The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane

by Katherine Howe

  From where he lay on Connie’s towel, Arlo heard water splashing and great whoops of laughter, mingled with calls of “You are so dead, Cornell!” and “You’ve got to catch me first, Hartley!” He raised his head at one point, ears pricking forward, searching for sound, when the laughter died to quiet giggling. But then his questing ears found their voices whispering, and so he dropped his head back to his paws and waited, fading to the pale moonlit color of the fog.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Cambridge, Massachusetts

  Late June

  1991

  CONNIE STOOD IN THE CRAMPED LADIES’ ROOM ON THE FIRST FLOOR of the Harvard Faculty Club, weaving her hair into what she hoped was a tidy-looking braid. She paused to examine the results in the mirror and saw a bump of hair poking up from the top of her head.

  “Dammit,” she said, undoing her work. She ran the comb under water in the sink and then pulled it more tightly through her hair, digging its teeth into her scalp. She had never quite mastered the art of looking pulled together. On dressy occasions she always felt wracked with anxiety, mindful of falling into hidden sartorial traps. As she braided she muttered under her breath. Why had Professor Chilton insisted on lunch here, anyway? She could just as easily have met him in his office. He usually took graduate students here only to celebrate something. Or to intimidate them.

  “Stupid,” she said, wrapping an elastic around the end of the braid and tossing it over her shoulder. She gazed at her reflection in the mirror. Behind a waxy purple orchid, which filled the bulk of the visual field over the sink, the mirror reflected an image of a young, blue-eyed woman in a droopy floral dress, its basic conservatism making up, she hoped, for what it lacked in style and tailoring. Sensible Mary Janes replaced her habitual flip-flops. Her shoulder bag was just a shoulder bag. Connie sighed. She should have borrowed something from Liz.

  “Ridiculous,” she said aloud, not sure if she was commenting on the situation or on her outfit. Perhaps both. She looked at her watch, decided that she had hidden in the bathroom as long as she could justify, and opened the door.

  Graduate students never ventured into the reading room of the Harvard Faculty Club, and as Connie edged her way inside, she wondered why. It was meant to be inviting. Deep, tufted sofas and polished leather armchairs sat grouped at either end around low coffee tables, and the rugs on the floor were bleached by decades of loafered feet and unfiltered sun. The room was watched over by the benevolent, painted eyes of clerical Harvardians, long dead. Its air smelled reassuring, a blend of polished wood, coffee, and “cake box” pipe tobacco. And still, grad students cringed away, as if something in its rarefied air might be toxic.

  That afternoon, the sweet pipe tobacco smell was emanating from a white-haired gentleman settled on the divan under the grandfather clock, an open newspaper level with the gold spectacles on his nose. He rattled the newsprint and puffed without removing the pipe from his mouth. Connie moved to the opposite end of the reading room to wait.

  She admitted to herself that she was excited to tell Professor Chilton what she had learned so far. Imagine how surprised he would be! She jiggled one foot in anticipation, a wry smile bending the corners of her mouth.

  “Miss Goodwin?” a voice asked, and Connie started. She had not heard the waiter approach.

  “Yes?” she asked, tugging at the hem of her dress with nervous fingers.

  “Professor Chilton asks if you will join him in the dining room,” said the waiter, smirking so slightly that only a practiced cynic such as Connie would be able to detect it. Of course he can’t come retrieve you himself, said the smirk. Connie sighed.

  “Guess I’ll just go into the dining room, then,” she said, rising.

  “Very well, Miss Goodwin,” said the waiter, bowing a fraction of an inch.

  THE DINING ROOM WAS CURTAINED AGAINST THE AFTERNOON SUN, AND Connie had to hunt for a few minutes in the dark before she located Manning Chilton seated at a table in a plush alcove. He was reading a dense book—Alchemical Practice as Moral Purity—which he stashed in a satchel under the table at her approach.

  “Connie, my girl,” he said, rising in a dignified half-crouch. There he goes with that “my girl” business, Connie thought as she shook hands with her advisor. She plastered over her annoyance with a bright smile, and the waiter pulled out a chair for her.

