Absolution

PROLOGUE- BOSTON 17021

I can’t live. 2

I don’t feel or even allow myself the recollection of feeling. If I was spring he was summer, but winter swallowed us and we died the second she bared her hatred. The almanac screams at me, but I don’t feel. I’m an old woman, though my hair falls crow black, he loved to run his narrow fingers through it when the devil danced. 3

No day passes without a single thought blanketed on him though ten distant years have died since the night we shook the pain from our soles. The pain of innocents executed on the testimony of deluded children and all in love for the man who brought summer into my spring.4

John Proctor.5

Waves lap gently round the various ships nuzzling the quayside, fly sailors buzz amid the sails, masts and decks, oblivious. The ink black waters croon their welcomes, beguiling and lulling me into their soft caresses. Why should I to live when he’s long dead, neck stretched, spine twisted, olive eyes broken, the gentle probing tongue protruding from the soft mouth I so loved. John is dead and I still mourn him, knowing he’d be living if I’d kept my vengeance but I couldn’t, I loved him too much. 6

She was stone to my crop, ice to our fire, and I still hate her. These waters will take me, suck me, greedily drink and no one will miss me. When they finally dredge up my bloated fish gnawed carcass they’ll declare another whore murdered for her meagre cache. And they’ll be wrong.7

A solitary man clad in clerical weeds passes as I stare, captivated into the awaiting depths. So many clergymen, so many ministers; my disgraced uncle and that other one, the witch finder, the man who finally saw me for what I was. He too wore the longer hair curling onto his shoulders, but I can’t recall his eyes, only John’s beguile me. 8

Momentarily he catches my eye and a frisson of recognition, or disapproval passes between us. Quickly I avert my gaze, it’s incomprehensible to him why I look away, there’s nothing to fear from a man of the cloth, but I stare into temptation, praying he’ll pass without a saving word and listen for his scurrying about his business. I yearn for desolation, the sanctuary offered by the welcoming waters and catch my palpable breath as the footsteps suddenly cease and a soft voice is rent from my memories.9

‘Abigail?’10

He mistrusts his sight; his senses must be tricking him, creating an image from his long interred past. But he persists, he believes.11

‘Abigail? Abigail Williams? It is you. Don’t you remember me?’ he turns rapidly, retracing his hasty footsteps, but it’s too late. The inky waters have received me as their own.12