Hester(14)

Trust the needle, Isobel. Anything is possible in the New World.

In the center I put Isobel Gowdie, Queen of the Witches, with a tiny pentacle on her cape, flying to safety. This was my ancestress—the one who’d seen the colors like me—and I prayed that she might protect and guide me in my new life.





FIVE





The lookout shouts, “Salem ahead!” and everyone looks east as the shape of the New World begins to piece itself together across the Massachusetts Bay.

“It is a good wind, a lucky wind,” Captain Darling says. He smells of limes and the black liquorice he chews while he steers the ship. He points at the flags on passing schooners—“That one’s the Union Jack … and there’s the American Stars and Stripes”—and waves at a black three-rigger heading to sea at a fast clip. “That one’s Dutch. And the fleur-de-lis”—I follow his finger to a red flag with a white symbol—“that’s the flag of Florence.”

Salem appears first as a dark dot, then a blur of ships and rooftops, naked treetops, and a flat land covered with a lace of white snow. At the harbor’s embrace, the wind dies and the sharp scent of pepper, sweet cinnamon, and tea perfumes the air. Every hand is on deck pulling ropes, climbing, shouting, tossing, tugging, catching, and cursing, all of it yielding a clamor of colors that I pray will settle down, and soon, thank God, they do.

I smell burning fires and food cooking in the town hearths, see men bustling along the wharves, and hear the sounds of hammers and dogs as the land comes quickly at us. Shouts go up like a spark of flame against the cool sea. The hard knock of wood on wood startles me as we bump up to the wharf and the ship comes to a stop.

It is the third of March. We’ve been at sea for thirty-three days.

I wrap the red cape around myself with its newly stitched memories pressed against me and hidden from sight. Before we step off the New Harmony, Captain Darling takes Edward by the elbow and shakes his hand. Edward has cleaned up. He wears the new white vest beneath his waistcoat and is freshly shaved for our arrival. He’s thinner than he was at the start of our journey and more leathered.

“Dr. Gamble, I’m alive thanks to you,” the captain says. “I hope you’ll sail with me again for luck and profit.”

I don’t know why the captain is excusing Edward’s seasickness and weakness with the poppy, but then I realize that America is indeed a land of new opportunity and the captain is forgiving, even generous. Edward left home a ruined apothecary and arrived in America a doctor. If I work hard and am clever, then perhaps I will make something new of myself as well.



* * *



SALEM—SALAAM—MEANS “PEACE” IN Arabic, the captain tells us, but the docks are anything but peaceful. The city greets me in the tongues of a hundred lands, the music of a thousand voices, monkeys and birds in small cages cawing and clucking—a cacophony of everything loud, bright, and new.

There are sailors of every color, Chinese men and Indians, short men with dark skin and gray teeth pushing carts and hauling crates, exotic women wrapped in cloth the color of spices, wine, tangerines, saffron, and more.

I’m a small bit of dust in this great swirl of color and sound until a stout old woman with cheeks pink from age or drink pushes right up to me and catches my wrist.

“You.” Something in her is familiar, and for an instant I think she knows me. “You’ve come from the low country.” I try to pull away, but her grip is strong. “There’s a blade in your pocket—hold it tight.”

My fingers twitch for the hook tucked inside my cape, and then Captain Darling is upon us, waving a flat hand in her face.

“Get away, Sally, you’re scaring the girl.”

“Beware the devil in the forest,” Sally says. Her eyes roll back in her head and she looks for a moment as if she might faint. Then she jerks once, her arms fly up, and she falls to the ground.

“A fit,” Edward says with a great thrust of authority. “She’s fallen into a fit.”

A slender, brown-skinned young lady wearing a striped baker’s smock runs up and takes the woman’s shoulders.

“Widow Higgins has the spells,” she says. She looks to Edward, who kneels to help as a small crowd gathers.

“Back away, give the widow room to breathe,” the young lady says.

The captain spreads his arms to help break up the onlookers. Edward cradles the woman’s head. Folks step back and my neck tingles, then something tugs at a corner of my sight like a pulled thread.

When I turn, three boys are raising up a cry as they run around a man on the wharf. The boys are heading our way, but it’s a man reading a book while he walks slowly down the pier who draws my gaze.

He’s tall, with a long black cloak, and thick, wavy hair. His gait tips slightly to one side and he seems not to notice as the wharf runners and errand boys scamper around him. In Glasgow, men of books were of another world, one where even Pap could not go, though he had ink on his hands. But this man is right here among the riffraff and scurry of the wharf, a dramatic figure whose cape waves as the boys in breeches fly toward us, breaking through the circle and skidding to a stop.

“Did the witch prick you?” The tallest boy points at me as if he knows my secrets. “You’ll have warts and frogs in your aprons.”