The Shape of Mercy (27 page)

I was startled awake the next morning by the high-pitched trilling of my cell phone. I jumped from the couch, unable to remember why I wasn’t in my own bed, convinced it was the middle of the night and something bad had happened. I lunged for my phone on the table next to me and answered, not thinking to see who was calling.

“Yes?” I said, groggy with sleep.

“Hi. This is Steve Turrell. I’m a professor at UCSB. Is this Lauren Durough?”

“Oh. Um, yeah.”

“Did I call too early? Clarissa said you usually go to a nine thirty church service, so I thought I’d catch you before you left. Sorry if I woke you.

“No. No, I was awake,” I lied. “Look, I’m sorry I haven’t called you back. I hadn’t finished the diary yet and I …”

“So you’ve finished it?”

“Yes. Last night.”

“Is it really a diary written during the Salem witch trials?”

“Yes, it really is.”

“And the author herself was one of those accused of witchcraft?”

“Yes.”

“Wow. That’s amazing. And the woman you work for just has this diary in her house?”

“She’s taken excellent care of it. It belonged to an ancestor of hers so it has”—I searched for the right word—”a lot of sentimental value.”

“Well, the reason I asked Clarissa for your number is I’m writing a book about the effects of stigmatization on culture and economy. I’ve always been fascinated by what transpired during the Salem witch trials, even before I started writing the book. I’d really like to see this diary. Would that be possible?”

I cleared my throat for no particular reason. “It’s not mine to show. I could give Abigail your number and she could get back with you on that. She’s out of town right now. She’s pretty protective of it, though.”

“But you’ve transcribed it, right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, could I see the transcription in the meantime?”

I looked down at my feet and noticed I was pacing between the sofa and the writing desk. I stopped.

“I think we’d better wait until Abigail returns,” I said.

Professor Turrell paused a moment. “Could I ask you about the content?”

“I … I don’t know. I guess.”

“What’s the name of the diary’s author?”

I hesitated to say her name. Would Abigail want me to? Would I be divulging something I shouldn’t? Mercy was a historical figure. She was surely mentioned in other records and historical accounts.

But I didn’t say it. If this man was fascinated by the Salem witch trials, then surely he knew more than I did. He might know what I wanted to know. Or he might know where to go to find out.

“Professor Turrell, have you studied the Salem witch trials?” I asked instead of answering his question.

“Yes, I have.”

“Could I ask you a few questions too? There’s something about how the diary ends that intrigues me.”

“Yeah, sure. Do you want to meet? I could show you what I’ve collected so far in my research.” He sounded excited. Hopeful.

“I would like that. The sooner, the better.”

“Okay. Tomorrow after my last class? That would be a few minutes after three.”

“Actually, I’d like to see you today, if that’s possible. It probably sounds crazy, but there’s something I need to know. It might take me days to find what I need on my own, and I can’t wait.”

“And it’s about the diary?”

“Yes.”

“Want to tell me her name?”

“Can I see you today?”

“I can meet you at my office on campus in an hour. Is that good enough?”

“Yes,” I said. “Her name is Mercy Hayworth.”

“Mercy Hayworth.”

“Yes.”

“See you in an hour.”

P
rofessor Turrell was in his early thirties—younger than I thought he’d be—and rail thin. He wore holey jeans and a faded striped dress shirt that probably looked nice with a tie before the hue had faded from pristine white to ash. His hair was cut short and gelled into chaotically neat peaks on top of his head.

He welcomed me into his office in North Hall, which was eerily quiet, and I could tell he had already gone to some effort to create space on his desk to show me his research.

“Sorry about the mess,” he said, as he scooped up a pile of essays from the extra chair in his office and flung them onto a credenza along the wall.

I eased into the chair and watched him toss books from his desk onto the floor at his feet. If I had majored in economics like my dad wanted, I’d have had Professor Turrell for a class or two, and perhaps one of my essays would’ve been in that clutch of papers resting atop copies of
The Wall Street Journal
and
Forbes
magazine.

“Okay,” he said, having cleared a path to his computer monitor, which he switched on. “I’ve got several files going on the trials: a couple for my book and a couple just because the incident interests me. Most of what I have is on the trials that occurred in Salem itself, in particular the people who were executed, so I may not be able to answer all your questions. I can try, though.”

“All right.”

He turned to me. “First, is Mercy’s diary legible? Were you able to transcribe the entire document word for word?”

“Yes, pretty much. Many pages were difficult to read, but I took my time and I think I was able to come up with a reasonably accurate transcription. Some of the ink has faded and portions of the parchment are damaged. But Abigail helped me, and most of the time we could see where Mercy was going even if a sentence or two was missing or faded beyond reading.”

“Wow. That’s really great.”

I could see how anxious Professor Turrell was to read Mercy’s diary How envious he was that I had spent so much time with it.

“And you found it be historically accurate?” he continued.

