“Is the Queen of Secrets the lord of the Sphere?”
“No, that’s the Lady of Whispers. The Queen of Secrets is her saint. That’s always the name she takes everywhere in the world. She’s the only saint who claims a special title for herself. When I took my Betrayal, the Queen of Secrets in Poland was a movie star. Well, a Polish movie star. No one ever heard of her here in England. But she was so glamorous. I never saw anything like her again.”
“Have you ever met the Lady of Whispers?”
Her mother grimaced and shuddered, pulling her shawl tighter around her shoulders.
“No, never, I'm happy to say. If you ever have that misfortune, run. It’s rare that a mortal doesn’t pay a steep price for setting eyes on the Lords and Ladies.”
Gosha nestled the orange segments in her palm, the tart fragrance biting at her nose.
“What do I have to do?”
“You take the oath, we fashion you a talisman, and then we confound the oath.”
“You can do that?”
“Oh yes. It’s quite devious. It comes down to politics again. A clever witch can always take advantage of the rivalries between the Spheres. Conflict would be the marrow of their bones if those mad incarnations of human appetites could have bodies.”
“Can a man be a witch?”
Her mother snorted.
“Małgorzata, you embarrass yourself. A man can be many things, but not a witch. A witch is a woman who does what must be done when no man will.”
* * *
It only took an hour to arrive at their destination, and in that time Gosha learned more from her mother than in a decade of sitting in her mother’s kitchen as a child, if only because now she had the sense to listen.
They got out of the bus at the edge of a village green. A Victorian stone cross stood proudly beside the well-kept lawn.
“The life of a witch is a series of tests.” Her mother led them across the green. “One after the other, tests that are often impossible to pass. The beauty of being a witch is that tests have rules, and the only rules a witch observes is her own. I will give you the first rule of being a witch. It’s not the most important rule, but it is very useful.”
She stopped outside the front gate of a house large enough to strain the definition of a cottage without breaking it.
“Take nothing for granted, and nothing as given.” She rearranged Gosha’s coat and blouse to her liking. “Something-something-something-midden. These British witches turn everything into rhymes that I can never remember. It says if you don’t like the game that’s being played, change the rules. Or, better yet, change the game entirely.”
“In there,” her mother pointed to the green front door with an iron door knocker cast in the shape of a leaf, “is the British Queen of Secrets. I know little about her. Just know that however she may present herself to you, she is sharp as a fox. She could not have become Queen of Secrets otherwise. You cannot lie to her. If you do, she will know and will use it against you. But also, you must not tell her about George and his devilish friend. She will act decisively against any threat to another saint. At best, she will deny you the oath, at worst she will turn you over to a higher authority. They stick together, these elitist bastards, even though they are always at each other’s throats. You have one goal, and one goal only: get her to accept your oath of fealty. Nothing else matters. Tell her whatever you want. A witch need only keep the word she gives to herself or to another witch. I’ll be over there waiting,” she waved at a park bench at the edge of the green, “with sandwiches and ginger ale. Give me your handbag.”
“You’re not coming in with me?”
Her mother shook her head and opened the gate. “The important things must be done alone. Here.”
She removed from her pocket one of Mrs. Dearing’s telling cards and handed it to Gosha. Drawn in black ink and brought to life with carefully cross-hatched shading was a woman sitting on a throne in a dark and barren wood surrounded by leafless trees. From her crown was draped a short veil that covered only her eyes, and from her neck hung an old-fashioned iron key. Across her lap rested a sheathed sword with a crow perched on its pommel. Under the picture was drawn the Roman numeral ‘II.’
“It’s good, isn’t it? Elsie made it specially for you. Be sure to thank her when you see her again. Present it upside down when they challenge you. They will know what it means. Now off with you and make your mother proud.”
* * *
Gosha knocked on the door and waited, watching her mother head back across the green toward the main road. No one had answered by the time her mother had reached the middle of the green, so she knocked again and watched her mother disappear around a corner. Still nothing. She knocked a third time and wondered if anyone was at home. The door opened a crack.
Three knocks, she thought as she presented Mrs. Dearing’s card upside down to the stern young woman who stood looking out at her. Fairy tale rules.
The woman looked at the card and curled her lip with contempt as she opened the door further to allow Gosha admittance.
“Wait there.”
She pointed to a straight-backed chair in the foyer, one of five lined up against one wall, shut the front door and disappeared down a hallway into the gloom.
Dark wood wainscoting spread out around Gosha, the plastered walls above lined with gloomy portraits of unhappy people from different ages stretching back to medieval times, all of whom stared down at her with sour expressions of judgment. The attendant made Gosha wait long enough to feel forgotten. Gosha’s backside began to ache from the discomfort of the hard wooden seat.
The girl reemerged at the other end of the house.
“Come through.” She beckoned her forward in a forced whisper.
The attendant ushered Gosha into a large suburban parlor that opened onto a formal dining room, decorated in the way of many a suburban granny. Matching floral chintz covered the plush Georgian furniture arranged around a darkened fireplace and mantle covered in family pictures, a small television set on a rolling cart to one side. It would have been a pleasant enough room were it not for the bizarre overlay of strangeness that colored everything like a panto set dresser’s fever dream.
