Hester(18)

Her words have softened.

“I appreciate knowing it.”

“Now.” She claps her hands as if she is about to deliver news, and her face livens. “Your husband is going to sea, and the captain has asked if I’ll let you my cottage. There’s a good well and a garden that only needs to be hoed and planted. You’ll be snug there—you may see it and decide if it’s to your liking.”

I can’t imagine when this exchange happened or if she’s even telling the truth.

“You’re very kind,” I say. “I’m sure if Captain Darling suggested it, my husband will view it favorably.”

I make an effort to get on with my walk. The woman makes me uncomfortable, it is undeniable. A secret, I think. The woman has a secret, or she is seeking to know mine. And the boy called her a witch. I do not wish to be anywhere near her.

“There’s a dressmaker in town who needs a stitcher.” Widow Higgins steps back at last and brushes the front of her white apron. “Ask at Felicity Adams’s piece goods shop and tell her I sent you.”

“Perhaps I will,” I say. But my plan doesn’t include working as anyone’s apprentice. I’ve had enough of putting my hand to work for someone else’s gain.



* * *



BACK AT THE inn, Edward is on the chamber pot. He grunts and puts a hand in front of his face when I enter our room, as if that might shield me from the unpleasant sight and smells. I shut the door and wait in the narrow hallway, where I overhear the men below talking about two barrels of oysters, a new batch of cider, and twelve loaves of bread.

Edward opens the door when he is decent.

“You found us a cottage?”

“Yes, and the price is very good.” He tugs down his coat sleeves and pulls the lapels together for his necktie. I smooth the paisley neck cloth for him. It’s my favorite blue, the color of a robin’s egg.

“It’s past the wharves, on the other side of the pond,” he says. “The captain said there’s a garden, a brick hearth large enough to stand in, and a sunny place for your sewing.”

So, the widow spoke the truth.

I hand him the necktie and he threads it beneath his shirt collar.

“The cottage belongs to the woman who has spells,” I say. “You didn’t ask if I’d like to live there.”

“I thought you’d prefer to be a mistress and not a boarder in someone else’s home.” His voice is sharp. “It’s as far from pig fields and the almshouse as you please.”

“I might have seen it, Edward.”

“You’ll see it this morning.” He gives me a stern look, and I know further protest is futile. “I’ve ordered up a wharf runner. He’ll be here shortly.”



* * *



THE WHARF RUNNER is a dark-skinned man with a scar across his cheek.

“Zeke,” he says with a nod. His eyes are friendly.

Zeke loads our single trunk into the back of a blue farm wagon, and Edward helps me climb onto a horse-blanket seat. I’m barely settled when Zeke flicks the reins and launches into his own tale.

“Been here since I was a boy.” Zeke’s words are liquid like tea and slippery like elm. Once again, someone new is speaking in colors and I am so distracted that I lose track of what he’s saying.

“… live out by the widow’s cottage with my cousin Mercy, her children, and the chickens. Mercy’s good with the needle like you”—Zeke nods at my cape, where the interior has fallen open to reveal the fanciful creatures I stitched beside the captain—“takes her wares down to the docks on market days.”

I remember the Black woman with the white turban and high cheekbones.

“I think I saw her yesterday.” I hesitate and then come out with it. “Her work was unusual”—the S and the F, crossed like running figures—“almost magical.”

He gives me a sidelong glance. “Could be her.” His words get smaller so that they are tiny as ants. “But I don’t know about any magic.”

The bay is out of sight when Zeke turns his cart into a broad road lined with cottages and sail shops and shrubs that put me in mind of a hedgerow back home. The Salem air smells of pine and the briny sea, and shadows play upon our faces as we ride out of town and into the scrub. It is silent here but for the rattle of the wagon wheels.

“That’s Mill Pond to the left,” Zeke tells Edward. He waves away from the water, and my husband looks into the distance. “Up there is the old tar works and way beyond is Gallows Hill. Folks say sometimes you hear spirits moaning when the winds blow through the Witch Woods.”

“Witch Woods?” I ask.

Zeke flicks his eyes onto me.

“Right—’course you don’t know anything about that.”

Although I struggle not to show any reaction, something must change in my face, for Zeke tips a hand to his cap and says, “Don’t you worry about it, Mrs. Gamble. It’s a thing done and gone.”

I stay silent and keep myself focused on what is right here: the trees, my husband who has decided to go to sea, the color of the wind through the trees that hums in a faint melon orange.



* * *



THE WIDOW’S COTTAGE sits at the edge of a wooded grove and fronts a narrow yard surrounded by a crumbling timber fence. The house is whitewashed stone, with two windows and a Dutch door painted green.