The Witch Watch

by Shamus Young

  Before Simon could close his eyes, the lantern returned and began tracking them again. They saw the light bobbing through the trees in the distance, and when the wind was right they could hear the clamor of men carrying their fighting gear.

  This time Gilbert could not shake them. He led them through streams, he doubled back, and he climbed over rocky places. Their tracker would move some distance, then stop for a minute, and then begin moving again, never falling for any of Gilbert’s tricks.

  Eventually Gilbert abandoned subterfuge and opted for speed, pushing through the darkness as fast as Simon’s weary legs would allow. Gilbert never heard any sound of barking, even though a bloodhound was the only thing he could think of that might explain this uncanny pursuit.

  Towards morning they were finally able to leave the lantern light behind, although it was more likely exhaustion than lack of direction that ended the chase. Simon was nearly spent as well, and Gilbert knew he couldn’t push the boy much further.

  They struck a road and followed it, not having any idea where it went or even what direction they might be heading. It brought them to a small village which neither of them knew. Before sunrise they found a humble church crouched on the edge of town, dark and quiet. They slipped in and hid in the tall space beneath the church bell. (This space was really too small to be called a “bell tower” by a serious person.) It wasn’t much in the way of a hiding place, but it was the best they could manage in such hasty circumstances.

  They sat on either side of the bell rope. Simon wrapped himself in Gilbert’s cloak and dropped off to sleep almost immediately. The terror had left the boy as fatigue set in, and by the end he was ragged and speechless.

  Gilbert found he wasn’t tired at all, even after their long run.

  Gilbert sat motionless and quiet, watching over the sleeping Simon as the boy tossed and shivered in the damp October air.

  Daylight found its way into the church. This was a quiet town, and even at the height of the day few sounds reached his ears. If not for the sound of the odd horse, Gilbert might have suspected this place was uninhabited.

  As daylight began to fade, Simon stirred. “What hour is it?” he asked sleepily.

  “You’re the one with the timepiece,” Gilbert whispered. There was no real reason to whisper. They were alone and the church had been quiet all day, but the setting seemed to demand it.

  “Of course,” Simon consulted his pocket watch. “Half five,” he remarked. “Did I miss anything?”

  “Around midday I heard horses enter town. Lots of conversation outside. Could have been the Witch Watch tracking us. Could have been gossiping travelers.”

  “What will we do now, I wonder?” Simon asked. He wore an anxious expression on his face, and his hands seemed to be trembling slightly. The night before, Simon had finally reached the point where he was simply too tired to be afraid. Now that he was somewhat rested, he seemed to be finding the energy to worry about things again. “I haven’t ever exercised myself like I did last night. I am still dreadfully thirsty.”

  “You could slip out and drink a bit more of the holy water.”

  “Perhaps,” Simon said. “But I don’t like doing that.”

  “As for what we will do next, I’d like some questions answered first. I’ve done nothing but sit here all day, and I’ve had a lot of time to think about what’s going on.”

  “I doubt I know more than you, but I’ll hear the questions,” Simon stretched and rubbed his bruised eyes.

  “You seem like a surprisingly nice fellow for a witch. How did you come to be mixed up with this cult?”

  “The Viscount has another place here in the countryside, the Ravenstead Academy, which he calls a ‘boy’s school’. But it is actually a prison where he keeps and trains servants. He takes orphans or other unwanted boys and teaches them to fear him. It is a cruel place. Many beatings. Little light. Less food. Dreadful cold in the winter. A lot of them don’t make it. Generally only the strongest and most loyal manage to ‘graduate’ and serve the Master directly. I’ve been with him since I was a very small child, and I’ve never had any say in the matter.”

  Gilbert liked Simon a bit more after hearing this. The lack of food and harsh treatment had reduced many stern soldiers to apprehension and weakness. Perhaps the boy might perk up with a hot meal? As for the academy, Gilbert wondered how such a thing could exist without being discovered by the outside world.

