straightened her frail shoulders, and walked out to accept her fate.
Witch should be a beautiful word, signifying wisdom and knowledge and discipline, but it isn’t used that way. It’s been made an insult, implying evil, causing fear. The word has been perverted.
—Harriet Bishop, 1890
1
Harriet
1890
Harriet preferred foraging in Central Park just after sunrise, before the cyclists and equestrians poured into the Mall, and while noisy young families were still breakfasting at home. On the nights before her excursions, she slept with her curtains open so the first light of dawn could tease her awake, and she could be out in the fields before anyone else.
On a cold, clear morning in May she woke as soon as the light began to rise. She dressed in sturdy boots, a much-worn skirt, and a man’s heavy jacket she had bought from a secondhand store in the Bowery. She took up her basket and slipped quietly out of the apartment so as not to wake her housekeeper. Grace worked hard, and she needed her sleep.
There were no other residents about as Harriet made her way down the corner stairs and out through the central courtyard of the Dakota. In front of the entrance arch she skirted the milk delivery van, its aging horse blinking sleepily beneath its harness. The milkman lifted a hand to Harriet in greeting. The ice cart rattled by as she crossed the road to the Women’s Gate, and the driver, teeth clenched around a pipe, tipped his cap to her. She smiled at him, relishing the communal feeling of their fraternity of early risers.
The first rays of the sun charmed curls of mist from the grass of Sheep Meadow, fairy clouds that sparkled silver against the green backdrop of the pasture. Harriet slowed her steps to take in the sight, savoring the slant of spring light and the emerald glow of new leaves before she crossed the meadow into the chilly shadows of the woods.
Here was near darkness that made her draw the collar of her jacket higher around her throat. Thick boughs of white oak shaded the ground, sheltering riches of sage, red clover, sometimes mushrooms. Harriet breathed in the scents of the fecund earth as she crouched beside a patch of nettles to begin her morning’s work.
It was a good day for her labors. She found a lovely bit of mugwort beside the nettles, and deeper in the woods she spotted burdock, which could be elusive. There was amaranth, too, the herb the shepherds called pigweed. She took care to harvest just what she could use and left the rest to propagate.
When she emerged from the shade of the trees into the brightness of the midmorning sun, she discovered dandelions growing among the Paris daisies, more than she had expected in mid-May. Their greens would make a nice salad. As she picked handfuls to toss into her basket, she noticed with a grimace how stained her fingers were.
She could have worn gloves, but she liked to feel the texture of growing things and sense the richness of the soil that nurtured them. She had inherited her grandmother’s long, slender fingers, adept at threading the herb she wanted out of the tangle of vegetation protecting it. It gave her pleasure to select a stem of leaves, pinch it between her fingernails, and wriggle it free. If she wanted the root itself, as with burdock, she dusted the soil from it and replanted any part she didn’t need. The process often gave her dirty fingers and grimy nails.
She breathed a rueful sigh. Grace was going to scold.
A herd of sheep had spread through the meadow to crop grass in the sunshine. Their shepherd, leaning on a stick as he watched his flock, doffed his cap as Harriet walked through the pasture. “Good mornin’ to you, Miss Bishop,” he called. “Bit nippy out today, ain’t it?”
“Good morning, Tom. Yes, it does feel chilly now, but it will soon warm.”
“That it will,” he said. The sun was at her back, and he squinted against the light to see her. “My missus is grateful for that stuff you made. She wanted me to say.”
“Is she feeling better, then?” Tom’s wife had received a simple tincture, one that needed no magic to strengthen it.
“Right as rain, Miss Bishop. Right as rain. You did her a wonder.”
The testimonial brightened an already fine day. It was hardly the first time Harriet had received such praise in her practice, but each instance lifted her spirit. Each moment diminished,