The Seventh Miss Hatfield (3 page)

I woke with a faint thrumming inside my head. Everything felt like a bad, foggy dream, yet here I still was – in a stranger’s house, looking at fingers too long and slender to be my own. I couldn’t understand what had happened to me, couldn’t get my head around the impossibility of it all.

I sat up to look around at the room and found myself on a plain mattress set atop a four-poster bed with an ornate golden headboard. There were no blankets on the bed or nearby. The logical conclusion was that I must have cried myself to sleep without even realizing where I was. Floral wallpaper peeled from the walls and ceiling, and tears or slashes in the paper revealed grey wooden boards beneath. Bunches of white primroses and blue flax swam in front of my eyes. Somehow I knew that these flowers had once made people feel comfortable and at home, but now they only made me feel lost and intimidated.

‘Good, you’re awake!’ Miss Hatfield emerged unexpectedly from the floor through an old wooden trapdoor she’d pushed open with one hand while balancing a tea tray in the other. Her heels thumped against the wooden floorboards and made them creak in protest. ‘Here you are, English breakfast,’ she said, pouring tea into a cup decorated with flowers that resembled those on the peeling wallpaper.

I couldn’t take the cup from her. Not after what had happened last night. The events of the evening had mostly become a blur, but the shock of finding myself in a different body with someone else’s face still haunted me.

Miss Hatfield smiled what she probably thought was a sympathetic smile, but it didn’t work on me. I remembered that she was the one accountable for all this.

‘Take the tea,’ she said. ‘I didn’t tamper with it. Besides, you’ll need the caffeine. You slept rather fitfully.’

I was tempted to remind her that it wasn’t every day that a stranger puts something into your drink that turns you into someone else.

‘I can’t trust you.’

‘And with good reason,’ she agreed. ‘But remember, I’ve never lied to you.’

‘You never told me the whole truth, either.’

She went mute at that, but after a moment of silence, she responded, ‘Would you like me to start now?’

I wondered what kind of question that was. Of course I wanted to know the truth about what was going on and what all this had to do with me. I nodded, curious but still untrusting.

‘Have you ever heard of Juan Ponce de León?’ she asked me.

‘The man who discovered Florida?’

‘Yes. On 27 March 1513, Juan Ponce de León had his first glimpse of Florida …’ I didn’t understand why Miss Hatfield was giving me what sounded like a dull history lesson, but she shot me a look that silenced the words that were about to spill out of my mouth. ‘On 2 April, he landed and took possession—’

‘Why do I need to know this?’ I blurted out, risking her anger in my frustration. ‘It sounds like something from a history book. It has nothing to do with me, or with what you’ve done to me.’

‘And if it did, would you listen then?’ It was a puzzling question. How could something that happened in 1513 have anything to do with me?

‘Yes,’ I said, reluctantly.

‘Then listen,’ she said. ‘While he was there, Ponce de León explored the coast of Florida. He found many islands, one of which he named Islamorada, the purple island. In 1521, Ponce de León returned, this time with two ships, to colonize Florida for the Spanish. But while he and his party were building houses, they were attacked by members of the Calusa tribe. Ponce de León was injured during the battle by an arrow tipped with Manchineel sap, and the Manchineel tree is deadly. It can kill a man in four different ways – by breathing in smoke after a tree has been burned; by eating its fruit, which resembles a small apple; by inhaling the vapours the living tree releases; and by introducing the tree’s sap into the bloodstream. The latter was what ultimately killed Juan Ponce de León. His men frantically tried to find arrowroot, the only known antidote for the poison, but to no avail. Finally his men brought him to Havana, Cuba, in a last-ditch attempt to find a poultice of arrowroot to save him, but Ponce de León died shortly after they arrived there.’

‘This has nothing to do with me. You didn’t poison me – you turned me into … this.’ I motioned to my face. Never going home again and never seeing my parents or friends again felt almost like being dead. Dying from the Manchineel tree sounded easier and a lot less painful than what she was putting me through.

‘This has everything to do with you – and me – if you’ll just let me finish.’

I didn’t know what to expect from this story. I had no idea what I should try to take from it, but having no other choice I could see, I agreed to let her continue.

‘The story I just told you is the one most people are acquainted with, but it’s only a fragment of the truth.’ Miss Hatfield’s voice became monotone, emotionless, as if she were reciting from an open book in front of her.

‘In 1513, when Ponce de León discovered Islamorada, he also found a lake on the island filled with the clearest water he’d ever seen. Wondering if it were fresh, Ponce de León took a sip and was amazed to discover that it was. He invited his friend, Buono de Quexo, to try the water, but fearing the lake wasn’t really fresh, he declined, preferring to stand guard in case the Calusa warriors decided to pay an unexpected visit. Instead, a woman by the name of Juana Ruíz, who had accompanied Ponce de León’s expedition and was the first European woman to set foot in the New World, decided that she wanted to try the water herself. She agreed that it was the sweetest she’d ever tasted. Ponce de León marked the location of the lake on his personal map, in case his men ran out of fresh water. However, it appears he promptly forgot about it for the remainder of his first expedition.

‘In 1521, when Ponce de León gathered men to return with him and colonize Florida, he realized that those who had accompanied him on his first voyage had aged gleatly over the course of the last eight years, whereas he received many compliments that he’d hardly changed and still appeared youthful. On his second expedition, one of the men, Francisco de Ortega, brought along his wife, Beatriz Jimenez, and she in turn brought her sister, Juana. While Beatriz had come to the New World to settle down with her husband and escape the tradition and social demands of Spain, her sister Juana had a very different reason for joining the expedition.

