Magic Lessons

by Alice Hoffman

  The old man knew about them. He often didn’t remember what year it was, or what country he was in, but certain things were unmistakable and unforgettable. The sounds of love, for instance, were obvious. He heard them at night, and was glad that his son could find pleasure in this cruel world. Now Maria was late to breakfast, and Abraham chuckled to think of the reason. He was sitting at the table, having managed to get himself down the stairs. The black dog and he were both waiting to be fed. They were patient even though the hour for breakfast had long passed and their stomachs grumbled. On most days, Maria was awake long before the old man rose from bed, while the morning was still dark. But today the sun had been up for hours, and the old man and the wolf were still waiting.

  When Maria finally came downstairs she was wearing her black dress, neatly buttoned. She had taken the time to comb the tangles from her hair and she had washed her face with black soap. She looked refreshed even though she’d barely slept.

  “I thought I heard something last night,” Abraham said when Maria finally came downstairs. “Very late, when people should be asleep.”

  “You heard nothing,” Maria insisted as she boiled water for Abraham’s tea. Abraham Dias liked his tea strong, with a slice of lemon when Maria managed to find one of those precious citrus fruits at the market stands.

  “I know what I heard. Maybe now he’ll stay.” The old man always had bread and butter in the morning, which Maria set before him. Keeper was fed a portion of meat and bones.

  “He won’t.”

  “New York would be good for him,” the old man insisted. By now, Samuel Dias was a wealthy man and could easily turn his attentions to another line of work, one that was within the realm of the law. He could import rum from Curaçao, or bolts of silk from France; he could find himself a warehouse, and an office nearby if he lived on Maiden Lane. “If he were here, you’d know when he was coming down with the fever. He’d be in your care.”

  Maria threw Abraham a look. “That won’t happen,” she assured him, brewing herself a cup of Release Me Tea, a mixture that loosened love’s hold on a person, especially when combined with bitters and fresh radish root.

  “He could be convinced,” Abraham said. “Especially if you helped me do so.”

  In Abraham Dias’s opinion, if a man had to live on land, there was no better choice than Manhattan. Portuguese Jews from Brazil had come in 1654 when Portugal reclaimed Brazil from the Dutch, bringing the Inquisition with them. These original Portugals were greeted by governor Peter Stuyvesant, who had been unwilling to accept the group of twenty-three souls with no country and no home until he was pressured to do so by the original owner of the house on Maiden Lane, Jacob Barsimon, who had worked for the Dutch West India Company. The new immigrants were not allowed to build a synagogue, but the men met daily, and Abraham Dias had gone to these gatherings on Friday evenings in a small house near the harbor. In 1655 Jewish taxpayers had paid for nearly ten percent of the price to build the wall, later the site of Wall Street, to separate the city from the wilderness beyond. Although they were outsiders, Jews were watchmakers, tailors, butchers, importers of rum and chocolate and cocoa. Manhattan was a tolerant city, and if you didn’t provoke your neighbors or call attention to yourself, you could do as you pleased and worship as you liked.

  “Let your son be who he is,” Maria told Abraham. “A man who lives at sea.”

  “A man can change,” Abraham Dias assured her. After all, he was about to plant vegetables in the garden, his hands deep in the earth, which, at this late date, he found to be an unexpected pleasure.

  * * *

  Maria went to the North River on the west side of the city to buy haddock and cod so she might simmer a broth of fish bones for Samuel’s supper, to strengthen his constitution. He had been healing all through the month of his recovery and was much improved. In the afternoons he sat in the garden with his father in the pale green sunlight, listening to stories he’d heard dozens of times before, and enjoying each one. He’d recently helped his father put in a row of lettuce, which distressed Maria. Why would Samuel bother with planting vegetables when he wouldn’t be there to see them grow?

