Chapter 5

Chapter 5

I t didn’t take me long to figure out that it involved finding the toilet. I prowled around the ground floor looking for evidence of the prized Orchard Farm plumbing. I found not one toilet, but two, on opposite ends of the range of ground-floor rooms.

I also located a parlor with stiff, formal furniture and a single vinyl-covered recliner from circa 1965. A mason jar full of feathers sat on the table next to it, and a cheerful bouquet of freshly cut daisies stood in the fireplace. They lent a bright note to the otherwise brown room, and breathed life into the place.

Past the parlor was a room filled with a bulky oak desk, circa 1940. Its swiveling metal office chair, with a cushioned green vinyl seat and back, looked like it could withstand a direct bomb strike. Shelves ringed the room, which held a wide variety of books and magazines as well as a complete set of Encyclop?dia Britannica. Once, the room had been the domain of Taliesin Proctor. I knew this before I saw the burnished metal plate that read taliesin proctor, editor, The Ipswich Chronicle.

More family photos were here, framed in gleaming silver and Popsicle sticks. One was a glamorous portrait of Ruby. Another showed my dad around the age of eight with a girl of the same age. Both wore rain slickers, boots, and wide grins. There were professional pictures, too, of Taliesin accepting a journalism award, and one of him at a desk in a newspaper office, puffing on a pipe while he studied a page from the latest edition. My grandfather may not have been an academic, like his sister Gwyneth, but he was a man of letters, nonetheless.

I found a snapshot of Tally and Gwyneth’s sister, Morgana, taken in her twenties. She was dreamy-eyed and pensive, sitting on the porch of the Old Place with a starchy old woman in a Victorian dress that was decades out-of-date based on Morgana’s cinched-in waist and fluffy, knee-length skirts. In the door to the Old Place, just visible in the background, was a slip of a girl who might have been teenage Gwyneth.

There were other rooms on the ground floor, but it was upstairs, where I found five bedrooms arranged around the landing, that the mystery surrounding my father and his family deepened. The largest had a freshly made bed, and fluffy towels waited in its adjoining bathroom. Two of the rooms were sterile and empty, guest rooms devoid of personal touches with sprigged wallpaper in spring hues. The beds were unmade, but towels and sheets waited in case any more unexpected visitors turned up.

The final rooms were a different story, however. They still bore the signs of their previous occupants, literally and figuratively. Wooden letters painted in red, yellow, and blue spelled out S-T-E-P-H-E-N on one door. I stood before it, the knob heavy in my hand. I was reluctant to twist it, for I didn’t need the widdershins guidance of Gwyneth’s oracles to tell me that what I discovered inside would forever change my sense of my father.

I turned the knob and pushed the door open, revealing a time capsule of his life before he left for college. The navy-and-red-plaid bedspread was smooth, which had never been Dad’s strong suit. Usually, he popped out of bed and left everything rumpled and straggly. Apart from that, there was plenty of evidence that an active, curious boy had grown toward manhood here.

I picked up a Magic 8 Ball and shook it. When I turned the ball over to see the message in the window it read Ask again later.

I put the toy back, and noted the Slinky, the Etch A Sketch, and the pair of Mouseketeer ears embroidered with my father’s name. These were iconic toys of Dad’s youth. So, too, were the Hardy Boys mysteries piled up on the floor. Unlike Grandpa Tally, Dad preferred his books in an unsystematic heap rather than a curated collection. His study in Cambridge had always been a maze of stacked books and mounds of paper.

At some point, my father had been passionate about model airplanes. Several flew across the room, suspended on a pale blue fishing line. Becca and Pip loved working on models and puzzles, their vampire blood giving them unusually deft and agile hands.

I shut my eyes tight against the image of my dad—who would be in his late seventies were he still living—sitting on the floor with his grandchildren and gluing together a car, or building an elaborate structure out of Legos. The twins were missing out on so much by not knowing their grandfather.

I opened the drawers, which held a jumble of T-shirts, and the closet, where a few crisp oxford shirts remained. Jeans, like books, were piled on the floor underneath the hangers that Ruby had no doubt purchased in a futile attempt to encourage Dad to take better care of his clothes. My mother had done the same, but to no avail.

A bulletin board hung over a small desk. I switched on the metal desk lamp so that I could see what was posted there. Most of the space was covered with photos, and all of them showed my father, taken at different ages, with the same girl I’d seen in the picture downstairs. They looked as though they’d all been snapped in the same spot, with the same view of the harbor and the seas beyond, and the same lump of granite over Dad’s shoulder. Carefully, I removed one of the photos and carried it to the window that overlooked the marsh, searching for the boulder.

