Mead stared at her for several seconds without speaking, and then he chuckled. It had the effect of uncorking a bottle. The silence broke, and laughter erupted all around her. The bristly student sitting near Quinn who had spoken so crudely about the role of Cassandra chortled loudly, his crooked teeth opened wide. “It may be a public institution, young lady,” Mead said, once the laughter had died down somewhat, “but it is open and free to allmen. I should have thought”—he waved his arm around the room—“that this was obvious. Indeed, the fact appears to have penetrated even your thick skull, since it seems that you have, in a rather unconvincing way, attempted to conceal your feminineweaknessesin masculine garb.” He pronounced “weaknesses” with unmistakable emphasis.
This was met with more chuckles, and they were harsher now—less ridiculing and more predatory. I did not like this, and I sent her a strong surge of bolstering strength. She needed to leave at once. Quinn waited until the laughter had passed. “None of the rules of the university forbid the admission of women,” she said, keeping her eyes trained on Mead, “and the laws of the commonwealth don’t bar them either.”
Mead narrowed his eyes, drawing his owlish eyebrows down until they almost met the sallow skin of his cheeks. “What is your name, young lady?”
An ordinary person would have considered the wisdom of giving a false name or not giving a name at all. But Quinn merely paused to wait for silence, as some in the room jeeringly echoed Mead’s question. I believe this was the moment when I first felt a spark of affection for Quinn: her chin held high, her eyes hard and unyielding, she was the very picture of resistance. It warmed my heart.
“My name,” she began evenly, “is Clem—”
“Clementine Quinn, daughter of Robert and Lydia Quinn, and my cousin.” It was Simeon Trench who had interrupted her in acid tones.
Under ordinary circumstances I would have enjoyed watching Simeon worked up into such a lather of indignant fury, his reddened face apparently on the verge of bursting from the pressure of his injured pride. In these circumstances, however, I feared for the person who had provoked such fury. His cousin. Hiscousin! “This isunconscionable, Clementine,” Simeon hissed.
Clementine didn’t reply. She considered him dispassionately for a moment before returning her attention to Mead.
The students who had first responded with stunned silence to Simeon’s declaration now began to murmur with growing outrage, and I found it entirely possible that one or several of them would seize the occasion to perform some malicious enchantment. Only the presence of a senior professor kept them in check. Mead was making a brief penciled note on his papers, and now he frowned. “You will be receiving a summons, Miss Quinn, and I suggest that you do not ignore it. And now”—he gestured toward the door—“you may go.”
“Very well,” Clementine replied coolly. “I look forward to demonstrating that Commonwealth is open to all.”
With unhurried movements, she dropped her tokens and notebook into her satchel. The entire room seemed to hold its breath. Simeon was still staring at Clementine with undisguised rage, and now his mood had contaminated every man in the room. I couldfeelthe weight of the hostility against her and the slim ribbon of decorum held in place by Mead’s cold stare. And yet, somehow, Clementine seemed completely calm, as if she had all the time in the world. She walked carefully through the desksuntil she reached the door. In the deserted hallway, she replaced the fox pin and the spectacles.
Outside, she walked steadily down the stone steps and onto the brick walkway that cut across the green toward the Brig. She didn’t look back at the building where her studies of enchantment had so unexpectedly come to an end.
Sam: Of Marvels
Reducir: One of the oldest known castings, and adaptable to many uses. It may lessen the size of a thing, it may gather several things in one space, and it may, with sufficient dead worth, eliminate a thing entirely. It is useful for cleaning.
—Euphemia Parra,Encantos de palabra(translation mine)
Saddle Street, 1877
This is, assuredly, Clementine’s story. But I cannot aptly explain how I came to be part of it without telling you a bit more about myself: enough so that you can appreciate the ties that bound us, me and Clem, even across the great divide of life and death.
