Read Chapter 19: The Hunting of Mercy

The cold of the fields beyond Salem’s walls seeped through Mercy’s shift as dawn crept grey over the horizon. She knelt among the tall weeds where Nathaniel had bid her stay, the apothecary chest clutched against her breast like a shield. Her breath fogged the air. A mile ahead, the town gate stood shut, and inside it, Patience awaited a conviction that would seal her fate within hours.

Nathaniel had gone ahead to fetch the servant’s dress and to scout the gate house. He’d pressed her hand before he left—a gesture she’d read as reassurance, though his knuckles were white with fear. He knows the risk. He goes anyway. She turned the locket over in her palm, the tiny key cold against her skin.

Then she heard them.

Horses. Three of them, thundering down the lane from the town’s westward road. Mercy dropped flat in the ditch, the bindweed and goldenrod swallowing her skirts. The riders passed within twenty yards—she saw the doctor’s black coat, the shine of his buckled shoes, and behind him two men with cudgels slung from their saddles.

Willard did not slow. He rode straight for her cottage.

Mercy’s stomach dropped. The chest was here. The formula was safe. But her cottage held her father’s tools, her drying racks, her mother’s garden journal—all she had left of them. And if Willard meant to destroy evidence, the place would be ash by noon.

She waited until the dust settled, then ran. Not toward town. Toward her home.

By the time she reached the cottage through the rear orchards, smoke curled from the kitchen window. Not the broad pillar of full fire—a thin, choking grey, as if they had doused the hearth and let it smolder. She crept to the gable window and peered inside.

Willard stood over the overturned apothecary table, his face a mask of fury. The two men had upended every shelf, every jar, every bundle of dried herbs now scattered like dead leaves across the floor. One of them kicked over a mortar and pestle with a clatter.

“It was here,” Willard hissed. “The girl’s father kept his ledgers beneath the floorboards. She had them. Where are they gone?”

“Mayhap the girl carried them off,” said the smaller man.

“Then find her. She cannot have gone far. She spent the night outside the walls—she is afoot, alone, and hunted.” Willard’s eyes swept the room once more, then fixed on the hearth where the fire licked at a torn page of her mother’s recipe book. “Burn it all. Every scrap. Every leaf. Let her have nothing.”

Mercy’s hands trembled. A rage—hot, grief-stricken—rose in her throat. She was about to move, to do something foolish, when a body slammed into her from behind, pinning her against the wall.

“Got her,” grunted the second man, his hand clapped over her mouth.

She bit him. He yelped and loosened his grip, and she twisted free, but the damage was done—the cry brought Willard to the door. He stood on the threshold, his doctor’s face composed, mild, almost kindly. It was the same face he had worn when he attended her father’s illness. The same face that had watched her father die.

“Mercy Hart.” He said her name like a verdict. “I heard you found something in your family’s Bible. Something that once belonged to your father.”

She backed away, the chest still pressed to her chest.

“You think I stole from your father,” Willard said softly. “You think I have wronged you. But I have given this town its only physician. I have saved more lives in a year than your father’s cold tea ever did.”

“You let him die,” Mercy spat. “You had his cure and you let him die.”

Willard’s composure cracked, just for an instant. A flicker of something black passed over his face. “The fever returns every ten years,” he said. “It will return this winter. And when it does, Salem will need me. They will need what I have. Not some girl’s hedgewife remedy that will fail in a week.”

“You mean to sell it.”

“I mean to command the price of it.” He stepped forward. “Give me the chest, Mercy, and I will speak for you at trial. I will say the accusations against you are the ravings of a frightened child, and the magistrates will listen. They always do.”

Mercy held the chest tighter. Her mother’s voice, thin as paper, echoed in her memory: *This is the truth, child. Never let it go.*

“No.”

Willard’s jaw tightened. He gestured, and the small man lunged.

Mercy dodged left, but the second man had circled behind her. A hand caught her wrist, and another seized the chest. She screamed, and the chest was torn from her grasp, the clasp biting into her palm as it ripped away.

Then the corner of her vision exploded white, and a heavy body crashed into the smaller man, sending him sprawling into the doorway. Nathaniel Pike rose from the tangle, his face bloodied above the eye, a wooden stake in his hand. He swung once, catching the big man across the ribs.

The man grunted and dropped the chest. It landed at Mercy’s feet.

“Run,” Nathaniel shouted.

She scooped it up, but Willard had recovered, snatching a fireplace poker from the hearth. He brought it down toward Nathaniel’s skull. Nathaniel threw up his arm—there was a sickening crack and he fell to one knee, his whole body shuddering.

“The formula,” Mercy cried.

Willard turned to her, the poker still raised. “You will burn like your mother should have.”

Nathaniel surged up beneath the doctor, headbutting him in the gut. The two men—Willard and Nathaniel—went down in a storm of fists and clattering wood. Mercy saw the big man stirring, reaching for his cudgel, and she did the only thing she knew. She scooped a handful of dried cayenne from the littered floor and flung it into his eyes.

He howled, clawing at his face.

Nathaniel wrestled free of Willard, who had gone still, winded. Blood poured from Nathaniel’s brow, streaking his cheek. He seized Mercy’s wrist.

“Go. Now.”

They fled through the rear door into the orchard, branches whipping at their faces. Behind them, Willard’s shouts rose hoarse and desperate. The small man had limped after them, but the path through the dense apple trees gave cover, and soon the sounds faded—exhausted, not gone.

Mercy pulled Nathaniel behind a thick hedge at the edge of the woods. They both collapsed among the roots. For a long moment, neither spoke. Nathaniel’s breath came in ragged gasps, and one of his hands pressed to his side, where the poker had caught him.

“Your arm,” she said.

“It’s not broke.” He tried to grin, but the pain twisted it. “Hurry. We must be past the gate by dawn.”

Mercy looked at him—his bloodied face, his torn coat, the dust and bruise rising on his cheekbone. He had risked his life for a formula that could clear only her. Not his sister. Not his name. He had thrown himself into the path of a man who could end him with a word.

“Why?” she asked quietly.

Nathaniel met her eyes. Something passed between them—a thing unnamed, but solid as the chest in her hands.

“Because you’re not a witch,” he said simply. “And someone ought to live to say so.”

Mercy let out a shaky breath. For the first time in this long, dark week, she believed him fully. Not as a lover, not as a protector. As a witness.

They could not trust the small man to keep his mouth shut. By now, Willard knew the formula was no longer hidden. He knew Mercy had it. And he knew she had seen his face when he burned her mother’s garden journal.

She looked down at the chest, then up at the grey morning sky.

“We need a place where he cannot find us,” she said. “And a way to show the court what he is before Patience is sentenced.”

Nathaniel’s eyes widened. “Mercy, the gates open at nine. The same hour your sister’s verdict is read.”

“Then I will not be outside the gate,” she said. “I will be inside the court.”