A Vision in Velvet: A Witchcraft Mystery (14 page)

He held my eyes for a long time. “There is a story of one woman. Bart’s obsessed with her. Deliverance Corydon.”

“Deliverance? That was her name?” That word was ringing in my head when I snapped out of the vision I’d had with the cloak.

“Pretty, isn’t it? A lot of the Puritan women had names like that: Chastity, Purity, Prudence. All the virtues. But Deliverance Corydon was a special case, obviously.”

“How so?”

“For one thing, she was burned at the stake. That almost never happened in the American colonies. Witches here were executed by hanging.”

My heart sped up. “Then why did they burn her? Were they out of rope, or was there some significance to the method?”

“That sort of question keeps scholars like me employed and writing treatises on the issue. I would argue that Deliverance Corydon was a very special case.”

“How do you know so much about her?”

“The Puritans, bless their hearts, were world-class record keepers. Not only that, but they tended to store these documents safely, which means we have many
more from them than from others of the time. There are letters, diaries, newspapers, church accounts, all kinds of notations. And there is the transcript of her trial, of course. It’s a summary, not a word-for-word recording—stenography was several centuries in the future—but it’s quite revealing. It describes, for example, how Deliverance was extensively interrogated about her familiar spirit, which was, apparently, a frog.”

“Really. What kind of frog?”

“I’m afraid they weren’t that detailed, but I imagine it was just a common toad of some sort.” Will smiled. “The accused were imprisoned while awaiting trial, and if any animal wandered by—even an ant or a beetle—it was assumed they were the witch’s familiar. The human mind is infinitely creative.”

“Anything else out of the ordinary in her interrogation?”

“Not really. She had a witch’s mark, which was common among those accused. Usually they were moles or birthmarks that were thought to be without feeling, and marks of the devil. Hers was shaped like a crescent moon and was on her neck. Like a hickey.”

“I was wondering . . . This might sound a little gruesome, but do you know what they did with the bodies of witches after they were killed?”

“Not gruesome at all! A fascinating question!” Will stood and began pacing behind his desk, as though too excited by my query to remain seated. I imagined him in a lecture hall, speaking to a class of rapt students, and wished, not for the first time, that I’d had the chance to go to college. Maybe I could think of pursuing it after I got my GED. As long as there was no math requirement, I would quite enjoy it, I felt sure.

“Because a witch was a minion of the devil, her corpse was considered polluted, and often there was a great deal of debate about what to do with it. It couldn’t be
buried in consecrated ground, for instance. One option was to bury the corpse outside the graveyard, literally on the other side of the fence. Makes quite a statement, don’t you think? ‘We reject you, in life and in death!’”

“Is that what they did to Deliverance?” I asked, wondering how on earth I would ever find a beyond-the-boundary colonial-era grave. Probably under a condo development by now.

“No, they chose another option. Fire was a traditional method of purification and had the added benefit of being thought to break residual spells. It was said—wait a minute. I have it right here.”

Will pulled a thick tome off a shelf, flipped to the middle, and ran his finger down the page. “Here it is. ‘The body of a witch being burned, her blood is prevented thereby from becoming hereditary to her progeny in the same evil, which by hanging is not.’” He snapped the book shut and grinned at me.

“In other words . . . ?” I asked, wanting to be sure I understood.

“Oh! Sorry. In other words, fire keeps the witch’s sins from being passed on through her blood kin, should she have any.” He put the book back, taking the time to adjust the spine so it was in line with the others on the shipshape shelf.

“What did they do with the ashes . . . the remains of the witch who was burned?”

“Usually they were thrown into a river to completely dissolve. Not unlike executed criminals today, who are given an anonymous burial in quicklime. The idea is to wipe out any trace of them.”

“And that’s what happened to this witch’s remains? Deliverance . . .”

“Deliverance Corydon,” he finished with a nod. “Actually, no. Deliverance received special treatment. Her ashes were put into a wooden box carved with symbols.”

“This was in the historical record as well?”

