“Amazing,” Liz murmured, and Connie heard a soft plunk, the sound of Liz tweaking the pop tab on her empty beer can with one thumb.
The haze of smoke gradually pulled apart, dissolving by degrees until the night sky once again stretched out clear overhead. Around them families folded up blankets and collected children, beginning the slow trudge toward home. The three of them sat, enjoying the quiet, saying nothing.
Connie rolled onto her back and yawned, stretching her arms out overhead and feeling her knuckles and bare heels dip into the moist grass that surrounded their blanket.
As she watched, a bright meteor streaked by overhead, a tiny ball of fire flashing through the atmosphere. Connie smiled, deciding—selfishly—to keep it to herself. She thought she detected an instantaneous flash of blue light on the horizon where the meteor disappeared, but then it was gone.
“It’s late,” she ventured finally. “We should be getting back.”
“So what are you guys doing tomorrow?” asked Sam, his voice emerging
out of the dark. The park had emptied, and they could hear only the waves in the harbor lapping against the park’s rocky face.
“Beach, right, Connie?” asked Liz, her voice sleepy.
“Beach,” Connie confirmed, struggling into a seated position. “C’mon, Liz,” she said, jostling her friend’s leg. “Sam has to get home.” Liz let out a protesting moan but rose, and they drew the blanket up off the grass and started the meandering walk back to Milk Street.
Sam’s flashlight carved a neat round cone through the massed night, bringing focus to each pebble and leaf that had fallen in the road. “Anyway, Grace thinks I’m just being closed-minded,” Connie was saying. “So I was thinking I should go over my notes again. She pointed out that maybe Prudence would have called it something else….”
“Connie,” said Liz with authority. “That’s great and everything. But tomorrow, you’re taking the day off. We are going to the beach, we’re going to lie in the sun, we’re going to float in the water, and then we’re going to spend the rest of the night in the diviest bar we can find. Sam, are you with me on this?”
He laughed, sweeping the flashlight beam over the tips of their feet and then back into a long yellow oval in the road. “Hear, hear,” he said.
“I knew I liked him,” Liz said.
The flashlight brushed up against the tangled mass of overgrown hedge that marked Granna’s house, and then spilled over the gate in the underbrush. Connie’s arm reached into the light to withdraw the latch, and they jostled into the garden, picking their way through the tufts of herbs poking through the flagstone pathway.
“You do deserve a day off,” Sam started to say as the bright oval slid up the flagstones onto the waiting front door.
In an instant all three froze. Liz let out a frightened scream.
“Oh, my God,” Connie whispered, staring in horror at the door.
C
ONNIE PULLED HER SWEATER UP TO HER CHIN, SHIVERING
. L
IZ HUDDLED
on the stoop next to her, knees pressed to hers, their eyes fixed on the
silhouette of Sam in quiet conference with two bulky men. Their hands were gesticulating, cast into sharp relief by the spinning flashes of red and blue light from the police cruiser parked in the street, penetrating through the vine overgrowth and splashing up against the impassive, silent face of the house.
“I’m sure they’ll figure it out,” Liz murmured, but Connie could tell that Liz was trying to reassure herself as much as she was Connie.
“I know,” Connie said, folding her arm around Liz’s shoulders and squeezing. But as she clutched her friend, she felt her heartbeat tripping faster. She saw Sam point in her direction, and the two bulky forms moved toward her through the night.
“You Connie Goodwin?” asked one of them. The other moved gingerly through the yard to play his flashlight over the windows at the front of the house. The officer looming over Connie had a head shaved nearly bald, and his nose had the bruised-looking quality of the heavy drinker. The harsh, spinning lights cast a diabolical sheen on his face that he probably did not deserve. She got to her feet, Liz rising with her.
“Yes,” she said.
“This yoah house?” he asked.
“Yes. Well, no, actually. It was my grandmother’s. Sophia Goodwin. She died.” Connie crossed her arms over her chest, not looking at the front door.
“Pretty hahd to find, yoah house. Even Officah Litchman and I had trouble, and we live in Mahblehead,” he said, unfolding a small notebook to a fresh page.
“No sign of fawced entry, Len,” called the other one—Officer Litchman, she supposed—from near the dining room window. He was peering through the windowpanes with his flashlight.
“Okay,” said the first one, jotting down notes. He turned back to Connie. “Anybody know yoah staying heah?”
“I don’t think so,” Connie said, frowning. “My mother, who asked me to come for the summer. My friends, of course. I guess my advisor.”
“Advisah?” the policeman asked.
