The Witches of New York

by Ami McKay

  “What do you suppose he did with her?” Adelaide couldn’t help but imagine the worst.

  “I don’t really care now that my problem’s solved,” Mr. Beadle answered. “Maybe he’ll put the screws to her, or dunk her in the river. I think a witch is worse than a murderer, don’t you? A murderer kills you all at once and it’s over, but a witch kills you by inches. I think witches ought to be killed themselves. They used to kill them in this country and I hear they still kill them over in Scotland. Send her back, I say.”

  “Did the gentleman happen to give you his name?”

  “I was so pleased to get rid of the girl, I didn’t ask. He was well spoken and finely dressed. When I offered to pay him for his services, he refused to accept one penny. I told him he was either a saint or gone mad. I’m sure he’d make a killing if he charged for this sort of thing. They say they got rid of all the witches long ago, but I say they’re wrong. Witches are like rats. Where there’s one, there’s a hundred.”

  Rising from her chair, Adelaide moved to take her leave. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Beadle. I hope no other witches ever cross your path.” For their sake, not yours, she thought.

  “Thank you kindly, miss,” Mr. Beadle said, puffing on his pipe. “You wouldn’t happen to know of any girls who might be looking for a housekeeping position, would you? A God-fearing American-born girl, of course.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t,” Adelaide said, shaking her head.

  Mr. Beadle didn’t get up to see her out, so she showed herself to the door. Pausing at the threshold, she spat on it to place a curse on Mr. Beadle’s head. She’d seen her mother give such curses to anyone who’d done her wrong. “That,” Adelaide said, “is for the blue-eyed maid. Wherever she may be.”

  Mr. Beadle’s Witch.

  LENA MCLEOD HAD been locked in a cold dark cellar for three days. She’d barely had any food to eat except for a hunk of stale bread she’d been given the first night. It’d been so salty she hadn’t been able to keep it down. After gagging it up she’d begged her captor for water. “Please,” she’d cried, “take pity on me. My thirst is terribly strong.”

  “Salt is the bane of witches,” Reverend Townsend had said, seeming to take pleasure in her pain. “God will soothe your thirst if you repent of your sins.”

  Lena had not known what to say to that, and was too afraid to speak.

  The next day he’d come at her with questions and accusations, threatening to hit her with a thick wooden rod he liked to smack against the palm of his hand. It was carved with primitive markings—circles, crosses, daisy wheels and double Vs—much like those that’d been scratched into the willow tree that stood outside the stone wall of the churchyard in Lena’s village in Scotland. Her great-great-grandmother Mrs. Davina Hale had been hanged there, found guilty of witchcraft long before Lena was born.

  “State your name,” Reverend Townsend had said, prodding her with the rod.

  Breath stuttering, Lena answered, “Mrs. Lena McLeod.”

  “Do you know where you are, Mrs. McLeod?”

  “In a house of God?”

  “And do you know why you’re here?”

  “I’ve done nothing wrong,” she insisted. “Please let me go.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that,” the Reverend replied.

  “I’ll do whatever you want,” Lena pleaded.

  Leaning close, the Reverend whispered in her ear, “I’ll keep that in mind.” As he straightened up he asked, “Is your husband living, Mrs. McLeod?”

  “No sir, he’s dead.”

  “How long ago did he die?”

  “One year ago this December.”

  “And how did he come to pass?”

  “He fell from the Great Bridge.”

  “And you had nothing to do with it? You did nothing to cause it?”

  “No, nothing,” Lena answered honestly, yet feeling sick with guilt. Not a day had gone by since Johnny’s death that she hadn’t blamed herself for it. She should’ve believed the signs when she first saw them and not let him walk out the door. There’d been talk in her family of other women having similar visions, that Davina’s gifts had been passed down through her blood, but Lena’s mother, a God-fearing woman, had told her it was best not to pay any attention to such tales. The foretelling had seemed so strong…but, still, she’d been afraid that if she told Johnny what she’d seen, he’d think she’d gone mad. (For a time, she’d thought maybe she had.) She’d seen his face in the washbasin the morning of his death, staring up at her through the soap flakes, then rising to the surface, gasping for air. But she’d let him go to the bridge. Then she’d grown frantic and decided to warn him. She’d been ready to climb the wobbly footbridge made of planks and wire that stretched to the top of the caissons, but the foreman hadn’t let her pass.

