The Witch Watch

by Shamus Young

  “Alice!” Simon practically shouted. He had been trying to get their attention while they argued, and in exasperation he finally raised his voice. The other two turned at the sudden noise. “Look!” he said excitedly. He had crept forward to see what was in the next room.

  It was clean and bright here. On the far side of the room was yet another door. The room was filled with fine furnishings. There was a desk as well as a table for work, and many paintings and curtains had been hung to hide the rough stone and make the space feel comfortable. These things escaped their attention; they were focused on the tables in the middle of the room.

  Each table had a body on it. One body was positioned with its head facing north. The other lay with its head facing south. (Assuming Alice was correct about their direction.) Around each body was a sorcery circle, which had been etched into the fine wood. One was a man, the other a young girl.

  “Leopold!” Gilbert said with surprise.

  “So now we see where Brooks obtained the vigor to revive Mordaunt. Moxley said he was missing, and I feared he had fallen into their hands.”

  “Who is he?” Simon asked.

  “Fourth son of Queen Victoria,” Gilbert explained. “Also a formidable fencer. I wonder how he came to be captured.”

  “Probably the same way my father came to be killed. By mistaking Mr. Brooks for a friend.”

  “That means the girl must be Princes Sophie!” Simon said in awe.

  Gilbert had walked around the tables and could now see her face right-side-up. “Wait. I know her. She’s the girl from my dream!”

  “She’s what?” Alice asked.

  Gilbert began to speak, but was cut short by the rumble of footsteps on the stairs in the previous room. The three of them froze for a moment, suddenly remembering their situation. There was another staircase in this room. It was very narrow and dark. Not having any other option, they fled this way.

  The stairs wound around as they ascended, and Gilbert lost his bearings again. Behind him was Simon, followed by Alice. At the top of the stairs was a door. Gilbert tried to open it and felt resistance. “Locked. Or perhaps blocked. I can’t tell. It’s plainly a door, but there’s no doorknob,” he said angrily.

  “Let me!” Alice said sharply. She tried to squirm past Simon, but the way was narrow. They were huddled together at the top of the steps and had only enough light to tell their feet from the stairs.

  Gilbert didn’t wait for her to push to the front. Instead he braced one leg against the exposed framework of the wall, and his shoulder against the door. There was the sound of splintering wood as he pushed.

  “Stop!” Alice said. “I’m sure it will open right up if you can find…“ She was cut off by the sudden shouts and activity from the soldiers below. Far off, they could hear someone frantically ringing a bell.

  Gilbert gave a deep grunt and the door gave way, blinding them all with sudden light. He fell forward onto the door, which was now on top of a grandfather clock. The clock had been blocking the door, or perhaps it was part of the door. In any case, it was exceedingly loud as the various chimes shifted inside, and Gilbert landed on top of it. Simon and Alice climbed over him.

  They were in a broad hallway. To their left was a magnificent set of double doors. To their right was a smaller door. In front of them were high windows to the darkness outside.

  There were footsteps on the steps behind them. Gilbert leaped off of the wreckage of the clock and sent it down the stairs with a mighty shove. There were curses and cries of confusion as it tumbled downward.

  “Go right!” Alice cried, but Gilbert had already started for the doors to their left. He opened them with a needlessly loud and destructive kick.

  He rushed through, and they found themselves in a cavernous space of dark wood and bright electric lights. On the far side of the room was a collection of guests, who had gathered in a circle around the wounded and bleeding Brooks, who was now on the floor.

  “We’re back in the ballroom!” exclaimed Gilbert.

  “I tried to tell you,” Alice said.

  The two groups regarded each other, mutually dumbfounded. The guests were so confused by the abomination entering the room on the opposite side from where it had exited, that they forgot their terror. Only two soldiers had remained here with the guests, and they were visibly less interested in violence with so few of them on hand. They stood nervously between the guests and the abomination, exchanging uneasy glances. Gilbert stood for a moment in quiet irritation, going over the secret tunnels in his head and trying to figure out where he had gone so wrong. Simon was struggling to master his fear. He looked to Gilbert for guidance, but Gilbert didn’t seem to be doing anything at all. Alice sighed in exasperation.

