Not Guilty

Mary was beautiful- that was something they would all have agreed on. With perfect golden curls, bright emerald eyes and a heart-shaped, freckled face, she made many men turn their heads as they walked by her.

Not that beauty would save her now.

She’s frightened- of course she is- as the jeering crowd force her closer and closer to the scaffolding. Barely a week or two ago, the same people now taking Mary to her death would have called her a friend, shared jokes with her, talked with her.

It’s funny how quickly the tide can turn.

The crowd are a sea of leering, ugly, twisted faces, but even out of the mob, one face seems so much more malicious. One face seems to hate so much more than the others.

The face of the preacher- that lecherous old man. A preacher with wandering hands and eyes, who would never take no for an answer…

The preacher she’d refused. Coldly, disgusted by his lewd passions.

The man who now sentenced her to death.

Only two words ran through Mary’s mind, repeating themselves over and over.

Not guilty.

Not guilty.

Not guilty.

But those words meant nothing to the people who had been her friends the same ones who now screamed and jeered at her, shouting those cursed words that the spurned preacher had given them.

His smirk was cold as he watched her terror, her look of utter mindless terror. His ultimate revenge.

But those words meant nothing to the people who had been her friends the same ones who now screamed and jeered at her, shouting those cursed words that the spurned preacher had given them.

His smirk was cold as he watched her terror, her look of utter mindless terror. His ultimate revenge.

Even as she’s almost thrown onto the platform, and the noose roughly placed around her neck and tightened, Mary doesn’t scream out. She swore she never would. Even when they walked her up and down for hours until her feet were swollen and bloody, even when they had stabbed needles into her to find the place where her body was numb, even when they had swum her in the lake, plunging her head under the surface again and again.

Until finally, she’d confessed. Just to end it all.

But still not guilty.

She doesn’t want to listen to the catcalls, the jeering and the shouts, but they permeate the daze of fear anyway.

“Witch!”

“Devil’s child!”

“Spawn of Satan!”

Mary doesn’t scream. Not now. Not ever. But silently, she mouths the words.

Not guilty.

Not guilty.

The executioner steps back, and for the briefest of seconds, hesitates.

Finally, he does his job.

“Witch!”

“Demon!”

“Servant of the dev-“

One moment of falling.

There’s a brief crack.

The mob falls silent.

The body swings gently in a breeze.

Not guilty.

Not that anyone knew.

Not that anyone cared.

Witch-hunts occurred mainly in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Although the stereotype is that witches were burned at the stake, this generally occurred in America and France, while they were in fact more commonly hanged in England. Hundreds of innocent women with no male relatives to protect them were trialled and hanged as servants of the Devil.

All of the mentioned tortures that Mary is put through did happen to women- ‘walking’ was a form of torture in which the woman was walked up and down for hours on end without shoes until their feet were bloody and blistered. The use of needles to stab the woman in different parts of the body was to determine where there was a numb spot on her- evidence of the Devil’s mark. And, as many people know, ‘swimming’ a witch involved repeatedly submerging her in water until she gave in and confessed.

Obviously, Mary did not exist. But literally thousands of women were condemned to death because they were believed to be practising witchcraft. In some cases, the accusations were made out of pure malice.

- Isilthrar.