“Yes, Philip,” I said, giving him a weak smile.
My son had a pet griffin. My daughter relished the taste of blood.
I was beginning to understand why my parents might have thought spellbinding was a good option.
* * *
—
WHEN WE REJOINED THE REST of the family, they were settled out in the courtyard under a brightly colored umbrella, gathered around a table covered with snacks and beverages, talking a mile a minute. Apollo was with them.
“Yet you listened to my ancestor Sarah Bishop, and went back to Hadley as she told you to do,” Sarah was saying. “That took courage—giving up dreams of glory to look after your mother and sister.”
“It didn’t feel courageous at the time.” Marcus was cracking pistachio nuts at a furious pace, and throwing the shells on the ground for Apollo to peck at. “Some people accused me of cowardice.”
“Obviously they didn’t live with your father.” Sarah cut through any tension Marcus might be feeling with her usual combination of complete honesty and compassion.
I gave her shoulders a squeeze and sat down in front of the iced tea pitcher. My aunt looked up at me in surprise.
“Everything okay?” Sarah asked.
“Of course.” I poured myself some tea. “Matthew and I have been talking about what to do about Apollo.”
“He didn’t like being separated from Philip,” Agatha said.
“I’m not surprised.” Marcus ate a handful of pistachios. “The bond between a familiar and a weaver must be powerful. How’s Becca taking it?”
“She doesn’t seem at all jealous,” I replied thoughtfully.
“Give it time,” Marcus said with a laugh. “I imagine she’ll feel differently when Philip chooses to play with Apollo and not her.”
“Maybe Apollo is the familiar for both of them?” Matthew said hopefully.
“I don’t think it works that way,” I said, dashing his hopes. He looked so forlorn that I gave him a kiss. “A familiar is a weaver’s training wheels, remember? Each one is different, and perfectly suited to the weaver’s talents.”
“So because Becca and Philip are fraternal twins, they’ll have different abilities, and therefore different familiars,” Marcus said. “Got it.”
“We still don’t know if Becca is a weaver, of course,” I reminded them.
Everybody looked at me with pity, as if I’d lost my mind.
I sighed. “Let’s look on the bright side. At least we’ll have some help keeping an eye on them.”
Matthew had consumed a full glass of wine by this point and was beginning to look less dazed.
“It’s true that Corra was quick to defend you if you were in danger,” Matthew said.
“And she was even quicker to come to my aid if I needed help or a bit of a magical boost,” I said, taking his hand in mine.
“Don’t you think it’s fascinating,” Agatha said, “that the power you possess comes with its own safety monitor? And in the form of a mythological creature, no less.”
“I’ve always wondered how weavers discovered they were different if there weren’t other weavers around to help them, and how they approached the problem of creating spells instead of just learning to work them the traditional way by studying grimoires and the practices of other witches,” Sarah said. “Now I know.”
“Dad had a heron,” I reminded her. “When I saw him in the past, I never thought to ask him how old he was when Bennu showed up.”
“It seems to me that familiars are a little like an inoculation,” Marcus said. “A bit of magic that prevents greater harm. Makes perfect sense.”
“Does it?” I was so used to thinking of Corra in bicycle terms that it was difficult to switch to a different metaphor.
“I think so. A familiar is like a childhood vaccine,” Marcus said. “With all this talk of 1775, I’ve been thinking a lot about inoculation. Apart from the war, it was the main topic of conversation in the colonies. Remembering Bunker Hill brought it all back to me.”
“Until the Declaration of Independence was signed, surely.” I felt on familiar historical footing now. “That had to have upstaged medicine.”
“No such luck, Professor Bishop.” Marcus laughed. “Do you know what they were celebrating in Boston on the fourth day of July in 1776? Not something happening in faraway Philadelphia, I can tell you that. The talk of the town—and the whole colony—was the Massachusetts legislature’s decision to lift the ban on smallpox inoculations.”
Even today, there was no effective treatment for this terrible disease. Once contracted, it was highly contagious and potentially fatal. The infection led to a high fever and pus-filled blisters that left disfiguring scars. Matthew had made sure I was vaccinated against it before we timewalked. I remembered the single blister that had erupted at the vaccination site. I would carry the mark for the rest of my days.
“We were more terrified of that silent killer than all the British guns,” Marcus continued. “There were rumors of infected blankets and sick people deliberately left behind when the British withdrew from Boston. Your ancestor Sarah Bishop warned me that surgeons were going to be as necessary as soldiers if we wanted to win the war. She was right.”
“So you trained to become a surgeon after Bunker Hill?” I asked.
“No. First I went home and faced my father,” Marcus said. “Then winter came, and with it there was a lull in the fighting. When the battles resumed in the summer, and soldiers gathered together again from all over the colonies, the number of smallpox cases rose until we were on the brink of an epidemic.
“We had nothing in our medicine chests that could fight it, and only one hope of surviving it,” Marcus continued.
He turned his left palm heavenward, revealing a round, white scar with a dimpled center on the underside of his forearm.
“We deliberately gave ourselves a mild case of smallpox to make us immune. It would be almost certain death if we contracted the disease through incidental exposure,” he explained. “Our independence from the king might have been celebrated in Philadelphia, but in Massachusetts we were simply glad to finally have a fighting chance at survival.”
Massachusetts Historical Society, Mercy Otis Warren Papers
Letter from Hannah Winthrop to Mercy Otis
Cambridge, Massachusetts
8 July 1776
(EXCERPT FROM PAGE 2)
The reigning Subject is the Small Pox. Boston has given up its Fears of an invasion & is busily employd in communicating the Infection. Straw beds & cribs are daily carted into the Town. That ever prevailing Passion of following the Fashion is as Predominant at this time as ever.
Men Women & children eagerly Crouding to innoculate is I think as modish, as running away from the Troops of a barbarous George was the last Year.
But ah my Friend I have not mentioned
the Loss I have met with which lies near my heart the death of
my dear Friend the good Madam Hancock, A powerfull
attachment to this life broken off, you who knew her worth can
Lament with me her departure. Ah the incertainty of all Terristrial happiness. Mr Winthrop joyns me Sincere regards to Coll Warren
& you, he hopes we shall be favord with his company with you & your son.
Yours in Affection
Hannah Winthrop
12
Pain
AUGUST–SEPTEMBER 1776
Zeb Pruitt returned to Hadley after the disastrous Quebec campaign and brought the smallpox with him. News of his infection spread through town with the fingers of August fog that were settling in the valley after the passing of the summer heat.
Anna Porter was flitting around her father’s mercantile like a self-important bumblebee. She enjoyed being in the hive of activity around the counter where people met to purchase newspapers, coffee, and flour—the three mainstays of the patriotic diet—and to exchange gossip. The store shelves were not as full of goods from abroad as they once were. The Porters could still find plenty of local suppliers of iron nails and cooking pots, saddles and shoes, and hog-bristle brushes, but there was no tea, little silver, and no porcelain. Writing paper was in short supply, and the few books available were from Boston and Philadelphia, not London. Spices and tobacco were now behind the counter, for fear that desperate shoppers might steal what little stock the Porters could acquire.