With ill-disguised eagerness, Goodman Thomas took another cake, and accepted a glass of Amer’s homemade cowslip wine. Amer took two cakes from the proffered plate and poured himself some wine as well. He stirred up the fire so it danced brightly.
“Boys can be cruel to one another,” Thomas admitted, and took a bite of cake. “Laban’ll be by to apologize to Jacob in the morning, or I’ll know why. These are the best I’ve ever tasted, Goody Crafter.”
“Thank you, sir,” Samona said, and then turned indulgently to her clamoring children. “Peep, peep, peep! You all might be a nestful of little birds.” She passed the plate to her three children. Each child greedily snatched two cakes apiece. Jacob noticed how Samona regarded the platter as it was returned to her empty. She looked first disappointed, and then upset. She appeared to do some mental calculation. Jacob quickly ducked his head and swallowed the last mouthful of honey-flavored crumbs, which suddenly tasted dry and sandy. During the rest of Goodman Thomas’ visit, he tried guiltily to appear inconspicuous.
He mustn’t have been doing a good job, for as soon as the neighbor left, both parents appeared before him and escorted him across the hall and into Amer’s study. Amy eyed them curiously as the door swung shut.
His father boosted him up on the laboratory table and met him eye to eye. Jacob was very uncomfortable, between the glare and the cold seat, but he didn’t squirm.
“Jacob, did you know something about the dessert your mother just served?” Amer asked in a mild voice. Jacob recognized his father at his most dangerous.
“I knew she was baking today,” Jacob admitted, very cautiously. His parents exchanged glances, and he knew he was in deep trouble.
“That’s a most evasive answer,” Amer said, his brows lowered together. “Did you take any cakes before they were served to you just now?”
Jacob could barely force his voice past his teeth. “Yes, sir,” he mumbled.
Samona let out a wordless exclamation. “But how did you know where they were? I hid them as soon as they were cooled.”
“I saw you in the stone,” Jacob blurted out. “I was watching you when I went down to see Octavius.”
“Ah,” said Amer, his face expressionless. “I think I see. Jacob, do you remember my teaching you the laws that govern Nature as well as magic?”
Puzzled, the boy replied, “I believe I do, Father. There is the Law of Contagion, in which a thing which touches another thing continues to react upon it from a distance.”
Amer nodded. “How about the Law of Equivalence? For every action, there is an equal reaction?”
Jacob felt his cheeks go red. “Yes, sir,” he replied in a very small voice. Amer took his arm and nodded pleasantly to Mother.
“Excuse me, Samona. An equal and opposite reaction awaits a cake-snatcher.” The two of them marched down the steps and outside, the boy with his head hanging, toward the woodshed.
“It isn’t so much your act of stealing the cakes I mind,” Amer said as the two of them walked in the woods after Jacob had suffered his switching. “It’s the betrayal of trust. Your mother trusted you not to get into things she had put aside for the pleasure of all of us. Or to pry into a secret she was keeping. There is a heavy responsibility in the use of magic, which you have to learn. We do not sell our souls through a contract with the Devil, nor abuse the talents we have been given. You do not deserve your skills if you don’t use them wisely.”
“I am sorry, Father,” Jacob said remorsefully. “I’ll never do it again. Shall I help her to make new cakes?”
“I think she would appreciate the offer, after you apologize. Because of your greed, she was unable to enjoy the cakes with us.”
“I won’t eat any on Sunday, sir,” Jacob promised. “Mother shall have all of my share.”
“That will be punishment enough,” Amer acknowledged.
“Well, I’ve given my word to throwaway your study stone. You need a new one. Would you like its twin?”
Jacob considered it. “No, sir. I’d rather not remember it, because a bully took it away from me. I’d recall that instead of my lessons.”
“Very wise,” Amer said approvingly.
In the dwindling twilight, they browsed through stones tumbled by the side of the river. Jacob chose a new one that was plainer than the first, but it had a depression worn in it by the pebbles of the stream. “I don’t need to see the indentation, Father,” he explained. “I can feel it with my thumb and know where it is. That way I can have the stone in school with me, and Master Poggins will not worry me about it.”
* * *
“Octavius and I have been playing a game with my study stone,” Jacob announced to his mother a few days later. “When I touch it, I can tell if he’s thinking of me or not.”
Samona was unsure whether it was a good idea for anyone else to know about their magic, but it was also bad for the children to grow up never trusting another soul. She reasoned that if anyone could be trusted with their secret, it might as well be Jacob’s best friend. “And is he now?”
Jacob reached for the study stone, which he now kept hidden in his pocket. “Yes,” he said, brightening. “He wishes to play with me. He’s thinking of the oak tree.”
“Finish your chores, and then you may go play,” Samona told him.
* * *
Now that a link had been established, the boys made the best use of it. But no matter how they tried, the link only. worked one way, from Octavius to Jacob.
“I don’t understand it,” Octavius admitted. “I concentrate and stare at the stone until I think my eyes are going to pop out, and I still can’t hear you. It must be something special to your family.”
“Must be,” Jacob said, but added loyally, “ ’cause if it had to do with being smart, you’d be able to do it better than me.”
