Page 63 of The Witches of Cambridge

Mather searched my bag for poison and found the belladonna and apple seeds. By then his father and brothers and sisters had come up to my mistress’s chambers, all weeping and keening.

“We should call the constables,” Cotton announced.

“Nonsense,” his father said. “Your mother would not wish for us to punish her, especially not for deeds that were never done.”

Outside the window I saw the bat that was May Mather’s familiar; it had risen into the air, and I felt that my mistress’s spirit had risen as well. Her familiar flew away soon enough, for there was nothing in this house anymore that would cause it to stay. Everything that had once been here had all been lost.

As I was ushered out the back entrance, one of the Mathers’ housemaids came rushing after me. “She wanted you to have this,” she said, looking nervous.

The girl held out an onyx necklace, a strand of black beads with a hanging pendant. I recognized it as the one Mistress Mather had been wearing when she rescued me from prison. She never went a day without wearing it and kept it beneath her clothing as if it were a personal amulet. I looped the necklace around my throat even though the stones were cold. The housemaid was even more nervous when we noticed Cotton Mather watching us.

I should have remembered what my own mother had told me. Cross a river once, and you will likely be fine. Cross the same river twice, and there may be danger. I wasn’t aware that left-handed magic could follow you no matter where you went. It could reach across rivers, and counties, and worlds. Cotton Mather had the darkest eyes and a gaze that could bore right through you if you didn’t know how to protect yourself, if you didn’t carry amulets and apple seeds to drive away evil, if you thought a river could divide you, if you believed that death ended the past and that all you had to do was turn away and you would be free.

As I left, I felt the eye that I always carried for protection burning in its tin. The witch-hunter’s eye was my amulet of protection, and I’d kept it even when he was sent to prison. I hoped it would save me from Cotton Mather’s ill intentions, for he could hold a fire in his hands, he could make branches fall from the trees, he could watch an innocent woman hang and not feel anything at all. Hyacinth and I made our way to the ferry, and when we arrived on the other side, I stood among the reeds and threw a curse across the river, ensuring that Cotton Mather would never be the president of either Harvard or Yale.

The light was fading, and I was glad to return to Cambridge with my daughter. I had no idea that on that day of sorrow for my mistress, I had been cursed as well. The birds in the marsh arose all at once, as if they had agreed there were better places to be than Cambridge, but not for me. Hyacinth sat before me, and I ran my horse fast, too fast probably. When we reached the Common, I didn’t see the iron wire stretched out before us from tree to tree. When Duke crashed to the ground, all I could think of was my daughter. I held her tight as we tumbled down, pushing her away so that my horse would not fall upon her. He broke his leg when he thundered down, and I was so shocked I was slow to rise. Hyacinth had landed beneath a bramble bush, stunned and bruised. That was when I saw him. Time had passed so quickly I hadn’t kept track of it, but now here it was, the time of vengeance. I had forgotten the man with one eye, but he hadn’t forgotten me.

Tom Boyle had been released from prison. His benefactor had paid his way out, and that man was Cotton Mather. Both men had scores to settle with me. I hadn’t realized that all the while I kept the witch-hunter’s eye in the tin I carried, it had been watching me. That was the reason Boyle could follow me so easily. Once I was on the ground, the first thing he did was pin me down and rifle through my clothes while I tried to fight him off. None of my spell work or chanting affected him. I cried out when Boyle hit me, and my cheek turned black and bruised. I tasted blood in my mouth, and when I spat it out it was black, and the grass grew tall in that place, as it always would. Boyle found the tin, opened it, then plucked his eye out of its container.

“This is my only payment, for my task is a pleasure, even if Cotton Mather hadn’t paid me to follow you, though I took his offer to pay for my freedom from prison. In exchange I do his bidding.”

Tom Boyle shoved the eye back in the hollow socket, and it stayed in place, cloudier than the other, but with a piercing look. He had my hands tied behind my back in an instant, and although I tried again to use incantations of destruction and of revenge, the words of magic all melted in my mouth. That was when I realized the onyx necklace had been not a token from my mistress but a dark enchantment sent by Cotton Mather which he hoped would destroy me.

