Page 27 of Magic Lessons

Martha Chase was at the shop buying fabric for a new gray dress, for her own dresses had been washed and pressed so many times they were threadbare, when she spied the child near the bins of flour and arrowroot and loaf sugar. For an instant she believed the Lord had heard her prayers and had delivered her heart’s desire, this angel of a child she had been watching from afar as she slunk through the woods in her nightdress, for this time the girl seemed to be there all alone. She was about to go speak with her when quite suddenly the dark-haired woman, the one people said was a witch, came down the aisle to take the child’s hand.

Martha felt a storm of spite rising inside. She was a plain woman, but not as simple as she proclaimed to be, she was haughty, for she believed she had been chosen to be in the Lord’s light. Her jealousy was turning into a ruthless desire, and with such an emotion came a plan. The girl and her mother wore colorful dresses that Maria had sewn, with purple skirts, dyed with cedar and lilac leaves, and yellow bodices, tinted with bayberry leaves. They went up and down the aisles of the shop, like chattering birds. There were barrels of Indian meal and rye, stored with a cold stone in the flour to keep them cool and stop them from fermenting, which could cause all sorts of maladies, including nausea and hallucinations. The girl’s mother was buying beans to soak, along with a tub of local honey, some dried plum-colored currants, and a bag of flour. Martha overheard the witch tell the little girl she would fix Indian pudding and that treat would be their supper. The witch then bought a bag of English tea, at a dear price. Martha didn’t waste her funds on expensive coffee beans or tea when there were homegrown substitutes, like Liberty Tea, made from loosestrife or a mixture of strawberry, currant, and sage.

Some people in town were so nervous when they spied Maria Owens, they made the sign of the fox, holding up the pinkie and pointer fingers of their hands to protect them, but there were women who nodded to her as if they knew her, or perhaps they merely thought it prudent to be polite. As for Martha, she said nothing. She was waiting for an omen that would instruct her on what action to take. She felt something green and bitter inside her; the seeds of jealousy had quickly grown into tendrils that circled her lungs and liver and heart.

The witch left the child on her own when she went to speak with Anne Hatch, who, instead of tallying up Maria’s charges, showed her a bolt of fabric that had recently come from England, an aniline-dyed calico, colorful and far superior to the homespun most women used for their clothes, perfect for a little girl’s dress if you were not a Puritan who wore gray or brown, the shades of dead leaves.

“My gift to you,” Anne Hatch said, clearly in a good humor, as she always was when Maria came to town.

While the two women were examining the fabric, Martha went up to Faith, who was busy with a tray of buttons, counting out each one.

“You’re very good at numbers,” Martha said. Children loved compliments, though such things could stir a child’s vanity.

Faith turned to the stranger. She could see inside this woman’s heart and was bewildered by what she saw. There was something dark there, as if a cloud had passed over the sun.

“Are you sad?” Faith asked.

Martha’s eyes were brimming with tears. “Of course not.” She quickly wiped her tears away. She was well aware that crying in public was as shameful as wishing to steal something that didn’t belong to you.

“My mother could help you.” To Faith, Martha seemed no different than the women who came to the door at night, leaving their shoes on the porch so they wouldn’t track mud inside, women who wanted something, whose lives had not turned out as they’d imagined they would, who could not sleep or eat, who worried over the fate of a son or a daughter. Faith saw a smudge around the stranger, but she was too much of a child to understand the dark turn desire might take.

“Could she?” Martha felt a chill. She stared at the witch, who was gathering provisions in a basket. She wore her black hair loose and red boots; a black crinoline peeked out from beneath her dress. Who was she to wear black undergarments? Martha was a widow and had worn mourning clothes for the prescribed period, then had once again dressed in a proper gray dress. “And how could she do that?” she asked the child, thinking to herself that the answer was simple. Witchery.

It was then Maria turned and spied Martha. At once she believed that something was not right. She saw the shrewd cunning in this stranger, and the craving that was so heated a hole had burned through the bodice of her dress. There was a puff of smoke in the air that Martha caught in her hand.

“Come here, Faith. Stay by my side,” Maria called. The girl grinned at Martha, then ran dutifully toward her mother. “Did you want something?” Maria asked the stranger.

Martha’s face flushed and her desire shone through her, aflame. She wanted something most desperately. Among the town fathers she was thought to be mild; she had been a good wife who didn’t complain, and was now a widow on her own in the world. But Maria spied a woman who plotted, one who was jealous beyond words. To know another’s mind was evidence of witchery, and Martha began to burn more hotly beneath Maria’s gaze.

“If you want something, speak up,” Maria said.

“I want nothing from you,” Martha replied curtly. She turned on her heel and found her way to the back of the shop, fearing she would be struck dead if she dared to look behind her, for she had told a lie and she knew it.