“I’m in grad school. My advisor’s the professor I work with,” she explained.
“Gotcha,” he said, making more notes. From behind them they heard a sudden torrent of fierce barking, followed by Officer Litchman crying out “Jesus Christ!” and then the thump of his flashlight tumbling to the ground.
“You got a dog?” the first police officer—Len?—asked Connie.
“Yeah. Arlo. He’s inside. Sorry about that!” she called to Officer Litchman, who was cursing under his breath, hunting for his flashlight in the weeds.
“Pretty weahd he wouldn’ta scared ’em off,” remarked the policeman, still jotting.
“Yeah,” Connie said, perturbed. Sam had joined them by now, wrapping a protective arm around her waist.
“Officer…Cardullo,” Liz began, reading the name plate on their interviewer’s uniform. “Do you have any idea who could have done this? Why would anybody want to scare Connie? She doesn’t even know anyone here!” Her voice rose, becoming almost shrill, and Connie placed a gentle hand on Liz’s arm.
The group all turned to face the front door again, and they paused to stare at it.
On the door, about two feet in diameter, appeared a circle freshly burned into the wood. It held a smaller circle inside it, like a target, bisected along both axes by lines. In the top half sat the word
Alpha
, written in an uneven, almost archaic, hand, with two crosses or hatch marks above it. In the upper-left quadrant, on the outer rim, was the word
Meus
with crossed hatch marks on either end. In the same position on the upper-right quadrant of the circle appeared the word
Adjutor
, also framed by crossed hatch marks. Echoing the pattern, in the lower half of the circle, were the words
Omega
in the center,
Agla
in the lower-left quadrant, and
Dominus
in the lower right, each bracketed by crossed hatch marks.
“Hahd to say,” said Officer Cardullo, resting a hand on his heavy equipment belt. “Sometimes ya get some weahdos up from Salem. Goth kids ’n’ the like. Sometimes ya get stuff like this spray-painted on walls. Pentagrams ’n’ whatnot. Usually not this complex, though.”
“Could be they thought the house was abandoned, what with all the vines and everything, and no lights,” Officer Litchman mused, joining them. “Just kids looking for trouble. Maybe yoah dog did scare ’em, else they woulda gone inside. You find anything missing in the house?”
“Nothing,” said Connie, bringing a fingernail up to her mouth and ripping the tip of it off with her teeth, thoughtlessly. “There’s nothing worth stealing in there, anyway.” She felt her control starting to slip, her outward shell of calm becoming shot through with cracks.
“Any idea what the wuhds mean?” asked Cardullo, eyeing Connie.
“No,” she whispered. The symbol sat there, inscrutable, the acrid smell of burned wood clinging to the nighttime air. The smoke still smelled fresh, as if the burn on the door had fizzled out only moments before they returned. Little heaps of ash were collected on the stoop. A hot tear squeezed out of the corner of one of her eyes and started to snake its way down her cheek.
“
Alpha
and
omega
are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet,” said Sam. Connie felt his grip around her tighten.
“
Dominus adjutor meus
is Latin,” Liz added, her voice wavering. She took the flashlight from Sam and trained it more closely on the symbols on the front door. “Of course, the
j
in
adjutor
should probably be an
i
, if we are talking about ancient spelling. Roughly translated, it means ‘God my helper,’ or possibly ‘the Lord my deputy.’ Helper is the more likely use.” She gazed at the inscription, frowning. “I don’t know about ‘Agla.’ ‘Aglaia’ is a name for one of the Graces, but I don’t think that’s what they mean.”
“Hey, that’s pretty good,” Officer Litchman said, elbowing Officer Cardullo. “I was an altah boy ’n’ I couldn’ta told you that.”
“But who is ‘they’?” asked Sam.
They turned to face the two policemen, who exchanged a quick look.
“Listen,” said Cardullo after an uncomfortable pause, sliding his notebook into his back pocket. “We’ve taken down yoah statement. I’ll have a cruisah drive by a coupla times ovah the next week, but it looks like just a case of yah gahden-variety vandalism. Just kids makin’ trouble.”
“Garden-variety vandalism?” Sam echoed, incredulous. “Are you serious? Don’t you think regular vandals would just use spray paint? Or markers?” Connie heard the anger in his voice and caught his blazing eyes with hers. She moved her head in a barely perceptible shake. Antagonizing the policemen would do nothing to get them to take this more seriously.