  One of the soldiers came to his senses and lifted a whistle to his lips. The shrill note broke the spell and the room was set in motion once again. The sound of heavy footfalls returned as the men around the house abandoned their careful searching and converged on the whistle blower. Gilbert spun and made for the closest exit, which was a nearby set of stairs.

  “We need to be on the ground floor,” Alice said as she chased him up the steps. “Or do you suggest we leap out a window?”

  “Maybe,” Gilbert replied.

  He led them on a mad rush through the upstairs, and it wasn’t entirely clear that he knew where he was going. He made more right turns than seemed reasonable for someone who might know where they were headed. The pursuing footsteps grew louder. The men from around the house were converging on them, and it seemed likely as not that they would find themselves at a dead end with a dozen men on their heels.

  Gilbert made one final turn and smashed open a set of double doors, shattering the glass in a single blow. They found themselves outside.

  “No stairs!” Gilbert cried with dismay.

  “No,” agreed Alice. “This is a terrace. You thought to find steps here?”

  “I did,” he admitted. “I saw this in the distance on our way in, and thought…” His voice tailed off. Their pursuers had overtaken them. The route behind them was crowded with armed men. They were struggling to arrange themselves into a proper formation for a fight, and couldn’t decide where the swords and rifles should go in such a tight space.

  The terrace was made of stone, and brightly lit. Below them was a floor of hard stone, surrounded by a meticulously trimmed lawn.

  “There!” Gilbert said, pointing to the side of the house. A bright electric lamp hung from the stonework. From it hung a thick cable that spilled down the side of the house and disappeared into the ground.

  “There?” asked Simon in confusion.

  Gilbert lifted the boy and almost threw him at the wall. Instinctively he grabbed on to the cable and began sliding down. A moment later the soldiers stormed through the doors and violence ensued. Alice managed to leap onto the cable before any of the men could grab her. She found it was tricky to slide down without either burning her hands or dashing herself on the pavement below. She split the difference and did a little of each, landing with a thud at the bottom.

  “I did it! Did you see?” Simon said once she had stood. Suddenly he remembered himself, “Are you all right?”

  “I’m whole,” she said, looking up.

  Above them, Gilbert was engaged with perhaps four or five men. There wasn’t enough room on the terrace for more. For whatever reason, the men with rifles had held their fire, and so this became a battle of strength. The soldiers hacked at him ineffectually with their weapons while he beat them with his bony fists. A man was tossed over the railing and dashed against the ground. Alice jumped back just in time to avoid his fall.

  Gilbert was an enthusiastic combatant, but not an exceptional one. He slowly overcame his foes not with cunning, but by being strong and durable. The number of upright men dwindled. Gilbert had one man by the shoulders, and repeatedly rammed him face-first into the broken doors. This made a loud, hollow sound. Fragments of glass were shaken loose from the frames by the blows.r />
  “Gilbert!” Alice called up to him. Gilbert seemed caught in the moment, and continued fighting even after his foes had lost interest. “Gilbert!” she said again, more scolding this time.

  Several gunshots rang, almost in unison. Gilbert was knocked over by the force of bullets entering his body. They had held their fire while he grappled with the other soldiers, but once he was the only one standing they were intent on shredding him with flying lead.

  Gilbert recovered and leaped for the electrical wire. It snapped the moment his weight caught it, dropping him to the ground in a shower of sparks. He very nearly flattened Simon on the way down.

  They scrambled to their feet and ran to the front of the house, chased by gunshots. An alarm bell continued to ring. Despite this noise, the men were still shouting to one another, trying to explain what had happened and which way the fugitives were headed.

  In front of the house, they found that the driver was not waiting with his coach as he had promised. Gilbert leapt up and drove it himself. He charged the gate, scattering the guards that tried to block their exit. More gunfire rang, but their shots went astray. The coach rolled off into the darkness, leaving the house of Sir Edward James Brooks behind.

