The Age of Witches

by Louisa Morgan

  On the other hand, she had longed for years to escape this dingy apartment, this drab neighborhood. Though she felt no familial affection for Beryl or Harriet, Cousin Beryl’s home had to be an improvement on this place. Sarah had often complained that Cousin Beryl had been fortunate to marry a man of means who left her a comfortable widow, while her own husband had vanished from her life along with the few things of value they possessed.

  Frances wanted to ask how many servants there were in the house in St. George. She wondered if she was to have a proper bedroom, or if she would be expected to sleep in the maid’s quarters. Cousin Beryl might even give her an allowance, if she was to become her ward.

  She kept these thoughts to herself. Even if she had chores to perform at her cousin’s home, or perhaps would be compelled to serve as Cousin Beryl’s companion as she got older, it would still be better than trying to survive in this place.

  She had no place else to go, in any case. The only work available to her was the sort her mother had done, taking in laundry, cleaning other people’s homes, backbreaking labor. Working in a factory, imprisoned all day in a room full of machines and other unfortunate girls, was unthinkable.

  She decided to play the grateful younger relative and wait to see what would come of Beryl’s invitation. She mustered the soft smile she sometimes used on gentlemen who held a door for her or retrieved her dropped handkerchief. “I’m very grateful, Cousin Beryl,” she said, letting her voice be small and sad. “I didn’t have any idea what I might do next, now that Mother is gone.” She managed to produce a tiny tear and allowed it to slide daintily down her cheek.

  “Of course,” Beryl said briskly. Frances could see she was not the type to comfort crying girls. She wiped the wasted tear and dried her wet finger on her dress.

  “It will be hard work,” Harriet warned. “You have a great deal to learn, since your mother taught you nothing.”

  Frances ignored this. She resented Harriet insulting her mother, though she could understand it. Sarah had not been an impressive person. She had been both weak and passive. If there had been some ability she could have called on, to Frances’s way of thinking she should have done it. Still, Frances hated Harriet looking down that long Bishop nose and giving orders Frances was obviously expected to obey without question.

  She drew a breath that trembled a little, audibly, to show she was doing her best to collect herself. “Cousin Beryl? There is one thing you haven’t told me.”

  “What did we forget?” Beryl asked.

  “I still don’t understand why you’re so certain I have it. This—this Bishop ability.”

  “Oh,” Beryl said, with a wave of her hand. She was putting on her coat and arranging her shawl over it. “That’s Harriet’s doing. It’s a rare gift. I don’t have it myself, but she developed it at an early age.”

  “What gift?”

  Harriet said, “I think of it as the knowing. I don’t have a better word. I often know things when I’m working. I can’t explain it.”

  “And you believe I have the ability.”

  “I don’t believe anything. I know you have it.”

  This had to be a good thing, Frances thought. Even if Harriet was wrong—and in this case she hoped she wasn’t—she could pretend to have the ability. It would be worth it to live in a decent house and meet a better class of people. Perhaps Cousin Beryl would buy clothes for her. She said, in her most girlish voice, “You’re going to teach me, Cousin Beryl? Really?”

  “Yes,” Beryl said. She was drawing on her gloves, but she paused and gave Frances a solemn look. “But remember, Frances—no one must know any of this outside of our family.”

  “Why?” Not that there was anyone Frances could tell, but she thought she should know.

  “Because we can accomplish things other people can’t. We can control our own lives and affect the lives of others. Such power frightens people, and frightened people can be dangerous.”

  “More specifically,” Harriet added, “frightened men are dangerous to the women who have frightened them.”

  “Exactly,” Beryl said. “Men control the government, the money, even the law. All we have is our ability, and too often it’s not enough.”

  Frances knew how cruel men could be. She was accustomed to the screams of women being beaten by their husbands or lovers or customers, as the case might be. She saw them in the market and in the shops, their faces bruised, their arms in slings, sometimes leaning on sticks to relieve the pain of their injured legs.

