The Witches of New York

by Ami McKay

  Was she nervous?

  -.--….(Yes.)

  Was she frightened?

  -. --- (No.)

  She’d travelled to New York first as a child, holding fast to her mother’s hand and then, after her parents’ passing, once a year in the spring with Aunt Lydia by her side. This time, however, there’d be no frantic rush to find the perfect hat, no fretting over fumes from the train aggravating her aunt’s lungs, no worry about getting there and back in a day. This time she was going alone, and she was going to stay. Although she cared for her aunt and would miss her dearly, she relished the thought of being someplace Lydia wasn’t.

  Their relationship had been brought about by a vigorous strain of smallpox that’d swept through Albany in the summer of 1873. Beatrice, just shy of her tenth birthday, was the only person in her house to survive. Not long after her parents had died, the court had appointed her mother’s sister, Lydia Floss, to serve as Beatrice’s guardian “until such time as Miss Dunn is legally wed, or turns nineteen.” With quiet composure, Lydia had collected Beatrice’s belongings, then whisked the girl away to the Floss family homestead in Stony Point. “Nothing here but blue skies, green pastures and hard-working folk,” Lydia had told the girl. “I can’t remember the last time someone fell ill or came to any harm.” They’d lived there, just the two of them, in a house so large that even their shadows occasionally got lost.

  Beatrice was given proper clothes to wear, healthful food to eat, a roof over her head. Aunt Lydia, the beneficiary of her family’s estate, and a spinster by choice, had always shown Beatrice a great deal of interest and respect, and, when occasion called for it (on birthdays, at Christmastime, on the anniversary of her parents’ deaths), an appropriate amount of affection. Lydia had raised Beatrice in the way she wished she had been raised, by teaching the girl to pick up books because of a love of learning (rather than a desire for praise), to do good deeds because of an enduring belief in kindness (rather than a fear of God’s wrath). While the other girls in Stony Point were braiding one another’s hair and spreading schoolyard gossip, Beatrice had preferred to sit by the fire (or in summer, under a willow tree in the back garden), reading and making figures between her fingers with a loop of string—cat’s whiskers, cup-and-saucer, owl’s eyes, the witch’s broom. When girls her age began pairing off with young men at dances and church socials, Lydia had encouraged Beatrice to look beyond the altar by handing her tracts from teacher’s colleges and nursing schools, with words of encouragement scrawled in the margins.

  Fortune favours the prepared mind.

  Beauty seeks attention. Intelligence commands it.

  As an ardent follower of Miss Susan B. Anthony, Lydia believed the only path to a woman’s betterment was through making her own way. If that path led Beatrice away from Stony Point, then so be it.

  With that in mind, Beatrice had told Lydia of her plans over her aunt’s favourite breakfast (poached eggs, rosehip tea and toast with blackberry jam). Much to the girl’s surprise, Lydia hadn’t balked in the slightest. She hadn’t lectured her about the dangers of the city, or warned her about seducers and swindlers lurking around every corner. If Beatrice hadn’t known better, she might’ve thought Lydia was happy to see her go. In the end, her aunt had given her blessing in the best way she knew how. “According to Miss Anthony,” she’d said, “ ‘the girl who is able to earn her own living and pay her own way should be as happy as anybody on earth.’ There’s no match for the sweetness independence brings. Nothing would make me happier than to see you succeed.”

  Staring at the sky, Beatrice thought, Thirteen sleeps before my departure. How lucky am I? “Luck,” of course, according to her aunt, “is what happens when preparation and opportunity collide.” What then of magic, Beatrice wondered, of destiny, of kismet?

  She’d recently read an account of a strange charm being found by a farmhand in the rafters of a run-down cottage outside of Tarrytown where a witch was supposed to have lived. It’d been fashioned from the simplest of things—a length of string, a few ratty feathers and six stray hairs (probably from the witch’s head). Nine knots had been tied along it, to secure the feathers and hair. When a farmer’s wife from the next house over had been asked by a newspaper reporter if she’d ever seen the likes of such a thing before, she’d eagerly replied, “Yes, indeed I have! ’Tis a witch’s ladder, for healin’ the sick, protectin’ loved ones, cursin’ yer enemies or gettin’ what you wish. It contains some of the strongest magic there is. Once the spell’s complete, its magic will be stored in the charm forever. So long as the ladder remains whole, so too will the magic. There’s a rhyme that goes along with it, to help the spell set. Would ye like to hear it?”

