Witches (33 page)

Joshua. She no longer thought of him as Jake. He was Joshua. A complete and independent person in his own right. A man she loved now with every fiber of her being.

Weeks ago, she’d helped nurse his family through the smallpox. His brother, weakened in body and soul by his earlier experiences at the hands of the witch hunters, hadn’t made it, but Joshua’s mother and a good deal of his workers had. Joshua, even in his grief, believed that she’d been the one to turn the sickness away with her herbs, her caring. Her magic. He wouldn’t listen to anything she said to the contrary. He would be forever in her debt, he’d promised her.

Like a miracle, the smallpox took no more victims. The town itself had been spared. When Amanda was sure it was safe, she’d returned to Rachel’s cottage, to the children and her new life.

Rebecca had been on her mind a lot lately and she wondered why. Possibly, she’d speculated, she was much on Rebecca’s mind. For the first time in her life, she wished that she and Rebecca had been closer, like she and Jessie. She found she missed both of them more than she would have thought.

Her new life made Amanda both happy and sad, but she’d stopped feeling guilty weeks ago. She was still there and nothing had changed. Except that she was happier than she’d ever been. How dare she be happy. But she was. Amanda sighed softly and cocked her head to watch Lizzy play with her doll.

She had Joshua and she had the children, a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. All was well, except...

Their endeavor at bartering off Rachel’s jewelry in the marketplace a few Saturdays before had reaped an unexpected and alarming harvest. The day had begun well enough, though the townspeople had hung back, barely acknowledging her and the girls. Yet with her appropriate clothes, carefully spoken speeches, and demure smiles, she’d eventually coaxed a couple of the merchants in their stalls to trade the pieces of jewelry for a priceless ten-pound cone of white sugar called a
loaf,
more tea and featherbed mattresses for all of them. The sugar and tea she’d carried away with her, but the mattresses she left for Joshua to pick up later in his buckboard, per an earlier arrangement she’d made with him. The merchant knew Joshua, he’d said. The whole town did—so that venture had gone well.

It was her chance encounter with the infamous witch hunter, Sebastien Goodman, and his friends late in the afternoon that ruined and sullied the day. Amanda had had nightmares ever since.

Thank goodness she hadn’t taken Amadeus along. That would have been even more suspicious-looking. People had been accused and arrested simply for having an animal considered a witch’s familiar. Amadeus, with his arrogant behavior, wouldn’t have helped matters.

She and the girls had begun their trip home and were walking alongside the main street, with their packages clutched tightly in their arms, when a gaunt man in a black cloak rode by on a bony horse with three other men.

When the men slowed down their mounts to come abreast of her and the girls, Amanda had looked up and, with a foreboding shiver, met the man’s manic eyes hidden in the darkness of his hood. Saw his face as he glared down at her and the cowl slid back.

That face...that face was someone she knew
.
Instant feelings of doom and chilling terror had lodged firmly in her chest, heavy as stone, and no amount of telling herself that she had no reason to be frightened would dislodge it. It’d clung like a leech, sucking the strength from her and making her behave like an idiot.

Amanda had quickly lowered her head and pretended to go on her way, dragging Lizzy and Maggie behind her.

Then the man astride the horse had spoken to her and she’d been obliged to stop, raise her head, and answer against the silent warning screaming in her head the whole time.

“A woman alone should not be unescorted out in public. It be unseemly,” he’d drawled, as his horse had come abreast of her, tugging at its bit and snorting as it pawed the ground. “Where be thy husband?”

His three friends, dressed like him in somber colored clothes and cloaks, stared down at her coldly, but seemed content to let the other man do the talking.

“I have no husband, sir,” she’d replied carefully. The less she said, the better. She just wanted to get away from them.

“What be thy name?” She’d noticed he had a cruel voice to go with his cruel eyes. A smile full of arrogance and threat, and more of a scowl than a smile, showing a mouthful of bad teeth, a curse of the times.

“Rachel Coxe,” Amanda had replied; her heart had been beating so wildly in her chest, it’d made her dizzy. She’d had to support herself against Maggie to keep from swaying like a drunkard.

The man had been leaning over her from his horse’s saddle, squinting at her in the falling shadows, taking stock of her as if she were a bug under a microscope—one he wanted to dissect. His companions had ogled her in silence. All four of them put her in mind of drab-feathered vultures. Their noses beakish, their faces humorless, and their stares predatory. Amanda, always attuned to the good or evil in people, cringed immediately at the air of viciousness about them. They made the hair on the back of her neck rise.

The man had smiled wider at her name, his pretentious gaze had flicked across her and the two children, and then slyly around them at the people who were already gawking. He liked the attention.

Amanda had also recognized the fear in those faces before they’d turned swiftly away.

“Mistress Rachel Coxe it be, then?” His face had screwed up as he’d seemed to search his mind for something, and his eyes glinted wickedly. “Aye, I know of thee. Thy reputation has preceded thee.”

She’d sensed something very dangerous about them. Their intense scrutiny of her wasn’t normal.

The man continued to study her for a second or two longer in the same strange way as he calmed his nervous horse with a slap of the riding crop he’d held in one hand.

Get away from them. Now,
her mind sang.

“Excuse us, sir. We were just leaving,” Amanda had said respectfully, her eyes traveling past him
to the other dour-faced men with him. “It be late.”

He’d ignored that, too. He maneuvered his horse before her so she couldn’t leave. His eyes had roved away from her and the girls, toward the setting sun, and then to her expressionless face again.

A hint of importance tinged his gruff voice as he leaned down nearer to her and mouthed, “They say there be many witches in Canaan causing decent God-abiding folk to tremble in their beds at night. Laying evil spells and hurting the good people of this town.

