The Witch of Willow Hall

by Hester Fox

  “Catherine, I—”

  “You’re sorry? Spare me.”

  I’m not sorry, but I’m about to tell her that it’s for the best no matter what it feels like right now, when the door flies open. Father thunders out of the dining room, brandishing his newspaper over his head like when he used to swat Snip for having an accident inside. His face is as red as a beet, a vein I never knew he had pulsing in his temple. Catherine and I exchange a look of horror.

  “For God’s sake, would you two be quiet?” he roars. “You would think we were at war with all the carrying-on out here.”

  Catherine and I don’t say anything, our last words still simmering in silence between us. Father doesn’t give a backward glance as he jams his hat on his head, grabs his cane and yanks open the front door. “I’m going to the mill,” he mutters. “At least there the only noise to contend with is the looms.”

  The door slams shut behind him and Catherine’s unflinching gaze slides back to me. When she speaks it’s so cold and detached that a shiver runs up my spine. “Just know this, Lydia—I will do everything I can to ensure that you are miserable and alone for the rest of your pathetic life.”

  And just like that, the last tenuous strands of love, of family, of sisterhood strain and snap. Only yesterday her blood stained my hands, her laboring body vulnerable and helpless before me. I can’t take it anymore. I pick up my hem and head for my room.

  “That’s right, go on, Lydia! Run away, you coward.”

  My eyes are hot, but the tears stubbornly absent as I take the stairs two by two. I’m halfway up when I come to a sudden stop, nearly teetering backward.

  I don’t know how long Mother has been standing there, one hand over her open mouth, the other clutching her shawl at her neck. Usually small and wispy among the imposing rooms of Willow Hall, she now towers above me, a queen of her castle. And the queen is not pleased.

  I glance behind me to find Catherine has the decency to look ashamed, her gaze quickly settling back on the carpet. I can’t stop staring at my mother though, transfixed by the fury on the face that is usually so vacant and withdrawn.

  Mother’s words are low and crisp. “That’s enough.” She sweeps down the rest of the stairs, her diminutive figure brushing me aside. “I won’t have another minute of this in my house. I’m at my wit’s end with all the bickering and animosity between you two.”

  I’ve never seen Mother so angry. It doesn’t come naturally to her, it’s almost as if she has to feel her way along, not quite sure of what she should say. But it takes her only a matter of seconds to find her footing.

  “It’s past time you were both married, but since you seem determined to spoil every opportunity, then I expect you’ll at least behave civilly to each other so long as you are under this roof.”

  “Mother, that’s not fair. I—”

  Mother cuts Catherine off with a look so frigid that it could turn the ocean to ice. Catherine clamps her mouth back shut.

  “Now,” Mother says as she retrieves a letter from the sideboard. Catherine and I watch her in stunned silence. “This,” she says, waving the envelope, “is another letter from your Aunt Phillips. She’s lonely and doing poorly with her foot, and in need of a companion around the house.”

  I swallow, casting a sidelong glance at Catherine.

  “I told her that one of my daughters would be happy to come and—”

  Before I can protest, Catherine blurts out, “Lydia should go.”

  “Me? But I—”

  “I don’t think it would be right for me to go,” Catherine hurries on. “I don’t want to start any fresh rumors about running off to Boston after Mr. Pierce.”

  Mother doesn’t see the look of smug exultance that Catherine flashes me, and my heart plummets into my stomach as I realize what she’s doing.

  “Catherine should go,” I say obstinately. “She’s the one that’s always going on about New Oldbury not being grand enough for her. She’s wanted to go back to Boston since the first day we arrived.”

  “Oh, and you don’t? Just the other day you were complaining about how there are no bookshops here, and before that it was how much you missed the ocean.”

  I feel my footing start to slip out from under me. “But...” I protest feebly. “But Mr. Barrett is calling on Friday and—”

  “If Mr. Barrett were going to call on you he would have by now,” Catherine snaps, relishing the knife twist all the more because she knows it’s true.

  “ENOUGH!”

