Chantress

by Amy Butler Greenfield

  “Your guild? Did you know him?”

  “Not to speak to,” Nat said.

  It was not quite the answer I’d hoped for, but Penebrygg’s response was more reassuring. “We knew him by reputation, my dear, but no more. If anyone in the guild had guessed what violence he planned, you can be sure we would have done our best to put a stop to it. But he and his cousins kept to themselves. They might never have been discovered if it hadn’t been for the Shadowgrims. So people were grateful.”

  Nat flicked away a shaving of wood. “But it didn’t end there. Magic never does.”

  Penebrygg sighed. “Yes, sad to say, that first hunt served only to whet Scargrave’s appetite for more searches and more arrests. None of us could understand it—the Scargrave of old would never have done such a thing—but losing his family like that must have turned his mind. He started sending patrols of Shadowgrims out by night, to ferret out malcontents and agitators and other potential threats to the Crown. If you were to look over London right now, you would see them gliding over rooftops, darting into alleys, crouching under eaves. Though, of course, it’s the ones you don’t see that you most need to worry about.”

  I glanced uneasily at the nearest window. “What if the Shadowgrims are perched outside? Could they hear us?”

  “Through double solid-oak shutters and two heavy wool curtains?” Nat dismissed my worry. “Not likely. Not if we keep our voices low. Anyhow, if there was a Shadowgrim so close, you would know it. You’re a Chantress. Your hair would be standing on end.”

  If he’d meant this as reassurance, it failed. Indeed, my skin began to prickle as he spoke. And Penebrygg’s next words did nothing to soothe me.

  “If the Shadowgrims were all we had to worry about, that would be bad enough. But Scargrave has also established a vast web of human spies—”

  “Oh!” I gasped.

  Penebrygg tensed. “What is it?”

  Fear rushed over me. “My skin—it’s burning.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  ONLY A CHANTRESS

  “Is this a joke?” Nat said, annoyed.

  “A jest? Hardly.” Penebrygg was already out of his chair. “Look at her, Nat. Something is very wrong.”

  The heat and the panic were fast overwhelming me; I could barely choke out any words now. “It feels like . . . the cart.”

  “Shadowgrims, then.” Penebrygg spoke hardly above a whisper.

  “They’re flocking here?” Nat was alarmed now too.

  “No. If they were, I would feel it. Even you would be growing uneasy. And no doubt we’d have Watchmen battering at our door as well,” Penebrygg said. “No, I suspect this is just a Shadowgrim alighting nearby, nothing more.”

  Nat glanced back at me. “And that’s enough to do this to her?”

  “Evidently.”

  How could they not be burned? The flames were everywhere, I thought dizzily.

  “Let’s get her downstairs, and see if that helps,” Penebrygg said. “Can you stand, my dear? No, I see you can’t. Nat, can you carry her?”

  Nat had me halfway out of the chair when the burning stopped. One moment I was clutching his shoulders, aware of nothing except the fear and heat in my head; the next, I was meeting his eyes in confusion and jerking away.

  As I bounded to my feet, he had to grab at the chair behind him for balance.

  “I’m feeling better,” I said.

  “So I gathered.” He rubbed his elbow and moved away.

  Penebrygg took my arm, as if to support me. “My dear, are you truly all right?”

  “I think so.” The terror was gone, almost as if it had never been there. Moments later, however, a wave of exhaustion hit me, and I sat back down.

  “I’ve double-checked, and all the windows are secure,” Nat reported to Penebrygg. “And the chimney damper’s only open a crack, as usual.”

  Penebrygg looked over at the fireplace. “Ah, yes, the chimney. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “It’s never been a problem before,” Nat said doubtfully.

  “But perhaps even a tiny crack is a problem for a Chantress,” Penebrygg said. “Especially if a Shadowgrim happened to perch right by the chimney itself.”

  “Could it have heard us?” I asked in dismay. “Does it know I’m with you?” Even now it might be winging its way back to Scargrave . . .

  “No.” Penebrygg hastened to reassure me. “It was here so briefly, and we were talking too softly to be heard through such a small crack.”

