Page 18 of Magic Lessons

“So have you,” Maria responded. She carried the baby. As always Faith’s bright hair was a beacon on this dark ship. “Thank you for bringing us to Boston. I know it was against your better judgment.”

“I judged wrongly,” he admitted. “Will he now be well?” Dias asked of his son. Though the old man was tough, his deep love for his son was evident.

“As well as ever,” Maria assured him.

They both laughed. Samuel had been a difficult, argumentative boy with a mind of his own, and he’d grown to be a difficult man who never shied away from a fight.

“So he is himself again,” Abraham Dias said, relieved. His son was his heart, and Maria understood, for she held her heart in her hands, a red-haired little girl.

Samuel was strong enough to be back on deck, and back at his maps as well. Navigators were prized on ships, for without them all was guesswork, and the northern coasts were littered with wrecks that had not avoided the reefs and rocks. He still tired easily, and was often chilled, wearing his black coat even on fine days, but he appeared healthy, as he must have been before breakbone fever seized him. He made certain to avoid Maria, sleeping on deck with the rest of the men covered with tarred sheets of linen to protect them from rain and seawater. Now that he had his health and freedom returned to him, it turned out he didn’t want either one; he would rather be ill if that meant Maria would still take care of him. He was no longer angry, he was hurt, and that was worse.

As they approached the Massachusetts harbor, Maria could see a city of docks and streets that followed the old paths where cows still wandered freely, where markets sold cod and oysters and clams. So many houses were being built that the clatter of hammers echoed constantly. Huge white clouds were strung as if on a clothesline and the harbor was thick with ships. Maria was on the deck with Cadin, at last freed from his cage in the open air, when Samuel approached. He had a slight limp due to the pain in his legs, but it was only noticeable to those who knew him. It had been days since they’d spoken.

“You’re setting him free?” They usually spoke in English, but now Dias spoke Portuguese. His voice was more musical and more urgent, and his questions and intent were harder to ignore. He almost seemed like a serious man. After his illness he had come to understand time in a different way. It was not endless, as most young men believed it to be. There was so little of it he could hold it in his hands, and still it slipped away, even as he stood in the pale sunlight approaching Boston Harbor, beside a woman he didn’t wish to lose.

“He was always free,” Maria said. “I told you that.”

When Cadin lifted into the sky, they watched him wing toward the shore. Boston Harbor was cold and gray even on a summer day. Dias had been stitching as sailors often did, and he’d made Faith a little poppet doll that she was delighted to be given.

“Keep it safe,” he told her, and the little girl nodded solemnly and clung to the doll. When Samuel went to the quarterdeck to help guide the ship to shore, the baby called out to him, but he didn’t answer. Samuel Benjamin Dias, navigator and robber, the man who liked to talk so much he continued to do so in his sleep, had become quiet on this day, as if afraid of what he might say. He’d been too many places and lost too many people to think there was a point in a drawn-out parting. He was gone before Maria knew it, leaving her there to consider what her new life might be once she found John Hathorne, for in truth, she could no longer picture his face. When she closed her eyes, all she saw was Samuel Dias, which clearly was a mistake.

He did not leave the ship after it docked. He told his father they should turn toward Newport as soon as their trading in Boston was done. There was no reason to stay. Maria looked back and saw him at his maps. Perhaps he was too busy to say his good-byes; he was meant to study the seas and stars and there was nothing for him here on land. A man who talked as much as he did knew when he’d reached the end of a story, even though there are those who insist that once you save a life, that person is tied to you eternally. Maria might have gone to him and asked for him to explain himself and tell her what he wanted of her, but it was too late. There was the city of Boston and beyond were the green hills of the second Essex County.

This was where fate had led her.

PART TWO Talisman

1680 I.

Summertime in Massachusetts was sticky with heat and plagued by thunderstorms, and August was the worst of it. Even a weather witch could do little here when faced with the oddities of nature. Occasionally, hailstones as big as a man’s hand would fall with a noisy splatter, pelting against roofs and cobbled walkways. The streets ran with waste, and temperatures rose until people were unable to sleep at night. Overheated men roamed the city, courting trouble; proper women slept without a stitch of clothing and dreamed of lakes and streams, often waking with their hair wringing wet and pools of water mysteriously appearing on the wooden floor beneath their beds.

Yet, despite the troubles the season brought, every soul in the colony agreed that summer was far too short. No one wished for a New England winter. Winter was severe in every acre of this region, bleak and much more fierce than winters in England, so cold that harbors froze solid. There were those who believed this new country was too frigid for Englishmen, many of whom perished in blizzards, freezing in their own beds. The native people vowed that every ten years there was no winter, but that the years in between made up for that blessed time. It was a land of extremes and there seemed to be more of everything here, both disaster and promise, and mothers whispered that was the cause that there were so many twins in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, for all here was doubled, even human life.

