Samuel knew that he was drowning. His leg was trapped no matter how he tugged. He moved his arms, still trying to swim, not yet giving up, but it was happening whether he fought against it or not. He had seen other men drown, they had fallen from the riggings of ships, or leapt into the currents while drunk, and he had wondered how it felt to be taken by the water, if it was a struggle or if it was more like a dream. He hadn’t had a breath for so long his heart was stopping. He thought of Maria on the dock in Curaçao and how he had fallen in love with her then, even though he was bent over with pain.
Samuel now felt an even sharper pain across his chest from the pressure of the water; it began in his heart and seared through his arm, then his throat, and finally his head. He had a single thought and it was she, and then he gave that up as well though it burned inside him. The way he was dying felt like a dark bonfire in a lake that had no end.
Faith was spitting water, alive, and so Maria didn’t wait another instant. She quickly filled her boots with stones, then shoved them back on. She repeated the incantation for protection, calling to Hecate, offering her devotion if only she could be granted this one thing. One time underwater, that was all she wanted. Maria ran into the lake, past her shoulders, past her neck. She dove and went under, the stones in her boots weighing her down. She saw through the darkness and there was Samuel Dias, floating in the mucky water, already a dead man. She dragged him out of the tangle of waterweeds that had held him down. The threaded roots were green and slimy and black, even though they opened into flowers on the surface. To float once more, Maria kicked off her boots, and as the stones fell into the bottomless darkness, she arose.
She pulled Samuel toward the marshy shore, a sob escaping from her mouth as she shivered; water streamed down her back and into her eyes. Maria had always been able to hear Samuel’s heartbeat when he was near and now she heard nothing at all. She tore open his shirt and pounded on his chest, her own breathing ragged.
Faith crawled over, drenched and in despair. “Goat,” she wailed. “Wake up.” There was no answer and Faith began to cry. She was on her knees beside her grieving mother, both coated with mud, weeds in the folds of their clothes, lake water dripping from their hair. Dias’s skin was pale and he was so very quiet. It was clear that he was gone. “You have to stop,” Faith told her mother. She knew death when she saw it. She’d seen it before. “Mother, he’s no longer with us.”
His spirit had left him and he was motionless. The beetle had stopped its clicking, for its work was done. Maria would not let this be their fate. She pounded on Samuel’s chest, again and again, in a fury. They had wasted time because of a curse; death was always possible, with or without magic. Her own mother had confided that there was an ancient bargain a person could make with the darkest powers, one that would bring back the dead to walk among the living. He will never be the same if you do. He will be a shadow self, a dark creature, but you will have him. Mothers had done this with children, only to have the rescued child run away into the woods, a feral creature with no memory of the past; wives had brought back husbands who had afterward left them for other women, or stolen from them, or murdered them in their sleep. Maria didn’t care. She was ready to make the bargain. She hit Samuel’s chest one last time, ready to take up a knife so that she might cut her arm to mix her blood with his, the beginning of this dreaded spell, but before she could, Samuel opened his eyes.
He had been dead until Maria forced his heart into beating. He’d returned from the dark water, from the darkness of the endless depth where he had seen his father sitting in a garden chair, waving him away. Don’t be a fool, Abraham Dias called to his son. She’s waiting for you, you stupid man.
Maria lay beside him in the grass, her arms around him. You cannot curse a man who has already died and come back. He has rid himself of one life and begun another, a life in which love is everything. He had been dead but now his eyes were open and the woman he loved was singing to him.
A ship there is and she sails the sea,
She’s loaded deep as deep can be,
But not so deep as the love I’m in
I know not if I sink or swim.
The water is wide, I cannot get o’er it
And neither have I wings to fly
Give me a boat that will carry two
And both shall row, my Love and I.
Samuel had to strain to hear Maria’s voice, but soon he understood she was saying she wanted to be with him no matter the cost.
“Are we ruined?” Samuel asked. The world was so bright and beautiful. Like his father before him, he had a new appreciation of the earth.
