The First Midnight Spell

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

 

About the Author

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Copyright

About the Publisher

1

RHODE ISLAND, 1695

 

A spell for stealing beauty:

 

Flowers in the spring.

Sunlight on the waters.

A man overcome by a woman's loveliness.

 

Those ingredients seemed as though they could be right. Sixteen-year-old Elizabeth Cooper readjusted her place on the meadow grasses as she took up Aunt Ruth's kit. Inside was the precious jade charm her great-grandmother had managed to find; this jade allowed for the casting of spells few other witches outside the Orient could ever match. Elizabeth was counting on that now.

“Are you doing it?” Pru said from where she lolled on her back, playing with the end of her braid. The wind caught at her long black skirt, revealing her ankles and calves, but she paid it no mind here; they were half a mile out from the village of Fortune's Sound, far from any men who might see. “Because I don't notice anything different.”

“Hush,” Elizabeth said, closing her eyes and beginning the spell.

Buttercups glinting like nuggets of gold within the first pale-green grasses of April.

“Look, my girl. Look.” Mama whispering as they stood on the deck of the ship that had been their prison for weeks, Elizabeth hardly able to remember England, where she had been born, and sick from days upon days of storms, but now able to see placid waters ahead and finally, finally, sunshine coming down through the clouds to paint brilliant light on the waves.

Nat Porter looking up from his work to see Pru walking by, a tendril of dark hair escaped from her cap, and his face alight with a smile.

Elizabeth felt a shiver pass through her, a shiver that might have been the magic—or jealousy. Quickly she opened her eyes and demanded: “Did it work?”

Pru rolled over on her belly to study Elizabeth for a moment, then shrugged. “You don't look so different to me.”

Her new spell had failed. Elizabeth slumped back against the nearby tree trunk in disgust. Aunt Ruth and all the other witches said the creation of a new spell was difficult work—so difficult most witches never even tried it, and few who tried it succeeded. But didn't they always compliment Elizabeth's abilities, marvel at her potential? If anyone could do it, she could.

“I don't see what you're so worried about,” Pru said. “You're very pretty.”

Elizabeth assumed this to be true. Nobody in their small community had brought a mirror with them from England, nor had anybody traded for one, so Elizabeth's only glimpses of herself since childhood had been her reflection in water. That reflection was pleasing enough, and ever since she'd reached marriageable age, she'd noticed boys and men both paying attention to her.

But not Nathaniel Porter.

“Besides, who were you going to steal beauty from? Me?” Pru laughed. “You're lowering your bucket into a dry well.”

“You're lovely,” Elizabeth said, because she liked Pru and because—well—she
had
intended to steal from Pru. It would only have been for a little while, more borrowing than stealing, which was why she thought it wouldn't be so very bad. Really, though, Elizabeth wanted to discover just what there was to steal.

By any sensible standard, Prudence Godwin was not beautiful. She was short as a child, and slightly plump, though not stout. Her eyes were brown, and her skin no less freckled than Elizabeth's own. Her features were neither ugly nor particularly arresting. And yet Nat Porter—like most of the other boys they lived with—looked admiringly at Pru whenever she walked by.

Perhaps it had something to do with Pru's smile. Every day, virtually every moment, Pru was smiling or laughing, finding humor in everything from the splay-legged wobble of a new calf to the awkward tilt of a child's cap. Elizabeth privately thought it was foolish of Pru to find this hard and savage New World a never-ending source of delight. But if Pru's smile was so winning, if it changed her simple face into something beautiful, then obviously there was something there worth the taking.

Pru rose to her feet, brushing off her apron. “Come on. They'll be looking for us soon.”

“You just want to walk through the street while Nat Porter's leaving his shop,” Elizabeth said.

“
You're
the one who's taken with Nat,” Pru said. “Like nearly every other girl in town. I don't understand the lot of you, and I don't care, either, because it leaves Jonathan Hale for me.”

Pru often spoke of Jonathan Hale, which made no sense to Elizabeth. Jonathan wasn't unappealing, she supposed. He was a bit short, though that would hardly be a flaw in the eyes of tiny Pru, and certainly he laughed as much as she did.

