Margaret

She heard crying from somewhere, as the big iron door closed her in. Crying from somewhere she could not see because of the dark. She felt the tears trickle down her cheek and realized where the crying was coming from. There were others, though, weeping quietly, not so far away. She was so afraid. They will kill me. They will execute me. Not for what I did, but for what I said, she thought. More tears continued to run down her cheeks and fall on her apron. Strange, she thought about how she was dressed. She had not had time to dress properly before they came and took her and her grandfather away. She didn’t know they were coming. Why did they come for them? What had they done that made them be arrested and brought before the Court? Why had she lied to the Court and confessed to something she wasn’t guilty of? Why did she listen to those other girls and accept and follow their advice and warnings? They so frightened me. God knows that I am innocent of anything that should have my life taken from me, except for the lies I told to try to save myself. Now I will certainly die, and the devil is sure to take my soul for my lies. I was caught up in it, in my fear of the evil minister, my fear of death. I fell in with them, I listened to them and now my grandfather and the minister and that other woman, Alice, who I do not even know, will also be executed because of my lies. I can’t stop the agony of the fear welling in my head. It will burst. Grandfather told me not to confess to anything I had not done. Things were so much better before we had Sarah in our lives. What will dying be like? Will the rope around my neck hurt as I drop? What will be the last thing I see in this life? Whose face will be the last I see, and whose face will be the first I see on the other side of death? I’m so afraid that it will, now, be the devil’s face. I’m too young to die. I want a family and children, which, now, I will never realize, never hold my own baby to my breast. I wonder how long it will be before they bring my case to court. Where’s mother and father? Why have I been abandoned? That woman, what was her name, something Soames? Mary Warren, why had I ever listened to Mary Warren. She has been trouble for as long as I’ve known her. She said she saw the minister. I said I also saw the minister and then told the Court that the minister told me that grandfather would be hanged. The lies pile up and they frighten me. I am so afraid of the lies, now, more than I am of the liars and their threats. They tell me that I will be thrown into the horrid dungeon with the evil minister who will have his way with me. Then executed in front of everyone in town. I will spend eternity in hell for it. God knows the truth and God will cast me down for lying. What if I, now tell the truth. Will God forgive me? I know the Court will not and they will kill me. They will hang me for lying to them. There is no way out now. I will die. I must die but I must die with a clearer conscience and a chance for God’s blessed forgiveness for the lies. He knows I am innocent of what I have been accused of by those liars. I must now tell the truth to the Court. They will put me into a worse part of the prison, close confinement in chains. More crying and beyond it, uncontrolled sobbing, the dropping of more tears on her soiled apron, and on the floor of her cell. Tears that would, when combined with all the tears of all the other accused, would drown some of them in the prisons in which she and the rest found themselves during the spring and summer of 1692.