Read Chapter 34: A Circle Closes

The morning after Thomas Putnam's arrest, Mercy woke to find Salem holding its breath. The streets were quiet in a way they had not been since the first accusations flew—not the peace of resolution, but the stillness of a town waiting to see which way the wind would turn.

She stood at the window of the apothecary, watching Mary Sibley cross the common with her basket, head down, refusing to meet the eyes of the women who gathered at the well. Two of them had signed the complaint against Mercy. Now they stood with their backs to one another, as if proximity might taint them.

Nathaniel came up behind her, his hands settling on her shoulders. "You're thinking too loudly."

"I'm wondering how many of them knew," she said. "How many watched Thomas mark his ledger and said nothing."

"Does it matter?"

"It matters to me." She turned to face him. "I spent months in that prison because of what he wrote in that book. Because of what Willard said I was. And now they all want to pretend they were deceived, that they had no part in it."

Nathaniel's jaw tightened. He knew something of that—his own father had played a part, however unwittingly, in the legend that had nearly destroyed her family. They had not spoken of it since Thomas's arrest, when Elias Hathorne had stood at the edge of the crowd and watched the constable drag Thomas Putnam away, his face unreadable.

"What do you want to do?" Nathaniel asked.

It was the question Mercy had been turning over since the moment she'd pulled that ledger from beneath Ruth's floorboards. She could demand testimony, press for more arrests, ensure that every man who had profited from Thomas's scheme was named and shamed. She could watch them squirm the way she had squirmed in that cell, could savor the terror in their eyes when they realized the weight of their choices.

She thought of Ruth instead. Of the girl's thin shoulders, the way she had flinched at her own father's name. Of the purple marks Mercy had glimpsed beneath the sleeve of Ruth's shift when she'd helped her dress that first morning after Thomas's arrest.

"There's a girl up at the Putnam house who needs someone to help her believe she is not her father's daughter," Mercy said slowly. "And there are a dozen other girls who were told they were witches or that their neighbors were, who believed it because they were children and the adults around them were afraid. They need healing more than they need punishment."

Nathaniel studied her face. "That's not what I expected you to say."

"It's not what I expected to feel." Mercy pressed her palms against the windowsill. "I spent so long being angry. It kept me alive in that cell. But I don't want to be that person anymore. I don't want to build my life on the same ground Thomas built his—on fear and vengeance."

She turned from the window and reached for her shawl. "I'm going to the Putnam house. Ruth needs to know she has a way forward."

---

The Putnam house had a hollow quality to it now, as if the weight of its master's crimes had sucked the air from its rooms. Mercy found Ruth in the kitchen, staring at a half-peeled apple, her knife idle in her hand.

"Mercy." Ruth's voice cracked on the word. She set down the knife and folded her hands in her lap. "I thought you might not come."

"Why wouldn't I come?"

Ruth's laugh was brittle. "Because I am the daughter of the man who tried to have you hanged. Because I kept his secrets even when I knew they were wrong."

Mercy pulled out the chair across from her and sat. "You kept his secrets because you were afraid of him. That's not the same as being complicit in them."

"I testified against you." Ruth's eyes welled. "I said the words he told me to say. I pointed at you in front of the whole court and called you a witch."

"And you were a child, and your father had been hurting you for years, and you had no one to turn to." Mercy reached across the table and took Ruth's hand. The girl's fingers were cold. "I know what it is to be trapped, Ruth. I know what it is to say things you don't mean because the alternative is worse."

Ruth's tears spilled over, tracking down her cheeks. "I dreamed about you in that cell. Every night, I dreamed about you in that cell, and I thought—I thought God would never forgive me."

"Then let me be the first to tell you that God's forgiveness is not mine to give, but I will give you mine freely." Mercy squeezed her hand. "I am not asking you to forgive yourself today. I am asking you to let me help you learn how."

"How?" Ruth's voice was small. "How do I learn to be someone else when I don't know who I am without him?"

"One day at a time." Mercy stood and drew Ruth up with her. "Come. I want to show you something."

---

The meadow behind the old Hart cottage had gone to seed in the months Mercy had been imprisoned. The medicinal beds her mother had tended with such care were choked with bindweed, and the fence that had once kept the goats out had collapsed in one corner. But the ground was good, and the spring rains had softened it.

Mercy walked to the center of the meadow and turned in a slow circle. "My mother started this garden when she was younger than I am now. She planted yarrow for wounds, feverfew for headaches, pennyroyal for the women who came to her in secret." She bent and pulled a strand of bindweed from the earth. "She told me once that the bindweed was her favorite weed, because it was the most persistent. It would always find a way to grow, no matter how many times you pulled it up."

