Witches (24 page)

“Yes, he ran off into the woods when the wagon drove by.

“Amadeus,” she called out. “Amadeus, where are you?”

Suddenly, the cat was in her arms, purring. She hugged him close to her, glad to see him, but more than a little perturbed that he’d arrived the way he had. Instant transport.

The man’s shocked eyes found hers for an uncomfortable moment, but he didn’t say anything, just looked at Amadeus, who was staring back at him from behind the edge of the cloak. He was snuggling on his mistress’s lap, his one ear perked
straight up.

Amanda clenched her teeth, remained
silent, and squeezed Amadeus a little too hard. He reciprocated by nipping her.

The man guided his horse between two trees, shaking his head. Then he laughed low in his chest and again, Amanda felt a big dose of
déjà vu.
Where had she heard that laugh before? She had this unnerving sense of having known him before. Which was, of course, impossible. The knowledge washed over her like a gently building wave and lulled her. Impossible.

They made their way silently through the woods for a while in the dappled sunlight until Amanda’s curiosity got the better of her.

“Are the Indians around here dangerous?” Careful to speak as little as possible. The less she talked the better.

Joshua seemed taken aback at her question. “’Tis rumored the Pequot have a camp somewhere deep in these woods. The townspeople leave them alone. They are not friendly.” He was looking down at her as he talked and she was very aware of him behind her. Strong and solid. Familiar somehow. Unbelievable as it sounded, she knew she was safe with him.

Amanda reached up with the hand that wasn’t holding Amadeus and touched the panther teeth hanging around her neck.

She had the feeling that Joshua had noticed the necklace, but again he asked nothing.

Amanda could feel his intense eyes on her. Feel the stiffness take over his body and she asked no more questions. Something had upset him and she wasn’t sure what it’d been. Could be it was her clothes, her speech, the way she was acting. Maybe she’d been odd enough to arouse his suspicions.

They eventually came to a crudely-built clapboard cottage on the outskirts of the town. Amanda spied a small anxious face peeking from a window at them. One of Rachel’s little ones.

“Thou art home, Mistress.” Joshua wrapped his arm tighter around her waist, lifted her from the saddle, and lowered her to the ground at the tiny cottage’s doorstep. The horse moved back as if the man was anxious to be on his way.

“Thank you, sir,” Amanda murmured, evading his sharp eyes. She was so tired she was weaving. After effects of her journey through time, or just emotional, she wasn’t sure. She hoped it wasn’t some extra spell Rachel had put on her. Like drugging someone who’s going to the guillotine. She had to brace herself against the side of the house or she would have fallen asleep right there.

The man was studying her intently, as if he was deciding something about her.

He leaned down over the saddle and whispered into her ear, “I am a planter, a small landowner of some means, who lives up at Settler’s Pass. If thou ever hast need of me, just send a message. Joshua Graham. I will come.”

Then he galloped away without a look back, merging into the forest, leaving her standing there at a stranger’s door.

She let Amadeus down and he started exploring the outside of the cottage.

It was then she thought of the cloak; she’d forgotten to return it and he’d forgotten to ask for it. She unfastened the clasp, slid it off her shoulders, and draped it across the inner crook of her arm.

The door opened.

A girl about ten or eleven years old appeared in the doorway, squinting at the harsh sunlight, shading her eyes with her hand. Amanda’s first impression of the child was one of an emaciated scarecrow standing there in rags. Her delicate face pitifully pale and in strange contrast with her large dark eyes and coal black hair that hung in stringy clumps to her waist. She had on a shapeless dress belted with a ratty piece of rope. She reminded Amanda of a starving waif you’d see in those Save-the-Children ads where the foreign children were all hungry eyes and bones sticking through their skin. She was barefoot.

“Ma, where hast thou been so long? Lizzy and I were worried,” a cowed voice said in an oddly restrained manner. Too polite. The girl hadn’t exactly rushed out to greet or hug her either. Was this the way the child acted toward her mother? So distant.

