Read Chapter 3: A Clerk's Burden

The jailhouse corridor stank of rot and old straw. Nathaniel Godfrey had walked it twice before, both times to record the confessions of condemned men. Neither had made him feel as though his own feet were being dragged toward the pyre.

He stopped before Mercy Hart’s cell and pressed his palm flat against the damp timber. Through the gap between two boards he could see her—sitting on the straw, back against the wall, studying her own wrists as though they belonged to someone else. The iron bracelet on her ankle had left a ring of raw pink skin beneath it. She did not look up.

“You,” she said, without shifting her gaze. “They sent a Godfrey to bury me. How fitting.”

Nathaniel cleared his throat. “Magistrate Hathorne has assigned me clerk to your case. I am to record all testimony, all evidence, and—”

“And all omissions.” Now she looked up. Her eyes were sharp, hard, and far older than her years. “Tell me, clerk, did you log the belladonna sprig they found in my shift? The one that was never in the evidence chest when I came before the magistrate?”

The words hit him like a fist. He had reviewed the evidence list three times that morning. No mention of belladonna. No mention of any herb besides the dried lavender the constables had pulled from her apron pocket—grown for sachets, everyone in town knew it.

“I saw no such entry,” he said carefully.

“Because there was no such entry. Because whoever put that plant on me did it in the dark, where no one could witness.” She rose slowly, brushing straw from her skirt with deliberate calm. “You know what belladonna is, clerk? Deadly nightshade. It kills the heart. And someone wished it on my doorpost before they wished it on my person.”

Nathaniel’s stomach turned. He had seen the sprig on her doorpost the morning of the arrest—he had been passing Mill Lane on an errand for his father and had stopped to look at it, puzzled by the dark berries and the way the stalks were bound with red thread. He had not thought anything of it then. Now the detail surfaced like a stone rising from mud.

“The red thread,” he said, almost to himself. “Red thread. Binding.”

Mercy’s expression flickered. “What do you know of it?”

“Nothing. It is simply—unusual. A binding charm, some would call it. But that is not evidence of witchcraft against you. It is evidence of someone else’s craft.” He hated himself for saying it aloud. His father had warned him, years ago, to never speak on the Harts’ behalf. The land dispute had ended in court, and the Godfreys had lost. The shame still sat heavy in the family like a stone in a well.

“Why are you here, truly?” Mercy asked. She stepped closer to the bars, close enough that he could see the faint bruise along her jaw where the constable had struck her. “Your family would sooner see me hanged than spared. You would inherit the acreage if my father’s line ended. Do not pretend you are moved by conscience.”

Nathaniel felt the weight of the ledger under his arm. Hathorne had pressed it upon him with thin, colorless lips: “Every word, Godfrey. Every word, or I shall find a clerk with a steadier hand.” It was not trust that had placed the book in his keeping. It was convenience—he was the youngest clerk, the least likely to be believed if he objected.

He could walk away now. He could record her testimony as she gave it, faithfully and without comment, then file the pages and go home to his cold supper. The gallows would do its work in three days, and the Godfrey name would remain clean, if still bitter.

But he had seen the evidence list. He had seen the accusation written in Goody Proctor’s own hand—“Mercy Hart did consort with the Devil in the guise of green herbs, and did threaten my daughter Abigail with a wasting sickness.” The wasting sickness had been diagnosed by Dr. Griggs as quinsy. Abigail had recovered within the week.

“I am here,” Nathaniel said slowly, “because the accusation against you names a plant that was never in your possession. It names a spell that no one saw you cast. And it names a witness—Abigail Proctor—who recanted once, in a whisper, to her own mother, and was silenced for it.”

Mercy’s breath caught. “You heard that?”

“I record what is said in the meeting house. I also record what is whispered at the back of it.” He took a step closer, lowering his voice. “Goody Proctor did not want to bring the charge. I saw her hesitate. It was the girl—Abigail—who pushed her forward. The girl who pointed at you with a trembling hand and a steady eye.”

A long silence stretched between them. Mercy’s fingers curled around the bars, knuckles white.

“That girl is twelve years old,” Mercy said quietly. “I attended her when she had the croup last winter. I sat with her for two nights while her mother slept. I spooned honey and horehound into her mouth and watched her breathe.” She looked away. “I do not know what I did to earn her hatred.”

Nathaniel wanted to tell her it was not hatred. Hatred was a simple thing, an honest thing. What he had seen in Abigail Proctor’s face was something colder—calculation, perhaps, or fear of something far worse than a witch. But he could not prove it. Not yet.

“I can look into the records,” he said. “Hathorne has given me the full case file. Depositions, witness lists, property claims. If there is a pattern, if someone benefits from your death beyond mere spite, I may be able to find it.”

Mercy studied him with open suspicion. “And why would you do that? What does a Godfrey owe a Hart?”

“Nothing.” He met her eyes and did not look away. “That is why I can do it without being accused of favor. The town knows we are enemies. They will think I am merely thorough.”

A bitter smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Clever. The one honest man in Salem is the one who has no reason to be.”

“Perhaps I have a reason I do not yet understand.” Nathaniel looked down at the ledger, then back at her. “But I need something from you in return.”

“What?”

“Your father’s accounts. The debts owed to him, the lands he held in trust. When he died, did anyone inherit his papers?”

Mercy’s face went pale. “My mother kept them. She would not give them to the court when the land dispute was settled—said they were private, family matters.” She paused. “They are in a chest beneath the floorboards of the cottage. The constables searched the room but did not lift the boards.”

Nathaniel nodded slowly. “I will need to retrieve them. But the cottage is watched. If I am seen entering, it will be noted.”

“Then do not enter as yourself.” Mercy’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Go at night. The window on the east side has a broken latch. My mother’s floorboard is the third from the hearth, nearest the chimney. It lifts without tools if you press at the corner.”

He memorized the details in silence. Outside, thunder rolled across the sky—a summer storm, sudden and violent, matching the storm inside him. He had come to this cell expecting to find a woman defeated. Instead he had found a plan forming in his own chest like a seedling pushing through frozen ground.

“Three days,” he said. “I will need at least two to find what Hathorne does not want found.”

“And if you fail?”

He looked at her then, really looked, and saw not an accused witch but a woman who had trusted nothing and no one for years—and who still, despite it all, had handed him the key to her mother’s secrets.

“Then I will record your final words,” he said quietly, “and they will be true ones.”

Mercy held his gaze for a long moment. Then she nodded once, sharply, and returned to her corner of the cell.

Nathaniel turned and walked back down the corridor, the ledger heavy under his arm. Halfway to the door, he stopped. The jailer’s wife had appeared at the far end, a ring of keys clinking at her waist, and in the dim light he caught the glint of silver at her throat.

Mercy’s locket. He had seen it in the inventory of personal effects—but it had not been logged as confiscated. It had been logged as lost.

He said nothing. But as he left the jail, the image of that silver chain burned behind his eyes like a brand.