‘Juana had heard from a friend about a woman with the same name as her who never aged and always had a youthful glow about her. She’d heard stories that this woman’s perpetual youth was a gift of the magical waters of a lake she’d bathed in when she visited Florida. Juana knew it was a risk; there was definitely a strong chance the stories would turn out to be nothing more than that – stories. But it was a risk she was willing to take, for Spain held nothing for her any more. Not since her parents had passed away and her betrothed had married another because Juana couldn’t pay a dowry. In a way, she had nothing to lose. All she had to do was stick close to Juan Ponce de León and find out if he knew anything about this lake.

‘There came a day when Juana’s patience and close following were rewarded. Ponce de León had gradually grown to trust her, and one morning he asked her if she would accompany him to a lake he’d found on his previous voyage. She agreed, of course, and as soon as they reached the lake, she dived right in. She swam around for a while, immersing herself in the water, and impatiently waited to feel different. Eventually Ponce de León asked her to help him search for kindling in the forest around the lake area to bring back to camp. He didn’t want to leave her alone, but having come this far, Juana had no intention of getting out of the water just yet. She told him she’d be perfectly fine by herself and that she would wait for him. He tried again to convince her to come with him – the area around the lake was damp and he didn’t know how far he’d have to go to find dry kindling. Ultimately, her stubbornness won out and he left alone, promising to return as soon as he could.

‘As far as anyone knows, Juana spent hours floating on her back in the lake. She was still floating when the sun began to cast long shadows into the waters around her. The ripples she made in the water disfigured the shadows until she could no longer identify their shapes. As the water grew still, she peered at her own reflection. It remained unchanged. She was upset – even angry – that she didn’t look any younger. She thought the waters hadn’t worked the way they should have, but she still found herself bottling up some of the lake’s waters.’

Miss Hatfield stopped speaking.

‘And what happened to her?’ I asked. I found myself caught up in the story despite myself, and was beginning to see where the connection to my strange situation came in.

‘The story goes that when Ponce de León returned, he didn’t find anyone floating in the lake. He searched the banks and looked all over for her. Just as he was about to head back to the camp, believing that she’d left without him, he realized that the small leaf-covered tree trunk he’d just stumbled over was too soft to be merely wood. He crouched in the mud and rolled the object over. It was a body – Juana’s body. Not even the smears of mud on her cheeks could hide her sickly pallor. She had claw marks on her face, as though she’d either scratched herself with her own fingernails or been involved in some sort of struggle. Her cheeks were bloodied and her expression was one of utter horror – the only evidence of the nature of the last thing she saw. No one really knew how she died. Some speculated that she went mad and took her own life, while others swore that the Devil himself was in the forest.

‘The physician Ponce de León ran to fetch said that in her grasp was a glass bottle of some sort. He thought the bottle might be a key piece of evidence in the mystery of her death, so he tried to take it from her hand. Though she’d been dead for many hours, her grip was still equal to that of the strongest man. It took three men to prise the vial from her fingers, and when they did, her fingers creaked as they opened, and a sigh escaped from her lips as if she were still alive. After her burial, which was a quick and small affair, the glass bottle went to her closest living relative – her sister Beatriz – who put it on her mantelshelf, where it remained, untouched, until the day she died.’

‘And where do I fit into this?’ I asked. ‘You’re still not telling me why you did what you did.’

Miss Hatfield barely glanced at me before lapsing back into her story. ‘The glass vial was passed down through family members and friends who didn’t know what they held, until in 1608 it reached a certain Rebecca Hatfield.’

‘1608?’ My mind froze for a second as all the implications of Miss Hatfield’s sentence unfolded themselves. ‘You were alive in 1608?’

Miss Hatfield laughed, the corner of her eyes crinkling daintily.

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t be born for another 224 years.’

‘But that’s still—’

‘It was just someone with the same name.’ Miss Hatfield paused to collect her thoughts. ‘She was making herself a pot of tea one day when she knocked over the glass bottle. The neck of the bottle hit the opening of the kettle just so, the cork stopping the bottle flew off, and a drop of the water fell into the tea. Poor Rebecca didn’t notice, and promptly re-corked the bottle and set it back onto the shelf above her. She drank the tea without thinking, and it wasn’t until a few months had passed that she realized something was amiss.’

‘How did she know?’ I asked.

‘I’m glad you’re finally taking an interest in my story.’ A small smile flickered across her face, and she continued, ‘She’d cut her hair sometime after drinking the tea, and though months had passed since then, her hair didn’t appear to be growing any longer. Rebecca had cut her son John’s hair at the same time, and was shocked to realize that her hair had stopped growing, though his had not. When half a year had passed, she knew something was wrong, but she kept her secret to herself. When five years had passed, she saw her husband’s face gain wrinkles and her son’s grow into maturity while her own didn’t change, and she knew she had to do something. She could no longer remain in denial. She thought of talking to the town priest or to her husband, or maybe even to her child, but she knew they wouldn’t believe her. She couldn’t escape what was happening to her and there was no way out. So, one fateful day, she left home and never looked back.

‘For years she lived alone in the wild. She learned to fend for herself and keep others at a distance. She lost track of time; the only way she knew one year from another was by the passing seasons and the growth of the trees around her. They protected and sheltered her from the elements as well as from mankind, and for that she was thankful.

‘Many days, she dreamed about how it might be to go back home. She knew it wouldn’t be as if she’d never left. She wondered if her son had finally moved out of the house and married a pretty young girl. She wondered if her husband was still blacksmithing, though his once-strong hands might now be stiff and feeble with age. That wondering was like a seed in her mind; once it was planted, it soon occupied her every thought and invaded her dreams.