It was easy to locate, given its size and position. I turned the photo over. On it was the date November 1944. My dad had been just five then, and World War II was still raging across Europe, Africa, and the Pacific.

I was always surprised by the realization that my father had lived through those horrifying years. He was older than Mom, but in my mind they were both the same age. Maybe my father had been more conservative at the start of their marriage than he had been later when he participated in political protests and volunteered his time with the homeless in Boston.

But simple conservatism couldn’t explain the long list of conditions he’d put on my mother and their relationship. I returned to the desk and scanned the photos, following along as my father grew taller, then chunkier, then lean and strong. His hair changed, too: short at first in a military buzz cut, and increasingly shaggy as he entered his teen years.

One of the most recent pictures was in color. It showed Dad in a Harvard T-shirt. The girl in his arms was a woman now, no longer pigtailed but sporting bobbed hair, ankle-length cigarette pants, and dark red lipstick. The woman held a Mount Holyoke College mug emblazoned with a green griffin. My dad’s usual wide grin distracted the viewer’s attention from the worried furrow between his brows. His grip on his companion was tight, as though he wanted to shield her from danger.

The young woman’s resemblance to Ruby Addison was undeniable.

She was not one of my dad’s childhood friends but his sister. It was impossible to believe that Dad had a sister I knew nothing of, and yet…

I went to the adjacent bedroom, with its chalkboard reading Naomi’s Room NO BOYS! Inside, the room was painted a deep lavender, and had the female equivalent of all of Dad’s childhood bric-a-brac: a well-furnished dollhouse that resembled Orchard Farm; an old-fashioned pram for dolls; Nancy Drew and Cherry Ames, rather than the Hardy Boys. Naomi had been an athlete, and there were high school trophies for pole vaulting and hurdles on the bookshelves. She was a music fan, too. A guitar rested in the corner, and a faded advertisement for The Biggest In Person Show of ’56 at the Boston Garden hung on the wall. A faint whiff of patchouli and incense among the childhood items suggested that, unlike Dad, Naomi had spent time here well into the 1960s.

The top drawer of Naomi’s white desk, ornamented with Flower Power stickers and peace signs, held another clutch of photographs. I riffled through them, my fingers moving as swiftly as Gwyneth’s did when she worked with her oracle cards.

I found a picture of the same girl with the same fashionable hairstyle. She was with my grandfather in a place I knew well: the cloisters at the heart of the Congregation complex on Isola della Stella. The pictures fell from my nerveless fingers to the floor. They all landed face down—except for the picture of my grandfather and Naomi in Venice.

I swayed on my feet, the shock overwhelming. Reaching out a steadying hand, I gripped the edge of the desk.

In my pocket, my phone buzzed and rang. I jumped at the sound, then went to the lavender-and-white-gingham–covered bed to answer the call.

It was Matthew. I’d texted him when I got gas before turning off for Ipswich, so he knew I had arrived. My silence since then must have been difficult.

“Hello.” My voice shook, and I tried to steadyit.

“What’s wrong?” Matthew’s question was as quick as the lash of a whip. “Are you at Ravenswood?”

“Yes.” I cleared my throat. “I’ve met Gwyneth, and a cousin called Julie.”

Matthew sighed with relief. “Thank God. I was worried you’d been in an accident.”

That was my Matthew. Always prepared for the worst.

“I’m supposed to be the worrywart, not you.” I sounded more like myself now that the initial surprise of the photograph taken in Venice had passed. “How are the kids?”

“They’re roaring around in the backyard,” Matthew said, an unmistakable note of fond pride in his tone. “Rebecca has expressed a desire for a tree house, so that she can keep on the lookout for more birds.”

“Ah.” I thought of Ravenswood’s witch’s tree. It would make a good site for a tree house, though there might be even better prospects in the forest that I’d been forbidden from entering.

“How’s the inn?” Matthew asked. “Comfortable?”

“I’m not staying at the inn.” I let that piece of information sink in before continuing. “Gwyneth thought it would be better if I stayed here, in the farmhouse. She lives in a small saltbox across the meadow.”

“You’re still at Ravenswood?” Matthew’s tone was low and measured—a sure sign that he was grappling with his temper.

“Gwyneth asked me to stay for dinner, and I don’t want to make the trip home in the dark,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’m still planning on coming home tomorrow.”

