Page 9 of The Witches of Cambridge

“I couldn’t find the door,” Ava explained to the older woman, who had worked at Eliot House for forty years. “I’m from Maine,” she explained. Ava knew she sounded desperate not to be thought of as a snob simply because she was a Radcliffe student. In truth, she had more in common with these two working women than she did with most Radcliffe students. “On scholarship,” she added. “Anonymous gift.” Oh, she was pathetic in her need to fit in, and she cringed when the cook laughed at her.

“You could be from the moon for all I care,” the older woman announced. “Just don’t expect us to handle your duties. We all pitch in here.”

They set to work immediately, although when Ava followed Maureen into the dining hall, she froze, left speechless by the enormity of the impressive room, with its arched, wood-beamed ceilings and stained-glass windows. The long tables were occupied by scores of young men, several of whom called out when they spied Ava, with her glorious red hair. The Harvard boys couldn’t take their eyes off her. Beauty did that, innocence did, too, and so did magic. Ava was like a flame, and the room itself seemed to have begun to burn. Sit over here with me. Join us, the boys called out. One student, who was not quite as civil as his cohorts, shouted, Get your pretty ass over here, and there was a response of cheerful laughter from his buddies, then a shroud of silence as a proctor approached the table to tell all involved they had best quiet down.

“They’re wicked smart, and they know it,” Maureen confided. “But they’re not too smart about preventing pregnancies.”

All Ava knew about sex she had learned from journals at the library back in Genesis, but it seemed very academic and medical. She hadn’t understood a thing until she read Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which someone in the library had overlooked after it had been banned. She had a knack for finding what she needed most on a library shelf. All the same, she’d been shocked by what that novel made her feel; it seemed a miracle that a book could so inflame her when she’d never even been kissed. He bent over her and kissed her, and she felt, so he must kiss her for ever. Thinking about such things made Ava feel famished. They were serving plates of beef and potatoes, and she realized that she was faint with hunger. “Will we have dinner as well?” she asked.

“In the kitchen, like the second-class citizens we are,” Maureen informed her.

A tall young man called Jamie was at a nearby table, and he’d been listening in on their conversation. When he turned to them, Ava took a step back. He was far too handsome. In fact, he looked like the beginning of something that might not end. Seduction had always come easily to Jamie. Girls might swoon over him at first, but in time they would cry to their friends about how selfish he was. The one thing he didn’t want was a soulmate; if anyone got close to him, they would know just how damaged he was, and he kept that to himself. He came from a family where failure wasn’t tolerated, and he’d failed at most everything, especially at being a Mather, the worst crime anyone in his family could commit. “Over here,” he called out.

“We’re actually working, unless you had an idea to take over our jobs,” Maureen called back, happy enough to flirt with someone so devastatingly handsome, despite his arrogance. She recognized him and knew his reputation. He was related to the seventh president of the university, Increase Mather, a renowned Puritan minister. Jamie responded to Maureen with an offhand smile, not especially attentive to her remark. Ava was the one he was interested in.

“It’s the red hair,” Maureen whispered. “He can’t look away. I told you so!”

Attraction had a life of its own, and it struck Ava through the heart as she stood in the bustling dining hall. Her pulse went wild despite her mother’s warnings. What appears to be a treasure may have a poisonous bite. Boys want one thing, and it’s the thing that will ruin your life.

“You must have heard about his family,” Maureen said. When Ava looked blank Maureen added, “He’s one of the Mathers, who encouraged the witch trials. One was the president of Harvard, the other tried to be, but what he wrote about women was so awful Harvard refused his wish to be president of the college.”

“No,” Ava said. “Are you sure?”

Maureen nodded. “Shame, isn’t it? He’s a charmer.”

“Is he?” Ava did her best to sound uninterested. “I hadn’t noticed.”

