Page 47 of Magic Lessons

How to Bring a Lover Home

Cook honey with nightshade, add a curl of his hair and let it rest on the windowsill. If your beloved is nearby he will appear, but if he has disappeared into the wilderness a bird will take his place. Tie a scrap of paper with your name written upon it to the bird’s leg and let it fly out your window. If your beloved is alive, the bird will find him and he will return, though it may take months or years.

Nail a wishbone over your front door.

Stick two silver pins into a red candle. When the flames burn down to the pins, your lover will arrive.

Are you sure you want him? Maria would always say about the man in question before she began an enchantment, for it was possible for a woman who had been unburdened by a husband to begin a new life in New York, one that she alone commanded. Oh I’m sure, most would say, not minding Maria’s disapproval. These women had put effort into their desires, arriving in the dead of night, leaving the rented rooms of their boardinghouses or the cots set up in the parlor of a relative’s flat, all to regain what they’d lost. But every now and then there were those who reconsidered, leaving without any help from Maria. And then there were those who found the men they’d searched for only to return for a different sort of remedy. He’s changed, these women said, he’s not the one, it’s all a mistake, save me, help me, give me back my own life.

Love was complicated; Faith had understood that even before she took to sitting on the stairs to watch these women come and go. She shook her head in wonder at what fools humans could be. Let them throw their lives away and weep over lovers who would only cause them pain and agony. Let Maria Owens trade in the thing that had caused her grief. Faith had studied love, but it wasn’t her business, and it never would be. She had something else in mind.

She had been in Manhattan for close to two years, and had grown up faster than most. By now she was tall, with a newfound grace, and a cool, distant gaze. She hadn’t left the practice of acting like an obedient girl, but she was anything but mild mannered. Faith climbed out the window on Maiden Lane, just as she had done in Brooklyn. Habits died hard, and she had the habit of doing as she pleased, even if that meant there were those who must be deceived.

She set up her practice near the grove of linden trees beside the Minetta Stream, where indigent men lived in canvas tents and the poor were buried without stones to mark that they had ever walked on this earth. This was where her craft had led her, to a hollow where the ferns were as tall as she and the earth was muddy and damp and vengeance came easily. Faith felt it inside her, spreading out from the red splotch in the center of her left hand that she had never been able to wash away. She was called to dark places, such as this. The birds did not sing here and the frogs did not call, although there were hundreds of peepers on the banks of the stream. If a woman wanted something other than what she could find in Maria Owen’s kitchen, she came here. If she had been mistreated and damaged and betrayed, if she wanted revenge, she came up the path, no matter how perilous it might be to walk alone in the dark woods.

Come to me and I will never judge you. I am just a girl and you can tell me anything, who hurt you, who you wish to defy, who should pay for their acts against you.

The hysteria in Salem began in the winter of 1692, stretching into the spring. Bridget Bishop was the first woman to be arrested, and the first to be hanged, on June 10. By September, twenty people had been executed. When the news about what was occurring reached New York, there was shock, especially among the Dutch community, who did not agree that the devil walked among men, or that it was proper to make use of spectral evidence based exclusively on dreams and visions, with no practical proof. The original Dutch settlers were serious-minded people who believed what they saw with their own eyes, but such was not the case in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

In May of that year one of those set to be arrested was a sixteen-year-old girl who had first seen a jail cell when she was a child who accompanied her grandmother, Lydia Colson, visiting Maria Owens after her arrest. When young Elizabeth Colson heard there was a warrant drawn out for her signed by the magistrates, she disappeared into the woods. Her grandmother packed a basket of food and told her to go to New York, where she could find a woman Lydia Colson had once helped who might assist them in return. One could hope that their kindness would be remembered, and perhaps repaid.