“No,” Maria said. She was as sure of this as she’d ever been of anything. “We’re just alive.”
While Samuel slept in the grass, Faith and Maria sat together in the falling dark. They had made a bonfire and sparks rose into the black sky. Faith gazed at her left palm. The line that had stopped when she found The Book of the Raven had begun again. She would live to be an old woman, she saw that now, but one who couldn’t work magic. That was the price she paid when she ignored the rules. She’d lost the sight and with it her bloodline gifts. She was ordinary now.
“If you don’t want me to be your daughter, I would understand,” Faith told her mother.
“You’ll always be my daughter.” Now and forever, in this life and the life to come, no matter what separated them or what brought them together.
At the first light, Faith would return to the field and bring Keeper back to the bonfire so that her loyal companion would be turned to ashes here in the woods, where he belonged. They watched the bonfire burn and remembered when they first saw fireflies and thought stars had dropped from the sky, when Keeper was a pup and drank goat’s milk, when Cadin brought gifts of buttons and keys, when they plucked apples from the trees, when the world of Essex County was brand-new.
Samuel Dias was asleep in the grass, his black coat still soaking wet. He was still dreaming when Maria Owens leaned in to tell him a story, one he already knew and had known ever since he saw her on the dock in Curaçao when she was fated to save his life, and he was fated to save hers in return.
PART SIX
Fate
1696
Twelve carpenters had worked for a year without stopping to build Maria Owens’ house. Fifteen varieties of wood were used: golden oak, silver ash, cherrywood, elm, pine, hemlock, pear, maple, mahogany, hickory, beech, cypress, cedar, walnut, and birch. The house was tall, with a twisted vine of wisteria that ran along the porch, in bloom at the first surge of spring. In the kitchen there sat a huge black cast-iron stove; in the pantry were dozens of shelves on which to store herbs. Two staircases had been constructed, one led to the attic, turning and twisting as if it were a puzzle bending in on itself, the other was made of the finest oak, with a broad landing that offered a window seat framed by damask drapes imported from England, ones very like those that had hung in the Locklands’ manor house in the first Essex County. Beside the front door was the brass bell that had hung outside Hannah Owens’ door.
When a traveling portrait painter came through town, he was hired to capture Maria’s likeness in oils, rendering her image perfectly, down to the bump she had on her hand from the day she pounded on John Hathorne’s door. When sitting for the painter, she wore her favorite blue dress, with her dark hair caught up in a blue ribbon and the sapphire that she never took off fastened at her throat. She wore her new red boots, ones Samuel Dias had had fashioned in Boston, which she wore every day. It was said that her eyes followed you when you passed by her portrait, and that she could see what was inside you and that you would know in that moment whether or not you had been true to yourself.
There were dozens of green glass windows, imported from England, and two brick chimneys that towered above the roof. The house was so well made that when a hurricane struck, every other house on the street sustained severe damage, but not a single shutter blew away from the Owens house. Even the laundry out on t
he line stayed exactly where it was on that day, which led neighbors to gossip even more than before. Maria kept chickens and goats in a small barn, and there was a renegade swan that arrived one day and refused to leave, soon enough spoiled by the crusts of bread he preferred to wild food. Maria called him Jack, and he waited outside for her on the porch each morning, and followed her about all day long, accompanying her on city streets and into shops, so that the children in town whispered that he’d once been a man who’d been turned into a swan, though no one dared to come near him, for Jack had a nasty temper and was devoted to one person alone.
