She had dispatched Bram to Jackie’s house with the order to get the chronicle. She and the others now awaited his return in the back room of RavenWing—Deborah at the small altar she had erected behind the sacks of bulgur, and the other members of the coven seated at her feet.
The storage room was narrow and cluttered and teeming with shadows. Burlap bags and crates were squeezed into corners and piled on top of each other, overrunning what little floor space there was. Deborah breathed in the vapors again, relishing the smoky bite as well as the cavelike sensation created by the low ceiling and murky light. Cupping her hand, she directed the smoke toward herself, then blew it away. “Talisman, talisman,” she chanted. “Return to us what is ours.”
“Mahala, Mahala,” the others answered. “Return to us what is ours.”
Deborah smiled benevolently upon the flock of souls she had gathered around her, all of whom had willingly separated themselves from their lives and their families to follow her into immortality. Cassandra, her eyes hooded and her face etched with the wrinkles of her eight decades, steepled her arthritic fingers beneath her chin. Tamar, her skin as smooth as Cassandra’s was creased, lowered her eyes in reverence. Robin beamed up at Deborah, her euphoria almost a visible aura surrounding her; looking at the dear girl, Deborah knew Robin had spoken the truth when she said that, as a member of the coven, she was the happiest she had been in the six years since her parents had been killed. And Alva, their mute, innocent Alva, with her tiny frame and chocolate skin, played a few sweet notes on her flute.
“Bram is coming,” Deborah said.
Within moments Bram entered the room. His face was pasty white and the eye ring that pierced just below his brow bounced against his upper lid. His eyes flitted to Deborah’s for a moment, then he looked down at his empty hands. “I have failed you.”
Deborah said nothing. She picked up the twisted brown candle she had used to light the christianwort and held it between her palms. The flame flickered with her breathing as she waited for Bram’s explanation.
“I did everything you asked, Mahala,” Bram said, still looking down at his hands. “I took the key from Jackie Pappas’s mailbox and then searched her house. And when I was sure the chronicle wasn’t there, I took Lauren Freeman’s key from where it was hanging in the Pappas person’s kitchen and searched the Freeman person’s apartment.” He raised his eyes; they were large and dark with fear. “The chronicle wasn’t there either—I looked everywhere.”
“Where else have you been?” Deborah demanded.
“I, ah, I …” Bram stuttered. “I’ve been waiting for the people to leave the Pappas person’s house so I could return the Freeman person’s key to its place on the wall—which I did.” With trembling hands, Bram reached out and took the candle from Deborah. Holding it in his right hand, he placed his left palm in the flame. The room was silent as Bram endured his punishment for failure to carry out the will of Mahala.
“Enough,” Deborah said when the skin of Bram’s hand began to bubble and blacken. Although she knew the punishment was both important and necessary, she believed it should never be too harsh. She took the candle from him.
“Thank you, Mahala,” he answered, sweat running down his face. “For allowing me to serve you.”
Deborah reached over to a shelf and pulled down a glass pot labeled plantain and burdock root. As she scooped the ointment from the jar and spread it on Bram’s palm, she said, “You have done the coven a great service. In my vision, it was the powerful raven who swallowed the chronicle. I thought it unlikely the raven would signify either Jackie Pappas or Lauren Freeman, but we had to be sure. And you did that for us. Now we know magic is the only means through which the raven can be bested.”
Bram hung his head. “Because of my failure, we cannot have the recitation.”
“The recitation shall commence as planned,” Deborah said.
“But we don’t have the chroni—”
“I told you the recitation shall commence as planned!” Deborah slammed the pot of burdock root on the table, and Bram shrank back. “In the forty days prior to the Immortalis, ‘The Book of Mahala’ has always been read—and this year shall be no different.”
Cassandra stood and pulled a length of gauze made from cinquefoil from a drawer. She wrapped the woven grass bandage around Bram’s wounded hand and motioned him to join the circle. As he sat, no one said a word.
