Read Chapter 5: A Toad's Confession

The meeting house stank of wool and sweat and fear. Mercy stood in the prisoners' box with her wrists bound before her, the iron bracelet on her ankle chafing through her stocking where the skin had already worn raw. Sunlight through the tall windows caught dust motes floating in the air like the souls of the undecided.

Magistrate Hathorne sat elevated behind his table, his face a mask of grim duty. Beside him, the younger magistrate, Corwin, leaned forward with his hands folded, studying Mercy the way a man studies a horse he suspects of being lame.

"The court calls Goodwife Elizabeth Browne to testify," Hathorne announced.

Mercy's stomach dropped. Goody Browne lived three houses down the lane—a pinch-faced widow who kept her goats tethered so close to her property line that their necks stretched over Mercy's fence like supplicants. Mercy had never trusted her.

A stir ran through the gathered villagers as the widow shuffled forward. She wore her black mourning dress despite the heat, and her hands were clasped at her bosom as though she were already praying for Mercy's soul.

"You have witnessed something pertaining to this case," Hathorne said. "Speak plainly before God."

Goody Browne's eyes flicked toward Mercy, then away. "I have seen her creature. Many a night, when the moon was high and I was wakeful with my rheum, I saw her slip from her cottage to the garden patch. And always she carried a sack."

"A sack," Hathorne repeated.

"Aye, your honor. And when she come back inside, there hopped after her a toad. A great, mottled thing, the size of a man's fist. She fed it from her own hand. I seen her coax it up her sleeve and into the cottage with her."

A ripple of whispers passed through the crowd. The bindweed pulled tight across Mercy's chest.

"I keep no toad," she said. "I have a garden. Toads live in gardens. That is where God placed them, to eat the slugs that ruin a good crop."

"Silence," Hathorne said without looking at her. "Goody Browne, did she speak to this creature? Did she offer it words of command?"

Goody Browne's lips pressed thin. "I could not hear what she spoke. But she spoke soft and tender, like a mother to a babe. And the creature answered her."

"Answered her?" Corwin's eyebrows rose. "How does a toad answer?"

"It croaked. Three times. Rhythmic, your honor. Like a counting." Goody Browne made a fist against her chest, as though warding something off. "I have heard that the devil's creatures know their masters' names, and they call them out in their own tongue."

Mercy laughed before she could stop herself. The sound was sharp and bitter and entirely wrong for the occasion.

Hathorne's eyes snapped to her. "You find this amusing, Mistress Hart?"

"I find it remarkable that Goody Browne, whose own goats have eaten my fence posts twice this summer, should on those same wakeful nights observe my doings with such precision. And yet in all that watching, she never once witnessed my goats eating her property. Her vision is a selective one."

"She is not on trial," Corwin said. "You are. Mind your tone."

Mercy bit her tongue. The bindweed tightened further—or perhaps that was her own fear coiling, a physical thing like the twisted plant for which the trial was named.

Then from the front row where the accusers sat, a high, thin voice cut through the murmur.

"She turned into a wolf!"

Abigail Proctor had risen from her seat. The girl could not have been above thirteen, but she stood with the authority of a woman twice her age, her eyes fixed on Mercy with a hatred that seemed too old for her face. Goody Proctor tugged at her daughter's sleeve, but Abigail shook her off and stepped into the aisle.

"I seen her, your honors. In the wood beyond the mill pond. She was gathering herbs, and I called out a greeting—I meant no harm—and she turned to look at me." The girl's voice trembled, but not with fear. With relish. "Her face was her face. Then it shifted. Her jaw grew long, and her teeth sharpened, and her eyes went yellow as candleflame. She dropped to all fours and ran into the trees as a wolf."

The crowd gasped. A woman near the back let out a small shriek.

Mercy stared at the girl. Twice now she had seen Abigail's performance—once at the dawn arrest, again at her initial examination. There was a rehearsed quality to it, a rhythm to the trembling, like a psalm recited too many times to remain sincere.

"I have never been to the wood beyond the mill pond," Mercy said slowly. "I harvest my simples from my own garden and the meadow south of my cottage. Any person in the village who knows me could attest to that."

"Your neighbors are deceived," Abigail shot back. "The wolf has a clever tongue."

A murmur of agreement rippled through the room. Mercy saw faces she knew—God-fearing men and women who had eaten bread she had baked, who had brought their children to her mother for croup and fever—and she watched them nod along with a child's accusation.

She understood then, with a cold clarity that cut through her anger: this was not a trial of evidence. This was a trial of belief. And belief could not be argued with.

Hathorne leaned forward. "The court has heard sufficient testimony regarding the prisoner's creature and her transformations. Given the gravity of these accusations, we are compelled to search for the marks of the devil's compact upon her body. The prisoner will submit to an examination by appointed women."

Mercy's blood went cold. "You mean to strip me—"

"We mean to find the truth," Corwin said smoothly. "A witch's mark does not lie where eyes can see plainly. If you are innocent, the examination will show it."

"The examination shows whatever the examiner wishes it to show," Mercy said. "I have seen it done. A mole, a freckle, a birthmark—any blemish can be declared the devil's teat. There is no woman in this village whose skin would prove flawless under such scrutiny."

"For a woman who claims to be wrongly accused, you speak as though you have studied the practices of witches with great care," Hathorne observed.

Mercy realized her mistake a moment too late. The crowd's whispers grew louder.

"I am a midwife's apprentice," she said. "I have assisted at examinations. That is how I know."

"You are an herbalist," Hathorne said, making the word sound like filth. "You traffick in plants and potions and the bodies of women. And now you speak with confidence about the devil's marks. This does not incline me toward your innocence."

She had no answer she could give. Every word she spoke twisted against her. That was the genius of the accusation, she saw now—it was not a single lie but a net. A bindweed, creeping and entangled, strangling any truth that tried to grow.

Her eyes swept the room and found, at the back near the door, Nathaniel Godfrey. He stood with his arms crossed, his face unreadable. But his eyes met hers, and his jaw was set in a way that suggested he was not as calm as he appeared.

The examination would happen. She knew that as surely as she knew the names of her herbs. And when it was done, they would find their mark—they always did—and she would have one less day to find the truth that could save her.

The real accusation, the one spoken in ledgers and debts, was not in this room. It was hidden beneath a floorboard in the clerk's chamber, and the only man who knew of it was standing twenty yards away, wearing the face of her family's oldest enemy.