When Maria and her daughter left, Martha went to the counter to pay for a box of glass jars she needed for her raspberry jelly. The property her husband had left her would soon be claimed by the magistrates, for she hadn’t the means to cover their debt and the land would pay for all they owed. The only thing that would grow there was a thicket of raspberry bushes. All through the summer she made jam and jelly, which she sold door-to-door. But every jar added to her bitterness, and every family she saw inflamed her, until at last her skin burned with a scrim of envy.

“What do you think of that one?” she asked Anne Hatch, nodding to Maria as they watched her through the window. The witch was skipping alongside her daughter as if she were a girl herself, without a care in the world, her red boots showing. There was a big black dog following them, a slinky creature with strange pale eyes.

“I would consider Maria Owens to be a good and generous woman,” Anne Hatch responded.

“Would you now?” Martha said thoughtfully. She had her doubts about Anne as well, for where was her husband? And how had she come to be so cheerful with the burden of running the shop set upon her shoulders? Martha kept her suspicions tucked beside her desire, close to her heart, where it continued to burn. She had seen what she wanted and she intended to have it: a daughter, one with red hair who could already count, who skipped down the street as if she hadn’t a care in the world and had no fear of strangers, even if it would have been best if she had.

The letter was dispatched to the courthouse on a spring day when the pear trees had begun to bloom. The sun was shining, as it was said to do every Wednesday for at least an hour a day. There was no signature on the parchment and the handwriting was shaky and difficult to read. It took all morning for the clerk to decipher the message, and when he did he brought the complaint before the magistrates, who were meeting to discuss the growth of the harbor, as well as a list of grievances they must attend to: a pig delivered but not paid for, a fence constructed over the landholder’s property line, the switching and caning of children in public places. The content of the letter was baffling at first, but when they really considered the charges it contained, no one was surprised this day had come. The complaint concerned a woman who flaunted the rules, who sold the bars of black soap that so many husbands had found in their wives’ possession. The anonymous note accused Maria Owens of a variety of evil deeds including speaking to spirits, dispensing poison, stealing souls, bringing on the loss of unwanted babes, and enchanting innocent men.

John Hathorne was quiet during the debate among the magistrates, but his heart was racing. By the end of the afternoon he would not have recognized the man he’d once been in Curaçao. That fool had gone swimming in his clothes; he had broken his marriage vows and his vows to God. He was most certainly not the John Hathorne who threw in his lot with his fellow judges, agreeing that witchery would only lead to more witchery and to women who believed they could do as they pleased. At the end of the day John Hathorne stood up and declared there was reason enough to prosecute Maria Owens. That night in bed, his hands began to bleed. He rushed outside and poured water from the rain barrel over his palms, but he could not wash the blood away. In the morning, Ruth noticed that he wore gloves. Her mother had told her that this was what guilty men did after they committed a crime; they could not look at what they’d done, they hid it away from others and from themselves, but the mark was there all the same, for what was done could not be undone.

There was a rapping on Maria Owens’ door the following night. It was late and dark and the frogs were singing, as they did each spring. It sounded for a moment as if Cadin had returned, but when Maria woke she saw that the flame in the fireplace burned black, and she knew there was evil outside. She stood by the door in her white nightdress, reciting a spell of protection, but whoever had come was still there. It was then that she felt the same chill she’d had when Thomas Lockland and his brothers rode across Devotion Field with murder in mind. She took the wooden box of salt she kept in a bureau, then poured a thin line along the walls and the door. But the salt evaporated in a white cloud as soon as it was laid down. Nothing would stick; it was too late for protection. Keeper had begun to growl and scratch at the door.

“Tie up that dog of yours,” a man shouted.

Tell a witch to bind a wild creature and she will do the opposite. Maria opened the window at the back of the house. “Go,” she told Keeper. The wolf refused to move. He would listen to one voice alone. Faith had been woken by the ruckus and she sat up clutching her doll, terrified by the shouting outside.

“Tell Keeper to run,” Maria told Faith. She knew he would fight to the death to protect the child, and she sensed the men outside would be grateful for any excuse to shoot him. “It’s for his own good.”

Faith asked the wolf to go, and he reluctantly leapt through the window, tail between his legs. They could hear him out in the woods, howling. It was at that moment that Maria wondered if she shouldn’t have sent Faith with him, as Hannah had sent her away. But it was too late to reconsider. The door was flung open by a constable with an axe in his hand, for he’d been ready to break it down. As Maria was about to utter a curse, sending them on their way, to hell if need be, the constable grabbed her, though he wailed when he did, his jabbing fingers burning from the heat of her flesh. The second constable now had the opportunity to snap iron cuffs on her wrists. This is how a witch was caught, while she worried over her child, and fought off one man, forgetting there was another. The men saw a pile of books Maria had bought while in Boston, and collected them as evidence. Then Maria was taken barefoot, in her nightdress with no belongings, pushed out the door into the night as her child choked back tears.

Fate is what you make it, or you will be what it makes of you.

“You damn well burned me!” the first constable cried. Blisters were rising on his hands where he’d grabbed her. He didn’t dare touch Maria again. “You’ve rightly been accused.”