The Witch of Willow Hall by Hester Fox EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
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- Author:Hester Fox
- Language: English
- Genre: Historical Fantasy Fiction
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1811
IT WAS THE Bishop boy who started it all.
He lived one house over, with his snub nose and dusting of freckles, and
had a fondness for pelting stones at passing carriages. We were the same
age and might have been friends, but he showed no interest in books,
exploring the marshy fens of Boston, or taking paper kites to the Commons
—unless of course it was the rare occasion of a public hanging. Catherine
would sit in the window, watching him flee from angry coachmen, shaking
her head. “That Bishop boy,” she would say. “It’s a wonder his pa doesn’t
put a belt to him, the vicious little imp.”
I’d follow her gaze from the safety of the drapes, ducking back if I
thought he might catch me looking at him. In my small, sheltered world the
Bishop boy came to symbolize the murky edge of a larger evil of which I
had no understanding. When Father lamented British aggression toward
American ships, I imagined a fleet of freckled boys with sandy hair,
identical in their blue coats as they drew their swords in unison. If there was
news of a killer in the city, then he took on a slight frame, a shadowy figure
with a snub nose protruding from his hood. The Bishop boy lurked around
every dark corner, responsible for every terrible thing in the world that my
young mind could not comprehend.
One day, Father—this was before he had made his fortune and he was
still our “Pa”—found a little black cat under the steps at his office, and
brought it home as a pet for Catherine and me with the stipulation that it
wouldn’t come in the house. Catherine said she was too old to play
nursemaid to a kitten, though sometimes when she thought I wasn’t looking
I saw her sneak out to the stable with a bit of bread soaked in milk. This
was before our little sister, Emeline, came along, so I was hungry for a
companion, as Catherine and our brother, Charles, were practically joined at
the hip. Every morning as soon as I could be excused from the breakfast
table, I would rush out to the stable with a precariously balanced saucer of
milk and a tattered hair ribbon that I had appropriated as an amusement for
the cat.
It must have been spring, because I remember the heady scent of wet
earth and lilacs as I emerged from the house into the garden, my heart light
and happy to be free. To this day I can’t smell lilac without a pit hardening
in my stomach. And it must have been a Thursday, because Mrs. Tucker
who came on that day to teach us French was there; I remember later the
way her severe black eyebrows shot upward, her thin lips that never did
anything except press into a tight frown, thrown open forming a perfect O,
emitting that awful scream.
So it was a Thursday in spring. Usually Bartholomew—I thought myself
very clever for this name until Catherine pointed out that Bartholomew was,
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