished the March 13 entry a few minutes before six, and Abigail, who knew I was going home again that weekend to work on my dad’s proposal, told me I could stop there. But she wanted me to eat dinner with her anyway.

  I correctly assumed she was in the mood to talk that particular afternoon. She wouldn’t have asked me to stay if she weren’t.

  I waited to see what was on her mind before telling her what was on mine. She had only taken one bite of her brie en croûte before launching into book talk. I should’ve guessed it would be about a book.

  “What are you reading for pleasure these days, Lauren?”

  I felt my face color. I hoped she didn’t notice. “Um … Robinson Crusoe?

  She did.

  “Well, that’s nothing to be ashamed about, Lauren,” she said, cocking her head, waiting for me to spill the reason reading Robinson Crusoe made me blush.

  “I know it’s not.”

  She waited and I chewed.

  “You’ve not read it before?” she said.

  “No.” I took a sip of water.

  “I’m surprised.” Abigail blotted the corner of her mouth with her napkin. “You’re such a fan of British literature.”

  I shrugged. “For a long time I just didn’t think I would enjoy reading about a man marooned alone on an island.”

  “Mmm. And now you think you would?”

  I coughed on a flake of phyllo dough and looked up at Abigail, She was smiling. “No. Not really,” I said.

  “Someone recommended you read it?”

  “Yes.” I took another sip of water.

  “A professor?”

  I set the glass down. “A friend.”

  “You know, I’ve always thought that Mr. Crusoe was a bit elitist for all he learned about life on that island. Even when he had no one and nothing, he set himself up as master of all that he saw. He taught the native he named Friday to call him Master instead of Friend, when what he really needed at that point was a friend, not a servant.”

  I didn’t know if Abigail was really that annoyed with the fictional hero or playing the devil’s advocate.

  “Well, I don’t know that he thought of himself as master of everything. I think his attitude of subduing the island was more about survival. Doesn’t the island deepen his relationship with God?” I said. “Doesn’t he begin to see himself as the created and not the Creator?”

  “And yet he introduces Friday to Christianity and keeps him as a slave.”

  “I guess Defoe was just keeping it real,” I ventured. “That was the custom of the day, to own servants. I do think Crusoe wishes he had listened to his parents instead of running off to do whatever he wanted. He seems repentant about that.”

  “Oh, I’m not saying Mr. Crusoe didn’t wish he had listened to reason before he left England. It’s just that he repents as a lord and not a pauper. He learned his lesson, but he saw himself as a privileged man in a hostile environment, not a broken man in the everyday environment of need.”

  I hadn’t read enough to know if she was right. I wondered what Raul would have said had he been there.

  “I used to think that way,” Abigail said, her voice soft.

  Pardon?”

  “I used to think I was a privileged woman in a hostile environment.”

  “Why did you think that?” I kept my voice soft too, coaxing her to continue.

  “Because I was raised like you were, in a home where money was as abundant as expectations. What couldn’t be controlled with money seemed grossly unfair. Hostile, even. But that was just the ordinary world I’d come up against. That was everyday life, and everyday life is full of choices. The privileged have very few truly difficult choices thrown upon them, Lauren. So when we’re called upon to make them, we’ve no history of success or failure.”

  I didn’t quite agree with her there. It’s a ridiculous notion that the rich have no troubles. But I wanted her to keep talking. I was certain she was reminiscing about the man she wished she had married. “What was it you came up against?”

  “I had to make a choice. I made a poor one.”

  “What did you choose?”

  She hesitated for only a moment. “I chose the easy way.”

  “The easy way?”

  “The way that left me alone.”

  Esperanza appeared at that mom
ent to take away the brie and replace it with scallops in a sherry sauce.

  I waited until she left. “Who said that was the easy way?”

  Abigail raised her head and smiled. “Who, indeed?”

  She said nothing else. She thought I was being facetious, but I wasn’t. I really wanted to know. Why had Abigail not married the man she loved?

  I could only think of one reason a rich young woman wouldn’t marry the man she loved: he had no money, and that woman feared losing her social standing, the respect of her family, or perhaps even her wealth. So she chose ease over love.

  This is what Abigail had done. I was certain of it.

  “Abigail, what was his name?” I asked.

  She cut a scallop in two. “It doesn’t matter.” She didn’t look at me.

  “Yes, it does.”

  Abigail pierced the scallop with her fork. “Not anymore.”

  But I could see it did matter. Anyone could see it.

  For several long minutes, we said nothing to each other. We ate our scallops, the breeze toyed with our napkins, and a lone bee buzzed about the floral centerpiece.

  “The transcription work was hard today,” she finally said, letting me know we were done rummaging around in her past.

  “Yes.”

  The bee flew away.

  “There are more entries like that one, I’m afraid,” she said. “Time has not been overly kind to the diary.”

  Or to you, I thought. “I hadn’t heard of someone appearing as a shape to someone else. Those sentences threw me, especially since they were so hard to read,” I said.

  “That was called spectral evidence. Many of the Salem convictions were based on spectral evidence. By autumn of 1692, it was no longer allowed, but by that time it was too late.”

  “And spectral evidence was …?”

  “It was one person saying he or she saw the specter or the shape of someone else, sitting in the rafters above their cooking fire, prancing about their kitchen, or hovering over them as they slept, sticking them with pins and knives.”

  The thought sent a shiver down my spine. “Like ghosts?”