A Vision in Velvet: A Witchcraft Mystery

by Juliet Blackwell

  The big retired fisherman was seated at the main table. He turned around in his chair. “What’s up?”

  “This is Bartholomew Woolsey. Bart, this is Duke Demeter. Duke, would you see how Bart could help?”

  “Sure. Here; have a seat.”

  Bart turned back to me and dropped his voice: “And if you don’t mind, could you keep this just between us? Maybe keep my name out of it if you’re asking around?”

  I nodded. “I’ll be discreet.”

  “Thank you.”

  Bart sat down next to Duke. The two men looked similar in age. Perhaps this was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, I thought, trying to force my thoughts toward something pleasant. And then I noticed that two of Bronwyn’s coven sisters were already welcoming Bart, their patchouli-scented purple gauze aflutter. One offered Bart a cup of steaming coffee; the other proffered a plate of cookies.

  Unfortunately, none of this activity was going to help find my lost pig. That was a whole other kettle of supernatural fish.

  I took a deep breath and tried to concentrate. What did I know so far? Bart Woolsey’s niece Hannah sold a trunk of old clothes to Sebastian Crowley. Bart gave no indication that he had any knowledge of what had been in that trunk. Sebastian was subsequently killed under an oak tree that was causing Conrad to experience nightmares. Aunt Flora’s Closet was attacked, possibly by someone looking for the trunk. A velvet cape—which Oscar called a travel cloak—within the trunk gave me visions of a witch burning. Bart Woolsey believed he was the victim of a love curse passed down through the ages. Oscar disappeared in—or near or around—the oak tree.

  And I was one clueless witch.

  * * *

  At three I set out for Berkeley. It probably wouldn’t take me a full hour to reach the university located right on the other side of the bay, but it was rush hour, so one never knew. Still, the real reason I left early was that I wanted some distance from the flurry of well-meaning activity at the store.

  Just thinking of Oscar hurt my heart, leaving it feeling scraped and raw. The longer he was missing, the more I feared he was being kept against his will.

  I often get lost when I cross over the Bay Bridge, so I followed Will’s instructions carefully, taking the University Avenue exit off of 80 and then crossing town on surface streets. I half expected to see student protests and hippies, as though it were still 1969. In reality, I passed through a neighborhood full of Indian clothing stores, display windows jammed with jewel-toned saris and glittering gold bangles—I made a mental note to stop in one day, as though I needed more cool clothes in my life—and then drove by several blocks peppered with restaurants and cafés and health food stores.

  University Avenue, handily enough, dead-ended at the UC Berkeley campus. I found metered parking and bought a ticket for two hours. Just in case.

  Then I threw myself on the mercy of a student who showed me how to get to the religion department, which was housed in Evans Hall, along with the mathematics department. Mathematics made me think of algebra and how Oscar had encouraged me to go to the GED this weekend, offering to drive. How I hoped he would be back in time to offer again.

  The door was ajar. I knocked lightly and pushed it in.

  “Professor?”

  “Hello! Nice to see you again,” said Will as he came out from behind a standard-issue beige institutional desk to shake my hand.

  Besides the desk, the office consisted of one wall of bookshelves, a filing cabinet, and two chairs. Everything was neat as a pin; the desk blotter was empty of anything but a framed photo, a well-ordered stack of papers, and two pens that seemed to have been placed at the side with military precision. I wondered how Will managed to work in the chaos of Bart’s apartment without either organizing or sitting on his hands to keep from diving in.

  “Please come in. Have a seat,” he continued. “How’s Bart doing? Have you seen him?”

  “As a matter of fact, I just left him at my shop. He stopped by and then stayed to help find a lost pig.”

  Will had returned to his seat behind his desk. He blinked.

  “I have a . . . pet pig,” I clarified. “A miniature Vietnamese potbellied pig.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s sort of like a dog. It’s gone missing.”

  “I’ve heard of that. Didn’t George Clooney have one of those?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it’s lost. You must be so worried. I have a couple dogs myself.” He picked up a photo in an ornate antique frame and held it out to me. He smiled, a little embarrassed. “I don’t have kids, so . . . they’re my babies.”

  I looked at the photo—a goofy-looking golden retriever and a smaller dog of unknown heritage, grinning widely, tongues lolling—and returned it to him with a smile.

  “Cute. I love dogs.”

  “Anyway,” he said. “You didn’t come here to ask about my canine companions. What can I help you with?”

  “I was wondering . . . We met the other day at Bart’s house, of course, but I was also referred to you by someone else, who suggested you might be able to answer some questions for me.”

  “Who might that be?”

  “Aidan Rhodes.”

  “Ah. Aidan.” Our eyes held for a long minute. “And now you’re not sure what to think of me.”

  “Where I come from, we say someone like Aidan might be welcome to supper—but hide the silver.”

  Will grinned, showing straight white teeth. “I like that. Mind if I steal it?”

  “It’s not like it’s mine. Belongs to plenty of Texans, I reckon. By way of warning, I wouldn’t say it to Aidan’s face, though.”

  “Believe me, I know better. Aidan was kind enough to answer some questions for a class of mine once. One of my students recommended him as a visiting lecturer. It was . . . fascinating.”