“I have come to rid the town of them and bring God’s grace back to this accursed place.” His sudden declaration had cut her like a knife. He’d abruptly sat up straight in the saddle and had grinned down at her startled face.

“I am known by the name Sebastien Goodman, witch hunter of some fame. Does thou know of me?”

Sebastien!
The witch hunter. The beast who’d imprisoned and tormented Joshua’s poor brother and nameless others.

Amanda had simply shaken her head, so angry and unsettled she hadn’t trusted herself to speak. Here was the worst of all her nightmares come true in living, breathing flesh right before her. Like a monster come suddenly to life. It’d made her want to run away screaming in panic; it’d taken every ounce of strength she could muster not to.

“I have just come from the coast cities.” He’d tossed his head, his straggly, greasy hair fluttering in the slight breeze. “I’m proud to say that there be no witches left from whence I have come. I have imprisoned or hung them all. God will not abide a witch to live, so they say, and I am God’s man.” He’d laughed sadistically then, enjoying her obvious discomfort. The man enjoyed inflicting fear and pain.

Catching her off guard, he’d dismounted from his horse and had faced her, grabbing her hands viselike in his so she couldn’t escape. He was a tall, thin man who’d towered over her; up close, pockmarks covered his face and his breath was foul—like his heart.

“Are thee one of
them,
Mistress? A witch?” He’d come right out and asked her boldly. His eyelid drooped lower over his left eye than the other, giving him a deceptively lazy, harmless look.

“Nay, sir,” Amanda had whispered back, gritting her teeth, trying to keep her terror from showing. She’d wanted
to scratch his beady eyes out. Instead, she’d kept her gaze lowered in a pretension of humility. Any sign of rebellion would only have incited madness in such a man.

He’d reached out to touch her face, nodding at what she’d said, and then had murmured in a dead voice, “Beware, Mistress, if thou be not what thee say. God despises liars and will punish the guilty.” His eyes had had that glow again.

Amanda, realizing he was truly insane, had finally snapped out of her trance, yanking her hand from his grasp, and had moved away from him. She’d been careful to cover her loathing and her dismay under an icy face. To have let him seen her fear would have been like signing her own death warrant. He’d been waiting for that.

“Then I am sure God will protect me, as I am what I say I am,” She’d managed to reply right before she’d rushed off down the street and away from him and his friends.

She’d heard laughter as she urged the girls on faster toward home.

“Good day to thee, Madame. We shall meet again, Mistress Coxe, be sure of it,” he’d yelled from behind her. From his lips, it’d sounded like a threat, pure and simple.

It was only then she’d known she should never have given him her true name. God, what had she done?

If only she’d still had her powers! Thing was, she didn’t, so instead, she’d fled from the marketplace and the silent crowds, shaking so hard, she could hardly keep her teeth from chattering.

At first, she’d been afraid he’d follow her, so with Maggie leading the way, they’d slipped into the nearest alleyway and had rushed home as inconspicuously as they could manage.

Of course, he didn’t follow. He didn’t need to, did he? He knew her name.

A frown settled on Amanda’s face at the memory of the witch hunter and their meeting. Since then, she’d placed his evil face.

Impossible as it seemed, he’d looked like the high priest of the cult that had taken Jonny ...his face the face of the demon she’d destroyed that night over three hundred years in the future.
The knowledge alarmed her. Was Sebastien a man or a demon? She didn’t know.

That incident with the witch hunter and his magistrates had been weeks ago. She’d told Joshua about it. Yet nothing had come of it. She was probably safe. Yes, it was all right. Her growing reputation as a healer and a good woman, and Joshua’s patronage, must be protecting her.

Amanda went back to the table, finished the loaves of bread, and laid the pans carefully on the grate she’d fashioned over their hearth fire. It was as if she’d been born to this time. Everything she’d learned so eagerly years ago from Jake and by doing things herself as a way of returning to the land held her in good stead here. She fit in and found she even liked it. She enjoyed the hard work and the sense of accomplishment that it gave her.

She made her way outside into the stifling heat, after taking Lizzy’s hand to draw her along, and went behind the cottage to check on their growing garden. She wondered wistfully what the townspeople did think of her. The tongues surely had been wagging night and day since her visit to town. Had they softened toward her at all since they’d seen that she cared so well for the children? Had helped so many people? She hoped so.

Amanda shaded her eyes with one hand and smiled as she watched Lizzy playing in the tomatoes—smiling as she thought of Joshua. He would be with her again tonight. Like most nights.

She knelt down to do her daily weeding. The garden was also thriving under her expert, loving care, and she was planning to plant some late summer crops, starting tomorrow.

Who knows, she chuckled to herself as she stared at the brilliant summer blue sky and wiped the sweat from her brow, she might become a full-fledged farmer and plant a field of tobacco or corn or anything. Get some pigs and some cattle. Joshua would help her. She could add another room onto the cabin so Maggie and Lizzy would have their own bedroom. She could swing a hammer well enough to do the job.

The Canaan she’d known just months ago never seemed so far away. Though she still fretted over poor Mabel and what her family was going through over her disappearance, there was nothing she could do about it. She prayed for all of them, as well as herself.

As she poked and tugged at weeds and threw out rocks, Amanda daydreamed about the things she had to do. She might never be able to go home. Maybe she’d have to stay here forever. Except for that meeting with Sebastien, she didn’t miss her powers much anymore. Her old life and her powers in exchange for all this. Lately, it had seemed a fair trade.

She looked at Lizzy and sang happily to herself a song that Maggie had taught her. The child had Amadeus in her lap and was stroking him. Amanda could almost hear his purring from where she was. It seemed the longer she was without her magic the less she understood Amadeus. She could tell at times he was angry with her because he couldn’t communicate. At times, he seemed to be trying to tell her something, but she could no longer understand.

Sometimes she felt sorry for him. He was trapped in the past, too.