Read Chapter 29: The Governor's Ear

The road to Boston was a ribbon of autumn mud, rutted deep by wagon wheels and hooves. Mercy's bay mare picked her way along the shoulder where the ground held firmer, and Nathaniel rode close enough that their knees nearly touched when the path narrowed. Behind them, Donne kept a hand on the rein of the pack mule carrying their saddlebags and the ledger, wrapped in oilcloth against the damp.

They had ridden through the night to put distance between themselves and Salem. The mob's torches had still been burning at the edge of town when they slipped out the north road, Caleb Noyes already gone ahead with a horse borrowed from the widow Fletcher. Mercy's back ached from the saddle and her eyes burned with want of sleep, but she could not slow. Every hour she imagined Mother Crane in the gaol, or Widow Price pressed for answers she did not have, or Willard finding some way to reach through the bars and strangle her hopes from a distance.

"He'll see us," she said, more to herself than to Nathaniel. "The Governor must see us."

Nathaniel said nothing. He had been quiet since they passed the last of Salem's outlying farms, his jaw set in that way she had come to know meant he was turning something over in his mind. She let the silence stretch, watching the gray sky lighten toward morning.

"Say it," she said finally.

He looked at her. "Say what?"

"Whatever it is you're holding back. You've been chewing on it since we crossed the town line."

Nathaniel reined in slightly, letting Donne draw ahead of them on the road. When he spoke, his voice was low. "Governor Phips is not a Salem man. He has no stake in the accusers or the accused. That could work for us, or against us." He paused. "He's also a man who owes his position to the Mathers. Cotton Mather has written endlessly on the necessity of rooting out witchcraft. If Willard's crimes are tangled up with the trials themselves—"

"Then Phips may not want to untangle them." Mercy finished the thought for him. She had considered it, in the dark hours of the ride, when the road stretched before her like an accusation. "But the ledger names a dead apothecary and my mother. It names Willard's patients. If I can make him see that the trials are built on one man's poison, not the devil's work, he'll have no choice."

Nathaniel's expression did not soften. "Men in power rarely lack choices when they want to look away."

Mercy felt the familiar heat rise in her chest—the sharp retort that had gotten her accused in the first place. She bit it back. Nathaniel was not her enemy. He had burned his own bridges to stand beside her. She reached across the gap between their horses and touched his wrist.

"Then we make it impossible for him to look away."

Boston rose from the morning mist like a promise and a threat at once. The harbor bristled with masts, and the streets were thick with merchants and sailors and the clang of shipyard iron. It was a city of noise after the hush of Salem's lanes, and Mercy found herself pressing closer to Nathaniel's horse as they wove through the crowd toward the Province House.

A knot of men stood at the gate, muskets at rest but hands near, and Mercy's stomach clenched before she realized they were simply guards, not a mob. Nathaniel swung down and produced a paper from his coat—a letter, she knew, from Magistrate Hathorne's own hand, though the words were lies about a family errand to the capital. Elias had written it before Nathaniel had left, before the truth of the feud had shattered between them. Watching Nathaniel hand over his father's false testament made Mercy's throat tight.

The guards let them pass.

Governor Phips received them in a chamber that smelled of beeswax and old paper. He was a broad man with a sailor's weathered face and the direct gaze of someone who had commanded ships through worse storms than petitions. He did not rise when they entered, but he set down his pen and gestured to the chairs before his desk.

"You've ridden far," he said. It was not a question.

Mercy had prepared a speech. She had rehearsed it in the saddle a dozen times, shaping the words like clay. But sitting across from the man who held the power to end the trials or let them burn on, she found the speech crumbling.

"Willard—" Her voice cracked. She started again. "Dr. John Willard, the physician who claims to have uncovered so many witches in Salem, is a murderer. He poisoned patients in Boston and blamed their deaths on the devil's work. He used the trials to cover his crimes. And he poisoned my mother."

She reached into her bodice and drew out the ledger page, wrapped in a scrap of linen. She laid it on the desk, smoothing it flat with a hand she willed to be steady. Phips looked at it for a long moment, then picked it up.

"This is a page from an apothecary's account book," he said.

