15 Birdie
BIRDIE
After a delicious dinner of Alora Poole’s homemade chili served with thick slices of Saito’s aged cheddar on a French baguette, Pickles and I snuggle in on the loveseat with a bowl of popcorn.
My laptop is open, perched on a pillow, old battery humming.
I’ve tossed one of Phoebe’s crocheted blankets over my legs, a ward against his needle-sharp claws.
This cat only knows how to knead biscuits one way: violently.
I hoped my little excursion to go meet Howe today would calm my anxiety, not give me all new reasons to be anxious. Why is Jasper so upset with Howe? What is Howe really looking for up in those woods? Full of questions, I turn to research for answers.
“Everything on this island seems to circle back to witchcraft,” I say at the cat.
He just purrs, flexing his claws against the blanket as he kneads my calf.
I adjust the tilt of my laptop screen, scrolling through another article with a flick of my finger. “Okay, so what do we know,” I reason aloud. “We know that the first recorded case of an execution for witchcraft in Colonial America was in 1647 in Hartford, Massachusetts.”
1647. Most of Europe is still embroiled in the Thirty Years’ War.
Violent conflict ravages England and Scotland.
In Asia, Shah Jahan is busy building the Taj Mahal, while the new Tokugawa shogunate has officially closed Japan’s borders.
By the end of the century, we’ll discover electricity and universal gravitation.
Newton will define the laws of motion. We’ll invent telescopes and microscopes.
But plagues will still devastate. Wars will demolish.
And all the while, Christian fanatics will torture, burn, and execute free-thinking men and women as witches.
Here in America, it will take another forty years of gender persecution and religious suppression before the chaos and violence of the Salem Witch Trials reaches its peak.
I click back to the other open tab. According to Howe’s research, five women were persecuted and killed as witches here on Burr Island as early as 1637.
The evidence at this point reads more like lore.
I used the university’s library database and found an article published by Howe last year in American Archaeology.
In it, he cites several pieces of evidence attempting to triangulate the location of Homewood, the island’s mysterious first settlement.
The whole thing gives Lost Colony vibes. Roanoke was an island too, right? What is it with islands and disappearing settlements?
Howe never got far with his theories. It was all purely academic . . . until that big storm hit the island earlier this year. All that tedious archival research and in the end, it was a bit of flooding that finally revealed the site. Now it’s just a matter of excavating what nature uncovered.
But what does Howe hope to find at Homewood? So far, it’s just a few buildings and some farm equipment. What evidence could possibly help prove his theory that these women were killed as witches?
I may not be able to answer that question yet, but I think I know why Jasper might want him stopped. While I was waiting for my chili to heat in the microwave, I found a list of the victims printed in a book on New England witch trials. My heart skipped a beat as I read the names:
Mathilde Blake, midwife
Charity Ames, midwife
Sybil Hastings, farmer’s wife
Alice Dent, tanner’s wife
Be-Good Prescott, teacher
It was that last name that caught my eye. Be-Good Prescott. I don’t have to ask to see Jasper’s family tree to make the connection. He’s a descendant of one of the victims. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say he’s a direct descendant.
And look, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Jasper doesn’t care about family history.
Maybe he’s just mad that Howe is digging up an owl’s mating tree.
But in my two short days on this island, I get the feeling that history is very important to these people.
At dinner on Friday, they all spoke about roots and ancestry.
Even wandering the downtown with Pickles, the plaques are everywhere.
Preserving the past. Protecting what was.
In suddenly finding Homewood, Howe wants to go digging deeper into Jasper’s past. Now he’s got the financial backing of a private research consortium. What does Jasper have? Clearly, he’s trying to fight this. I think he’s losing.
And now I’m officially on the side fighting against him . . .
I stroke the cat’s silky fur, mind humming.
It’s easy to forget that history is a living thing.
When the artifacts we unearth are old enough, you can feel detached, wholly objective.
And the stories we historians weave can sometimes read like fiction.
It was that ability to tell stories that first drew me to history as a discipline.
I love stepping into a room and imagining the lives lived in it, or picking up a piece of jewelry and painting pictures in my mind of who wore it and where.