  Instead she’d knelt at the water’s edge. “What if I gave you my life for his?” she’d asked the River in her desperation.

  “That’s not how it works,” the River had answered. “The choice is made.”

  Within the hour, Johnny was dead.

  “And you came to live with the good Mr. Beadle sometime after that?” the Reverend asked.

  “I did,” Lena answered.

  Cradling her chin in his hand, the Reverend tipped her face so her eyes met his and said, “And you seduced him into taking you on.”

  “I did not!” Lena cried.

  “But you had no means to support yourself and no place to go.” Taking a little chapbook from his pocket the preacher laid it in Lena’s lap. The title on the cover read, Madam Morrow’s Book of Potions, Hexes and Spells. “Is this yours?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “So you don’t deny it?”

  “No sir,” she said.

  “What was the purpose of your having it?”

  “A woman at the market offered it to me after my husband died. She said there was a spell in there for talking to the dead. I was mad with grief, so I took it. I was curious and desperate. I wanted to be sure he was all right.”

  “And what of the things Mr. Beadle found in his cellar?”

  “I was only trying to scare him a little. He was awfully mean to me.”

  The Reverend hadn’t stopped heaping abuse upon her since then. No matter how hard she begged, he hadn’t relented. He’d said it was God’s will for him to test her and if she came through clean he’d let her go. He’d taken her clothes and burned them. He’d cut her hair and burned it too. He’d collected her urine for God knows what purpose. He’d pricked her arms, her thighs, her breasts and every freckle she had with a hot needle. He’d asked her to recite the Lord’s Prayer, but when she’d done so in her native tongue, he’d beaten her with the rod and told her “those are the Devil’s words.”

  She was never sure when he was going to torment her. She could hear his footsteps overhead, pacing, at all hours of the day and night. She was free to move about the room but there was no escape. The furnishings were sparse, the floor was dirt, the walls stone and the door always locked.

  To pass the time she sat and looked at a single small window, high on the back wall. It was bricked over on the outside, braced by thick bars sunk deep into the stone on the inside. For a short while each day, a scant beam of light shone through a crack between the bricks. This morning, while she lay on her straw mattress, the light had heralded a vision that floated and danced before her eyes. She was hanging by a noose from the willow tree, her body swinging next to Davina’s.

  Shrugging out of her cotton shift, she tore it into long, ragged strips. She sang the Lord’s Prayer as she braided the strands together, even laughed as her sadness turned to elation.

  Ar n-Athair a tha air nèamh,

  Gu naomhaichear d’ainm.

  Standing on a rickety stool, she tied one end of the rope to one of the bars in the window.

  Thigeadh do rìoghachd.

  Dèanar do thoil air an talamh,

  mar a nìthear air nèamh.

  She fashione
d the other end into a hangman’s knot and slipped it over her head.

  Tabhair dhuinn an-diugh ar n-aran làitheil.

  Agus maith dhuinn ar fiachan,

  amhail a mhaitheas sinne dar luchd-fiach.

  Agus na leig ann am buaireadh sinn;

  ach saor sinn o olc:

  Stepping off the stool she let God do the rest.

  oir is leatsa an rìoghachd,

  agus an cumhachd,

  agus a’ glòir,

  gu sìorraidh. Amen

  Reverend Townsend found her body not long after, limp with death, her flesh still warm. Hand lingering on her calf, he was disappointed, then relieved, then deliciously satisfied. There was immense beauty in the demise of evil. Falling to his knees he uttered a prayer of thanksgiving.

  Before he’d finished, before he’d even begun to consider what he might do to get rid of the young woman’s body, two strangers entered the room from the cellar doorway. Like a pair of funeral mutes, wearing long frock coats and wide-brimmed hats, the men moved with an air of quiet, unshakable purpose.