  Harriet was watching her, and those stone-gray eyes seemed to see right into her brain. “It’s not just physical abuse,” Harriet said. “A woman can be thrown out of her house. Separated from her children. Accused of hysteria or outright insanity. If a man speaks against her, no court will hear her side. She can be put away on the flimsiest of excuses, relegated to a hospital or a jail, even an insane asylum. It’s how they deal with our sort in this new age, if we are exposed.”

  Frances said, “I will be careful, Cousin Harriet. Cousin Beryl.”

  “Good.” Beryl settled her wide-brimmed hat on her head. It was old, Frances noted, but of quite good quality, perhaps even a Victorine copy. She would like one of those for herself.

  Beryl asked, “Do you need time to get your things together, or will you come with us now?”

  “I’ll come now, Cousin Beryl.” Faced with this new opportunity, there wasn’t a single thing she cared to carry away from this hovel of an apartment. “I’ll come right now.”

  9

  Harriet

  Harriet had tried to warn Frances. She had assisted Grandmother Beryl in the instruction of their young cousin, the two of them introducing her to the practice as judiciously as they could. They had explained herbs and their uses and made Frances memorize dozens of them so she could recognize the leaves and roots by sight, both in the wild and in the herb shop. They taught her to make the simple things first, slurries and poultices, salves and ointments, before moving on to more delicate tinctures and potions.

  Harriet often wished Beryl could have lived longer, and not only because she missed her. Beryl might have eventually convinced Frances to abandon the dark practice of her ancestresses—the maleficia—and embrace the disciplined purity of their own. Unfortunately, though Frances had done reasonably well at her studies, and she luxuriated in the comforts of Beryl’s home in St. George, things had still gone wrong. After Beryl’s heart failed her, Frances lost her way.

  Harriet had tried to divert her from the darker path. She knew Frances envied her, but she could forgive that. She had enjoyed an easier life than her young cousin, despite having lost her mother even earlier than Frances lost hers. Grandmother Beryl had been a rigidly disciplined guardian, a product of her stern generation, but she had filled Harriet’s young, curious mind with knowledge of all sorts of things: books, history, poetry, and music. She had imparted her deep understanding of the natural world and the uses of its miraculous products, and guided Harriet’s first efforts to use her ability. Above all, when it became clear that Harriet’s abilities outpaced her own, Beryl had rejoiced, not resented. She had encouraged her and inspired her.

  Several weeks before her death, she bestowed her own precious amulet on her granddaughter, with a blessing. Harriet had objected, saying it was too soon, she must continue to wear the amulet for protection, but Beryl only smiled and pressed it into her hand.

  “Come now, Harriet dear,” she murmured. “You are the one who knows things. You must know it’s time, or near enough to time as makes no difference.”

  Harriet hadn’t known, though. Or perhaps some part of her soul had known but suppressed the knowledge. Beryl’s death came as a shock. Harriet had done all she could, all she knew how to do, but Beryl slipped away from her, and that was a lesson in itself. She couldn’t save everyone. She couldn’t defeat death itself.

  She could try, however, to prevent Frances from ruining Annis’s life just to win entrée to the gilded world of the V
anderbilts and the Astors. She didn’t know yet if Annis had inherited the Bishop ability, but she doubted a seventeen-year-old girl, however spirited, could stand up to Frances’s dark practice.

  How tempting power could be to a person of shallow character!

  She turned out the lights in her herbarium and went to the kitchen, where Grace was slicing vegetables for soup.

  Grace looked up. “All done? That’s good. Mrs. Schuyler is due any moment.”

  “Her treatment is ready.”

  “I’m glad. She did look peaked, didn’t she? Didn’t look well at all. Pity, pretty young lady like that, a family and all, and plenty of money. You’d think she’d be happy, have anything she wanted, and there she is, looking for all the world as if she’s lost her best friend. I thought—”

  Harriet let Grace run on as she walked to the sink to run a glass of water. She drank it slowly, gazing through the window to the soothing vista of the park. When the doorbell rang, Grace went to answer it and to usher Dora Schuyler into the parlor. She came back into the kitchen and began filling the kettle.