Matthew made a noncommittal sound.

“Gwyneth is answering my questions,” I continued, wanting to soothe my husband’s ruffled feathers, “but there is a lot of ground to cover. It seems that the letter from the Congregation isn’t just about the twins’ future. The past is wrapped up in it, too.”

“It always is,” Matthew said grimly. As a vampire, my husband knew this better than most.

“Dad had a sister, Matthew. I think they were twins.” My glance traveled to the photo of her and Tally. I got up to look at it again. When I flipped it over, I found the date Summer 1957 written on it, and Full circle! Naomi is delighted. See you soon. XX Tally.

“Her name was Naomi. She and my grandfather were together at Isola della Stella in the summer of 1957,” I said.

There was complete silence on the line.

“Matthew?” I asked, worried we’d been disconnected.

“I’m here,” he said.

“There’s more.” I struggled to speak around the lump in my throat. “Dad made Mom promise not to do higher magic. Aunt Gwyneth calls it their prenup . No practice of higher magic, no involvement with the Congregation, no passing her knowledge of higher magic on to me. He put conditions on their relationship.” My voice had risen, and I was close to tears.

“Stephen didn’t strike me as the kind of man who issued ultimatums.” Matthew and my father had met in London, during our timewalk. My father had traveled back to the past, too, in search of clues about the mysterious manuscript Ashmole 782.

“And Mom never struck me as the kind of woman who would succumb to the pressure of them!” Not only was my image of my father shattered, my memories of my mother were also in tatters.

“Creatures do unexpected things for those they love,” Matthew said. “Are you sure you want to spend the night there?”

“I need to know more about Naomi, and if she was my father’s twin. And why he kept her existence from me!” I was angry and frustrated. “Did Naomi do higher magic, too? Did she refuse to give it up, so Dad cut her out of his life?”

My mind took an uneasy turn as something niggled at me. I was missing something—something that would help me to see a pattern in all of this.

“Perhaps the distance between Dad and Naomi had something to do with the Congregation,” I said, giving voice to my jangled ideas. “Maybe the Congregation’s interest in Pip and Becca is related to it, too.”

I spotted a large earthenware crock filled with dark feathers. It was a gloomier assortment than what I’d seen stuffed into the mason jar downstairs.

“And the ravens,” I said.

“Maybe there was a good reason why Stephen didn’t want you to know the Proctors,” Matthew said, his suspicious brain on high alert.

“Are you questioning Gwyneth’s motives in sending for me?”

“Of course I am,” Matthew retorted. “Ravens falling out of the sky? Missives from the Congregation? Secret twins?”

He had a point.

“The one thing I’m sure of is that Gwyneth wants what’s best for me and the family,” I said.

“Whose family?” Matthew asked pointedly. “Ours? Or the Proctors’?”

This was a question I couldn’t yet answer. But I knew who could.

The prospect of a lobster dinner was reason enough for me to return to the Old Place, but it paled in comparison to the opportunity for me to have an honest exchange with my great-aunt.

—

“I’d like to speak to Naomi.”

I was so intent on answers that I forgot basic good manners and was now standing at the threshold of the parlor. Gwyneth looked at me with raised eyebrows.

“Good evening to you, too, Diana.” Gwyneth held up a fine-stemmed glass. “You’re early. Wine?”

“How can I get in touch with her?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” Gwyneth filled my glass with a generous pour. Hers was more measured.

“What was her last known address?” Between Baldwin and Jack, I was sure that I could find Naomi’s present whereabouts, given their access to every legal and illegal method of tracing people across the globe.

“The Old North Cemetery in Ipswich.” Gwyneth handed me the glass. “She’s dead, Diana.”

“Dead.” I sat down with a thunk.

“Didn’t your father mention his twin sister, Naomi?” Gwyneth looked as shattered by this possibility as I felt.

I shook my head. “Dad told me he was an only child.”

My revelation sparked Gwyneth’s anger. “I’m not surprised. I am, however, extremely disappointed. Naomi doesn’t deserve to be erased, a blot on the Proctor family lineage.”

“When did she die?” The wine sloshed around in the bowl as I lifted the glass to my lips for a steadying sip.

“August 13, 1964.” The date sprang easily to Gwyneth’s tongue. She had never forgotten the particulars of her niece’s death.

“My birthday.” An eerie sensation crept across my shoulders. What must my dad have thought, when I was born on the same date that his sister had died? Had he worried I was a replacement sent by the goddess to fulfill Naomi’s interrupted destiny?

