Page 1 of The Witching Hours

THE MISSING INGREDIENT

“Yer choice be scarce, girl,” said Goody Elder. “Yer husband’s dead and yer farm is a plat of grace. A prize it is. And they’ll be a’comin’ for it.”

“This is my home. My children and I have nowhere else to go.”

Prudence Blackwell had been a widow a scant time and Goody Elder knew the young woman was inexperienced with the sort of evil that comes when dark places of the heart are awakened by greed and selfishness.

“Aye. ’Tis exactly that,” said Goody Elder. “The reason why ye must call upon the Dark One to send one of his servants to protect ye. Calling on the Light may help ye quicken the end of this life, but the Light is beyond mortal coil and will no’ fight for ye here and now. Only dark can overcome dark. Ye must believe an old woman. The pain of age means little if it can no’ help one such as yerself. Know this. They’re comin’. They’ll be about takin’ yer house, yer farm, and puttin’ yer children to work before their time. Gods know the wee ones’ll no’ survive a single winter of it.”

Prudence knew Goody Elder was sincere. She knew the old woman believed what she was saying and wanted to help, but Prudence knew the people of Fairforde. She’d lived there all her life. They would not suddenly change from well-wishing neighbors to the wickedest of demons that Goody Elder described. Prudence had lost her young husband, but that wasno crime. Both of them were Fate’s victims. Tavish had died in a tragic mishap through no fault of his own.

Tavish had just begun rigging the wagon for a drive to the town when their normally steady horse was spooked by something on the ground. He’d been caught in the traces and dragged to his death. It was the sort of story farmers employ as a cautionary tale when teaching their children to respect the power of large animals.

Prudence was sure that any hour nigh her good Christian neighbors would be arriving with food, gentle words of comfort, and offers to help her work the farm. So, she continued to say the words Goody Elder told her to say while she pressed and ground the pestle into the hardwood mortar brought from England by John’s grandmother on one of the first passages.

Prudence was meticulous by nature. So, it hadn’t been hard as she’d gone about performing every step of the task with pretend precision. She was careful to do everything Goody Elder instructed. All but one thing. She knew it didn’t matter since the whole of it was folly. Going through the motions was intended as a kindness done to appease a raving old woman.

“There,” Prudence said, “all is done.”

“Take the paste outside and paint it on the facing of your door. Don’t be stingy. Use a generous dollop.”

With measured politeness, Prudence did as she was told. She stepped outside into the chill and smeared the foul-smelling concoction on the facings above and beside the door while Goody Elder looked on.

“There,” said Goody Elder, with a well-satisfied sigh, content it was a job done well. “I shall sleep well this night. As will ye.” Goody Elder carefully wiped the mortar and pestle with a clean cloth then threw the rag onto the fire. Spell residue was known to sometimes take on a life of its own. “Will be onmy way then.” She pulled her cloak tight around her old bones and set out into the night.

Just as she’d predicted, Goody Elder slept well that night. In fact, she was in her own bed asleep when the good townspeople of Fairforde came for Prudence by light of torches, armed with Bibles and chains. The mayor and councilmen looked upon her as if she was a stranger, calling her witch and binding her with more force than necessary. She stumbled as she was led away without so much as a cloak to fend off the chill of wind. She looked up to see her kindly neighbor, Jamison Brown, towering over her with a look of coldness she’d not seen before. No one offered to help her to her feet. It was then that full recognition of Goody Elder’s truth began to settle on her young, naïve mind.

When she heard her children crying, she tried to turn, but the iron collar around her neck prevented a last look. It was too late to take the old woman’s words to heart and follow the prescription precisely.

Three days later, after a parade of indignities that don’t deserve mention compared to the tortures she’d endured, the entire town gathered to watch their native daughter put to test. Her protests and denials of witchcraft had only earned her more mistreatment. She’d been honest when she’d denied practicing the craft. After all, she hadn’t included the final ingredient. It had been willfully omitted as would be an expected duty of a good Christian woman. She’d been polite and respectful to an old woman, but she’d not been tempted by the Devil and had not summoned his help.

