Page 3 of The Witches of Cambridge

The Korean War had begun in June, and Ethel and Julius Rosenberg had been arrested as Communist spies amid a Russia panic. Senator Joseph McCarthy, who persecuted left-wing intellectuals and artists, ignored First Amendment rights as he searched for traitors and Communists. If you were a free spirit, an artist, a liberal, a writer, you were in jeopardy; if you believed in magic, if you were different, if you spoke your mind, if you loved someone you weren’t supposed to, they would come after you. They used spectral evidence in courtrooms, evidence that was nothing more than gossip and hearsay, just as they had in Salem three centuries earlier. Books were removed from libraries, actors were blacklisted, women had no power over their own bodies. The government was especially suspicious of the city of Cambridge, home to poets and professors, known for progressive thought ever since the first witch of Cambridge had made the city safe for their kind. But safety lasted only so long, and every witch needed to remember the past as she walked into her own future, for what had been could come again.

In the days after their grandmother’s passing, Lauren spent even more time in the family’s vast library of ancient manuscripts. She felt as bitter as she was hurt, as angry as she was lost. Now that Lillian Bell wasn’t there to guide her, Lauren didn’t have to pretend to be on the healing path that had been set out for her, and she certainly didn’t have to hide the fact that she was drawn to the dark side. She felt like a creature who was in a cocoon, about to transform into a different sort of being. After her parents’ deaths she had studied books that would lead her onto the left-handed path of magic. She read The True Black Magic, also known as The Secret of Secrets, a book so precious the only other copy could be found in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and she did her best to decipher a manuscript known as The Key of Solomon, a mysterious text written by Jewish magicians on parchment so fragile it was kept under lock and key to ensure the pages wouldn’t disintegrate into ash. There was also a series of French grimoires with vibrant emerald-colored covers in a shade called Paris green, dyed with copper acetoarsenite, a substance so toxic readers needed to wear gloves, for one could easily be poisoned by even the briefest contact. Inside there were recipes for elixirs and potions, along with dozens of love spells.

Each one was a textbook for the practical uses of dark intentions. How to construct a wax revenge figure to bury outside your enemy’s door, how to set up a shield of protection with herbs and enchantments, how to escape from prisons, how to untie ropes, how to avoid love at all costs. Several of the books in the family’s private library were so rare that many academics and practitioners would be shocked to discover they were stored in Cambridge. The History of Magic, by Eliphas Levi, and the Liber Maleficarum, a book of black magic and misdeeds, written in a language no one had yet managed to decipher. The power within the pages of these books was far deeper and more mysterious than anyone might have imagined, and there were times when Lauren became so ill after reading them, the only cure was an elixir of vinegar and salt that she drank in order to make herself vomit so she could rid herself of what she’d just read.

There was a family grimoire of spells and enchantments that was so thick it was difficult to carry, but Lauren wanted something else. Something that belonged to her. She went to Bob Slate’s stationery store in Harvard Square, opened in 1930, and bought a notebook so she might have a grimoire all her own, black, of course, for a grimoire was often called the Black Book. She wrote what she felt and who she was.

I buried my heart beneath a tall tree. I could visit it, but nothing more. In that way I was free to do as I pleased. I never had to feel anything ever again.

Lionel usually avoided bars in Harvard Square, many of which allowed only male customers entry and were frequented by beer-drinking students who threw darts or wagered on football games. Instead, he went to a club called Boston Midtown Rendezvous, but like most bars in Park Square and Scollay Square, the Midtown was watched by the police, often resulting in customers being hauled off to jail if they didn’t have a ten or a twenty to pay off the arresting policeman. Same-sex dancing was outlawed in the Commonwealth, but that rule wasn’t adhered to behind closed doors. There was the waltz, the tango, and best of all, slow dances that lasted for hours, when kisses were both given and received not only in dark corners but right out there on the dance floor.

Just before the police raided, a secret bell would be rung at the front desk, allowing everyone to change partners, so that women were dancing with men before the authorities arrived. So far Lionel had been able to talk his way out of any awkward situations when the police burst into a club, making certain to keep a good amount of cash in his wallet. He would then find his way to a pay phone on a random street corner and call Lauren to come pick him up.

“Find what you’re looking for?” she would always say as he clambered into their grandmother’s old Jeep at the end of the night. She was always surprised by the way in which he could be his truest self, even when it was dangerous to do so. They had gone in opposite directions. Lauren with a heart that she insisted felt nothing. Lionel with a heart that reminded him of who he was at all times. He was someone who believed in love: it healed, it created, it led you to the path you were meant to walk.

Take this twenty, look the other way, what do you care? What is it your business? Did you never want to kiss someone, to steal a few hours, to dance all night?

“Almost,” Lionel would answer. “But not quite.”

“Oh, give up,” Lauren told him. “You’re better off on your own.”

Boys at school had often fallen head over heels in love with Lauren, but not a single one had ever held her interest, and sex certainly hadn’t met her expectations. She had wanted to drown in it, to leave this world behind while held in someone’s arms, but time and time again she found herself desperately bored. She preferred to be in a library, lost in a book.

“People like us shouldn’t ever fall in love,” she told her brother. “We have better things to do with our time.”

“I don’t think I can avoid it,” Lionel said as Lauren sped away. “And I’m not sure I would want to.”

Lionel had the sight, possessing the ability to see into the future. What was to come didn’t present itself to him fully formed, though; instead, it was like spying clouds in the sky, transparent images you could miss if you didn’t look carefully. A kiss, a door flung open, a bower of green leaves, a book filling up word by word, a small dark painting in shades of blue, a man in the shadows who hid who he was but was waiting all the same. Lionel already knew that love would find him; it would follow him home and knock down all the doors. As for his sister, he remembered what Lauren had forgotten. She had a huge heart. It hadn’t been carried off by blackbirds or frozen to ice. It just happened to be broken. She could fight it all she wanted, Lionel knew what he saw, and he knew what her future would bring.

Love was always the answer.