I performed some quick mental calculations.

“If Naomi died in 1964, that means she was only twenty-four.” Horror swept over me. What must it be like to lose a beloved child at that pivotal moment, when their future life was filled with possibilities on the cusp of being realized? As for my father, the death of his sister would have cut to the bone. To lose a sibling was traumatic enough. For a twin, it meant losing part of yourself.

“Your father was in his first years of graduate school then,” Gwyneth said, “and hadn’t yet met your mother.”

“Was Naomi in an accident?” There was no other reason for the strong, healthy woman in the photographs to die so young.

“Naomi took her own life, Diana.” Gwyneth put her wineglass down with exaggerated care, as though she didn’t trust herself to complete the simple gesture without catastrophe.

The cumulative effects of this afternoon’s shocks were beginning to take their toll. My fingers and toes went numb, and I had the odd sensation of being outside my body looking down on what was happening below, connected but detached, like a member of the audience at a play.

“Naomi was on the Congregation’s higher magic track—the same one the twins will be tested for in September. The same program that you were tested for when you turned seven,” Gwyneth said.

I’d never heard the faintest whisper about any “track” for witches on Isola della Stella.

“I found a picture in Naomi’s room of her and Tally in 1957. They were in Venice, at the Congregation’s headquarters.” I was ashamed to be caught snooping, but Julie had told me to poke around.

“In the cloisters outside the meeting chamber.” Gwyneth nodded. “It was taken during the witches’ annual training exercises in July. Tally was one of the instructors. Usually, they avoid having members of the family involved in the examinations, but they were shorthanded that year and had to call on Tally at the last minute.”

“You’re no stranger to Isola della Stella,” I said sharply. Only someone who had been to the island would know where the cloisters were relative to the Congregation’s main chamber.

“I was in the Congregation’s 1948 class of initiates,” Gwyneth replied, “the first to form after the end of the war. I took a break to finish my undergraduate degree, and was made an adept in the summer of 1952.”

“An adept?” I frowned, unfamiliar with the term in this context.

“There are three levels of mastery in higher magic,” Gwyneth explained. “Novitiates, who are taking their first steps on the Dark Path. Initiates, who have been tested at the Crossroads and chosen to continue on the Dark Path. The top rank is reserved for adepts, who have passed through the witches’ Labyrinth and been recognized by the Congregation as skilled practitioners of higher magic.”

“There’s no maze on the island,” I said with a frown.

“How much time have you spent in the witches’ precinct?” Gwyneth asked, cocking her head.

Not much. The witches had been reluctant to admit a member of the de Clermont family to their hallowed halls, even though I was not a vampire.

“Many members of the Proctor family have been tested on Isola della Stella. Tally’s examination was in the summer of 1936,” Gwyneth said, her expression proud. “An astonishingly talented bunch of witches that class turned out to be. Morgana was in the class of 1939, but the invasion of Poland brought a halt to the program. She was happy with her oracles, and didn’t seek advancement to the level of adept after the war ended.”

Gwyneth’s face crumpled with grief.

“As for Naomi, she made it through the first two levels of training and was awarded the rank of initiate,” she continued. “Naomi was invited to attempt the Labyrinth, but got lost somewhere along the way. She was devastated, and ashamed of failing to live up to Tally’s legacy.”

I was familiar with the peculiar predicament faced by daughters who wanted to make their fathers proud. It was impossible not to feel you were falling short.

“Naomi broke under the strain. She took a whole bottle of pills, drank a fifth of tequila, and dove off the meetinghouse spire. Stephen never got over it,” Gwyneth continued. “He blamed the family for allowing Naomi to enter the Congregation’s program, even though she didn’t have the strongest talent for higher magic or the self-confidence to brazen out her failures. Stephen blamed the Congregation for not intervening at the first sign of trouble, when something might have been done to save her. And he blamed higher magic itself for her death.”

My father’s antipathy toward this branch of the craft made more sense now, as did my aunt Sarah’s insistence that higher magic was something to be feared.

Though my mother and Em had both experimented with the darker arts, when I questioned their interest Sarah wrote it off as a moment of teenage rebellion rather than a path to higher mysteries. I had long suspected Sarah might have been wrong on this point. When my hands absorbed my weaver’s cords soon after returning from the sixteenth century, and Sarah had glimpsed the colors of higher, darker magic on my fingers, she had conceded that their power was only as evil as the witch practicing it. To this day, however, Sarah retained her conviction that higher magic was dangerous.