The system followed their natural inclinations anyway. Jacob was more content to follow his friend’s lead. He learned to distinguish when the faint mind-voice wanted him to come to the woods or to the Winterbourne house. Gradually, in an admirable scientific manner, the two boys maximized the extent of the skill. Octavius’ summons seemed to work best when coupled with some strong emotion, like excitement. When he was very happy, it was easy for Jacob to know that his friend was trying to attract his attention.
“May I go out with Jacob this morning?” Octavius asked his mother, on a fine day when there were to be no lessons.
“Heavens, no, it’s market day,” his mother exclaimed, tying on her bonnet and collecting her basket. “I need you to watch the supper.”
Octavius accompanied her to the door and opened it for her. “May I go when you come back?”
“Yes, of course. But don’t let the supper burn, or I’ll skin you alive!” she said, emphatically. “Read your lessons, or the Bible, and keep an eye on that joint!”
Goody Winterbourne let herself out at the gate, and turned into the lane. Octavius waved farewell, and went inside.
Laban Thomas and his cronies were waiting in the nearby lane for Octavius to come out of the house. Laban had suffered a tremendous beating at his father’s hands for stealing the Crafter boy’s stone and trying to get him in trouble with the elders.
“I’ll get even with him,” he said through his teeth.
“Then why are we waiting for Winterbourne?” one of the bully boys asked. “Why don’t we go up and throw Crafter into the river?”
“No!” Laban said, turning white. “They’re witchfolk. They’ll curse you if you lay a hand on them. We can make Crafter sorry by making trouble for his best friend. Come on, the goody’s gone.” He made a vicious grin. “She left him alone to mind the cooking. Look.” He held up a bucket of wet straw. “We’ll stuff the chimney full of this, and give him a face full of smoke.”
“We’ll get in trouble if anyone sees us.”
“No one will see,”
Laban sneered. “We’ll go back and pull it out later. That way, no one will know what happened. I just want him to get a faceful of smoke.”
Octavius sat beside the fire, keeping one eye on the meat, and the other on the book he was reading. It was nice and warm inside, but he would rather have been out in the crisp fall air with Jacob. The warm, fragrant fire made him feel comfortably drowsy, and soon the book slipped out of his grasp. He never noticed when the bundle of wet grass slid down the chimney and dropped the well-larded roast into the fire.
Smoke filled the room as the fire hissed its protest. An ember jumped away from the coals and landed on the rag rug in front of Octavius’ chair. Flames began to lick away at the tight braids. Octavius forced his eyes open. Immediately, they watered as the smoke flooded the sensitive tissues. He scrambled up from the chair, and kicked at the burning rug. It was burning too fast. Waving the smoke out of his face, he tried to find his way to the door, or the window, or whatever way out. His eyes were burning.
Octavius took in a lungful of air to call for help, but the full force of the wet smoke choked off his breath. He sagged to the floor. He woke up to cough and cry out again, then fell, overcome by the smoke. He was only a short way from the kitchen door.
* * *
Jacob sat dejectedly reading Shakespeare’s sonnets in the parlor, waiting for Octavius to signal him to meet. Samona had gone off to the market. The children had assumed that since it was market day, they might have a day away from lessons, but Amer, left in charge, had declared that it was a good time for extracurricular education. Hopefully, Jacob had thought it might be lessons in magic. Instead, it was moldy old poetry. He and Amy shared the huge book between them.
He was finding it hard to keep his mind on the fourteen line stanzas, and had to apply his hand frequently to the smooth stone, now on the window seat beside him.
“ ’Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’ “ Amy read, and sighed deeply. “That’s so romantic.”
Utterly bored, Jacob reached for the study stone, and put his thumb in the depression. Suddenly, he had the strongest intuition that Octavius needed him. The emotion was strong, all right, but that emotion was fear! Alarmed, Jacob sprang off the window seat, dumping the book onto Amy’s lap. He snatched up the stone, and hurried out.
“What are you doing?” Amy demanded. “Father!” Jacob left the room at a run without saying a word. Amy, aggrieved, put the book down and ran to Amer’s laboratory.
“Father, the stone has ceased to work,” Amy complained. “He just ran off. He paid no attention to me at all.”
Amer was grateful that his experiment was one in stable compounds, and not volatile chemicals. He put it aside at once and stripped off his lab smock. “I’ll find him, Amy. You go back and read.”
Amer set out in pursuit of Jacob, guided by the touch of his son’s mind. By the feel of his thoughts, the boy was agitated. He wondered what was wrong.
* * *
As Jacob ran through the town, the feeling that worried him was growing stronger, but he could no longer feel Octavius’ mind-voice. He clutched the stone, and rubbed his thumb furiously in the small depression. A distant feeling tickled at the inside of his nostrils, hot and close, though the air was crisp and clean. Fire!
“Fire!” Jacob cried as he ran toward the Winterbourne house. As he got closer, he could see that there was smoke coming from under the door and out an upper window. “Help! Fire!”
The entire neighborhood of houses were wooden-framed.
The cry was not one to be ignored. “Fire!” was echoed up and down the street. Anyone who could carry a bucket or broom rushed toward the Winterbourne house.
