Page 38 of A Lullaby for Witches

You yourself often spoke of her queer ways and independent nature... Are you certain that she did not simply leave of her own accord? Perhaps she had a secret beau and has taken herself off to marry. Not of course, that such a thing would be desirable, but certainly it would be better than the alternative.

Another letter, dated nearly a month later.

As to that subject on which we were arguing, we will speak of it no more. I am sorrier than I can say, and wish only for your grief to fade so that you may be hale and hearty once more. I miss your bright merry eyes, and the laughter which we shared, and I am certain that she would not wish you to go on in such a wretched fashion.

I am, as always, your faithful and loving,

IDA

Rocking back on her heels, Augusta sat absorbing what she had just read. The letters felt heavy in her hand, substantial evidence of something very real that had happened long ago. They did not mention Margaret by name, but she was certain that they were referencing her. She did a quick calculation in her head. If the dresses mentioned in the ledgers were bought in 1858 when Margaret was perhaps four or five, then she would have been about twenty when these letters were written.

Augusta carefully put them back in order and pressed them into the compartment. She would have to tell Jill and Sharon about her discovery and how she had found it. They probably wouldn’t be thrilled that she had gone ahead and opened the compartment, but she had to imagine that their excitement over the find would outweigh any disapproval.

Her playlist had long ago stopped, and outside it was growing dark. After she packed up her stuff and locked the carriage house behind her, she stood for a moment, letting the cool evening air wash across her skin. Aside from the occasional passing car, she might have been in the 1870s. “Margaret,” she whispered into the dusk, “what happened to you?”

21

Margaret

My garden was planted well

With flowers everywhere,

But I had not the liberty then for to choose

The flower that I lov-ed dear.

—“The Seeds of Love,” Traditional Folk Song

My vision blurred, my world spun. As soon as I had escaped from Main Street, I stumbled behind a stone wall and leaned over and retched.

I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to see Henry’s smug face when he learned that Jack had betrayed me, that he had been right all along. I didn’t want to go sit with people who had lied to me for years about who I was, people who had stolen me away from my mother. As I stood with my boots growing damp in the wet leaves and the cold wind pricking at my skin, I realized there was only one other place to go.

But the closer I got to Phebe’s house, the more I could feel that something was wrong. I hastened my step as I approached the cottage. The usually tidy shell path was scattered and unkempt, Phebe’s beloved wind chimes lay tangled on the ground, and one of the front windows was broken.

My problems momentarily forgotten, I rushed up the front steps. “Phebe?” I banged on the door until I heard footsteps inside and it opened a crack.

“Oh, it’s you,” Phebe said, stepping back, arms crossed. She looked tired. There were dark rings under her eyes, and her shoulders were tight and hunched.

“What’s happened? Who did this?” I thought that Phebe would invite me in, put some tea on and explain everything. But she did not invite me in, and her expression remained stony.

“What happened? I’ll tell you what happened.Youhappened, Margaret Harlowe. Word of your dark doings has spread throughout town, and who do you think has paid the price? Certainly not you,” she said, pinning me with a disgusted look.

I stood there, my mind sluggishly working to understand, until it finally hit me like a cold wave. It had been weeks since the men had shown up at our doorstep, and I had all but forgotten about their threats. How could I have known that they were serious? They were all bluster and show, and I had assumed that was to be the end of it. Yet every word they had said had been true; they had found the person that I cared about the most and visited their rage on her.

“But they have no reason to accuse you! Jenny Hough came to me—she knows I acted alone.”

Phebe leveled an exasperated look at me, her brown eyes flaring with impatience. “You really have no idea how the world works, do you?” She moved to close the door but I stopped her.

“Wait. Phebe, please. May I come in?”

“You’ve caused me enough trouble. This is the thanks I get for taking you under my wing, for giving you hospitality when everyone else shut their doors on you. Well, I’m not staying in this town a minute longer, not so long asyou’rehere, walking about and causing me grief.”

“You can’t leave. People love you here,” I said, desperately. “No one would dare lay a finger on you.”

She gave me a hard, almost pitying look, and I felt like a child. “No, they might not dare lay a finger onyou, being the rich white girl that you are, but no one would so much as blink an eye if my house were to burn down. They can come to me with their fishing nets and ask me for charms and spells, but it isn’t me that they respect, it’s the novelty of someone like me.”

Was she right? I couldn’t believe that she was. I had seen for myself how people revered her, sought her out. Everyone in Tynemouth lived in relative harmony, it seemed to me. But as my gaze swept anew over the jagged glass of the window, the muddy boot prints through the little herb garden, a disturbing sense of ignorance spread over me. I had always thought myself so above the rest of the townspeople; had I been too high in a tower of my own making that I had not seen the reality of life for others? Was I oblivious to the dramas and hardships that others endured outside of my front door?

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