The Witch of Willow Hall

by Hester Fox

  Aunt Phillips prattles on. “The family may be a bit down in the coffers, so to speak, but he comes with a good name, and after, well...everything—” she politely clears her throat “—you really can’t expect to do much better. Besides,” she says as she helps herself to a heaping plop of eggs and poached ham, “he’s young and not too hard on the eyes, eh?”

  I pick at my own food, doing my best to look like I’m listening to her, that I’m taking her seriously. I wish I could tell her that the young man in question is a weasel, a blackmailing scoundrel. I wish I could tell her that there’s a man a thousand times better, handsomer, kinder, back in New Oldbury.

  She’s going on about some suitor she had back when she was a young woman, who had eyes “the color of morning dew and a smile that would melt the halo right off an angel,” when Blake comes in bearing a tray with two letters on it.

  My heart leaps. Mr. Barrett’s written back. He understands why I went away, that it wasn’t my choice and had nothing to do with him. But before I can reach for it, Aunt Phillips is plucking the letters from the tray and tearing one open.

  “I wondered when that wicked husband of mine would write,” she says, putting on her spectacles.

  Just as fast my heart sinks. “And the other letter?”

  She’s in her own world, smiling to herself as she reads.

  “Aunt Phillips,” I say, trying to keep the exasperation from my voice, “who’s the other letter from? Is it possibly for me?”

  She looks surprised, but picks it up and squints at the envelope. “It’s from Catherine, though it’s addressed to me. Shall I read it?”

  Of course it is. I give a half-hearted shrug as she starts reading. I wrote Mr. Barrett again last night. It took hours of crumpling up false starts and crossing out tear-stained passages before I squared my shoulders, took a deep breath and poured out six double-sided pages of everything that I’ve been holding inside me since the day I met him. Propriety and convention be damned. Before I could even look over what I wrote, I sprinkled the ink dry, folded up the envelope and in a moment of dramatic flourish, sealed it with wax. Now all I can do is wait.

  “Wait, what did you say?” I sit up in my chair.

  Aunt Phillips stops, and looks up from the letter. “Hmm?”

  “You just said something about a Mr. Barrett, can you go back and reread that bit?”

  Aunt Phillips furrows her brows, scanning back over the last few lines. “‘Father’s business partner, Mr. Barrett, has surprised us all by announcing his engagement to a young lady of the town. Of course we are all very glad for him, but Father is concerned that the wedding preparations and subsequent trip abroad will impact the upcoming construction of the new mill.’”

  I swallow. “Can you... That is, does it say the name of the lady?”

  “Let’s see here... Abigail Tidewell.” She looks up when I take in a sharp breath. “Do you know her?”

  “Just in passing,” I say faintly.

  “Mr. Barrett,” muses Aunt Phillips, leaning back in her chair. “The name is familiar. Though of course it would be if he’s your father’s business partner. Well, there will be a wedding in New Oldbury then. That must be something to look forward to, eh, my dear?”

  My lips are numb but I think I agree, my voice faraway.

  After sword fights and duels, succumbing to a broken heart is the most common way to die in all the novels. Ladies in towers languish and slip away from the affliction after refusing to marry their father’s choice of suitors. Roguish highwaymen, taken by surprise for their feelings toward their virginal marks, find themselves stricken and helpless to go on without the pale face in the carriage that so captivated them. I always thought it terribly romantic, even though it’s only a literary device and not an actual phenomenon.

  But in this moment I know, I know it’s real. My heart twists, a dull, tingling pain that pulses through my body leaving me choked for breath. It feels like the moment when I realized Emeline wasn’t going to open her eyes again. It feels like death.

  Aunt Phillips is still prattling on, blissfully unaware of the devastation she’s just wrought. “Oh dear, and it seems your mother has come down with something. Nothing serious, Catherine assures us, but the doctor came and ordered that she stay in bed until she can get her strength back up, the poor thing.”

  I hardly hear her.