  “None of the boys ever escape to get help?”

  “Sometimes, but we were far from any city. The boys usually end up crawling back once their empty belly gets the best of them. This happens sooner rather than later, since you have to fight for every mouthful in that place.”

  Gilbert grunted. “What about you? You don’t seem like the strong type. How did you make it?”

  Simon found his bowler hat and returned it to his head. “I might not be strong like you, but I have strength of my own. The strength to endure, if you like. And I always did as I was told. The other boys tried to get away with things when the Master wasn’t looking. But I knew. He was always watching.”

  Gilbert had spent all day playing the scene over in his mind. When he emerged from the tomb with Simon there had been four men. Were any of them witches? “So you were obedient. Is that why you were chosen to do the ceremony, or spell, or whatever you call it? Why didn’t one of the Four Horsemen do it?”

  “You’re asking why I was the one to go into the tomb to revive his Lordship? Well, it wasn’t an honor, if that’s what you’re thinking. The process takes a long time, most of which is spent kneeling on the stone floor. You can see why the old men would rather I did that.” Simon swallowed hard as he said this, his eyes darting around as if he expected his old masters to be hiding in the shadows.

  Simon abruptly left their hiding spot and went out to the sanctuary. He returned a minute later, wiping his mouth. He’d evidently helped himself to more holy water. He seemed to have recovered his nerve enough to continue his story.

  “Kneeling on the stone floor aside, the main reason they sent me to revive the master is that revivification is tricky business. There are stories that sometimes the dead return mindless and enraged. Feral. I don’t know if it’s true, and neither did the elders. So they sent me in alone. If you had killed me, they would have simply sealed the place and walked away.”

  This unraveled a great many mysterious details for Gilbert. He now was convinced that the boy was reliable. Whatever crimes he might be guilty of, lying was probably not among them. An accomplished liar would have crafted a better story, and an amateur liar would have given himself away by now.

  Gilbert felt the need to take action soon, but he had one question left. “And now the thing that’s been gnawing on me all day... If you were so loyal to the master, how could you possibly have failed to notice you were reviving the wrong man?”

  “You really don’t know?” Simon asked slowly.

  “No.”

  Simon drew out his pocket watch and handed it over. “Look,” he said.

  Gilbert took the watch. A name was engraved on it. “Who is Donovan White, and why do you have his watch?”

  “I have no idea who he is. Probably some poor sod the Master killed or turned into a frog or foreclosed on or something. It was a graduation gift to me from his Lordship. Flip it over. Look at your reflection.”

  Gilbert saw that his once ruddy skin was now the color and texture of dried leaves. His lips were pulled back into the horrifying grin of a skull. His nose was gone, replaced with an empty hole. His eye sockets were dark save for two dim, remote lights that flickered like candles in a distant window.

  “I really am dead,” he said.

  Simon nodded. “You can see how it would be hard to recognize someone when their face looks like that. To be honest, I was horrified at the prospect of what I was doing and I tried not to look at the body. At you, I mean. I saw the name on the wall and that was enough for me.”

  They were quiet fo
r a long time. Night settled in around them and the sunlight vanished from their hiding space below the church bell. Gilbert wanted nothing to do with this business and thought it would be much better for everyone if they could just put him back where they found him. He tried not to think of his family.

  “Is there any way to undo this?” he asked at last. “Can you make me look normal again? Or return me to death?”

  Simon pulled out a necklace, although it was now too dim for Gilbert to see it in any sort of detail. “Last night, I was given this necklace to use in the revivification spell. It glowed, filled with the vigor of another human being.”

  “Vigor.”

  Simon put the necklace away and clasped his hands together, perhaps to keep them from fidgeting. He seemed very uncomfortable with this line of questioning. “That’s what the book called it. Their life, basically. When your body is ruined by injury or disease or age, it loses its grip on your soul, and you die. But you can re-attach the soul as long as you can find another source of vigor.”