That didn't make him a match for Nathaniel Porter. Never had Elizabeth seen the boy who could match him.

Nat stood a head taller than any other man in the town. He had thick hair the color of ripened wheat, and eyes as pale and rare as the beach glass she had once found in the sand after a storm. His chin had a cleft, and while Elizabeth couldn't say precisely why this made him even more handsome, she knew that it did.

She realized Nat wasn't in love with Pru. Smile though he did when she walked by, that wasn't any special regard—only admiration. Yet it was more attention than Nat had ever given Elizabeth, so she envied it.

Had they still lived in Dorset, where they'd been born, Elizabeth thought it unlikely she and Pru would be friends. They liked each other well enough, and of course they shared their fascination with witchcraft; other than that, they had little in common. Pru was part of a large, bustling family, all of them as giddy and playful as she; Elizabeth's parents had died years ago, and she lived with a stern aunt who mostly wanted her to take care of her cousins. Pru liked early mornings; Elizabeth preferred the night. In every way they were different. Here, though, on the cold, rugged coast of Rhode Island Colony, they each had to take friends where they could find them.

The town of Fortune's Sound contained fewer than three hundred souls. They all lived in small houses the men had built by hand, most of which had paper windows and dirt floors. Elizabeth knew the name of every single person, from old deaf Thomas Gaskill to the Pruitts' new baby girl, Mercy. Sometimes she thought she even knew every single cow, every single sheep, every single chicken. When she was a little girl, Elizabeth had found this very boring.

Now, however, she found herself coming to like the smallness of town, her world. When you knew people well, you knew what to expect from them.

As they walked back to Fortune's Sound, Pru was uncharacteristically quiet. Elizabeth glanced over at her a few times before finally saying, “Cat's got your tongue.”

“Elizabeth—I've been wanting to ask you—” Pru hesitated, and Elizabeth's heart seized with fear.

Did she love Nat after all? Was she about to confess it?

Instead Pru said, “Why do you even let yourself think about Nathaniel Porter? You can't marry him any more than I could. It's impossible. You know that.”

Nat Porter was a witch's son; his mother, the Widow Porter, led their coven. The First Laws decreed that no witch could ever marry the son of another. And there was no breaking the First Laws; they defined the Craft, governed all witches, and set the only limitations on their powers. Elizabeth had been taught since earliest childhood that the penalty would be beyond anything she could bear.

She said only, “Thinking about a boy isn't against the Laws.”

Pru laughed. “That's why I like you. You think for yourself.”

Elizabeth smiled back, forgetting her jealousy for a moment. Pru ran ahead, an invitation to a race—which Elizabeth accepted, dashing as fast as she could and easily outpacing Pru. They giggled as they ran, their long skirts swishing. She could almost pretend they were little girls again, new to the colony, and convinced the New World was boundless and free.

 

That night, Elizabeth and Aunt Ruth left just after dinner so that they might join their quilting circle—or so they said. This was a perfectly respectable thing for women to do of an evening, and one no man would ever ask to take part in or even observe. Not every woman in their small colonial town was a part of the quilting circle, and a few of those excluded felt quite insulted. Weren't they as good with a needle and thread as any of the others?

Of course it wasn't really a quilting circle.

The coven gathered together in the Widow Porter's home. Nathaniel always went to visit with friends on “quilting circle” nights, but Elizabeth liked just being in the place where he lived. She usually sat on the wooden floor by the small corner bed she assumed was his, and imagined him lying there, so near her they could touch.

They always began by spreading out the sewing, and those witches who would work that night took up their thimbles and spread out patches of spare cloth. (In order to sustain the illusion of a quilting circle, it was necessary to occasionally produce quilts.) Elizabeth expected this to be an ordinary late-spring meeting, one at which they would perform spells to ensure the bounty of the crops, the health of the newborn calves and lambs, before turning to more delicate work. But when Widow Porter spoke, her voice was sharp. “Tonight a dark task lies ahead of us. Tonight, we must censure the weakest among us, and cast her out.”