By the time Elizabeth arrived in Manhattan, she was exhausted and terrified. She’d stopped in Cambridge overnight, then made her way to Connecticut, where the witchcraft mania had spread to New Haven. Her cousins there had helped her leave in the middle of the night, but the hired carriage driver had beaten her and stolen what little she had. She made the rest of the way alone, all the while in fear of the large wildcats in the hills of Connecticut. At last she reached Manhattan, taking a ferry that disembarked near the Fly Market. She asked vendors if they might know a woman named Maria Owens. The fruit seller knew such a woman and the fishmonger did as well, although neither knew her address. The fishmonger’s daughter, however, called Elizabeth aside, for she had gone once for a love charm, and she knew exactly where Maria Owens could be found.

When Elizabeth rapped on the door, a suspicious red-haired girl appeared, her black dog at her side. Faith was an unwelcoming figure, glaring at the unexpected guest with narrowed gray eyes, for the sight allowed her to know where the girl had come from. “You’re from Salem,” Faith blurted.

“I’ve come to see Maria Owens.” Elizabeth lowered her voice. “I fled before the constables could arrest me.”

“For what crime?” Elizabeth certainly didn’t appear to be a criminal, but then neither had Martha. People could surprise you, each and every time. When Elizabeth hesitated, Faith assured her that she could be trusted. “I’m Maria’s daughter. We have no secrets.”

It was hardly true, but Elizabeth wished to believe Faith; they were not so far apart in age, and perhaps she imagined she had found a friend in whom she could confide. She glanced over her shoulder to the crowded street. There was a good deal of foot traffic and several carts and wagons, but no one paid the girls the least bit of attention. “Witchcraft.”

Faith held back a laugh. “You’re not a witch.”

“True enough. But the truth won’t save me from hanging.”

Faith took the other girl’s hand and looked into her palm. “I see that you’ll live.”

“Are you a fortune-teller?” Several of those arrested in Salem had practiced palmistry and other forms of parlor magic in which they promised to divine who future husbands and wives might be.

“Not at all,” Faith said, drawing the visitor inside. “I just know that if you’re here with us, you’ll be safe.”

They had a dinner of chicken pie closed into a coffin of crust that had been flavored with rosemary, and to celebrate their guest’s determination to make her way to New York, Maria fixed a delicacy called Hedgehog Pudding, consisting of bread and raisins, sweet cream and eggs and butter, which was then decorated with slivers of blanched almonds pointing upward like spikey spines. She was delighted to see Elizabeth so grown up and remembered what a dear child she’d been, but the evening took a turn when Maria heard the details of what was transpiring in Salem. She felt a deep sense of foreboding, and when she asked who was at the heart of the witch mania, she was not surprised when John Hathorne’s name was spoken. He was one of the magistrates hearing the cases of the accused, well known to be the most unforgiving among the judges, badgering the women who were called before him, forcing admissions from prisoners who hadn’t eaten or slept but had been beaten with sticks and leather straps, accepting spectral evidence of the worst sort, pure madness and gossip masquerading as truth.

Faith noticed that her mother shivered when she heard about this judge and his deeds.

“Do you know this man?” she asked.

“I don’t believe I ever truly did.”

But she certainly knew what he was guilty of: seduction, betrayal, lies, abandonment, pride.

Despite the Owens’ hospitality, Elizabeth had decided she would not be able to stay. Her Connecticut cousins had confided that when the constables came to arrest her and found her missing, they had taken her grandmother in her place. She realized she had erred in coming to New York.

“You can’t go back,” Maria told Elizabeth Colson. “It’s far too dangerous.”

Still, it was clear the girl wouldn’t desert her grandmother in the old woman’s time of need. Elizabeth had an honest heart and was young enough to believe that she was dealing with reasonable men who would release her grandmother when she gave herself up. She stayed a single night and left in the morning. Before they’d gone to bed, Faith had whispered she would leave something for Elizabeth that might be useful, in the rear of the garden. She’d kept her word. There between the neat rows of rosemary and cabbages was an amulet for Elizabeth to wear close to her heart. Inside the velvet pouch was powdered vervain, used in dark acts of magic, and a slip of black rope tied into knots to protect her three times. A note had been written upon black paper with red ink that disappeared as soon as it was read.

Travel well. Trust no one.