  “I imagine this involves killing someone.”

  “I think so. Remember I’m just going by what the book said. I haven’t studied this personally. Apparently it takes a lot of vigor to make the spell work, so you need someone who is old enough to have the strength of adulthood, but not elderly.”

  “You’re saying someone had to kill a young, healthy person in order to bring me back?” Gilbert stood up, suddenly feeling like a party to a murder.

  Simon flinched when Gilbert stood. He spoke without making eye contact. “Not just any youth. The book says they need to have royal blood in them.”

  “So someone killed a prince to revive me?”

  “Princess. Princess Sophie, who turned sixteen just last month. I don’t know how they acquired her, but their talk revealed that they performed the extraction a few nights ago.”

  “Murder! Your master is a thrice-cursed villain,” Gilbert fumed. He clenched his hands into fists, and tried to figure out who he should be hitting with them. “I hope they didn’t... I mean, she didn’t have to suffer anything unnatural, did she?”

  “No. In fact, to my understanding she had to remain unharmed. This was their chief concern. She was feisty, and they worried that she would harm herself in her struggles. The extraction had to take place on a healthy, living individual, and afterward they wanted the body to remain safe and undisturbed.”

  “So perhaps her life could be restored?” Gilbert asked with sudden excitement.

  “The Horsemen speculated on that topic themselves. If the revivification failed, they thought to return the princess to her family, either through ransom or through a feigned rescue. They were always working on such schemes.”

  “Well then, we now have purpose. We are going to save the princess,” Gilbert said as he pulled Simon to his feet.

  “How?” Simon seemed put out and confused at this sudden course of action.

  “We’ll go and give her back the vigor.”

  “I don’t even know where she is,” Simon said.

  “Oh.” Gilbert sat down, feeling dejected again. “Do you know where we might look?”

  Simon thought for a minute. “She certainly wouldn’t be at the academy. But she wasn’t distant, based on what the elders have said. I suppose she could be in the manor.”

  “Perhaps we could go there, find her, and give her back her vigor.”

  “Do you realize that this would kill you? Or un-revive you.” Simon said this nervously, backing away from Gilbert as if he expected a blow.

  “It burns my heart to think I’m robbing a young girl simply by not staying dead.”

  “Well, it’s no good anyway. I have no idea how to do it. I was trained in sorcery, but they never taught me more than I needed to know. I was never involved in their plans.”

  “Well, maybe this is your chance to revenge yourself on your master. Freeing Princess Sophie and exposing this conspiracy should ruin his work. Certainly there must be some book in the place that can instruct you on how to restore her.”

  “I’m sure there is. Sadly, I think I left it on the floor of his Lordship’s tomb last night.” Simon did not look particularly sad about this detail.

  Gilbert stood again, feeling he was at last coming close to having some sort of plan. “So we go in, fetch the book, and make things right.”

  “I don’t know,” Simon said. “We don't know where she is. She will be guarded. It's just... hopeless.”

  Gilbert saw this as a simple morale problem. He’d never been one for inspiring men with words, but he decided to try his hand at it now. “Think about the situation you’re in. You’re chased by the Witch Watch and by your former masters, either of which will most likely kill you if they catch you.”

  “Only if I’m very fortunate,” Simon lamented.

  “But here is your chance to make your own fortune. Ruin the house of Mordaunt, save the princess, and become a hero. I’ll be dead... again. So the credit can all go to you. The Witch Watch probably won’t hang you if you explain that you were a slave and worked against your master as soon as your bonds were broken.”

  “This is absurd. We can’t possibly best the Viscount.”

  “We do have the strategic advantage of him being dead.”

  “You don’t understand. He still commands his servants from beyond the grave. He is terrible!”

  “All the more reason to ruin his schemes.” Gilbert found this business of persuasion was becoming tiresome. Of all the emotions a man might experience, it seemed that cowardice was the most obstinately unreasonable.