Jamie Mather had taken a year off to travel after his freshman year, working on cargo ships, defying his family’s expectations. Only when he’d been caught with some marijuana and faced the possibility of imprisonment for ten years did he agree to go back to Harvard, as all the men in his family had. His father, a well-known attorney, had gotten him out of his legal jam, and now Harvard was payback. Before classes began, Jamie’s father had given him a Vacheron Constantin watch, the exclusive brand founded in 1755, traditionally worn by the men of the Mather family, inscribed with the name Mather and the Latin phrase Una familia in aeternum. One family forever.

Despite his acceptance of the watch, Jamie continued to resist his upbringing. He’d always been his mother’s favorite; she’d been kind enough to ignore the length of his hair and his bouts of drinking with friends who went on to be carpenters and plumbers, for he never bonded with any of the boys he encountered at boarding school. He did his best not to be a Mather, but people at Harvard knew who he was even before they met him. Jamie’s oldest brother was right in his assessment. Jamie was selfish and daring, and those traits were evident as he introduced himself to Ava with the confident expression of someone who knew just how attractive he was and wasn’t above using that attribute to get what he wanted. It was also clear that he was broken: one look into his eyes and there it was, the sorrow he carried. Each girl he went out with believed she would be the one to fix him, but it hadn’t happened yet.

“Don’t disappoint your father,” Jamie’s mother, Louise, always told him. Still, he’d known he was fated to do exactly that, and so he always avoided his father. But one dark morning when Jamie wasn’t much more than ten, he’d spied his father standing over a bonfire out on the lawn, not far from the shallow waters of their pond. Jamie had gone outside in his pajamas, and his father had glanced up when he heard a branch break beneath Jamie’s footsteps.

“Some things shouldn’t exist,” Jamie’s father had said in a brooding tone. Paul Mather was tall and handsome, dark like Jamie, but unsmiling and superior. He threw Jamie a small black book, and Jamie paged through what appeared to be someone’s private journal.

I have ensured that the witch of Cambridge will no longer have power. No one knows but God himself, and the angels that accompany him.

“Did this person kill someone?” Jamie had asked.

“He did his duty. He rid the world of a witch.”

“Was she wicked?” Jamie found he was interested in this story, though it caused him a sense of panic. He’d felt his heart thud against his chest. He’d always had an affinity for magic without knowing quite what it was. Why did the birds in the sky spell out the future? Why could he read his brothers’ minds?

“That’s not the point, Jamie. The point is we have to destroy the evil out in the world, but also rid ourselves of what’s inside of us that doesn’t belong. Magic is evil.”

Jamie had thought that over carefully. His serious father, a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, was talking about magic as if it was something real, something you could hold in your hand, something that might be inside of him, marking him as evil. Was this why he sat on the roof? Was it the reason he hadn’t broken his legs as his mother warned he would when he leapt down? He had a wound on his hand that throbbed on rainy days, and he wondered about that as well. His mother had informed him that he’d had an operation as an infant to correct a growth, but he’d always felt it was something more. Something that ached, something that was there to remind him of who he was.

On that day in the garden, his father had signaled for Jamie to throw the journal onto the fire. “Toss it,” Paul Mather had commanded. “It’s what we have to do. We must rid ourselves of what will only bring us to ruin.”

So Jamie had done as he was told, even though he hadn’t wanted to; he didn’t believe in burning books. The smoke was black and acrid, and the black clouds made him choke and left a bad aftertaste in his mouth, but his father ignored his wheezing, and they had never spoken of the bonfire or the book again. After that he’d done as his father instructed. He put away his doubts and his deepest self, just as his eleventh finger had been surgically removed while he was still a baby.

Now Jamie swept his arm across the table, causing a pile of silverware to clatter to the floor. His father had told them that it was possible to tell a good woman from one who would bring you grief by the way she handled silver. If she simply handed the cutlery back to you, you could trust her. If she avoided touching knives and forks and spoons, you were headed for trouble.

Jamie reached for the bell at the head of the table and rang it as a master might call to a servant. There was silence in the room, a shocked and somewhat excited hush. Everyone wanted to see what would happen next. Embarrassing someone could bring great pleasure to those without compassion.

“Over here,” Jamie called.

Maureen and Ava exchanged a look.