Hester(32)

I tip my head, not trusting myself to speak.

“Then it’s agreed.” He points off toward a ring of gray rocks that stand near the sea like sentinels. “Sometimes I sit there with my notebook. Maybe I’ll see you here one day with your needle?”

The prince has invited me to sit with him beside the sea. I imagine a trident, a gold crown, the faded vestment of his cloak around me. All of it enchanted and enchanting.



* * *



AT HOME I search through Edward’s book of medicine and plants and find, at last, a reference to the May tree, also called the hawthorn flower, also called the thornbush, belonging to the same Latin family as the traditional rosebush.

I run my finger along the thin tissue page and hold a candle to light the words.

A tincture of hawthorn may be useful in healing a broken heart.



What magical beings brought this man to me the very same week I learned that Edward stole my gold? I was never a woman with a temper until now, and somehow that rage and anger has brought me from that moment to this one; from Edward’s betrayal to Nat’s invitation.

I prop open the book to the hawthorn illustration and sketch it into my notebook beside his initials. N, a red letter. H, a copper yellow. I bind his handkerchief in my embroidery hoop and begin with white and pale greens for the hawthorn flower.

My colors are blossoming, and with them I’ve found a new power in my needle. Is it witchcraft? A mere trick of light? A strange dream that stays even when I’m awake?

I can no more vanquish the colors than summon them. Sometimes they’re bold and light, as the captain’s words that hung upon the sea like white and blue clouds; other times they’re dense like the faded robe and crown of Nat Hathorne’s words. Some voices are subtle, the soft and slippery melon pink and green—Ivy—or rich, like plump elderberry and plum fruit—Mercy.

They aren’t solid and hung in the air overhead like a rainbow, yet they’re more tangible than a fleeting thought or memory. Here in Salem, my colors help me to see what I might otherwise miss: the delight of yellow and red flowers beside a patch of lavender, the power of a leopard marching across a gray silk dress. The heart-healing hawthorn flower stitched upon a white handkerchief with a tiny red A, for Abington. The intrigue of Nat Hathorne’s words lined up like a row of crowns.



* * *



IT’S LONG PAST midnight when I finish my work. The branch of flowers is curled around Nat’s monogram like two hands holding a heart. Perhaps it’s too much, yet it’s exactly as I intended.

As I take the pins out of my hair, I think about Nat’s story of the red-haired girl, about the May trees and the Witch Woods where Zeke said the winds howl with long-ago cries. Holding a spoon to catch the light, I study small pieces of my reflection—an eye, my lips, the hair that curls along my cheek.

I am changing. I’m alone here, but my colors are everywhere now and they have become a new and strange kind of company. Until today it never occurred to me that a person might want to be lost in an enchantment. It never occurred to me that I need not hide from the visions that feel beyond my control—that instead, I might surrender to them.

Perhaps I will dare to go with Nat into the world where stories offer an escape. Perhaps I may even offer my own enchantments in return.





Scotland, 1673


Isobel’s new husband is a cottar who pays in eggs and potatoes for what he needs. Their three sons are born easily, but this fourth birth is full of blood and screaming, and Gille is so frightened, and the boys so atremble, that he sends for help.

Night is creeping toward dawn when the midwife holds a lamp between Isobel’s legs and sees wet and struggle—and the marks made by the witch-pricker years ago. Isobel has told Gille they are scars from the pox, but the midwife has heard of the Highland red-haired woman who endured the witch-pricker and then escaped, and she knows what she sees.

Using strong hands, a fat wooden spoon, and a pot of lotion, the midwife coaxes the child into the world, cleans the blood, and hands the swaddled bundle to Isobel. There is a flash at the window and Isobel sees the bright tail of a shooting star. She hears the whistle of wet wood in the hearth like a scream.

“The girl has flaming red hair,” the midwife whispers, her words like silver mercury in a glass. “Like yourns. Whatever you done before, you must be sure nigh you or the child do it again.”

All year, and the next, and the one after that, Isobel keeps the girl at her bosom. Twice as long as the boys. For she knows the price of enchantment and salvation must be paid again and again, and she knows the sprites who saved her wanted nothing less than her first sweet girl-child. She has seen it all, the cruel greed of men and faeries, and she wants only to live in her cottage and keep the lamplight on and hold her family close.





TEN





My first days at the shop are full of measuring, pinning, kneeling, and sweeping the hearth beside Abigail, the shop cutter. Mrs. Adams is curt with us and charming with her customers even when they splatter spring mud on her floors, and I learn to anticipate her abrupt mood changes when one of the city’s wealthier wives enters.

To avoid unfriendly questions about my brogue, I speak as little as possible and listen as Salem ladies talk of society and imported fabrics, London fashions, and the British embargo that stifled the city’s prosperity in the second war with the English. Two sisters trade ugly whispers about a Quaker girl their brother fancies, another bemoans that Mrs. Spencer has raised the price of her Gibraltar candies two pennies, and mothers and daughters argue over the cost of their new costumes for the Salem Light Infantry banquet to be held at Hamilton Hall at the end of October.