  “I am so pleased that you could join me today. Shall I ask James for a menu, or do you know what you would like?” Chilton asked. The waiter, James, hovered at Connie’s elbow, one eyebrow peaked in the same ironic manner with which he had retrieved her from the reading room.

  “Ah,” Connie said, stalling. The dining room, with its crisp, ironed linens and silver butter knives, always made her ill at ease. Most grad students survived on a mishmash of foodstuffs culled from the ends of departmental meetings. For one whole week last semester she and Liz had subsisted on a cheese plate stolen from the classics department new-student reception. When free food was scarce they could resort to the dining hall, with its steady diet of spaghetti with plain tomato sauce and tuna casserole. It’s a wonder more of us don’t come down with rickets, she thought before realizing that she had not yet answered Professor Chilton. James cleared his throat delicately.

  “May I see a menu, please?” she asked, aiming her question into the uncertain air between Chilton and the waiter. A tall leather folder appeared in her hands, the florid descriptions of the food on offer swimming before her like a foreign language. She looked closer and realized that it was in a foreign language: French.

  “Just the chicken, I guess,” she said, hoping that the menu actually included chicken as it was plucked from her grasp and James vanished into the dim recesses of the club.

  “Now then,” Chilton began, rubbing his hands together in anticipation, “tell me of your great discovery.” Connie glanced at him to see if he was mocking her, but then decided that he was serious.

  “I have found my unique, perfect primary source,” Connie started to explain. “Actually, that is not accurate, strictly speaking. I have found evidence that my unique, perfect primary source exists.”

  Chilton leaned forward, elbows folded on the table. “Tell me,” he commanded.

  Connie began by describing her adventures looking for Deliverance Dane in the Salem meetinghouse archive, leaving a gaping Sam-shaped hole in her narrative. When she started her story by returning to the strange name that she had discovered, Chilton frowned but said nothing. Connie spoke quickly, squelching any opportunity for him to interrupt. She carried him up to her visit to the Salem Will and Probate department, and listed the inventory of Deliverance’s belongings at her death.

  “Connie, I am waiting to hear where this litany is going,” Chilton interrupted. “So far I have only heard you spending a lot of time mucking about in archives with little result.”

  Connie pushed aside her aggravation at Chilton’s comment, her own enthusiasm outweighing her desire for his approval. “But I was confused by the list,” she continued, undaunted. “I couldn’t figure out why the executors would have listed a receipt book on the same line as Deliverance’s Bible, rather than treating it like any of the other books that she had in the house. Why would a ledger book have had the same value, financially speaking, as a big expensive family heirloom?” She paused to take a swallow of ice water.

  At that moment James appeared again at her elbow, silently thrusting a steaming plate of chicken fricassee onto the table between her silverware, and a platter of grilled salmon before Chilton. “Will there be anything else, sir?” James asked. Chilton looked questioningly at Connie. She shrugged.

  “Not at this time, thank you, James,” Chilton said, dismissing him. She smiled apologetically at the waiter, who sent her the faintest hint of an eye roll in response before disappearing.

  “Now, Deliverance left everything to her daughter, Mercy,” Connie continued. “So I thought, if the book was that important, maybe it would be mentioned in Mercy’s probate record,
too.” Connie gesticulated with her fork, and a shadow of disapproval traveled across Chilton’s face.

  “Indeed,” he said, toying with his fish.

  “But get this,” said Connie. “I couldn’t find Mercy anywhere. I know that records can sometimes be incomplete from this period, but it just seemed kind of strange to have her vanish with no trace whatsoever. But then I realized that I was just being too narrow.”

  “In what sense?” asked Chilton, watching her.

  “Say ‘Mercy,’” said Connie.

  “I beg your pardon?” Chilton asked, taken aback.

  “You have an old-style Brahmin accent, Professor Chilton,” Connie said, wondering if she was stepping out of bounds. Do people with accents know that they have accents? Let’s hope that Chilton has a sense of humor, Connie thought, knowing that there had been no prior evidence in her years as his student to support that hope. Ah, well. “Please just humor me.”