“Last week we read the fourth chapter of ‘The Book of Mahala,’ the story of the first Immortalis. Today we read the third, which tells of our escape from Cambridge Prison, from the shackles of evil.” Deborah smiled and reached under the velvet drape of the altar. “We always begin at the end and end in the beginning, to signify that there is no end and no beginning, that the cycle continues to cycle.” She pulled out a packet of photocopied papers and raised them for all to see. “Forty-eight hours before the Immortalis we shall read the first chapter.”
The coven released a collective sigh and looked up at Deborah in adoration. They joined hands and settled themselves to listen.
Placing the pages before her on the altar, Deborah looked at her flock. “From The Chronicle of the Coven,” she said. “‘The Book of Mahala.’ Chapter III.” Then she began to read.
Even the walls were weeping, so musty and wretched was it there; the bricks’ tears ran down the mortar and added themselves to the river that rose above Rebeka’s boots. She kicked out at something slimy and cold as it swam past her calf, knowing not whether it be rat or snake—or worse. By misfortune, Rebeka hit Abigail Cullender, who stood shackled to the brick no more than a foot beyond her own chains; Abigail groaned quietly and then was still.
“Abigail,” Rebeka cried to the lass who had been bright of eye and salty of tongue just a single month past, to the young girl she now feared was dead. “Abigail, thou must remain strong. We have lost Dorcas and her power, and without you there is no hope of reaching the sages.” But Abigail neither answered nor moved, and fear twisted in Rebeka’s belly.
Then Abigail shuddered and Rebeka felt the warmth of the young girl’s sour breath tickling her neck. She dropped her head in thanksgiving. A sign from the sages that all was not lost.
Although Rebeka was weak and low, she knew she would not die in this place with its wetness and its cold and its miserable wretches packed close against her. She, the great Mahala, who had harnessed the power of heliotrope and malaxis to carry them to eternal life among the sages, would not succumb amidst the putrid smells of disease and despair. Help was coming; she knew it to be so.
Abigail groaned again and raised her head. “Mahala,” she called, her voice barely a whisper. “Is it thou?”
“Yes, child,” Rebeka replied. “It is I.”
Abigail sighed. “Thanks be to the Lord that thou are alive. That Oliver Osborne’s pillory did not kill thee.”
“My powers are far greater than Oliver Osborne’s evil.” Rebeka thought of the hours she had stood in the icy rain, her arms outstretched, as Oliver read from his Malleus Maleficarum, prancing and preening for the crowd gathered to watch her pain. But Rebeka had showed no pain; she had stood tall, neither flinching nor crying. Oliver had renounced her for causing Goody Warren gripping pains and for making the old woman vomit crooked pins and twopenny nails. Rebeka had shaken her head sadly at his accusations, for she had done no such things.
“The Immortalis,” Abigail gasped. “Can it be done?”
“It shall be done,” Rebeka assured her. And she knew it to be so, for as she stood at the pillory that morn, her brother Ezekiel had passed behind her. “All is as thee planned,” he had whispered in her ear. “Be of brave heart and quick wit, for aid shall come tonight.” But before Rebeka could further comfort the frightened Abigail, the good-men of Cambridge were upon them.
By lantern light, the men sludged through the mire to search for witches’ teats upon their bodies, for any unnatural protrusions of the flesh that signified the women had been marked by the devil—a freckl
e or burn or boil would do.
Ripping the ragged clothes from their bodices, the good-men burned Rebeka and Abigail with their flames and heckled their shriveled breasts. “These not be godly goodwives,” they cried. “They not be hale and well-looking. They be dirty and foul and full of the devil!” They pointed to the insect bites that covered Rebeka’s skin as proof of their accusations.
Rebeka pulled her small body to its fullest height. “Foolish men,” she admonished them softly. “Can thou not see that these be the bites of the bugs that infest the water in which we stand? These markings are not the work of the devil—lest you think thine own hands are under the command of Satan.”
But the men would have none of her, and they continued past, their laughter bouncing harshly off the brick walls.
Rebeka cared not that the goodmen found marks upon her, nor that they had laughed. For these foolish men believed Rebeka and Abigail, along with Millicent Glover, Foster Lacy, Bridgit Corey, and Mercy Broadstreet, would be hanged by the morning’s light, and Rebeka knew it would not be so. She knew they would be saved, that the coven would be consummating the Immortalis well before the next sun’s rise.