"Caleb Noyes, a patient of Willard's, took it from the apothecary's shop before the man died. It shows four patients treated by Willard in the spring of '87, all of whom died of a fever that matched no known illness. Willard's own hand noted their symptoms." She pointed to the margin, where a cramped script recorded doses and times. "My mother was among them."

Phips read the page in silence. Nathaniel shifted beside her, and she felt his tension like a wire drawn tight. The Governor's face gave nothing away.

"Willard is a respected physician," Phips said at last. "He has testified at length in the examinations. His evidence has convicted—"

"His evidence has hanged people," Mercy said. The words came out harder than she intended. "And I have proof he lied. Caleb Noyes will testify. He was there when Willard spoke of building a case against me. Willard knows Noyes is in Salem now, and if he finds him before we return—"

"Return?" Phips raised an eyebrow. "You brought this man with you?"

Mercy hesitated. "He traveled ahead of us. He should be in Boston by now."

Phips set down the page and folded his hands over it. For a long moment he studied her, and Mercy felt the full weight of his attention, the way she imagined a sailor felt when the captain decided whether to throw him overboard.

"You understand what you are asking," he said. "If I act against Willard, I act against the trials. Against the magistrates. Against the Mathers and half the clergy in the colony." He paused. "If I act and you are wrong, the consequences fall on me, not you."

"I am not wrong." Mercy heard her own voice, steady now, and was surprised by it. "I was acquitted. My accusers recanted, in open court and in front of the congregation. Their affidavits are in the file with my case. Willard built the accusations to keep me from exposing what he did, and he will build more. He is doing it now, from inside a jail cell, through a stranger with a scarred face who has accused a widow of poisoning the sick."

Phips's gaze sharpened. "A scarred man?"

"You know him?" Nathaniel said, speaking for the first time.

The Governor leaned back in his chair. "There was a student of Willard's, two years ago. A young man who came to me with a story about his master's methods—something about bleeding a patient who'd merely swooned. I dismissed it. He had no proof, and Willard was highly regarded." He looked at the ledger page again. "The man had a scar across his jaw. From an accident with a lancet, he said."

Mercy felt the ground shift beneath her. The scarred stranger who had accused Widow Price was not Sower's invention. He was a man who had once tried to expose Willard himself and been turned away.

"He's in Salem now," she said. "He's working for Willard, or Willard has something on him. If you'd believed him then—"

"Then." Phips's voice was flat. "I cannot undo then. I can only act now."

He stood, and Mercy rose with him, her heart hammering. The Governor crossed to the window and looked out over the harbor for a long moment. When he turned back, his face had changed. There was something harder in it, something that had made him a commander of men.

"I will send a letter to Salem," he said. "The special Court of Oyer and Terminer is suspended while I review the cases brought before it. I will examine the records of every trial, including yours, and I will hear this Noyes's testimony." He held up a hand before Mercy could speak. "I make no promises. But I will look."

Mercy's legs gave way beneath her and she sank back into the chair, pressing a hand to her mouth. Nathaniel was beside her, his hand on her shoulder, and she felt the warmth of it through her woolen dress. Hope was a strange thing, sharp and fragile as new ice. She had almost forgotten its weight.

They were shown to a room in a boarding house near the waterfront, and Mercy stood at the window watching the ships rock at anchor while Nathaniel set down their bags. The sun had broken through the morning clouds, and the harbor glittered with false gold.

"You're thinking about what he didn't say," Nathaniel said from behind her.

She turned. "He suspended the court. He'll review the cases. It's more than I hoped for."

"It's not enough." He came to stand beside her, close enough that she could feel the heat of him. "Phips is a politician. He'll do what serves him. If the evidence is public, he'll act. But he'll want someone to blame for exposing it, in case the clergy turns against him."

Mercy looked at him. "You think I should stay hidden."

"I think you should be ready." He reached for her hand, and she let him take it. "You asked the Governor to look. He will. But looking is not the same as seeing."

She thought of the mob's torches, of the boy's warning, of her mother's locket warm against her chest. She thought of the scarred man waiting in Salem with his secrets, and Mother Crane in the gaol, and Caleb Noyes somewhere in this strange city, carrying the truth of what Willard had done.

"We'll make him see," she said. "Whatever it takes."