by Suzanne Weyn
“Miss Elizabeth has come to visit us,” Lily informed Miss Pritchard. “She is here at the table.”
“I am aware. Thank you, Lily.” The old woman took a seat across from Elizabeth May. “This is a pleasant surprise. What brings you here, my girl?”
“Troubling news, I fear.” She told her what she’d heard from Charles.
“And you naturally assumed I was the witch these girls saw riding across the sky, did you?” Miss Pritchard asked, an amused smile playing on her thin, lined lips.
Elizabeth May flushed with embarrassment. “I thought this only because you have been known to prescribe unusual cures for neighboring people.”
“She learned it from my mama,” Lily offered. “She was the cook for the Pritchards in Barbados.”
“It’s true,” Miss Pritchard agreed. “Lily’s mother taught me her island ways. When I was a girl, I believed everything she taught me. As I grew older, I came to realize that she believed many superstitious things that were not true. But she also knew many natural cures that worked.”
“Mama taught you to heal by touch like she did,” Lily reminded her.
“Life force, healing energy, runs through all living things,” Miss Pritchard explained to Elizabeth May. “I have used my hands to direct this life force into a diseased or injured area.”
“Do you believe in witches?” Elizabeth May asked.
“St. Augustine, a Catholic theologian of the ninth century, argued that only God can control the mechanisms of the universe. Neither the devil nor any human being has that same ability. That is what I believe.”
“Are you a Catholic?” Elizabeth May asked.
“I do not believe in one religion or the other. I worship God privately and in my own way,” Miss Pritchard replied. “God is God whatever you call him, or her.”
Her? This idea hit Elizabeth May forcefully. “You think God could be a her?” she asked, leaning excitedly across the table. Despite all the teaching she’d received to the contrary, she’d always suspected God could be a female.
“Perhaps God is not he or she. Perhaps God is a force so vast it combines the sexes or disregards sex altogether,” Miss Pritchard proposed.
God was neither male nor female? This was a new idea to Elizabeth May. She could not imagine a being or force beyond the confines of male or female. It gave her the feeling that her brain was being twisted, stretched in a manner that was almost painful. “I’ll need to think further about that idea before I can rest easy with it,” she admitted.
“Thinking deeply never killed anyone,” said Miss Pritchard.
Lily laughed bitterly as she poured the tea for them. “I’m not so sure that’s true,” she commented.
After their tea, Elizabeth was full of questions regarding island cures. She and Lily followed Miss Pritchard into a small, disheveled study where Lily, under Miss Pritchard’s direction, searched among books stacked in disarray. Despite the apparent chaos, she quickly found what she was looking for.
“These two books are the best ones I have,” Miss Pritchard said. “Lily’s mother gave them to me shortly before she passed away.”
Elizabeth May took the books. Both were so frayed and faded with age that she worried that they might crumble to dust in her hands if she attempted to open either of them.
“You can borrow them for as long as you like,” Miss Pritchard offered.
“Thank you. I should very much like to read them. It would be interesting to study medicine and become a doctor, though I realize no such opportunity is available to women.”
Miss Pritchard sighed. “I know. It’s so foolish and wrong. Women throughout history have been midwives and healers, delivering babies, caring for the sick. Why they should not be doctors is a mystery.”
“It is no mystery,” Lily disagreed. “It’s because men won’t let them. They want to keep all the power and knowledge for themselves.”
“Lily,” Miss Pritchard said. “Could you find me my special deck of tarot cards? I would like to do a reading for Elizabeth May.”
Lily turned to Elizabeth May. “Miss Pritchard has special cuts in the cards that tell her which is which, even though she can’t see them. There’s no better card reader than Miss Pritchard. Even Mama said she was the best, although Mama herself taught her how to do it.”
“I’ve never seen a tarot deck,” Elizabeth May said.
Back at the kitchen table, Miss Pritchard spread the cards facedown with the assurance of a sighted person. She told Elizabeth May to select thirteen cards and leave them facedown, then she arranged them.
The first card she turned over was called The Lovers.
“This is your immediate past,” Miss Pritchard said. “The card is upside down. You have lost a true love.”
Elizabeth May gasped but said nothing. It was true, though she tried to push it from her mind and not dwell on the past.
Miss Pritchard stroked her hand consolingly. She turned the next card. “You will meet this love again,” she said.
As she continued to turn cards, she revealed a tower being hit by lightning. “The tower card predicts a sudden upheaval, abrupt change.”
“What will happen?” Elizabeth May asked.
“You will soon find out,” said Miss Pritchard.
Abby stood at the bottom of the winding stairs and winced at the sounds of crashing as Mr. Wheldon threw things against the wall from upstairs. It was disconcerting how easily his temper flared. And no one got him angrier than that wife of his — a pretty young thing, to be sure, but with no sense whatsoever. Any other woman would consider herself lucky to have him, yet all she ever did was to resist his wishes at every turn. She’d try the patience of a saint — and he was far from saintly.
“Has she come back yet?” asked Helen, the kitchen maid, stepping out of the kitchen door.
Abby shook her head.
“I hope he calms down by the time she returns,” Helen said.