  “Mehcy,” he said, straight-faced.

  “Right,” said Connie. “The dropped r, the flattened vowel. Now, say the name that is spelled ‘M-a-r-c-y.’”

  “Mehcy,” Chilton said again.

  “Exactly!” Connie said, gesturing with her fork again. “In phonetic spelling, which is how they did things before dictionaries and printing standardized the language, the names ‘Mercy’ and ‘Marcy’ are the same name!” Connie forked an overlarge slice of chicken into her mouth and chewed with triumph. Chilton smiled at her enthusiasm. Connie felt pleased to see that she was beginning to win him over. “When I started looking for Marcy Dane,” she added, “I found all kinds of stuff. In fact, it turns out I had even stumbled across a number of her records at the First Church already without knowing that she was important.”

  “Such as?” Chilton prodded.

  “I couldn’t figure out exactly when she was born, but she belonged to the First Church in Marblehead for her whole adult life and was in good standing the entire time. She married a guy named Lamson in Salem, but I haven’t found his first name yet. She was involved in some kind of lawsuit in 1715. And she died in 1763. Leaving a probate record.”

  She paused for another drink of water and saw that Chilton was now fully absorbed, though she suspected that he could have no idea where she was really going.

  “And…?” he asked.

  “And listed on her own probate record, along with the same house that Deliverance left her, was something described as ‘book—receipts for physick.’”

  “Another ledger?” Chilton asked.

  “That’s what I wondered at first,” Connie said. “But in the course of poking around town I found some interesting material culture.” She described the boundary marker with its strange charm and carvings. Again she left Sam out of her account. She was not sure if this omission was because she wanted to impress Chilton with her research acumen, or if it was because she wanted to keep the warm sensation that she felt whenever she thought about Sam a secret, for herself alone. Even now, perched across from Chilton at the table, zipped into awkward clothes, turning her thoughts to Sam made Connie feel taller, more alive. A pleasurable tingle traveled from the crown of her head down the back of her neck, and she smiled a tiny, private smile.

  “Connie, I don’t follow you,” Chilton said. “What does this boundary marker have to do with a ledger book?”

  “Wait,” Connie said, polishing off her chicken. “The boundary marker is a vernacular example of magical thinking at work in the real world. Now, think back to what we know for sure about Deliverance Dane. She was ex communicated in 1692. In Salem.”

  “Excommunication was hardly uncommon in the Puritan religious structure,” Chilton pointed out.

  “But it was also the first thing that happened after someone was tried and convicted of witchcraft!” Connie struck her plate with her fork in her excitement. Chilton’s mouth began to pull into a smile.

  Connie pressed on. “I started to think that if Puritan culture could produce a would-be magical object like the boundary marker, then perhaps that culture would have left other evidence of magical thinking as well. What if a receipt book isn’t a receipt book at all?” Connie paused.

  Chilton waited, saying nothing “Receipt is also a variant spelling of recipe,” Connie clarified.

  “Recipe?” Chilton repeated, brows knitted.

  “When I found Mercy’s probate record I was finally sure. What kind of book would be valuable enough to get its own listing in a probate record, would be handed down from mother to daughter, and would contain recipes for ‘physick,’ also known as ‘medicine,’ and would have been owned by a woman who was probably convicted of practicing witchcraft?”

  Surprise and pleasure began to crawl up Chilton’s face, and his lips slowly drew back into a wide grin. Connie reflected that she had never known her advisor to smile while showing his teeth before.

  “A spell book!” Connie announced.

  Chilton gazed across the table at Connie, his eyes gleaming with a hard, cold light.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Marblehead, Massachusetts

  Late June

  1991

  “SO WHERE’D YA WANNIT?” ASKED THE MAN, PLOPPING HIS TOOL CASE onto the flagstones with a dull thump.

  Connie smiled from where she stood in the front doorway. “Well, I don’t know, really. What’s usual?”

