Angelique fashioned the clay into a figurine about six inches tall. On one side, she pinched two little balls into breasts. She used a hat pin on the figurine's head to poke the shape of a nose and a mouth but deliberately did not make eyes; the figurine would be blind, as love was blind. On the other side of the head, she scratched out a similar mouth and nose for a face to be looking in the other direction. She fashioned lumps of clay into male genitals opposite to the female half of the figurine. As she worked, her fingers getting smudged with reddish-brown silt, she thought of the biblical commandment, thou shalt not make a graven image. She had not understood then, but now she pondered whether the dead god of the old book was a bit wiser than she had given him credit for. Names are power. Images are power. These things were a deeper older truth that the enlightened 18th century man no longer believed. This will be your downfall, Barnabas Collins—your hubris to think that you understand the world. Out of despair, you will descend into my arms, and I will teach you the mysteries of eternity.
Obtaining a lock of Josette's chestnut hair was as easy as offering to help clean her hairbrushes. Angelique had even polished the silver handle to a fine sheen before giving it back. Ben Stokes had been assigned to sneak into Jeremiah Collins's bedroom and take a strand of hair from his dressing table. Not skilled at subterfuge, Angelique had instructed him to prepare an excuse—to bring a load of fireplace logs. When Jeremiah caught him coming out of the room, ironically, he even thanked Ben for the favor.
She pressed the strands of hair, entwined, into the head of the figurine. The clay was still soft and easily accepted the new material. "You are Josette and Jeremiah. You are two molded as one. You are blind to all else but each other. You will feel incomplete until you are joined to each other."
Angelique lifted the twig that Ben Stokes had brought to her. A glorious full-circle spiderweb filled the Y-shaped hollow. Better than she could have hoped, a few carpenter ants were ensnared and bundled up in the web's strands. The ants feebly wiggled; they were still alive. It sparkled like silver silk in the firelight. And the fires in the brick hollow, from across the room, flared high.
In honor of Barnabas and his idol Shakespeare, she had researched and memorized the most exquisite incantation. "Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile; so ere you find where light in darkness lies, your light grows dark by losing of your eyes."
Slowly she drew the twig downward, like a wand, and swept the cobweb over the androgynous figurine. The web's strands tangled and glued onto the figure. The dead and dying ants, by happy accident, stuck to the belly area—the core from where all life began.
Power quickened and warmed her blood. Angelique's breathing grew deeper, harder, and rougher with the effort of holding onto the figurine. She labored to hold her stare into its eyeless face and breathed her own passion into its lifeless shape.
"Josette loves Jeremiah," she panted heavily now, hardly able to gasp out the words. "Josette loves Jeremiah!"
Firelight flashed as bright as lightning. All the world for an instant became as clear as noon. Owls perching on the roof. Bats squeaking in the rafters of the barn. Josette brushing her hair. Jeremiah reading lists and inventory papers. Barnabas blowing out a candle. Ben Stokes weeping with his head in his hands. Joshua and Naomi Collins shouting an argument at each other. Sarah Collins being tucked in bed by her governess. Natalie duPres turning her Tarot cards. Andre duPres guzzling a jug of rum alone in bed. Clouds passing over the moon.
Awareness surged out to the ends of the horizon and then with the force of a boiling ocean crashed back into her. A rush of ecstasy tore through the center of her. Angelique shrieked at the blast of feverish heat. The room went dark. Quiet. She toppled out of her chair. She only awakened when the mantle's clock chimed an hour later.
#
Over the next few days, Angelique watched for signs of her magic taking effect. But she was disappointed to see no outward change in Josette or Barnabas's uncle. They continued their daily routine—Mademoiselle duPres in preparing for her wedding, and Mister Collins in supervising the construction site of the family's new mansion. At breakfast each morning, Josette hugged onto Barnabas's arm and let him playfully feed her scrambled eggs with a silver spoon like a child. After supper each night, Jeremiah took sherry in the drawing room with his older brother Joshua. The two men discussed for hours the style and color of roof shingles, and window gables, and ceiling beams to support large crystal chandeliers.
"Are you sure you haven't seen them together?" Angelique asked Ben Stokes on the fourth day. She found him in a glade, not too deep in the forest, where he was checking a wire cage rabbit trap. It was sprung but empty.
"Who?" Ben Stokes reset the rabbit trap and rose to his feet to move on to the next.
"Josette and Jeremiah, of course. Have you seen them sneak off to be alone?"
"No, why would I?" He tromped around a large tree in two steps. Angelique had to hop the large roots to come around and keep up with him.
"They're supposed to be falling in love."
Ben Stokes laughed, heartily and loudly, with the open-mouthed guffaw of a sailor in a tavern. "That's nuts! Miss Josette loves Mister Barnabas."
"Not for long."
