Harriet came into the room without so much as a knock to announce herself. “I need a moment with Mrs. Allington,” she said to Antoinette, and before Frances could stop her, the maid was out of the room.
“Wait!” Frances exclaimed, though it was already too late. Antoinette was gone.
People did that with Harriet. They obeyed every one of her orders, as if she were Queen Victoria herself. It was infuriating.
Frances’s temper began to rise, her ready anger flaring. She wanted to jump up from her stool and stamp her foot, but her legs had gotten tangled in the lacy drapery of the dressing table. She felt small and weak, which made her even more furious.
She should be feeling triumphant! Even Harriet should respect what she had just accomplished, marrying a wealthy widower, becoming a cherished young bride despite her lack of dowry or family connections. Resentment drove her voice high, making her sound more like a complaining child than the new mistress of a Riverside Drive mansion. “Harriet, what—”
“You forced him, didn’t you, Frances?”
Trapped by the swath of lace, Frances turned abruptly back to her mirror. She fussed with a strand of hair not yet pinned into place, endeavoring to hide her suddenly flaming cheeks.
Harriet had not bothered with a new ensemble for the occasion. Her visiting dress must be at least five years old, with flat sleeves and only a few jet buttons. It didn’t surprise Frances, but it was a further annoyance. Harriet might be a forty-year-old spinster, but she could afford good clothes if she cared to bother. Her dead fiancé had left her enough for that and more. She could have worn an up-to-date gown for the wedding of a cousin, however distant. She was, after all, the bride’s only family.
Frances scowled into her mirror. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Harriet,” she said. She took one quick look upward and saw that the corners of Harriet’s mouth were pinched with anger, drawing unattractive lines in her cheeks. The lines made her cousin look older than she really was, which gave Frances a brief feeling of superiority. She smoothed the strand of hair into place and adjusted a pin to hold it. She turned her head to assess the effect and was reassured by the smoothness of her cheeks, the unblemished line of her neck above the lace of her shirtwaist.
She preened a bit, twisting one of the expensive ruby earrings her groom had given her as a wedding present. “George is in love with me, Harriet. Anyone can see it. Why should you think I had to force him?”
“I don’t know that you had to,” Harriet answered with asperity. “I know that you did.”
Frances dropped her hand to the dressing table, flexing the fingers to appreciate the sparkle of her wedding ring. “You can’t know that, Harriet,” she said. “You’re just jealous.”
“I’m not in the least jealous, but I’m worried about the welfare of my great-niece. She’s lost her grandmother and her mother, and her father has rushed into marriage.”
“Annis will be fine. I’ll see to it.”
“You know nothing of children.”
“Neither do you!” Frances retorted, but her cheeks burned again.
“I do, actually, Frances. I often treat childhood ailments in my herbalism practice.”
“Herbalism!” Frances spit. “You could do so much more.”
“I could, and I do, when it’s needed. I know the best uses for my ability, and I’m careful not to misuse it. You should do the same.”
Frances finally freed her legs from the drapery of her dressing table and stood up. Her head came no higher than Harriet’s shoulder, which she hated, so she moved away to the wardrobe, where her going-away cape waited, blue brocade with a white fur lining.
She lifted it down and held it in front of her as she turned back to Harriet. “I don’t need you to tell me how to use my ability, Harriet.”
“Grandmother Beryl warned you. I warned you. You should have avoided the maleficia. It will always do more harm than good.”
Frances tossed the cape onto the bed and returned to her dressing table. She would not give Harriet the satisfaction of an argument on this topic. It would not be the first between them in any case, and this was, after all, her wedding day. She should not have to defend herself.
She could have pointed out that her practice was every bit as ancient and powerful as Harriet’s, but she would have been wasting her breath. Harriet would prate on about doing good and healing people, work that gave Frances no pleasure. Half the time, she knew perfectly well, Harriet didn’t even use her ability. She just cooked up herbal concoctions and sold them, or, too often, gave them away.