In the garden there grew lily, rue, and arnica, along with fiery onions that could cure dog bites and toothaches. Maria planted Spanish garlic in great abundance, peonies to ward off evil, rows of lettuce, parsley, and mint, and lavender, planted for luck, by the back door. The original shed had been attached to a glass greenhouse so that herbs could be grown all year long, even in the dead of winter. Behind the foggy windows there were pots filled with lemon balm, lemon verbena, and lemon thyme. The more dangerous plants were kept inside the locked shed, which now boasted a murky glass ceiling so that light could enter. Belladonna, yarrow, black nightshade, wolfsbane, foxglove, lords and ladies with its pretty toxic berries, pennyroyal, which could end a pregnancy. It was there that Maria kept her Grimoire in its black toadskin cover, a book that would belong to Faith upon her mother’s death so that she might learn magic all over again, from the start, but not until she was a very old woman who had come to understand the importance of the rules. On the first page Hannah had written the rules of magic, and now Maria added a third, doing so without hesitation. Some lessons you have to learn for yourself, others are best to know from the start.
Do as you will, but harm no one.
What you give will be returned to you threefold.
Fall in love whenever you can.
Perhaps the Grimoire was the reason toads collected in the garden, or perhaps they merely enjoyed the varieties of greens Maria grew—sorrel, dandelion, spinach, and chard. At the rear of the large yard there was a small orchard of fruit trees—plum, peach, pear, and several varieties of apple—all having been set into the earth in the dark of the moon. Maria left the acreage between the house and the lake as free and open land, there for all to enjoy, a gift that would bring a blessing to her family. The fence that circled the house was of an unusual construction, black metal with spikes, laid out in the form of a snake with its tail in its mouth, ensuring that the only way someone could reach the door was to walk through the front gate where the ivy grew wild. Maria nailed the skull of a horse she had found in the Hopwoods’ pasture to a post to send a message to unwanted visitors. That pasture was deserted now that the brothers had disappeared in the middle of the night, headed west, still unable to speak, dreaming every night that they were drowning in a dark, bottomless lake and waking each morning with mouths full of water.
Twenty blue stones from the old path to the shed had been used to fashion a pathway to the house. Every night women came for what they needed most, red pepper tea for an upset stomach, or butterfly weed for nerves, or a bar of black soap that could take years off their age, or a charm for love. Love was what Maria was best at, and she didn’t fight it anymore. Let the rumors be spoken, logical people knew that a woman in trouble would never be turned away from Maria Owens’ door. If she went anywhere in the middle of the night, wrapped in a dark cloak and carrying her bag of curatives and teas, it was to visit an ill child. All the same, there was always bound to be talk about a household of women, not that it stopped people from coming to the door late at night in search of assistance, particularly in matters of love. Other houses were dark, but the light on the Owens’ porch was always kept on. On some occasions baskets of cakes and pies were left at the door, or freshly made cheese, or hand-knitted sweaters, left there by those whose loved ones had been accused of witchcraft, then freed by the governor’s decree, for there were those who were convinced that Maria Owens had something to do with his decision, and for this they would always be grateful.
* * *
The Owens Library opened in May, the most beautiful month of the year, when it was possible for people in Massachusetts to forget winter, at least until it came again. Maria bought the empty jail after Samuel Dias made a donation that would cover all costs for its renovation. While the carpenters were at work, they discovered a blue journal hidden behind the bricks. Work stopped for the day. Even the most serious-minded of the men were afraid of that slim blue volume and not one would touch it. When, at the end of the day, Maria came to see what had been accomplished on the project, the carpenters were sitting in a semicircle waiting for her, their faces ashen. She thought perhaps they had found the remains of a body, for surely there were those who had never left their cells alive, and when she saw that it was her journal that had stopped the men from working and was the reason they stared at her, unsure of what to do next, she was reminded of the first lesson Hannah had taught her. Words had power.
Maria kept the journal in the library to remind those who passed through the doors of what had happened in this building. Before it was filled with dozens of volumes, there was a book that had been written here when women were not allowed to speak on their own behalf. In the evenings there were lessons for those who wished to learn how to read. At first only women attended, many of whom sneaked out and said they were going to a quilting party, but after a while their husbands came to peer through the door, farmers and fishermen who entered the room with their hats in their hands, shyly picking up a book, then fitting their tall, strong bodies into chairs meant for children.