  Alice stirred and slowly opened her eyes. The pre-dawn light crept over the London rooftops and into the alley where she had dozed fitfully for the last few hours. There was a faint smell of coal in the air as the early risers lit their stoves to ward off the morning cold. She had intended to let Simon use her as a pillow when she nodded off, but somehow this had been reversed as she slept. She slid out from under their blanket (Gilbert’s cloak) and stretched. The cold stone had not been kind to her joints.

  Gilbert hadn’t moved from his spot at the end of the alley since she last saw him. He was a silhouette against the dimly lit streets. Uncloaked and upright, he was strikingly tall and imposing. Alice briefly envied his immunity to the cold, until she recalled all the joys he lost in the exchange.

  “Simon insisted he’s been subjected to worse beds,” she whispered to Gilbert as she joined him. “I can’t imagine a bed worse than cold stone. If there is such I thing, I would rather forgo sleep.”

  Gilbert replied without turning to face her. “I found myself sleeping in some nasty places when I served Her Majesty. It’s been said that if you go hungry long enough, your mouth will water at the sight of insects. The same idea applies to sleeping arrangements.”

  Alice looked back to Simon, who had slumped to the ground and tightened the cloak around him. “Poor boy,” she said. “It was foolish to bring him, but he refused to stay at Grayhouse.”

  “He wants to be brave,” Gilbert said. “And anyway, it’s good that we had him with us. If he was still at the house…”

  “Yes,” Alice agreed quietly. Last night they had decided it was too risky to return home. The authorities would be looking for them. Aside from whatever scheming Mordaunt’s followers might be engaged in, Gilbert was an abomination, and Alice had blatantly attempted to murder a powerful man in a crowded room. These were not the sorts of things that could be overlooked.

  “What is this place?” asked Gilbert.

  “I told you last night, this is Witching Street. Or Witching Way, depending on who you ask.”

  “I’ve never seen it on a map.”

  “Oh, that’s not the proper name for the street. Actually, I can’t even remember that proper name. And it’s actually two streets. A few blocks down, the street changes name.”

  “So witches live here? Wouldn’t that make your job easy if all the witches moved to the same neighborhood, and announced it by renaming the street?”

  “The name of the street is maintained as a joke by the locals. They like the sense of mystery it gives the place. Most of the shops and homes here dabble in unmagic: herbal medicine, fortune telling, contacting dead relatives through absurd playing cards. Most are harmless enough. A few are simply very enterprising cheats and mountebanks. The church has trouble telling the difference between these people and those who practice authentic magic, and so they show up here now and again to harass people and burn some books of benign nonsense.”

  “You seem to know this place very well. You knew this alley before we arrived, and this was the first place that came to your mind when we decided we couldn’t go back to your house.”

  “It’s not my house, but you’re right. I wanted to come here because I knew we would not be looked for here. If we are spotted by the locals, they won’t trouble us. Father had a good rapport with many of these people, and they think well of me on his account.”

  “You say that as if they wouldn’t respect you if not for your father. It’s far more likely that they admire you for your quality than your ancestry.”

  “It’s kind of you to say so,” she replied. “Anyway, Father brought me here now and again. Sometimes real witches come to Witching Way to hide. They never do anything so foolish and obvious as to set up a shop and announce themselves, of course. But if you know the right people and know how to ask, you can find them. Captain Turpin and I hid in this very alley two years ago. At the time, there was a rash of attacks by unliving dogs around the city. Dogs were being killed, preserved, then re-animated and set loose. We killed a lot of them, but had trouble finding the source.”

  Alice spoke while pointing to the narrow, crooked house on the other side of the street, “That place belongs to a man named Wilfred. More than half crazy, but he’s kind and earnest and most of his medicine and poultices are harmless. Some might even be effective. He told the captain and myself about a young man who showed up frequently and at inconvenient hours, looking to buy embalming agents. Wilfred could barely keep the stuff on hand.”

  “A medicine shop that sells embalming fluid?” Gilbert asked.