Amanda met the girl’s eyes only briefly. Afraid she’d see right away that she was an impostor. “In the woods. I had an...accident, I think.” Remembering not to talk too much.

“Ah,” the girl said. As if she were used to such vague explanations.

“The gentleman is not staying, then?” The girl’s eyes cut sharply to where the dust kicked up by the man’s horse was settling. She gazed back at Amanda. Her eyes perplexed.

“No,” Amanda answered, not understanding what the girl was getting at.

The child seemed at a loss, but she didn’t question further.

She was gawking at Amanda’s clothes.

“Ma, what happened to your gown?”

“My gown?” She pretended as if the condition of her dress hadn’t occurred to her.

The girl’s face had a smirk on it. “It is truly a mess.”

Amanda was never good at lying, especially on the spur of the moment. She decided that acting as if she didn’t know how she’d gotten into the state she was in, might be the best course of action. Convenient amnesia. “I’m not sure...” She raised her hand to the side of her face and tried to look confused. Which wasn’t all that difficult in the mood she was in. “I was so hot. I think I fainted out in the woods. When I came to,” she waved her hands lazily in the warm air, “this is how my gown looked. I looked.”

Then she made a great show of staring down at her clothes in surprise. “I don’t know how I came to look like this.” The corners of her mouth twitched up slightly at the corners. “Then that nice man came along and brought me home.”

She could tell that the girl didn’t believe any of it, but she merely inclined her head as if she did.

“Well, come inside, Ma. The sun is hot.” There was no real empathy, though, in her sad eyes at the words or in her voice, as if she either didn’t care or as if she was used to her mother coming home in such a questionable state.

“I have saved supper for thee.”

“Thank you.” She didn’t even know the girl’s name. She was supposed to be Rachel and this was supposed to be her child. How, she fretted, was she going to fool her?

Alert to the strained emotions drifting around them, Amanda asked, “Is everything all right here, then?”

“Aye.” The girl gave her a sly sideward glance. She was deliberately leaving something out, but Amanda knew when she was getting the brush-off and let it drop.

Amadeus sauntered past them and into the cabin. “Ma, thou brought home a cat? Where is Beelzebub?”

“Beelzebub?”

The girl’s voice drifted to a whisper and her eyes darted around to be sure no one was around to hear. “The goat. Thy familiar?”

“Oh.” So Rachel’s daughter knew about her being a witch. Which wasn’t so unusual. Living in such close quarters, she would have had to know what her mother was—or had been.

Amanda hesitated, searching for some plausible fib. Because, of course, she had no idea where Rachel’s familiar was. He was most likely with Rachel.

Wherever she was.

“I don’t know really. He left.”

The girl gawked at her, then shrugged as if she didn’t care either way. “I did not like him, anyway. He had a nasty temper. Is the cat your new familiar, then?” The child had turned and was heading into the darkness of the cottage. Amanda followed her in, stooping because the door was so short and narrow.

“Ah...yes,” she answered. Well, that would make it easy.

They were inside. That it was hot as blazes was the first thing Amanda noticed. Hot and stuffy. There were only two miserly windows covered with what looked to Amanda like some sort of waxed cloth, instead of glass, and they let in only a little light. Heavy shutters surrounded both windows, ready to be bolted shut—protection against Indian attacks. One large room with a simple fireplace made of logs plastered together with clay in one corner and shelves around it filled with cooking kettles and dishes. A wobbly looking table, and three chunks of shapeless wood that served as simple chairs. For beds there were mattresses stuffed with something, probably rags or corn husks, in two corners. She counted two smaller ones and a much larger one.

Either Rachel liked room when she slept...or (and Amanda finally recognized the girl’s earlier confusion over Joshua leaving so soon) Rachel shared her bed at times. The floors were packed dirt. A tattered rag rug lay in front of the fireplace.

