Magic Lessons (Practical Magic #0.1)(59)

“If you are a friend, and you wish her well, then you won’t like what you discover,” Anne warned.

She directed him to the jail, where he’d sat all night, waiting for Maria to come to the window. He could tell this city was a cold and heartless place, one of the worst he’d known. He had seen the women with their heads covered, their eyes downcast. He’d passed by the stocks on the hill and the frame of the gallows built between two linden trees beneath the mottled sky. Dias wore his black coat even though it was spring, for he still was affected by breakbone fever even when he was not in the grips of the disease. He despised cold weather, but here he was in Massachusetts, a place that mystified him, for the righteous in this new country were no different than the inflamed mobs in Spain and Portugal.

When Maria saw the snowy flowers, her heart opened to the world she did not wish to leave, and when she spied Samuel Dias, who had been waiting all night, she heard what the tree told her, everything that the man who could not stop talking could not bring himself to say. The tree convinced her that he was in love with her, but just then she heard her jailors grab their chains and their keys. It was too late for her to feel anything in return.

Maria had saved his life, and now Samuel was meant to save hers. Before the jailors came for her, before they told her the court’s decision and allowed her to wash her hands and feet a last time, Samuel Dias told her the truth of the world as he knew it. They always want to burn a woman who defies the rules. They want to turn lies into the truth. This time they were not so barbaric as to set her on fire. They thought themselves too godly for such pagan practices, and left fire and water to those heedless fools in Europe. They would dole out her punishment in a civilized manner and hang her at the gallows on the hill at the edge of town where wild purple nightshade flourished. There was already a crowd, and boys and young men had climbed the linden trees for a try at the best view.

Dias thanked the tree for bringing him to Essex County. He felt undone by how badly they had already treated Maria; her hair had been cropped so hastily she had only patches left, her beautiful face was so pale and drawn. She was near starved, for she said she could not eat a bite. When she told him her little girl had been taken by a neighbor who refused to give her back or even allow the child to visit, Maria looked broken.

“How can you help me? What will you do?” she asked through the bars. “Will you talk to them until they change their minds just to stop you from talking?” She smiled despite her wretched situation.

Yes, he could most assuredly talk, but he intended something quite different. “I can tell you this. You may be hanged, but you will not die.”

“You know the magic that will accomplish this?” she asked, unbelieving. “Perhaps you speak directly to God?”

As they held hands through the bars, Dias spied a black beetle burrowing through the wood of the jail. It made a horrid clacking sound. It was said there was no way to stop this beetle’s ticking off the hours of a person’s life, but Samuel Dias had never heard of a deathwatch beetle. He went over and stomped on it with his boot, crushing it completely.

“What did you do?” Maria said, stunned that she could no longer hear the horrid clacking.

“It’s a beetle.” Samuel shrugged. “I killed it.” Such a thing could happen when the fate of the person who was to die shifted. Samuel Dias could not save his mother or his sisters, but he had learned many lessons since that time. His presence had changed Maria’s fate, and death no longer chased after her.

“Trust me,” Samuel said, and because the beetle was no longer pursuing her, and because this man had carried a tree a thousand miles for her, she told him that she would.



* * *



By morning the magnolia had been planted in Maria’s garden. Dias had worked for hours with a shovel he’d stolen from a farmer’s field. There was a light green rain spattering down, and toward the end he’d been digging through soppy mud, arms and legs streaked black, but at last the job had been completed. He awoke before dawn to find the tree in full bloom, a bower of cream-colored stars on dark, leathery leaves. He heard it speak to him when he leaned his head against the gray trunk.

You were only a boy before; now you’re a man who understands you must take action against the cruelty in the world.

Samuel was fortunate to have a sailor’s knowledge and skills other men might not have. He had circumvented bad fortune dozens of times, so many that the lines on his left hand were a jumble, all possible fates he had managed to avoid. He wondered if he’d brought the tree to speak not to Maria but to himself, to give him courage and remind him of who he was, a man ruled by love. Morning was about to break. It was certainly not a day to die, but rather a time to rejoice in the beauty of the world. He rode through the grassy fields in the dark, to the hill near town that was deserted, except for the birds waking in the bushes. This is where the gallows had been built. He tied his horse to a tree at the edge of the woods. The grass was damp and he was still unaccustomed to being on earth rather than at sea; he walked with a rolling gait, as if the ocean was below him rather than the black earth of Essex County. Over one shoulder he carried a leather satchel that was stained with salt. He had a grin on his face despite the circumstances. Inside the bag was the one thing that could set Maria Owens free.



* * *



A woman who went to the gallows must be barefoot. She was to walk through town in iron chains, and then be taken up the hill in a cart drawn by oxen. There were horse pastures on either side, for all the trees had been chopped down, and groves of locusts would be planted here when at last men realized only fools cut down nearly every tree, except for the few where boys sat in the branches waiting for the gory event to occur. Maria wore a long white shift and nothing more. She was not allowed the comforts of this world, for she would next be judged in the hereafter, and here on earth she was beyond all help. She had been found guilty of witchery, of conversing with spirits, of evil deeds done for her benefit and the benefit of Satan. The old magistrate came to her and told her to list her sins, and repeat her conversations with the devil, and she would not do so. When he made his report to the court, John Hathorne asked for a chance to speak to the witch. He was a learned man, from a well-respected family, and so the court agreed. Hathorne stood outside her cell, and called for the jailor to leave them alone.