  She predicted he would be gone by the end of the week, and once away from her, he would be safe. The Queen Esther was docked, and it was likely most of the crew had begun to run out of funds and would soon be ready to be back at sea. If Maria wasn’t mistaken, she could see a flicker of longing for the sea in Samuel’s eyes when the wind picked up and the sea chilled the air, a hunger for his old life in which he didn’t have to sit at the dinner table at an appointed hour, here where the stars weren’t half as bright as they were out at sea. He was drawn to the harbor, where he stared out beyond Hell Gate. New York was blue and gray, a city surrounded by water, which called to him even though he wished to stay. The broad North River, later to be renamed the Hudson, ran two ways: seawater rushed to the north; fresh water flowed into the ocean. It was a river that couldn’t make up its mind, and Samuel appreciated that. He was born under the sign of water, and was himself often of two minds. He yearned to leave and he didn’t want to go. He had recently constructed a boat out of parchment by folding it this way and that for Maria’s amusement. Men on ships found all sorts of entertainments to while away the hours at sea. How to make a valentine out of shells, how to turn paper into cranes and birds and fish and boats, how to tell stories, how to be completely silent. When Maria set the paper boat in the river, it had turned one way and then the other. In the end, it did not set forth on either tide, north or south, but instead continued on in a circle until Samuel plucked it from the sea. It was a sign of his own indecision. On some mornings he packed his bag, on others he could not imagine ever leaving New York.

  * * *

  At the Fly Market on the far end of Maiden Lane, Maria noticed a person of interest farther down the row of stalls, buying lemons at the fruit stand. The shopper was an elegant woman who wore an embroidered mauve dress stitched in France; her pale hair was caught up with small combs, all of which were blackened silver. A small white dog followed at her feet, devoted beyond all reason. If Maria wasn’t mistaken, the woman wore red boots.

  “I wouldn’t look at Miss Durant for too long,” the fishmonger warned Maria as he weighed out haddock. “It wouldn’t be wise.”

  “Why is that?”

  Maria wore a black veil over her face whenever she was in public. On the day when she finally found her daughter, she would throw the veil away, or burn it over a pile of sticks, or tear it to shreds. For now, it had its desired effect: people steered clear and avoided her, for no one wished to step too close to tragedy. And yet there were still those who took pity on her, the fishmonger among them, for she was unmistakably a woman in mourning.

  “Catherine Durant is an enchantress,” the fishmonger confided in a low tone as he nodded to the other shopper. “You might call her a witch.”

  “Is she?” Maria craned her neck to see, for the woman they spoke of was already leaving, her back turned to them. Her little dog gazed at Maria with bright eyes before hurrying after his mistress.

  “I sold her fish she said wasn’t fresh, and for the next two months I didn’t sell another thing,” the fishmonger went on. “Not a scrap or an ounce. People walked by as if I was invisible, and those who saw me held their noses, as if my wares stank. So I had a bushel of mussels delivered to her house, and after that it was business as usual. Now I send a gift of mussels or clams to her on the first of every month. It’s worked out well for both of us.”

  Maria soon made her way to the fruit vendor, but before she could choose any of the produce, he handed her a satchel.

  “Sir,” Maria said, surprised by his forwardness. “I don’t yet know what I want.”

  “It doesn’t matter. She knows.” He nodded in the direction in which the woman had disappeared. The vendor looked sheepish, but when a witch suggested you do something, it was best to comply. Inside the satchel were ten apples, already paid for, shiny red. “
She said to bake a pie.”

  “Did she?” Despite herself, Maria smiled. Someone had seen her for who she was, most likely a sister in the Nameless Art.

  “She said you wouldn’t regret it. And to bake one every week and set it on your windowsill.”

  If this was magic, it was made of simple, practical stuff. All the same, Maria went home and cut up the apples, then made a crust. She rolled out the dough, and when she added the apples to the mix, the white slices turned crimson. Perhaps the fruit was not as ordinary as she had first thought. She felt her hopes rise as the pie baked in the brick oven beside the fireplace as she sent a message to Faith, wherever she might be: Do what you must until we are together again, but never believe a word she tells you. Believe only in yourself. You are my daughter and mine alone, whether we are together or apart.

