Read Chapter 33: The Ledger's Final Page

The ledger had to be there. Mercy knew it the way she knew foxglove from monkshood—by the shape of its absence in every other place she had searched. Thomas Putnam had been meticulous, but men like him always kept their true accounts where they could touch them.

Ruth’s room was cold despite the May warmth bleeding through the casement. Mercy had come to check on the girl, to sit with her through another dream-haunted night, but her fingers had found the loose floorboard beneath Ruth’s bed within the first hour. The child slept now, breath shallow and quick, her face turned toward the wall.

The board lifted without a fight. Inside, wrapped in oilcloth, lay a ledger bound in cracked leather. The same hand that had kept the dead apothecary’s books in Boston had kept this one.

Mercy carried it to the window seat and opened it.

The first pages were routine—crop yields, livestock sales, debts owed and called. But halfway through, the hand changed. The ink grew darker, the strokes sharper, as if the writer had begun to record something that excited him.

*October 1691—Goodwife Easty’s fence line encroaches on the north pasture by three rods. Filed complaint. Witnesses secured. The land will fall to the court’s disposition upon her conviction.*

*December 1691—Widow Osborne’s claim to the mill tract remains disputed. Her daughter has been seen speaking with the new midwife’s apprentice. The girl may prove useful.*

Mercy’s stomach turned. She read on.

*January 1692—The accusers are in place. My niece leads them well. The Hart woman’s knowledge of simples makes her a fitting target—the town will believe anything of one who gathers herbs at night.† Chosen for her mother’s old quarrel with Willard’s patron. The physician owes me. †*

The mark beside the entry was the same symbol as the one in Mercy’s locket. The brand Caleb Noyes had worn on his chest, burned into him by Willard’s care.

*March 1692—The midwife apprentice is taken. Her mother’s property is already mine in name, pending the court’s confirmation. The bindweed I planted in her garden will be discovered in due course. †*

Mercy’s hands shook. The ledger listed land—acres upon acres—each parcel tied to a name. A name of an accused. A name of the dead.

*Rebecca Nurse’s farm. Giles Corey’s fields. John Proctor’s timber.†*

Acquisitions, all of them. Thomas Putnam had not merely covered for Willard. He had fed the hysteria, encouraged the accusations, funded the accusers, all to swallow the land of the condemned. Her mother had been one more entry in a long list of thefts.

The final page contained only a single line, written in fresher ink.

*The Hart girl returns to Salem. She knows too much. Ruth’s visits to her must cease. The child grows troublesome. I will settle the matter myself.*

The floorboard creaked.

Mercy turned. Thomas Putnam stood in the doorway, his greatcoat still wet from the spring rain, his eyes fixed on the ledger in her hands.

“You found my accounts,” he said. His voice was flat, calm, as though he had expected this all along. “I wondered how long it would take you. You have your mother’s curiosity.”

“You killed her.” Mercy’s voice came out steady, though her heart slammed against her ribs. “You and Willard. You poisoned her patients and blamed her, and you took her land.”

“I took what was owed to me.” Thomas stepped into the room. His boots were muddy; he made no effort to wipe them. “Your mother was a complication. Willard was already in Boston, covering his own sins. It was simple arithmetic.”

Ruth stirred in her bed, a small sound escaping her throat. Thomas glanced at her, and something flickered across his face—not tenderness, but calculation.

“She’ll testify, you know,” Mercy said. “Ruth will tell them what you did to her. What you made her do, to lie before the court.”

“Ruth will do as she is told.” Thomas crossed the room in four strides. “As she always has. But you, Mercy Hart—you were never good at following instruction.”

His hand closed around her wrist. The ledger slipped from her fingers and hit the floor, pages splaying open to the damning entries. Thomas’s other hand went to his belt, and Mercy saw the knife there, half-drawn.

“You will not speak of this,” he said, his breath hot and sour against her cheek. “You will leave Salem tonight, and you will tell no one what you have seen. If you do, I will make sure Ruth suffers for your disobedience. I will make sure the entire town knows what your mother truly was. I have papers. I have witnesses.”

Mercy’s free hand found the iron candlestick on the windowsill.

“I know what my mother was,” she said. “She was better than you will ever be.”

She swung.

Thomas lurched back, the candlestick grazing his temple. He staggered, his grip loosening, and Mercy tore free. She lunged for the door—

He caught her by the hair, yanking her back against his chest. The knife came up, cold against her throat.

“Foolish girl,” he hissed. “You should have run when you had the chance.”

The door flew open.

Nathaniel stood in the threshold, his face gone white, his musket raised. Behind him, in the corridor, Mercy caught the glint of the constable’s badge and the dark robes of Magistrate Hathorne.

“Let her go, Putnam,” Nathaniel said. His voice was low and terrible. “Let her go, or I will put a ball through your heart and answer for it gladly.”

Thomas laughed, a dry, broken sound. “You would shoot a man of property, clerk? You, who scraped your way into this family by marrying above your station?”

“I would shoot the man who threatens my wife.” Nathaniel’s finger tightened on the trigger. “Make no mistake.”

For a long, terrible moment, no one moved. The knife trembled against Mercy’s skin. Ruth’s breathing filled the silence, quick and shallow, and Mercy thought of bindweed again—how it strangled what it clung to, how it could not survive once pulled from the root.

“You have no proof,” Thomas said. “That ledger is a forgery. You have nothing but the word of a dead man’s scribbles and a girl who was touched by the devil himself.”

“I have proof,” Mercy said. She reached into her bodice and pulled out the folded page Caleb had given her months ago—the page linking Thomas Putnam’s name to Willard’s payments, to the death of the Boston apothecary, to her mother’s ruin. “And I have this.”

Thomas’s eyes went wide. The knife dropped a fraction of an inch.

The constable chose that moment to move. He crossed the room in three heavy strides, seized Thomas’s raised arm, and wrenched the knife from his grasp. Thomas cried out, and the sound was almost human, almost a plea.

“Thomas Putnam,” the constable said, “you are arrested in the name of the Governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, on charges of conspiracy to murder, fraud, and the corruption of the courts of Salem.”

Nathaniel lowered the musket. He crossed to Mercy and pulled her into his arms, his hand trembling against her back.

“I have you,” he murmured. “I have you.”

Thomas strained against the constable’s grip, his face twisted with rage. His eyes found Ruth, still small and pale in her bed, and something like grief passed over his features before the mask of fury slammed back down.

“She is mine,” he said. “Ruth is my daughter. You cannot take her from me.”

The constable said nothing. He dragged Thomas from the room, his protests echoing down the corridor until the front door slammed shut behind them.

Mercy stood in the silence, the ledger still open on the floor at her feet. Ruth’s eyes were open now, watching her with a clarity Mercy had not seen in months.

“It’s over,” Mercy whispered, though she was not sure she believed it.

Ruth shook her head slowly.

“It has only just begun,” the girl said, and Mercy felt the cold seep back into the room.