Marta looked a little thinner than Callie remembered. Probably from the flu. But she didn’t look tired, as Callie might have expected. The energy field that Callie sometimes sensed around people seemed stronger than ever around Marta, though her vibration had changed tone. It had always been slightly dissonant; now the dissonance seemed a bit stronger. Illness had a way of doing that to a person. If it had been anyone but Marta, she might have offered to help, but somehow she knew that, like meditation, sound healing would not be a modality Marta would ever embrace.
“Your house is beautiful,” Callie said.
“It’s sweet and simple,” Marta said. “With a no-nonsense New England attitude. Just like its resident.”
Callie couldn’t imagine describing Marta as either sweet or simple.
“Every piece in here is historically accurate, down to the single ‘sleep tight’ rope bed in the corner,” Marta said. “But I don’t sleep in that.” She led Callie to an even smaller room, which held two straight-backed chairs and a four-poster queen-size bed with a lace coverlet. “The only anachronism in the entire house,” Marta said, indicating the bed, “that you can see, anyway. The regular conveniences of daily living are carefully hidden behind closed doors.” She shut the bedroom door behind them, pointing Callie toward one of the chairs. “Watch your head.”
The chairs were under a slanted ceiling that housed the structure’s only gable, and Callie had to duck to get to them. Marta took a seat on the other chair, pouring a glass of wassail punch for each of them from a carafe on a nearby table. “Everyone thinks the ceilings are so low because the people from the sixteen hundreds were shorter.”
“Weren’t they?”
“They may have been, but I don’t think so. The ceilings were built low to conserve heat.”
There was a fire in the bedroom fireplace. Next to it were the regular implements: an iron shovel, a hook and lance to move the logs, and a broom to sweep the embers away. Hanging on a hook was a braided rope that looked as if it were made from the witch hazel branches Callie had noticed on her way in. One of the Goddesses, she couldn’t remember which, had told her that witch hazel symbolizes eternal life. “What’s that?” Callie asked when Marta spotted her looking at the braided rope.
“That’s the switch,” Marta said, bitterness creeping into her voice. “My mother said every good New England family has one.”
“Was it ever used?”
“Of course. My mother was a big believer in corporal punishment,” Marta said, her light tone betraying her disapproval. “?‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’ was one of her favorite sayings.”
Callie grimaced. “I had a nun like that at the children’s home. But she used a ruler.”
“My mother forced me to braid it myself. Good and tight,” Marta added grimly.
Callie didn’t hide her surprise. “Why on earth do you keep it?”
“I—” Marta paused. “I really don’t know.” She walked to the fireplace, took down the switch, and examined it. “I should have buried it with her.” With a quick twist of her wrist, she threw it into the fire. “Take that, you old hag.”
They both watched as it caught, then slowly started to burn.
“I take it you and your mother weren’t close.”
Marta burst out laughing. She took her seat. “So, Callie,” she said, her mood much lighter. “What’s new in the world of Whiting?”
Seeing an opportunity, Callie jumped in. “I hope I’m not overstepping. I want to talk to you about Christmas. Finn said you may not come to dinner if Rose is invited. Is that right?”
“I won’t,” Marta said. “I’m sorry. But that shouldn’t stop you from inviting her.”
“I don’t want you to stay away. The Hawthorne Hotel has a Christmas dinner. I’ll take Rose to that.”
Marta laughed again. “Please don’t think me rude. I’m simply a person who doesn’t want to be associated with any talk of witches and injustice. I had enough of that at Thanksgiving. For a number of reasons, some of which go back generations, as you’ve heard today. I just don’t feel comfortable being in the same room with her, knowing what her beliefs are and how some might construe them.”
“Rose is trying to find closure. She wants the bodies of those hanged found so that everyone can move on. When she talks about the oak—”
“I’m not interested in keeping that dark history alive. In any way.”
It was rich that Marta—who lived in a museum to the past—claimed she didn’t want to keep history alive. Callie wanted to argue the point, to remind Marta of all that Rose had been through. But Marta already knew the story. “I don’t want you to miss Christmas dinner because of an invitation I extended,” Callie said, an edge in her voice.
“Between you and me, you have no idea how happy I am to use Rose as an excuse not to attend this year.”
The remark took Callie by surprise, but Marta quickly softened and changed the subject. “Did you know that Christmas was outlawed in Massachusetts in the sixteen hundreds?”
“Because it was based on the Pagan holiday?”
“Partly that, and partly because the Church of England was pro-Christmas, which automatically made the Puritans vehemently anti-Christmas. My, I am pedantic today. It’s one of my greatest flaws.”
“I don’t think you’re pedantic. I do think you’re extremely well versed in the past.” Maybe too well versed.
“Well, thank you for that.”
They were interrupted by the docent’s knock and entry. “Can you come out here a minute, Miss Hathorne? We need you to answer a question about the spinning wheel.”
“Oh, I know quite a lot about spinning and weaving, too,” Marta said. She pointed to a plate of Christmas cookies on the side table. “Help yourself. I’ll be back as soon as their eyes begin to glaze over.”
Callie had more of the wassail punch, took a cookie, and scanned the room. There was an uncomfortable-looking cradle in the corner, hand carved and, in all likelihood, passed down through the generations. She imagined Marta had once slept in the thing. She looked past the cradle to the leaded-glass window above it, and had a clear and disturbing thought: Marta and her family had chosen to live in the dark history of the past for more than three hundred years. They were keeping it alive. With the exception of Marta destroying the switch just now, it seemed as if nothing had ever changed in this house. And, until now at least, no one had wanted to let the darkness out. Maybe now that she’d burned the switch, Marta would consent to opening a window.
Callie looked at the bed, with its lovely lace coverlet, the only thing in the entire house that looked out of place. And then she spotted another thing that didn’t belong.
Sitting on the bedside table were Finn’s eyeglasses.
To the Puritans, anything beyond the western boundary of Salem Village could invoke terror, for that was where the savages dwelled. But one could encounter the devil in those you met in Salem Town as well: In the Quaker heretics and blasphemers, and in the Catholics.
—ROSE WHELAN, The Witches of Salem
“Does Paul know?”