how do you read this?

One of the most helpful techniques for reading handwritten documents is to initially ignore what you are trying to read and evaluate the entire page:

• Where is it from?
• What type of document is it?
• What year is it from?
• How does the person that wrote it write?
• What do his letters look like on the rest of the page?
• Do the same words appear multiple times so I can be confident knowing what letters are what?
• What does everything look like zoomed way in and way out?
• How does making the page lighter or darker affect what can be read?

This means it is much more useful to see the entire page than just a tiny clip. My best guess is that this is the name Mercy. But if you could post a link to where this image is found or show the entire page at high resolution, so I could properly look at this, I could easily change my mind or someone else could give you a better opinion.