  Taking three black feathers, a length of string and six strands of red hair from her own head, Beatrice began tying knots to secure her wish, reciting the farmwoman’s verse as she went.

  By knot of one, my spell’s begun.

  By knot of two, it will come true.

  By knot of three, so may it be.

  By knot of four, this power I store.

  By knot of five, my spell is alive.

  By knot of six, the spell I fix.

  By knot of seven, the future I’ll leaven.

  By knot of eight, my will be fate.

  By knot of nine, what’s done is mine!

  She hoped the farmer’s wife was right. She hoped the magic would prove true. She wanted to believe—in miracles, in fate and in witches too.

  Twelve days. (Thirteen sleeps.)

  Those averse to magic need not apply.

  The time between first and second sleep is neither slumber nor waking. Too much dark and your mind will stay at rest, too much light and your dreams will surely flee. Use this time wisely—for writing spells, summoning spirits, and most importantly, remembering your dreams. Queens have been crowned, schemes hatched, fortunes gained, demons defeated, lovers found—all from visions born in the stillness of the night. In dreams, our souls are given the eyes of Fate. Dreams must be encouraged by all possible means.

  —From the grimoire of Eleanor St. Clair

  Between Sleeps.

  ELEANOR ST. CLAIR was fast asleep—a pair of silver scissors tucked under her pillow, a sprig of lavender tied to the post of her bed. The scissors were for protection against curses and other dark magic; the lavender, to foster sweet dreams. As the clock in the shop below her moved through its hourly dance, gears clicking, pendulum ticking, hammer poised to strike, Eleanor stirred, but didn’t wake. The clock, as if it meant to take pity on the tired woman, slowed to a stop just shy of two. Adelaide Thom, Eleanor’s partner and friend, had forgotten to wind it again.

  Moonlight shone in the windows of the building where Eleanor slept. Nestled between Markowitz’s Bakery and the ticket office for the Erie Railroad, the unassuming storefront was easy to miss. The awning was faded, its crank frozen with rust. The door was in need of a fresh coat of paint. The sign above it, a simple placard with modest letters painted in cerulean, read: ST. CLAIR AND THOM, TEA AND SYMPATHY. EST. 1879. To most passersby, the place was neither remarkable nor inviting. To a select society of ladies who spoke the right words and asked the right questions, it was a place of whispered confessions and secret cures—a refuge run by women they could trust.

  The crippled awning and peeling paint were of no consequence to Eleanor, who saw no need to attract undue attention from zealots, skeptics or the law. Assisting women through their difficulties carried certain risks. A young female doctor from the Women’s Infirmary had been thrown in the Tombs by Anthony Comstock and his Society for the Suppression of Vice for fashioning pessaries from bits of sea sponge and silk floss (Distribution of Contraceptive Devices). A bookseller, who’d sold copies of Fruits of Philosophy: The Private Companion of Young Married People from behind his counter, had met a similar fate (Distribution of Obscene Literature). The abortionist Madame Restell, considered by some to be a saviour, by others a sinful hag, had slit her own throat to avoid two year
s of hard labour. Apothecaries no longer carried French safes or “preventative powders” for fear that Comstock would shutter their shops.

  Women who found themselves in trouble were left to their own devices, or worse yet, to quackery. Mail-order medicines under the guise of vegetable compounds, regulating elixirs and an assortment of pills (renovating, periodical, Catholic and lunar) promised to “restore female regularity, remove weakness of the stomach, dissolve unwanted uterine growths.” While clever language allowed their makers to avoid the long arm of Comstock, the packages in which their remedies were delivered could easily be intercepted and destroyed. Even when the item arrived safely and was used accordingly, there was no assurance a product would make good on its boasts. “Desperate times make for desperate women,” Adelaide had quipped. “And desperate women with rich husbands mean more money for us.”