Every surface was covered. Grand leather-bound ledgers piled high next to portfolios stuffed to the brim with sheets of paper. On one wall of the dining room was mounted a long strip of museum racks, the kind that you might flip through like pages of a book. Against the other wall stood a library card catalog with what must have been a thousand tiny drawers, each labeled by hand. And most bizarre of all, from a large round hole in one wall of the living room grew a tree, sideways as if the world had shifted by ninety degrees on that wall alone. The tree was small, but perfectly formed, a bonsai tree paused on its way from growing to full size in rebellion against its gardener’s obsessive control.
“Sit there.” The young woman aimed her at another bank of uncomfortable chairs pushed up against a wall opposite the tree and in view of the dining room. “Speak only when you’re spoken to.”
At the dining room table stood a tall, thin middle-aged woman dressed in high heels, a pale green couture skirt, and a white satin blouse with a string of pearls about her neck. Her round head was a small knob atop the wiry clothes peg of her body, stooped over a sheet of foam-core board upon which she fixed a slip of paper at the end of a long pin like a naturalist in a museum preparing a sample. The slip of paper was only the most recent addition to the board in what had clearly been hours of work. The foam-core spread out across two-thirds of the dining table and was covered in tiny fragments of printed words in a sweeping relief map of scraps.
“Ma’am.” The young woman curtsied toward her boss before leaving the room.
Gosha sat as instructed and watched as the Queen of Secrets went about her business, oblivious to Gosha’s presence.
When she finished mounting the fragment of paper on the board, she stood back to inspect her work for a moment before striding over to the c
ard catalog. Finding what she wanted among the tiny drawers, she took the index card with her to the tree and rummaged through the leaves, and referred to the card as she checked each leaf on one branch before settling on a particular one that, to Gosha, seemed no different than any of the others. The Queen of Secrets took out a tiny pair of secateurs from the pocket of her skirt, clipped the leaf at the stem and brought it back to the dining table.
As she took a fresh long pin from a small cardboard box by the board, the fragment of paper she had just attached blackened and crumbled to dust.
“Oh, no,” said the Queen, startling the butterfly on her shoulder which flapped up and back to the tree. “No, no, no.”
The fragments of paper next to the now-empty pin blackened, the corruption spreading out slowly in a wave.
“Dammit.” The Queen rushed to the card catalog to retrieve a large glass perfume bottle with an old-fashioned pump dispenser from its place on top.
She sprayed the paper fragments, but the fine mist that fell over the board only sped up the process of decay. Soon, the entire presentation was stripped clean of paper.
“Dammit.”
She slumped into her chair and scribbled a note in an exercise book she pulled from the middle of a stack at her right hand.
“Show me,” she said without looking up from her writing.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Show me the card.”
Gosha approached the table and offered it up, image forward and inverted. The Queen put down her pen, the butterfly perched on her finger, and took the card.
“A nice one.” She turned it to inspect the back. “Hand me that box.”
She pointed with the card to a small, plain wooden box on the floor, pushed into a corner of the dining room. It was heavy in Gosha’s hands, made of a sturdy hard wood with iron corner protectors and a metal hasp that reminded her of the boxes in which Margrave kept his amulets.
“Put it on the table,” said the Queen and opened it one handed to put the card within.
“Do you know what you’re asking?” she said.
“I do, your Majesty.”
The Queen closed the box and placed her open palm beneath the butterfly perched on the finger of her other hand. It fluttered down, spread its wings flat and turned into paper, an embossed and inked pair of wings against her skin. She took a pin from a pile on the table and set about affixing it to her board.
“What is it you witches like to call your little escapade? I can never remember. Something colorful, isn’t it? The wakening? The deception?”
“The Betrayal, Ma’am.”
“And what makes you feel you’re worthy?” She sorted through her exercise books, found a fresh one and wrote something down in an illegible scrawl.
“My mother is a witch, as are my aunts. My grandmother was, too.”
“So what?” said the Queen without lifting her head from her writing. “My mother was a nurse and my grandmother a washerwoman, but you don’t see me up to my elbows in the unmentionable. Why become a witch?”
How to tell her? How can I be truthful without letting her know about George and Margrave?
“I saw a young man die in my arms and I couldn’t save him. I saw a woman raped next to me and I couldn’t stop it. And when I was a little girl, I was taken from my parents by an oath-bearer and used as bait to lure them to their deaths. I don’t want to be helpless anymore.”
“Really?” The Queen put her pen down and closed the book. She rose and went back to the card catalog to run her fingers across the carved wooden handles. The drawer she opened exploded in a cloud of color as butterflies, moths, and a kingfisher escaped from it and fluttered over to the tree. She reached in and took out a single long and rusty nail, which she turned and inspected as if reading from it. “A witch hunter, but not in Britain. I thought as much. We haven’t had witch hunters in the British Isles for centuries. Not since the first Convocation of Saints when my predecessor at the time demanded the end of such practices.”