  The single word slices through our bickering like a knife. Mother closes her eyes and massages her temple, her flush of outrage receding just as quickly as it came on. “Lydia, you’ll go to Boston. Catherine, I don’t know what’s gotten into you but I agree, I want you home where I can keep my eye on you.”

  I open my mouth to tell her what Catherine’s doing, that it’s not fair, but Mother holds up her hand to silence me, shattering my last fragment of hope. “As for Mr. Barrett,” she says with finality, “he can wait.”

  27

  BOSTON GREETS ME with a sharp, gusty wind carrying the tang of woodsmoke and fresh-caught fish. The coach bumps and rumbles over cobblestone streets, past the market with pyramids of cabbage heads and silver cod where Emeline and I used to explore. Nothing has changed since we left; Boston has awakened and slumbered just the same without me. Even though the woods of Willow Hall are my home now, where Mr. Barrett lives just out of sight, where Emeline roams by night to find me, I can’t help but feel a melancholy prick of betrayal that my old city has not missed me.

  Mother hadn’t cared when I pleaded with her to let me stay until Friday, that I would go anywhere she asked if I could only see Mr. Barrett first. “I think you would do well to get away from Willow Hall for a little while,” she had said with a cryptic look that I didn’t understand. Her eruption of anger had drained her, leaving her reclining by the fire and coughing into her handkerchief. When she raised her eyes to mine, they were so tired, so resigned that I had swallowed the rest of my argument and went upstairs to pack my trunk and write a letter to Mr. Barrett. I explained that a family emergency had arisen and I’d been called away to Boston, but that I would be back soon, and I was very much looking forward to his call. It was a pleasant, formal letter, the kind one writes when one regrets that she won’t be able to call for tea. That was Tuesday night, and I’ve spent every minute of the two-day coach ride regretting my empty words to Mr. Barrett, Catherine’s voice echoing in the back of my mind: happiness doesn’t just fall into your lap, you need to go out and take it. And what about Emeline? My chest tightens when I think about her, searching Willow Hall only to find me gone. If I can somehow help her, it certainly won’t be all the way from Boston.

  Aunt Phillips is waiting outside the neat brick house on Acorn Street when I climb down weary and dusty from the coach. She’s leaning heavily on a crutch, her foot bandaged up to comic proportions. Like Father, she’s short and well built, and has an inordinate interest in everything that can be measured in currency, and what things cost. Unlike Father, she is perpetually talking and moving, a whirlwind of pleasantries and endless questions that catch me off guard after my long journey.

  “Lydia, Lydia, Lydia,” she says with both hands outstretched, the crutch clattering to the ground. “Come here, child.” She kisses my cheeks with a force that almost knocks me over, and shouts for the butler, Blake, to come and take my case. Tall and crooked as he is ancient, Blake has been a fixture at Acorn Street since my earliest memories of visiting here as a child. He hefts my trunk up over his shoulder as if it were nothing, and with little more than a nod of recognition, leaves me to Aunt Phillips.

  “You must be exhausted! Those coaches are terrible contraptions. So crowded and bumpy and they never stop at the good inns. Well never mind that now, you must come inside and have a cup of something hot to drink.”

 
I’m installed in the parlor in front of a roaring fire, my head already throbbing from Aunt Phillips’s steady stream of questions and chatter. She and Mrs. Tidewell would probably get on famously.

  “Oh, but am I glad to see you. It’s been so lonely here since your uncle has been in New York. Has it really only been five months?” Aunt Phillips shakes her head, tight curls bouncing out at the edges of her lace cap. “Tch, you’ve gotten too thin. It must be that horrible country food. I’ll see if I can’t get that good-for-nothing cook to put something together for you.” She pours out two steaming cups of tea and hands one to me. “How is your poor mother doing?”

  “Well enough,” I lie.

  “That’s good to hear.” She sounds a little disappointed. “To lose a child that age to such an accident...” She trails off, gesturing helplessly into the air. “Of course your uncle and I were never blessed with children of our own, but unfortunately one grows accustomed to hearing of infants dying as a matter of course. It’s when they make it past a certain age only to be snatched back that you can’t help but feel it unfair.”

