Star Cursed: The Cahill Witch Chronicles, Book Two

by Spotswood, Jessica

  Someone claws at my wrist with sharp nails, and I jump.

  “Sarah Mae,” the nurse chides, and I look down into squinted green eyes. A freckled girl, no more than thirteen, stares up at me. The bottom of her skirt is muddy, and her cheek is smudged with dirt, her brown hair tangled with leaves. “Look at you. What were you doing on your morning constitutional?”

  “Presiding over a funeral,” she says. “Will you say a prayer with me, Sister?”

  “Er—certainly, I’ll—”

  The nurse tuts. “Not in this shameful state, missy! Only good girls what brush their hair and behave get to speak to the nice Sister,” she insists, hustling me down the row. “Loves animals, that one. Finds dead birds and buries them. Right creepy, it is.”

  There’s a sudden clamor as the door opens and the matron reenters with a tea cart. “Teatime, girls!” she announces, smiling. “Line up!”

  Several women bolt forward.

  “They act like they’re starving.” But there doesn’t seem to be any food on the cart.

  The nurse shakes her frizzy gray head. “They get two meals a day—porridge for breakfast and a hot supper. What those girls want is their tea.” I raise my eyebrows, and she cackles again. “Some of ’em get the shakes without it.”

  “I see.” The girls each take a cup and hold it out to be filled—not poured from a teapot but ladled from a large, steaming soup tureen. Some of them cup their hands around the warmth and stare down at it for a moment first; others slurp greedily. The matron and the skinny dark-haired nurse watch as ea Ke wr handsch girl drinks.

  “Drink up, Mercedes,” the matron chides, and a woman obediently tilts the cup to her mouth, her throat working.

  “Some of ’em will try and give it away, or pour it into the chamber pot if we ain’t careful,” the nurse explains. “Sneaky things.”

  She goes on, gossiping about this patient and that, but I’m watching the girls at the end of the line. A few try to maneuver their way out of taking the tea, to no avail. One woman drops her cup on the floor, and the matron slaps her before handing her another. A tiny blonde holds the cup in her hands but refuses to drink, staring stonily as the matron exhorts her not to put up a fuss. Eventually, the matron nods at the skinny nurse, who pinches the girl’s nose shut. When she gasps for air, the matron pours the tea down her throat. The girl gags and coughs—and swallows.

  “It’s time for us to move on to another ward,” Sister Sophia calls from the doorway.

  I look around the room, committing the misery to memory, and I make a promise. I will make things better for these girls. They will not spend the rest of their lives here—not if I can help it.

  Out in the hall, Sister Sophia takes my elbow. “Are you all right?” she asks, and I nod. I wonder if I look as horrified as I feel. “Pearl and Addie and I will go to the infirmary on the first floor. Why don’t you and Mei visit the second floor and then meet us downstairs? Mei will take the north wing, and you can take the south.”

  My mind spins with questions. Will I know Zara when I see her? Will she recognize me? She must have some of her wits about her; she wrote me a note earlier this fall, urging me to seek out my mother’s diary. How drugged is she? Is her mind clear enough to help us, even if she’s willing?

  There is a nurse posted just inside the door to the south wing. She’s a tall, broad woman bent over some knitting; she doesn’t bother to leave her stool when she sees it’s only me. “Most of the girls here are at work, Sister.”

  “Work?” I ask. “What sort of work are they capable of?”

  “Ah, you must be a new one.” The nurse smiles. She has an enormous red birthmark splotched over her right cheek. “This wing houses the patients who don’t give us any trouble. Some of them help with the kitchen garden, some down in the kitchens or the laundry. All supervised, of course, but you know what they say—idle hands breed devilry.”

  “Of course.” It’s such a gloomy place; I don’t know how anyone keeps from going mad here. The scratched wooden floorboards warp and waver beneath my boots, and the hallway is dark save the nurse’s lamp, with moth-eaten curtains covering the windows and peeling paper on the walls. There are no paintings or plants to alleviate the sense of crumbling abandonment. A small dark shape—a mouse?—darts across the end of the hall, tiny nails scrabbling.