“Yes. It was noted by a particularly devout young minister, who was also a bit of an artist. He even drew pictures of the box, thank goodness. It’s the sort of thing that makes history fun, this kind of window into the past. I have an image of it somewhere. . . .” Plucking another book from his extensive collection, he thumbed through it and then handed it to me.

A shiver ran down my spine. The drawing of the symbols on the box containing the remains of Deliverance Corydon was a match for the photo Carlos had shown me . . . except that the box was now several rotted pieces of wood. But some of the carved symbols had survived.

“Where did the symbols come from? Was it something the Puritans came up with?”

Will shrugged. “Their meaning has been lost, but it was assumed to be a spell or protective markers of some sort. As I said, burning witches was unusual in colonial America, though more common in Europe.”

“Could Deliverance’s ashes have been transported to San Francisco?”

Will thought for a moment. “It seems highly unlikely . . . but possible, I suppose. Once a witch was executed, most folks seemed to want to forget all about it. It’s possible someone kept the box, and it was handed down through the generations and taken with them when they moved. Over time, it’s likely the family forgot what was inside, but really, who knows?” He shrugged. “The box would have been sealed with nails and wax, but wood does disintegrate. Depending on environmental conditions, it might take a few years, or several centuries. But eventually, it will rot away, faster if it’s buried.”

My mind raced as I tried to process all he was telling me. “Suppose . . . Suppose a box like this were buried at the base of a tree. Could it have disintegrated and the ashes soaked into the tree?”

“Um . . . can’t help you there,” he said with a slight smile, eyebrows raised. “That’s botany; not my specialty.”

“Sorry. Never mind. Tell me, were you studying the Woolsey family in particular? Is that how you found Bart? Or did he find you?”

“Woolsey was a reasonably common name. It was also the name associated with the most famous curse from the colonial era.”

“The one Bart believes he suffers under?”

“He told you about that?”

“He actually asked me to help him get rid of it.”

“Poor guy. Seeking true love at his age . . .”

“You think the desire for true love lessens with age?”

“Oh no, no, no, I’m no ageist.” He sat back down behind his desk and adjusted his glasses. “I guess I just thought, well . . . I don’t know. Half my colleagues are looking for love online and whatnot, and I guess part of me hoped it would get easier with age.”

He smiled and shrugged again, and I was struck by his open and friendly expression. Will had the kind of nerdy good looks one saw a lot on college campuses: intellectual and intense, but eager and interested. I imagined he had more than a few young students falling for him.

“I discuss the Woolsey curse in a book I’m writing, titled, appropriately enough,
Ancient Curses
. I’m interested not only in how these stories originated and were handed down through the years, but also how they’re kept alive by a modern society that claims not to believe in curses.”

“Do you see a lot of hereditary curses active today?”

“No, not at all. Especially not in these parts. I’m from New England originally. Same country, different world. My family traces its ancestry back multiple generations. There it’s more common to find an obsession with pedigree.”

I had to smile. “Did you ‘come out’ at a debutante ball?”

He chuckled. “No, that’s for young ladies. But I was the next-best thing: an escort to a deb. Not as much fun when it comes to wardrobe selection, sorry to say. But I looked pretty snazzy in my rented tux.”

We didn’t have debutante balls back in Jarod, Texas . . . though most of the girls in town would have given their eyeteeth to have taken part in one. Instead, we had regional beauty contests. As a young woman, my mother had been crowned Miss Tecla County; she was photographed wearing a rhinestone tiara and a silk sash, carrying a huge gold trophy inscribed with her name. The photo was published on the front page of the local weekly newspaper, the
Jarod Journal
. It was her moment of glory and the highlight of her life.

Needless to say, I had never been invited to participate.

“Anyway, if you’re wondering about the curse Bart claims he has been carrying around, it was supposedly cast by Deliverance Corydon. It was recorded in the family Bible, which Bart still has—I’ve been angling to take a look through it, but he hasn’t yet allowed me to. But this Deliverance is a bit of a mystery, to be honest. I’ve looked and looked but haven’t found any reference to her or her family, which is odd. As I said, the Puritans were excellent record keepers, and her birth should have been recorded in the church and town records.”