The next trap had a snowy white rabbit caged in it. The bewildered thing twitched its pink nose. Ben Stokes picked up the cage by the handle and turned to begin the walk back to the house. "I don't like you messing with Mister Barnabas. He's been real good to me, not like his father. He promised that, after he gets married to Miss Josette, he'll buy out my indenture contract and keep me on here as a free man on decent wages."
"There isn't going to be a wedding! Not to Josette, anyway."
"Why? What's it matter to you?"
Angelique walked alongside him. Dwarfed by his bulk, she was still in command of his attention, in command of his will. "I love Barnabas and I will have him as my own."
"The way you have me?"
"No, not that way. He will choose to come to me, willingly, as soon as he gives up this silly dream of Josette."
"That'll never happen. He worships her. I ain't never seen a man so smitten."
Angelique shot him a hard, angry stare. Ben fell silent. "He won't worship her anymore, after she betrays him for another man."
"But she won't." His face screwed into a scowl of agony. "That'll be your doing."
She raised her chin with pride. "Only you will know that and you won't be able to say a word. Not one word, Ben! If you even think about starting to whisper a hint of who I am, or what I'm doing, you will go mute. Your tongue will swell up and choke you."
"I hate you," he growled.
"And yet, you will obey me?"
His throat worked, his Adam's apple bobbed, and he tried to hold back the words. It gurgled hoarsely out of him anyway. "Yes, I will obey."
#
On Sunday morning, Jeremiah went to church with Joshua, Naomi, and little Sarah. Angelique smiled to watch through the bay window at the carriage depart with the family. Jeremiah never usually went to Sunday services. Perhaps, she thought, he had something to feel guilty about; something to confess.
She wandered off through the house in search of Josette. The servants had the day off. Joshua Collins, a god fearing man, strictly enforced the blue laws—no labor on the lord's day—and his hardworking servants were only too happy to obey. Ben Stokes spent his Sundays on the back porch with the master's hounds, tossing sticks or leather balls for them to retrieve out of the snowy drifts. Phyllis Wick the governess enjoyed tea in her room and wrote a page in her personal journal; Angelique glanced in on her to say hello and thought how pathetic the woman who did not have a lover to write letters to. Natalie duPres stayed alone in her room, as well, and occupied her hours with playing the Tarot cards.
Barnabas and Josette were in the dining room but not at the table. They sat off to side, at the bay window seat, with the 12-foot high curtains like fluted columns of a Greek temple. He was reading the sonnets of Shakespeare, and Josette seated beside him seemed to be listening. Angelique lingered at the door to carefully watch Josette's mood. The young woman's big brown eyes wandered away from her betrothed. Her attention was fixed upon the window panes, or on something beyond the veneer of frosted glass.
"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" he recited from the little book in his hand. "Thou art more lovely and more temperate. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, and summer's lease hath all too short a date."
Barnabas leaned towards her, tilting himself sideways to aim for a kiss. Josette startled at him drawing near. She hopped to her feet. She stumbled a few steps before she stopped dead in the middle of the room for no reason. She stood there, her eyes as wide as a rabbit caught in a snare.
"What's wrong?" Barnabas approached her slowly from behind.
"We shouldn't..." Josette's voice trembled like her hands. "You shouldn't be so familiar. We're not married yet."
"We will be, very soon." He rested a hand on her shoulder from behind. Josette shrank away. "I don't understand. You've let me kiss you before."
"I don't know why I'm so bashful." Josette moved away from him, a little farther. She took hold of one of the large dining room chairs.
Angelique cringed back behind the door frame to keep out of sight. Unable to see them now, she could hear the strain in Josette's voice. That familiar rise in pitch and the quivering meant she was about to cry.
"Have I unknowingly done something to offend you?"
"No," Josette moaned. "You've been wonderful."
"Is it my father? Has he said something?"
"No, it's... It's something only a woman could know." Josette's skirts rustled loudly as she hurried for the door to the hallway. "I must speak with my Aunt Natalie!"
Angelique pulled back a few steps and timed her movements so that she appeared to be just approaching the door as Josette burst out of it. She bowed a slight curtsey and pretended surprise. "Mademoiselle, I did not know you were..."
"Excuse me, Angelique, I can't... I can't!" Now she was crying freely, the tears dribbling down both cheeks.
Angelique coolly stepped into the dining room and faked another gasp of surprise. "Why, Barnabas, I did not expect to find you here."
He stood there, helpless and lost in the middle of the room, a little book of poetry in his hand. "What do you think is wrong with her?"
"I'm sure it's just a young girl's nervous mood." Angelique looked about quickly for some excuse to be in the room. She opened a drawer of the breakfront cabinet, took out a few candles, and proceeded to change out the half-melted candlesticks on the dining table.
