Read Chapter 23: The Fever's Toll

The cottage door hung crooked on its hinges, and the smell of crushed herbs and overturned clay rose to meet them like a ghost. Mercy stepped over the threshold without waiting for Donne, her boots crunching on shattered glass. The apothecary chest sat where Nathaniel had dropped it—battered but whole—and she fell to her knees beside it, fingers finding the latch.

“Thank God,” she breathed.

Donne stood in the doorway, his dark coat dusted with road dirt. “We should be quick. Hathorne’s bail terms were specific about your movements.”

“Let him come,” Mercy muttered, but she was already lifting vials, sniffing corked bottles, setting aside the ones that had cracked. Feverfew. Willow bark. A small pouch of Jesuit’s bark powder that her father had hoarded like gold. She held it up to the grey light. Enough for one strong dose. Maybe two.

She stuffed the pouch into her bodice and stood. “I need fire. A clean pot. And you need to keep the constables away from Donne’s study.”

“Mercy—” Donne began.

“Nathaniel is there. Injured. Unarmed. If Willard’s friends come looking for me, they’ll find him first.” She met the minister’s eyes. “Please.”

Donne hesitated, then nodded once. “I’ll go to him. Take the back lanes. If anyone asks, you were never here.”

Mercy was already out the door.

---

Abigail’s house smelled of sickness—vinegar and sweat and the sweet rot of something deeper. Mercy pushed past the mother at the door, who clutched a rag to her mouth and wept without sound.

“She’s been calling your name,” the mother said. “Over and over. ‘Mercy will come. Mercy will fix it.’ The girls who came to pray for her left an hour ago. They said she was already dead.”

“She’s not dead,” Mercy said flatly. “Where is she?”

The bedroom was dark, curtains drawn against the New England light. Abigail lay on her back, lips cracked, skin grey as ash. Her breath came in shallow hitches that made Mercy’s chest ache. She set down her satchel and pressed two fingers to the girl’s wrist. The pulse was there—thin and fluttery, like a bird trapped under ice.

“Abigail,” Mercy said softly. “It’s Mercy Hart. I’m going to save you. But you have to fight.”

The girl’s eyelids flickered. Her lips moved.

Mercy leaned closer. “What?”

“I told them,” Abigail whispered. “I told them you were a witch. That you came to me in dreams. But it wasn’t true. None of it was true.”

“I know.” Mercy opened the pouch of Jesuit’s bark powder and tipped it into a clay cup. The powdered bark was bitter and dark, the color of dried blood. She added a little water from the pitcher by the bed, stirred with her finger. “Dr. Willard gave you something to make you sick. I smelled it on his breath the day he visited you. I knew it then, but I couldn’t prove it.”

Abigail’s eyes widened. “He said—he said if I accused you, my father would be given the shop on High Street. He said we’d never want for bread again.”

Mercy held the cup to the girl’s lips. “Drink.”

Abigail gagged, but Mercy cupped her chin and forced her to swallow. The girl coughed, spattering brown liquid across her chin, but Mercy was already mixing the second dose—feverfew and willow bark this time, crushed together with a pestle she’d brought from her own kit.

“It will bring the fever down,” Mercy said. “The bark I gave you fights the sickness Willard put in your blood. But you need to tell the court. Publicly. Before more people die.”

“They’ll hate me.”

“They’ll hate me more,” Mercy said. “That’s not the point. The point is the truth.”

Abigail stared at her a long moment. Then she gripped Mercy’s wrist with thin, hot fingers.

“He hurt you too,” the girl said. “In the jailhouse. I heard the guards talking. He wanted your mother’s formula.”

Mercy’s throat tightened. “He wanted more than that.”

“Tell me.”

The words came out before Mercy could stop them. “He courted my mother. She refused him. So he accused her of witchcraft, and watched her hang.”

The silence in the room was broken only by Abigail’s ragged breathing. Then the girl pushed herself to her elbows, her face contorted with effort.

“Help me up.”

“You can’t—”

“I can. I will.” Abigail swung her legs over the side of the bed, swaying. Mercy caught her before she fell. “The court convenes at noon. If I have to crawl there, I’ll do it.”

Mercy looked at the girl’s wasted frame, the trembling arms, the eyes that burned with a fever that was no longer just sickness but something fiercer. Purpose.

“Wait here,” Mercy said. “I’ll find Nathaniel. We’ll get you there together.”

---

Donne’s study was stifling. Nathaniel sat in the corner with a book open on his lap, but his jaw was tight, his breathing shallow. Mercy saw the bruise spreading across his ribs through the open collar of his shirt and felt her stomach turn.

“The cottage?” he asked.

“It held.” She set the satchel down. “I have the Jesuit’s bark. Abigail took the first dose. She’s weak, but she’s lucid. She’s willing to recant to the full court.”

Nathaniel rose, wincing. “Then we go now. Before Hathorne can bury it.”

“You can’t. You can barely stand.”

“I can stand well enough to walk into a courtroom.” He crossed the room, close enough that she could smell the sweat and blood on him, and set his hand on her arm. “Mercy. I’ll be damned if I let you face this alone.”

Donne cleared his throat. “I’ll have my carriage brought around. Abigail will be carried in through the back; I know a way past the constables.” He glanced at Mercy. “Ruth Putnam is already there. She’s nervous, but she’s holding firm. And Hathorne’s clerk was seen sending a letter by fast rider this morning—I don’t know to whom.”

Mercey’s blood chilled. “Willard’s allies. The magistrate who sent him to Salem Village.”

“Possibly.” Donne opened the door. “We find out together. Whoever it is, they’ll arrive too late.”

Mercy picked up her satchel, heavy with the weight of everything she carried. Her father’s formula. Her mother’s letter. Abigail’s confession. Ruth’s testimony. And beside her, Nathaniel Hartwell—a boy whose family had hated hers for as long as anyone could remember, standing now like he intended to stand forever.

“Then let’s be the storm,” she said.

---

They carried Abigail into the courtroom just as the bells tolled nine. Hathorne was already seated, his face unmoving as stone. The room was thick with whispers, the accusers clustered in the gallery, Ruth among them, pale but upright.

Abigail moved forward on her own two feet, barely. The crowd fell silent.

“Your Honor,” she said, and her voice cracked but didn’t break. “I have something to confess.”