Because of the powers of the amulet, I could not speak magic or call it to me; my gift and my inheritance had been erased. My mistress had wished to be ordinary, a wife with no magical talent and no life outside their home. The necklace was an ancient charm, once used in Babylonia to catch witches and strip them of their powers. It was called the circle of darkness, sold to Increase Mather by a trader who had bought it from a British thief who had stolen it from a castle after a crusader had brought back magical artifacts from Jerusalem. May Mather received it as a wedding present, and in return she wore it as a gift to her husband. Wear it, and you would lose everything you had once been. You could not understand the birds, the stars, the moon, your own thoughts. The future would become blank, the present a mystery; a veil would be lowered over your eyes, for you would have lost the sight. Cotton Mather had tricked me. He had taken my soul from my body, and I was stranded here with nothing inside me.

My captor threw the tail end of the rope he had looped around my neck over a branch of the hanging tree, then tightened it so that I had no possibility of wriggling out of his hold.

“Now we’ll be done with you,” he said with a sneer.

I was frantic in my concern for Hyacinth, fearing that he’d find her or that she’d be abandoned on her own. The weather was frightful and bitter, cold enough to freeze a girl left out overnight. But then I spied my daughter sitting beneath the thornbushes and I knew she was safe. That was when I saw Amelia Bell from Lilith House watching us. She cursed Tom Boyle then and there.

She spoke words I failed to recognize in a language I had never before heard. It was left-handed magic, the sort you use when you are desperate, when you have no other choice. That was when the crows appeared, a cloud in the sky, a thousand or more, including the one that had plucked out my oppressor’s eye, the white crow who had risen from the dead. They swooped down to attack him, allowing me the opportunity to hurriedly untie my hands and lift the rope from my throat. I slipped off the necklace, the cursed object that had robbed me of my power, and then went forward to Tom Boyle, who lay on the ground, trying and failing to fend off the birds. They spun away at last when I sat upon my oppressor’s back. I wound the necklace around his throat and pulled it tight. He was desperate for air, but he never took another breath, and it was in this way he left the world. It was a reckoning and what he deserved, but I cried all the same, and wherever I cried the grass disappeared and left bare earth. The witch-hunter’s eye had tumbled onto the ground, and I returned it to the tin. I had no choice but to shoot my beautiful, injured horse, and for that I used my oppressor’s gun. It is the moment in my life I most wish I could forget. If the truth be told, when I fired, I closed my eyes.

After that day, I vowed I would never chase away the crows on my land, and to sustain them I planted corn every year. As for my daughter, she had always been an amazement to me, as perhaps all parents feel their children to be. I looked around and saw that all the thorns had turned to white flowers, and I knew that love could save you. It is the heart of the heart of the matter.

When the new constable found the body of Tom Boyle, he ordered that the witch-hunter be buried immediately, not in the Old Burial Ground, but farther down Brattle Street, where the first cemetery had been abandoned when it was raided by wolves. It was deserted now, and I was the only mourner. I wanted to be certain he was truly dead and gone, placed in the ground, and I dressed in black for the occasion. I made my way through the dark hollows, even though the boot-worn path was muddy and overgrown with weeds. There was no pastor, only a gravedigger, and I gave him a few pence to thank him, as if I were the dead man’s wife, when the truth was that I wanted to watch the earth shoveled over the man who had tried to destroy me. I wanted to stand there in the place that was still wilderness. There was hardly a wolf to be found anymore, but I saw one that day. It was a fine thing to see something wild, wild as I used to be and was no longer. Through the trees I could see the figure of a woman in a black dress and red boots. I recognized Amelia Bell, and I raised my hand in greeting. We would always be connected as our daughters would be, for they were nearly the same age. From the distance she nodded, and I felt our souls wrap around each other in this cold, abandoned place. We were here together, and in our memories, we always would be.

To make certain none of us was harmed, I buried the necklace Cotton Mather had used when he wished to destroy me. Once I was rid of the necklace, my magic returned to me. Magic or not should always be our choice. I often sat in the place where I had buried the necklace, the place where the hyacinth return year after year, bursting through the snow on the first warm day. They appear to be fragile, but they’re stronger than anyone would imagine. If you take that path, what I’ve left behind will be waiting for you. If you need it, it will always be there.