And it came to pass just as Rebeka knew that it would. As she was falling into a dazed stupor somewhere between sleep and hell, a hand gripped her shoulder. “Awake, Goody Hibbens,” an unfamiliar voice whispered in her ear. “Awake and follow me.”
The sweet scratch of metal upon metal filled her ears as his key unlocked the shackles that bound both Rebeka and Abigail. Weak with hunger and fatigue, both women fell to their knees in the putrid water, their legs having forgotten how to support their bodies.
“Rise,” the voice hissed in the darkness. “Time is short.”
With one arm around Abigail and one hand grasping the man’s coattails, Rebeka sludged through the dungeon, the pitiful moans of the other prisoners echoing in the darkness. It seemed to take forever before they crawled out of the abyss and into the night. When the sweetness of the air hit her face, Rebeka sucked it deeply into her lungs, as a greedy baby will suck at his mother’s breast.
“Make haste,” the man said. “The others await us at Brattle Wood.”
His words filled Rebeka with great gladness; the Immortalis would be held. Her flock awaited her, awaited her magic and her cunning, awaited her to lead them to eternal life. Although Abigail shivered as the cold air chilled her wet clothes and body, Rebeka was flushed with warmth and vigor; she flew over the fallen branches and brambles and rocks covered with slippery moss. She was going to her future.
When the man led them to the place deep within the forest where the others waited, Rebeka found six bodies sprawled upon the ground instead of the five she had expected. Off from the others, Faith Osborne lay huddled against a towering oak tree.
‘“Twos a grievous mistake in the darkness, Mahala,” Millicent said quickly, pulling herself up from the ground and coming to take Rebeka’s hands in hers. “She, she …” Millicent looked at Faith and spat on the ground three times. “She was rescued from Cambridge Prison along with Foster and Mercy. But it is of no consequence. She is of no consequence. I thought we should leave her here to die the death she deserves.”
Rebeka looked sadly upon her cousin. She had had such love for the young woman, had had such love for her child. Faith cowered under Rebeka’s gaze and pulled her body even more tightly into itself.
As Rebeka bent toward Faith, a raven circling overhead caught her attention. She lifted her eyes to follow the bird’s restless flight. Finally settling himself on a branch above Faith’s head, the raven locked his beady eyes into Rebeka’s. He cawed three times—two long and one short—then flew off into the dark sky.
Rebeka nodded, then turned from the empty branch to Millicent. “The sages think not,” she said. “Faith shall come with us to meet her destiny.”
As Deborah’s voice faded away, the room was filled with a dense silence. Deborah replaced the pages under the altar and said softly, “Our chronicle is more than our heritage, more than our shared history. It is our shared memory.” She met the eyes of each of the coven members in turn. “What I have read to you is no mere story—it is our life. For as I remember being there in 1692 as Rebeka, Bram remembers being there as Foster, Cassandra as Millicent, Robin as Bridgit, Tamar as Abigail, and Alva as Mercy.”
“I remember Faith cowering under your gaze,” Cassandra said.
“I remember being shackled to the brick,” Bram added quickly. “And all those horrid insects.”
“I remember being so weak I fell into the water.”
“And I remember how the walls of Cambridge Prison wept for us.”
Alva played a lilting trill on her flute.
“Now that we all remember who we are, and what has been done to us,” Deborah said, “it is time to retrieve our chronicle.” She went to a far corner of the room and pushed a bag of bulgur with her foot. “Never forget, our power continues no matter who the raven personifies. We shall best the raven—the lancet proves it!” Deborah’s voice thundered through the low room.
“The lancet?” Robin repeated, her face filled with awe.
Rebeka’s lancet was the most hallowed of the coven’s relics and it was rarely removed from its hiding place. With the exception of Deborah, each of the coven members had seen it only once before—at the initiation when it was used to cut a shallow crescent into the soft skin at the base of each member’s neck.
Deborah slipped her finger into a small notch between the floorboards and raised a narrow piece of wood. Lifting more pieces of flooring, she exposed an opening about three feet square. She reached in. After a few twists of her wrist, there was a soft click. Deborah pulled a metal door toward her and retrieved a long jewelry box. She flipped open the case, revealing Rebeka’s lancet lying upon the velvet. Reverently, she lifted the lancet and held it out to them.