“Maybe she came to town as an adult.”

“Maybe so. Still, she should appear
somewhere
. Tax records, census records . . . But I haven’t found anything. Apparently, she lived alone on the outskirts of town.”

“That was the case for many women accused of witchcraft, wasn’t it?”

“Not all, but many. A woman living independently was not the norm at this time. Deliverance was also accused of fornication with several of the town elders.”

“‘Fornication’? I haven’t heard that term in a while. Was she . . . a prostitute?”

“Doesn’t appear to be the case. She was, by all accounts, a beautiful, powerful, independent woman who kept herself apart from others—just the sort the devil would go after.”

“Which made her vulnerable.”

Will gave a simple nod. “Which meant she didn’t have many friends—and that made her vulnerable. Stray too far outside the bounds of what is socially acceptable, and you might as well paint a target on your back.”

I sighed. Too often this was still true today. Would we humans ever learn from our mistakes?

“Anyway, what we do know is that Deliverance Corydon was accused of witchcraft, tried and convicted in a court of law, then sentenced to death by fire. As the flames roared higher, it is said she looked at her primary accuser, the magistrate in her case, Jonathan Woolsey, and cursed him and all his male descendants, declaring that they would never find true love or domestic happiness.”

“She only cursed the males?”

He nodded. “Maybe because men had the authority in her society?”

I pondered that for a moment. “So, were there other women killed in Dathorne?”

“Yes, several.”

“But Deliverance was the only one burned?”

“As far as we can tell. But there was another woman who was put to death not long after Deliverance. She was charged with stealing Deliverance’s ashes.”

The back of my neck tingled. “That’s a charge?”

“As I said, the people of the time were concerned with the effects of earthly remains. There’s also an illustration of the woman, who was called the Ashen Witch. Let me see. . . .” He looked up at his orderly bookshelves, rubbing his chin absentmindedly. “Yup, here it is. . . .”

He took out a large book labeled
New England Ghost Stories
.

“She’s said to haunt the town still, especially the site of Corydon’s burning.”

He turned the book around to face me. There was a full-color illustration of a dark-haired woman in a gold cape, kneeling before a pile of gray-white ash. I studied her image and swallowed hard.

“Hey,”
said Will, glancing at the picture, then at me. “You know, ever since I met you, I thought you looked familiar. You’re the spitting image of the Ashen Witch!”

He was right. I looked just like her. Not as pale, perhaps, but that could be due to the fact that she was, after all, a ghost.

“No one knows her real name, but according to the lore, she was a newcomer in town—already a big mark against her since outsiders were suspect—and was tasked with gathering up Deliverance’s ashes. She started too soon after the burning and singed herself, but applied a poultice that healed her miraculously. And then she was found applying the marks on the box, and she tried to run away with it. The townspeople found it all very strange and accused her of being a witch as well. Further cementing their suspicions was that she and Deliverance Corydon were said to ‘have the impression of one another’—meaning, they looked alike. Both had dark hair and pale faces.”

“Seems there’s a lot of that going around,” I said. “So you’re suggesting I look like Deliverance, too?”

Will shrugged.

“And so they killed the newcomer because she was a quick healer and wrote a few symbols?”

“And because she looked like the witch they’d just burned, yes.” He nodded. “It made sense to them at the time.”

I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly.

“Here’s an interesting tidbit,” said Will as he read through the story. “The Ashen Witch is shown here in
her cape and was always referred to as wearing one—but she was not hanged with it. In fact, upon her arrest, the cape was nowhere to be found. According to the arrest warrant, ‘said garment, perhaps enchanted, was assumed hidden upon her foreseeing her arrest.’
Huh
. Where do you suppose it went?”

* * *

I meandered slowly back through the campus, enjoying the scenery. It surprised me that the UC Berkeley grounds were so bucolic. Located as it was in the middle of an urban area, I expected big ugly gray buildings; there were a few, but the overall impression was of a graceful, historic site of higher learning. I passed by Hearst Mining Circle, and gathered eucalyptus branches to hang in my shower; the aroma they released with the steam was great for one’s skin and lungs.