Page 55 of Magic Lessons

John Hathorne didn’t often eat with the family; on most days he left early, and came home when everyone was already asleep. But one morning he came into the room like a windstorm, very much in a hurry, for there was to be a meeting of the magistrates called at the last moment by a clerk who ran from one judge’s house to the other. Fortunately the courthouse was steps away and he would have time for some tea and toast at least. He was tall and dark and self-important and handsome, though he was more than fifty. His coat was perfectly pressed and his shoes well polished despite the muck in the streets. Faith took a step back, her breathing labored; it happened to her whenever she saw her father. This man and no other was to blame for crimes against her and her mother and the women of Salem. They had the same high cheekbones and long legs. He pursed his mouth when deep in thought, as she did. And, just like Faith, he was particular about his diet.

She had made cornmeal pudding and fresh speckled eggs cooked with parsley. She’d risen from sleep while it was dark so she could bake an apple pandowdy, a crusty pastry, perfect for afternoon tea. Apples were used in love charms, but also in spells of remembrance. For that purpose she had also added rosemary, an entire sprig, finely chopped. Let him recall his actions against them. Let him be haunted by them. Let him repent. That was why she had come all this way, to face him and damn him so that he would be the one pleading for mercy for once in his life.

Faith wished to be thought of as a servant, and to not have him look too closely at who she might be. So far he hadn’t even noticed her. To assist in the effort of being invisible, she had pulled her hair tightly away from her pale face and drawn it into a knot atop her head. Over that she wore a white cap so not a strand of her hair showed forth, for he surely would have recalled her red hair, if he remembered her at all. She used ink to darken her eyebrows, and a bit of pencil shaving to turn her eyelashes black.

Faith could see that the magistrate carried ambition and worry in his heart. She intended to bring bad fortune into his house with its dull mohair-covered chairs and pine tables. Already her presence was affecting the household. She’d noticed that the oldest son, a handsome boy a year or so older than she, couldn’t keep his eyes off her. Had he never seen a girl before? Perhaps due to their Puritan beliefs he had never been as close to one as he was to Faith, for his bedchamber was directly above the storage room where she slept, and she had a habit of appearing in his dreams.

The younger children paid her no attention at all, which was just as well. They were innocents and had likely suffered from having the same father as she. She had told the mistress of the house that her name was Jane Smith and said she had grown up on a farm in Andover, and was an orphan who was grateful for any honest work she could find.

“My husband will take tea,” Ruth Hathorne reminded Faith when she stood there staring. “And perhaps a slice of the pandowdy, for he won’t be back this afternoon.”

“No cake,” John said, his nose in his notes for the day’s meeting. His children knew well enough not to interrupt when he was at work, and he was always at work.

Faith poured him a cup of Tell the Truth Tea. She spilled a few drops on the tabletop. He noticed her then.

“Who is this?” he asked his wife.

“A godsend,” Ruth responded. “Jane. She’s been here for weeks. She can help me with everything. She’s a wonderful baker and very knowledgeable about cooking. She even makes her own tea.” The tea supplied from England was so expensive many people drank raspberry tea, called liberty tea, which was not half as good as Faith’s mixtures. “We’re so fortunate,” Ruth was happy to say.

“Do you have a voice?” the magistrate asked Faith.

“I do indeed,” she answered.

They gazed at each other, and for one confusing moment each seemed stunned by how similar the other’s tone was. Arrogance and intellect. Fine for a magistrate, not so fine for an orphaned girl. Before another breath was drawn, Faith lowered her eyes, though she was reluctant to do so.

“I expect I will not be hearing much of your voice while you live here,” he said to her. “My house is a quiet one. The voice we listen to is the Lord’s.”

“I thought it was yours,” Faith said bluntly. “Sir.”

The younger children gazed up at her then, and the son, also called John, who had once been a little boy peering at Faith through the white phlox, and who had swallowed his emotions for a lifetime due to fear and fidelity, had a rush of color in his face. The magistrate looked at her again, puzzled.

“Go on,” he said. “Do what’s expected of you.”

Faith went to fetch the biscuits, knowing young John watched her as she left the dining room, turning to give him a quick smile. It did not hurt to have an ally here. He was her brother, but by half, and that half did not include the blood that made her who she was. Faith simply could not puzzle out what on earth had made her mother fall in love with John Hathorne. She assumed he must have presented himself wrapped up in a lie, as many men were known to do. When she returned to the dining room, his tea was gone.

“The oddest thing just happened,” Ruth told the girl called Jane, for she was dazed by her last interchange with John Hathorne. “My husband announced that he was afraid to go to his morning meeting. He thought the magistrates might be disciplined. He’s never said that he was afraid of anything before. Perhaps your presence is a good influence,” she murmured.

