Endicott's Scarlet Note- Chapter 4 Asha's Beginnings
The Scarlet Note:
Chapter 4 of Asha's Beginnings
The snow had fallen in the night and stayed, thick, windless, perfect. Sunlight poured through the orchard like molten glass, catching on the ornaments Asha, Saint Rita, and Saint Thérèse were hanging. Each bauble flashed crimson, violet, gold (tiny, defiant hearts against the white).
Brother Jerome followed with his sack of salt licks, the monk who had come looking for a hermitage and discovered instead that women talk in their sleep. He had been trying to leave for twenty-three years. The gate kept forgetting to open.
Asha paused beneath a crab-apple. “In the book they sew a scarlet letter on a woman because she refuses to name the man. The one who orders it is Governor Endicott’s son. Why cloth? Why any of it?”
Rita snorted. “Because men like their cruelty embroidered. Easier to admire the stitching.”
Thérèse rolled her eyes so hard the ladder creaked. “It’s not cruelty, it’s jurisdiction. The town brands her so they can sleep at night.”
They began arguing grace versus arithmetic. Jerome inhaled to speak; two saints silenced the impulse with a glance.
Bootsteps, soft and certain. Mary Magdalene stepped between the trees, coat the color of old wine, hair loose and dark as midnight water. She carried no basket, only the faint scent of spikenard and the memory of a tomb that had failed to keep her.
The quarrel died mid-breath.
“If anyone is going to explain the scarlet letter to this child,” she said, voice low, amused, ancient, “it will be me. I’ve worn worse.”
She took Asha’s hand (calloused fingers, gentle grip) and walked her to the oldest apple tree, the one whose roots had tasted every kind of tear.
Mary leaned against the trunk as though greeting an old lover.
“The letter you read about was coarse scarlet paper pinned to her so the wind couldn’t be merciful. Her name was Elizabeth Dew. Year of our Lord 1654. The man who walked away whistling was Zerubbabel Endicott, eighteen, spoiled, and (crucially) the governor’s son. She named him. They whipped her raw, married her off to a terrified boy, and when she named him again they wrote her sentence in red and tacked it to her body like a tavern sign.”
Asha’s breath clouded and vanished.
Mary’s mouth twisted (half smile, half scar).
“I know the taste of that particular medicine, little sister. Different century, different empire, same recipe: one woman, one truth, a whole city clutching its pearls. They called me a lot of things. Never asked what I called myself.”
Asha went paler than the snow. “Endicott is in my blood, that's why I read it,” she whispered. “Zerubbabel is… mine.”
Mary’s eyes softened, but the wit stayed sharp.
“Ah. Congratulations. You’ve inherited both the arsonist and the girl he tried to burn the house down around. Blood’s a messy genealogist.”
She knelt, snow creaking under her knees, and took Asha’s cold face between warm palms.
“Listen carefully. The scarlet doesn’t win because it’s loud. It wins when we believe we have to wear it alone. Elizabeth didn’t get a choice. You do.”
Asha’s voice cracked. “I have secrets. Heavy ones. I'm not even sure if they have names nor how to put in words spoken.”
Mary gave a soft laugh that had seen too much and still chose tenderness.
“Darling, I once had seven devils and a reputation that could peel paint. Secrets are just demons with better manners. They leave when you stop feeding them shame.”
Asha’s tears froze on her lashes. “Kelly already knows,” she breathed. “My Siamese. I tell him everything, he understands what I do not speak. Does that count?”
Mary’s grin flashed (wicked, fond, centuries old).
“Counts first and best. Cats were at the tomb before any apostle. They understand resurrection.”
A deliberate crunch of paws. Kelly, seal-point and imperious, crossed the snow like a small blue-eyed priest, tail high. He sat beside Asha, leaned hard against her leg, and began purring with the force of a small, determined psalm.
Mary stood, brushing snow from her coat.
“Tonight, when you’re ready (minutes, years, never, doesn’t matter), bring your confessor. We’ll tie that ribbon or burn it or feed it to the deer. The tree doesn’t care about schedules. Neither do I.”
Asha looked at the cat, at the saints pretending they weren’t crying, at the monk who had finally found a silence worth keeping, and at Mary Magdalene (who had once been the scandal of Judea and now smelled of apples and mercy).
“I’m closer than yesterday,” Asha said.
Kelly blinked once, slow as absolution, and purred louder.
Mary flicked the red ribbon so it caught the sun (scarlet, not sacred, bright as the morning she walked out of a tomb and refused to apologize for it).
“Good,” she said. “The scarlet only owns you if you let it sew the story shut. Tonight we start ripping out stitches.”
The oldest apple tree waited, patient as forgiven sin, while the Garden held its breath and prepared to witness whatever truth Asha and her Siamese finally decided to lay down.
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