“Sorry, kids, I don’t know what to tell yeh. It’s a remote kinda house, no lights on. Yeh were off watchin’ the fiahworks, so theh was plenty of noise and nobody watching. Looks to me like a case of bad kids and bad luck,” said Cardullo, Litchman nodding his agreement. “Heah’s my cahd. You have any moah trouble, you call us up, okay?”
“Well, thanks,” Connie murmured, accepting the card, and the policemen withdrew into the night.
“Need some lights out heah!” one of them called out, and Connie smiled weakly. The rotating red and blue lights vanished, replaced by the blazing red of taillights.
Connie stood fixed in her place as a chill night wind circled around her rooted legs and blew the fine gray ashes away.
Marblehead, Massachusetts
Late April
1760
A
loud crashing sound emanated from within the tavern, followed by riotous laughter and cheering. Above it all, Joseph Hubbard’s voice bellowed out indistinct directions, and whoops and cries drew nearer the door until it exploded open, ejecting a young man in a tattered overcoat several sizes too large for him, with blurry face and bloodshot eyes.
“I war goin’ to pay,” he slurred, staggering onto his hands and knees. Prudence Bartlett’s jaw clenched, the chill in her eyes growing a few perceptible degrees cooler as she stooped to hook one hand under the young man’s arm. With some effort she helped him to his feet, her strong, wiry hands gripping his shoulders and holding him vertical until the worst of the swaying stopped. He was just a little thing, not much older than her Patty. His hair was clotted with sand, dirty hanks having pulled out of his pigtail and standing out in several directions. He had a faint down of whiskers scattered around his mouth, and nothing more. Prudence sighed.
“I war,” the boy said again, his exhaled breath a corrosive cloud of Barbadoes rum, and Prudence closed her throat against the smell.
“Steeped in vice, you are,” she said to him. The boy’s nose flushed red, and his eyes and cheeks started to crumple in a sob.
She placed her hands on the boy’s hot cheeks and looked him full in the face. Her eyes glowed white with concentration as she sent strict instructions through the palms of her hands, and she felt the boy’s body absorb her intent, diffusing it into his suffering bloodstream. Under her fingertips the boy’s skin flushed deep crimson, and he let out a tiny whimper. She whispered a short string of words under her breath, and then released him.
“Get you home,” she said, “and with no need for strong drink neither.”
The boy slowly reached up to touch his face where the bright red welts were already receding into nothingness, and he blinked, eyes clear. He swallowed, looking at Prudence with some alarm, and then without a word turned and fled along the alleyway toward the wharves. She snorted without mirth.
At the end of the alley, where the boy disappeared around a corner, an unseen voice called out, “Down buck-
et
!” as a wet pot of ordure rained down from one of the windows into the street.
“Up for air, you dirty bawd!” cried a passing shoreman, his breeches neatly splattered. A putrid smell began to suffuse the narrow thoroughfare, and Prudence wrinkled her nose in distaste.
She pulled open the tavern door and surveyed the scene inside, looking for the man whom she was appointed to meet. The room hung thick with smoke from tobacco pipes and the great stone hearth at the far end, veiling the clusters of men who lounged on low benches around rough wooden tables. It smelled not unpleasantly of woodsmoke and ale, boiling fish stew and wool coats crusted with seawater. Prudence shifted the heavy bundle she was carrying to her hip and passed a hand thoughtlessly over the stomacher that bound her waist. The pungent smell of the stew caused her mouth to flush with saliva, and she wondered if the man—this Robert Hooper—might be persuaded to treat her.
“Prue,” greeted the graveled voice of the tavern keeper, who nodded at her from across the room.
“Joe,” she said, nodding back. She waded toward him through the merry room, batting away the errant hands of a few drunken men with grubby fishermen’s clothes. “Seen a Robert Hooper about today?” she asked, arriving finally at the keeper’s table. He sat with a flagon at his elbow, flanked by a young laughing woman with lace spilling out of the bodice on her tight jacket and cheeks rather more rouged than nature had intended.
Joseph Hubbard reached up to scratch his whiskers, planting his other hand on his extended knee. His great belly lopped over the sagging waist of his breeches, and his coat was open. Under shaggy gray eyebrows his dark eyes gleamed. “That be that Robeht Hoopah of up the trainin’ field hill? Great fine house he has. New built.”
“The same,” she said, scanning the room for a man who seemed to match such a description. The Goat and Anchor was hardly known to have been frequented by the gentlefolk of up the hill. Joe let out a robust laugh.
“Has some business with you, does he?” asked the man, taking a draught from his mug.
