There were no lilacs, as there had been in the vision in the black mirror, but surely she could plant them when she was John’s wife and this was her house. She would have Persian lilacs in shades of purple and violet and blue, with blooms so sweet women passing by would stop, unable to go any farther, called to the spot as if their names had been spoken aloud.
A bee came to examine Faith’s hair, red as a flower in the bright sunlight. Maria sent it off with a polite nod. “Be elsewhere,” she whispered, and it happily complied. In the tree with black leaves, Cadin was clacking and tossing down pebbles. Maria gave him a dark look, but otherwise paid him no mind. She could not let a crow make her decisions. Her fate was her own, and she would most certainly make the best of it before it made the best of her.
She set her sleeping baby in the grass. To call John to her, she took a laurel leaf from her satchel and held it in the palm of her hand, then set it on fire with a single breath, not minding that she scorched her own skin. The smoke was thin and green, so fragrant it was impossible to ignore. She said his name backwards, chanting beneath her breath. From behind the gate he felt the thrill of seeing her again. She was like no other woman he had ever seen or known, and when she called to him he felt his desire in the pit of his stomach. Sins were committed every hour of every day, and it was clear that this woman was unnatural in some way. But who among them had not committed a sin? The eternal torments of original sin had waited for mankind from the moment Adam ate the apple, which was handed to him by Eve, an act that proved to him and his brethren that women were spiritually inferior to men, weak with human frailty, sinful at their core.
John entered the garden and closed the open gate behind him, always bad luck. He was wearing the same black coat he hadn’t bothered to take off when he swam alongside the turtle, when he didn’t know the difference between a miracle and a monster. It had been laundered with hot water and lye soap and yet there was still sand in the seams. He looked at Faith, dozing in the afternoon light. She might be anything at all, an angel beside the snowy phlox, a wicked changeling sent in the guise of a red-haired girl, but her features were not unlike his, the same narrow nose and high cheekbones. She was merely his child. He softened then, and perhaps he smiled, for as Maria gazed up to see him she believed she saw his heart beating beneath his black coat.
Maria turned her attention to the bee that now came to sting Faith. The child let out a cry so filled with shock and pain that the sparrows in the garden took flight all at once. For a moment the sky was dark as the leaves from the black elm fell to litter the path as if they were bats falling from the branches. Maria quickly removed the stinger from her baby’s arm, then rubbed some lavender oil on the rising welt. “Hush,” she told the child. “All better.” She picked up the dying bee and cast it into the bed of phlox. Some creatures do not care how polite a person might be, they will hurt you for no reason, and then all you can do is heal yourself with whatever ingredients are necessary.
John’s heart was twisted in two between what he wanted and what he must do. He took her hands in his and drew her to her feet. He embraced her then, and so it came as a surprise when he said, “We must leave this place.”
“What do you mean? I’ve brought you your daughter.”
Hathorne gazed at the child’s hair. It was a time when many people believed red-haired women to be witches and imagined those with freckles had been marked by the devil, especially if they were left-handed, another evil trait. Redheads were said to be violent in temperament, false in nature, evil in intent. But this darling baby smiled up at Hathorne. “Gogo,” she said in her sweet voice.
Maria laughed. The babe thought Samuel Dias had returned. “No, no. This isn’t Goat. He’s another man.”
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