The land itself was huge, endless, some people vowed, with uncharted territories of wilderness said to be overrun by beasts and natives that the settlers had betrayed and now feared. Essex County itself was large, with many towns and villages. Until Maria could discover where John Hathorne was, she would remain in Boston, boarding near School Street, where the first public school, Boston Latin, had opened in 1635. As always, she kept the window open for Cadin, so that he might come and go as he pleased. He continued to bring gifts for Maria, from every neighborhood in Boston. Bullets, fishhooks, a blue pearl, scallop shells, colored glass, a key that seemed to fit any door. The crow perched in the rafters of her room, but at night he seemed to know that she was lonely, for he slept beside her, making a nest in the blanket, lulling her to sleep with a clacking sound. Several of Cadin’s feathers had turned white by this time, and Maria worried over him, although crows could easily live to be twenty, and in rare cases, such creatures had been known to survive for thirty or more years. Do not leave me, she whispered to the crow, the same words Samuel Dias had so often said in his sleep, not that she would think of that, or of him, or consider what he had meant to her.

There was a teahouse in her lodgings, and in exchange for room and board, Maria was employed as a cook. She knew the basics of Hannah’s simple cookery, and she quickly learned the American specialties favored by their customers. Odd as these dishes were to her palate, she soon grew accustomed to the strange food she ladled out each evening. Cod and mashed potatoes, baked beans that had been soaked in cold water overnight and were then cooked for hours with salt pork, stewed pumpkins, yellow and green native squashes, pot pies of every sort, boiled clams, cherry and plum puddings, as well as a dish known as Indian pudding, a great favorite of Faith’s, for it was a heavenly mixture of scalded milk, Indian meal, molasses, cinnamon, and ginger. Maria had learned to tell the difference in the fish she used; cod was good for boiling and had white stripes, and haddock was best for frying and had black stripes. On Tuesdays she baked Shrewsbury cakes, buttery and flavored with rosewater. On Saturdays there was bird’s nest pudding, made of cored apples and egg custard. Best of all were Sundays, when she fixed apple fritters, battered apples fried and coated with sugar and cider, or on special occasions, an apple pie, Faith’s favorite. For those who had a taste for tart desserts there were slices of cranberry spice pie flavored with nutmeg and cinnamon, or hard gingerbread, which kept well for weeks. Courage Tea was always called for, especially when a woman had a difficult decision before her or when the right words could not be found although they needed to be said.

Every morning Maria made her daughter a breakfast of gruel, oats settled in cold water, boiled with raisins, sugar, and a pinch of salt and nutmeg. Faith was an early walker, and by the summer’s end she often toddled about from table to table, with her favorite poppet in hand. Maria laughed to think that her doll had been sewn by a sailor who had fought battles at sea and thought nothing of engaging in bloodshed. She was reminded of Samuel’s charm and his open smile, and his reckless brand of self-confidence that had made her laugh out loud, for in his opinion, there was nothing he could not do. She looked at the poppet and thought perhaps this was true. Sailors had endless time at sea, hours in which they took up what were ordinarily considered the female arts. They fashioned extraordinary boxes decorated with shells, knit scarves, learned to sew.

Maria recalled the times she had slept beside Samuel when he was burning with fever, and closer to death than she’d let on. She still missed their intimacy. All that talk, all those stories, were like a river she had dived into. She told herself it was only natural to think of him, for they had held each other, and had once or twice done more. But perhaps her thoughts were drawn to him because she had saved him and her connection to him was not unlike someone who had rescued a dog from an icy pond or a bird from a tangle of thickets, nothing more.

Faith often called out for the sailor, puzzled by the fact that he was no longer in their lives. Maria would then shake her head. “He’s out at sea,” she’d tell the baby. When the child would not stop calling Gogo, Maria brought her to the wharf. She gestured to the harbor and the waves beyond. “That’s where he is,” she told her daughter. “He’s gone.”

Secrets were hard to keep, even in Boston, and word of Maria’s talents soon spread through the city, with each client telling the next her address. These referrals were knots in a rope, buds on a tree, birds that sang to summon others who might need a tonic or a cure. Soon a line of women waited at the back door after dark, their shawls drawn over their heads, for no one wished to be recognized if a neighbor happened to pass by. Some called Maria Owens a healer, others said she was a witch. Those who feared magic came for her help anyway, regardless of what their fathers or husbands might say had they known their daughters and wives had come to a woman who was an expert in the Nameless Art. The ill, the old, the lovesick, the brokenhearted, the abandoned, the hopeful, the cursed, the fevered, the fallen, all arrived after dark, when the streets were empty, and the harbor quiet, and rats ruled the city. As always, most came for love. Maria wasn’t surprised, for this had been true in Devotion Field, and Hannah had always said lovesickness afflicted most of those who came to her door. In many cases a simple cure would do. The most reliable love potions were the ones Maria had learned watching from a corner as Hannah worked her magic. A woman could plant an onion and keep it on her windowsill; she could write her own name and her intended’s on a white candle and burn it without ever extinguishing the flame; she could braid a strand of her own hair with her beloved’s and keep it under her pillow. When the eight lesser charms had been tried and had met with failure, Maria turned to the Ninth, which did no harm and could not force love, but instead gently invited it to walk through the door.

Love Potion #9

9 oz. red wine

9 basil leaves

9 rose petals

9 cloves

9 apple seeds

9 anise seeds