Hester(91)

“Isobel, come away from here.” Nell steps in front of me and obscures my view of the men. I see fatigue and kindness in her face.

“Wait—”

I step around her. A man with a dirty vest has taken his doughnut and turned away. There’s something about him. The yard is ablaze with autumn flames that dance with the light of the torches in the yard. I can see only the outline of his shape as he steps into the shadows of the nearby trees. For a moment it looks like Edward.



* * *



I FOLLOW NELL to a bench on the gray stone patio and let her bring me water. I say nothing about the man, for surely my husband wouldn’t return to Salem without coming to me.

“Shall we leave now?” Nell asks. “To be honest, I don’t feel well.”

I know she’s being kind, and so I say I only need to sit awhile.

“I’ll go when you’re ready,” she says, and sinks beside me onto the bench.

I’m thankful for the shadows on the veranda, for the flames that catch only a part of her expression and my own. What did Nat say—that every person lives in shadow, that every person has secrets that others cannot imagine?

“I’m expecting a child. Edward’s child.” The sound of it is a lie, and I know that Nell knows it. But she puts her arms around me and tells me she is glad that I am blessed with it.

“Charlotte and Mrs. Silas wish you very good health,” Nell whispers. I’m caught in the crook of her arm, my face pressed into her neck. “Charlotte loves you; she told me herself. But she can’t go against her mother; she never has and never will.”

So Nell knows, and so do the Silas women. I should have expected it. Nat always said there are no secrets in Salem.

I struggle to pull out of Nell’s embrace, but she doesn’t let me go.

“It’s all right, Isobel,” she says. “I’m your friend.”

When Nell finally lets me go, her eyes are bright with tears. We go back inside, but for the rest of the night I am numb. Abigail finds me and pulls me to her, and she and Nell talk for a moment about what they call “my blessing.” I barely hear their words.

All the way home, I lie beside my friend in the back of the cart and look up at the sky passing over us like a black cloak.



* * *



I’M STILL IN my dress when a voice at the door startles me.

“Isobel.” His voice. “I saw you at the banquet.” I know his hands are on the other side of door, the flat of his palms that are so familiar. “I’ve had time to think—I want to help you. Let me help you.”

I want to open the door. I want him to take me in his arms. I want his lips pressed against my cheek, that simple act of affection and comfort. I want to go to Maine with him, to see stars in a bowl of sky and the sun a golden torch above cool blue water.

“Do you hear?” he asks. His voice is tender. Urgent.

I slide my feet across the floor, lean my shoulder against the door. His voice is so close.

“I’ve got a friend in Raymond who’ll keep you.” I hear the sweetness and the treachery in his voice like the whisper of his pen on paper. “We’ll have to travel soon. The journey to Maine is impossible in winter.”

“And will you stay with me?” My own voice startles me.

He waits, and I wait. My hands are flat on the door, where I imagine his are pressed onto the other side of the wood.

“You’ll have a midwife to keep you well.”

“And would you be with me?”

“I can’t.” His voice breaks. “I’d have to give up everything and it would kill me—I mean it, I would die.”

I feel the wind rise up.

“You would take me into a harsh winter and leave me there alone?”

“Please, Isobel.” He is gasping now. The faded red fabric of his voice tears in two. “I want no harm to come to you or the child—I’ve gone to great lengths to speak to my friends and vouch for you.”

I don’t move, but my heart beneath my ribs is shattering, it is falling and falling.

“You can’t stay here. The town will ruin you—the child will be a bastard and an outcast.”

I’m on my knees, begging without words. He must feel me there, for his shoes scrape against the pebbles and then his voice comes at the bottom of the door, his face close to mine. Through the crack at the floor I feel the warmth of his breath.

“I’m telling everyone it’s Edward’s child,” I cry out. “Go away.”

He doesn’t seem to hear me.

“I need some days to arrange a carriage. A week from today—on Tuesday, wait by the sycamore in the forest. Leave here just before daylight—do you hear?”

I keep my face pressed against the door, my shoulder on the floor, listening until he is gone and the night is silent. Then I tear off my gown and weep.





Scotland, 1818


Isobel Gowdie’s fear and pain have been whispered through generations from mother to daughter, whispered at the last moment before death, loss, or leaving. Margaret knows that love and strength are passed from mother to daughter, too, just as the yellow-and-purple iris begets her own, multiplying beauty that is held in the bulb through the cold of winter.