The walls were raw wooden timber, the cracks filled with some sort of mud or something. The house itself had a thatched roof. Very primitive. A chamber pot was snuggled next to each one of the beds. No indoor plumbing here.

When Amanda’s eyes had become accustomed to the murkiness she also saw that the cabin was filthy. Uncared for in many ways.

If Rachel had been such a powerful witch, why had she had to live like this? So poorly? Another mystery.

Amanda couldn’t help the compassion from welling up inside of her and spilling out toward the children. If she’d had children, she would never have treated them like this. Never.

Amanda wandered around the cabin as the girl picked Amadeus up, and cuddling him, took him to a corner of the room where she sat down next to one of the stuffed pallets. He let her, and soon Amanda could hear him purring from across the room. Heard the girl talking to someone in soft tones.

There was something delicious cooking over the fire in a hanging kettle and Amanda walked over to the hearth and stoked the dying fire back up into a strong flame. It brightened the dark interior of the cottage and that was when she saw the other child. She was holding Amadeus and cooing over him happily as she sat talking to the older girl in the corner.

Amanda walked over. A very young child with an angelic face and empty bright blue eyes stared up at her. Not much more than a baby, really. Three or so, and as blond as the other child was dark, with a perfect heart-shaped face and curly golden ringlets. Lizzy, the dark one had called her before. Short for Elizabeth, perhaps?

Rachel’s other child.

The smaller one was hugging the cat and laughing and Amadeus was licking her face contentedly, when he wasn’t wanting the other girl to scratch him under his chin. He seemed to have adopted the two already—and they him. The younger one was squealing with delight, and even the older one was smiling. Amanda in a flash of insight knew that life was hard for these two children. Loveless. She could see it in their faces.

Looking down at them, Amanda felt a surge of pity. These were the two children whose destiny was to die at the hands of either their mother or witch hunters. Oh, no, not these two innocents. Not if she could help it. She’d watch over them because she couldn’t deny she felt, almost against her will, a bond with them. A bond for another witch’s children whose fate, she prayed, wasn’t already written in stone.

“I see you’ve made friends?” Amanda smiled down at the girls.

The older one glanced up. “Aye, he is a bonny cat.” Her eyes gleamed in the dimness. There was a piercing quickness to them. A knowing. The girl was smart. Exceptionally intuitive.

The littlest one continued to stare blankly up at Amanda, no acknowledgement whatsoever. No expression, nothing. A chubby fist came up and rubbed her eyes. She yawned, showing perfect little teeth. A soft wistful smile came and then faded.

Amanda passed her hand in front of the child’s face. No reaction.

With dawning sadness, Amanda realized that the child was blind. She couldn’t see her. She couldn’t see anything.

“Lizzy.” Amanda sighed. The name sounded sweet on her lips. Amanda knelt down, and unexplainably drawn to the child, she took her into her arms and cuddled her. Rocked her gently as if her caring could change the fact that she was blind. At first, the girl seemed to resist her but as Amanda continued to hold her, the feeble struggles ceased and the child responded cautiously by hugging her back.

The older girl was watching, her dark eyes attentive, as if she was trying to pierce Amanda’s disguise.

“Mama?” The small, astonished voice was full of desperate want and...fear? It struck Amanda as hard to believe, but the child was actually afraid of her.

Her own mother. Hadn’t Rachel loved her children? Hadn’t she shown them any affection at all? Amanda had no way of knowing.

She hadn’t known Rachel.

“Yes. It’s me.”

The child held on to her tighter and planted a soft, sloppy kiss on her cheek. Hot as fire, like her whole body. Fever. The child was sick. Amanda thought. I’ll have to gather some special herbs from the woods and make her some medicine.

As she drew away, an urgent longing—a painful tug—lodged in her heart and began to take root. She wanted to protect and love this child in her arms. Forever. The child shone like a diamond, her soul as bright as the sun.

A
special child, this one
.
Good. Not a child who should belong to a black witch.