Barnabas paced the length of the table, on the opposite side, following in time step by step with Angelique's task. The broad mahogany table was a barrier between them. "Is that all, do you think? I have the feeling there's something more that's upsetting her. If not my father then perhaps my Aunt Abigail has offended her? My aunt is not very pleased that I'm marrying a Roman Catholic, to put it mildly. She imagines the Pope himself has a clandestine scheme to acquire Collinwood or some such nonsense."
Angelique finished replacing the candlesticks and so had no good reason to stay in the room with him. Barnabas did not seem to notice; he stared at the open door as if expecting Josette to return at any moment.
"Well, I may have some idea of what might be upsetting Josette."
"What is it?" He spun about so suddenly that Angelique flinched in genuine surprise.
It took her a moment to collect her thoughts, to restrain herself from climbing over the table to tumble into his arms. So fervently he gazed at her, so eager to hear what she had to say. He had not looked at her so intensely for weeks. "Well, I don't mean to be indelicate but surely you know that... well, she is... that is to say..."
"Please, tell me."
Angelique lowered her eyes and, for a moment, held her breath to force her cheeks to show a blush she did not feel. "She is as Mary was when the Angel Gabriel came to announce the good news. That is, unless you have...?"
"No, of course we haven't." Barnabas drummed his fingers on the hard-backed book that he held. "Do you think that's it? She's afraid of what will happen on our wedding night?"
"More's the pity," Angelique said, switching to French because the mood seemed to call for it, and she had not spoken French to him in months. It felt as if she had been holding her breath underwater and was just now coming up for air. "She is making the mistake of consulting with Aunt Natalie who is hardly more schooled in the arts of love than Josette herself."
He stepped a little closer to her, with his eyes wide open in an expression of pleading. "I shouldn't ask," he said, also in French, a bit halting and out of practice. His quebecois accent was a bit stronger than she remembered. "But would you be willing to talk to her, as a woman, and soothe her fears?"
A laugh burst out of her; she could not hold it back. "What would you like me to say to her? Shall I tell her about those nights in Martinique when you came secretly into my room? Shall I tell her what we did there, together, in the dark?"
He quickly walked away across the broad room. He stopped facing out of the window. Snowflakes fell outside in moth-like flurries. "It's all in the past. I thought we agreed not to talk about it."
"You agreed! I never did." Angelique's laughter of a few moments ago now turned to a bitter sneer. "I can't ever forget the way you made me feel..."
"Don't say this, please."
"...and the passions you taught me to discover. You tutored me in more than English; yours was the school of love. I was a maiden pure as Josette is now. That first night in Martinique was like our wedding night. You made me a woman."
In English, he cried out, "Stop it!"
Angelique lowered her voice to a whispering murmur. She continued speaking French in case one of the nosy servants or Phyllis Wick might wander by and hear. "If she wanted you the way that I wanted you, then she would not be afraid. She would open her arms to welcome you, as I did from the first... as I would even now if you ask."
"You've said quite enough. Please leave me."
#
Alone in Josette's bedroom one afternoon, Angelique soaked a kerchief in the enchanted rosewater. She wiped clean the oval mirror on the dressing table. It was an elegant work of silver-backed glass in an ornate frame of gilded jasmine vines. As she continued to polish the glass, she whispered an incantation in pure French.
"Josette, Josette, when you look in this mirror, you will not want to be the bride of Barnabas Collins. You will not ever want to be his bride. You will recoil from his touch. You will fear him. You will reject him. Each time you look in this mirror, Josette, you will never want to be his."
Abigail Collins came to the open door. "You!"
Startled, she withdrew from wiping the mirror. She had to wonder, did Abigail know French even half as well as her nephew Barnabas?
"Do you know where my brother is?"
"Jeremiah?" she asked.
"No, I meant Joshua!" Abigail frowned her annoyance; it seemed that the spinster was always frowning.
"Oh, I believe he is in the library, Madame."
Without so much as the suggestion of a thank you, Abigail Collins hurried away. Her old-fashioned lace bonnet with long frills flapped at the shoulders of her somber dark dress. Angelique had avoided the spinster as much as possible; she was a grim, god-fearing woman who disapproved of everyone and everything. She made Joshua Collins seem jovial by comparison.
Still holding the blue ceramic jug of rosewater, Angelique sauntered through the bedroom. Her wandering gaze surveyed the various items of Josette's personal possessions and the gold-toned furnishings that were Barnabas's gifts to her. What else could she put a spell on that would sabotage the wedding plans? The bed? The fireplace? The sheet music of Mozart concertos and fugues, so that every time Josette practiced the harpsichord she would think of Jeremiah?
Heavy boot steps thudded up the stairs, followed by the clicking of Abigail Collins's hard heeled shoes. Joshua's nasal voice growled and grumbled about wasting his time.
"You'll see! When you get a look at her, you'll believe me," Abigail insisted.
They passed right by the open door to Josette's room. Joshua snorted, "Witchcraft, you say! What nonsense."