  “I’ll bet it was.”

  “So, you’re here because of Aidan, or because of Bart? Or something else?”

  “I was hoping you might be able to tell me more about the history Bart was discussing yesterday.”

  “His family history?”

  “Yes. But also . . . about the witchcraft trials in general. For instance, he mentioned his family was from a Massachusetts settlement that was . . . similar to Salem?”

  “That’s right. Salem was the location of the most famous witch craze in colonial America, but trials also took place elsewhere. Many elsewheres, in fact. Bart’s family settled in a town called Dathorne. Nasty history there.”

  “So it was a generalized hysteria?” I should know more, but had always shied away from learning much about the witch hunts. The subject was too frightening, too painful.

  “I wouldn’t call it ‘hysteria,’ exactly,” he said slowly, as though searching for words. “In my work I describe it as a confluence of events and attitudes that led inexorably toward an extreme response—”

  “Such as putting a bunch of women to death?”

  “And several men as well,” he said with a nod. “But yes, that’s the kind of extreme response I’m talking about. It’s hard for the modern mind to understand the seventeenth-century mentality. The Scientific Revolution was just getting underway in England, and the worldview of most American colonists was still very much medieval. They saw the universe as a battleground between the forces of good and evil, between God and the devil. And they didn’t mean this metaphorically; they meant it literally.”

  “Weren’t the colonists mostly uneducated and illiterate?” I asked.

  “That’s a common misconception. In early colonial New England especially, literacy rates were uncommonly high—much higher than in most of Europe at the time. The Puritans prized education and founded Harvard College only six years after settling the Boston colony.”

  “Then why . . . ?”

  “In the Puritan
world, the devil was constantly on the prowl to snatch vulnerable souls from the path of righteousness. Lacking a scientific explanation for natural events, they tended to interpret bad things—a crop failure, a baby’s illness, a cow’s milk drying up—as the actions of either God or the devil. Witchcraft was not the default explanation when something bad happened, but it was one possible explanation.”

  “So are you saying there weren’t any actual witches in Salem?”

  “The evidence for Salem suggests the accusations of witchcraft grew out of social conflict rather than the presence of actual witches. But this is not the same thing as saying there were no witches in colonial America; witchcraft has been present throughout history and all across the world. Women, mostly, often healers and botanists, who specialized in the rites and traditions that brought people comfort and health. They were the wisewomen, or cunning women.”

  Will reminded me of myself, insisting upon the positive aspects of the history of witchcraft. While I took in the professor’s words, my gaze wandered to the window, which looked out across a stand of trees. Idly, I wondered if this would qualify as a “coppice.” The word brought Oscar’s loss back to me with a vengeance.

  Will continued. “Women were considered more vulnerable to witchcraft, of course, since they were traditionally defined as morally and spiritually more fragile than men and therefore at greater risk of being seduced by the devil. The Puritans were trying to create a ‘city on a hill,’ a shining example of a godly community on earth. What greater prize for the devil than to disrupt God’s people? So when conflict broke out, as it did in Salem and other places, a logical suspect was the devil and his minions—the witches.”

  “I understand.” I watched Will and tried to assess whether he knew I was a witch, whether he might have a sense of such things, as Bart had mentioned about himself. That still shook me a bit. I wasn’t used to being outed by someone who barely knew me, who wasn’t part of the magical world. “But what I’m wondering is whether there might have been some true witches present at that time. Powerful women. Maybe someone who cursed someone else?”

  He held my eyes for a long time. “There is a story of one woman. Bart’s obsessed with her. Deliverance Corydon.”

  Chapter 13

  “Deliverance? That was her name?” That word was ringing in my head when I snapped out of the vision I’d had with the cloak.

  “Pretty, isn’t it? A lot of the Puritan women had names like that: Chastity, Purity, Prudence. All the virtues. But Deliverance Corydon was a special case, obviously.”

  “How so?”

  “For one thing, she was burned at the stake. That almost never happened in the American colonies. Witches here were executed by hanging.”

  My heart sped up. “Then why did they burn her? Were they out of rope, or was there some significance to the method?”

  “That sort of question keeps scholars like me employed and writing treatises on the issue. I would argue that Deliverance Corydon was a very special case.”

  “How do you know so much about her?”

  “The Puritans, bless their hearts, were world-class record keepers. Not only that, but they tended to store these documents safely, which means we have many more from them than from others of the time. There are letters, diaries, newspapers, church accounts, all kinds of notations. And there is the transcript of her trial, of course. It’s a summary, not a word-for-word recording—stenography was several centuries in the future—but it’s quite revealing. It describes, for example, how Deliverance was extensively interrogated about her familiar spirit, which was, apparently, a frog.”

  “Really. What kind of frog?”

  “I’m afraid they weren’t that detailed, but I imagine it was just a common toad of some sort.” Will smiled. “The accused were imprisoned while awaiting trial, and if any animal wandered by—even an ant or a beetle—it was assumed they were the witch’s familiar. The human mind is infinitely creative.”

  “Anything else out of the ordinary in her interrogation?”