“It’s just a cooking fire,” Laban Thomas shouted over the crowd.
“It’s not!” Jacob protested. “The house is on fire!”
Men and boys started filling buckets from the pump at the end of the street as two big men forced open the Winterbourne’s front door. Smoke poured out, followed by the tongues of flames as the fire, suddenly freshened by more oxygen, burst into new life.
“Hurry up with those buckets there!” one of the men called to those at the pump.
Drenching themselves with water, the men started dousing the walls and the floor inside, anything that had not yet caught fire.
“It’s in the cooking area, all right,” one of the men shouted from inside.
“Octavius is in there!” Jacob called, pushing forward. “Get him out, please!”
The man looked back at him pityingly, and shoved him back. “It’s a sheet of flame, lad. Stay back!”
They didn’t believe him. Jacob, panicked to think that his friend might burn to death before anyone found him, raced around the back of the house, and threw open the kitchen door. The fireplace and everything in front of it was ablaze with a smell like burning flesh, and Goody Winterbourne’s favorite chair was flaming like a torch. Some of the floorboards had taken fire, but others were smoking under a layer of a thick, dark mass.
Jacob had to find Octavius. The feel of the stone guided him through the thick smoke to where his friend lay on the floor. He could hear yelling and splashing coming from the front of the house, where the volunteer fire brigade had formed its bucket chain. Jacob called to them, but the roar of the fire overpowered his voice.
It was hard to see, but it looked as if a tall man in a cloak had gained entrance to the kitchen, and was-bending over a small heap on the floor. It must have been a trick of the light, because when Jacob raced up no one was standing there, although the heap on the ground was Octavius, Coughing, he knelt beside his friend and tried to wake him up. The boy only stirred and muttered.
With a heave, Jacob picked up his friend and started to carry him back toward the door. As Jacob looked back into the smoke, he got a brief, almost illusionary, glimpse of a skull with glowing eyes, nodding approvingly at him in the same way Amer did when he did something well. Not stopping to think further about it, he bustled Octavius out into the air and dumped him on the grass.
Members of the fire brigade clustered around the two soot-smudged boys. Jacob was praised for his heroism, but he ignored everyone’s attempts to pull him away until Octavius opened his eyes.
“You heard me,” he whispered, and Jacob nodded.
“Now, don’t speak,” Amer said, rushing up to the boys and kneeling down beside them. “Just breathe in and out until your lungs are clear. That’s good,” he said, nodding, as Octavius drew in long breaths of air.
“Will the house burn down?” Jacob asked fearfully, looking up at Octavius’ house.
Amer shook his head. “I don’t think so. They’ve nearly got it under control. You alerted them in time to prevent severe damage.”
Jacob let out a heartfelt sigh of relief. Goody Winterbourne, riding pillion behind a neighbor, began shrieking when she saw the smoke pouring out of her doors and windows. Amer met her at the gate and led her to where her son was resting in the care of neighbor goodwives. He assured her that the fire was out, and that the damage was minor. All the other neighbors immediately began to help clean up the damage and clear away traces of the fire.
Laban Thomas tried to sneak away in the confusion, but his fellows, alarmed by the tragedy they had precipitated, confessed, and named him as a conspirator. As soon as their attention was not entirely centered on the Winterbourne house, men-at-arms took the four boys into custody.
“Restitution to the Winterbournes will have to start with replacement of their dinner,” Sexton Thomas informed his son as the boy was marched away.
“Your sister was concerned when you ran away, my lad,” Amer admonished Jacob as they walked home later.
“I am sorry, Father, but I had to go,” Jacob explained. “I did not mean to leave my books, but the compulsion was so strong. I could not concentrate on my studies when I felt there was something ill befalling my friend.”
> “I am not taking you to task,” Amer assured him, wiping a smoke smudge off the boy’s nose with a pocket cloth. “All is well as far as I am concerned, my young son. I think for once you may be praised for a lesson very well learned indeed.”
Anno Domini 1712
MARGARETHE sat on the floor and watched her father grind things into powder.
“Daddy, why are you doing that?” she asked.
“Because it needs to be done,” he answered.
“Daddy, why does it need to be done?” she inquired further.
“I need it to do my work,” he grumped.
“Daddy, why do you need it to do your work?” she asked.
“Margarethe, go ask your mother.”
“Why, Daddy?”
“Because I told you to.”
“Why are you telling me to?”
“Just go, no more questions.”
“But Daddy, why?”
“GO!”
Margarethe toddled away slowly, glancing at her father every now and again over her shoulder. She had just learned to walk without a wall to hold on to.
“She’ll be the end of me yet with all those questions.”
Willow appeared and answered him. “There is a good college near Boston. Perhaps she should go, once she’s old enough.” At Amer’s insistence the being had improved her language skills for the children’s sake.
“She is a girl, and girls don’t go to college.”
“This one needs to. Besides, after sixteen more years of this, you’ll need the rest.”
“Willow, you may be right.”
* * *
Margarethe is listening through the walls again,” Willow reported.
The Crafters Book One Page 11