Page 52 of Magic Lessons

“I know what people are capable of in Essex County. I know what they did to me.”

“But this is her fate, not yours. She has to cross through hell to come out on the other side. Otherwise she will be trapped in her own darkness.”

Maria shook her head. She held back tears that burned her.

“There’s only one way for you to help,” Catherine told her. “The first and second rules combined.”

Maria saw then that Catherine was older than she appeared to be, older than any mortal should be. Women in the Durant family lived too long, and in the end lost everyone they had ever loved. That was why Catherine had come to New York, to begin anew. She was grateful to Faith for invoking the Tenth and giving her a new life with Finney, a good and decent man. She would now return the favor and help Maria win her daughter back from the dark side.

“If you want your daughter, save someone. That’s the way to win back her life. Wait and the chance will come to you. When it does, don’t let it pass you by.”

For weeks Maria looked out the window, barely able to eat or sleep. Days passed and then one bright morning a minister’s wife came to Maiden Lane. Catherine had vowed that a sign would appear and now it had arrived at her door. Maria could feel her caller’s sorrow; another grieving mother, one she must help at all costs. The woman was the English wife of a well-known Dutch minister who introduced herself as Hannah Dekker. As soon as Maria heard that the stranger had the name of her beloved adopted mother, she was certain this stranger was the woman who would lead her to her daughter’s rescue.

You receive what you give threefold. Save someone else’s daughter and you’ll rescue your own.

Hannah Dekker had searched out Maria Owens in desperation. Her daughter was in the throes of a fever that had grown worse with every passing day; there seemed nothing to do but watch the poor child sink more deeply into sickness and pain. The family’s dear friend, Dr. Joost van der Berg, an esteemed elder with the Dutch Reformed Church and a physician, had found no success in fighting her affliction. He had given the girl an elixir made of crushed bones collected from crypts, thought to heal bone pain, but to no effect. If anything, the girl grew weaker.

Hannah Dekker had overheard furtive conversations about Maria Owens that took place among women when they thought no one could overhear. She didn’t believe in witchcraft and had no experience with the Nameless Art, but when there was nothing left to try it could not hurt to believe in something, however preposterous it might seem. Hannah made it clear that she was willing to pay any price for a cure.

“When your daughter is well again you can decide what it’s worth,” Maria said as she gathered her cape and her black bag of herbs. She would have her payment, but it wouldn’t be silver or gold. Save a life, win a life. She knew of Jonas Dekker by reputation; he was prominent and well respected within both the Dutch and British communities, and had lived in Boston, but was more comfortable in New York, among more freethinking individuals.

Seeing as the girl was too ill to leave her bed, Maria would call at the Dekkers’ home, something she rarely did. When she arrived, the family’s lavish mansion appeared to be a house in mourning with the damask curtains drawn and the candles and lanterns snuffed out. Maria was led upstairs by a servant, then asked to wait in the dim hall. Dutch paintings lined the wood-paneled walls and hand-knotted French carpets could be found on every floor. All the same, wealth was no protection from sorrow, and when Maria entered the bedchamber she felt great compassion for the patient, a pale ten-year-old girl named Anneke, who writhed in pain. Anneke was in a fever, her bedclothes drenched, her delicate face set in an expression of agony. The girl’s mother could not look at her without bursting into tears. They had tried leaching and cupping, none of it effective, and Dr. van der Berg had been stymied in his diagnosis, for he was most familiar with diseases of the Netherlands and New York and the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and this girl was in the grips of a tropical disease. Maria immediately recognized the illness as breakbone fever, so common in the West Indies. The family had been to Aruba to visit relatives, and when questioned closely, Hannah recounted that the children had often been at the shore, where mosquitoes clouded the sky on hot summer evenings.

Maria had brought along a selection of dried and fresh herbs, including two it was clear the girl needed: dried blue violets as a tincture for mouth sores and linden root and yarrow for a racing heart, for the child’s heart was pounding so hard she kept her hands on her chest, frightened her heart would fly out from her body. Fortunately, Maria kept Tawa-tawa at hand, and grew it in pots on her windowsill, ready if Samuel Dias should return with a recurrence of the disease, though it seemed unlikely he would ever come back, for she hadn’t received a single letter from him since his departure.

