They ask whether I danced with the Devil.

I tell them I do not remember.

That is true.

The cell stinks of straw, piss, and damp stone. Light enters through a slit high in the wall, enough to show the dust when the sun is kind. My wrists are rubbed raw from the rope. Father Anselm says confession cleanses the soul. Magistrate Howe says confession spares the body some pain.

The women in the next cell pray aloud until their voices become hoarse. One says she saw me in the woods under the moon, naked and speaking in a language no Christian tongue should know.

I almost laugh.

I have not been naked in months. Winter was cruel, and even before they dragged me here, my dresses hung from me like rags.

Yet sometimes, when sleep takes me by the throat, I see the woods.

Dark branches.
Smoke.
A circle of figures.
A fire crackling low.

And I do not know whether it is memory or dream.

“Tell us of the sabbath,” Father Anselm says.

His face is lined and tired, as though my soul is an inconvenience to him.

“There was no sabbath.”

“Then explain the child.”

I close my eyes.

Elsbeth Harper’s boy had a fever for six days. Burning skin, dry lips, eyes rolling beneath half-shut lids. His mother believed demons had entered him because he spoke nonsense and clawed at the air.

I went because she begged.

I remember willow bark steeped in boiled water.
Cool cloths.
Honey, if they could spare it.
Keeping him from the fire so the heat would not worsen.

He lived.

Three weeks later, her husband’s cow miscarried, and suddenly my remedies became suspicious.

“God spared the child,” Father Anselm says.

“Then why ask me?”

His expression hardens.

That earned me the first blow.

I still taste blood when I swallow.

I was not always feared.

Once they came to me for births.

For coughs.

For infected cuts.

For women’s pains they could not speak of before men.

Old Marta taught me most of what I know. She called herself no witch. Only practical.

“Nature gives remedies,” she would say, crushing herbs between cracked fingers. “Men fear what they do not understand.”

Marta died in winter. Some said age took her.

Others said something else.

I inherited her satchel.

Perhaps that was my mistake.

Or perhaps my mistake was surviving where others did not.

A woman whose husband dies in the harvest fever may accept God’s will.

A woman whose child dies in the same week may require another answer.

I became convenient.

Yet memory is a treacherous thing.

Because there are gaps.

I cannot account for all nights.

I wake some mornings remembering dreams so vivid they cling like cobwebs.

Once I woke with dirt beneath my fingernails.

Once with blood on my sleeve that was not mine.

Once with the distinct certainty that someone had whispered my name from the tree line.

“Margaret.”

Soft. Familiar.

Impossible.

My mother used to call me that.

She has been dead these twenty years.

“Did you commune with spirits?” asks the magistrate.

“No.”

But I hesitate.

He notices.

“Ah.”

“No,” I say again, harder.

Yet I remember the winter Agnes Pike labored for two days with a breech child. Snow trapped us indoors. Her screams weakened to whimpers. The baby should have died. She should have died.

I remember exhaustion.
Hot water.
Blood.
Prayer.

And something else.

A moment when the room became strangely still.

The fire bent sideways though no door was open.

A pressure in my ears.

And then a voice—not heard, exactly, but understood.

Turn the child.

I did.

The baby lived.

Agnes called it a miracle.

I told myself instinct.

But what is instinct except knowledge without explanation?

The magistrate produces items laid on the table.

My satchel.

Dried herbs.

A small carved token I do not remember owning.

A lock of hair bound with red thread.

That unsettles me most.

“Explain these.”

“The herbs are medicine.”

“And the token?”

“I do not know.”

“The hair?”

“I do not know.”

His smile is thin and ugly.

“At last, honesty.”

Do I know?

The thread is familiar.

I have seen it before.

Or dreamed it.

Red around pale fingers.

Red tied to branches.

Red circling a wrist not my own.

That night they put another prisoner in my cell.

Sarah Miller.

She will not look at me.

By morning she whispers, “Did you curse my husband?”

“No.”

“He said you stared at him.”

“I stare at many people.”

“He wasted away.”

“So did half the village.”

She begins to cry.

“I told them I saw you.”

I am quiet for a long time.

“Did you?”

She looks up.

“I don’t know.”

That frightens me more than accusation.

Because I understand.

This place makes certainty rot.

After enough questioning, enough sleepless nights, enough repeated suggestions, a person begins to examine themselves like a stranger.

Did I say that?

Did I do that?

Was I there?

I search myself as one searches a dark attic with a single candle.

There are shapes.

But nothing clear.

The dreams worsen.

I see women dancing barefoot in mud.

I smell animal musk and smoke.

I hear chanting.

But when I force myself closer, the faces blur.

Then one night, I see clearly.

Myself.

Standing at the edge of the fire.

Watching.

Not dancing.

Watching.

And behind me—

Marta.

Dead Marta.

Her hand on my shoulder.

“You know what they need,” she says.

I wake screaming.

Father Anselm comes at dawn.

“You are ready.”

“For what?”

“To confess.”

“What if I am innocent?”

“Then God knows.”

“That is little comfort.”

“And if you are guilty?”

I think of the voice in Agnes’s room.

Of the red thread.

Of dirt beneath my nails.

Of dreams that feel more solid than waking.

“Then perhaps I do not know myself.”

He softens, just a fraction.

“That is how evil works.”

Or madness, I think.

Or grief.

Or exhaustion.

Or suggestion.

At trial, they pack the hall so tightly the air tastes human.

Faces I have known my whole life refuse to meet my eyes.

Elsbeth holds her son close—the child I saved.

Sarah stares at the floor.

The magistrate asks the question.

“Margaret Hale, are you a witch?”

Silence stretches.

I could deny it.

I could confess.

Either might end the same way.

And suddenly I understand that what terrifies me most is not death.

It is uncertainty.

That a mind can become unreliable.
That memory can fracture.
That one may carry darkness without naming it.

I look at my hands.

Hands that healed.

Hands that perhaps harmed.

Hands I no longer trust.

“I do not know,” I say.

The room erupts.

But the magistrate bangs for silence.

“Not know?”

“No.”

Laughter. Gasps. A woman spits.

I raise my voice.

“I know I healed the sick. I know I buried children. I know I used herbs and skill and whatever sense God gave me.”

I swallow.

“But if you ask whether I heard things I cannot explain… yes.”

A murmur.

“If you ask whether grief and exhaustion have made dreams seem real… yes.”

The magistrate leans forward.

“If you ask whether Satan touched you—”

“I do not know.”

Father Anselm closes his eyes.

The verdict comes quickly.

Of course it does.

As they lead me away, Elsbeth’s boy slips from her grasp and runs toward me.

He presses something into my bound hands before they pull him back.

A scrap of red thread.

My breath catches.

“From when you fixed me,” he says.

His mother goes pale.

“You tied it round my wrist and said it would remind me to keep fighting.”

The hall goes quiet.

A charm.

Or encouragement.

Witchcraft.

Or comfort.

The meaning changes with the teller.

I begin to laugh.

Not because it is funny.

Because at last I understand.

Memory is not a clean ledger.

It is a story we keep rewriting to survive.

And whether I am healer, witch, or simply a frightened woman whose mind has splintered under fear—

I will die not knowing.

Which may be the cruelest judgment of all.