Ruth stood at the edge of the garden, uncertain. "Why would anyone love bindweed?"

"Because it reminded her that life finds a way." Mercy tossed the strand aside. "I am going to rebuild this garden. And I want you to help me."

Ruth blinked. "I don't know anything about plants."

"Then you'll learn." Mercy gestured to the earth. "I need someone who can help me tend it, someone who knows what it means to be pulled up by the roots and planted somewhere new."

Ruth's chin trembled. "You would trust me with this? With your mother's garden?"

"I would trust you with more than that, if you let me." Mercy knelt and pressed her hand into the soil. "I think you have been told for so long what you are that you've forgotten you have a choice about who you become. This garden will give you a place to practice choosing."

Ruth stood silent for a long moment. Then she walked forward, her steps slow, and knelt beside Mercy. She reached out and touched the earth with her fingertips, drawing them through the dark soil.

"The soil is good here," she said quietly. "It wants to grow something."

"It does." Mercy looked at her. "What do you want to grow, Ruth?"

Ruth was quiet. Then she said, "I want to grow something that helps people. Something that doesn't hurt anyone, ever again."

Mercy smiled. "Then we'll start with that."

---

Over the next weeks, the garden took shape. Ruth came every morning, and Mercy taught her the names of plants, their uses, their dangers. Ruth's hands, which had once trembled around her father, grew steady around seedlings. She learned to identify foxglove by its spotted throat and to crush mint between her fingers just to smell it. She learned to ask questions instead of assuming the answers.

Mercy found herself sleeping better than she had in months. The rage that had fueled her through the trial began to loosen its grip, replaced by something quieter and more sustaining.

It was Nathaniel who finally asked her about the other names on Thomas's ledger—the ministers who had supported him, the officials who had turned a blind eye.

"You could press for a full inquiry," he said one evening as they sat on the step of the apothecary, watching the sun sink behind the rooftops. "You have the evidence. The Governor would listen."

"I know." Mercy leaned her head against his shoulder. "But I also know that a full inquiry would tear this town apart. There are families on both sides of every accusation. There are children who would grow up knowing their fathers were named in a madman's book."

"Some of those fathers deserve to be named."

"Some of them do." Mercy was quiet. "But I think the naming should not be my work anymore. Let the Governor and the courts do what they must. My work is here, in this garden, with the girls who were told they were evil and the women who were told they were helpless."

Nathaniel pressed a kiss to her temple. "You've become someone your mother would be proud of."

"I hope so." Mercy watched the last light fade from the sky. "I think she would have liked Ruth. She would have liked the way Ruth asks questions now, instead of accepting what she's told."

"Like someone else I know."

Mercy smiled and said nothing.

---

The day the final proclamation came from Boston, Mercy was in the garden with Ruth, planting feverfew along the eastern edge where it would catch the morning sun. Ruth had become adept at spacing the seedlings, her fingers gentle as she tucked each one into its bed.

"What is it?" Ruth asked, seeing Mercy's face.

"Governor Phips has formally dissolved the special court. There will be no more witch trials in Massachusetts." Mercy read the letter again, as if to confirm the words had not changed. "He has ordered a day of fasting and reflection, for the town to reckon with what was done."

Ruth sat back on her heels. "Will it be enough?"

"I don't know." Mercy folded the letter and tucked it into her pocket. "I think it will be a start. I think it will be a place to begin."

Ruth looked down at her hands, dark with soil. "I read the list of names, Mercy. The people who were hanged. Some of them—my father named them. I watched him write the complaints."

"You were a child."

"I was old enough to know better." Ruth's voice was firm. "I have spent a long time telling myself that, believing that I was too young, too afraid, to do anything else. But I did know better. And I think—I think the only way I can make that right is to make sure I do better now."

Mercy reached over and took Ruth's hand, earth and all. "Then we will do better. Together."

Ruth nodded slowly, and Mercy saw something settle in her face—not peace, not yet, but the beginning of a possibility of it.

The garden stretched around them, young shoots pushing up through the dark soil. Bindweed curled at the edges, persistent as ever, but the feverfew was taking root, and the yarrow was already beginning to spread.

Mercy thought of her mother, of the quiet strength she had drawn from this earth. She thought of the days in the prison cell, when she had been certain she would never see this place again. She thought of Ruth's trembling hands and steadying them around the stems of plants that would one day heal someone else's wounds.

There was work still to be done in Salem. There were wounds that would take years to close. But the garden was growing, and Mercy was learning that healing was not the same as forgetting.

She knelt in the soil and planted another seedling, and felt something in her chest loosen and open like a flower turning toward the sun.