  * * *

  The days drag on, and with them comes the raw chill of winter that settles in my bones. Aunt Phillips continues to improve, though I don’t think she ever really needed someone to help her so much as she was just lonely. I read to her in the evenings—always from the gazettes, never books as she doesn’t have the patience for them—and she takes calls in the afternoon, staying abreast of every word of gossip that circulates Boston.

  I exist in a liminal state of nothingness; New Oldbury is where Mr. Barrett is, and I don’t think I could bear to be back so close to him, knowing that there is no future for us. If I must live without him than I would rather it be somewhere that I’m not constantly reminded of what might have been. And yet, in Boston I walk with my shoulders hunched forward, my eyes constantly darting about, afraid that Cyrus might spring out from the least likely places, demanding my answer or harassing me with fresh accusations.

  My thoughts often turn to Emeline and her grave. Does anyone go to keep it cleared of weeds and place a flower there? Or is the stone buried in snow now, just another nameless, jutting marker in a field of forgotten souls? Does Emeline roam Willow Hall, looking for me only to find me gone? Oh, Emeline, I feel as restless and homeless as you must.

  * * *

  I’m sitting in the parlor, losing myself in Ivanhoe as the early December evening draws close around the city. I know that I’m supposed to want the lady Rowena to win Wilfred of Ivanhoe’s heart, but I can’t help but feel for Rebecca, who heals and cares for him after he’s injured in the joust. As promised, I returned to buy the second volume from Mr. Brown, at once desperate to know what happens to Rebecca when she’s put on trial for witchcraft, but also afraid to find out lest Ivanhoe isn’t in time to save her from being put to the stake.

  Putting down the book, I gaze out the window at the dusky winter street below. The witchcraft trial in the story draws my mind to that other book. I’ve been putting off opening it, hoping that if I ignore it long enough it might simply melt away into the shawl I wrapped around it. But I bought it for a reason, and I can either keep fretting about it, or face my fears. So I fetch it from my trunk and, taking a deep breath and closing my eyes, open it on my lap.

  I read a few pages and put it down, half-relieved, half-disappointed. I don’t know what I was expecting to find inside the covers, but it’s not this. Instead of a history of witchcraft in New England, names of Salem families, or even accounts of the infamous trials, it’s a collection of stories gathered from all corners of New England having to do with magic. The first story is the tale of a girl who takes spectral trips in the body of a yellow bird, and is one day captured by a farmer who makes her his wife. In return for her hand in marriage, the farmer must allow her to return to her bird form every full moon. It’s fanciful, the kind of fairy story I would have told to Emeline years ago. Flipping ahead I see that another is about an old woman who lives in the woods and lures children to her cottage. Nothing good happens to the children. I flip ahead. My fingers stop as a page goes by, and I quickly thumb back to it.

  There’s an illustration, one of many sprinkled throughout the book. This one shows a young woman with a tangle of dark hair flying about her head. Her hands are outstretched in front of her, little lines of movement hastily drawn in emanating from them, as a man and woman cower in the corner. The man is, rather futilely, holding up a cross, and the woman buries her head on the man’s shoulder in terror. But it’s the young woman’s hand that I can’t tear my gaze from. Outstretched, vibrating, sending invisible powe
r through the air. Just like with Tommy Bishop. Just like with Cyrus. There’s a caption beneath it, but I don’t read it.

  I slam the cover shut, as if hoping to keep all the stories and pictures therein contained to the page, and not let them spill out into reality. Quickly, I slip the book under the cushion of the window seat and take up Ivanhoe, desperate to bury the image of the girl with outstretched hands with tamer stories of knights and chivalry.

  But I’m soon jolted from my world of maidens in distress by a shrill laugh cutting the air. Aunt Phillips has a caller, one of the ladies from the Fragment Society, a fashionable group that makes and distributes clothes to the city’s poor. If they distribute half as much clothing as they do gossip, then there shouldn’t be a bare back in all of Boston. I’ve successfully ignored them for two hours, but now the woman is rising to leave.