  Simon was silent and stared at his feet. Gilbert waited to see if the boy would refuse, or if he would find some courage. The boy didn’t seem inclined to do either.

  “Very well,” Gilbert said after a long silence. “I am going back to the manor and will attempt the deed alone. I place no value on this second life I’ve been given, and I’d rather expend it in the service of something worthwhile than skulk about hiding and fleeing. You can go your own way, and I hope it does not end at the end of a rope in Tyburn.”

  Simon swallowed. “I will go with you,” he said without looking up from his shoes.

  “That’s a good lad,” Gilbert said as he clapped Simon on the shoulder. “I think you’ll find courage suits you once you taste a bit of it.”

  The two of them slipped out of the tower and passed through some back rooms. They were reluctant to enter the main sanctuary. They did not want to compound the sacrilege of bringing the unliving into the church by parading him around before the holy symbols. Simon helped himself to another draught of the holy water, begging pardons in the general direction of the ceiling as he did so.

  Gilbert wrapped himself in the black cloak again, if only to cover the white garment he was wearing. He meant to slip quietly out of the side entrance and simply follow the road out of town.

  Gilbert opened the door, took a step, stopped, and jerked back inside, nearly knocking Simon over in the process.

  Outside the door was a young woman, inexplicably wearing trousers. Her hair was done up in ribbons and she was standing just ten paces from the door, looking at her wrist.

  “What’s wrong?” Simon whispered.

  “It’s the Witch Watch. The woman from last night. She’s right outside.”

  “Did she see you?” Simon hissed.

  “Assuming she’s hasn’t been struck blind. She looked right at me.”

  “Now what should we do?” Simon demanded.

  “Now we will find out if you’re capable of courage,” Gilbert said.

  II

  “Do try to have some courage about this, Gilbert dear,” Mother chided as she opened the door for him.

  “It’s not about courage at all. I’m quite capable of living on my own here,” Gilbert protested. He pushed through, trying to keep the load of clothing steady as he headed down the stairs to the parlor. It was a bright day in April. Sunlight flowed through the windows and revealed the dancing mote
s of dust that their work had set in motion.

  “That claim is yours to prove,” she retorted.

  “It’s about common sense. I see no reason to pack up our whole life and go running off to America like this.” Gilbert set the load down on the floor beside the trunk.

  “Perhaps you don’t. But I see no reason to stay here where we have no relations and so few friends.” She began to sort through the pile, putting wanted items into the trunk and setting the rest aside.

  Gilbert looked at the trunk and at the pile of clothing. The two were of similar size. “I don’t see how you can hope to fit everything inside this trunk.”

  “Then it’s fortunate I don’t plan on taking ‘everything’. I plan on taking just the personal items and valuables. The rest of it can all burn. No, not truly, but you know what I mean. You remember your father’s friend Mr. Hughes?”

  “The barrister with the enormous nose and no hair?”

  “Solicitor, not barrister. He has kindly offered to sell off the unwanted items and send me the proceeds.”

  “What unwanted items?”

  “I don’t think the furniture will fit in my trunk, for starters.”

  “Furniture!” Gilbert said indignantly. “You mean to leave me without furnishings?”

  “Very well. I’ll leave the furniture. I think you’ll find them less useful without a house to put them in, but you’re welcome to drag the tables and chairs through the streets of London if you think they will be useful.”

  “You’re selling the house?” Gilbert boomed.

  “Did you think I was going to just leave you the family fortune and crawl back to your sister a vagabond?”

  “No,” Gilbert said after a pause that indicated the opposite. “But see, what you’re doing is going to make me a vagabond.”

  “Well if you had a family I might consider giving you your share of the fortune now. But you’re strong, you’re young, you’re single, and you’re more than capable of seeing to your own needs. And if not, you can always come back to America with me. It would save me the trouble of finding someone to carry this trunk.” She held up one of his father’s suits to him and frowned. “Curse your unnatural size,” she said.