And she heard sobbing...
From the victims, from the crowd—maybe from both.
Suddenly she felt a presence beside her. She looked and saw that it was Margaret Nottingham.
“Walk with me,” Margaret said softly.
Together they started toward the hill. The women huddled in the cart, eyes turned away from the ropes dangling from the tree, nooses tied and at the ready. The Reverend Stoughton began to speak to the condemned, demanding that they confess and save their immortal souls.
The cart was drawn up beneath the hanging tree and the condemned women were made to stand. A noose was slipped over each woman’s head, and together they began to pray, finally fading into silence. All but one. Someone in the crowd demanded that Rebecca Nurse be allowed to finish her prayer.
And next to Devin, the specter of Margaret spoke. “It was all a mockery. A mockery of all that is just and good. Rebecca...how could any fault her? She lived a life of piety. The others...poor, often begging, or perhaps of different beliefs.” She turned to look at Devin. “You must understand. When even such a woman as Rebecca can be brought to the gallows, people are terrified. When one member of a family is taken, more follow. If you give testimony on behalf of one you love, you risk the hangman’s noose yourself. A four-year-old child resides in prison and did give testimony against her mother. And yet how do these confessions come to be heard? The weak are tortured, oppressed by fear and the demands of their oppressors and the examinations. They are so afraid they will say anything. When Governor Phipps demanded corroboration, goodwoman Rebecca Nurse was stripped before the crowd to find her witch’s teat, and she suffered humiliation beyond bearing. The prison itself is rank with disease and sickness, and food is scarce, and several died there with no hope. And so―”
There was a gasp and a cry from the crowd as the horse was whipped and the cart was dragged from beneath the women. They struggled, kicking and jerking as they slowly strangled to death. Devin had to look away, and she turned to the specter at her side.
Would she have died in this same way had she lived to be accused?
As if she read Devin’s mind, Margaret turned to her with a soft smile. “They saw suffering, and they were terrified of the woods and the Indians, and so they saw the devil’s work in anything bad that happened around them. Fear made them believe in the devil, and I think they did indeed become demented. The sins of hatred and greed within their elders—one group wanting Salem to stay is it was, and another desiring separate villages—festered in their hearts. The children cried out against those they heard their parents ridicule, until it went wild and no one was safe anymore.”
Margaret’s expression was sorrowful, her face marked by the pain and guilt of everything that had happened here so long ago.
Devin could hear the ropes still swinging from the tree.
Then a storm rushed in and the sky turned dark. But it wasn’t dark from the black clouds of a common storm; it was covered in a wash of red, like blood sweeping across the sky and covering the world. Or was it only in her mind that the world was changing? The red began to deepen to black. The darkness overwhelmed her, until there was no past or present, only a blackness deeper than any night.
*
Rocky caught her just as she began to fall.
He’d seen the apparition, but the ghost had ignored him and walked straight to Devin. Together they had walked forward toward a rise with a little stand of trees, but as he followed, he knew from Devin’s eyes that she was seeing something more than the small deserted hill.
He didn’t know how much time passed, but certainly no more than a few seconds. He had eyes only for Devin, who seemed hypnotized by something only she could see.
Only his well-honed reflexes allowed him to catch her before she hit the ground.
She blinked and looked up at him. “Is it over?” she asked.
“Is what over?” he asked. And then he knew. She had indeed witnessed something he’d been unable to see, and he was suddenly certain that it had been a scene from the past. An execution. “It’s over,” he told her gently.
She didn’t struggle to get out of his arms but let him help her to stand, and she didn’t object when he kept an arm around her for support. She looked around at their surroundings, looked to the trees, the rocky slope and the small crevice at the base of the hill.
“That’s where they threw them,” she said, pointing. “They threw them into that crevice and covered them with dirt, burying them in unhallowed ground.” Once again, she seemed to be looking at something only she could see.