“He told her not to go out but she went anyway. I don’t know what she expected,” Abby answered as another resounding crash hit.
Helen sighed anxiously and went back into the kitchen.
Abby gazed up the stairs. A man in a rage did not frighten her. In her day, she’d seen more than her share of them. She could handle him and maybe do herself some good in the process.
This latest upset had given her an idea. This wife of his would not last. The awful marriage would end sooner or later. Why shouldn’t Abby nudge it along?
Abby knew men found her attractive. In Ireland or England it would be unheard of for a man such as Mr. Wheldon to think of marrying a maid — an indentured servant, at that. But her indenture was almost over and Americans were a practical people. A woman known to be a good housekeeper and pleasant, obedient company might make a swift and sensible replacement for a first wife who had deserted him — or who had been sent packing because she was thought to be unfaithful by her husband.
Of course, Abby did not know for certain that Elizabeth May had been unfaithful, but she had seen something that could serve as evidence that there was another man in her life. It might be enough to inflame an already agitated husband. Possibly, this was the perfect moment to show it to him.
Lifting her skirt daintily, she ascended the stairs.
Charles stood in the kitchen awaiting his wife’s return, sure she would sneak in through the back door. He paced, agitated and ready to spring at her. It was nearly dark. What had she been doing all this time?
In the purple grayness of dusk, he caught sight of her trekking across their backyard in the falling snow, huddled into her cape. She saw him watching her at the back window. She stood stock still, and for a moment he thought she would run. He prepared himself to chase her, but after another second she continued toward the kitchen door.
“Where have you been?” he asked angrily as soon as she entered.
“I had to warn Miss Pritchard to be careful. I know she is no witch; she doesn’t even believe in witches,” Elizabe
th May defended her actions.
“I do not know that you were even at Miss Pritchard’s house. Maybe you are lying to me. Perhaps you have gone out to meet a lover. I have sent Abby over to Miss Pritchard’s right now to check.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked, astonished.
He had been certain she’d gone to warn the old blind woman and had been upstairs venting his rage. He was fed up with having such a defiant wife. It hadn’t occurred to him that she was unfaithful to him until Abby had come in and shown him what she’d found.
Charles took a crisp, white handkerchief from his jacket pocket. He unfolded it, displaying what it held. Elizabeth May gasped when she saw what he had wrapped with the handkerchief.
“Where did you get those?” she asked.
A pair of dark green peridot earrings in the shape of teardrops lay hooked together in the center of the handkerchief. They glistened brilliantly.
She reached for the earrings but he yanked them back to his side. “I did not give them to you. I am sure of that.”
“They were among my private possessions,” she said. “You had no right to pry!”
“Abby thought they were from me to you. She came into our room to return them. She told me she’d found them on the floor and thought you’d dropped them. Thinking she was giving me a compliment, she said a loving look comes into your eye whenever you wear them. I have never seen you wear these. What man gave them to you?”
Elizabeth May seemed unable to speak, but stood there looking like she wanted to flee.
He was now sure she had a lover. It explained everything — her coldness to him, the fact that she had defied his instructions to go out in a snowstorm. And now he had the proof of her love affair in these earrings — a lavish gift, to be certain.
And that soft look in her eyes that Abby had described: There it was at this very instant.
“Tell me!” he shouted, slamming his hand on the table. “I demand to know!”
Elizabeth May sat at the maid’s table in the kitchen. Under her snow-flecked cape, she clutched the books Miss Pritchard had lent her. To produce them now would simply fan the flames of his rage.
Brian. She remembered a pair of hazel green eyes set in a pale, handsome face; how his thick, nearly black hair settled in a wave across his forehead. She could hear his Irish brogue as he pressed the earrings into her hand: “There’s a story to these earrings. My great-great-great-grandfather found them in the Irish Sea as he was swimming for his life. He was a Spanish sailor aboard the ship Girona, part of the Armada sent by Philip the Second of Spain to conquer England. His ship had been sunk by the English and he was swimming for shore as fast as he could when there in the water, no doubt stirred up from the bottom by the battle, these earrings floated right toward him. They were hooked together just as they are now.”
Her father imported goods from Ireland and she had accompanied him to port one day. She had first laid eyes on Brian as he unloaded goods from the ship on which he’d worked as a sailor. The attraction between them had been instant. He lost no time in sitting down beside her on a bench while her father conducted his business elsewhere.
From then on, she accompanied her father to the port whenever she could. Brian sometimes came to London and found his way to her bedroom window. They would sit out on the porch roof until the morning. It was on a night such as that when he gave her the earrings. “I want you to have them,” he’d said. Minutes after he’d spoken those words, the window to her bedroom was flung open and her father stepped onto the roof, firearm in his hands. Without asking a question, he’d shot just slightly over Brian’s head.
Elizabeth May had screamed as, terrified, he’d slid from the roof, crashing into the bushes below. “If you ever come near my daughter again I’ll blow your head off!” Henry Harrington shouted after him.
Shaking, Elizabeth May had slipped the earrings into the pocket of her skirt just before he whirled around on her, red-faced with anger. “Get inside, you shameless girl. Who else knows of this? If anyone hears of this, your reputation will be ruined — if it’s not ruined already.”