  There are small windows looking into each cell, with tags bearing the patients’ names. I walk down the hall, peering into mostly empty rooms. Halfway down the right-hand side, I finally see Z. ROTH, marked in faded blue ink.

  My godmother.

  Inside, a tall woman sits in a wooden rocking chair facing the window. Her cloud of curly dark hair surprises me. Somehow I expected her to be a little redhead, like Mother.

  I take a deep breath and push at the door. It groans as it swings open.

  “Miss Roth? Zara Roth?”

  “What do you want?” Zara’s voice is a dreamy rasp. Her brown eyes are dazed, the pupils narrowed to pinpricks despite the gloom. “I’m not in the mood to pray today, Sister.”

  “I’m not—I didn’t—” I panic as the door slams shut behind me and the lock clicks into place. The nurse will co Knur1em">“me. Sister Sophia won’t leave me behind. But I have to fight the urge to pound on the door with both fists and scream to be let out. The room feels suffocatingly small, barely big enough for the narrow bed and chair. There is not a single personal touch: nothing cheery or welcoming, nothing beautiful.

  How can Zara stand it? She’s been in this place for ten years.

  “Go away and leave me alone.” My godmother must have been pretty once, but now she’s gaunt: long limbs poke out from beneath her ragged hem and cuffs like a scarecrow’s, her cheeks are hollow, and her hooked nose is a little too big for her thin face.

  I hesitate. I wish I had Tess’s talent for reading people. “It’s Cate,” I say, stepping closer. “Anna’s daughter, Cate.”

  “Cate Cahill?” Zara’s hand flies to the gold locket around her neck. She searches my face for a long time. “You don’t look like Anna,” she says, turning away as though that’s that.

  “Maura looks like Mother; I take after Father,” I explain, pushing a strand of blond hair back into my chignon.

  Zara squints at me. Closer, I can feel the draft from the iron-barred window; I can see the crow’s-feet etched around her eyes and the gray threading through her hair. She is only thirty-seven, the same as Mother would be, but she looks older. “Brendan was never handsome. Anna was so beautiful, she could have done better for herself, but they were in love.” She shakes her head. “Why are you trying to confuse me, talking about Anna? What do you want?”

  I bite my lip. “I just want to talk to you. I’m studying at the convent school with the Sisters, and I wanted to meet my godmother.”

  “The Sisters? Ah. Cora’s heard about the new oracle, then.” Her laugh is a rusty screech. “She needs me. I knew it would come to this, soon as I heard the nurses gossiping.”

  I don’t know what I expected—for us to fall into a teary embrace? for her to lie and say how much I resemble my mother?—but it was not this.

  “Damn her for using Anna’s memory to get to me,” Zara says, apparently accepting that I am who I say. She flips open the locket. Inside, there’s a tintype of Mother from when she was young.

  “Oh.” Emotion knots my throat. It’s been a month since I’ve seen my mother’s face in a picture; I brought none with me to the convent. She does look like Maura, with her curls and big eyes and heart-shaped face.

  “I loved her like a sister,” Zara says sadly. Then she recoils, as if stung by a wasp. “Your sisters—are they both alive?”

  “Of course. They’re on their way to New London now. Sister Cora thought it best—safest—for us all to be at the convent,” I explain, perching on her bed.

  “Is that wise, do you think?” Zara seems more alert now. “Considering the prophecy?”

  “The prophecy is wrong,” I say flatly, crossing my
arms over my chest.

  Zara’s smile softens her long, angular face. “You’re a fighter, aren’t you, Cate Cahill? Even when you were a child, you had a temper. Lord, you were such a ragamuffin. Always chasing that neighbor boy of yours.” I frown. Paul isn’t mine anymore. “You kept coming home with your knees all scraped up from tumbling out of trees. Anna was afraid you were going to break your fool neck.”

  “Not yet, fortunately.”

  Zara twists her chair to face me, her knees bumping against mine in the tiny space. “They’ll hang you, you know. Or perhaps burn you alive,” she says, her eyes darting toward the door, and my smile fades to horror. “If you’re the oracle. There have been two others since the Great Temple. They kept them here and tortured the prophecies out of them. That’s what they’ll do with Brenna. But you—they won’ Ktn’t mt let you live.”

  I try not to let her words rattle me, but they do. “Because I’m a witch?”