  A lump forms in my throat, threatening to rise up and spill into tears. I push it back down. “Yes, of course it is. I’ll tell Mother you asked after her. Thank you.”

  She sighs. “And this business with Catherine...well, I won’t speak of it,” she says with a distasteful little wave. “But it’s enough to break any parent’s heart what your family has had to go through.”

  If she only knew the half of it. I just nod, staring into the depths of my cooling tea.

  “And what about you, my dear?”

  “What about me?”

  “Well,” she says, putting her tea down and leaning across to my chair. “Has your mother said anything about getting you settled? Surely it’s time, and I can’t imagine she’s willing to wait until Catherine is married. Do you have your eye on some young man?”

  I jerk my head up, unable to mask my surprise at the question. It might be different if she was asking me a week from now, in a world where Mr. Barrett had already left me with some understanding. Even if I had just had a letter from him, anything so that I knew what he wanted to tell me last week in the road. “No,” I say, hoping she doesn’t catch the slight quaver in my voice. “There’s no young man.”

  She arches a questioning brow at me and sits back. “No? What about...what was his name... He used to work with your father. Started with an S... Silas? Or maybe it was a C.”

  I nearly drop my cup. “What, Cyrus?”

  “Cyrus! Thank you, my dear. That would’ve bothered me all day.”

  “The engagement was broken off when we moved,” I hurry to explain. She doesn’t need to know about Cyrus’s unwelcome appearance in New Oldbury or his ridiculous proposal and letters. “I haven’t seen him since then.”

  “No?” She furrows her gray brows, tilting her head in deep thought. “But didn’t he go to Emeline’s burial? I could have sworn your mother wrote something to that effect in one of her letters. That was kind of him, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh,” I say weakly. “Yes, I had forgotten. Very kind. Aunt Phillips, do you think I might be shown to my room now? I’m afraid the journey here has quite worn me out.”

  Aunt Phillips looks startled. “Did I say something wrong? I was only asking because—”

  “No, it’s fine,” I assure her with a thin smile. “I’m just tired, that’s all.”

  * * *

  As I lay in an unfamiliar bed that night, the sounds of Boston surround me like a long-forgotten lullaby. Carts rumble down the hill and the clatter of horse hooves echo through the narrow street. Somewhere two men are shouting over each other, then abruptly break off into laughter. It’s a far cry from the nocturnal sounds of New Oldbury where the only traffic is that of the stealthy foxes and the beating of owls’ wings. I strain my ear for the sound of ships in the harbor, canvas sails crumpling in the wind, bells alerting the sailors of curfew. I picture them returning drunk and sleepy to their swaying hammocks. On Washington Street my favorite bookshop is quiet and dark, books lined up in precise rows of thick, uncracked spines as Mr. Brown turns the lamps down for the night. The grocers down in Faneuil Hall will have long since taken in their wares, chucking any spoiled apples and onions to the barefoot beggar children. Aunt Phillips will be snoring away downstairs, foot propped up in front of the fire, no doubt dreaming of gossip and fresh scandals.

  In New Oldbury I imagine Mr. Barrett sitting at his desk, running his hand through his hair, a frown catching at his lips as he reads my letter for the fourth or fifth time before crumpling it up and throwing it away.

  And then there is Emeline. Lost, alone, scared, unable to rest.

  * * *

  The next morning as soon as I can reasonably be excused from helping Aunt Phillips dress her foot, I bolt to Mr. Brown’s bookshop where I buy the first volume of a new book on his recommendation: Ivanhoe. He promises that it’s full of knights, castles and “all those things that seem to so capture the imagination of young women in particular.” He accepts my money with a wink and a promise from me that I’ll be back for the next two volumes.

  Just as I’m about to leave, I turn back and he looks up in surprise. “Is there something else I can help you with? Perhaps you’d like the second volume now?”

  On an impulse, I ask, “Do you have any books on witchcraft? That is, specifically its history in Massachusetts? The Salem trials and such.”