Harriet was correct about George, though. Frances had forced him. Harriet might be maddening, but she was perceptive. She probably saw it in George’s face. Others merely saw an older man in love with a young woman. Harriet no doubt took in the glassiness of his eyes, the urgency of his touch on his bride’s arm, the hungriness of his hands when he encircled her waist.
But, Frances thought, Harriet was wrong about the maleficia. It had not harmed her. On the contrary, it had given her precisely what she wanted, and she had no intention of giving it up.
She settled herself onto the stool again, taking care to arrange her skirt around her ankles. “Harriet,” she said, striving for a suitably commanding tone. This was her house now. Everyone in it must do what she wanted. “Call Antoinette back. I’m about to go on my wedding journey, and I have no time for this.”
“I do wish you a happy honeymoon, Frances,” Harriet said. Frances didn’t believe she meant it, not for a moment. She went on, “But I fear you will regret what you’ve done.”
“I won’t. I already know that.”
“Very well.” Harriet turned and started for the door. With her hand on the latch, she said, “Treat Annis well, Frances. I mean to see to it that you do. And if she inherits the ability…”
Frances glared at her cousin’s lean figure reflected in her dressing-table mirror. Anger gave her energy. It enhanced her own ability, and for once she felt as if the flow of her power was equal to Harriet’s. Her fingers and toes tingled with the familiar feeling, with that vague hot thrill that was almost pain.
She said in a low, hard voice, “I mean, Harriet, to see that you stay away from us. I will make clear to George what a bad influence you are, associating as you do with the lowest classes, laborers and factory workers and their flocks of disease-ridden children. Imagine the illnesses you could bring into the house! My stepdaughter has no need of such an influence in her life.”
Only then did Harriet smile, a cool, remote expression that made Frances’s heart thud with fresh rancor. “We shall see about that, Cousin. It’s your family now. But in the meantime—for this short time—enjoy your conquest.” She opened the door, tossing her last comment over her shoulder lightly, as if it were too prosaic, too obvious, to be spoken gravely. “It won’t last.”
5
Harriet
Harriet heard the front door of the apartment open and close and Grace’s running chatter greeting the housemaid who came to clean. The maids were all employed directly by the Dakota, and allowing one into the apartment was the only concession Grace made to the way things were done in the building. She flatly refused to use the kitchen service or even the laundry service. She had announced, at great length, that she was a better laundress and a better cook than any who would hire themselves out to a building of what she called “French flats.”
The manager of the Dakota would be appalled if he heard the elegant dwellings of his building referred to as French flats. Fortunately, Grace had the wisdom not to refer to them that way in his hearing.
Harriet hurried her breakfast, then refilled her coffee cup and carried it to the herbarium, where she closed and locked the door against the clatter and bang of the housemaid at work. She was eager to begin sorting through her morning’s harvest.
Harriet was of a precise nature, particularly when it came to the herbs and flowers she worked with every day. The herbarium was a space meant to be t
he fourth bedroom of the apartment, fitted with an iron sink and hot and cold running water. She had hired a cabinetmaker to line it with shelves and to install the two long stone counters where she could use scissors and knives without scarring the surfaces. On the shelves were dozens of glass jars of every size, pottery crocks, several mortar-and-pestle sets, and a fountain pen and ink bottle, with labels and mucilage for marking her remedies.
On a cabinet just inside the door, suspended on a triangular wooden stand, hung her most precious possession, when she wasn’t wearing it around her neck. It had been her grandmother’s, an amulet worked in silver and set with a large ametrine, its shades of lavender and yellow shot through with veins of deep purple. Harriet always touched the amulet as she passed it, and it always vibrated beneath her fingertips.
Magic? Yes. The best kind of magic, reminding her of her grandmother’s love, still with her though Grandmother Beryl had died ten years before.
Harriet called on the amulet to enhance her potions and tinctures, her salves and poultices. Sometimes they needed to be stronger, their effects swifter, their results longer-lasting. The amulet was why Grace was not allowed in the herbarium. No one was allowed to touch it except Harriet herself.
