THE FIRST WITCH OF CAMBRIDGE #2
As I was ushered out the back entrance, one of the Mathers’ housemaids came rushing after me. “She wanted you to have this,” she said, looking nervous.
The girl held out an onyx necklace, a strand of black beads with a hanging pendant.
I recognized it as the one Mistress Mather had been wearing when she rescued me from prison.
She never went a day without wearing it and kept it beneath her clothing as if it were a personal amulet.
I looped the necklace around my throat even though the stones were cold.
The housemaid was even more nervous when we noticed Cotton Mather watching us.
I should have remembered what my own mother had told me.
Cross a river once, and you will likely be fine.
Cross the same river twice, and there may be danger.
I wasn’t aware that left-handed magic could follow you no matter where you went.
It could reach across rivers, and counties, and worlds.
Cotton Mather had the darkest eyes and a gaze that could bore right through you if you didn’t know how to protect yourself, if you didn’t carry amulets and apple seeds to drive away evil, if you thought a river could divide you, if you believed that death ended the past and that all you had to do was turn away and you would be free.
As I left, I felt the eye that I always carried for protection burning in its tin.
The witch-hunter’s eye was my amulet of protection, and I’d kept it even when he was sent to prison.
I hoped it would save me from Cotton Mather’s ill intentions, for he could hold a fire in his hands, he could make branches fall from the trees, he could watch an innocent woman hang and not feel anything at all.
Hyacinth and I made our way to the ferry, and when we arrived on the other side, I stood among the reeds and threw a curse across the river, ensuring that Cotton Mather would never be the president of either Harvard or Yale.
The light was fading, and I was glad to return to Cambridge with my daughter.
I had no idea that on that day of sorrow for my mistress, I had been cursed as well.
The birds in the marsh arose all at once, as if they had agreed there were better places to be than Cambridge, but not for me.
Hyacinth sat before me, and I ran my horse fast, too fast probably.
When we reached the Common, I didn’t see the iron wire stretched out before us from tree to tree.
When Duke crashed to the ground, all I could think of was my daughter.
I held her tight as we tumbled down, pushing her away so that my horse would not fall upon her.
He broke his leg when he thundered down, and I was so shocked I was slow to rise.
Hyacinth had landed beneath a bramble bush, stunned and bruised.
That was when I saw him. Time had passed so quickly I hadn’t kept track of it, but now here it was, the time of vengeance.
I had forgotten the man with one eye, but he hadn’t forgotten me.
Tom Boyle had been released from prison.
His benefactor had paid his way out, and that man was Cotton Mather.
Both men had scores to settle with me. I hadn’t realized that all the while I kept the witch-hunter’s eye in the tin I carried, it had been watching me.
That was the reason Boyle could follow me so easily.
Once I was on the ground, the first thing he did was pin me down and rifle through my clothes while I tried to fight him off.
None of my spell work or chanting affected him.
I cried out when Boyle hit me, and my cheek turned black and bruised.
I tasted blood in my mouth, and when I spat it out it was black, and the grass grew tall in that place, as it always would.
Boyle found the tin, opened it, then plucked his eye out of its container.
“This is my only payment, for my task is a pleasure, even if Cotton Mather hadn’t paid me to follow you, though I took his offer to pay for my freedom from prison. In exchange I do his bidding.”
Tom Boyle shoved the eye back in the hollow socket, and it stayed in place, cloudier than the other, but with a piercing look.
He had my hands tied behind my back in an instant, and although I tried again to use incantations of destruction and of revenge, the words of magic all melted in my mouth.
That was when I realized the onyx necklace had been not a token from my mistress but a dark enchantment sent by Cotton Mather which he hoped would destroy me.