“I doubt that, ma’am,” Faith was quick to say.

Tell the Truth Tea could affect even the most challenging of liars, those who were false not only to those they loved, but to themselves as well. It seemed her recipe had worked wonders. He’d told the truth to his own wife, an uncommon occurrence.

“I’m sorry he missed the biscuits,” Faith said. “I think he would have enjoyed them.”

Ruth patted her arm. “You’re a good girl.” The maid appeared to be an innocent and a poor judge of character who wished to see the best in everyone, even in Ruth’s own husband, who was, after nearly twenty years of their marriage, still a complete stranger to her.

Faith stowed away bones and leavings from her supper, wrapped them in a handkerchief, then sneaked them into a basket and went off, saying she would return from the market with some vegetables and herbs. She wore her cloak and her boots even though the weather was fine. The fiddlehead ferns were unfolding; bloodroot and trout lilies grew in profusion in the marshland. There was a shadow following her, as there always was. Her dear wild heart, her other, who pretended to be what he was not just as she did. People looked out their windows and swore they spied a black wolf that wore a dog’s collar, skulking down the cobbled streets, though most in the area had been killed for bounties or for their fur.

Faith found her way across the meadows and headed into the woods, allowing memory to lead her. The town had grown, but there was still plenty of wild land and acres filled with pine and oak, old chestnuts and elms, witch hazel and fragrant wild cherry, with its delicious fruit and poisonous seed. At last, Faith came to a muddy clearing where Maria had made a path. When she scraped at the ground with her boot heel, the blue stones Maria had carried from the ledge of the lake were still there. The roughly made slatted fence ringing the garden had tumbled down and was covered by wild ivy. There was the tiny tilted house, a neglected hunting shack her mother had worked so hard to make into a home. The windows had been covered with thick translucent paper, but that was torn apart now, for raccoons and weasels had taken up residence inside, and one year a bear had made its home in the cabin through summer and the last smoldering blaze of autumn. The seeds of the grapes he had eaten had sprouted and there were now wild grapevines growing over the roof, with wide green leaves unfolding. And there was something Faith didn’t recognize, the tree Samuel Dias had brought here from a thousand miles away, planted in the hours before Maria Owens left Massachusetts. People in town said that if you stood beneath the magnolia, your beloved would come to you, no matter the season or the time, and when its flowers bloomed those who passed by became confused, imagining there had been snow in May, or that stars had fallen from the sky.

Even a bitter, hard-hearted girl could feel wistful upon returning to the first real home she’d known. Faith climbed over the broken-down fence and cleared away the ivy. There she discovered what she was looking for, the apothecary garden. It had gone wild, and there were jumbled weeds abounding, but there were still stalks of belladonna, along with the root that took the shape of a man and was said to scream when plucked from the ground. Faith filled the basket with the ingredients she needed, then noticed that a small sparrow had tumbled from its nest. One more ingredient, fallen into her lap. She took it in her hands for it was what she needed for her dark spell, the bones and heart and liver. She closed her eyes as she wrung its neck, and as she did so she could feel the wrongness of her deed pulsing as if a hive of stinging bees were under her skin. Whoever was charmed by this spell would feel the pain he had caused others; his deeds would be pulled out of him and bite him, as if all his wrongdoings were sharp teeth, and he would feel the stab of remorse.

As Faith took the life of the sparrow, Keeper threw back his head and howled, overcome by loss, as if Faith had been stolen from him once again. The sound sent shivers along her spine but she didn’t stop. Her blood was on fire. When she opened her eyes the bird was lifeless in the palm of her hand, and Keeper was gone. He was done with her. She was not the person that he had been attached to, the one he’d come to of his own accord, for a familiar can never be called, he must make his own choice, and Keeper had made the choice to leave her.

Faith wrapped the bird in a bit of flannel cloth and placed it in the basket of herbs, then went to search for Keeper. There were muddy footprints that led past the lake where she had fed handfuls of bread to a huge eel, but when she searched the cliffs and caves, Keeper was nowhere to be found. Faith cried out for him, she whistled and clapped her hands; still there was no sign of the wolf. Her most loyal friend had deserted her, and for good reason. She was not the girl he knew. It is easy to become what your actions have made of you.

“Go ahead,” she called in a broken voice. “If you leave me, then you were nothing to me anyway!”

Her face was burning as she ran through the fields. She went back to the house with the elm trees and began to simmer her cursed stew over the fire in the kitchen. When she cut up the bird, the lifeline on her left hand stopped. If she had glanced down that afternoon as she swept the Hathornes’ house and boiled their laundry with ashes and lye, she would have seen that she had made her own fate out of bitterness and spite. According to the rules of magic, she would have to pay a price for the actions she had taken that had been born of vengeance.