“Aye,” said Prudence. “I’ll just be waiting then.” She located an empty bench by the wall and placed her parcel on the table. Settling in her seat, she reached up to adjust her mobcap, tucking loose strands of hair back into place, and tugged on the emerging sleeves of her shift to smooth out their wrinkles. Robert Hooper would be a man of fashion, after all.
“Not needin’ you for his wife, I trow, poor wretch!” Joe bellowed as he waved over a serving girl. The woman seated with him laughed a high, irritating screech, covering her face with a fan.
She weren’t as young as all that, then
, Prudence thought. “You’ll fix her up, right enow.” Joe chortled. “Set his gahl to rights, I hope.”
Prudence scowled, resenting his implication. “How fares Mrs. Hubbard with little Mary?” she asked pointedly. The serving girl placed a flagon of ale before her and then waited, eyeing Joe Hubbard.
“Well enough, that one. Neahly two. Runs us ragged.” He caught the
serving girl’s eye and shook his head once, and the girl withdrew without payment. Joe chuckled. “Yoah health, Prue,” he said, raising his ale in Prudence’s direction.
“And yours,” she replied, raising hers in turn.
Brought out twelve of his
, she glowered,
and not all with Mrs. Hubbard neither.
Prudence pulled a little ceramic pipe from within her pocket, together with the crumpled flyer that she had carried with her for the last several days. She smoothed it across the tabletop and contemplated it as she packed the pipe bowl with a pinch of tobacco, then lit it at the lamp on the table.
OLD BOOKS WANTED
, the printed flyer said.
CURRENCY OFFER’D FOR THE RARE AND UNIQUE. INQUIRE WITH MR. HOOPER AT THE FOLLOWING ADDRESS
. She inhaled, sallow cheeks growing hollow around the pipe, the harsh smoke filling her lungs and gradually seeping calm through her twitching nerves.
She supposed that she could still change her mind. He wasn’t here, after all. Perhaps he didn’t even want it.
Prudence hazarded a glance at the parcel and rested her hand on it for a moment, rubbing her thumb across the rough fabric wrapping. As she did so, she thought of the sum that he had mentioned in the note that had arrived in response to her inquiry. More than she would get in almost two years of midwifing. But the sum alone was not her main reason for selling the book. She had her reasons for wanting to be rid of it.
A circle of quiet rippled out in the vicinity of the door, and Prudence looked up to see the cause: a young man, dressed in a rich crimson jacket with shining buttons and long, elegant cuffs, stood sweeping his hair back with one hand where it had been ruffled by the removal of a new felted tricorne hat. He stamped his feet to loosen the mud from his butter-soft calfskin boots and surveyed the interior of the tavern, evidently looking for someone. She caught his eye and lifted her chin. He smiled and made his way toward her, hat under one arm, trailing silence in his wake.
“Mrs. Bartlett, I presume?” he said, half bowing.
“Just Prue’ll do,” she said as the man seated himself with a flourish. The room watched him join the midwife in the corner nearest the hearth,
digested this incongruous piece of information, and then turned back to the business of merrymaking.
“Is this the volume?” the man asked eagerly, indicating the package between Prudence’s elbows.
He started to reach for it but was stopped when she commented, as if for his own edification, “The Goat ’n’ Anchor’s known for its stew.” She puffed on her pipe, blowing the smoke off to one side, and gazed at him evenly.
“Ah,” said Robert Hooper, turning to the serving girl who had appeared by their table. “Of course. Two bowls of stew, if you please. And whatever punch is best.”
The girl sniffed in reply, and Hooper turned back to the parcel. Prudence slid it across the table, and as he unknotted its dimity wrapping her eyes traveled over his countenance, gathering her impressions of him. The clothes were new, to be sure, but he wore them with the self-consciousness of a man not accustomed to them. He fussed with his lace sleeves, and kept shifting the hat about on the bench next to him, unsure how best to supervise it. His face was young and earnest, as yet unseamed by the wear of drink, or women, or soft living. It still carried the nut-brown hue of a man who had reason to be out of doors, or on the water. When the stew was brought to the table he gripped his pewter spoon in his fist, leaning over to bring his mouth nearer the bowl. Prudence half-smiled, and resituated the pipe between her lips. He pushed aside the bowl and reached for the book.
“Remarkable,” he said, turning over the book’s leaves one at a time. “Surely not all writ in one hand?” He glanced up at her.
“No, indeed,” she said.
“What is this, Latin?” He turned another page, peering at the text.
“Most Latin, yes. Some English, too, near the end. And some in cipher. More ’n’ that I couldn’t say.”
“And your note said this came from England?”
“So I’m told,” she said. “A family almanac, like.”
