“We’ll start immediately.” Freya nodded.
“Good. With the three of us I think we can hold it back a while longer until we figure out how to get rid of it entirely.” Joanna looked at her girls. “One more thing. What happened to the house? Has Gracella not been by to clean it? And how’s my Tyler doing?”
“Tyler’s in the hospital,” Freya said. “Don’t worry, I checked on him. He has a fever and an infection but the doctors say they have it under control.”
Joanna tried to keep calm. If Tyler was sick, the hospital was the safest place for him to be. “First things first: Gardiners Island and then the hospital.”
They were preparing to leave when there was a sharp knock on the door, and the three women jumped and looked at each other fearfully.
“The Council!” Ingrid yelped.
“The oracle doesn’t knock,” Freya scoffed. She peeked out the window and saw several police cars parked in the driveway, their lights flashing. “What on earth?”
“Open the door,” Joanna instructed.
Ingrid moved toward the front door and flung it wide. “Matt!” she cried, her hands flying to her glasses. In all the ways she had imagined Matthew Noble visiting her home, this certainly was not one of them. The detective looked apologetic as he stepped inside the doorway with two policemen behind him.
“Hey, Ingrid, I’m really sorry to bother you, but I’m hoping your family has some time this afternoon to come down to the station and answer a few questions,” he said, looking tired and anxious.
“Why?”
“Can we talk about it when we get there?”
“Do we have to?” Freya demanded. “Don’t you need a warrant—or something?”
“No, we just want to ask some questions,” he said sternly. “It’s standard procedure.”
“Matt—what’s going on?” Ingrid asked fearfully.
“Why do you need to talk to the girls?” Joanna asked, her manner and tone imperious, as if the police detective were an underling daring to address the queen.
Freya snorted. “We’re being arrested, aren’t we?”
“Not at all, not at all. Look, we just want to ask you a few questions,” Matt repeated for the third time, shaking his head slightly at Ingrid, as if to say he couldn’t speak freely at the moment.
“Fine,” Freya said. “Ingrid, let’s go. See what they want to talk about.” They motioned toward the door, but the detective stopped and looked apologetically back at their mother.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but we’d like to talk to you as well,” he said.
“Me? Why?” Joanna’s forehead crinkled in worry.
“We’ll get into it down at the station. Ladies?” Matt asked, leading them to the patrol cars parked in their driveway. One by one, the Beauchamp women were placed in the backseat, and the police car sped away, sirens on and lights flashing. They might not have been arrested, Freya thought, but it sure felt like they were in trouble.
chapter thirty-seven
The Salem Trials
Freya made a face at her sister, who sat stoically next to her in the backseat of the squad car. Her mother was on the other side, and none of them had said a word since they were taken into custody. When they arrived at the station, the three of them were separated, and Freya was left to ponder her fate and that of her family alone in a small room. The patrolmen who were her friends did not look her in the eye when she was led in, a bad sign. She wondered what was going to happen when the door opened, but it was only Ingrid who walked in, her face ashen.
“What’s going on? Did you talk to Matt? What’s happening?”
Ingrid shook her head. “No. They wanted to talk to Mother first. They had to use the room to interrogate someone else, so they moved me here. I have no idea what’s happening.”
“Some friend you got there,” Freya muttered. She leaned back in her chair and looked around the small room with the one-way mirror. She wondered who was watching them. “Well, this brings back memories.”
Her sister closed her eyes and bit the top of her thumb. “I know.”
Freya sighed. In 1690 they had settled in the pretty little town of Salem in Massachusetts. Their lives had brought them to the New World as healers. Their mother had been one of the most sought-after midwives, had delivered healthy babies in a time when so many women died in childbirth and so many newborns died of fevers and pox. Ingrid worked in the community the same way she did now, doling out household charms and spells. Their father was a fisherman, due to his ability to maneuver the waters and bring in plentiful harvests.
Then something terrible happened. Bridget Bishop, who helped Joanna with the washing, came to her for help during her pregnancy and died in childbirth. Bridget was very dear to the family, and Joanna had not been able to help her. Then the rumors started: Freya was said to be conducting an affair with a boy who had pledged to marry Ann Putnam, who would become the ringleader of accusers. Ann and her friend Mercy Lewis testified that they had seen Freya and Ingrid “flying in the air through the winter mist.” The trials were a farce, but effective. The community turned on them, branding Freya a slut, Ingrid a bitch, and Joanna a monster. Norman and Joanna had been spared but they were given a more terrible punishment. They had to watch as their daughters were hanged at Gallows Hill in 1692.
Freya shuddered. She could still remember the feeling of the noose around her neck, the scratchy rope that made her skin itch. The way the crowd had spat and thrown rotten food at their cart, the hatred and the fear and the hysteria.
“Don’t,” Ingrid said, as she knew exactly what Freya was thinking. “It doesn’t help.”
The Salem trials were the beginning of the end of practicing magic in mid-world. When the girls were reborn, they found a new world and new rules awaiting them. The family had resettled in North Hampton, and Joanna explained that the White Council had paid them a visit right after the burial. The Council told them that in order for any of them to continue to live in mid-world, every one of the Waelcyrgean would now have to adhere to a new condition: The Restriction of Magical Powers. In effect, it meant that they could no longer practice the art of magic and witchcraft without punishment and recrimination from the Council. They were to live as humans, with lives that were as ordinary as possible. There could be no more undue attention that would jeopardize knowledge of their existence. To continue to survive in mid-world they had to agree to live in the shadows. Those who did not comply would be in breach of Council laws and would be severely punished.
Their mother also told them that Norman had left the family for good, and they never saw their father again.
Back in Salem, as in North Hampton today, Freya understood that they would not be allowed to use their magic to save themselves. That had been made clear from the very beginning, when they found themselves stuck on the other side of the bridge, right in the dawn of the world. Sometimes Freya wondered how it was that she was so old and yet so young at the same time that she found herself in the same place as she had centuries before. Would she never learn? Maybe the Council was right, maybe magic had no place in mid-world. Every time they practiced it in the open, this happened: an anxious mob, a swift rush to judgment; and the result was always the same—witches hanging from the gallows, or burned at the stake, their ashes scattered to the four winds.
They sat in the room for what felt like an eternity but in reality was only a few hours. The policemen were kind and polite, especially those who had worked with Freya before, bringing deli sandwiches and drinks from the vending machine. But they were not allowed to leave. Matt Noble checked in on them from time to time, but Freya had been able to understand from his tight-lipped anxiety and Ingrid’s mournful gazes that while he was not happy about what was happening, he had no power to stop it, either.
Finally, the door opened and their mother was allowed inside the room.