  “But perhaps it could sense my presence—”

  “No,” Penebrygg said again. “You can feel the Shadowgrims, but they can’t feel you. Everything we know about them proves that point. It’s their one saving grace—that, and the fact that they sleep by day.”

  I was deeply relieved by his answer.

  Nat moved to the fireplace. “So we’ll shut the damper, then?”

  “Yes, do,” Penebrygg said. “And then we’ll go downstairs. I think our guest has had enough of the attic for one night.”

  By the time we settled by the smoking embers of the kitchen fire, I was feeling stronger.

  “Where were we?” Penebrygg asked.

  “We were talking about Scargrave’s spies,” Nat said from the bench opposite mine.

  “Ah, yes, indeed,” Penebrygg said. “His great web, over which he reigns as Spymaster, with the ravens at his side.” He straightened his spectacles and looked at me. “I’m afraid that informers are everywhere, my dear. Fear is in the very air we breathe. There is no room for dissent, no freedom to speak one’s mind. Even the most innocent acts are now considered sedition and can land a man in front of the ravens.”

  “Last week a neighbor of ours complained about the price of bread,” Nat said. “He was arrested within the hour.”

  “As if grumbling about prices were gravest treason!” Penebrygg said, shaking his head. “But no one dares to rise up against Scargrave while he has the Shadowgrims in his command, not even King Henry.”

  “But why?” I asked. “He’s the King, isn’t he? Surely Scargrave wouldn’t throw him to the ravens.”

  “He would if it suited him,” Nat said.

  “I think not,” Penebrygg said. “The King is not yet eighteen, and he has been led by Scargrave for most of his life. Moreover, he is one of those people who is particularly susceptible to the Shadowgrims, and he lives very near the Tower dungeon in which they are housed. Little wonder he is quiet and melancholy, and he does whatever Scargrave advises.”

  “Their magic takes some people that way,” Nat said. “It’s horrible to see.”

  “Yes,” Penebrygg agreed. “The mere existence of the Shadowgrims is enough to unsettle many—especially those who are impressionable, or have little practice in dealing with fear. You can see it in their faces, even in the way they speak and stand. They are easily frightened and easily led, and even by day, when the Shadowgrims can do them no harm, they blindly follow Scargrave because he promises to make them safer.”

  “But some people stand against him?” I asked. “Like you and Nat?”

  “A few,” Penebrygg said. “But we, too, fear the Shadowgrims’ power. While Scargrave possesses his ravens, we cannot call our souls our own.”

  I was shaken by the quiet desperation in his voice. “Couldn’t you leave England, and live abroad?”

  “And leave everyone here to suffer?” Nat said indignantly. “Anyway, Scargrave has guards along the entire coast and in every port; you can’t leave without his permission. And even if we did manage to wriggle free somehow, he has ways of finding people, wherever they are.”

  “The only answer is to fight him here, with every means at our disposal.” Penebrygg clasped his hands and looked at me. “That is why we need your help.”

  “My help? But I don’t see how, or why—”

  “We have an old saying here,” Penebrygg said.

  “If harm is done by a Chantress song,

  Only a Chantress can right the wrong.”


  “I don’t understand,” I said, although I was beginning to.

  “It means that the Shadowgrims must be destroyed by the same means they were created: by Chantress magic,” Penebrygg said.

  Nat jabbed at the wood again. “If we could do it ourselves, we would.”

  “But we cannot,” Penebrygg said. “So we must turn to you.”

  My heart thumped. “But I wouldn’t know where to begin. I know nothing of Chantress spells, aside from the one that brought me here.”

  “You may know more than you realize,” Penebrygg said. “And I am certain there are ways we can help you. Nat, could you bring us the box?”

  Nat set aside his carving and went out of the room. Several long minutes later, he returned with a wide, shallow box. He set it down in the shadows, and I heard the sound of metal against metal, like tiny taps on a pan or the scrape of a key in a lock. When he turned back to us, he held two sheets of parchment.

  “It is only a copy,” Penebrygg said. “But we believe this to be the song that will destroy the Shadowgrims, provided it is sung by a Chantress. That, at least, is what the papers that we found with it claim. But we cannot make head nor tail of the notation on the parchment itself. Can you?”