  “Well, I really must be going now. It looks like snow and I don’t trust Jack once the streets turn slippery.”

  Aunt Phillips clasps her friend’s hand from her seat. She has a habit of taking a turn for the worse whenever she has company, and takes to her chair as if she were an invalid so that her guests must kneel beside her to talk. “Oh, that’s too bad,” she says. “We’re having company for dinner and it would have been so nice if you were able to join us.”

  I put down my book and wait for her friend to leave. After much cheek kissing and hollow promises of future engagements, we’re finally alone together.

  “I didn’t know anyone else was coming over.” I’m only just keeping my head above water with Aunt Phillips, and I don’t know if I can play along with dinner guests now too. I’m so tired, and the book of magic stories has my head flying in a hundred different directions at once.

  “Hmm? Oh, Mr. Thompson said you wanted to see him, so I invited him over for dinner first before you young people talk.”

  My book slips from my hand. “You...you invited Cyrus?”

  “Yes, won’t that be nice?” She glances over as if noticing me for the first time since speaking. “Is that what you’re going to wear?”

  Dazed, I look down at my striped cream dress. It’s the one I wore the day I walked home with Mr. Barrett, the one that his body pressed against as he drew me close to him at the fork in the road. I’ve worn it for almost a week straight now. The hem is stained brown from dragging through the muddy street on my walks, the puffed sleeves limp. “Yes, why?”

  Aunt Phillips sighs and beckons me to her, pressing her lips together as if she has to deliver some distasteful news. “Sit down, my dear. I know your parents have taken a...lax approach when it comes to your upbringing, but you’re in my home now and I’m determined to do everything I can to ensure that you have a bright future. Cyrus Thompson can give you that future. If you’re worried that he’s not going about it in the proper way by informing your parents, don’t worry, I’ve already written to your father to let him know. Now, go upstairs, change into something decent and try to shake off whatever cloud you’ve been living in for the past few weeks.” She pauses. “And why hasn’t Mr. Thompson been back for so long? Did you two have a falling-out?”

  I grumble something about having a disagreement, which I suppose is only half a lie.

  She gives a dismissive wave of her hand. “Well, whatever it is, find a way to settle it. It won’t do to let some silly little thing come between you two.”

  Yes, because blackmail is such a silly little detail.

  * * *

  Dinner is a blur of excruciatingly polite conversation from Cyrus, excited titters from Aunt Phillips and a steady flow of wine poured out for both of them by Blake. If I thought that what happened the other week in Aunt Phillips’s parlor would deter him, I’m sorely mistaken. Cyrus acts as if nothing out of the ordinary took place at our last meeting. In fact, he is extra solicitous tonight, and more than once I catch him gazing at me as if I were a particularly fine pair of boots or aged bottle of Madeira—or whatever it is that someone like Cyrus covets—which he can’t wait to get his hands on. I pick at my food in gloomy silence as Aunt Phillips and Cyrus discuss the establishment of the new Mercantile Library Association, to which Cyrus is desperate to gain membership. There’s so many of these societies and associations cropping up in Boston every day that I can’t keep them all straight.

  “It would open up so many doors, and the connections would be invaluable for business,” Cyrus says, before pausing. “Lydia.” He puts his glass down and turns to me. “You’re awfully quiet tonight. How are you finding Boston since your return?”

  I glare at him.

  “You’ll have to excuse her,” Aunt Phillips hurries to explain. “She’s been a bit under the weather lately.”

  Cyrus gives a little wave. “That’s quite all right. You know,” he says around a mouthful of roast lamb, “Lydia and I were just talking the other week about the funny things that people remember after a long time. About Tom Bishop, isn’t that right, Lydia?”

  My fork wavers in my hand as I silently plead with him to stop, but he only winks at me, his eyes alive with delight.

  He has Aunt Phillip’s full attention. “Bishop...” She tilts her head in thought. “Wasn’t that the boy down the street? You got into some sort of fight with him?”

  “Cyrus, please—”

  “That’s right,” Cyrus, says, beaming. “You have a sharp memory, Mrs. Phillips.”