  “There’s never been an oracle with magic before. And mind-magic, at that.” Zara leaps up and crosses the room to peer out the peephole, then returns to the chair, her voice dropping to a scratchy whisper. “Is it you? Is that why Cora sent you?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t had any visions. I was hoping perhaps you could tell me what to expect. What happened to the other two oracles?”

  Zara chews at one fingernail thoughtfully. Her nails are all bitten short, her fingertips cracked and bleeding. “I would like to help you. For Anna’s sake. But you’re one of them now, and I can’t forgive what they’ve done. Not just to me, though that’s bad enough. Do you know how many girls pass through these doors? How many are beaten or used as the Brothers’ playthings? And when they die—and so many do, you know, they stop eating and just will themselves to go—when they die, there aren’t even proper rites. There’s a communal grave over the hill. That’s all that’s waiting for us. And Cora just lets it happen.”

  I want to echo the vow I made to myself upstairs: I will save these girls.

  But I don’t know how, or when. “She can’t save everyone,” I say softly.

  Zara turns on me, her eyes furious, thin nostrils flaring. “Is that what she told you? She could have saved me!”

  She stares out the window for a moment. The sleet has turned to snow, coating the hillside in sugary white. In the distance, I can see the red silo from a nearby farm—and beyond that, the white spire of a church. “I’m angry with Cora, but not fool enough to make you suffer for it. You will suffer enough, if you’re the oracle,” she says.

  “I hope I am. I’d rather it be me than Maura or Tess.” I take a deep breath. “Will you tell me about the other oracles? How did the Brothers find them?”

  Zara doesn’t need more prompting. “Marcela Salazar was only fourteen when she tried to warn her father that he would drown swimming in a nearby lake. After he died, they turned her over to the Brothers. It’s a wonder she wasn’t killed outright for a witch. They kept her upstairs under lock and key her whole life. She died at twenty-five in the typhoid outbreak of 1829.”

  “Not much of a life,” I remark.

  “Not as bad as Thomasina Abbott’s.” Zara looks at me solemnly, fiddling with the chain at her throat. As she speaks, words rushing out faster and faster, she rocks more violently in her chair. “When she was twelve, she tried to warn a neighbor about a house fire. The neighbor didn’t listen, the house burnt down, and then they accused her of being a witch and sent her here. She refused to speak to the Brothers, but they could tell when she was having one of her spells, so they resorted to torture—cut off her fingers and broke her leg so badly it never healed right. Then she started speaking nonsense, and they couldn’t figure out if she was mad or only pretending, so they tried all sorts of awful experiments on her. Drilled a hole in her skull to try and alleviate the insanity, but that killed her. That was three—no, four—years ago. Then they dissected her brain. The nurse said there was no abnormality to explain the madness or the visions.”

  My stomach twists, and I feel flushed and sick at the thought of my corpse being cut up for research. “Will”—my voice comes out a croak—“will I go mad?”

  Zara’s wild rocking stills so suddenly that her chair crashes back into the cement wall. “I don’t know. You’ll be better off than most, because you’ll know what the visions are. They can be disorienting. Cause headaches and confusion. The others tried to prevent bad things from happening, and that put t Knd four—hem in danger. The prophecies always come to pass.”

  We stare at each other in dismayed silence. I know Zara thinks she’s telling me the truth, but I refuse to believe it.

  “Zara?” The nurse with the birthmark knocks on the door and leans in. I look up, hoping she hasn’t overheard anything she oughtn’t, but she only looks exasperated. “You mustn’t waste the young Sister’s time telling your stories. She’s needed down in the infirmary.”

  “I was just telling her about the Minotaur,” Zara says, her voice dreamy again. “All the maidens lost in the labyrinth. They needed a champion to save them.”

  “She’ll tell you those scandalous Greek stories all day if you let her. She was a governess once,” the nurse says, clucking disapprovingly. She holds her knitting against her white apron, and now I can make out a child’s blue stocking. For a grandson, perhaps? “Say good-bye now, Zara.”

  Zara gives me a wide, eerie smile. She’s missing several teeth. “Good-bye, Sister Catherine. Cave quid dicis, quando, et cui.”