“If ye be not witch,” the mayor said, “you’ll drown, be blessed, and the good Lord shall claim ye. If ye be witch, as accused, ye’ll be hanged and dismembered. Your body will be scattered in the deep forest for wild animals to devour and your name shall never again be spoken. The story will spreadand serve as a warning to others who think to cavort with evil spirits and bring the Devil to Fairforde.”

According to the pronouncement of the mayor and councilmen, Prudence was blessed by drowning and buried in the churchyard among other good Christians. Her children could not attend since they’d become the property of deserving landowners. So, the only tears shed at her burial were those of Goody Elder. She would live out her days and die with a constant burden of guilt, thinking something had gone awry with the remedy she conceived to save the innocent young family.

Truth be told, Goody Elder’s charm was without flaw. In time long past, when she’d been a girl known not as Goody Elder, but as her given name, Brigid Campbell, she’d learned the spell from her mother who’d been a wisewoman in the Scot lowlands before undertaking the voyage to America.

Goody Elder had been a good student and memorized her lessons perfectly. It wasn’t the charm that was at fault. It was Prudence’s lack of belief. She spent the last three days of her life in convulsive throes of sorrow and regret for having dismissed the old woman and her instructions. She’d tricked Goody Elder by omitting a crucial ingredient and compounded the sin by lying about it. Her last thought, as her lungs filled with brackish river water, was to wish she could correct that one mistake. That was not to be.

The spell, however, once partially set in motion, could be described as a gun loaded, but not fired. Goody Elder had wiped the mortar and pestle thoroughly and burned the cloth, but some residue remained and permeated the pores of the wood. And there the unfinished rite would remain, dormant, for a very long time. Waiting for completion.

Brigid Carmady stared at the small fire as she sat at her late husband’s opulently appointed study, just off the foyer, and wondered if she should drop her husband’s name and go by her maiden name, Campbell. She’d never been completely comfortable with her husband’s name. Making pronouncements that Carmady was her name always felt like a lie. She didn’t consider it long before deciding to keep the same name as her boys. She wanted them to be proud of their name, even if it did lack the romance and history of her own surname.

Careful to leave the study double doors open, she was situated in the best location to get work doneandbe alerted to any emergencies that should arise. With three boys between the ages of seven and twelve, emergencies were more rule than the exception.

She swiveled to briefly look out the window. The gray wintry day matched her sense of loss. Loss was a euphemism for the constant reminder of Steve’s absence that felt like an open hole in her heart. But there was no time to indulge in grief.

At first there was a flurry of activity centered around funeral arrangements, having the boys out of school, and people coming and going. Since they’d made their home not too far from where they’d both grown up, there was no shortage of support from family and friends. Aunts and cousins took turns manning the kitchen, organizing food deliveries. With so many people in and out, someone had to make sure there was food and drink available for guests. Someone had to make sure dishes and glasses were picked up and cleaned.

Inevitably, and in some cases regretfully, people returned to the drumbeat of their own lives.

As it had a dozen times in as many minutes, Brigid’s gaze wandered from the window to the fire, which was doing its damndest to appear cheerful, then back to the bills on top of the large mahogany desk in front of her. She’d arranged them in avery neat stack, all four corners perfectly in line. As she stared, she wondered if the exaggerated neatness made it appear that there were more bills or fewer bills. Perhaps if she removed the crucial documents from their outer envelopes and discarded what wasn’t necessary, the reduction in packaging would help with the visual.

There was never a shortage of something else to think about.

Her eyes refocused on the pile of bills. When she and Steve signed a thirty-year mortgage to buy the house and furnished it on credit, Steve was a rising star at his insurance agency. Every time he wrote a policy, he chalked up a hefty commission for the initial sale and got a percentage of every payment made on the policy for as long as it was kept up by the insured. Since Steve was a gifted salesman, that meant their income threshold grew every month.

He was fond of saying, “The sky’s the limit!”

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