  Aunt Phillips colors like a schoolgirl, tutting at his compliment.

  “Oh yes, Lydia has quite a talent, it seems.” He puts down his glass and furrows his brow. “I’m not sure I even know how to explain it, come to think of it. Something she does with her eyes, and her hands if I remember correctly.” He gives a little laugh. “I even got to see something of a demonstration of it the other—”

  “Cyrus!” My face is on fire. “Aunt Phillips doesn’t want to hear about that,” I choke out.

  Aunt Phillips opens her mouth to protest, but Cyrus flashes a charming smile and says, “Well, I certainly don’t want to bore your gracious aunt. Perhaps it’s best left for another time.”

  I look down at my knuckles, white and shaking, and realize that I had been gripping the edge of the table. I let go now, twining my hands together in my lap.

  “It does make me think though,” Cyrus says, “about the things that happen when we’re children. I can’t for the life of me think what made me remember this, but I woke up this morning with a memory as fresh in my mind as if it happened yesterday. Would you like to hear it?”

  “No,” I say, draining the rest of my wine.

  Aunt Phillips flushes scarlet. “Oh, I’m sure she doesn’t mean that. In any case, I would love to hear it, Mr. Thompson.”

  “Mrs. Phillips,” Cyrus says with an ingratiating smile, “you’re too kind to indulge me.” He flickers a self-satisfied glance in my direction.

  He leans his elbows on the table, settling in like he’s about to grace us all with gospel. “Well,” he says, “when I was little, say nine or so, a ship from Macao put in at the docks. I was at the tavern on an errand for my father when some of the crew came in on their leave. I still remember those men, the leathery brown of their dark skin, the mellow scent of vanilla under the musk of ship-living. There was one man in particular who caught my young imagination. He couldn’t have been anything more than a lieutenant, yet he wore a big gold earring, and when he ordered ale none of the other men would lift their glasses until he drank. And do you know what the best thing about him was? On his shoulder, he had the cleverest little monkey in a gold collar and chain. It cracked walnuts for him and did a little jig on the bar when the man whistled a tune. I’d never seen anything like it before and I knew right then that I had to have that monkey.”

  Cyrus pauses to take a dramatically long draft from his glass and dab at his lips with his napkin. I roll my eyes and he clears his throat.

  “Well, I walked right up to th
e man and told him I wanted to buy his pet. I had a little money from my father that was meant for new shoes, and I showed him the coins in my hand. The man took a long slow drink, his black eyes watching me from over the rim of his tankard. When it was drained, he put it down and wiped his mouth. ‘Odysseus isn’t for sale, my little fellow. Save your coins for sweets and trifles.’ And just like that, he took his monkey and left, the other sailors falling into line behind him, laughing at me over their shoulders.”

  Aunt Phillips looks puzzled but does her best to act like this is the most interesting story in the world. “A monkey!” she exclaims. “I can’t imagine. What a curious thing to keep as a pet.”

  “Ah, but you see, Mrs. Phillips, it wasn’t really the monkey I wanted. The creature probably had a whole host of diseases. No, it was the idea of possessing something that rare, something no one else had.”

  I’m pushing a pea around on my plate, trying to make it follow the snaking path of the ivy motif, but when Cyrus says this, I put my fork down and slowly meet his gaze. His piercing dark eyes bore into me, and an icy shiver grips me by the spine.

  “Well,” says Aunt Phillips, “did you ever get one?”

  “You know, I never did. I heard that the ship went down a few months later under British guns.” He looks up, flashing his neat, white teeth at me like the wolves in my dream.

  “If the man had only sold it to me, the poor creature would have lived.”

  * * *

  After the plates have been cleared away and Cyrus has exhausted the last of the wine, Aunt Phillips suggests that he and I retire to the parlor where we’ll be more comfortable. All sense of correctness seems to have been abandoned in her desperate suit to get me engaged.

  As soon as the door clicks behind her Cyrus gestures to a chair. I stay standing.