  “There’ll be none of that, now. You’ll speak proper English like the rest of us, Zara, or you’ll get no supper,” the nurse scolds. She turns to me. “What did she say?”

  “I’ve no idea,” I lie.

  Thanks to Father’s insistence that we all be educated in Latin, I’m familiar with the phrase.

  Beware of what you say, when, and to whom.

  arm am">To th

  CHAPTER

  6

  THE HARWOOD INFIRMARY IS A HELLISH place. An oppressive wave of heat greets me, like opening an oven door. The fireplace burns hot at one end, and the room feels small and stifling. The heavy curtains are pulled shut; candles throw monstrous shadows onto the walls. A dozen patients doze and cry and cough on their narrow metal beds, and the air smells coppery, like blood.

  In the corner, a girl cries out for her mother in her sleep. Another girl is coughing—horrible hacking noises that rack her thin body. Addie sits beside a skeletal old woman who sucks in each harsh, rasping breath as though it might be her last. Addie looks so young next to her, head bowed in prayer, her smooth brown hair pulled back at the nape of her neck. As I watch, she touches the woman’s hand and the patient slips into a peaceful slumber.

  I hesitate in the doorway, perspiration gathering at my spine. I don’t want to go in. It reminds me too much of my mother’s sickroom, of death and dying. Down the hall, two nurses chat and laugh, having abandoned their posts to the Sisters’ capable hands.

  Sister Sophia hurries forward. “There’s a patient here who’s beyond my skill. Would you sit with her for a minute and see if you can help?”

  Sophia leads me toward a woman tossing and moaning on her bed. Purple shadows blossom beneath her eyes. As she clutches her swollen stomach, I have a sudden dreadful suspicion.

  “Please,” she begs, with tear-filled blue eyes, “please bring me my baby. I just want to see her. Just once, before you send her away.”

  I look to Sister Sophia, who gives the slightest shake of her head, confirming my guess. The baby is dead.

  “She was crying and then she—stopped, and now they won’t let me see her. Where is she?”

  Sister Sophia gives me a little push in the woman’s direction. I want to run away. What help can I be, in the face of such immense grief?

  “Sister, please,” the woman whispers, her bloodless lips parched and dry. I look back at Sister Sophia before I realize she’s talking to me. I pour a glass of cloudy water from the pitcher on her nights Nk backtand and hold
it to her mouth.

  The woman takes a sip, then turns her head away. “I want my baby,” she says, her voice fierce. She has pale hair that tumbles down over both shoulders.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, wondering what else this woman has suffered, why she is in this place. “I’m terribly sorry for your loss.”

  It is the wrong thing to say.

  “No.” Her eyes go wild, and she thrashes toward the side of the bed, determined to rise and find her child. “No! You’re lying. I heard her cry.”

  I reach out and grab her thin wrist, tugging her back to her pillow before she can pitch herself onto the floor. “Stop. You’re not well, ma’am. You’ll hurt yourself.”

  My words are calm, but inside I’m reeling with horror. This woman is dreadfully sick. I could feel it the moment I touched her. It’s a miracle that she and the baby aren’t both dead.

  “What do I care?” She snatches her arm away. “I’d rather die than live the rest of my life in this hell. At least I’d be with her. They said she was a girl. My only daughter!”

  I seize on this new bit of information. “You have sons?”

  She nods, wiping tears away with the backs of her hands. “Two of them.”

  “Then you must take care of yourself. They need their mother.”

  More tears leak from her eyes. “I’ll never see them again. They’ll grow up hating me for leaving them,” she whimpers.

  “No. You’re their mother. They’ll understand, when they’re older.” I wish I could promise her that she will leave this place, that she’ll see her children again. But why would she believe me, dressed in the garb of the Sisters? And dare I promise such a thing?

  “What do you know of it? Married to the Lord,” she scoffs. “You’ll never be a mother.”

  Oh. I’d like to be a mother, someday.

  I think of this woman’s sons. I picture them as two towheaded little boys, lips wobbling as they hear of their mother’s death. That is a grief I do know. I reach out and circle her wrist with my hand, and I wish she could go home to her little boys so they need not know how it feels to lose her. I wish that she could be healthy enough to fight, when the time comes.