Magic Lessons

by Alice Hoffman

  II.

  A woman who loses a child twice will be acquainted with sorrow, and yet the second loss will hurt just as much as the first. It is a snake that circles around to bind you hand to foot, heart to soul. If it comes to pass that the child runs away again, there is no magic strong enough to bring her back to you. In the natural order of things, children do leave, but not with bitterness and in secrecy. Maria knew Faith was gone before she opened the door to her daughter’s room. She had dreamed of a dark wood where the birds were silent. She saw The Book of the Raven in a hollow tree. I know more than you think I do, Faith had said in the dream. Maria could hear her voice, but the girl was nowhere to be seen. She awoke in a panic and sure enough the window in Faith’s chamber was open and there were footprints in the damp grass. On the bedside table was a note written with red ink on black paper.

  Do not follow me. You should have told me who my father was. If you try to stop me, then you will be the one I never forgive. This is my life to live.

  Making her way to the farm in the Bowery, Maria went immediately to Finney, who seemed to know Faith better than anyone. Finney was working in the garden, the white dog digging up mud to bury a bone, but he put down his shovel when he spied Maria.

  “Why would she run off?” Maria wanted to know. “And to Massachusetts of all places.”

  Finney told Maria of Faith’s vision in Brooklyn in which she had to cross through hell to reach home. They’d assumed the vision had been of Hell Gate in the river, but perhaps there was another meaning entirely, and it was her fate to return to Salem.

  “She’s as smart a girl as there ever was,” Finney assured Maria. “Surely she’s got her reasons to go.”

  But Maria disagreed. “It’s a dangerous place, and no matter how smart she might be, she’s only a girl.”

  “If you decide you want to go after her, I’ll leave with you today.”

  Finney insisted they go first to Catherine for advice, and although Maria felt humiliated to ask for another woman’s help in such a personal matter, she agreed. She had a new admiration for those who came to her for cures, for they opened themselves to reveal their most private thoughts and deeds, an act that now mortified her.

  “Have you not worried about your daughter?” Catherine asked Maria.

  “No more than any mother would,” Maria said.

  It was a wonder how those you loved best were often the ones you could not fully see. “She’s gone over to the dark,” Catherine told her. When Maria’s expression was still puzzled, Catherine explained, “You didn’t want to know, so it was easy for her to fool you. She works left-handed.”

  “No. That’s impossible.” Maria looked up at Finney, who couldn’t meet her eye. “Isn’t it?”

  “She’s a good-hearted girl,” Finney assured Maria. “No one is saying she’s not, but she was locked away for five years. It could turn anyone.”

  “You had lost her before she left for Massachusetts.” Catherine had the little dog on her lap, ignoring how muddy he was. “Now let’s see if you can get her back.”

  Catherine filled a glass bowl with cool, clear water. She placed two sticks of bramble into the bowl, which helped to invoke the spirit of the person in question, along with a stalk of thistle, for protection. The water turned black, the better to see into. On one side of the bowl was the future as it was now, on the other side the future as it might be. There was fire on one side, waves on the other that leapt from the bowl, splashing onto the table.

  Catherine turned to Finney. “When the girl dreamed of hell, how did she cross over?”

  “Through water,” Finney said.

  The women exchanged a look. They both knew that meant a drowning to prove witchery was at work. Maria rose to her feet, thanking her hosts, ready to leave, telling Finney he need not accompany her; she would find her daughter.

  Catherine held her back. “Listen to me,” she said. “I have seen this before. I know black magic. I have seen more than you could imagine. Following the girl isn’t the answer.”

  “I know what people are capable of in Essex County. I know what they did to me.”

  “But this is her fate, not yours. She has to cross through hell to come out on the other side. Otherwise she will be trapped in her own darkness.”

  Maria shook her head. She held back tears that burned her.

  “There’s only one way for you to help,” Catherine told her. “The first and second rules combined.”

  Maria saw then that Catherine was older than she appeared to be, older than any mortal should be. Women in the Durant family lived too long, and in the end lost everyone they had ever loved. That was why Catherine had come to New York, to begin anew. She was grateful to Faith for invoking the Tenth and giving her a new life with Finney, a good and decent man. She would now return the favor and help Maria win her daughter back from the dark side.

  “If you want your daughter, save someone. That’s the way to win back her life. Wait and the chance will come to you. When it does, don’t let it pass you by.”

  * * *

  For weeks Maria looked out the window, barely able to eat or sleep. Days passed and then one bright morning a minister’s wife came to Maiden Lane. Catherine had vowed that a sign would appear and now it had arrived at her door. Maria could feel her caller’s sorrow; another grieving mother, one she must help at all costs. The woman was the English wife of a well-known Dutch minister who introduced herself as Hannah Dekker. As soon as Maria heard that the stranger had the name of her beloved adopted mother, she was certain this stranger was the woman who would lead her to her daughter’s rescue.

  You receive what you give threefold. Save someone else’s daughter and you’ll rescue your own.

