a Tyler.”
“That was her married name,” Beryl said.
“She said she was Sarah Margaret Tyler.”
“Margaret was her middle name. You never knew her maiden name?” Harriet asked.
“No, she… no. She never told me.”
Beryl’s lips pursed with disdain. “Sarah was terrified of her Bishop heritage being exposed. I recall how thrilled she was to change her name when she married. She thought that would keep her safe.”
Frances gazed at them in mystified silence. They were sitting in the tiny Brooklyn apartment Frances had shared with her mother ever since her father disappeared. It smelled of stew being cooked downstairs and laundry being boiled and starched next door. Its two small windows gave onto a narrow alley where rats and stray dogs scavenged for scraps. The windows were too small for the sun to penetrate, and mold and mildew grew in every corner.
It was a dismal place on a sad and dirty little street. Accordingly the rent was meager, but they had struggled to pay it just the same.
Their poverty didn’t seem to be what Cousin Beryl was talking about, though. Ability?
Harriet said, “A cup of tea would be nice, Frances. I brought some, in case you didn’t have any. This might be a long conversation.”
Harriet didn’t look craggy like her grandmother, but in her grief she had gotten too thin. Her cheeks had lost their youthful plumpness, and her bosom had shrunk to almost nothing. Even her lips were narrower than Frances remembered. Of course, she was thirty-one now, a spinster, still sorrowing over the death of her fiancé. Frances privately thought that five years of grieving was excessive, but she kept her opinion to herself. Alexander had been killed just at the end of the war. Such a pity! He had been a handsome man, and quite well off. Frances couldn’t recall which battle he had been wounded in, but the name of it didn’t matter. He was dead.
Listlessly Frances rose and crossed the kitchen to the range. She pushed bits of coal into a pile and lit them, then pumped the kettle full. As she did these things, Cousin Beryl began to talk. By the time the kettle whistled, Frances’s entire life had changed.
“Seven generations ago,” Beryl began, “our ancestress Bridget Bishop was tried as a witch, judged guilty, and hanged for the crime.”
“A witch!” Frances exclaimed, with a little laugh.
Cousin Beryl put up her hand for silence. “It is no laughing matter, Frances. It is, in fact, a life-or-death matter. Now listen.” She folded her hands on the table. “Bridget had two daughters, Mary and Christian. Both inherited some part of Bridget’s ability.”
Frances couldn’t help interrupting. “What is this ability you keep talking about? I don’t know what you’re—”
Harriet said, “Frances, Grandmother Beryl is trying to tell you. Be patient.”
Frances scowled at being spoken to as if she were a child.
Cousin Beryl took no notice. “Bridget did have a certain talent. She was just a hedge witch, an herbalist, a maker of potions and charms and tokens. She was good at simple cures, using her ability to make liniments and salves and tinctures.
“She was also, unfortunately, adept with manikins, and her daughter Christian chose that practice. Mary was a stronger practitioner, but it was Christian who did real damage. A manikin, before you ask, is a replica of a human being. Some witches call it a poppet.”
“Witches! You’ve said that twice now. You don’t mean, really—magic?”
“Yes, but I think of it as power, the power of intention. In conjunction with knowledge and study and discipline, it can effect wonderful things.”
“What damage did Christian do?”
“She cursed people, they say, brought on illnesses, caused accidents, ruined romances. You and your mother are descended from Christian’s line. Harriet and I are from Mary’s line.”
“What difference does it make what line I’m from? Would it mean I have the ability?”
Beryl said without inflection, “You do have it, Frances.”
The kettle had begun to whistle, but Frances didn’t reach for it. She stood frozen, staring openmouthed at Beryl. “How do you know? Mother never said anything!”
“Sarah watched her own mother go mad, probably from misusing her ability. Your grandmother was shut up in an asylum, a horrible place where she died in only a few months. Sarah spent her life trying to deny her legacy out of fear, and she didn’t want to see it in her daughter.”
“There are good reasons for that,” Harriet put in. “Her line—your line—has suffered for their dark practices. They have been ostracized, put away, even murdered.”
Frances turned to Harriet.