Magic Lessons (Practical Magic #0.1)(98)

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Maria was in the corridor carrying a basin of cool water and vinegar when the minister’s close friend Dr. Joost van der Berg arrived. The doctor was a tall man of huge influence who regularly visited the governors of both New York and Massachusetts and was highly regarded by all. She overheard the doctor speaking with Dekker about the trials in Salem. They were both skeptical that a human being could make contact with the devil, causing death and destruction at that person’s will. The doctor believed there were issues with the accusers rather than the accused. It was clear that both he and Dekker saw the entire process of witch hunts as insanity. Neither believed that any of the accused could hit and bite victims when they had been seen miles or more away at the same exact time as the attacks. It was lunacy to think such acts were possible, with Jonas Dekker stating that the accusers were ill and deprived of their sanity. The two men were not alone in their opinions. There were many who were in power in Massachusetts who had begun to see that the trials were a sort of hysteria, although some would not understand the horror of what had been done until later. Increase Mather, the president of Harvard, had published Cases of Conscience, making an argument against use of spectral evidence in witch trials, in direct opposition to his son Cotton Mather’s The Wonders of the Invisible World, which insisted spectral evidence was valuable in a court of law, with the elder man writing, It is better that ten suspected witches should escape than one innocent person be condemned. One man among those in power who had not changed his mind at all, however, was the chief examiner of the witchcraft trials, appointed in 1692, John Hathorne.

He had once been a man who had dived into the water fully clothed, who had stood in the moonlight to pick apples from a tree in the courtyard. When she’d asked him why he had abandoned her, he’d merely said, People change. Perhaps he wanted to believe this was true, but you were who you were. A person might be changed by ill fortune or circumstance, as Faith had been, but every individual carried a soul within him, unchanging and eternal, a light, a heart, a breath.



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Dr. van der Berg brushed by Maria, barely glancing at her. At this moment his only concern was the patient he’d come to visit. He examined the girl, then went into the study, calling Maria to join him, closing the door so they might speak privately. Van der Berg’s brow was creased and he looked disturbed, not over the state of his patient, who was much improved, but rather in regard to his own apparent lack of judgment and expertise.

“I suppose you think I’m a fool.” He was certainly looking at Maria now.

“Not at all. I’ve had experience with this illness in Cura?ao and merely recognized it for what it was. You cannot know what you haven’t seen.”

The doctor was grateful for her kindness, though he believed that in this case he had indeed been an ignorant fool. He was known to be a somewhat arrogant man, assured of his vast knowledge, but he now humbled himself and asked for her method of treatment, and she shared the curatives she’d used, all of a practical nature. Wet washcloths with apple cider vinegar, basil tea with ginger, fish bone broth, all simple enough, but most important was the use of Tawa-tawa tea, which she would be happy to supply if he came upon more patients with the disease.

“If she first became ill in Aruba, among her cousins, she was likely infected by them. It travels in the breath,” he concluded.

“No, by the bite of an insect. It is not like the pox. You cannot be infected by a person who is ill.”

“What was your name?” the doctor asked, quite taken with her.

“Maria Owens.”

“And mine—”

She stopped him there. “I know who you are, sir.” Everyone in New York knew of him, he was so esteemed, a friend to those in power and those in need.

The doctor poured two glasses of port from the minister’s glass carafe. “I celebrate you,” he said. People were usually so dull in his opinion, but not this woman. “I must say, I can’t help wonder what it is you’ll do next.”

Maria glanced at his hand. His fortune was changing as he spoke. She had never seen a man’s fate change as quickly. When she peered into her own palm, the same thing was happening, a twin to the pattern on the doctor’s hand. Their meeting had changed everything that was to come.

Fate is what you make of it, Hannah had told her. You can make the best of it, or you can let it make the best of you.

Maria and the doctor were now tied together, by choice, by intent, by happenstance. Fate had made it so, but Maria would make certain it continued to her benefit. When they said their good-byes later that evening, it would not be the last time they met.



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While Maria was watching over the vastly improved Dekker girl, she came to understand what she wished to receive as her payment for this cure. She knew why the line on her hand ran identically to the doctor’s. She found paper and pen and ink in the minister’s study and stayed awake till dawn writing, producing a letter that was three pages long. By noon, Anneke was sitting up in bed, starving and calling for fish bone soup. She wolfed down buttered toast and was strong enough to bathe and have a change of clothes. The girl’s mother had been directed in what she must do should the disease reappear, and was aware that it might be a constant fight, though one she could win.

“Must you leave?” Hannah Dekker asked when Maria began to pack up.