“How very curious,” the man said, running his hands over the leather binding with a tenderness that surprised her. His fingers, she saw, were still
thorny, rough, and callused. Perhaps his reverence for old books came from not having encountered any of his own. “And you’ve no idea the age? Which is the oldest entry?”
Prudence arched one eyebrow at him, and then delicately sipped at her stew, saying nothing. They sat for a moment in silence, Hooper squinting at a page covered over in symbols and hatch marks, Prudence wondering when the time would come to talk about money.
“I cannot read Latin,” Hooper confessed, not looking at her. She gazed at him in an attentive attitude, hands clasped under her chin, but inwardly she heaved a little sigh.
Everyone has wounds as want healing
, she reflected.
Seems like they all find me
. She looked at this prosperous young man seated before her and perceived the areas within him where the damage lay. The whole idea made her tired. “But I mean that my son should learn,” he added, glancing up.
She let her pale eyes linger on his face for a while, not speaking. “Why do you look for old books to buy, Mr. Hooper?” she asked finally, toying with the handle of her pewter spoon.
He chuckled, embarrassed. “My business interests have grown of late,” he began, “much aided by a flourishing connection with some merchant houses in Salem.” He took a long swallow of his punch and made to wipe his lips on his sleeve before checking himself. A fragile handkerchief appeared from within his sleeve, and he dabbed at the corners of his mouth before secreting it away again.
“I got…that is, I was invited by some gentlemen to join their Monday Evening Club. And now the Club, being comprised of sundry well-read gentlemen of sophistication and taste, decides to establish a private social library, that we may all benefit from our collective literary and scientific interests.” He paused, turning his punch cup where it sat on the table. “We are all asked to donate volumes of our own collection, you see.” He looked up at her.
“And you have none,” she finished.
“I have acquired some fine specimens, and have hopes to secure still
more. Though none so fine and rare as your own.” He reached into his pocket and placed a small drawstring leather bag between them on the table. It looked heavy and fat. “I wonder how you can bear to part with it,” said Hooper, watching her.
A sickening lurch gripped Prudence’s stomach as she looked at the fat little bag sitting on the table next to her almanac—her mother’s almanac, she should say, for her mother, though frail, yet still lived in her house. A vision of her mother’s aged but beautiful face rose before her, framed by the whispers that had dogged her through her entire life. Mercy had more strength than she, carrying her head high every day as she did. She knew what great stock her mother placed in this tome, but Prudence herself felt only resentment for it. Her mother had passed her whole life on the fringes of her society. All the bitterness that Prudence might have held for the neighbors who shunned her mother, who sometimes whispered still when Prudence took Patty to the meetinghouse, she heaped upon the tattered leather binding of this wretched book.
She thought then of Josiah, and the shooting pains he complained of in his back, worsened by each day spent off-loading boats down the landing. Prudence imagined the frayed snap of a rope giving way, the rumbling of heavy wooden casks slipping their binds, bouncing down the gangplank toward the frightened form of her husband. She could not fathom a life with Josiah taken from her. She closed her eyes against the image. Her father had gone in an instant, washed away to sea, and her mother’s father, too, felled with all the men who married into her line. If she could be rid of the book perhaps she could keep Josiah safe, preserve him from Providence’s vengeful hand. He giveth, and He taketh away. Prudence wanted nothing more than to have the book out of her house, away from her, where it could sully her family no more.
Admittedly Prudence quavered to contemplate what Mercy would say if this betrayal were discovered. But Mercy was languid in her old age; she spent her afternoons puttering in the garden, needling Patty in the kitchen, napping under a tree with the dog. It was years since she had looked for the
book, years more since anyone had sought her counsel. Mercy Lamson wended her way through her days, each one roughly like the next, until one day, soon enough, they would come to an end.
Prudence thought then of Patty, who had sprouted near three inches since Christmas. Her loping, warmhearted daughter, so deft with the garden and the chickens the family kept—every morning they presented her with eggs as ripe and round as little melons. What would Patty want with old shames and superstitions? The money in the fat little bag could be laid aside for a dowry, or could improve the Milk Street house. Patty, with her speckled cheeks from days in the sun, her blue eyes bright and warm, not cold and careworn like Prudence’s own. Why, when Patty reached the age that Prudence was now, the nineteenth century would be upon them. She sometimes tried to imagine the world into which her daughter, all awkward limbs and knocked-over teacups, would vault, and as she did so she saw time flowing forward from the still point of the table in the kitchen of their house, unfathomably long and distant. Sometimes the magnitude of it overwhelmed and frightened her.