  But Eleanor hadn’t gone into business with Adelaide for the money. In her eyes, their venture was more about duty than due. While Adelaide had been born a creature of the city, Eleanor had been born in a humble cottage on the banks of the Bronx River. Her mother, Madame Delphine St. Clair, was a keeper of spells, a gardien de sorts, so Eleanor had spent her childhood learning to embrace the traditions of her ancestors: growing herbs, keeping bees and mixing potions. She’d come from a long line of wise women that stretched back to the shores of Normandy and to the woman after whom she’d been named—who, in her mother’s words, “had been twice a queen as well as a witch.” Eleanor’s mother had also taught her to carefully guard her gifts. “Always needed, ever hunted,” was her motto—spoken each day before rising, written in the margins of her grimoire, carved into the wood of her daughter’s cradle beneath the family crest. She told Eleanor, “A shepherdess sees to the care and feeding of her flock, a seamstress sees to the cut of a lady’s dress. Witches see to things best sorted by magic—sorrows of the heart, troubles of the mind, regrets of the flesh. This is what we do. That is who you are.”

  Delphine had left Paris for New York in the spring of 1848 after yet another revolution had rocked France. Newly pregnant and alone, she’d settled in the cottage on the edge of her brother’s farm and waited for her husband (and her baby) to arrive. Eleanor was born late that December, but Madame St. Clair never saw her husband again. Her brother had kept her and her new baby fed by sharing any surplus he had from the farm, and she’d provided the rest of whatever she needed for herself and Eleanor by offering her services to the women of the surrounding countryside, dubbing her little home “l’Hermitage.”

  Once a month, she’d bundle Eleanor in blankets and paddle a little rowboat down the river to deliver bottles and jars of her concoctions to a handful of apothecaries in the city. Over the years Eleanor became as much apprentice as daughter, happy to learn all she could about tinctures, elixirs and the traditions of the “cunning folk.”

  For a time, she’d abandoned those ways, choosing to leave home and study at the Women’s Medical College in Manhattan, but when her mother had taken ill not quite a year into her studies, Eleanor had returned to l’Hermitage to care for her in her dying days. In the two years since Madame St. Clair’s passing, Eleanor hadn’t once considered going back to school. What she’d learned of modern medicine had only made it clear to her that the lessons her mother had taught her were the ones she held most dear. Honey infused with saffron, cinnamon and horny goat weed makes an effective aphrodisiac. A tonic of valerian, mugwort and poppy heads promises deep sleep and sweet dreams. A pastille containing liquorice, skullcap and chasteberry tames an aggressive lover’s lust. A mix of rose petals, lavender, lemon balm and hawthorn berries soothes a broken heart. Red clover, oatstraw, nettle and red raspberry ready a woman’s womb for child bearing. Tea brewed from tansy keeps a woman’s blood on course. Tansy failing, there are other herbs that can bring things around: black cohosh, milkweed, pennyroyal, oarweed, Queen Anne’s lace. Or, as her mother liked to sing, “Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme…” Whenever Eleanor was concocting a batch of this or that, Adelaide preferred to sing a different sort of tune: “Buds, berries, leaves and roots…keep a girl healthy, wealthy and loose!”

  Eleanor could only wish her task was as simple as that. For every woman who sidled up to the shop counter wishing to have her heart mended, her beauty increased, her lover made true, her courses stayed or started, there was a host of enchantments, incantations and charms for Eleanor to keep in mind. “Of all the creatures under Heaven,” her mother used to say, “women are, by far, the most perplexing. It stands to reason that the path to solving their troubles is just as convoluted. Travel it with care, my dear. No matter a lady’s concerns or burdens, be they heavy as a millstone or light as a feather, every word she speaks must be heard, every tear she sheds considered.”

  Over the years, Eleanor kept track of the lessons she’d learned by recording them in a large leather-bound book she’d been given by her mother, a grimoire grown so thick, the binding was split. The first time she’d brought the thing out in Adelaide’s presence, her friend had cringed at the sight of it.

  “It won’t bite,” Eleanor had teased, caressing the book’s cover. “Cross my heart, hope to die.”

  Sheepishly, Adelaide had replied, “I’ve seen it, it’s seen me, that should be enough.”