  Hannah Dekker had searched out Maria Owens in desperation. Her daughter was in the throes of a fever that had grown worse with every passing day; there seemed nothing to do but watch the poor child sink more deeply into sickness and pain. The family’s dear friend, Dr. Joost van der Berg, an esteemed elder with the Dutch Reformed Church and a physician, had found no success in fighting her affliction. He had given the girl an elixir made of crushed bones collected from crypts, thought to heal bone pain, but to no effect. If anything, the girl grew weaker.

  Hannah Dekker had overheard furtive conversations about Maria Owens that took place among women when they thought no one could overhear. She didn’t believe in witchcraft and had no experience with the Nameless Art, but when there was nothing left to try it could not hurt to believe in something, however preposterous it might seem. Hannah made it clear that she was willing to pay any price for a cure.

  “When your daughter is well again you can decide what it’s worth,” Maria said as she gathered her cape and her black bag of herbs. She would have her payment, but it wouldn’t be silver or gold. Save a life, win a life. She knew of Jonas Dekker by reputation; he was prominent and well respected within both the Dutch and British communities, and had lived in Boston, but was more comfortable in New York, among more freethinking individuals.

  Seeing as the girl was too ill to leave her bed, Maria would call at the Dekkers’ home, something she rarely did. When she arrived, the family’s lavish mansion appeared to be a house in mourning with the damask curtains drawn and the candles and lanterns snuffed out. Maria was led upstairs by a servant, then asked to wait in the dim hall. Dutch paintings lined the wood-paneled walls and hand-knotted French carpets could be found on every floor. All the same, wealth was no protection from sorrow, and when Maria entered the bedchamber she felt great compassion for the patient, a pale ten-year-old girl named Anneke, who writhed in pain. Anneke was in a fever, her bedclothes drenched, her delicate face set in an expression of agony. The girl’s mother could not look at her without bursting into tears. They had tried leaching and cupping, none of it effective, and Dr. van der Berg had been stymied in his diagnosis, for he was most familiar with diseases of the Netherlands and New York and the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and this girl was in the grips
of a tropical disease. Maria immediately recognized the illness as breakbone fever, so common in the West Indies. The family had been to Aruba to visit relatives, and when questioned closely, Hannah recounted that the children had often been at the shore, where mosquitoes clouded the sky on hot summer evenings.

  Maria had brought along a selection of dried and fresh herbs, including two it was clear the girl needed: dried blue violets as a tincture for mouth sores and linden root and yarrow for a racing heart, for the child’s heart was pounding so hard she kept her hands on her chest, frightened her heart would fly out from her body. Fortunately, Maria kept Tawa-tawa at hand, and grew it in pots on her windowsill, ready if Samuel Dias should return with a recurrence of the disease, though it seemed unlikely he would ever come back, for she hadn’t received a single letter from him since his departure.

  The Dekker girl’s illness was far worse than Samuel’s. She had begun to bleed internally, and when she cried her tears were red. There were purple bruises blooming along her arms and legs; she could barely stand to be touched without crying out. She could not open her eyes when asked to do so, for she was too weak. Maria decided she would stay beside her patient until there was some improvement. On her way via a small corridor to the kitchen that was attached to the house, she passed a room that was filled with books. She went inside and stood at the desk. The minister had been working on a letter, open on his desk.

  Too much is attributed to the devil and the witch or sorcery.

  The minister was well acquainted with the Mathers, a family that had been instrumental in the witch trials, whose beliefs Dekker had come to believe were ridiculous opinions for godly, rational men. Maria thought over the minister’s writings as she soaked clean rags in cold water and vinegar to bring down the girl’s fever and then asked the cook to begin a fish bone broth. She boiled water to make Tawa-tawa tea for her patient and Courage Tea for herself. There was a reason fate had led her here, and she wished to be strong enough not to back down from what would come next. She was fighting darkness, which arose when it was least expected, in this case in the heart of a young girl, her own daughter.

  Though the minister’s wife did not believe in magic, she said nothing when Maria poured a line of salt along the window ledge and hung the brass bell above the door, or when she dressed the child in a clean blue nightdress. Maria rubbed rosemary-infused oil over Anneke’s aching bones before spooning Tawa-tawa tea between her parched lips. The poor child had been speaking to herself in a fever; she wished to be put out of her misery and no longer had the will to live. Hannah sat on a chair beside the bed, quietly weeping until Maria whispered they must show the girl they had faith in her recovery. She then went to tend to the child.

  “We will rid you of misery and you will live until you’re a very old woman with white hair,” Maria assured Anneke. But you will never be a child again, she thought, not after such pain. You will be a person of compassion, who will be unable to walk past another’s suffering without doing your best to aid them. She crooned Hannah Owens’ song, the one that had comforted her when she was a babe, and that she had then sung to Faith on board the Queen Esther and in the woods of Essex County. Anneke begged for her to sing it again and again, and Maria was happy to comply, for the song always reminded her of home.

  The water is wide, I cannot get o’er it

  And neither have I wings to fly

  Give me a boat that shall carry two

  And I shall row, my Love and I.

  When Cockle Shells turn Silver bells

  And mussels grow on every tree,

  When frost and snow shall warm us all,

  Then shall my love prove true to me.

