Magic Lessons (Practical Magic) - Alice Hoffman Page 0,19

cure you, but two had the power to do as they pleased, and there’d be no defense against them. In this world, witches were best to be avoided at all costs. Still, the boy did as his master had instructed. His horse was old and nearly lame, but the boy rode him as quickly as he could. No messenger wanted to be caught and questioned by Rebecca Lockland.

“That boy’s horse has a tail as black as your hair,” Rebecca said as she watched the worried rider. “Perhaps the old stallion is your father and you’re only half-human.”

Maria had her hands on her hips. She did not like to be taken for a fool, even by her own mother. “If there’s one thing I know for certain, it’s that the non-human half was inherited from you.”

Mother and daughter were more than ready to quarrel as they faced each other in the field. But they had begun to pay closer attention to the boy, who leapt from the horse to nail a piece of parchment to the door, then jumped back onto his old steed to race out of sight before Maria and Rebecca reached the house. Out of breath, Rebecca tore the paper from the door and handed it to Maria to read.

“Your husband’s family claims this house and will come for it and all of your belongings tomorrow,” Maria told her mother. “They are legally entitled to everything, as your husband is ailing and in their care.”

A single woman might own property, but a wife was entitled to nothing, and the proclamation came as no surprise. The Lockland house had been a prison, and Rebecca was glad to have good reason to leave it. She had another life to live elsewhere. They went to pack up all that mattered to them, which as it turned out, wasn’t much. Maria took a change of clothes and her Grimoire, along with pen and ink, the black mirror of divination, and the bell from Hannah’s door. Rebecca gathered some jewelry, along with a pistol that had been a favorite of her husband’s and the rest of the blackened silverware. If they stayed here, they would likely be sent to Bridewell Prison, where as paupers and women alone they would be set to work and kept confined, perhaps for the rest of their lives. The wisest move was to flee as far from Essex County as possible. It was always best to step into the future while it was still waiting for you. In fact, there was a man who was Rebecca’s past, present, and future. For him, Rebecca had planted a night garden that bloomed after dark. Angel’s trumpet, moonflower, night jasmine, evening primrose, all waited for the moon to rise.

Both Maria and Rebecca wore skirts that were ankle-length, best to wear when riding, and neither bothered with petticoats that would only be dragged in the mud. Before they walked outside, Rebecca placed the second hairpin in Maria’s hair.

“You might as well let him see you at your best.”

“How do you know he’s coming here?”

“We have made a decision to leave here. The Locklands will come for this place, and we can’t be here when they do. As for your father, he’s always been waiting for me.”

* * *

Maria took him to be her father the instant she saw him approach. His horse was black, as was his hair, and he wore a long overcoat and black velvet breeches that had once been elegant, but now were threadbare. It was clear that witches didn’t frighten him. He shouted out for Rebecca, a grin on his face, and in return she called him Robbie, such a sweet name in her mouth she sounded like a girl again, the one she’d been on the day she’d first met him, when he’d been a member in a company of players, often taking the part of the hero, and she had been rapt all the while she watched him, certain that he was the one for her.

He’d turned to crime during the plague years, when theaters were shut down due to illness and Puritan beliefs. Many of Shakespeare’s plays hadn’t been revived until recently, and then, in altered form; still there were rogue companies of players, and some would still hire Robbie despite his history and his bad reputation in the theaters of London, where he had stolen from some of his contemporaries, charming them as he did so. As time went on, he became more of