Read Chapter 16: Aftermath of Revelation

The jailer’s wife had taken her sweet time, but at last Nathaniel stood in the narrow, reeking corridor of the Salem gaol, a leather-bound Bible pressed to his chest as if it were a shield. Mercy watched him approach through the iron bars, her fingers wrapped around the cold metal, and she did not realize she had been holding her breath until she saw the book in his hands.

“She gave it willingly?” Mercy asked.

Nathaniel’s face was pale beneath his dusting of freckles. “Not at first. She asked me twice whether you had sent me, and whether you were safe. I told her yes, and that you meant to clear both your names. She pressed the book into my hands and said, ‘Tell Mercy the truth is between the pages her mother marked, not the ones the minister reads aloud.’”

Mercy’s throat tightened. Patience had known. All this time, her sister had kept the Bible close through her own imprisonment, and she had known there was something hidden within it.

“The guard,” Mercy said. “He didn’t question you?”

“He did. I told him I was fetching a psalm book for a condemned woman’s comfort. He looked at me like I was soft in the head—which, to be fair, I may be, standing here in a gaol for a woman accused of consorting with the devil.”

A ghost of a smile crossed Mercy’s lips. “You’re a good man, Nathaniel Putnam. Foolish, but good.”

“I’ll take that as it’s meant.”

They did not dare open the Bible in the prison yard, where watchful eyes might note a prisoner’s sister and a clerk paging through a holy book with too much intent. Instead, Nathaniel led her to the small, cramped office he shared with three other court clerks, a space of scarred desks and ink-stained ledgers and the sour smell of tallow candles. He barred the door behind them and set the Bible on the desk as if it were made of spun glass.

Mercy’s hands hovered over the worn leather. She knew this book. Her mother had read from it every Sabbath, her finger tracing the words as Mercy listened, more to the music of her mother’s voice than to the scripture itself. The spine was cracked, the pages soft with years of handling. She had never thought to look inside it for secrets.

“Your mother’s locket,” Nathaniel said. “You said it had a key inside.”

Mercy fumbled at her neckline and drew out the thin silver chain. The little brass key winked in the candlelight, no longer than her smallest finger. She turned the Bible over in her hands, searching for a lock, for any seam that did not belong. But the book was whole, bound in plain leather with no clasp.

“Patience said the truth was between the pages Mother marked,” Mercy murmured. “But which pages, and how would a key fit between them?”

Nathaniel leaned closer, his breath warm on her cheek. “Look at the edges. Some old Bibles have a hollow cut in the boards.”

Mercy ran her thumb along the edge of the front cover, pressing. Nothing gave. She tried the back cover, and there—a faint give, the leather shifting just a fraction over something firm beneath. She slid the key along the edge, probing, until it caught on a tiny latch hidden in the joint of the binding.

The click was soft as a mouse’s footfall.

The back cover swung open on hinges she had never noticed, revealing a shallow compartment no deeper than her thumb. Inside lay a folded square of paper, yellowed with age, sealed with a drop of wax. Mercy’s hands trembled as she lifted it out.

“The seal is unbroken,” Nathaniel said quietly.

Mercy broke it with her nail. The paper unfolded into a letter written in her mother’s careful, sloping hand—the same hand that had once soothed her fevers and salved her scraped knees and taught her the difference between foxglove and comfrey.

> *My dearest daughters,* > > *If you are reading this, I am gone, and you have found the key your father gave me on our wedding day. I have kept this secret long enough, and I will not carry it to my grave unspoken.* > > *Your father was not a wealthy man, but he was a gifted one. He spent years perfecting a cure for the ague that swept through our villages with the autumn rains. He made a tonic of dogwood bark and feverfew, of willow and a root he would not name to anyone but me. It worked, Mercy. It worked when the Boston physicians could do nothing, when the elders had given up. I saw men rise from their sickbeds on the third day, their fevers broken as cleanly as a snapped twig.* > > *But your father was trusting, and the Devil finds purchase in trusting souls. Dr. Willard came to our door in the winter of 1688, claiming he wished to learn from your father’s skill. He stayed three weeks. He watched. He asked questions. And when he left, your father’s recipe book went with him.* > > *Your father never confronted him. He said he would not start a war he could not win against a man with the town’s ear. But he wrote it all down again, in his own hand, and hid it in the chest my grandmother brought from England—the apothecary chest with the brass corners, in the cottage where you learned your plants.* > > *The key you hold opens that chest. The recipe is within. If Willard ever tries to claim your father’s work as his own, or to harm our family, that paper is your proof.* > > *I am sorry I could not tell you while I lived. I feared what he would do to you. I feared what he has already done to your father’s heart, which never truly mended after his work was stolen.* > > *Be brave, my daughters. Be wise. The truth is a root that grows in the dark, but it will break through the earth in time.* > > *Your loving mother,* > *Elizabeth Hart*

Mercy read the letter twice. The first time, the words blurred and swam. The second time, they struck with terrible, crystalline clarity. Her father had never been sickly, not truly. He had been heartbroken. And Dr. Willard, the man who now whispered accusations into the ears of magistrates, had been the thief who broke him.