“Well, I guess it is. Mercy wrote it as she saw everything happening around her. I have no reason to think her dates are wrong, but I suppose she could’ve written something on the tenth of August that actually happened on the eleventh. Nobody’s perfect.”

“No, certainly. And she lived in Salem Village, right? I’ve done a search for her name in my documents and it comes up a couple times. She was accused in late summer of 1692 and stood trial the first week in September. Does that sound right?”

“Yes. Yes, I think so. You really don’t have much on her? Nothing about her diary or her story book or letters she wrote?”

Professor Turrell’s fingers flew over his computer keyboard.

“She was arrested and taken to Salem Town. She was examined the same time as Mary Easty and that whole lot.”

“Yes, that’s correct.”

“I have some of the transcript of her examination. I can e-mail that to you if you want. She was accused by a girl named Prudence Dawes. Does that sound right?”

“Yes, that’s right.” It was strange to hear Professor Turrell say names that had become as familiar to me as character names in a novel. But this had been real.

“I don’t see much else,” he said. “I’d have to do some digging to find more on her. Her name doesn’t come up as often as some of the others. What exactly are you looking for?”

“In the diary, she mentions doing something the day before her execution, and I just wanted to know if maybe she had written a letter to—”

Professor Turrell interrupted me. “Did you say execution?”

“Yes.”

“Mercy Hayworth wasn’t executed.”

“Yes, she was.”

“She was convicted and sentenced to hang, but she died in prison. She wasn’t executed.”

A warm sensation like walking from an air-conditioned room into summer heat swept over me. What Professor Turrell was saying was impossible. His data was wrong. He had made a mistake.

“Yes, she was,” I said.

“There were a lot of people accused of witchcraft back then, more than a hundred, but only nineteen were hanged. She’s not one of the nineteen.”

“She had to be,” I whispered. Relief that Mercy had not been executed after all should have flooded my soul, but instead raw disappointment enveloped me. I had been tricked.

Professor Turrell looked pained, like he hated telling the naive sophomore she had her facts mixed up. “I can show you the list of nineteen names. She’s not on it.”

“Are you sure it’s an accurate list?” I asked.

“This list is everywhere, Lauren. It’s in books, it’s on the Internet. Haven’t you done any research on your own?”

I closed my eyes as the heat of embarrassment assailed me.

“I promised Abigail I wouldn’t,” I whispered. “She wanted me to wait until I had finished the diary.”

“I see. And she’s the one who told you Mercy was executed?”

“Yes.”

“I wonder why she did that.” Professor Turrell stared at his computer screen. Then he turned to me. “What else did she tell you?”

“I … I don’t know. Nothing else, I guess. Everything I know about Mercy I read in the diary. And I know the diary is real. It’s authentic. I know it is!”

“Oh, I don’t doubt the diary is real. It probably really is Mercy Hayworth’s diary, and it’s still an amazing artifact. And of course Mercy couldn’t possibly have written how she died. When she stopped writing, she was scheduled to hang. But she died before that happened.”

“Does it say how she died?” The words shot out of my mouth. Embarrassment had given way to anger.

“I don’t have that in my notes. I … We could do some research and find out. It might take a while, but we could probably do it. She must’ve been ill when she was arrested.”

“She wasn’t ill.”

“She might’ve been. Conditions in the Salem jails weren’t that great. Other people died in them, and the colonies were plagued with sickness all the time.”

“Mercy wasn’t ill. She would’ve written about it if she were. She didn’t die because she was sick. She
did
something the night before she was to be hanged.”

“What could she have done? Are you thinking she tried to escape?”

Mercy hadn’t tried to escape. I was sure of that. But what if John Peter tried to break her out?

“What if someone helped her escape?” I asked, thinking out loud more than anything.

“The records say she died in prison.”

“What if that’s just what was said? What if she really did escape?” I sounded like a fool.

“There was a body,” the professor said, still in that gentle voice of
an educator revealing hard truth to the ignorant. “She was buried. She didn’t escape, Lauren. Mercy Hayworth died in prison the day before her execution.”

I felt sick to my stomach. I felt stupid. “Are you sure she’s not on that list?”

Professor Turrell clicked a couple keys on his computer and sat back in his chair. He gestured with his hand, inviting me to see for myself. I leaned in, squinted, and read the names, whispering them.

Hanged on June 10

Hanged on July 19

Hanged on August 19

September 19

Hanged on September 22

I
left Professor Turrell’s office in a fog of disbelief. My thoughts were in a tumble. Why had Abigail lied? Why had she told me Mercy was executed when she really died in prison? Had she lied to me about other things?

And I couldn’t accept the truth that Mercy hadn’t been executed on Gallows Hill, even though she never deserved to be there. I’d envisioned the tragedy of her wrongful execution from the first moment I saw her handwriting. The others who’d been examined and convicted the same day as Mercy had met their sad end at the gallows. But not Mercy. I’d read the list of names three times. Professor Turrell even produced for me another list from another source. And another one from one of the books lying at his feet.