“Now you’re married to a witch,” I said. “And everything looks different.”
“Yes. I’m caught between what I once believed and what I now hold most dear, what I once proudly defended as gospel truth and the magnitude of what I no longer know.”
“I will go back into the city,” Pierre said, turning toward the door. “There may be more to discover.”
I studied Matthew’s tired face. “You can’t expect to understand all of life’s tragedies, Matthew. I wish we still had the baby, too. And I know it seems hopeless right now, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a future to look forward to—one in which our children and family are safe.”
“A miscarriage this early in pregnancy is almost always a sign of a genetic anomaly that makes the fetus nonviable. If that happened once . . .” His voice trailed off.
“There are genetic anomalies that don’t compromise the baby,” I pointed out. “Take me, for instance.” I was a chimera, with mismatching DNA. “I can’t bear losing another child, Diana. I just . . . can’t.”
“I know.” I was bone weary and wanted the blessed oblivion of sleep as much as he did. I had never known my child as he had known Lucas, and the pain was still unbearable. “I have to be at Goody Alsop’s house at six tonight.” I looked up at him. “Will you be out with Kit?”
“No,” Matthew said softly. He pressed his lips to mine—briefly, regretfully. “I’ll be with you.”
Matthew was true to his word, and escorted me to Goody Alsop’s before going to the Golden Gosling with Pierre. In the most courteous way possible, the witches explained that wearhs were not welcome. Taking a weaver safely through her forspell required a considerable mobilization of supernatural and magical energy. Wearhs would only get in the way.
My Aunt Sarah would have paid close attention to how Susanna and Marjorie readied the sacred circle. Some of the substances and equipment they used were familiar—like the salt they sprinkled on the floorboards to purify the space—but others were not. Sarah’s witch’s kit consisted of two knives (one with a black handle and one with a white), the Bishop grimoire, and various herbs and plants. Elizabethan witches required a greater variety of objects to work their magic, including brooms. I’d never seen a witch with a broom except on Halloween when they were de rigueur, along with pointed hats.
Each of the witches of the Garlickhythe gathering brought a unique broom with her to Goody Alsop’s house. Marjorie’s was fashioned from a cherry branch. At the top of the staff, someone had carved glyphs and symbols. Instead of the usual bristles, Marjorie had tied dried herbs and twigs to the bottom where the central limb forked into thinner branches. She told me that the herbs were important to her magic—agrimony to break enchantments, lacy feverfew with the white-and-yellow flowers still attached for protection, the sturdy stems of rosemary with their glaucous leaves for purification and clarity. Susanna’s broom was made from elm, which was symbolic of the phases of life from birth to death and related to her profession as a midwife. So, too, were the plants tied to the staff: the fleshy green leaves of adder’s tongue for healing, boneset’s frothy white flower heads for protection, the spiky leaves of groundsel for good health.
Marjorie and Susanna carefully swept the salt in a clockwise direction until the fine grains had traveled over every inch of the floor. The salt would not only cleanse the space, Marjorie explained, but also ground it so that my power wouldn’t spill over into the world once it was fully unbound.
Goody Alsop stopped up the windows, the doors—even the chimney. The house ghosts were given the option of staying out of the way amid the roof beams or finding temporary refuge with the family who lived downstairs. Not wishing to miss anything, and slightly jealous of the fetch who had no choice but to stay by her mistress, the ghosts flitted among the rafters and gossiped about whether any of the residents of Newgate Street would get a moment’s peace now that the specters of medieval Queen Isabella and a murderess named Lady Agnes Hungerford had resumed their squabbling.
Elizabeth and Catherine settled my nerves—and drowned out the gruesome details of Lady Agnes’s terrible deeds and death—by sharing some of their early magical adventures and drawing me out about my own. Elizabeth was impressed by how I’d channeled the water from under Sarah’s orchard, pulling it into my palms drop by drop. And Catherine crowed with delight when I shared how a bow and arrow rested heavy in my hands just before the witchfire flew.
“The moon has risen,” Marjorie said, her round face pink with anticipation. The windows were sealed, but none of the other witches questioned her.
“It is time, then,” Elizabeth said briskly, all business.
Each witch went from one corner of the room to the next, breaking off a twig from her broom and placing it there. But these were not random piles. They’d arranged the twigs so as to overlap and form a pentacle, the witch’s five-pointed star.
Goody Alsop and I took up our positions at the center of the circle. Though its boundaries were invisible, that would change when the other witches took their appointed places. Once they had, Catherine murmured a spell and a curved line of fire traveled from witch to witch, binding the circle.
Power surged in its center. Goody Alsop had warned me that what we were doing this night invoked ancient magics. Soon the buffeting wave of energy was replaced by something that tingled and snapped like a thousand witchy glances.
“Look around you with your witch’s sight,” Goody Alsop said, “and tell me what you see.”
When my third eye opened, I half expected to find that the air itself had come to life, every particle charged with possibility. Instead the room was filled with filaments of magic.
“Threads,” I said, “as though the world is nothing more than a tapestry.”
Goody Alsop nodded. “To be a weaver is to be tied to the world around you and see it in strands and hues. While some ties fetter your magic, others yoke the power in your blood to the four elements and the great mysteries that lie beyond them. Weavers learn how to release the ties that bind and use the rest.”
“But I don’t know how to tell them apart.” Hundreds of strands brushed against my skirts and bodice.
“Soon you will test them, like a bird tests its wings, to discover what secrets they hold for you. Now, we will simply cut them all away, so that they can return to you unbound. As I snip the threads, you must resist the temptation to grab at the power around you. Because you are a weaver, you will want to mend the broken threads. Leave your thoughts free and your mind empty. Let the power do as it will.”
Goody Alsop released my arm and began to weave her spell with sounds that bore no resemblance to speech but were strangely familiar. With each utterance I saw the filaments fall away from me, coiling and twisting. A roaring filled my ears. My arms heeded the sound as if it were a command, rising up and stretching out until I was standing in the same T-shaped position that Matthew had placed me in at the Bishop house when I drew the water from underneath Sarah’s old orchard.
The strands of magic—all those threads of power that I could borrow but not hold—crept back toward me as if they were made of iron filings and I were a magnet. As they came to rest in my hands, I struggled against the urge to close my fists around them. The desire to do so was strong, as Goody Alsop predicted it would be, but I let them slide over my skin like the satin ribbons in the stories my mother told me when I was a child.