“She knew,” Mercy said, her voice barely a whisper. “Mother knew what he was, and she never told us. She kept it hidden to protect us.”

Nathaniel was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “She was right to. If Willard had known she had proof of his theft, he might have turned his accusations on her instead of your father. She bought you years of safety.”

“Years I spent trusting him. Letting him into my cottage. Showing him my herb racks.” Mercy’s fists clenched. “I showed him everything. I thought he was a learned man who wished to share knowledge. All the while he was taking the measure of what he might steal next.”

“He stole from your father a cure. He is manufacturing devilment from your mother’s herbs. And he wants you dead to ensure no one untangles his threads.” Nathaniel’s jaw was set. “This letter, together with the ledger and the death certificate—there is enough here to hang him twice over.”

“There is enough to prove he steals.” Mercy shook her head. “But the trial is not about theft, Nathaniel. It is about witchcraft. I must prove to the court that my accusers were dosed with hallucinogenic herbs, and that Willard is the one who dosed them. His motive for stealing my father’s formula is a thread that connects, but it is not the rope that will save me.”

Nathaniel looked at the letter, then back at her. “Your mother says the formula is in the chest. The apothecary chest in your cottage. With the brass corners.”

“The chest I have walked past a hundred times and never once thought to open.” Mercy laughed, a short, humorless sound. “She taught me nearly everything I know about plants, and she hid the one paper that might have saved me from this fate in a box she knew I would not look inside for fear of disturbing her memory.”

“Perhaps she meant for you to find it when you were ready to truly understand it.” Nathaniel ran a hand through his hair, a nervous gesture she had come to recognize. “What is in the chest now?”

“Herbs. Salves. The tools of my trade.” Mercy paused. “And the paper, if my mother’s words hold true. I need to get to my cottage.”

“That is not possible. The constable posted a man to watch your door after you were arrested. He is there day and night, and he has orders to confiscate anything that could be used in sorcery.”

Mercy’s mind raced. “Then I will not go as myself.”

Nathaniel blinked. “You mean to disguise yourself?”

“I mean to be clever.” Mercy folded the letter carefully and tucked it into the bodice of her dress. “Do you know anyone with a horse and a cart who might make a delivery to the Hart cottage?”

Nathaniel studied her. “The constable’s man is not a fool, but he is also not a man who questions an errand boy. If you wore a hat low and carried a basket of cabbages, you might pass, but your voice—your voice is distinctive, Mercy. He has heard you speak. He arrested you himself.”

“Then he will not stop a woman who does not speak.” Mercy moved to the small window of the office, looking out over the yard. The afternoon light was fading, the shadows long. “Patience walked to the gaol in a dress that was not her own, and the constable’s man saw me dragged away in a gray wool gown. If I borrow clothing from a woman of different station—a cap, a shawl, a posture that bespeaks age—he will look at me and see a servant, not a witch.”

Nathaniel was silent. When she turned, his expression was caught between admiration and worry.

“You are asking me to help you break into your own home under the nose of a guard who is watching for you specifically.”

“I am asking you to help me find the proof that will save my life.” Mercy met his eyes. “And if I am caught, you will say that you knew nothing, that I begged the Bible from you and escaped your sight. You will not hang for my crimes, Nathaniel. I give you my word.”

He shook his head slowly. “Your word is worth little in a court where the accusers have been poisoned against you. But it is worth everything to me out here.”

The words hung in the air between them, heavier than either of them expected.

“Go find me a servant’s dress,” Mercy said quietly. “And a hat. And a basket. I will have to leave town before the gate closes.”

Nathaniel nodded, and then he did something that startled her. He took her hand, his fingers closing around hers, warm and calloused from gripping quills and ledgers.

“Your mother hid this secret to protect you,” he said. “Perhaps she also hid it knowing that one day, you would need it to save yourself. She must have believed you were clever enough to find it when the time came.”

Mercy looked down at their joined hands. “She believed in me more than I believed in myself.”

“Then it is time you began to believe it too.” Nathaniel released her hand and crossed to the door. “Wait here. I will return before the light fails.”

He left, and Mercy stood alone in the clerk’s office, the Bible open on the desk, the empty compartment staring up at her like an eye. She touched the letter against her bodice, feeling its edges through the fabric.

She had a key. She had a chest. And somewhere inside that chest, her father’s stolen work waited to be reclaimed.

Six days until her trial.

Six days to uncover the root of the bindweed that had entangled her.

She would find it. She would pull it up by the roots. And she would not let Dr. Willard’s poison choke her any longer.