Magic Lessons (Practical Magic #0.1)(14)

Mother and daughter were more than ready to quarrel as they faced each other in the field. But they had begun to pay closer attention to the boy, who leapt from the horse to nail a piece of parchment to the door, then jumped back onto his old steed to race out of sight before Maria and Rebecca reached the house. Out of breath, Rebecca tore the paper from the door and handed it to Maria to read.

“Your husband’s family claims this house and will come for it and all of your belongings tomorrow,” Maria told her mother. “They are legally entitled to everything, as your husband is ailing and in their care.”

A single woman might own property, but a wife was entitled to nothing, and the proclamation came as no surprise. The Lockland house had been a prison, and Rebecca was glad to have good reason to leave it. She had another life to live elsewhere. They went to pack up all that mattered to them, which as it turned out, wasn’t much. Maria took a change of clothes and her Grimoire, along with pen and ink, the black mirror of divination, and the bell from Hannah’s door. Rebecca gathered some jewelry, along with a pistol that had been a favorite of her husband’s and the rest of the blackened silverware. If they stayed here, they would likely be sent to Bridewell Prison, where as paupers and women alone they would be set to work and kept confined, perhaps for the rest of their lives. The wisest move was to flee as far from Essex County as possible. It was always best to step into the future while it was still waiting for you. In fact, there was a man who was Rebecca’s past, present, and future. For him, Rebecca had planted a night garden that bloomed after dark. Angel’s trumpet, moonflower, night jasmine, evening primrose, all waited for the moon to rise.

Both Maria and Rebecca wore skirts that were ankle-length, best to wear when riding, and neither bothered with petticoats that would only be dragged in the mud. Before they walked outside, Rebecca placed the second hairpin in Maria’s hair.

“You might as well let him see you at your best.”

“How do you know he’s coming here?”

“We have made a decision to leave here. The Locklands will come for this place, and we can’t be here when they do. As for your father, he’s always been waiting for me.”



* * *



Maria took him to be her father the instant she saw him approach. His horse was black, as was his hair, and he wore a long overcoat and black velvet breeches that had once been elegant, but now were threadbare. It was clear that witches didn’t frighten him. He shouted out for Rebecca, a grin on his face, and in return she called him Robbie, such a sweet name in her mouth she sounded like a girl again, the one she’d been on the day she’d first met him, when he’d been a member in a company of players, often taking the part of the hero, and she had been rapt all the while she watched him, certain that he was the one for her.

He’d turned to crime during the plague years, when theaters were shut down due to illness and Puritan beliefs. Many of Shakespeare’s plays hadn’t been revived until recently, and then, in altered form; still there were rogue companies of players, and some would still hire Robbie despite his history and his bad reputation in the theaters of London, where he had stolen from some of his contemporaries, charming them as he did so. As time went on, he became more of a thief than a player, and he couldn’t return to his true calling. All the same, he thought of himself not as a robber, really, but rather as a man portraying a robber, and in this role he had excelled. Horses were his specialty, and the hearts of women, and other men’s savings.

When he noticed Maria, he gazed at her, curious, but asked no questions, merely nodded a greeting. She was such a solemn creature, with her black hair parted down the middle and her pretty, somber mouth in the shape of a black rose. He would not know how to describe her, so he merely shook his head. He was quite marvelous at speaking other people’s words, but otherwise could not express himself. Some men are tongue-tied in that way; they need a prompt that allows them to release their emotions, unless they are in bed with a woman they love, and then they reveal themselves in a thousand ways. Maria gazed at her parents as they embraced. She herself would want more. A man who talked, who could speak for hours and still be worth listening to, as he told stories of his own making. A man who listened to what you had to say.

Most times this particular man, called Robbie for as long as he could remember, tried not to think about all that he’d done in order to survive in the world. Robbie had brought with him a horse for Maria to ride, recently appropriated from a local farmer, and he took Rebecca onto his own. At last he had the love of his life beside him, and for him this was enough. Thieves have hearts and souls, and his heart was pounding. Before they left, he took a flint, and with a spark he lit some hay wrapped around an arrow. He shot the lit arrow into the door of the house, then shot six others similarly made through the windows. He’d done this very same thing in a play once, one about the son of a king who yearned for vengeance, but then the flaming arrows had been aimed into a bucket of sand offstage. Now he clearly took pleasure in what was a very real act. When he smiled, his face changed; he was as handsome as a boy again, and Maria could see why her mother loved him so.

“There’s my gift to you,” he told Rebecca as the flames went up.

Even though the grand stone house would be standing when the lord’s family came to make their claim, everything inside would be burned to ash. That was vengeance, pure and simple, for all the years her husband had stolen from them.