Magic Lessons (Practical Magic) - Alice Hoffman Page 0,48

roamed the city, courting trouble; proper women slept without a stitch of clothing and dreamed of lakes and streams, often waking with their hair wringing wet and pools of water mysteriously appearing on the wooden floor beneath their beds.

Yet, despite the troubles the season brought, every soul in the colony agreed that summer was far too short. No one wished for a New England winter. Winter was severe in every acre of this region, bleak and much more fierce than winters in England, so cold that harbors froze solid. There were those who believed this new country was too frigid for Englishmen, many of whom perished in blizzards, freezing in their own beds. The native people vowed that every ten years there was no winter, but that the years in between made up for that blessed time. It was a land of extremes and there seemed to be more of everything here, both disaster and promise, and mothers whispered that was the cause that there were so many twins in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, for all here was doubled, even human life.

The land itself was huge, endless, some people vowed, with uncharted territories of wilderness said to be overrun by beasts and natives that the settlers had betrayed and now feared. Essex County itself was large, with many towns and villages. Until Maria could discover where John Hathorne was, she would remain in Boston, boarding near School Street, where the first public school, Boston Latin, had opened in 1635. As always, she kept the window open for Cadin, so that he might come and go as he pleased. He continued to bring gifts for Maria, from every neighborhood in Boston. Bullets, fishhooks, a blue pearl, scallop shells, colored glass, a key that seemed to fit any door. The crow perched in the rafters of her room, but at night he seemed to know that she was lonely, for he slept beside her, making a nest in the blanket, lulling her to sleep with a clacking sound. Several of Cadin’s feathers had turned white by this time, and Maria worried over him, although crows could easily live to be twenty, and in rare cases, such creatures had been known to survive for thirty or more years. Do not leave me, she whispered to the crow, the same words Samuel Dias had so often said in his sleep, not that she would think of that, or of him, or consider what he had meant to her.

* * *

There was a teahouse in her lodgings, and in exchange for room and board, Maria was employed as a cook. She knew the basics of Hannah’s simple cookery, and she quickly learned the American specialties favored by their customers. Odd as these dishes were to her palate, she soon grew accustomed to the strange food she ladled out each evening. Cod and mashed potatoes, baked beans that had been soaked in cold water overnight and were then cooked for hours with salt pork, stewed pumpkins, yellow and green native squashes, pot pies of every sort, boiled clams, cherry and plum puddings, as well as a dish known as Indian pudding, a great favorite of Faith’s, for it was a heavenly mixture of scalded milk, Indian meal, molasses, cinnamon, and ginger. Maria had learned to tell the difference in the fish she used; cod was good for boiling and had white stripes, and haddock was best for frying and had black stripes. On Tuesdays she baked Shrewsbury cakes, buttery and flavored with rosewater. On Saturdays there was bird’s nest pudding, made of cored apples and egg custard. Best of all were Sundays, when she fixed apple fritters, battered apples fried and coated with sugar and cider, or on special occasions, an apple pie, Faith’s favorite. For those who had a taste for tart desserts there were slices of cranberry spice pie flavored with nutmeg and cinnamon, or hard gingerbread, which kept well for weeks. Courage Tea was always called for, especially when a woman had a difficult decision before her or when the right words could not be found although they needed to be said.

Every morning Maria made her daughter a breakfast of gruel, oats settled in cold water, boiled with raisins, sugar, and a pinch of salt and nutmeg. Faith was an early walker, and by the summer’s end she often toddled about from table to table, with her favorite poppet in hand. Maria laughed to think that her doll had been sewn by a