  “I’m sure Wilfred has stranger things than that on his shelves. His place only qualifies as a medicine shop under the broadest and most generous use of the term. At any rate, the Captain and I spent several nights lurking in this very alley, waiting for our necromancer of canines to appear. It was January at the time, and bitter cold. The captain and I kept warm by standing against that wall where Simon and I were just sleeping. There’s a fireplace on the other side, and it loses a lot of heat to the outside. A shame it wasn’t lit last night.”

  “But what about the necromancer?” Gilbert said impatiently. “Did you find him?”

  “Yes, although the necromancer turned out to be a woman. Eventually the young man appeared and we followed him home, where we found his wife at work killing and reviving dogs. The husband was nothing more than an assistant. Vicious shrew, she was. She wound up hanging from a rope at Tyburn. I’m not sure what became of her husband, although I think he was spared the noose. He’s probably still in prison, although I imagine that’s a better fate than being married to that woman. All those dead dogs of hers. Her stench was incredible.”

  Gilbert sighed and paced back and forth for a few minutes. Finally his thoughts came to the surface. “Grayhouse is closed to us. We’re all fugitives in one way or another. Your tools and reference books are gone. We are in a very tight spot. I don’t know how we’re going to rescue Sophie now.”

  “Rescue Sophie?” Alice exclaimed incredulously. “I should think not. The idea is absurd.”

  “I didn’t like leaving her behind last night,” Gilbert said. “It would have been better to put things right and give her back her vigor. Assuming you know how.”

  “Foolishness,” Alice insisted. “Yes, I know how to restore her when the time comes. The Headmaster’s book gave us that secret. But last night was not the time. We would never have escaped without your help. Remember that reviving her means un-reviving you. It’s very likely she could be sick, or weak, or disoriented when she wakes. What if she couldn’t walk on her own? Imagine how short our escape would have been if Simon and I had been carrying the girl.”

  “Well, we know where she is. Now we can prepare and mount a proper rescue.”

  Ali
ce shook her head. “You were at the party last night. You heard the speech as well as I did. While I would be glad for the opportunity to restore Sophie, our main focus should be on unraveling this plot. It’s no good saving Sophie if the rest of the royal family dies in the meantime. As for finding allies, that may be harder than you imagine. You saw that our foes control some portion of the military. This will be beyond the understanding or expertise of the constables. Who else could we approach for help?”

  Gilbert was quiet and paced fitfully. His voice was full of doubt, “I don’t know. But I don’t like leaving her now that we know where she’s being held. If we’re not going to rescue Sophie, then what are we planning to do?”

  “An insightful question, for which I have no answer. I think I should pay Lord Moxley another visit. We can leave as soon as Simon is awake.”

  “I’m awake,” said a muffled voice from the alley. “I just didn’t want to surrender my blanket.”

  “There is a bakery not far from here. If you give Gilbert back his cloak, I can offer you warm bread in return.”

  Simon jumped to his feet and hurled the cloak at Gilbert, “In that case, good morning!”

  Crossing the city to visit Lord Moxley was an interesting challenge. He had briefly instructed Alice on how to move around in such a way to avoid or discourage people from following her. She tried to follow this advice, but they also decided to cross the city separately. The authorities would no doubt be looking for a woman, a young man, and a very large man in a black cloak. There was nothing they could do to disguise Gilbert, but it did seem reasonable to split up. Gilbert walked a hundred paces behind Simon, who walked a hundred paces behind Alice, who was deliberately making odd turns and stops intended to expose anyone following her secretly. They all felt ridiculous and conspicuous and it wasn’t at all clear if they were being clever or making fools of themselves. Nevertheless, they crossed London without being accosted.

  Lord Moxley opened the door and peered out through the crack. When he saw Alice he motioned her into the apartment and quickly shut it again. He returned to the table without a word, and made a vague gesture in the direction of the teapot, in case she was in the mood for a cup. There was a small pile of mismatched papers in front of him. Some were brief scrawls on scraps of paper, while others were proper letters. Some were bits of newspaper with notes written in the margins. Some were crisply folded and others had been crumpled up and smoothed out again. The notes were written by many different hands.