Even the amulet had failed to help her heal Alexander when his time came. His injury had been beyond the power of either doctor or witch to heal. There had been no one to speak a word of blame to Harriet, but none was needed. She lived with the knowledge that his death was her fault, and with every remedy she created, every person she helped, she struggled to assuage her guilt.
Now, in the scented peace of the herbarium, she emptied her basket, handful by handful, and spread her bounty across the stone counter. The dandelion greens she piled in a bowl to give to Grace for their dinner salad. She separated the stems of sage from the other greens and stripped the leaves to chop later for an infusion.
The shift from winter to spring often caused stomach upsets and inflamed chests. She kept remedies on hand for the people who sent requests up to her through the doorman. The doorman was a haughty creature, quick to reject anyone he deemed not of sufficient quality to enter his building. Fortunately, he had not forgotten his roots in the working neighborhoods of the city, and most of Harriet’s patients were of that class. They couldn’t afford a doctor, so they followed hearsay to the Dakota, where the doorman proved there was a heart beneath the copper buttons of his uniform.
Harriet tied the cut bunches of mugwort and hung them from hooks to dry. She tucked the stems and flowers of red clover into a pottery jar and did the same with the wild nettles, good for rebuilding the body after an illness. The burdock roots she trimmed and cleaned and set aside to make a decoction later for one of her patients, a girl of fourteen years who suffered from spots on her face.
Last she cleaned and chopped the leaves and flowers of the small amount of amaranth she had picked and added the bits to a glass jar. It was almost full now, and she would ask Grace to use it in a broth when the time was right. Someone was coming—someone always was—someone who couldn’t afford food for her children or herself. A broth thickened with amaranth would be both healing and nourishing.
When she finished all these tasks, she shook out the detritus at the bottom of her basket into a bin. She wiped down her work surface with a damp cloth, then stood back, dusting her palms together, satisfied with the morning’s work.
She was just untying her apron when she heard the tinkle of Grace’s bell. It hung from a cord in the hallway outside the herbarium, far enough away not to disturb her if she didn’t want to be interrupted, but close enough for her to hear. With mundane tasks an interruption would do no harm, but if a cantrip was needed, a disruption would mean starting over at the beginning. Now, however, she could hang up her apron, turn off the light, and answer the discreet ring.
She had been in the herbarium longer than she realized. She had worked into the afternoon. The housemaid had gone, leaving the floors and surfaces gleaming, and Harriet found Grace in the kitchen, wielding a cleaver to segment a chicken for dinner. Grace pointed toward the parlor with her greasy cleaver and gave a meaningful nod.
Harriet’s parlor held two simple divans facing each other, with a low inlaid table between them. There were two straight chairs and a sideboard, but little else. She found a well-dressed woman of about thirty sitting on one of the divans, with a cup of tea on the table before her. She had the look of old New York, thick, fair hair above round blue eyes and pink cheeks.
She would be, Harriet guessed, a Stuyvesant or a Steenwijk or a Bleecker, one of the Dutch who had come here, made their money, and for decades dominated the city. She wore a walking suit of tweed, with a tightly fitted jacket over a high-necked shirtwaist and a graceful gored skirt.
Harriet absorbed all this in an instant, including the detail that the young woman had not touched her teacup, nor the small biscuit perched on the edge of the saucer. When the visitor spotted Harriet, she jumped to her feet and held out one gloved hand.
“Miss Bishop, I believe? I hope you don’t object to my calling unannounced.”
Harriet took the young woman’s hand. “Yes, I’m Harriet Bishop. And you are Miss…?”
“Mrs. Mrs. Peter Schuyler. Dora.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Schuyler.” Now that she was closer to her visitor, Harriet saw that the pink in her cheeks was not from health but from embarrassment. Distress had intensified the blue of her eyes. It wasn’t often that someone from the upper classes came in search of Harriet’s help, and when they did, their need was usually desperate.
Harriet said, “Please, do sit down. You should drink your tea. Grace makes exceptionally good tea.” And of course Grace had divined, in her best old-retainer way, that this was not a social call, despite the visitor’s well-turned-out appearance.