“Behold the power,” Deborah said. “Behold the power of our most sacred sacred, the lancet that finds us in every lifetime. Behold the power and know it is far greater than any other.”
One by one, each coven member raised a finger to his or her neck, to the crescent-shaped scar that lay at the site of the 1692 death wound.
Deborah closed her fingers tightly around the familiar hills and valleys, exploring as if blind the carved serpents and pinecones, feeling the lancet’s heft—and its power. The power that allowed the coven to reincarnate together every 101 years, the power that would finally, with the great Immortalis of 1995, lead them into immortality. She touched the crescent-shaped birthmark on her own neck. “The chronicle shall be ours once again!”
Deborah stared off into the distance, across time and space, well beyond the bounds of the back room of RavenWing and her life in the twentieth century. She heard Dorcas Osborne giggling as she hid amid the tall rows of Rebeka’s herb garden. She saw Millicent carving pinecones into the hilt of the lancet, which she, Rebeka, had received as a gift from the village doctor, Foster Lacy. She felt the icy water of Cambridge Prison rise above her boots as she stood shackled to the cell wall.
“And Faith Osborne shall be ours too!” Deborah closed her eyes. She needed to invoke a very powerful magic to draw both the chronicle and Faith, but she knew the energy to perform magic was a finite fuel. It could be dissipated, even for the very powerful, by casting a particularly complex spell or by performing too many incantations within too short a time. One of the signs of a great witch was the ability to cast efficient yet powerful spells. Deborah opened her eyes. She knew she was a great witch.
Deborah held Rebeka’s lancet over the symbolic objects before her: the rock of black obsidian, the vial of bird ashes, the ritual knife, the cup of blood. Before she spoke, she considered which chant would be the most potent but used the fewest words—how to ask for the least while receiving the most. After a long silence, she nodded.
“Black-luggie, hammer-head, rowan-tree, red-thread,” Deborah chanted. “Bring to us what has always been ours. Return to us our
chronicle and return to us our Faith.” Then she raised the cup of human blood to her lips and devoured every drop.
Nine
LAUREN BANGED THE WROUGHT IRON KNOCKER FOR the third time; the stillness inside Jackie’s house remained solid and undisturbed. She stood on her toes and tried to peer through a bull’s-eye pane, but, just as the last time she had waited for the door to be answered, she could see nothing through the wavy glass. She was waiting for Dan, not Jackie, she reminded herself. It was morning, not evening. The breeze and sky were crisp and invigorating, not heavy and dank. But still, the situation was all too familiar.
Lauren pulled her jacket closer around her, although she wasn’t cold. She supposed she could use the key in the mailbox to let herself in, but somehow it didn’t seem right. She sat on the short slate stoop. The stoop was so close to the sidewalk, she had to pull her legs in whenever anyone walked by. She stretched while she was able, then glared at the toes of the Nikes or wing tips or boots that forced her back into a crouch.
Lauren yawned. In the days since Jackie’s death, she had fallen into a semidazed lethargy. She was somehow making it through the motions of life: getting herself up and dressed, making Drew go to school, even managing the two-block walk to the Star Market in Porter Square a couple of times. But she wasn’t really there. She was in a dream world where she could reach for the phone and call Jackie whenever she wanted, where she could sit in Jackie’s snug kitchen and drink tea and argue about whether some of the seventeenth century witches might actually have been guilty, or how aggressive she should be in the meeting with Dr. Berg, the school psychologist, next Tuesday. She lived in a world where Jackie was still alive and where she, Lauren, didn’t need to wait for Jackie’s son-in-law to help her gather the materials she would need to finish Jackie’s book by herself.
Lauren pulled her legs in again, thinking that this was probably a much more pleasant spot to sit in Colonial days. Originally, Jackie’s house must have been set back by itself on a lazy dirt road or cow path. But now progress had shoved two taller and much uglier buildings almost on top of it, and it stood barely a foot from the well-traveled sidewalk. It would be a much more pleasant spot today if Lauren weren’t so conflicted about Deborah’s chronicle.
See No Evil Page 8