Page 30 of The Witches of Cambridge

THE FIRST WITCH OF CAMBRIDGE

1692–1694

Dear Reader,

I went to visit Mistress May, waiting until her husband had left for the day, for ours would not be a conversation a husband should overhear. Increase Mather was still the president of Harvard, but now that the witch trials were over, his son Cotton’s inflammatory remarks and writings made the family appear reckless. I always knew that Cotton Mather’s evil deeds would come back to him three times over. Once, for those he’d had hanged. Twice, for the girls and women who hid their true selves because of him. Three times, for the night he claimed me for himself when no one else was at home.

The Mathers were horrified by the changes that had begun at Harvard, for the reading lists now included natural philosophers, and there was a move away from Calvinism and Puritanism to a more open interpretation of material. I knew that Cotton Mather would never be satisfied, not if he began a hundred schools, not if he was the president of every single one. He would never get what he wanted most, for he would never return to Harvard.

On the day I went to visit, I let myself in through the back door. I had been a good servant who’d never asked for favors, but I was about to ask for one now. My mistress was delighted to see me, embracing me as if I were family. In fact, I knew more about her than they did, for she had always kept the truth of her background from her children. Her daughters had no talent for witchery, but Cotton was different. As a boy he could hold fire in the palm of his hand. There was a morning when the maid forgot him in the bath, and he did not drown even though he’d slipped fully underwater. My mistress hadn’t known what was more distressing, that the servant had been so careless, or that Cotton had shown proof of his inheritance. She called him her darling, her fish, her witch boy, but only when they were alone together. He hated himself, and Mistress May told me that he whipped himself out in the stable where no one could hear him cry. He punished himself for not being strong enough to get what he wanted, and Mistress May said he cut the palm of his hand every day, in the hope he would bleed out his inheritance.

In his writings about Salem, he did unto others as he wished to do to himself. Exposed and punished them.

On the afternoon of my visit, I knew exactly what I wanted. A way to keep women safe.

“We need a constable who refuses to tolerate witch-hunters,” I told May Mather on that day. “Your husband can have the governor appoint such a person. One who doesn’t wish to chase us from the face of the earth, if such a man exists,” I added ruefully, for I’d lost my faith in mortal beings.

As it happened, May Mather knew such a man, one who had recently arrived from England, a cousin whom she trusted, whom she promised to contact. Before I left, she gave me a bag of coins for the women in my orchard, so that they might buy hammers and nails to build shelters. Among our people in Boston, word had gone out that there was a safe place across the river, and my mistress understood why I wished to make certain it remained that way. Witches can hide, they can pretend they don’t exist, or they can claim a piece of the world.

Not long afterward, a new constable was appointed, and in high summer he came to see me while I was at work in my garden. People called it a witch’s garden, for it had every manner of herbs. Agrimony, a bitter herb used in protection and to reverse spells and break hexes. Rosemary to drive evil away. Alyssum, said to cure rabies and anger alike. Angelica, to be sprinkled in all four corners of a house to help in exorcisms and promote healing. Ash trees, whose leaves let you know the future in your dreams. Asters to win love. Lemon balm to heal. Basil to keep away spiders and scorpions. Bay leaves to remove curses. Madder root transplanted from England, which could be used to form a beautiful red dye as well as a poultice for bruises and jaundice. Apples, charms for spells of love and symbols of the soul, used for divination. We had planted a hundred apple trees, and in the spring the world turned hazy and pink, as if love was everywhere you looked.

When Amadis Grey introduced himself, I should have been forewarned, for his name was derived from the Latin word for my beloved. His mother was a cunning woman who had taught herself magic, and he had no fear of witchery. He carried the bone of a toad with him, as many do in England to protect themselves from curses and enchantments as they wander along the rural lanes. He was a man like any other, yet he was more. I was aware of that the moment he arrived on the property. He was tall, with an olive complexion and black hair, but his eyes were pale blue. He told me later he had the vision of a hawk and could see things that were hidden from other men, and perhaps it was true, for he’d managed to find his way to me. If he’d been bothered by the brambles, he didn’t complain. He didn’t speak much, but when he did, it mattered. He always had an opinion, a trait that would ordinarily provoke me, but instead I found I wanted to hear what he had to say.

“I think we might be able to help one another,” he told me on the day we met. I noticed there were leaves in his hair, which was too long and fell into his eyes. “I trust my cousin May’s judgments.”

“Did she tell you to beware of me?” I asked. The day was warm, but it seemed broiling to me, as if we had wandered into the heart of August. I felt possessed in some strange way.

The constable laughed. “Not at all. She told me you’ve been like a daughter to her. A beautiful daughter,” he added.

I presumed those were his words, not hers. I knew it was best if I took a step away, yet I remained where I was, facing him. “Now I know you’re a liar.”

“Never,” he answered. “My mother taught me to be truthful. Unless the truth would get me killed.”

“Mine told me the very same thing.”

He grinned then. “And yet I noticed that you are Rob rather than Rose in the landowner’s records.”

“Call me Rob if you wish,” I told him boldly. He would either turn me in as a pretender or come to my aid.

So there we were, observing one another, perhaps a bit too closely. At last he got down to business and I realized he was looking at me with respect, something I hadn’t seen before when a man gazed at me. I was already half in love with him, and in that moment, I fell the rest of the way. No one had to push me. I went there all by myself. There I was, completely undone. I invited Amadis Grey into my house for tea, and after that, he stayed on.

For that, I would always be grateful. I worked all that summer and fall in the garden and was happy to do so. I told Amadis I didn’t need marriage; I didn’t need anyone’s help. He frowned and seemed to be ready to ask me something, but I kissed him, and he didn’t say another word. When he left, he said he would be back, and I assured him that he didn’t owe me anything.

Amadis shook his head. “Do you know nothing about what we are to each other?” he asked me.

I knew the answer, but I couldn’t bring myself to say the truth out loud. Everything. That was the answer. But I knew how the world worked, how short a day was, how a year passed by in the blink of an eye, how loss was growing in every garden, how once you plucked it, it was yours.

That winter eight feet of snow fell in a single day. It kept falling until the world was white and so quiet not a single bird sang. All I could hear was the sound of my child’s heartbeat inside me. Amadis came to see me after that snowfall. He was the sort of man who worried, even though I’d told him not to. A deer had been trapped in the deep snow, and he rescued it and carried it on his shoulders. He leaned on my door when he finally arrived, weary and out of breath.

“You could have died for the sake of a deer,” I said.

“I know,” Amadis agreed. “But I thought it would make you love me.”

I already did, and he knew it. It was admitting that truth that was the problem. Love was dangerous and it always had been. I’d known that to be true ever since I was a girl.

We let the deer stay, and for a while I kept it as a pet, knowing I would have let it go when the snows ended. We fed it milk and bread, and it slept beside our bed, but there are times to let everything go, like it or not, whether or not your heart will be broken.

During this time Amadis insisted he was there to watch over me, but I told him I didn’t need his protection.