“Thank you,” Dora Schuyler said. She sat down again, perching nervously on the edge of the divan, skirts fluttering like the wings of a skittish bird. “This is the first time I’ve been to the Dakota. It’s quite—quite a building, isn’t it?”
Harriet sat down, too, linking her hands in her lap. She knew the process of getting to the purpose of Mrs. Schuyler’s visit could be laborious, wandering through the lanes of polite conversation, twisting and turning until the end point was finally achieved, but she had little patience with small talk. The afternoon was getting on. It was best to move things along.
“I would say, Mrs. Schuyler, that there is no other building like it in New York. I haven’t yet decided if that’s a good or a bad thing. We are certainly well out of the city. You must have come by carriage.”
“I did, Miss Bishop. My landau is waiting in the courtyard.”
“Well, then. Let us not keep your driver waiting. How can I help you?”
As Dora Schuyler began to speak, Harriet bent her head to listen, not only to Mrs. Schuyler’s voice but to her heart. Harriet was adept at hearing the truth beneath a person’s words.
Mrs. Schuyler told her story in a hurried whisper. It was an echo of hundreds of others and as old as time. Her wealthy husband was a good bit older than she. Her marriage had no affection in it. They had two children but had not shared a bed in five years or more. She had met someone, had fallen in love, she had never meant to be indiscreet…
Harriet listened without judgment, and without curiosity for the details. She had heard it all before, though rarely from someone of Dora Schuyler’s social position. She knew the end before her visitor said it, and she knew she would help. It was what she had been born to do, and it prevented women from seeking other, more perilous, frequently fatal remedies.
When the recitation stumbled to an awkward stop, Harriet asked, “Who sent you to me, Mrs. Schuyler?”
“My maid went to the Italian woman’s shop on Elizabeth Street. Do you know it?”
“I do. Then I assume you understand the need for absolute discretion?”
“Yes, but… your housekeeper…”
“Grace has my c
omplete trust, and she understands you and I are both at risk. You needn’t worry.”
The younger woman’s eyes filled with sudden tears, and she groped in her small, soft purse for a handkerchief. She whispered, “I’m terrified, Miss Bishop. I will lose my children if I’m found out. My husband will find an excuse to send me to the asylum, to Blackwell’s Island.” She spoke the name with a shiver of pure horror. “I couldn’t survive it!”
“I understand perfectly.” Harriet spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, as if she were discussing a household shopping list. She would not indulge in sympathy, although she felt it. It wouldn’t help. “You must come back the day after tomorrow, about this same time. I will have something for you then.”
“You can’t—you can’t make it up now?” Dora Schuyler said tearfully. “I don’t care what it costs, but it’s so hard to get away…”
“I’m sorry,” Harriet said. “What you need can’t be rushed, I’m afraid. Do you know how long…” She let the question trail off and saw that Mrs. Schuyler understood.
The young woman’s cheeks burned even hotter as she answered in an undertone, “About six weeks, I believe. Perhaps eight.”
“You’re in time, then, Mrs. Schuyler. Do your best not to worry.”
Grace, hovering in the background, stepped forward to escort their visitor to the door. Harriet watched Mrs. Schuyler walk away, her shoulders hunched beneath her stylish jacket, her steps small and quick, the movements of an anxious rabbit.
Harriet sighed and went to make a cup of tea and find one of Grace’s scones to fortify herself for the tedious task ahead. She had the ingredients on hand, because it was a tincture much in demand. Emmenagogues, herbs to stir the womb to clear itself. The making of the tincture itself did not require so much time or effort, but the cantrip to make certain it was effective did. She would be working late into the evening.
Harriet took the greatest care in measuring for her tincture. The wild carrot seeds and juniper berries were not likely to threaten Dora Schuyler’s health, but pennyroyal and tansy could be deadly. Their amounts had to be precisely calculated. Harriet took pains with every step of the process and washed her hands thoroughly once the work was done.
The Age of Witches Page 4