Page 78 of The Faerie Morgana

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THE AGE OF WITCHES

by

Louisa Morgan

In 1692, Bridget Bishop was hanged as a witch. Two hundred years later, her legacy lives on in the scions of two very different lines: one dedicated to using their powers to heal and help women in need, the other determined to grasp power for themselves by any means necessary.

This clash will play out in the fate of Annis, a young woman who finds herself to be a pawn in the family struggle for supremacy. She’ll need to claim her own power to save herself—and resist succumbing to the darkness that threatens to overcome them all.

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, ever so slightly, the burden of guilt she carried always.

With her basket brimful of her harvest, she set off across the pasture, pulling off her dilapidated straw hat to feel the balm of sunshine on her hair and her cheeks. At her age a few new freckles wouldn’t matter. In any case, who was there to complain? Well, Grace, of course, but no one else.

Alexander had been fond of the faint freckles that dusted her nose and darkened in the sunshine. She remembered the feel of his hand cupping her cheek and the glow in his eyes as he teased her about them.

She sighed again, sadly this time. Alexander had been gone twenty-five years, but the passing of the decades had not diminished her grief. There was nothing like the pain of loss to teach a person that time was an illusion.

She put her hat on again as she reached the far edge of the meadow.

The sheep had wandered on, Tom trailing behind them.

Voices carried now across the morning air, the cries of children riding the carousel, the remonstrations of their nurses, the calls of the vendors selling ices and twisted papers of taffy. Harriet pressed on toward the drive.

Just as she reached it, a rider approached at a steady trot, a young lady mounted on a tall black horse. Harriet stopped. Her basket grew heavy on her arm, but she stood still to watch the striking pair pass by her.

The girl rode astride, which must cause comment, as would the divided skirt that made it possible.

Strands of dark hair escaped from her straw hat and trailed over her shoulders.

Her gloved hands rested low and easy on the reins, and she kept her chin tucked, her back straight as a spear.

When she glanced up, Harriet caught a glimpse of light-blue eyes and thick dark lashes.

She sat in the saddle as if she had been born to it, and Harriet felt a swell of pride.

The girl was Annis Allington, granddaughter of Harriet’s sister. She didn’t know it, but she and Harriet were the only ones left of their branch of the Bishop family.

She noticed Harriet standing beside the drive and acknowledged her with a courteous nod. Harriet nodded back, as one stranger does to another.

Annis Allington had no idea who Harriet was, of course. Her stepmother had seen to that.

Harriet passed over the dry moat and through the entrance of the Dakota with barely a glance at the building’s facade.

She preferred not to meet the glare of its gargoyles, and she found its wrought iron balustrades excessively baroque.

She had moved there with Grace when it first opened, attracted by the open fields and farms that surrounded it, delighted by its nearness to her beloved park.

She loathed the mansions being thrown up by New York’s nouveau riche, ostentatious palaces that squatted along Fifth Avenue like the overdressed, overfed matrons who inhabited them.

Not that the Dakota wasn’t ostentatious.

It was designed to be. Still, Harriet loved the bright, airy rooms with their high ceilings and tall windows.

She had space for her herbarium, and Grace had her own bedroom in the apartment, instead of on the cramped upper floor with the other staff.

Grace had been thrilled to discover that the entire building was electrified, its own generator providing power for lights and heating and cooking.

The Dakota was ideal for the two of them, and they owed their life there to Alexander’s legacy.

As Harriet passed by the courtyard fountain and on toward the stairs, the fragrance of herbs from her basket made her raise it closer to her face to take an appreciative breath.

At just that moment, Lucille Corning, whose apartment was on Harriet’s floor, appeared at the top of the staircase. She was dressed for shopping, a short cape over a full-sleeved shirtwaist. Her day skirt, fashionably long at the back, trailed behind her as she descended.

Harriet lowered her basket and stepped aside to make room, murmuring, “Good morning, Mrs. Corning.”

Without pausing, Mrs. Corning picked up the train of her skirt with her hand and pointedly pulled it aside. She drew a long, noisy sniff as she reached the last tread, and she swept on into the courtyard without speaking a word.

It was the cut indirect. And it was not the first time.

Harriet watched the woman flutter away across the courtyard. A carriage was waiting for her, with a liveried driver who touched his cap as he helped her up the step. Her maid came scurrying down the stairs to clamber into the carriage while the driver stepped up onto the box.

Harriet chuckled and shook her head as she climbed the stairs to her floor. Mrs. Corning’s disdain didn’t matter, really. She had accepted long ago that she was meant for a lonely life.

She let herself into the apartment and set her basket down in the hall. Grace came bustling out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her long apron. “Miss Harriet! Your skirt is wet to the knees!”