I feel the same heart beating in Ezra Howe.
He’s a dreamer, a teller of tales. But for Jasper and the other families, there’s nothing exciting about this excavation project.
He doesn’t share our zeal for discovery.
For him, Homewood is a sacred space. A place of mourning.
A reminder of persecution, violence, and death.
The Witches of Burr Island . . .
I sigh, setting aside my bowl of popcorn.
I don’t for one second believe any of those women were actually witches.
Witch trials were never about curtailing occult practices.
In most cases, older women were targeted for being widows with access to money, businesses, and coveted land.
It’s a tale as old as time: Kill the woman to take her shit.
Who was Mathilde Blake? Why was she a threat to the other settlers?
What was Be-Good Prescott teaching in her little island school?
Answers to these questions interest me far more than proving how and when they died.
I want to know how they lived. Not as witches, but as women.
As mothers and lovers, neighbors, farmers, midwives.
What were their lives like here? And why did their neighbors want them dead?
Maybe it’s a good thing I arrived when I did.
Maybe I can help redirect some of Howe’s energy for the project.
If Jasper knows we mean to honor his ancestor’s life and legacy, not merely sensationalize the manner of her death, he might be more accepting of the work. Perhaps I can reason with them both—
“Ouch!” I shriek as Pickles digs all his claws into my thighs through the blanket. Standing tall, he arches his back and hisses at the door. “Get off, you little shit.”
I shoo him off my lap and he races over to the door, still growling and snarling. Tension coils up my spine as I take in his bottlebrush tail. “Kitty, what’s wrong?”
Something’s out there. He doesn’t have this reaction when it’s Jasper.
Slapping my laptop shut, I pause and listen for movement out on the landing. From the glow of the streetlamp, I can see it’s lightly raining. I rise slowly to my feet, the blanket slipping from my legs to the floor. “Pickles? What is it?”
Down in the alley, someone shouts.
Pickles snarls again, scratching at the door.
I hurry over in my bare feet and scoop him up, tucking him under my arm.
Twisting the lock, I open the door a crack and peek out.
Damn it, I don’t have my contacts in. I’m nearsighted, so everything in the alley looks a little fuzzy, especially in the rain.
Pickles squirms under my arm, digging his claws into my hip. “Ouch—stop—”
“Let go,” shouts a deep voice down in the alley.
Okay, that was definitely Jasper. I didn’t even know he was still here. The shop closed hours ago. He’s arguing with someone down there.
Twice in one day? This man makes enemies quick.
Pickles growls, still fighting my hold. I toss him onto the nearest kitchen chair and slip outside, shutting the door behind me. I move over to the railing and—
Oh, shit. Jasper is on the ground! I see his boots at the edge of the little circle of light cast by the bulb hanging over the shop’s side door. I follow the boots up his legs to where he lies half-hidden in the shadows. Someone hunches over him. It looks like they’re choking him!
I lean over the metal railing, heart beating wildly. “Hey, stop!”
His attacker stiffens. He’s wearing a black hood pulled low over his face, but I feel the moment his eyes lock on me. He shudders, still holding tight to Jasper. It’s only then I notice his hands. They stick out against the black of his long sleeves. Are those skeleton gloves? God, what a creep.
The misting rain slicks my torso and bare arms, but that’s not the reason I shiver. “Let him go!”
The attacker flinches, like my words are a physical blow. Then he makes a weird rasping sound. Is he coughing? Choking? What the hell is happening? Beneath him on the ground, Jasper twitches. He’s clearly hurt.
“I said get off him,” I shriek, panic rising. I have no weapon, nothing to fight this guy off. But I can’t just leave Jasper down there.
Holding my gaze, the attacker slowly rises. He slinks back into the deepest part of the shadowed wall. Without my contacts in, he may as well have just gone invisible. But I know he hasn’t left. I feel him. He stands there, watching me. Heavy and searching, his stare all but strips me naked.
I point to where I think he stands. “Get the hell out of here, you creep! Before I call the cops!”
He slinks back farther, but he doesn’t run away. Does he want to get caught? Or is he just waiting for me to come down the stairs?
Fight or flight, Birdie. Make a move.