Report of the Trial of
Margery Lemont, Beatrix Walker, Cordelia Darling, & Tamsyn Penhaligon,
On an Indictment for the Murder of Flora Grayfriar
The trial took place in 1712, well before the advent of photography, but like most of us at Dalloway, the accused girls came from money. A portrait of Margery Lemont has been preserved here in the bowels of the Dalloway library; it hangs on the east wall next to the painting of her mother, the founder. When I look up from my book, Margery is watching me with a cool and impenetrable gaze. The artist painted her in luscious pale silks, her black hair tumbling loose over her shoulders, in defiance of the style of the time. Her nose is long and narrow, her lips faintly smiling, but it is her eyes that have always captured me most. Pale green along the lower curve of her irises, they deepen to black past the meridian of her pupils. A pinprick of light gleams against that shadow but fails to illuminate.
Some say she haunts the school along with the rest of the Dalloway Five—Godwin House, in particular. That legend isn’t true, of course; or it wasn’t until Alex and I made it so.
Flora Grayfriar was found exsanguinated in the woods, says this particular record, her sternum split and her white dress soaked red. She was the last body in a series of smaller corpses to be found: a slaughtered rabbit, a bloodless sheep. The trial makes no mention of a musket wound, although the account of the herbs and flowers strewn about her body is repeated here.
I reread the girls’ testimonies. It’s hard to imagine that they were alive once, pink-cheeked and vibrant, when the tales of their deaths loom so large.
In fact, tonight I reread the entire record of the murder trial, although I’ve scoured it enough times I nearly have it memorized. There are other accounts, of course, but I keep coming back to this one. Maybe a part of me heuristically assumes that if it was reported in a courtroom, it is likely a truer account of what happened—although I’m sure that isn’t actually the case. Every time I read I think I’ll find some new detail: another hint about what spells they cast, what arcane arts they practiced that required Flora’s death—if any. It’s useless. The girls claim they never touched Flora. They do admit to having held a séance, the details of which I had bastardized last year for my ritual with Alex. But the girls insisted it had all been in the name of good fun, a joke between friends, nothing more insidious. And nothing to do with Flora’s death.
Never mind that some townspeople testified they’d seen the girls holding bacchanals in the woods, drunk on cherry wine and consorting with devils—this wasn’t Salem. Nor was it Norfolk, Virginia, where Grace Sherwood survived the water test and was acquitted of witchcraft; or Annapolis the year following the Dalloway trial, where Virtue Violl was similarly found innocent. The town leaders were educated and wealthy, not Puritans; they did not believe young girls were capable of such satanic cruelty.
Or perhaps they were just afraid of Dalloway’s then headmistress, the daughter of the Salem witch.
If being Deliverance Lemont’s daughter had saved Margery from the stake, it hadn’t kept her alive for long. And if the town’s leaders were too scholarly to believe in magic, well, that did not apply to the common folk who relied on healthy crops and cattle to survive. If the girls at the school were witches, and if they were to turn their evil eyes toward the fields and farms, the town could not endure. Normal hardworking people can’t live off tuition and inheritance money, after all.
At least, that is what historians commonly believe happened to the girls. Fevered and idiotic mobs out for brutal justice.
And so one by one the Dalloway Five died—each in mysterious circumstances, each horribly. Flora Grayfriar’s ritual murder was avenged with their blood.
These are the deaths Ellis wants to recapture. These are the deaths she insists weren’t caused by magical means, although I still don’t understand what she thinks is the alternative. I don’t get the sense she buys the mob account, either.
I want to interrogate the concept of the psychopath,Ellis hadsaid.
Maybe she believes Margery is responsible.
It’s what I believe, too. She confessed, according to later records, once the trial was complete. Sheconfessed.Angeline Wilshire, the baker, claimed that Margery Lemont boasted about murdering Flora as the devil’s sacrifice while buying bread one Sunday. Allegedly, Margery had said that she was possessed by a spirit, or a demon. And if Margery was responsible for Flora, then why not the rest of them, too?
The demon part is what used to suspend my disbelief.
Yet Alex and I were there the night Margery Lemont’s ghost stepped out of legend and into the real world. I invited her into our lives, and I kept her here against her will. I still feel her fingers tangled up in the threads of my fate.
If Margery really had been possessed…if the girls had failed to close the séance, if they’d trapped a spirit in our world who would not rest until all of the participants were dead…
Who is to say she hadn’t done the same to us?
How long will you punish me?I ask the ink that inscribes Margery’s name.
But that’s not why I’m here. Or at least, it’s not the only reason.
I pull out my notebook and turn to the list of references, cross-checking the values against the tome open on the desk before me. I take notes for Ellis—anything that could conceivably be relevant, anything that suggests Margery’s guilt, paired with book and page numbers in case she wants to come herself.
When I’m finished I return the trial record to its glass case. I should leave. I’ve done what I came to do. There’s no need to look at any of the other books.
But I can’t stop looking at the spellcraft tome in the case nearest the door. It’s bound in a blue so old it appears nearly gray, the cover stained dark where some ancient witch spilled her wine while reading.
My hands clench into fists. I really shouldn’t. Ican’t.If I start with this again, I’ll never be able to stop.
On the other hand…On the other hand, it was so difficult to get in here. I can’t be sure I’ll ever have a chance again. And what if Ellis could use some spells for her book? It might be helpful.
In for a penny, in for a pound—
I open the case and take out the spell book, carrying it quickly to the reading table. Irrationally, a part of me thinks magic won’t infect me if I don’t touch it for long.