  When the pie was done, Maria let it cool on the windowsill. It sat there, red as a heart, the crust brown, perfectly done. From then on she baked a pie each and every week, with apples that turned from white to red. People passing by sniffed the fragrant air and were reminded of home, and many longed to find their way back to their loved ones. That was all Maria wished for. That was all she wanted in the world. To look out her window and see her darling girl, to have her walk up the stone path and fling open the door.

  II.

  In a place called Kings County, originally called Breuckelen by the first Dutch settlers, newcomers arrived to find a land of marshes dotted by snow-white clouds where the horizon reached out in bands of blue until at last it met with the sea. This low land had reminded the Dutch of home, and many had sunk to their knees and wept upon their arrival in this wild place where the sky was filled with ducks and geese, and fish jumped in the streams. Rough workingmen, both farmers and fishermen, established the original villages on land where the native Lenape people had once lived, before they were slaughtered and driven out, first by the Dutch, then by the British who replaced the original invaders. In a world that had begun with murder, there was always cruelty, despite the beauty of the shore and the sea.

  There were five towns originated by the Dutch in the county, and the sixth, Gravesend, was populated by those who wished to disappear from their previous lives. It was built in 1645 on a parcel of land originally belonging to Lady Deborah Moody and her son, Sir Henry, both of whom had fled from the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in search of religious freedom. Lady Moody had been fortunate enough to have the Crown grant her a small wedge of Kings County. She’d begun her life in England, close to royal life, and had happily ended her time on earth in Brooklyn, where she’d been free to do as she pleased and had been buried in the one cemetery, at the end of an Indian path. Her son had disappeared. Some people said he’d been buried beside his mother, others vowed he’d left for the unknown territories in the West, and that he preferred native people to Englishmen.

  The original settlement had been destroyed by the war-ravaged native population, who had lost more than a thousand to the Dutch aggression and hundreds more to the British, though they did their best to fight back. In the end, they were defeated, and their population had all but vanished. When Faith was brought to Gravesend, it was the farthest outpost of what was called the Flat Country by detractors and admirers alike, populated by hardy souls who did not fear isolation. Martha Chase paid a pittance to the village elders for the use of an abandoned house overgrown by weeds and vines. She wished to be in a place that was on very few maps, and the farther she was from the crowds of Manhattan the better, for all the previous year there had been an epidemic of yellow fever which had killed ten percent of the population. Gravesend was cold in the dead of winter with ice coating the cattails and reeds, and it was equally hot in the blazing summer when the sun beat down. Their house was far enough from the village so that hundreds of gulls and terns wheeled across the sky all through the day and not another sound was heard. It was a worthwhile spot, for they could fish in the streams and have a garden, though the sandy soil was a trial. It was easy enough to hide away in this desolate location where there would be few questions asked concerning the girl with her hair dyed pitch-black from a tint of crushed inkberries and the boiled bark of a black walnut tree, a quiet, thoughtful child who didn’t resemble the pale nervous woman who insisted Faith call her Mother. When Faith repeatedly told her she already had a mother, Martha Chase calmly said that Maria hadn’t wanted her, and had given her to Martha, otherwise she would have been in a workhouse. Faith wept at night; when she looked at the inky sky she wished for a sign that her mother still loved her, in her dreams or in her waking life, which would let her know her mother was still thinking of her.

  * * *

  By the time they had arrived, Brooklyn was populated by two thousand souls, and although it was set just across the river from Manhattan, it was a world away. When they’d first left Massachusetts, Faith had been told there were evil people who were chasing after her and that they must escape or the devil would have them. Faith’s mother would approve of their move to New York, the girl was told; after all, she had given her only child to Martha for her protection and wasn’t that proof of her wishes?

  Faith might be in disguise, but she was who she was, and her natural inclinations arose time and time again. When she closed her eyes and sang a song in a language Martha had never before heard, a soft green rain would begin. When she whistled, sparrows came to sit in the palm of her hand. She could foretell storms and sunny weather, light a candle with her breath, find drinking water merely by following its scent, and Martha once heard her speaking to her mother, asking Maria to please come and find her.