Elizabeth's eyes sought Pru's instantly. Pru sat there, motionless, thimble still glinting on her thumb. At first Elizabeth had thought Pru might have told someone about the stealing-beauty spell, that now they all knew Elizabeth loved Nat in defiance of the First Laws—but no, Pru was as surprised as she.

Widow Porter looked across at Goodwife Crews, who had hung her head. Her long, thin hands shook in her lap. After a long moment of silence, Widow Porter continued, “Catherine Crews did yesterday cast a spell of healing upon her son's leg.”

This was hardly out of the ordinary. Everyone in Fortune's Sound knew that little Ezekiel Crews had taken a bad fall two days ago, and that the break in his bone was a serious one, the sort that often led to infection and death. This was precisely when a spell of healing should be cast. Pru shrugged, and Elizabeth shook her head slightly, meaning,
I don't understand, either.

But then Widow Porter said, “This she did in the presence of a male witness.”

Gasps echoed around the room, and Elizabeth had to cover her mouth to keep from crying out in shock. Catherine Crews had broken one of the First Laws. Elizabeth had thought if you did this, surely your magic would rip you apart instantly, or the One Beneath would leap up from His dark throne in hell to snatch you down. Yet Catherine Crews sat there, downcast but alive and well, waiting meekly for her punishment.

“What have you to say for yourself, Catherine Crews?” demanded the Widow Porter.

“Timothy—my husband—he wouldn't leave the boy.” A sob broke Goodwife Crews's voice, but she kept on. “Not for an instant. He was so frightened for him. Ezekiel grew worse and worse, and Timothy only became more desperate, and finally I knew that I would have no chance to cast the spell alone until my son was beyond the saving.”

“You ought to have let him die,” the Widow Porter said. Pru's face darkened angrily, but she knew better than to speak out of turn in the coven circle. Elizabeth, meanwhile, studied the faces of those around them. None of the other witches appeared to object. Many of them were crying, thinking perhaps of their own small children, or of a worried father's devotion. But not one of the adult witches who might have contradicted Widow Porter said a word.

“I couldn't,” Goodwife Crews said. “I was weak. But—I came to you right away, I did, and together we cast the spell of forgetting on Timothy. It worked perfectly! He'll tell no one now, and our neighbor believes sure that Timothy was just ranting after, not having slept and having been so afraid. That's what Timothy believes, too—”

“That's what he believes today. What all the men will believe, this time. But what happens the next time you are so weak? The next time you think you can cover your tracks?” Widow Porter rose from her seat. Despite her name and her authority, she was not yet an old woman; she looked regal now as she stood over trembling Goodwife Crews. “He will remember what has happened before. Yes, it will be confused, disjointed. But he will recall it. Then he will put two and two together. He will realize that he has been witched. And he will know that you are the one responsible.”

Many of the other witches were visibly agitated now—wringing their hands in their laps, breathing faster, struggling not to weep. Even Pru wouldn't look directly at Catherine Crews any longer. Elizabeth did, though. She studied Goodwife Crews's face, searching for any sign that she was fundamentally changed by breaking one of the First Laws. But Elizabeth saw nothing but a shaking, crying woman.

Widow Porter's voice became quieter, but more dangerous. There was something in the tenor of it that made Elizabeth shiver. “Do you think that your husband loves you too much to name you a witch? Other wives have thought so. Others have believed that men would look upon their works and see that our Craft can further the will of God, rather than work against it. And what has become of those women? Burned at the stake, most of them. They died screaming as their flesh burned from their bones. Sometimes, to show mercy, the judges would have the men build a fire that smoked, so our sisters might fall unconscious from breathing it in. But not always. Sometimes they make sure we will be alive as long as possible, that our suffering might be the greater. This is what they do to us, for daring to heal the sick or bring in the crops. This is what they do to us, for attempting to protect those we love. We possess a power no man can ever share or understand, and they respond to this in one way only: They destroy us.”

There were other ways to execute witches. Elizabeth knew this very well. Sometimes women were drowned. Sometimes they were tortured to death with hot pokers or by being pressed with stones. Even the most powerful witch would lose her casting materials when she was arrested, were she not swift enough to avoid capture; once the casting materials were lost, the witch was powerless. Then she could be torn apart like a lamb for slaughter.