Hester(26)

I lose the rhythm of my step, for he has laid it clearly between us: I am a married woman and Edward is my husband, not my father. Mr. Hathorne doesn’t say outright that I failed to correct him that day in Blackwell’s shop. But I didn’t, and he knows it.

“It’s hard to keep secrets in Salem,” he says, as if reading my thoughts. I cannot tell if he speaks with sympathy or if there is more to it. Either way, I understand that someone has been gossiping about me. I imagine Widow Higgins clucking at him on the street, and I tear at my fingernail, shredding off a good chunk of the cuticle.

A sharp pain yelps through me and I pop the bloody finger into my mouth.

“You’re hurt.” Something wolfish crosses his face as he produces a clean white handkerchief, tugs my finger gently from my mouth, and wraps the cloth around it.

I cannot bring myself to look at him. A bit of blood seeps through the cotton and we both watch the crimson spread.

“I’ve soiled your handkerchief.”

“Don’t worry, our house girl will clean it.”

“No.” I pull away my hand. “I’ll do it myself.”

He seems to consider my hair, my costume, even my shoes, which have just splashed through a muddy puddle.

“Despite your boldness and your temper, you’re quite charming, Mrs. Gamble.”

One expression of impatience and he says I have a temper! Why is it that men are not subject to the same quick judgments as women?

“If I have a temper, it’s because you’ve drawn it out of me with your”—I struggle for the proper words—“your close observations—too close, sir, I might add.”

I match his gaze with an intensity of my own.

“I suppose I owe you an explanation.” He nods as if he has just decided something. “You see, Mrs. Gamble, with your red hair and sharp eyes, you are just like a girl I’ve been inventing.”

“What do you mean by that?”

He peers at me with almost affectionate familiarity. I can still feel the warmth of his hand on mine, a trace of his breath on my neck.

“I write stories.” A shrug tells me he is both proud and wary of his writing, as I am with my colors and needle. “I invent them, sometimes from history, sometimes from my dreams. I must invent the people in them, too.”

“You’re a writer.”

“I try,” he says. “I’ve been writing a story about a red-haired girl during the witchcraft delusion.”

Again, the word witch startles me.

“What is the witchcraft delusion?”

We’ve come to a narrow alley lined with distilleries and coxswain shops. The bright sun has disappeared and there is a fog at the end of the street, rolling in from the sea. He looks around as if he doesn’t want to be overheard. But there’s no one within hearing distance.

“Some hundred and fifty years ago in this very city, fourteen women were hanged as witches.”

In a few halting sentences he explains that schoolgirls came together to accuse old widows, new mothers, ministers, and even a young girl of witchcraft.

“The women were killed on the false accusations of a few hysterical girls and one Indian slave woman,” he says.

“And what happens to the girl in your story?”

“I imagine her on Gallows Hill with the others.”

My hand goes to my throat. I thought I’d left these tales of horror behind in Scotland.

“Did they hang a child here?”

A pair of men brush by us and pass into the alley. We step apart, our intimacy broken.

“Little Dorcas Good was arrested and charged with witchcraft. I’ve spent months reading through dusty courthouse records, but that’s all I know of the child.” He shakes his head and looks at the bloodied handkerchief still wrapped around my finger. “I can see I’ve upset you, Mrs. Gamble. I’ve spoken too freely and I’m sorry for it.”

Before I can reply, he’s bidden me a sudden good day and spun away down the street, his too-large cloak flapping like the wings of a bird.



* * *



ALL THE WAY home the skies threaten rain and my mind writhes with talk of the little red-haired girl, the witchcraft delusion, and the tapestry in the Marine Society Hall.

Rainclouds open as I near the cottage, and I run to my door. Inside, I go straight for pencil and paper so that I can record the leopard and the palm trees and everything else I can remember from the tapestry. Soon I have sketched a sea-colored dress decorated with red and gold. On the dress a leopard walks through a tropical thicket. The scene is one of powerful enchantment, equally frightful and mesmerizing, much like Mr. Hathorne himself.

Rain pounds outside as I draw the dress on a girl, then on a woman. The sketches are rough at first, but soon it’s just as it happened on the ship, a cascade of colors and pictures pour out of me at once.

As evening falls, I calculate what it will cost to buy materials: four dollars for rich gray silk, two for trims, threads, and brocades. The scrimshaw buttons will be the finishing touch, one at each wrist and one at the neck.

I imagine Nat Hathorne admiring the dress on me. Admiring its boldness and the colors that match his voice. Putting a finger to a button at my wrist and then to one at my throat.





Scotland, 1663


Asleep beside a cold stream, Isobel Gowdie wakes to the sound of voices in the river rocks. Her aching hands are covered in mud and blood, and she remembers her tiny child coming as if in a dream, perfect and unmoving. She looks around for the watery grave but sees the white lights moving along the rocks and knows the wee faeries have come.