“But, Father, we didn’t do anything wrong,” she said, her voice quivering.
“Going out in the middle of the night with a sailor is enough!” He pointed to the window. “Get in, I say!”
From that moment on, life had been unbearable. Thanks to her father’s shooting and shouting, gossip swirled around the family. Speculation ran rampant. Someone had seen Brian running from the house.
Elizabeth May’s mother had simply averted her eyes in embarrassed disappointment whenever her daughter came into the room. Her father would not speak to her either; naturally, he would no longer take her to the port with him. There was no way for her to contact Brian, even though she thought of him constantly.
She felt as though she might die if she could never see him again.
It was shortly thereafter that Charles Wheldon had visited with his father, an importer of goods from the colonies to London. He was in town to arrange for a shipment of tobacco and to be introduced by his father to London Society.
Mr. Harrington had moved quickly to foster the match, inviting Charles and his father over frequently and ordering Elizabeth May to present herself in a favorable light. When Charles had finally proposed, Elizabeth May had accepted as a way to get as far away as possible from her tattered reputation, her disapproving parents, and all memory of Brian.
Now she looked up at Charles, almost having forgotten that he was there glowering at her, arms folded, waiting for her explanation. “Someone gave them to me long ago and I treat them as a keepsake. He is long gone, never to return.”
They heard someone open the front door. Charles’s eyes darted toward the sound, but he didn’t move.
“If he is gone, then this token of his love should be gone as well.” He put the earrings in his inside jacket pocket. “I will go out tonight and dispose of them for you.”
“No. You cannot. They are mine!” Elizabeth May protested. As she spoke the words, they had an echo in her head. She heard herself shrieking: Mine! Mine!
She did not know where this other voice came from but she knew it was now her own.
The room swirled around her.
“Mine!” she screamed. It arose from somewhere so deep within. All reason and restraint left her.
She sprang from her chair. Miss Pritchard’s books clattered to the floor from under her cloak.
Lunging at him, she raked his face with her nails. “Give them to me. They’re mine!”
Stunned, he staggered backward.
The earrings dropped from his hands and she fell upon them, scooping them into the neckline of her dress.
Abby raced into the kitchen, pointing to Elizabeth May. Two men were right behind her. “See her! She’s a witch! This proves it! Look what she’s done to him!”
Elizabeth May sat crouched there, her hair loosened, blood dripping from her fingers.
The men grabbed her at each arm, dragging her to her feet.
“She … she attacked me,” Charles stammered.
Abby crossed to the books, opening one of them to the first page. Miss Pritchard’s name was written there on a book plate. “As if any further proof were needed, here it is,” she announced to the men, presenting the open book triumphantly. “She’s apprenticed herself to the old witch and her servant, the ones you just arrested. It’s fortunate that I was there to alert you to the third member of their wicked party.”
“Is this true, sir?” one of the men asked. “Do you believe your wife to be a witch?”
Charles touched his face and then gazed at the blood that smeared his hand. His eyes cut to Abby holding the books.
Elizabeth May saw what was about to happen. In a flash of understanding, she realized the maid’s part in it all. “I am no witch!” she protested. “This woman wants me out of the way so she can marry my husband.”
The men looked to Abby. “That’s a lie,” she said. �
�A lie told by a witch.”
“Who is lying, sir?” the man asked.
Elizabeth May’s black cat jumped onto the kitchen table. With one leap, it sprang into her arms, stretching up to lick her cheek.
Abby sat on the stairs, listening to the ticking grandfather clock. She wore her best dress. Her hair was neatly curled and pinned back.
Helen approached, her face swollen from crying. “I can’t believe they will really burn that poor girl. They’ve never burned anyone for being a witch before.”
“She brought it on herself,” Abby said dully.
“But to be burned alive!”
Abby sniffed. “She’s not the first. She won’t be the last.”
“How could Mr. Wheldon be there to watch?”
“He set his heart against her because she was an unfaithful witch.”
“She was not!”
“Who am I to say she was not when Mr. Wheldon, a lawyer, says otherwise? That is what he told the judge at her trial, and so it must be,” Abby replied. “She fell under the sway of that Miss Pritchard and her witch slave who will burned alongside her. That’s why witches must be gotten rid of, they harm and corrupt the innocent. You should have seen her that night in the kitchen. She was wild with the witchery in her.”
“I can’t picture it,” Helen insisted.
“I saw it myself.”
The door opened and Charles entered, appearing ashen and exhausted. Abby sprang to her feet as Helen retreated to the kitchen. “Let me take your coat, sir,” Abby said, sliding it from his back. “Shall I bring you tea in your study?”
“Yes, please.”
She made the tea, serving it to him on a silver tray. “How did it go, sir?” she asked.
His head dropped into his hands and he began to sob. “There, there,” Abby soothed, putting her hands on his shoulders.
“I am so filled with guilt,” he sobbed.
“You did the right thing.”
“Did I?” he asked, suddenly lifting his head to her. “Or did I simply want to be rid of her?”