  Adelaide was young yet, twenty-one to Eleanor’s thirty-two, and she’d already suffered more than her share of sorrow. Still, the young woman’s quick wit, sense of style, head for business and keen intuition made her the ideal partner—the perfect complement to Eleanor’s unkempt braids, stained apothecary’s apron and brilliantly cluttered mind. Eleanor’s only quibble with the girl was that she hadn’t yet accepted the truth of who she was—a seer filled with untold promise, a wise-woman in the making. If only Adelaide would stop hiding behind the ratty deck of fortune-telling cards she kept in her pocket, and embrace the gifts that so clearly had been passed on to her in her blood. In all her life, Eleanor had never met anyone who could peer so thoroughly into the minds and hearts of others as Adelaide could, yet remain so oblivious to the truth in her own.

  “Don’t be so hasty to dismiss true magic,” Eleanor had advised after Adelaide had recoiled from her grimoire. “Your gifts are stronger than you think.”

  “Stop plying me with your hocus-pocus,” Adelaide had said. “I’m not like you, and my mother was most certainly not like yours. I’m just a girl from the wrong side of Chrystie Street, born to a slum-house mystic who lived on petty schemes and poppy juice. The only thing my mother ever gave me was reason to doubt her.”

  “You shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.”

  “She never spoke well of me, unless you count the night she sold me away.”

  “Don’t talk like that…”

  “Fine,” Adelaide had said. “I wouldn’t want to give you the morbs.”

  “Honestly, Adelaide, you should take these things seriously.”

  “Oh, but I do,” Adelaide had said, giving the grimoire a sideways look.

  “I could teach you how to use it,” Eleanor had offered. “I’m sure you’d be a quick study.”

  Adelaide had flatly refused. “Women come to me when they wish to hear what they already know. They come to you when they want a miracle. I’ll stick with turning cards, if it’s all the same to you. It’s easier that way.”

  “Someday what’s easy might not be enough,” Eleanor had warned.

  With a smile and a shrug Adelaide had replied, “When that day comes, you’ll be the first to know.”

  They bickered sometimes but they were fast friends; two strong-willed women who refused to conform to society’s expectations. Just after New Year’s 1879, Eleanor had received a letter from a former medical school colleague. I thought this might be of interest to you, the last line of her note had read. Attached was an advertisement for a private nurse’s position in the city. Thinking a change might do her good, she’d shuttered her mother’s cottage and headed for the city with a bag full of tinctures and her pet raven. Adel
aide Thom would prove to be the most exasperating patient she’d ever cared for, and, next to her raven, her most loyal friend.

  Resting on a bamboo perch near the head of Eleanor’s bed, the witch’s pet raven ruffled his feathers and peered into the darkness. Squinting at his mistress, the bird wondered when she might wake. He recalled a time in the not so distant past when she’d wake in the middle of each night without fail to light a candle, sit by his side and tell him her dreams. The bird remembered every last one of her visions, no matter how odd or insignificant they’d seemed. How long had it been since she’d last risen in the night? Was she ill? Had she been cursed? Or perhaps, the raven wondered, had man’s misguided ambition made the city around them shine too bright? How distracting the sparkle of their false lights was at night, their world barely fit for anything, most especially dreaming.

  He’d been opposed to leaving the countryside, but it hadn’t been his choice to make. He’d promised her mother that he’d stay by Eleanor’s side, no matter what. The great sorceress was dead, so the promise was no longer negotiable. He often wondered if Eleanor, too, missed the mossy banks of the river, the sound of frog song in the evening, the sweet buzzy chorus of cicadas rising and falling in the dark.

  He tried to rouse her by tapping at the gold band that rested around his leg, an ancient ring that bore the inscription, “Alle my trvst.” Tap, tap, tap, he rapped persistently. Tap, tap, tap.

  Pulling her pillow over her head, Eleanor gave the bird a gentle scolding. “Perdu!” she grumbled. “Let me sleep!”

  Perdu, from the French, meaning stray or lost, generally reserved for things such as dogs, husbands and hope. If the bird ever had another name, he couldn’t remember what it was.

  “Wake up,” he chortled, soft and low. “Wake up, wake up, wake up…”