  Martha had heard that there were ways of curbing magic, and that witches had an aversion to iron, for it took away the sight and was the element that decreased their powers. After Faith picked a flower that bloomed in the palm of her hand out of season as she stood in the snow, Martha had a blacksmith come to solder iron bracelets around Faith’s wrists. It was costly, but worth it as far as Martha was concerned. In a proper, pious household, any form of blasphemy could not be allowed.

  “This is so I can always find you,” Martha had said, to comfort Faith when the torch stung, but the truth was she wanted to make certain that Faith would not escape.

  After the bracelets had been locked onto her wrists, Faith felt a pale dullness inside of her. She could no longer call birds to her or see what was to come. She could not make the clouds move or ask the sky to rain. When she dipped her hands in the streams, the fish swam away from her. She was a prisoner, without talent, without hope. But at night, she was free to dream, and in her dreams she saw her mother crying as she stood beside a flowering tree. That was how Faith knew that her mother was still alive.

  She hadn’t been forgotten.

  * * *

  They had traveled constantly at first, living in lower Manhattan, then on a farm in the settlement of Bergen in New Jersey, a place plagued by mosquitoes and lawlessness. Wherever they went, the door was always kept bolted to ensure that none of the bad people from Massachusetts would snatch the child. Who these bad people were, Faith had no idea, for all she could remember was a loving mother, a man who told stories when she was little more than a babe, and a black dog that followed her faithfully. And yet she was told they must always remain in disguise to protect themselves. Martha called herself Olive Porter and Faith had a new name each time they moved, even though changing a person’s name was known to bring bad luck. She had been called Temperance, Charity, Patience, Thankful, and Verity. When she was alone, she wrote down these names in black ink, then crossed them out with thick blotchy lines, as if doing so could block out her false identities.

  At last they had come to Kings County, where the blue air tasted like salt and seabirds dropped clams onto the dirt roads to crack them open to feast upon. It was the last outpost, and the place where they would stay. As always, Faith was made to call the lady who took care of her “Mother”; the word continued to stick in her throat. She was certain that if she
waited long enough her true mother would find her, and that one bright morning when she opened her eyes, Maria Owens would be there.

  * * *

  Faith had turned nine when they first came to settle in Gravesend, the land of seabirds and outcasts. There were few outsiders who passed through this place, and most residents who abided here had reasons to be in a town that seemed to be perched at the end of the earth. There were husbands who had quit their wives, and women who’d been cast out, and robbers who were tired of running from the law.

  “We’ll be safe here,” Martha told Faith, although safe from what, Faith wasn’t quite sure. She was now called Comfort, a name she despised, not that there were many to call her by name. Quiet was a certainty here, and it was possible to be alone for weeks on end, whether one was walking along on the dirt roads or through the sandy fields. Other than the changes in the weather, each day was the same as the one before and the one to come. People in town waited for the peddler, who appeared on the last Friday of the month, and all were excited to see an outsider. They went to him for bolts of fabric or nails or pots and pans and would have to go without until he appeared, for no storekeeper had found the courage to open shop in this remote location.

  Faith Owens could spy the sea from her room in the attic, where the previous tenant had died of the fevers, for in this low-lying land there were clouds of mosquitoes drifting by on summer nights. One out of every three children born out here would be dead before a first birthday was celebrated, and several of the women in town wore mourning black no matter the year or the season. As the years passed, Faith had more questions all the time, but because she dared not ask, they went unanswered. If Maria was alive, why hadn’t she come after her? Where was her loyal wolf-dog who would never leave her side of his own volition? Why must Faith not show the true color of her hair? Ever since that day when the constables came to call in Essex County, her life had been torn in two. There was the before, when she’d lived with her mother, and the after, the time that had accrued ever since Martha had taken her aboard the ship bound for New York, leading to these years in Brooklyn.