You see, Clementine was not the only one who disguised herself in order to study enchantment. Though she did not know it, she was following in my footsteps. To understand how alike we were, how much we were brought together not just by a common enemy but by a common strategy, I will ask you to suffer through a little of my own story—I promise I will not diverge for long.
I came to Salem in 1877 with my parents and my older brother. I was nine—old enough to remember the island we came from, a place where the air was always heavy and scented, the insects asserted their unchallenged dominion inside and out, and the hurricanes were like a god’s tantrums, terrible and devastating and arbitrary. We left Havana in the wake of a hurricane that ruined the season’s crops. My father, who had already braved the ocean once to leave Yucatán for Havana, believed the long journey to New England would be less perilous than the ceaseless warfarein Havana. After he established us safely in a small wooden house on Saddle Street, he succumbed to a pernicious illness that stole him away by degrees. Five months after we’d arrived in Salem, he departed the world of the living and left us alone, bereft. I will pass over those dreadful days. You have no need to hear about them, and I have no wish to relive them.
Saddle Street took us in. For many years I had little conception of Salem beyond it, much less Boston. I thought the entire city of Salem consisted of Africans, islanders like us, some French Canadians, and many Irish. My mother, a gifted seamstress and lacemaker, found employment almost instantly. Her fine needle soon landed her customers from far beyond modest Saddle Street, and our small household flourished.
I remember the first time I saw the marvels of enchantment with my own eyes. It’s not that there were no enchanters in Havana, but their acts were designed to assist and protect, to bolster and heal, and they often did so invisibly. They didn’t aim to impress and entertain. A child, lamentably, is far more impressed by showmanship than by the slow, steady work of good care. It must have been a year or so after we settled in Saddle Street. I had walked with my brother, Cristóbal, to a plot of land nearby that made perfect grounds for our ballgames. Sometimes men tethered their horses to the fence along one side and took their ease, talking and resting. A few were there that day, and one I didn’t recognize: short, bearded, wearing a black coat and a costly hat. His manner was cheerful and talkative; though he clearly lived somewhere finer than Saddle Street, he could pass for a neighbor.
In the midst of our game with a few other boys, Cris hit the ball so hard that it flew into the air and toward the men at the edge of the lot. We watched, horrified and helpless, shouting warnings that went unheeded, until the flying ball hit itsunintended target: the stranger’s hat. He picked up the hat and the ball, his face unreadable. The men around him said nothing. Then he untied his horse, placed the ball in the animal’s mouth, and spoke in its ear.
Dumbly, we observed the approach of the stranger’s horse. It trailed its reins and took measured steps, its slow gait seeming to radiate disapproval. When it reached us, the horse dropped the ball. Then it drew back its thick lips and spoke. “Next time try hitting his brainless head.”
We must have made a pretty picture, all us boys standing there dumbfounded while the horse plodded back to its master. For a moment I truly believed that horses could talk, and my head spun with readjustments, known things upended and new possibilities bursting like firecrackers. Then we heard their laughter, and my mind began to wonder what my eyes had seen, and by and by I realized that what I had just witnessed was enchantment.
We took up our ballgame again for a little while longer. When we were done, the stranger was still there, and I couldn’t help myself—I walked over to him. “How did you make your horse speak, sir?”
Up close, I could see that he was a man full of lively mischief. Red-nosed, with a scraggly beard and eyes a little pink from frequent drink. “Oh, I was a grand enchanter once,” he said to me wryly. “I used my talents to make a fortune, which I promptly lost in the most foolish pursuit of vanities.”
I was a little in awe of him. “Why did you do that?”
He smiled at me without any bitterness at all. “Because even the most brilliant man can be as dense as a brick. And I was.”
“I’m sorry to hear it, sir,” I said solemnly.
He shrugged, and his eyes twinkled a little. “My aims are different now. Before, I wanted to make a fortune and master theworld. Now, I merely seek to be amusing.” He gestured toward his horse. “A horse making fun of its master. Now that’s funny.” He chuckled to himself. “I could make every pot and pan in your kitchen talk, you know.”
