The shopkeeper’s wife, Anne Hatch, who had always been so kind to Maria, was the first to arrive. Anne was not more than twenty and her husband, Nathaniel, was near fifty. It was not an unusual match in the colony; men often had three, perhaps even four wives, for so many were lost in childbirth. But it was not a good marriage. Anne feared her husband, for he treated her badly; all the same she left her bed to walk alone through the fields, turning into the dark wood to reach the cabin that many said was enchanted. People in town hadn’t forgotten Maria Owens. They saw her when she came in once a month to do her shopping, the little girl tagging along with her black dog at her side. Maria always wore a blue dress and those red boots, which some people said were the color of blood and others insisted were the color of roses. “Hold your breath when she passes by,” mothers told their children.

On Maria’s market days, Ruth Gardner Hathorne always went to her gate to watch her, as did most of the women on Washington Street. They never spoke a word or greeted Maria; all the same, they felt drawn to this stranger. What might she do for them if they asked? What was there to be found outside their own garden gates? The magistrates had allowed Maria to own land in Essex County; still, it was strongly recommended that no one speak to her, and if anyone should befriend her that person would also be suspect and run the risk of an inquiry. People swore that one day there would be proof enough for her to be brought to trial for witchery. “What makes her think she can defy laws and protocol?” the women whispered among themselves.

Anne Hatch went up the porch steps, even though her frantic heart was hitting against her ribs. She had been orphaned; first her mother was taken by a fever, then her father was lost in King Philip’s War. She should have been grateful to have a man pick her out of the workhouse where she’d been sent by the Overseers of the Poor, but after the first night with her new husband there was nothing to be grateful for.

“Bless me,” Anne Hatch whispered to He who watched over her. Her hands were shaking. “Do not judge me for what I must do,” she asked of the Lord.