  I stared at the tiny spots and whorls that were scattered like blots on the page. Meaningless, and yet even as I shook my head, they made memory speak:

  The floorboard in my mother’s room trips me, and when I reach for it, it wiggles loose. Underneath it, I find scraps of paper with strange blots on them. I know my letters, know that this isn’t writing—at least not any writing I recognize. I bring them over to the light, so absorbed that I do not hear my mother’s footsteps behind me.

  “Lucy, love, give those to me.” When I do not immediately surrender them, she takes them gently from my hands.

  “What are they, Mama?”

  “Nothing for you to worry about. We’ll say no more about them.”

  Penebrygg took hold of the parchment. “You don’t know what the signs mean?”

  “I think they might be Chantress marks,” I said. “But I have no idea what they mean.”

  Penebrygg and Nat exchanged disappointed glances.

  “Well, never mind,” Penebrygg said. “In time, perhaps we will work out some way of cracking the code. But first we must know: Are you willing to help us?”

  Behind his spectacles, his eyes glimmered with entreaty. And although Nat betrayed no emotion, I sensed that he was listening carefully for my answer.

  “But why me?” I was genuinely puzzled. “Why not another Chantress? Someone older, with more skill?”

  To my surprise, Penebrygg looked away. “My dear, I thought you understood . . .”

  “Understood what?” I asked.

  “That there are no other Chantresses left,” he said quietly.

  The words were like a winter wind, cutting me to the bone.

  “Scargrave hunted them down.” Penebrygg spoke with great care, as if he guessed how difficult this might be for me to hear. “He wanted no one to threaten his hold on the Shadowgrims and the grimoire that made them. And his task was made easier by the ravens. Before they killed the Chantress Agnes, they robbed her memory of the names and dwelling places of every other Chantress she knew. And Scargrave went after them, capturing them by surprise and binding their mouths shut before giving them to the ravens. So it went, with yet more names gathered and more Chantresses killed, until at last they were all gone.”

  “But why didn’t they fight?” I asked in distress. “If they were Chantresses, if they had power—”

  My words hung in the air.

  “We don’t know,” Penebrygg admitted. “Not for certain. But most of those he captured were Chantresses in little more than name. As far as we can tell, they knew only a few weak and worn spells, and they had only a cursory understanding of their heritage. Many were very old, as well, and most lived in remote places. They had little chance against Scargrave and his Shadowgrims. We did hear that at least one young Chantress had been hidden away before the rest of her family was killed, but we thought that was only rumor, until we met you.”

  “My mother . . .” I whispered. It hurt too much to say anything more.

  “What was her name?” Penebrygg asked gently. “There are lists, you see, and those of us who have seen them keep them alive in memory.”

  I heard myself give the answer, almost as if someone else were speaking. “Viviane Marlowe.”

  There was a long pause. And then Penebrygg said, “Oh, my dear, I am so sorry.”

  I stared at my empty hands. I had accepted long ago that my mother was dead and would never come back. It was a sad fact, but a settled one—part of the flint-hard rock on which my life was built. So why did it shake me so much to learn exactly how my mother had died? To know that it was not the sea that had killed her, but Lord Scargrave’s Shadowgrims?

  No matter. It shook me. I pushed my palms against my hot eyes, and hid my face.

  “I think,” said Penebrygg, slowly and kindly, “that you need rest and quiet, yes? We must find you a place to sleep and some warm blankets. I shall give you my own bed—”

  “No, sir,” Nat interrupted, his voice low. “It’s not right that you should give up your bed. Your back’s not up to it. She can have mine instead.”

  “That’s good of you, Nat.”

  “But sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “She still hasn’t said whether she’ll help us.”

  “And you would ask her now, when she is mourning her mother?” Penebrygg’s hushed voice held a note of reproof. “We have waited a long time for a Chantress, Nat. Surely we can wait a little longer for her answer.”

  I barely heard them for thinking of my mother, so loving, so gentle, so determined to save me. My mother, surrounded by Shadowgrims . . .