  A bushy gray brow shoots up behind his round spectacles. “Witchcraft? Well now, let me see.” He crosses his arms and leans back behind his desk, deep in thought.

  My cheeks burn and I wish I hadn’t asked, but now he’s on the case and I know there’s no stopping him.

  Mr. Brown springs up and in a moment he’s rifling through an overcrowded shelf, pulling off volumes, inspecting the titles and then discarding them.

  “Aha!” He coaxes a slim little book off the back of the shelf and hands it to me. “Tales of Witchcraft, Sorcery, & Other Macabre Happenings in Olde New England.” He looks at me and gives me a conspiratorial smile. “Doing a bit of research, are we?”

  My cheeks burn hotter. “I... It’s just a passing fancy,” I stammer. “Really more of a fancy of Catherine’s,” I lie. “I promised her I would look for a book for her while I was in Boston.” I certainly can’t tell him the real reason I’m desperate for information is because of the black mark on my family’s history, and that Mary Preston’s visit and cryptic warnings have been churning in my mind for weeks now. There is something wrong with Willow Hall—or me—and I need answers.

  But he hardly hears me as he makes his way back to his desk and begins to wrap it up in brown paper for me. “Not such a popular subject these days,” he says without looking up. “Now it’s all haunted castles and wicked highwaymen and the like.”

  When I realize he’s making a joke about the books I usually come in looking for, I let out a little laugh and relax.

  He hands me the package and I add it to my other book. “Let me know what you find with your research,” he says.

  I promise that I will, though now that I’m in Boston, far away from the spirits and strange happenings of Willow Hall, it doesn’t seem so urgent anymore.

  * * *

  Once outside with a crisp ocean breeze at my neck and my new books under my arm, I can almost forget about my reason for being in Boston in the first place. Winding along the familiar streets and feeling the cobblestones through my leather soles it’s like the past five months never happened. I pretend that we still live in our brick house with the ivy climbing up the front, and that when I go home Emeline will pull me into the library, demanding that I read to her from my new books. Mother will be smiling in the way she used to, her gentle brown eyes lighting up when she sees me and Emeline curled up together by the fire. Ada will bring in chocolate and...

  I’ve just re
ached Acorn Street when I stop dead in my tracks. Oh no. No no no.

  His back is to me as he leans down to kiss Aunt Phillips on the cheek, but I would recognize that neatly combed black hair and slender, trim figure anywhere. He hasn’t come in a carriage—I suppose his father had to sell that—but he looks well enough in his double-breasted coat and polished Hessians. Aunt Phillips clasps his hand as she says something, and then smiling, ushers Cyrus inside.

  I stand there, turning the books over in my hands and biting my lip. I could go somewhere else, wait for him to leave. Maybe back to Mr. Brown’s and browse for an hour? Or to the docks and watch the ships come in?

  As if in answer, a fat, icy raindrop falls onto my neck, worming its way down my back, followed by another and another. If I found out Cyrus could summon storm clouds at his whim I wouldn’t be surprised. Grumbling, I shield my books under my arm and plunge inside to see what my ex-fiancé could possibly want now.

  * * *

  “Oh, Lydia, there you are! I saw the dark clouds rolling in and I was worried you’d be caught in the rain.” Aunt Phillips hobbles over to greet me. “Well, don’t just stand there in the door, come in, come in.”

  As I step inside, she leans in and whispers in my ear, “You don’t have to say a word. I saw how heartbroken you were when you mentioned the engagement was off, so I sent for Mr. Thompson, telling him it was all a misunderstanding and now he’s obliged us with his company.”

  My mouth falls open but I can’t sort my thoughts into any coherent words. Aunt Phillips gives me a knowing look and smiles. “There’ll be time to thank me later, now go on.”

  Cyrus is already lounging in the parlor, fingers tapping erratically on the arm of the big chair by the hearth, one boot propped up on Aunt Phillip’s gout stool. I don’t bother smiling or pretending I’m pleased to see him as I drag my feet inside.