“Nobody’d set foot on that piece of land until Friedrich came down with a bunch of fur trappers from around Ste. Genevieve. He was out tracking one day and claimed he heard somebody singing. Found Anneliese down there in the holler. When he couldn’t find her family, he reckoned he’d raise her himself. He fixed up the old Sutter place, and him and Anneliese lived there till he got the sepsis and died twenty-odd years later.
“Anneliese had a queer way about her. A cunning way. Folks were unsettled by her looks and manner, even though she never harmed a soul. She had her son when she was little more than a girl herself—my pa—and after she died, folks claimed he was the devil’s boy.” Granny chuckles. “If you’d known my pa, you’d laugh yourself to death at the thought. No. His daddy was an Osage scout who Anneliese healed after a skirmish with some settlers. She had a lifelong kinship with the Indians because of that. They trusted her. Traded with her. You can imagine how well that went over with the settlers. That’s when the rumors first started to gain their steam.”
“Folks always got something wicked to say about people who are different, don’t they?”
“They sure do, Gracie. But my Oma never harmed a soul. She helped people. Nurtured the sick and the land. She blessed Bartholomew Ray’s fields and orchard with her charms, because he was kind to her pa and kept him in work. She’d speak her words over the Rays’ cattle and their cows’d give milk so rich you could churn butter with a few turns of a spoon. Even if she was a bit strange, folks cast their aspersions, but they let her be. Until he came along.”
“Who?”
“Nathaniel Walker. The preacher who drove them to burn her.”
“She’s the witch from them old stories, then. The reason for the curse.”
Granny frowns. “Wherever a witch’s blood is spilled, a curse remains on the land. That’s the saying, all right. Nobody ever blames the men that do the killing and the burning, do they? Instead, they blame the witch.”
Granny’s right.
The witch poisoned my well.
The witch cursed my crops.
The witch stole my husband.
And on and on it goes, from the first witch, down to the last.
Granny rises, her knees creaking. “If you really want to know who Anneliese was, there’s somethin’ I need to show you, Gracelynn. Something my pa gave to me a long time ago.”
EIGHT
DEIRDRE
1881
Deirdre pulled her cotton wrapper over her shift and sat on the hope chest at the foot of her bed, carved of cedar and decorated with circular, multicolored hexes. Her mind spun with everything that had happened since yesterday. Gentry and his healing. The sudden flood. Her strange vision in Sutter’s holler. None of it seemed to fit together.
Downstairs, her parents were arguing, Mama’s voice rising and falling in waves. “You’re blind to her ways, Jakob. She’s been willful while you’ve been away.” Mama knocked a spoon handle against a pot for emphasis. “She’s help to me when her mind’s not addled with that Cash boy, but you’ve spoilt her.”
“She’s not a little girl anymore, Nola. You were younger than she when we married. It’s fitting for her to want her own life. Suitors. Robbie Cash may not be to your liking, but if he comes to me and asks for her hand, I’ll give my blessing.”
Deirdre smiled. Pa approved of Robbie! It was all she needed to hear.
“The women talk about what he gets up to.” Mama hissed the words low, but Deirdre still heard them. “Don’t you want better for her?”
“Mountain biddies talk when they’ve nothing better to do. My concern is with that preacher you let on the place. A man like that would bring Deirdre worse than heartache, just like he brought my mother. His kind don’t fit well with our own.”
“A minister? Surely a man of God . . .”
“He’s no man of God,” Pa said with a finality clean as a postal stamp. “We need to hide Deirdre away. Protect her.”
“To soothe your mind, we could send her to the Bledsoes’ for a spell, to help Mrs. Bledsoe and the new baby,” Mama said softly. “Hannah likes Deirdre and would be glad for the help.” Mama sighed. “You and I need time to ourselves, besides. I’ve missed you, husband.”
Pa whispered something too low for Deirdre to hear, and a girlish giggle bubbled from Mama’s throat. Deirdre’s face blazed with indignance. Mama had used her wiles to sway Pa into doing her bidding once more. But going to Hannah’s would give Deirdre the chance to be out from under Mama’s watch, and she could earn money of her own to put toward her wedding. She’d seen a fine bolt of ivory satin at the mercantile she could fashion into a gown.
Deirdre would finally have everything she wanted now that Pa was home.
A few moments passed, then Pa’s footsteps echoed down the hall. He climbed up the ladder with a book clasped against his chest and sat beside her on the trunk, his eyes weary.
“I heard you and Mama,” Deirdre said quietly. “Heard you say you’d give your blessing if Robbie asked for it.” She clasped Pa’s calloused hand. “Oh, Pa . . . being Robbie’s wife is what I want more than anything. We could have the wedding this summer—by June, even, if we make things official now.”
“There’ll be time for wedding talk later, Deirdre Jane. There are more important things we need to talk about first.” Pa opened the strange book carefully and placed it on Deirdre’s lap. It was old, worn around the edges, with fragile pages made of pressed wood pulp and leather parchment. It smelled of musty leaves. She had no idea Pa even owned such a thing.
“What is it?”
“Your Oma’s grimoire. Her Zauberbuch. It’s a book of knowledge. Recipes and secret charms. My Opa Friedrich brought it over from the old country. His mother wrote all her wisdom on its pages and sent it with him. She knew he would have a daughter someday who might learn from it. My mama studied it and carried on the tradition herself, so that you might have her knowledge when the time came. If I’m not mistaken, it’s time.” He studied her, narrowing his eyes. “You must learn as much as you can from this book, Deirdre, so that you might guard yourself from those who would seek to beguile or harm you. You must always come to the book with clear intentions. As you will, the book provides, for good or for ill. Seek always to do no harm.”
Deirdre carefully turned the pages of the grimoire, her fingers trembling. Some of the writing was in German, some in English. There were recipes for herbal cures and poultices, as well as illustrations of animals and the human form. Deirdre’s breath caught in her throat when she turned to a page with a drawing of a locust tree, its branches in flame. She traced it with her fingertip. A strange warmth seemed to radiate from the paper. “It’s that tree by your old home place. The one they burned her on.”
Pa’s jaw clenched. “You saw something down in the holler, didn’t you, Deirdre?”
Deirdre nodded. “Yes. I’ve been having visions for a long time, Pa. But this one was different. There was a woman. They burned her, just like the stories people talk about. Did that really happen? Back then?”