Today in Salem: The now-friendless Elizabeth How bunches her petticoats under her bruised knees and kneels to pray once again on the jail’s brick floor.
She’s been fasting and praying nearly every moment since she was condemned eight days ago. She knows she must die. God has ordained it. But she doesn’t know when, and the waters are rising fast around her. She has very little time to remove the stone in her heart, to prepare to meet God in peace.
So she prays to understand the judges, who were so quick to believe her accusers. Twelve people have testified on her behalf. How can the judges not see that she is innocent? Why hasn’t she been reprieved, like the beloved Rebecca Nurse?
She prays for the afflicted girls, who, for reasons she cannot begin to fathom, have turned on her so fiercely. Some of them are children, past the age of reason, but children nonetheless. Some are older, and seem to delight in their false accusations. Why? What has she done to wrong them?
Most of all, she prays for her neighbors, who’ve been so convinced for so long that she has hurt them. They are grieving for their young daughter, of course, and perhaps they are too afraid to blame God. But why her?
She cannot make sense of it. But she also cannot meet God with a hardened heart. So she stays on her bruised knees, hungry, seeking forgiveness.
Tomorrow in Salem: RESIGNED: the sharp-tongued Susannah Martin