“I did not, sir,” she managed to say.

“Speaking falsely is a sin, you understand,” she was told. One constable had sworn he had a bite mark on his shoulder. The other had been in a fever since he’d touched her.

“Treating someone falsely is a sin as well.” Maria glared at Hathorne. He must have felt her eyes upon him, for at last he returned her glance. It was as though they had never met.

“Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live,” the old magistrate said, quoting from Exodus. It was the same quote used on the title page of The Discovery of Witches, written by Matthew Hopkins, who had overseen the deaths of so many in the first Essex County in England.

A woman in disguise was called into the room; she’d been covered in a veil that reached to the floor to hide her identity. As a witness against Maria, she had pleaded to remain anonymous, fearing for her life. To turn against a witch was dangerous business and her pleas had been answered. When she was seated before the council, she was to respond by nodding, so that Maria would not know her by her voice and curse her. Without the iron cuffs Maria would have known her in an instant through use of the sight, but now this enemy of hers might have been any woman in town. The veiled witness nodded yes to enchantments, yes to a promise of murder, yes to curses, yes to sexual perversities, yes to speaking with the devil. Had she seen her fly? Yes, indeed, she had. Had she seen feathers fall away and flesh appear to cover the witch’s bones? Yes as well. Black plumes sprouting upon her skin? Yes, a thousand times yes.

“You are a liar,” Maria said before she could stop herself. “And you will pay for these lies.”

“Are you threatening witchery right here before us?” the chief magistrate asked.

“Where is her proof?” Maria wished to know.

“Her proof is the word of a God-fearing woman.”

Maria sat back in her chair. Hannah had told her how God-fearing people had nailed her cat to her front door while it was still alive. How they had given her moldy bread and no water in jail. How she’d been stripped and searched to see if she had a tail. Already the metal cuffs had drawn blood on Maria’s wrists, black blood that was burning through the wooden floor. Let no one see it, let no one know, Hannah had warned her, should her fate ever lead her to a prison cell. Do not speak or argue. Do not proclaim your innocence. They want you to be guilty, they want to mock your sins, they want to keep you in irons, and they would most certainly like to see you burn.