Angelique froze in place, her eyes as wide as a rabbit snared in a trap. But to her relief, the two kept going past the room and onward to the far end of the hall.
Curious now, she followed them at a discreet distance. They entered the master bedroom at the corner of the house. Naomi Collins herself, the matriarch of the family, wore a glorious house robe of dark green velvet lined with teal satin and trimmed with gold braid. Tassels dangled off the shoulders. A delicate ruffle of lace softened the neckline. Diamonds sparkled at her ears. Pearls shined at her throat. She reclined on the window seat, the frosted panes matching her porcelain skin. The ebony window frame was the same color as her luxurious pile of black hair. Naomi's soft blue eyes had a faraway, dreamy gaze. She did not react when Joshua and her sister-in-law thundered into the room.
"It's witchcraft, I tell you!" Abigail shouted. "Look at her. She's obviously under a spell."
Joshua bent over as if to kiss his wife, but did not. He lingered near to her mouth for a moment, breathing deeply, and then straightened up. "It's not witchcraft, Abigail. It's called sherry."
"What do you mean?"
"She's drunk!"
"Drunk?"Abigail repeated.
"Like an Irish sailor, and it isn't the first time." Joshua stomped to the tea table. He fingered the crystal corks of several decanters, clinking and clicking glass on glass. "She's outdone herself this time. I daresay she could hold her own with some of the Navy men at the docks."
Abigail sat down on the window seat with Naomi, her plain brown skirt a dull shadow against the rich shine of velvet. "I don't understand. Why?"
"I had a nightmare." Naomi spoke in a husky monotone. Still staring out the window, it was not clear if she spoke in response to the question or if she simply needed to say it out loud. "I saw Jeremiah walking through the house in the middle of the night. I called out to him and he didn't answer me. I followed him downstairs to the parlor. He went to the folding doors that open to the pantry. He met a woman there. I couldn't see her face, but I knew somehow that she was young and beautiful. Jeremiah embraced her. I told him not to... I felt something was wrong, but I don't know why. I saw the woman's hand across the back of his coat as she caressed him..."
"Oh please, madame," said Joshua. "Have some decorum, if you will."
"The woman's hand, it had a strange mark like a pitchfork."
Abigail gasped to hear this. "A pitchfork! The devil's mark. And a nightmare, it must have come from a servant of the devil."
Joshua grumbled, "Dreams are the imagination of a sleeping mind and no more."
Abigail insisted, "Are they? What about little Sarah? Is she dreaming when she has borne witness to wraiths stalking the hallways in the middle of the night?"
Listening outside the door, Angelique smiled secretly with understanding. Those aren't wraiths; it is Josette and Jeremiah sneaking back and forth from each others' bedrooms.
"No doubt she saw servants going about their chores. And what is my daughter doing out of bed at such ungodly hours? I should have a stern talk with her governess, letting her charge run wild."
"Speaking of servants," Abigail said, her voice strong and confident and uncompromising. "I have seen some of them able to sort the labels on barrels or parcel packages. Servants who were illiterate before, now suddenly able to read! Can you explain that, Joshua?"
Joshua stomped his heel so hard that Angelique could feel the vibration in the hallway. "That isn't witchcraft either! It's called an education. The devil himself is my son Barnabas."
"The devil is no joking matter," Abigail said, her tone becoming shrill.
"Barnabas fancies himself a modern day Pygmalion who can bring any stone-headed statue to life. I have seen him on several occasions inflicting lessons on the staff. He gets them to write their alphabet, and before you can say Jack Sprat, he's transforming them into gentlemen scholars. Last winter, he had poor Riggs suffering through Homer's Odyssey. I believe they got as far as Circe's island, where the men were all being turned into pigs, when the fellow gave up. Who is his victim this year? Oh never mind; I don't care to know."
Abigail insisted, "You must admit there is a pall of wickedness and evil that has descended upon this house. I've corresponded with a minister in Salem and he agrees with me that witchcraft is running rampant here at Collinwood. There are fell omens that foreshadow doom, whether you choose to ignore them or not!"
Joshua started for the door. Angelique had nowhere to hide, so she pretended to use her rosewater kerchief to polish the hallway table.
"Abigail, if you don't stop babbling on about such nonsense, I will bar you from the wedding ceremony."
"You can't...!"
"I can and I will, if you don't keep your tongue in your head. We're at the dawn of the 19th century after all. This isn't the Salem witch trials of a hundred years ago. I will not have the ranting of some fanatic Puritan repeated in my home. Is that clear, little sister?"
"A day will come," Abigail said. "When the face of evil stares back at you, and you won't be able to deny that its source is Satan."
"If that day comes, you have my permission to gloat, 'I told you so,' but until then..." Joshua gripped the door frame as he straddled the threshold. "Not another word from you about witchcraft!'
#