Hester(4)

Isobel’s body is streaming with blood when she falls to the ground.

Dickson stands over her and reaches for her ankle, pretends to pull out a needle.

“The barb sank and she did not know it,” he proclaims.

It is a lie, but Isobel’s voice is drowned out by the shouting crowd, women who once sat beside her in the kirk joining their voices now with Dickson’s and the reverend’s.

Even Forbes’s wife is screaming, the bright words leaving her black maw of a mouth: “A witch, she’s a witch!”

“You will stand trial.” It is the Laird of Park and Loch Loy, his velvet boots unsoiled even in the mud. “You will stand trial for witchcraft.”

The words he speaks bloom like dark roses. Isobel has seen this before—the colors, the words scraping across the air like blood on snow. She closes her eyes. She has not done what they accused her of, but she is surely cursed, for she sees the man’s words in the color of evil as if it is Satan himself speaking over her in the square.





TWO





The blizzard came when I was eight years old. All day it blew snow sideways across the fields and turned the sky gray. My brother was asleep in a mound of pillows that afternoon when Mam nestled me into the fold of her arms.

“It’s time you learned about your namesake,” she whispered.

I had a gap in my smile where the last of my milk teeth had fallen out, and I pressed my tongue into that space. Mam was ready to speak of Isobel Gowdie; I didn’t ask why, although I understood later that she must have known what was coming.

“A long time ago, in the Highlands near Loc Katrina, your ancestress Isobel Gowdie had the colors like you,” Mam said. “People were comfortable with the faerie world then and spoke to God in one breath and the faeries in the next. They believed man lives in the realm between the two.”

Mam told me that Isobel Gowdie spoke freely of her colors to the people she loved. As long as the village was prosperous and her salves helped heal the sick and birth babes, the lord of her village was satisfied.

“She didn’t think her colors were evil, and she didn’t fear the Devil’s snare. But when the crops failed one year, and the village cows died, they blamed her,” Mam said. “They came to her cottage with torches and pitchforks and called her a witch.”

I felt I had heard this story before; there was Isobel Gowdie running for the safety of her cottage, her hair the same coppery red as mine, her gray shift decorated with fanciful flowers that seemed to fall off the cloth and leave a trail behind her.

“Women had been hanged as witches all across Scotland that year and the people feared the Devil was taking hold of her, too.” Mam was stitching a row of irises on a tea towel, but she put it aside. “They crowded round her cottage and put fire through the windows and called for her to hang. There was nowhere for her to go but through the chimney and onto her rooftop, where she stood on the burning thatch and screamed—”

Here Mam raised her chin and repeated the same words Aileen had called out: “‘Yea, I am what you say I am—I have lain with the Devil’s forked prick inside me, and if you kill me hell will reign on earth.’”

I felt terribly afraid, for I thought she would tell me the Queen of Witches had given her soul to the Devil.

“And what happened?” I asked.

“It’s said that Isobel Gowdie escaped—that’s all I know—and slipped away on a moonless night.”

In my mind I saw Isobel’s red hair hidden beneath a kerchief as she ran across the countryside from hilltop to valley and on and on through the night. I wanted to ask if she escaped by witchcraft or magic or some special charm, but mostly I needed to know …

“Do you see the colors, Mam?”

My mother picked up her work and pulled a blue thread through the cloth before she spoke.

“No.”

“Did your mam?” I asked.

She smoothed my hair away from my face and pressed her cheek to mine. Her answer was barely audible.

“She learned to hide what she saw. Just like you, Isobel. But her sister was sent to the madhouse. I don’t mean to scare you, child, but you must understand.”

“Can you help me?” I was near to tears. “Why do I have them? What do they mean?”

Mam took my chin in her hands and blinked back her own tears, which surprised and frightened me.

“My mother was a good Christian woman. She prayed every morning and every night and she taught me to keep God close so that the Devil couldn’t find his way into my soul. You must do the same.”

“I’ve tried, Mam—can’t you make them go away?”

She tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.

“I don’t have the colors, Isobel, and so I can’t help you understand them. You must be careful, for they can lead you to heaven or to hell and I cannot tell you which way is right or wrong. Remember what I’m telling you,” she said. “Someday you may need great strength, just as Isobel Gowdie did. One day your time will come.”

I was too young to understand all that my mother was trying to say, but she was intent and I was attentive to her.

“When will it be my time? How will I know?”

“I don’t know, but when it comes you must be ready.”