  Harriet smoothed her hair and skirt. “I don’t think you need to bother with tea, Grace. I doubt Mrs. Schuyler will have a taste for it.”

  “You’re probably right,” Grace said. “She doesn’t look a bit better today than she did before, circles under her eyes and her hands all trembly. She’ll be glad of your help, that one. Just let me know if you change your mind about the tea, and I have some fresh biscuits I just made this—”

  Harriet didn’t hear the end of the sentence. She went quickly into the herbarium to collect the vial she had prepared, and carried it into the parlor.

  Grace was right about Mrs. Schuyler’s appearance. Her eyes were hollow and shadowed, and her lips were pale. She shot to her feet when Harriet appeared, and when she put out her hand, it was shaking. Harriet held it between hers to steady it.

  “Good day, Mrs. Schuyler,” she said, in a matter-of-fact tone.

  “Oh, oh yes. Good day,” Dora Schuyler said, flushing at the lapse in her manners.

  “Do sit down.”

  “Thank you, Miss Bishop.” Mrs. Schuyler didn’t precisely sit, but perched on the edge of the divan, her slight shoulders hunched. She had a small velvet purse dangling by a cord from her wrist, and she placed it in her lap and opened it by its cord. “Do you have my—my medicine?”

  “Of course.” Harriet sat near her and placed the vial on the inlaid table. As Mrs. Schuyler counted out several bills, Harriet said, “Mrs. Schuyler. Dora, if I may call you that, since you have trusted me with your secret. Do you have someone to be with you when you take this tincture?”

  “My maid will be with me. She always is. That is, not today, but almost always.”

  “And does she know you’re here, and why?”

  “No,” Dora Schuyler said. She dropped her head and stared into her open purse. “No one knows but you.”

  “You can’t trust her?”

  Dora shook her head. “I’m not sure. She might—she’s capable of telling my husband. She always seems to need money.”

  “How are you going to explain? This is going to make you very ill.”

  Dora shook her head again and raised a face full of misery to Harriet. “I thought—well, I hoped I could tell her my monthlies are particularly bad. They often are.”

  “Ah. There are some things that can help with that, but we can address the problem at a later date. In the meantime you will have to hide from your maid just how bad your pain is. I haven’t experienced the effects of an emmenagogue myself—”

  “A what?”

  “An emmenagogue. An abortifacient.”

  “Oh.”

  “As I said, I haven’t experienced the effects, but my patients have described it to me. It’s a bit of a misery, I’m afraid.”

  “I’ve had two babies.”

  “Yes, I remember. It will be something like that.” Harriet took a piece of tissue paper from a drawer under the table. She wrapped the vial and handed it to Dora. “Take it all at once. It’s probably best if you take it in the late morning, so the worst of it will take place in the hours of darkness, when most of your household is asleep.” As Dora accepted the paper-wrapped vial, Harriet warned, “If you seem to be in too much distress, I fear your maid will alert your husband, and he will call for a doctor.”

  “Oh, a doctor… oh no, I can’t see a doctor.”

  “You’re right. A doctor will most certainly recognize what is happening.”

  The flush on Dora’s cheeks faded in an instant, and she swayed as if she might fall. Harriet moved closer to take the woman’s arm to hold her upright. “There now, Dora,” she said. “You have been brave in coming to me. Now you must be brave a little longer. Twenty-four hours, no more. Your confinements doubtless took more time.”

  “Yes,” Dora whispered. “They seemed to go on forever.”

  “I should warn you, also, that you may never conceive again.”

  “I have two children already. It’s enough.”

  “Very well, then. I think I’ve told you everything.”

  “You can’t give me anything for pain, Miss Bishop? My doctors gave me laudanum when I delivered my children.”

  “There is a risk the tincture will not be effective if you counter it with a palliative. I’m very sorry.”

  Dora nodded, closed her purse, and pushed herself to her feet. Harriet stood with her, releasing her arm with reluctance. She recognized the pain in Dora’s eyes. It was a pain that would last far longer than the suffering of the actual event. Dora Schuyler didn’t want to do this. She had no choice, no other path. Harriet feared the young woman’s spirit might never fully recover.