  “Just the one?” he asked, lifting and then resettling his baseball cap on his head, affording Connie a fleet glimpse of shining scalp. “Front hall.”

  “Sounds good,” she said, ushering him in. “You want some coffee or something?”

  “I’d take a beah,” said the man.

  Connie hesitated for a moment, but then shrugged. Why not, she thought.

  It’s hot out, anyway. “Just a sec,” she said to the man.

  “Be stahtin’ outside,” he replied.

  In the kitchen, Connie lifted open the antique wooden icebox and reached down into the slush inside. She was going through ice at an amazing clip so far this summer. She paused, enjoying the cool breath of the melting ice on her moist face before closing the icebox again. Ice’d last longer if you did that less often, she told herself as she carried the beer out to the yard.

  She found the man kneeling in the little vegetable patch near the front door, toolbox open. He had prised off a loose shingle and was uncoiling a length of wire.

  “Ya had one heah before, turns out,” he told Connie as she placed the beer on the ground next to him. Arlo had appeared from under the tomato plants and was now sniffing at the soles of the man’s work boots. The dog quickly gathered all the information that he needed from this investigation and then returned to his spot in the shade, chin resting on his folded paws.

  “Yeah?” she said, surprised. “What happened to it?”

  “Got took out,” he said, working away with a small pair of pliers.

  “Oh,” said Connie. She watched him work for a minute, thumbs hooked in her cutoff belt loops.

  “Gonna be a while,” said the man without looking around.

  “Oh! Sure,” said Connie, embarrassed. “Sorry.”

  She made her way back into the house, being careful to leave the door unlocked, and then settled at the Chippendale desk in the sitting room to wait. Now that she thought about it, she hardly ever bothered to lock the door anymore. Granna’s house was so obscured by brush and overgrowth that she was even a little surprised the man had been able to find it. Connie smiled to herself. Wouldn’t Grace be astonished when Connie called her from the house.

  Connie had been feeling confident since her lunch with Chilton. He was even more delighted with her possible primary source than she had anticipated.

  “Of course, there are surviving examples of manuals for finding witches,” Chilton had said. “The Malleus Maleficarum from fifteenth-century Germany, even Cotton Mather’s 1692 treatise on the Wonders of the Invisible World.”

  “Right,” Connie affirmed. “But so far my research indicates that there are
no surviving colonial North American examples of any book or instructional text for practicing witchcraft. We usually interpret this to mean that nobody was actually practicing it, right? So if Deliverance’s book is what I think it is, and if it has survived, it would be an amazing find. Its contents could change the way history looks at the development of medicine, of midwifery, of science….” Connie trailed off.

  “To say nothing of changing our interpretation of the Salem panic. Those are quite a lot of ‘ifs,’ I’m afraid,” Chilton said. “But too tantalizing not to pursue.”

  Two dishes of warm bread pudding appeared at their table, and as Chilton chewed he watched Connie thoughtfully. “Tell me, my girl,” he ventured. “You were planning to attend the Colonial Association conference this year, weren’t you?”

  Connie nodded. “I think so. I’m not on any of the panels or anything, but I was going to go, just to hear the papers.” She dipped her fork into the soft pudding, prodding at a golden raisin with one of the tines.

  “Always a good idea,” Chilton said. “Ground yourself in the current work in the field.” He paused, seeming to weigh something before continuing. “You know, I’m to give the keynote address this year,” he said lightly.

  “Really?” she asked, surprised.

  “Indeed. Just a general talk on the development of my research on the history of alchemical thought. Presenting some exciting new conclusions.” He paused, catching Connie’s eye when she looked up. “I may wish to introduce you there,” he finished, setting his fork aside with finality.

  “But why?” she asked, puzzled.

  Chilton chuckled. “We can discuss that in more detail later. Let us not get ahead of ourselves, my girl. Your only concern at this point is to find the book, and see if it is everything that you suspect. I trust you will keep me closely apprised of your progress.” As he spoke, Chilton had folded his hands into the temple shape that always indicated he was deep in thought.