The Maria Owens School for Girls held its first classes soon after, with ten girls in attendance, aged six to thirteen. Faith Owens taught both Latin and Greek, along with poetry and classics. There were still many in town who thought it was a danger and a disservice to society to educate female students; all the same, several local residents allowed their daughters to register for classes, despite the rumors about the Owens women. Faith was not yet seventeen, but quite well respected by the girls and their families, who ignored the rumors that vowed both Owens women became crows who flew above the fields after dark, and that they would put a curse on you if you wronged them, and that they swam naked in Leech Lake. It was true that Maria went to the lake on summer mornings. She could only float, but that was enough, for she’d been able to dive the one time she needed to do so. If she wanted to swim there, among the waterweeds and the lilies, with no clothes on and her hair tied up with blue ribbon, who was to say such a thing wasn’t a pleasure and a delight?
* * *
No one knew whether or not Maria was married, but there was a man who spent winters with her and went to sea each summer. Some people swore he’d come back from the dead, and that love had returned him to life. His sailors said little about him when they frequented the taverns, other than to note that he paid them well and was a brilliant navigator. They laughed about his personal habits. He liked to tell stories, he always drank a special tea to give him courage, and wherever they might be, he searched out a certain variety of tree, bringing home so many that the road that led to the Owens house was now called Magnolia Street. It was rumored that if you stood there in May, on the day when the trees bloomed, you were bound to fall in love, but no one believed tall tales such as that, except for those it had happened to, and those couples often married there, rather than in church, and were said to be exceptionally happy.
* * *
Faith Owens was regularly seen in town with a book in hand, reading as she walked. She wore a wide-brimmed black hat and men’s trousers, and she carried a satchel of books to ensure that if she should finish one volume she would be handily prepared with the next. There was rarely a time when she didn’t have her nose in a book, and people would come upon her in the woods, sitting on a rock and reading, or on a ledge by the lake, tossing bread crumbs into the murky water as she turned the pages. She’d collected dozens of vo
lumes for the new library, meeting with wealthy families throughout Essex County, as well as in Boston and Cambridge, convincing well-to-do patrons that the entire population, men, women, and children alike, must be literate in order for the colony to grow. Several men fell in love with her, but she turned them all down. If they called her beautiful, that was a mark against them, for what a person was could not be seen with the naked eye. She had learned from her mother’s mistakes. If she ever fell in love, she wanted someone she could talk to.
Although women were not allowed to be students at Harvard College, the esteemed citizen Thomas Brattle, who had written a letter that was critical of the witch trials and was both the treasurer of the college and a member of the Royal Society, had made arrangements for Faith to study in Cambridge. She was closer to Brattle than most people might have supposed, despite their age difference; they appreciated each other’s minds, and she was grateful to him for believing in her abilities as a teacher.
Faith sat in the back row of the classics seminar at Harvard, allowed only to listen and never to speak. She dressed in boy’s clothing in her everyday life, which she found so much more practical than skirts and capes. At Harvard, she could be seen in a black jacket along with trousers and a white shirt and a black tie, the same uniform as the men, so that she might not call attention to herself and her gender, although she hardly went unnoticed due to the red boots she wore every day.
“Gentlemen,” the professor had told his students on the first day of class when Faith Owens was present. “Keep your eyes on me, if you please.”
Faith had been wrong about many things. She still had the red mark that had arisen in the center of her left palm when Martha Chase drowned; the color had faded, but the blotch was enough to remind her of the bad choices she had made in the past. Every midsummer’s eve a sparrow came into the parlor of the house on Magnolia Street. If it completed a circle around the room three times, bad luck was sure to come. Because of this, Faith never forgot the bird whose life she had taken for her own benefit when she made the Revenge Pie for John Hathorne. Hathorne was a successful trader, but people in town avoided him. There was nothing she wanted from him now, because he had nothing to give her. She always chased the sparrow to the window, then gently urged it out with a broom.
Magic Lessons Page 35