“Mom was an adept, too.” Another piece of the Ravenswood puzzle slid into place. Mom had been drawn to Ravenswood because it supported her higher magic. Sarah didn’t want me to know of its existence because of my mother’s experiences as well as the tragic circumstances of Em’s death.

“She was.” Gwyneth’s glance softened. “And your grandmother. Joanna Bishop was in the class of 1936, with Tally.”

As the synchronicities mounted, I felt the hand of the goddess at work. But the pattern and purpose of her complicated weaving remained beyond my grasp, though some of the stitches were now visible. It was clear that the threads between the Proctors, the Bishops, and the Congregation were knotted and tangled around a dark strand of higher magic. No wonder the witches were interested in gauging the twins’ powers.

“There’s no way to prevent Becca and Pip from being examined by the Congregation, is there?” I buried my head in my hands.

“No,” Gwyneth said. “The truth is on their side, after all. There is nothing Matthew Clairmont can do, either, except declare a bloody interspecies war he won’t win.”

My eyes rose to meet hers.

“But you might be able to help them when it’s the twins’ turn to choose their life’s path. At the moment, you’re only a fraction of the witch you were born to be.” Gwyneth folded her hands and let them rest on the table.

I foresaw where her argument was leading and shook my head.

“If you’re suggesting I walk the Dark Path and become an adept in higher magic, you’re going to be sorely disappointed,” I said. “I saw what that kind of magic did to Satu J?rvinen and Peter Knox. They were both highly talented witches—adepts, too, no doubt—and they couldn’t avoid turning to the darker side of higher magic. Emily Mather, Sarah’s life partner, might still be with us if she hadn’t returned to it. Dad lost his sister to that kind of magic and did everything short of locking my mother up to keep her from the same fate. And my parents died to prevent me from being marked as a potential magical asset for the witches to exploit. I’m a skilled witch, and a trained weaver. I have enough power, thank you very much. Higher magic isn’t for me, Gwyneth.”

“That’s not your choice,” Gwyneth replied with the patience of an experienced teacher. “The goddess gifted you with these talents. Now you are faced with a decision, Diana. Will you refuse the goddess and the Dark Path?”

I hesitated. The goddess didn’t like it when witches turned down her overtures.

“Will you let Pip or Becca walk the Dark Path alone?” Gwyneth saved the thorniest question for last.

I would never abandon either of my children. My expression told Gwyneth as much.

My aunt leaned forward. “Or will you, like so many of your ancestors—maternal as well as paternal—have the courage to face your fears and claim your birthright?”

“I don’t know enough about higher magic to decide!” The truth burst forth in a loud rush. “Not with the children’s futures on the line.”

“Oh, no. This is about you. ” Gwyneth’s finger pointed at my heart, the tip glowing just like Becca’s had in New Haven. “This is your choice, which you must make without regard for anyone else’s fears or desires. When they’re ready, Becca and Pip will make their own decisions about their own magic.”

“But Sarah—” I protested, thinking of my aunt’s strong aversion to higher magic.

“Sarah is eager to tell you what you shouldn’t do,” Gwyneth said. “What if I taught you what you can do?”

Gwyneth made it sound so simple, as though what I wanted was all that mattered. But I was part of a large, complicated family and the time for acting unilaterally was behind me. Still, the prospect of greater knowledge beckoned, as alluring to me as it had ever been, even during the years I’d tried to deny my magical heritage.

“How would you do that?” I asked, wary.

“Carefully, just as I have done with generations of witches for the past half a century.” Gwyneth’s voice was tart.

“I need to get back to New Haven.” I bit the corner of my lip. “We’re going to England for summer break.”

“A few more hours won’t make much difference,” Gwyneth said. “Meet me in the barn tomorrow morning. I think you’ll find that higher magic is neither as terrifying nor as dark as your father and Sarah made it out to be.”

—

After dinner, I went back to the farmhouse and shared my updated plans with Matthew. The conversation with Gwyneth had revealed the neat hole in my life where the Proctors and their history should have been. Like the space left by a missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle, the outlines of the Proctors’ absence were sharp and unmistakable. As a historian, I knew that such a neat hole was never accidental. Such lacunae appeared only when something had been deliberately excised.

In this case, it was my father who had made the surgical cuts to the Proctor family tree. Perhaps tomorrow I would better understand why he had gone to such lengths to keep me away from Ravenswood and my own kin.