The Dekker girl’s illness was far worse than Samuel’s. She had begun to bleed internally, and when she cried her tears were red. There were purple bruises blooming along her arms and legs; she could barely stand to be touched without crying out. She could not open her eyes when asked to do so, for she was too weak. Maria decided she would stay beside her patient until there was some improvement. On her way via a small corridor to the kitchen that was attached to the house, she passed a room that was filled with books. She went inside and stood at the desk. The minister had been working on a letter, open on his desk.

Too much is attributed to the devil and the witch or sorcery.

The minister was well acquainted with the Mathers, a family that had been instrumental in the witch trials, whose beliefs Dekker had come to believe were ridiculous opinions for godly, rational men. Maria thought over the minister’s writings as she soaked clean rags in cold water and vinegar to bring down the girl’s fever and then asked the cook to begin a fish bone broth. She boiled water to make Tawa-tawa tea for her patient and Courage Tea for herself. There was a reason fate had led her here, and she wished to be strong enough not to back down from what would come next. She was fighting darkness, which arose when it was least expected, in this case in the heart of a young girl, her own daughter.

Though the minister’s wife did not believe in magic, she said nothing when Maria poured a line of salt along the window ledge and hung the brass bell above the door, or when she dressed the child in a clean blue nightdress. Maria rubbed rosemary-infused oil over Anneke’s aching bones before spooning Tawa-tawa tea between her parched lips. The poor child had been speaking to herself in a fever; she wished to be put out of her misery and no longer had the will to live. Hannah sat on a chair beside the bed, quietly weeping until Maria whispered they must show the girl they had faith in her recovery. She then went to tend to the child.

“We will rid you of misery and you will live until you’re a very old woman with white hair,” Maria assured Anneke. But you will never be a child again, she thought, not after such pain. You will be a person of compassion, who will be unable to walk past another’s suffering without doing your best to aid them. She crooned Hannah Owens’ song, the one that had comforted her when she was a babe, and that she had then sung to Faith on board the Queen Esther and in the woods of Essex County. Anneke begged for her to sing it again and again, and Maria was happy to comply, for the song always reminded her of home.

The water is wide, I cannot get o’er it

And neither have I wings to fly

Give me a boat that shall carry two

And I shall row, my Love and I.

When Cockle Shells turn Silver bells

And mussels grow on every tree,

When frost and snow shall warm us all,

Then shall my love prove true to me.

The minister heard the tune and came to stand in the doorway of the bedchamber, dismayed by the old folk song as he stood watching the stranger care for his daughter. It was a song sung by the cunning folk, people he held in low esteem. He watched as Maria washed the child’s matted hair in a bowl with warm water and black soap that had a distinctive sweet scent. Rose and rosemary, sage and lavender. Maria had a beautiful, clear voice, and Anneke, who had tossed and turned in the throes of pain, at last lay quietly, taken up by the song. Her improvement was so quick it appeared that magic was at work, had there been such a thing, for the minister didn’t believe in enchantments, only in the ignorance of those who had faith in sorcery. Maria did not leave Anneke’s side, remaining by her bed, where she hemmed the girl’s nightdresses with blue thread.

The minister drew his wife into the hallway. “We don’t know a thing about this woman you’ve brought here. Who’s to say she won’t poison our daughter with her potions?”

Hannah Dekker went to her knees and begged her husband to allow Maria Owens to continue to treat Anneke. When he saw how distraught his wife was, the minister had no choice but to agree. Still, when he returned to the room later that night he found that Maria was burning a white candle onto which she had carved the name of the disease, the name of the child, and the date. He was ill at ease, and insisted on tasting the tea Maria was feeding the child; once he had, the bitterness of the drink worried him. “Will this not make her more ill?” he asked.

“I know breakbone fever and you either will trust me to do my best, or I can assure you, your girl will not live.”