Witches (26 page)

Amadeus was already out romping in the woods, scoping out the new terrain, or chasing down rabbits.

As she stood poised in the doorway, pulling her fingers through her unruly hair, she looked for him, but didn’t see him.

Wish I had a comb or a brush. A toothbrush and some toothpaste.

She walked out the door into a cloudy day and worked her way down to the edge of the pond. Using twigs, she brushed her teeth as well as she could with the cold water, and then washed her hands and face. She
wanted to wash and mend her dress, but she had nothing else to wear. She would have to leave it on, dirty as it was. For now anyway. Rachel must have more clothes somewhere in the cottage. She’d have to find them.

Above her, more clouds were gathering, burnt marshmallows, and the temperature was dropping. She could feel it on her skin and shivered. A storm coming. It would break this suffocating heat, she contemplated, lifting her hair off her neck to catch the breeze and tugging her fingers through it again. Hopeless.

She plodded back to the cabin and caught Maggie lurking before the door, waiting for her. She had a hand-carved wooden comb in her right hand and held it out to Amanda.

Amanda had decided last night before she’d fallen to sleep that when she had to converse she would try to talk more like the people of the time. Using thou and thee whenever she could remember. No contractions. Her survival depended on making people believe she was Rachel, but a changing Rachel. Shrewdly and gradually, she had to whiten Rachel’s tarnished reputation.

“I thank thee. I need it, do I not?” Amanda agreed, as she took the comb and started yanking it through the rats and knots.

Maggie disappeared back into the cabin and returned with a piece of thin rope which she offered her. “Here, thou can tie thy hair back with this.”

“Thank thee,” Amanda muttered, again. After weaving her hair into one thick braid, she tied it and flipped it over her shoulder and down her back. On one hand, she would have liked to have had a mirror, but on the other, not. It wouldn’t be her face looking back at her.

Then Maggie handed Amanda a bundle of cloth. “Here is one of your other dresses. Thou will feel better in a clean and untorn one.”

“I thank thee again.” Amanda unrolled the cloth. It was a lovely blood-red dress with a thin waist and a full skirt. Amanda’s eyes widened as she looked at the dress and then back at the thing Maggie wore. She had to bite her tongue, remember who she was supposed to be, or she would give herself away. Rachel’s dress partly explained the poverty in the house. If Rachel had always dressed this well, no wonder her children had to wear rags and live in a dump. There were soft slippers tucked inside the dress and a fancy petticoat.

“I took it from thy chest there in the corner. It be one of thy favorites.” The girl’s voice held just a pinch of anger; a hint of red in her cheeks matched the defiant gleam in her quickly-lowered eyes. Amanda caught it, anyway.

This will have to change, Amanda thought to herself. As soon as possible.

“
I
will go gather the eggs from the chickens as thou dresses and then we will eat breakfast,” Maggie announced.

Amanda’s face went blank.

“The chickens, Ma. Those we have in the pen next to our garden...remember?” There was amusement in the girl’s tone that again made Amanda feel like the child. How could the girl be so young and think so old? She must have had plenty of practice.

“Oh, those chickens.” Amanda rubbed the side of her face absent-mindedly. “That knock yesterday on the back of my head must have addled me some, Maggie.”

“Aye.” Maggie threw her reply over her shoulder as she moved past her and out of sight around the side of the cottage, a basket in her arms for the eggs.

Amanda followed her silently
and saw where she was heading before she turned back
towards the cottage to slip on the dress, and check on Lizzy.

A small chicken coop was crouched behind the house, along with a large, well-tended garden. So she knew where some of the food was coming from now. Fresh eggs sounded delicious. It was strange how the idea of a simple hot meal could bring up a person’s spirit.

Of course, the dress and slippers fit perfectly. Rachel was a smaller woman than Amanda, but the dress had been made for her. After Amanda had put the clothes on, she found the chest Maggie had spoken of and went through the things in it. Her irritation grew as she took out one beautiful gown after another. At the bottom of the large chest, she discovered a box of jewelry, fine handkerchiefs, bonnets, and accessories. Clothes and jewels fine enough for a princess.

She made a decision then and there that she’d take most of the dresses and cut them down for the girls to wear. Sell or barter away the rest of the stuff in the local marketplace—if there was one—for other necessities. It was silly to have such things when the children needed so much. She’d always been good with a needle and thread and she was sure she could do it. The children deserved better than what they had and she was going to see that they got it. She didn’t need all these fancy clothes and jewels, but they needed better clothes. She kept out two of the prettiest dresses of thinner material and laid them on the table. She’d start cutting them down and sewing new ones right away.

She laid the comb on the shelf by the fireplace and built up the fire for cooking. She’d noticed that Maggie never let the fire go out, even in this hot weather. There were always tiny burning coals or a small flame.

Lizzy was sleeping, Amadeus curled in her embrace. He must have snuck in when Amanda wasn’t looking. The girl’s eyes opened.

“Good morning, Lizzy,” Amanda said, stooping down to lift the child into her arms. She was as light as a bag of twigs. “Are thee hungry, too?”

The little girl hid her head against Amanda’s shoulder and mumbled that she was. Her arms stole around Amanda’s neck and tightened. The child seemed to trust her completely already.

If I had my powers, I could help this child.

However, her powers were gone, so she couldn’t do anything. Again, their loss caused her regret and pain.

Though she’d have to hide her healing gifts here in the past, anyway, she thought, as in the future. Here, because any sort of unexplained healing was attributed to Satan quicker than God, and in the future because contrary to what people assumed, the medical community and authorities would discredit any person who had such a healing power, if for no other reason than it would jeopardize their immense profits. Sickness in the twentieth-first century was big business.

Long ago witches learned not to advertise their healing abilities just like their other gifts. It was safer that way.