  “I suppose you think I’m disgusting,” Dora said in a thin voice.

  “Of course I do not,” Harriet said. “I think you’re human.”

  “But ladies—nice women, well brought up—we’re not supposed to be…” Dora’s voice faltered, and she made a half-hearted gesture with her hand.

  Harriet supplied, “Passionate?”

  “Yes.” The word was a breath, no more.

  “Forgive me for being blunt, Dora, but that’s nonsense. We are no less passionate than the men we love. The trouble is that when women love, they bear the greater burden. It has always been that way, I’m afraid.”

  “I suppose that’s true.” Dora’s breath whistled in her tight throat, and her eyes sparkled with unshed tears. “I thank you, Miss Bishop. I was desperate.”

  “I know.” Harriet put out her hand, and they shook. Dora Schuyler’s hand felt heartbreakingly fragile in Harriet’s strong one.

  “Shall I—May I come to see you again?”

  “Of course you may, and I hope you will, but wait a good while. Months. Neither of us benefits if someone makes a connection between us.”

  “I understand.”

  Harriet rang the silver bell on the side table, and Grace came to see Dora out. When she was gone, Harriet walked to the tall windows that looked to the north, where a gay sunny sky mocked the sorrow of the day. She stood with one hand on the amulet beneath her bodice and watched puffs of creamy cloud, propelled by the sea wind, scud toward the west. She breathed and reminded herself that she couldn’t carry the burdens of her patients. It helped neither them nor her, and it hampered her ability to heal others.

  She heard Grace return from the front door and move into the kitchen, but still she stood. She hoped the beauty of the fields and scattered farmhouses might soothe her, but her memories, never far from her mind, flooded through her defenses.

  Alexander had been a gentleman, a throwback to a different time. She had wanted him. Had longed for him, her body throbbing with need, but he was a man of immense honor, and she was a lady. He would not give in, and then, when their wedding was only a few months off, he was shot and killed in northern Virginia. Their future died with him.

  Harriet’s body had never been satisfied, not once. She would never feel that quicken
ing of the breath, that ecstasy of skin against skin, the bliss of two bodies becoming one. She would never feel the beginnings of life in her womb or the pains of childbirth. She was barren in every sense.

  Not till she felt steady again, her heart beating evenly beneath the consoling weight of Grandmother Beryl’s charm, did she turn from the window to take on the next task of the day.

  She had to do something about Frances.

  Harriet knew where Frances practiced. She had known for years, since her cousin first moved into Allington House. Frances was adept at her craft but naive in protecting her secrets. Her solitary outings, the only ones she made without her maid, caused her servants curiosity, which no doubt Frances never suspected. It had been simple to learn her schedule, whispered in exchange for a coin in a servant’s hand. People told Harriet things they would not tell anyone else.

  Harriet was very good at slipping in and out of a wood or a shrubbery without being seen. One day she had waited patiently in the shade of the strip of trees edging the Allington estate, watching for Frances. When she appeared, she walked quickly with only a cursory glance about her. A string bag bulging with supplies hung from her arm.

  Once Harriet knew the spot, she could walk from the Dakota to Riverside Drive and turn north along the equestrian path, veering off into the woods as the trees thinned. She didn’t go often, but it had become her habit, once or twice a year, to check on the cabin, to find out what Frances was up to.

  It had shocked her to realize Frances had used the maleficia to force George Allington. His glassy eyes at the wedding breakfast, the quickness of his breathing when Frances touched him, the wetness of his lips, revealed clearly what had happened. Harriet didn’t need the knowing to understand what Frances had done.

  She didn’t know whether Frances had used a philter or a manikin. She didn’t learn about the cabin until Frances and George had returned from their wedding journey, and whatever Frances’s means had been were gone. If there had been a manikin, she had no doubt destroyed it. If she had used a philter, a love potion, there was no evidence to prove it. She had the right ingredients, scattered on the bare shelves of the cabin, but Harriet had the same ingredients in her herbarium, each used for other purposes.