  Startled, Reverend Townsend feared he was caught. “She did herself in,” he stammered. “There was nothing I could do.”

  One of the men approached him and placed a steady hand on his shoulder. “Go to your bedchamber,” he ordered. “Fast and pray until first light.”

  Pointing to the open door the other man said, “Leave us now. All will be well.”

  September 17, 1880, Evening.

  St. Clair and Thom,

  Tea and Sympathy,

  933 Broadway,

  New York, New York

  Dear Aunt Lydia,

  I am well. I am safe.

  Please send my winter coat, my second pair of shoes, my other day dress, and my Sunday best to the above address at your earliest convenience.

  As you may have guessed, the position is mine!

  More soon, when I am properly settled.

  With affection,

  Beatrice.

  Messages From Abroad.

  ELEANOR SAT IN the window of the teashop that night, waiting for Adelaide to return. Feet propped on a low wooden stool, she nursed a cup of blackberry tea and wondered where the day had gone. So much had happened, yet it felt as though the day had passed in a blink. She hated days that ended with more questions than answers.

  Beatrice had retired upstairs, and Eleanor hoped the girl would soon be nodding off to sleep with Perdu on his perch at her side. Seeing the toll the day had taken on the girl, Eleanor had offered up her own bed for the night. They’d make a cozy place for her in the garret tomorrow. Besides, Eleanor had so much on her mind, she wasn’t sure she could sleep. Her head was still swimming with the day’s events—her argument with Adelaide (which she was sorry for now), the strange circumstances of Beatrice’s arrival, and the unsolved puzzle as to what was troubling Lady Hibiscus (she never had caught up with her old lover). If she did need some shuteye, she could always curl up on the couch, or lie down next to Adelaide for a spell. That was, if Adelaide ever decided to come home. She could use her friend’s advice in sizing up their new girl.

  “You say you’re from Stony Point?” she’d asked Beatrice over dinner.

  “Yes, Miss St. Clair,” Beatrice had answered. She was so polite, so sweet!

  “Please, call me Eleanor.”

  “Yes, ma’am…I mean, Eleanor.”

  “Stony Point is on the Hudson, up past Sleepy Hollow?”

  “Yes,” the girl had answered. “Just across the river from Verplanck.”

  Eleanor wondered if Stony Point, like Sleepy Hollow, was a place of covered bridges, haunted burial grounds and headless horsemen. Had Beatrice really spotted a ghost in the shop or had she brought it with her? She’d come to the city with so little in hand, had she really planned to win the job and stay here? And what of the witch’s ladder Perdu had found in her bag? Well done, dear bird. His nose for magic was as keen as ever.

  The charm was far more than the simple plaything Beatrice had made it out to be. Did the girl truly not know what she’d done? How could she not see the perfection in her handiwork, feel the magic bound in every knot? Was the girl being fully honest? Had she run away from someone, or from some terrible deed? “And no one’s missing you?” she’d asked, hoping to get to the bottom of the matter.

  “My aunt Lydia, I suppose,” Beatrice had answered. “But I’m here with her blessing, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  “Yes,” Eleanor had said with a laugh, “I suppose it is.” What would Adelaide do faced with such a situation? Confess a little, learn a lot. “I come from an out-of-the-way place as well,” Eleanor had confided. “I know how tempting it can be to leave the past behind.”

  “Where was that?” Beatrice had asked.

  “On the Bronx River,” Eleanor had replied.

  “Was it anywhere near Fordham Village?” Beatrice asked. “I hear it’s lovely there.”

  “No,” Eleanor had said, shaking her head. “It’s far too small to have a name. There isn’t even a road leading to it. You can only get there by water.”

  “Sounds idyllic,” Beatrice had said with a smile.

  “It was,” Eleanor replied.

