And, alas, Mary knew things she would never tell anyone, secrets that Constance and Esther Hawke knew, but nobody else. She had planned to murder her husband. She had planned that Catherine be tried for the crime. The fact that she had come to her senses and changed her mind in no way diminished the possibility that the Devil had His claws inside her and she was possessed—that she deserved to be hanged and hope, for reasons that were inscrutable, that God would spare her the flames that most likely loomed.