She replaced the nail in its drawer and came back to her board of oddities, slid out a dining chair and perched on its edge, her legs crossed beneath her as she spread her hands on the table. She regarded Gosha properly for the first time.
“So much passion.” She laughed. “It’s such a foolish notion. A betrayal. You all think you’re tricking me. You think you’re stealing power for yourselves. You imagine yourselves heroines of the people. You’re not nearly as independent as you like to make out.”
She slid back in the chair and crossed her hands on her lap.
“Over there, by the window. Bring me one of those roses.”
A large bouquet of white roses sat in a cut crystal vase. As Gosha separated one from the tangle of stems, she pierced her finger on a thorn and drew blood. As she handed the bloom over, she wanted to stick her finger in her mouth to lick the wound, but worried the Queen might take offense and instead squeezed her thumb against it to staunch the flow.
“Thank you,” said the Queen and laid the rose on the table. “Sit over there, please.”
Gosha returned to her place by the wall.
“The women who come to me are so much younger than you, scarcely more than girls, brainwashed by their mothers and aunts, or by some old crone in their village, into believing they can be different and special. But you’re in your thirties. You’ve had children. Why now? Why have you taken so long?”
“I didn’t want to live the life my mother planned for me, but now I realize she was right.”
The rose on the table changed color from white to a deep red.
“Oh, good,” said the Queen once the rose completed its transformation. “My time has not been wasted. That I can understand. I know how mothers and daughters are. But you have other options to becoming a witch. Complete your betrayal and you’ll have a little power, yes, but not much. If I take your oath and you keep it, you’ll have so much more.”
She stood, walked over to the absurd and impossible tree and rested a hand on the trunk.
“I am Queen of Secrets of the Sphere of Mystery. I am two hundred and twelfth in my line. In all that time there have been witches, and I and my forebears have been content to allow them, to include their mysteries in our own. But the Craft of witches remains that, a mystery even to the Queen of Secrets. You worm your way into so many places where you aren’t wanted, and no amount of witch hunters and zealots have been able to ferret you out. It’s quite admirable.”
The branches swayed and creaked, the leaves whispering as if a wind blew through them.
“You’re the daughter of a witch. You’ve been trained to be a witch. If I take your oath and you keep it, you could reveal your witch’s mysteries to me. A great darkness is coming that threatens to change the landscape of Influence forever. It might be a time of great tragedy, or a time of renewal that brings the Spheres into balance. Think of it! With the struggle gone, Mystery could flourish as it hasn’t in a thousand years. You could be a part of that, standing at my right hand. What do you say? Will you abandon your Betrayal and choose real power to stand with me?”
If she only knew how well-trained I was, she might think twice about making such an offer.
Her mother told her she wouldn’t have to stand by any pledge she made to the Queen, which was good, because she couldn’t think of anything worse than becoming more entangled in this web of madness, but the Queen had asked her a direct question. If she lied, her mother said the Queen would know.
“It’s a very generous offer.”
She did her best to sell her prevarication with a bobbed curtsy.
“Kneel before me.” The Queen smiled in invitation.
Gosha did as she was told. The Queen approached and placed her hand on Gosha’s head.
“Repeat after me, exactly as I say it. The words are important, even though they’re simple. Are you ready?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“I take refuge in the Lady of Whispers,” said the Queen.
Gosha did as she was told and repeated her words. The leaves on the tree rustled as she spoke.
“I vow to protect the sanctity of mystery. I pledge fealty to the Lady of Whispers that her Influence may flow around me and through me till I ever I may die.”
After she finished, Gosha felt no different than she had before taking the oath.
“Arise, my child, and be my princess, not a common witch. The rose tells me you’ll survive the transition. Once you have stabilized, return to me here and you can tell me everything I want to know. Now, go. I have a representative of the Crown’s security services coming in an hour and I must be ready.”
29
Gosha felt nothing unusual walking out of the house and through the front gate. The morning was still clear, the air fresh and loamy from the village green. As she crossed the lane and walked toward the park bench where she could see her mother waiting, her skin prickled. The air thickened and pressed against her, resisting her effort to move forward. The opposition strengthened until it became a wall, and she couldn’t walk. Force pushed in from every direction. Wind blew at her from all sides to crush her, though the leaves in the trees at the edge of the green were still.
“MAMA!”
She screamed at the top of her lungs, but her mother was too far away to hear, the park bench facing away from her.
A wave of force crashed down upon her. Her knees buckled and, as she collapsed on the grass, she lifted her arms to protect her face against the battering. The onslaught lessened, and she struggled back to her feet. Her body heated up. Sweat broke out across her skin and washed off her in sheets, soaking her clothes. She ripped her coat off and threw it on the ground. Losing the extra weight gave her a moment’s relief, but the force pressing against her only grew stronger.
“Coreszka, lie down!” Her mother pelted toward her across the grass, clutching her shopping bags to her chest. “Lie down! Don’t resist it! Lie down!”
Waking the Witch (The Witch of Cheyne Heath Book 1) Page 18