  Taking another sip of tea, Eleanor wondered how her mother’s cottage was faring. Her uncle had promised to keep an eye on it, but she guessed he was too busy with farm and family to give it much attention. She hoped it hadn’t gotten terribly overgrown or broken down. She hadn’t been there since early spring when she’d gone to collect fiddleheads from the forest. She’d like to see the place again, someday soon, perhaps—to pick apples from the craggy trees that surrounded the garden, to collect hips from the wild roses that grew along the hedgerows, to raid the cellar for a bottle or two of elderberry wine.

  In the last days of her life, Madame St. Clair had ordered Eleanor to sit by her side so she might confess all her secrets. In those sad, beautiful, drawn-out hours, Eleanor had sat quietly with pen in hand as her mother recited a number of stories she’d often told her in her youth. The lively tales of peasants and princes, witches and queens, came to life again in her mother’s ailing voice—her advice peppered with laughter, her warnings accompanied by tears. The last story she’d recited was “The Princess Who Wished to Be a Witch,” an eerie tale filled with magic and wonder and a raven who bore a striking resemblance to her dear Perdu.

  The Princess

  Who Wished to Be a Witch

  Long ago, a beautiful princess named Odoline wanted to become a witch. Her mother, the Queen, had died when she was born and aside from the Queen’s jewels and robes, all Odoline had left of the woman were the precious books she’d collected in her library. Whenever she grew tired of listening to her five quarrelsome brothers bicker (which was quite often), she’d steal away to the library to sit and read and ponder.

  Among the volumes were a handful of books devoted to tales about sorceresses, seers and witches. As a young girl, Odoline’s nurse had told her that the women in the tales were her kin, connected to her by her mother’s blood. When Odoline had asked her father, the King, if what her nurse had said was true, he’d laughed and said, “Those are nothing but fairy tales, dear daughter.” Sure enough the stories were populated by fairies (and trolls and ghosts and demons, too), but Odoline found more truth in the pages of those books than in her daily life. It wasn’t long before she was able to read the magic that lived between the stories’ lines.

  When the time came for her to choose a suitor, her father called forth the brightest and strongest princes and knights of the land. One after another Odoline rejected them, sometimes dancing only one dance at a ball or watching one jousting match, so she could return to her studies in the library.

  The King, at his wit’s end, sought the counsel of a sage, hoping he might have a solution to the problem. After a brief conversation with Odoline (where she barely looked at him over the top of a book), the sage had returned to the King. “Leave it with me,” he said, “I’ll take
care of it.”

  Not long after, a handsome young prince named Sev came to the castle and presented a gift to Odoline—a book of tattered parchment, bound in chains and fixed with a heart-shaped lock. “ ’Tis a book of spells,” he said, “the most powerful known to man. I give it to you along with the key, but you must promise never to open it.”

  Sev, of course, was the sage in disguise, and he’d hatched a terrible plan. He knew that the princess had witchery in her blood and desired to become a great sorceress. Seeing her powers as a threat to his own, he sought to deny them to her. The book was indeed as powerful as he claimed, but he was willing to part with it to secure his place in the kingdom. He’d charmed the book to tempt the princess so the minute she gave in to its powers, she’d feel the wrath of its curse. The book contained spells of all sorts—including precise instructions on how to summon demons. Those who understand magic know that demons have their uses, but only when tempered by the company of angels. The book contained the names of forty angels. The number of demons it named was forty-one.

  Odoline did indeed choose Sev for her suitor. In return for his gift she gave him a gold ring inscribed with the words, “All my trust.” The book sat for one hundred days unopened on her desk while the pair danced and sang and made love in the corridors and gardens of the castle. The key to the lock on the chains that bound the book was tied safely on a scarlet ribbon around Odoline’s neck.

  When the day of her wedding arrived, Odoline snuck away from her attendants to sit alone in her library. She wished to find a verse to read to her new husband on their wedding night. Spying the book of spells on the desk, she went to it. When she touched it, the chains around the book began to rattle, the lock began to shake. “Who is Sev to forbid me to open it?” she thought. “It belongs to me and I’ll do with it as I see fit.” Removing the key from around her neck, she opened the lock and shook the chains free from the book.