Magic Lessons (Practical Magic #0.1)(37)
Mrs. Henry had told Maria to keep her head covered so that her glossy black hair wouldn’t be seen. Puritans rejected beauty in a woman, Mrs. Henry warned, just as they feared independence in the sex they deemed responsible for Adam’s downfall and the trials of all men who had followed. Maria carried the baby on her hip and Cadin in his case made of reeds. From the start, the crow made it clear that he was unhappy with their destination, clattering nasty clicks, as if scolding his mistress. Cadin put up such a racket that at last Maria paused on the street to open his cage. He peered at her with his glittering eye, sulking as he had on the day when Rebecca Lockland had knocked at the door, as annoyed as he’d always been when John Hathorne had come to call in Cura?ao.
“Go on,” she urged when he glared at her with fierce disapproval. Cadin would always be her dearest friend, but perhaps he was jealous of John; certainly he had never taken to him. “You asked to be free. Go have a look at this town.”
The crow disappeared above the rooftops, a black streak in the sky. If he didn’t wish to help her find John, so be it. They’d make amends; they always did, for they had similar temperaments, cool and mistrustful, but ultimately, forgiving. She had decided she would no longer have doubts. A black heart could belong to anyone, and she would ignore the image she had seen. This was the day when she was to step into the future. She wore a serge dress, hand-stitched by Mrs. Henry for the occasion, dyed with blue composition, an inexpensive dye made of indigo and sold as a liquid in small glass bottles, a common enough color in Boston, but one which stood out here in Salem, where the women most often wore gray. She had on her red boots, still as good as new, and in her hair were the blackened silver hair clips that she considered to be good luck, even though a witch makes her own luck, and silver meant less to her than remembrance. Her lovely face shone in the sunlight, perhaps even more than it might have elsewhere, for sunlight was a rare occurrence in this city.
Maria had brought along some johnnycakes for Faith to eat on the journey, and some salt cod for herself, and as they went along the road she’d picked handfuls of ripe blackberries. Although the baby was hungry, Maria’s stomach was a nest of nerves and she couldn’t bring herself to eat. Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw herself holding a black heart in her hands.
Turn it over once for love, twice for betrayal, three times for heartbreak.
* * *
Maria was young, her looks striking with her black hair, silver-gray eyes, and slim, reedy body. Puritans are men, Samuel Dias had warned her. No matter how many prayers they say. Instinctively, she searched for a woman’s help, which she found when she approached an inn on the wharf. When she mentioned Hathorne to a barmaid there, she was directed to Washington and Court Streets. If Maria was in search of the magistrate, that was where he would be found, at the court or city hall. His house was on Washington Street as well.
“But if I were you I’d avoid that place,” the barmaid confided. She was a Dutch protestant, and did her best to live in the Puritans’ world. “They’ve got their rules and we’d do best to stay far away from them.”
Maria followed the directions she’d been given. She stood on a corner of the cobbled street and observed a row of elegant houses. Better to find him at home, she decided, as they’d found one another in the blue dining room in Cura?ao. She would know which house was his when she came upon it. As she closed her eyes, she saw it in her mind’s eye, a large house with black shutters that were thrown open on summer mornings before the heat turned brutal, the cloudy windows where he stood to watch snow fall on dark winter days. She felt the tug inside her and there she was standing in front of John Hathorne’s house, a world away from the country of heat and light where they’d met, where women went barefoot, and men were willing to jump into the sea-green water, and no one who saw such behavior would give it a thought.
The bricks in front of the house were patterned in diamond shapes, a formation that is said to bring bad luck, but Maria would not think of luck. Still, the mark on her inner arm had begun to burn, as though it were a star that had fallen from heaven to earth. When a witch’s mark burns, she had best be aware of the dangers that surround her, for it is a warning that should never be overlooked. Hannah had taught her not to ignore her intuition, telling her not to look away or think all will be well if she wished it to be. Pay attention, pay heed, listen to the voice inside.
The two large elm trees in his yard displayed a peculiar black leaf. When the leaves fell in autumn, a black carpet led to the gabled entranceway, but in summer they provided a welcome bower of shade. When Maria approached, the leaves that had only recently unfurled began to fall as if autumn had come early. She could see nothing through the small casement windows with leaded diamond-shaped panes. To summon John to her she rubbed her wrists with lavender oil. She had a pocket full of bird bones, gathered from the grass of grazing land in Boston, then strung on a bit of rope that she wore around her wrists. They were spells for love and for remembrance. She wore Cadin’s black feather in a charm at her throat.
They waited for nearly two hours, until Faith grew cranky and hungry. Little Faith was not as patient as Maria had been as a baby; she had a bit of a temper, as red-haired children often do. Maria hushed her, but some things have only a single remedy. Because the baby needed to be fed and because there was nowhere else to go, Maria made her way up the path to the garden, where she sat in the sunlight, the baby at her breast. Someone had carefully tended the kitchen garden here, planting seedlings of parsley and chervil, summer savory, thyme, sage, and spearmint. The black leaves continued to fall, their shapes forming black hearts in the grass.