“We will rid you of misery and you will live until you’re a very old woman with white hair,” Maria assured Anneke. But you will never be a child again, she thought, not after such pain. You will be a person of compassion, who will be unable to walk past another’s suffering without doing your best to aid them. She crooned Hannah Owens’ song, the one that had comforted her when she was a babe, and that she had then sung to Faith on board the Queen Esther and in the woods of Essex County. Anneke begged for her to sing it again and again, and Maria was happy to comply, for the song always reminded her of home.

The water is wide, I cannot get o’er it

And neither have I wings to fly

Give me a boat that shall carry two

And I shall row, my Love and I.

When Cockle Shells turn Silver bells

And mussels grow on every tree,

When frost and snow shall warm us all,

Then shall my love prove true to me.

The minister heard the tune and came to stand in the doorway of the bedchamber, dismayed by the old folk song as he stood watching the stranger care for his daughter. It was a song sung by the cunning folk, people he held in low esteem. He watched as Maria washed the child’s matted hair in a bowl with warm water and black soap that had a distinctive sweet scent. Rose and rosemary, sage and lavender. Maria had a beautiful, clear voice, and Anneke, who had tossed and turned in the throes of pain, at last lay quietly, taken up by the song. Her improvement was so quick it appeared that magic was at work, had there been such a thing, for the minister didn’t believe in enchantments, only in the ignorance of those who had faith in sorcery. Maria did not leave Anneke’s side, remaining by her bed, where she hemmed the girl’s nightdresses with blue thread.

The minister drew his wife into the hallway. “We don’t know a thing about this woman you’ve brought here. Who’s to say she won’t poison our daughter with her potions?”

Hannah Dekker went to her knees and begged her husband to allow Maria Owens to continue to treat Anneke. When he saw how distraught his wife was, the minister had no choice but to agree. Still, when he returned to the room later that night he found that Maria was burning a white candle onto which she had carved the name of the disease, the name of the child, and the date. He was ill at ease, and insisted on tasting the tea Maria was feeding the child; once he had, the bitterness of the drink worried him. “Will this not make her more ill?” he asked.