  The minister heard the tune and came to stand in the doorway of the bedchamber, dismayed by the old folk song as he stood watching the stranger care for his daughter. It was a song sung by the cunning folk, people he held in low esteem. He watched as Maria washed the child’s matted hair in a bowl with warm water and black soap that had a distinctive sweet scent. Rose and rosemary, sage and lavender. Maria had a beautiful, clear voice, and Anneke, who had tossed and turned in the throes of pain, at last lay quietly, taken up by the song. Her improvement was so quick it appeared that magic was at work, had there been such a thing, for the minister didn’t believe in enchantments, only in the ignorance of those who had faith in sorcery. Maria did not leave Anneke’s side, remaining by her bed, where she hemmed the girl’s nightdresses with blue thread.

  The minister drew his wife into the hallway. “We don’t know a thing about this woman you’ve brought here. Who’s to say she won’t poison our daughter with her potions?”

  Hannah Dekker went to her knees and begged her husband to allow Maria Owens to continue to treat Anneke. When he saw how distraught his wife was, the minister had no choice but to agree. Still, when he returned to the room later that night he found that Maria was burning a white candle onto which she had carved the name of the disease, the name of the child, and the date. He was ill at ease, and insisted on tasting the tea Maria was feeding the child; once he had, the bitterness of the drink worried him. “Will this not make her more ill?” he asked.

  “I know breakbone fever and you either will trust me to do my best, or I can assure you, your girl will not live.”

  The minister sat beside Maria and watched the candle flicker. He had one child, and Maria knew what that was like. You carried your heart in your hand.

  “You can have me thrown in jail if I fail you,” she told him. “You can have me hanged.”

  The minister exhaled a soft, brittle laugh. “I prefer not to do so. I prefer that my daughter lives.”

  “Then we’re in agreement. That is what I prefer as well.”

  * * *

  Maria was in the corridor carrying a basin of cool water and vinegar when the minister’s close friend Dr. Joost van der Berg arrived. The doctor was a tall man of huge influence who regularly visited the governors of both New York and Massachusetts and was highly regarded by all. She overheard the doctor speaking with Dekker about the trials in Salem. They were both skeptical that a human being could make contact with the devil, causing death and destruction at that person’s will. The doctor believed there were issues with the accusers rather than the accused. It was clear that both he and Dekker saw the entire process of witch hunts as insanity. Neither believed that any of the accused could hit and bite victims when they had been seen miles or more away at the same exact time as the attacks. It was lunacy to think such acts were possible, with Jonas Dekker stating that the accusers were ill and deprived of their sanity. The two men were not alone in their opinions. There were many who were in power in Massachusetts who had begun to see that the trials were a sort of hysteria, although some would not understand the horror of what had been done until later. Increase Mather, the president of Harvard, had published Cases of Conscience, making an argument against use of spectral evidence in witch trials, in direct opposition to his son Cotton Mather’s The Wonders of the Invisible World, which insisted spectral evidence was valuable in a court of law, with the elder man writing, It is better that ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person be condemned. One man among those in power who had not changed his mind at all, however, was the chief examiner of the witchcraft trials, appointed in 1692, John Hathorne.

  He had once been a man who had dived into the water fully clothed, who had stood in the moonlight to pick apples from a tree in the courtyard. When she’d asked him why he had abandoned her, he’d merely said, People change. Perhaps he wanted to believe this was true, but you were who you were. A person might be changed by ill fortune or circumstance, as Faith had been, but every individual carried a soul within him, unchanging and eternal, a light, a heart, a breath.

  * * *

  Dr. van der Berg brushed by Maria, barely glancing at her. At this moment his only concern was the patient he’d come to visit. He examined the girl, then went into the study, calling Maria to join him, closing the door so t
hey might speak privately. Van der Berg’s brow was creased and he looked disturbed, not over the state of his patient, who was much improved, but rather in regard to his own apparent lack of judgment and expertise.

  “I suppose you think I’m a fool.” He was certainly looking at Maria now.

  “Not at all. I’ve had experience with this illness in Curaçao and merely recognized it for what it was. You cannot know what you haven’t seen.”

  The doctor was grateful for her kindness, though he believed that in this case he had indeed been an ignorant fool. He was known to be a somewhat arrogant man, assured of his vast knowledge, but he now humbled himself and asked for her method of treatment, and she shared the curatives she’d used, all of a practical nature. Wet washcloths with apple cider vinegar, basil tea with ginger, fish bone broth, all simple enough, but most important was the use of Tawa-tawa tea, which she would be happy to supply if he came upon more patients with the disease.

  “If she first became ill in Aruba, among her cousins, she was likely infected by them. It travels in the breath,” he concluded.

  “No, by the bite of an insect. It is not like the pox. You cannot be infected by a person who is ill.”

  “What was your name?” the doctor asked, quite taken with her.

  “Maria Owens.”

  “And mine—”

  She stopped him there. “I know who you are, sir.” Everyone in New York knew of him, he was so esteemed, a friend to those in power and those in need.

  The doctor poured two glasses of port from the minister’s glass carafe. “I celebrate you,” he said. People were usually so dull in his opinion, but not this woman. “I must say, I can’t help wonder what it is you’ll do next.”