  “Not really. She had a witch’s mark, which was common among those accused. Usually they were moles or birthmarks that were thought to be without feeling, and marks of the devil. Hers was shaped like a crescent moon and was on her neck. Like a hickey.”

  “I was wondering . . . This might sound a little gruesome, but do you know what they did with the bodies of witches after they were killed?”

  “Not gruesome at all! A fascinating question!” Will stood and began pacing behind his desk, as though too excited by my query to remain seated. I imagined him in a lecture hall, speaking to a class of rapt students, and wished, not for the first time, that I’d had the chance to go to college. Maybe I could think of pursuing it after I got my GED. As long as there was no math requirement, I would quite enjoy it, I felt sure.

  “Because a witch was a minion of the devil, her corpse was considered polluted, and often there was a great deal of debate about what to do with it. It couldn’t be buried in consecrated ground, for instance. One option was to bury the corpse outside the graveyard, literally on the other side of the fence. Makes quite a statement, don’t you think? ‘We reject you, in life and in death!’”

  “Is that what they did to Deliverance?” I asked, wondering how on earth I would ever find a beyond-the-boundary colonial-era grave. Probably under a condo development by now.

  “No, they chose another option. Fire was a traditional method of purification and had the added benefit of being thought to break residual spells. It was said—wait a minute. I have it right here.”

  Will pulled a thick tome off a shelf, flipped to the middle, and ran his finger down the page. “Here it is. ‘The body of a witch being burned, her blood is prevented thereby from becoming hereditary to her progeny in the same evil, which by hanging is not.’” He snapped the book shut and grinned at me.

  “In other words . . . ?” I asked, wanting to be sure I understood.

  “Oh! Sorry. In other words, fire keeps the witch’s sins from being passed on through her blood kin, should she have any.” He put the book back, taking the time to adjust the spine so it was in line with the others on the shipshape shelf.

  “What did they do with the ashes . . . the remains of the witch who was burned?”

  “Usually they were thrown into a river to completely dissolve. Not unlike executed criminals today, who are given an anonymous burial in quicklime. The idea is to wipe out any trace of them.”

  “And that’s what happened to this witch’s remains? Deliverance . . .”

  “Deliverance Corydon,” he finished with a nod. “Actually, no. Deliverance received special treatment. Her ashes were put into a wooden box carved with symbols.”

  “This was in the historical record as well?”

  “Yes. It was noted by a particularly devout young minister, who was also a bit of an artist. He even drew pictures of the box, thank goodness. It’s the sort of thing that makes history fun, this kind of window into the past. I have an image of it somewhere. . . .” Plucking another book from his extensive collection, he thumbed through it and then handed it to me.

  A shiver ran down my spine. The drawing of the symbols on the box containing the remains of Deliverance Corydon was a match for the photo Carlos had shown me . . . except that the box was now several rotted pieces of wood. But some of the carved symbols had survived.

  “Where did the symbols come from? Was it something the Puritans came up with?”

  Will shrugged. “Their meaning has been lost, but it was assumed to be a spell or protective markers of some sort. As I said, burning witches was unusual in colonial America, though more common in Europe.”

  “Could Deliverance’s ashes have been transported to San Francisco?”

  Will thought for a moment. “It seems highly unlikely . . . but possible, I suppose. Once a witch was executed, most folks seemed to wa
nt to forget all about it. It’s possible someone kept the box, and it was handed down through the generations and taken with them when they moved. Over time, it’s likely the family forgot what was inside, but really, who knows?” He shrugged. “The box would have been sealed with nails and wax, but wood does disintegrate. Depending on environmental conditions, it might take a few years, or several centuries. But eventually, it will rot away, faster if it’s buried.”

  My mind raced as I tried to process all he was telling me. “Suppose . . . Suppose a box like this were buried at the base of a tree. Could it have disintegrated and the ashes soaked into the tree?”

  “Um . . . can’t help you there,” he said with a slight smile, eyebrows raised. “That’s botany; not my specialty.”

  “Sorry. Never mind. Tell me, were you studying the Woolsey family in particular? Is that how you found Bart? Or did he find you?”

  “Woolsey was a reasonably common name. It was also the name associated with the most famous curse from the colonial era.”

  “The one Bart believes he suffers under?”

  “He told you about that?”

  “He actually asked me to help him get rid of it.”

  “Poor guy. Seeking true love at his age . . .”

  “You think the desire for true love lessens with age?”

  “Oh no, no, no, I’m no ageist.” He sat back down behind his desk and adjusted his glasses. “I guess I just thought, well . . . I don’t know. Half my colleagues are looking for love online and whatnot, and I guess part of me hoped it would get easier with age.”

  He smiled and shrugged again, and I was struck by his open and friendly expression. Will had the kind of nerdy good looks one saw a lot on college campuses: intellectual and intense, but eager and interested. I imagined he had more than a few young students falling for him.

  “I discuss the Woolsey curse in a book I’m writing, titled, appropriately enough, Ancient Curses. I’m interested not only in how these stories originated and were handed down through the years, but also how they’re kept alive by a modern society that claims not to believe in curses.”