Amanda had never approved of the greed she’d found in most so-called health-care professionals or the life-prolonging procedures some doctors and hospitals resorted to, or when a brain or body died but machines kept the shell alive long after hope was gone. She felt it was a sin
to do that.

Amanda was at the table, giving the child sips of the tea she’d brewed from the medicinal herbs, relieved to hear the cough and the congestion breaking up. She was marveling at the child’s brightness for her age when she heard horse’s hooves, and a shadow from the doorway fell across her. A big shadow.

She looked up, startled to see Joshua Graham standing there and surprised by the joy that burst upon her at the sight of the man again. A grin spread across her face and her heart skipped a few beats. He was so handsome dressed in a white shirt and leather jerkin, tight-fitting leather breeches and the high boots again. That long hair glinting with streaks of brilliant brownish-gold swept back from a strong face. He’d trimmed his mustache. He carried the old flintlock musket in his left hand and a burlap sack in his right.

Everything else faded away. Except for his piercing brown eyes and his somehow hauntingly familiar smile.

Amanda’s smile faltered, she trembled.

It had come to her finally. His smile, his mannerisms, his eyes...were Jake’s
.

How could you not have seen that yesterday?

Maybe, an inner voice told her, because you were so upset? It was such a shock, she just sat there gawking up at him like an awestruck child who’d bumped into Santa Claus on Christmas morning. In physical appearance, except for his height, he was little like Jake had been. Such sharp features. He seemed much more guarded than Jake. Yet, it was Jake.

We’ve both lived before, many times. We were lovers in each one.

She’d told Jake that once, long ago. Now she’d found him again in the far past. It was incredible. Imagine the odds—or, another thought hit her, was it fate? Was he here for another reason? For her. To help her.

Again, she had the strange premonition that someone was watching over her. Even here, so far from her home and own time.

“Mistress Rachel? I am sorry to intrude like this...but I—”

“Came for your cloak,” Amanda finished, taming her grin, and ordering her heart to stop hammering in her chest. This wasn’t her time, he wasn’t her Jake. Just because Jake’s soul resided in this body before her, didn’t give her any rights to him. They didn’t know each other. She’d be wise to remember that.

He paused. Amanda had the feeling that the cloak wasn’t all he’d come back for, as his eyes self-consciously met hers, then traveled to the dress she was wearing and clearly registered approval.

“Aye, for the cloak, to be sure, but also to see if thou are feeling better today.”

“I am,” Amanda responded.

His jaw clenched and his voice fell. “And to apologize for my rude behavior yesterday, as well. It was unforgivable.”

Amanda shook her head. “You helped me, what is there to forgive? I should thank thee.” He seemed to accept that.

Outside, it began to rain softly. A soothing sound. Amanda got up from the chair with Lizzy clinging to her hip like a monkey and went to fetch the cloak.

She handed it to Joshua. “You may come in, sir, out of the rain. It is the least I can do after what you did for me yesterday.”

He hesitated, thought about it as Jake would have done, and finally stepped into the cabin and sat down on one of the two other chunks of wood that passed for chairs. The cloak he laid across his lap, the sack he lowered to the floor, and the musket he propped on the floor against his thigh. She noticed his work-roughened hand never left it.

His eyes scanned the place and Amanda felt shame at the poor condition of the cottage. What he must think of her.

“It does not always look like this.” She felt the need to apologize for something that wasn’t even her fault. She promised herself the next time he stopped by the cottage would be spotless.

If he came by again.

He shrugged, and said nothing.

She gathered the dresses from the table and folded them neatly to one side. “I was about to cut them down for the girls,” she found herself making another excuse.

“Thou were?”

“Yes.”

He placed the sack on the table and explained nonchalantly, “We butchered some of our pigs this morning and I thought with the children…” He nodded toward Lizzy as she hid her face against Amanda’s chest from the stranger who seemed to frighten her, “…thou might have use of a slab of fresh pork.” Amanda couldn’t help but catch the fleeting glimmer of kindness that the man tried to conceal with a stern face.

So like Jake and yet not.

Amanda smiled at him. A feeling of happiness she couldn’t contain lightening her mood. “I thank thee.

“The meat will be put to good use. Thou must stay and have some of it along with fresh eggs for breakfast.” The invitation snuck out before she could stop it. She hoped she was putting her thees and thous in the correct places.

“I could not—”

“I insist.

“My daughter, Maggie, is out even now stealing the eggs from the chickens.” She chuckled softly.

“Then,” he spread his arms in a capitulating gesture, “I would be honored.”

Lizzy was asking for more of the tea and Amanda put the cup’s rim back to her lips, gently helping her to drink. The girl hadn’t coughed since Joshua had arrived and the hotness of her skin had cooled. She was getting sleepy. Good.

Amanda glanced up in time to see Joshua regarding her and Lizzy with compassion, and admiration mixed with a touch of confusion. Anyone who studied the child for a while could tell she was blind.

“This is my daughter, Lizzy.” She introduced the two.

“Nice to meet thee, Lizzy.” He spoke softly to the child and made no comment on her condition, merely smiled understandingly over her head at Amanda. “Thou art a lovely child.”

Lizzy burrowed against Amanda’s breast again. Amanda could hear her tiny heart thumping against hers but she was no longer afraid of Joshua, she could tell that. Simply tired and shy.

Joshua met Amanda’s eyes directly for the first time and held them. “Thou dost look better this morning. In fact, quite fetching.”

Under his intense observation, Amanda could feel herself blush. Glad that she’d had the time to pretty herself up before he’d appeared and then amused at herself for caring so.

His tall muscular frame remained rigid, as if he was uncomfortable sitting across from her. He was a fighter, she could tell. Like a hawk, his sharp eyes didn’t miss a thing. His movements lethal as a panther.