  I had spent half my life wanting to come back to this place, this England. I had believed my life would begin here. But I had never imagined anything like this. Desperately I wished myself back on the island, with Norrie at my side, my voice locked away, my magic untapped. This terrible world unknown.

  But that was not possible.

  Sing and the darkness will find you.

  Desolation swept over me. But through my grief and bewilderment, I could sense something else growing in me, something alive, something stronger than fear: a burning and angry resolve.

  My hands fell away. I looked Nat and Penebrygg full in the face.

  “If you want my help, you have it,” I said. “I will do everything in my power to destroy the man who murdered my mother.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  CURIOSITIES

  “Lucy?” a voice called.

  Fogged by sleep, I thought: Norrie? Eyes still closed, I listened for the customary sounds of an island morning—the pots clattering, the cockerel crowing, and Norrie’s wide-awake call, “Up now, and no dawdling!”

  Instead, I heard dogs yapping, and hammers tapping, and hoarse voices hawking wares: “Had-had-haddock!” “Small coal, penny a peake!” And beneath everything, a rumble like a hundred handcarts rolling by.

  Where on earth was I?

  London, my sleepy mind said. I was in London with Norrie and Mama, in the narrow garret by the River Thames. Only for the winter, Mama had said, and then we would move out into the country . . . .

  “Wake up!” The command was sharp as a slap on my cheek.

  I opened my eyes and saw a boy with hazel eyes looming over me. Memory flooded back: Nat and Penebrygg. Scargrave and the Shadowgrims. The singing and the ruby.

  My mother, murdered.

  And Norrie lost.

  I sat up, and my stone swung forward on its chain. Still there. And still a ruby.

  “You sleep like the dead.” Nat sounded cross and a bit alarmed. Apparently my commitment last night had made us close enough comrades that he thought it worth worrying about me. It hadn’t made him any friendlier, though. “I’ve been shouting your name, and you never even moved.”


  “Well, I’m awake now.” And feeling at a distinct disadvantage. Neatly dressed in dark breeches and fresh white linen, Nat had the look of someone ready to take on all comers. I, meanwhile, was facing the world with wrinkled skirts, a rumbling stomach, and fingernails that still bore traces of mud from the island garden. I put a hand to my hair and wished I hadn’t: It was a scraggle of snarls.

  My only comfort was that Nat did not appear to notice.

  Striving to sound self-possessed, I asked, “What time is it?”

  “Nearly nine. You need to stir yourself.” Nat no longer sounded alarmed, only impatient. “Dr. Penebrygg will return anytime now, and he’ll want to see you as soon as he’s back.” He gestured toward a washstand in the far corner. “There’s clean water there. And a chamber pot under the bedstead. When you’re done, come and find me upstairs.”

  He sped out the door, leaving me grateful for the privacy—but relieved, too, that he had been frank in addressing the essentials.

  I slid out of bed and set about making myself ready. Everything proved straightforward enough, except for my hair. As I struggled to smooth it back, I could almost hear Norrie scolding. Your hair’s a tangle of seaweed, child. Plait it back now, there’s a good girl.

  Last night, before I had gone to sleep, Penebrygg had reassured me again that they would do their best to help me find Norrie. “She could be anywhere, I’m afraid. But if you give me a description of her, I will make some inquiries. Very discreetly, of course. Anything else might endanger her—and you.”

  The nature of those dangers was not something I wished to contemplate. Instead, I remembered my last evening on the island with longing—a fire warming up the hearth, and Norrie and I cozy in our chairs in front of it. Of course, the fire had been built to rule, and I had chafed whenever Norrie gave me pointed reminders on tending it. But we both had been safe, and that seemed a blessing to me now.

  However much I wanted to, however, I could not turn back time. And even if I could, it would not undo the Shadowgrims.

  What’s done is done, and we must make the best of it.

  With Norrie’s words echoing in my ears, I forced myself to concentrate on the job at hand, plaiting my hair. As my fingers worked, I stood by the tiny window and tried to make sense of the view: a scrap of muddy yard enclosed on three sides, with a sloping shed along the other. Aristotle’s stable, I guessed.