Carve Her Name - Lydia Gilbert's execution

 A stone placed centuries ago in the ground. Her name is carved into the grey granite. The letters fade as the headstone withers with each passing year.

Lydia Gilbert; Unknown - 1654.

I drop to the ground next to it; my jeans dampen against the wet grass. Persecuted. Murdered for a crime, she didn’t commit.

“Witchcraft,” they had yelled.

Her death happened well before my life, but her story did not die with her. She lives with me; every woman killed for her gender lives with me. Their pain. Their fear. Their lives and futures stolen from them.

My hand slides against the smooth cold granite. My fingers move, etching over the letters of her name. I close my eyes, and I can envision her.

She sits, knees to her side, on the rough ground of her tiny cell. Her elbows rest on the wooden bench in the center of the room, her hands clench firmly together. Within her fingers, she grips tightly to her rosary, her faith, her hope. Her thin lips mutter a prayer.

The grey metal cuffs around her weak wrists blister the skin underneath. The attached chains leash her to the wooden bench.

Her pale white skin is clammy from fear, her brown eyes reddened by tears. The same black dress that she wore to her trial covers her body. Her brown hair tucks messily into a colonial white bonnet that is now stained by dirt.

Darkness suffocates the room. She looks and smells of desperation. Rotten food sits uneaten in the corner and fills the small chamber with its stench—the wet stone throughout the room sheens from the cell’s occasional washing.

Outside, the village prepares. The bustle of their conversations permeates the silence of the cell. Their voices bounce off the uneven cobblestone wall.

“Bring the witch out,” they yell. Her impending doom will be their evening show.

“Entertainment of Satan,” the prosecutor had said. “Guilty of witchcraft,” the judge shouted. A capital crime, the punishment, to be hanged.

When it is time, the guards pull her from her cell, unlatching her chains. She cries silent tears.

The villagers wait, lanterns in their hands—the shadows of the night bounce off the cell’s building. The tree outside lies in wait, an unwilling participant to the violence. The large oak tree is booming with life, beautiful green leafage, and blossoming acorns. A ladder leans against the

thick trunk of the tree. A noose waits on the lowest branch—a beautiful setting for a tragedy. The chilled night air lingers with smoke and sweat.

A witch, a murderer, a heathen. Childless and impoverished, she was easy prey for their hatred. They cheer as the guards force her to climb the ladder towards her hideous death. The devil, an enemy of God and mankind.

No. A woman. An innocent woman. A future robbed. A life needlessly ended.

Tears stream my face, and I open my eyes. The tears blur my vision and the text on the stone. She will live through me. I will carve her name into my future; her name will not be forgotten. Her name will not be erased by the passage of time. Her name will live in the fire of my belly. Her name. Lydia Gilbert.