“What do you think of that one?” she asked Anne Hatch, nodding to Maria as they watched her through the window. The witch was skipping alongside her daughter as if she were a girl herself, without a care in the world, her red boots showing. There was a big black dog following them, a slinky creature with strange pale eyes.

“I would consider Maria Owens to be a good and generous woman,” Anne Hatch responded.

“Would you now?” Martha said thoughtfully. She had her doubts about Anne as well, for where was her husband? And how had she come to be so cheerful with the burden of running the shop set upon her shoulders? Martha kept her suspicions tucked beside her desire, close to her heart, where it continued to burn. She had seen what she wanted and she intended to have it: a daughter, one with red hair who could already count, who skipped down the street as if she hadn’t a care in the world and had no fear of strangers, even if it would have been best if she had.

The letter was dispatched to the courthouse on a spring day when the pear trees had begun to bloom. The sun was shining, as it was said to do every Wednesday for at least an hour a day. There was no signature on the parchment and the handwriting was shaky and difficult to read. It took all morning for the clerk to decipher the message, and when he did he brought the complaint before the magistrates, who were meeting to discuss the growth of the harbor, as well as a list of grievances they must attend to: a pig delivered but not paid for, a fence constructed over the landholder’s property line, the switching and caning of children in public places. The content of the letter was baffling at first, but when they really considered the charges it contained, no one was surprised this day had come. The complaint concerned a woman who flaunted the rules, who sold the bars of black soap that so many husbands had found in their wives’ possession. The anonymous note accused Maria Owens of a variety of evil deeds including speaking to spirits, dispensing poison, stealing souls, bringing on the loss of unwanted babes, and enchanting innocent men.

John Hathorne was quiet during the debate among the magistrates, but his heart was racing. By the end of the afternoon he would not have recognized the man he’d once been in Curaçao. That fool had gone swimming in his clothes; he had broken his marriage vows and his vows to God. He was most certainly not the John Hathorne who threw in his lot with his fellow judges, agreeing that witchery would only lead to more witchery and to women who believed they could do as they pleased. At the end of the day John Hathorne stood up and declared there was reason enough to prosecute Maria Owens. That night in bed, his hands began to bleed. He rushed outside and poured water from the rain barrel over his palms, but he could not wash the blood away. In the morning, Ruth noticed that he wore gloves. Her mother had told her that this was what guilty men did after they committed a crime; they could not look at what they’d done, they hid it away from others and from themselves, but the mark was there all the same, for what was done could not be undone.