Chantress

by Amy Butler Greenfield

  I set down my spoon. “Norrie, did you ever read the letter my mother gave to you, the one you put in the bay tree pot?”

  “Never. It was for you, not me.”

  I sat back, disappointed. I had hoped Norrie had read it, and that it might have some advice for me. “Did she ever talk to you about her magic?”

  “No.” Norrie scraped halfheartedly at her trencher. “To tell the truth, child, I didn’t want to know.”

  This was difficult for me to understand. “You weren’t curious?”

  “It wasn’t any of my business,” Norrie said. “I was there to look after you, wasn’t I? Not to help her cast spells. And anyway, magic makes me nervous, and your mother knew that. Kind soul that she was, she took care not to practice it around me. Except at the end, when she needed to hide us.”

  “What was that like? The song that brought us to the island, I mean.” When I saw the look on her face, I added quickly, “Unless it’s too hard to talk about.” I’d made things hard enough for her already.

  “No.” Norrie took a deep breath. “You’re old enough to have answers now. And I’m done keeping secrets. It never works out the way you think it’s going to, anyway. I saw that clear as day the moment I came in and saw you singing.”

  Norrie was done with keeping secrets? I could hardly believe it. “So what was it like?” I asked again.

  “It was horrible.” Norrie stared at the floor. “A whirlwind of singing and howling and wind and water, and things pulling at our hands, trying to part us. It was worse even than when you brought me back. I kept my eyes closed and held tight to you both till it was over.”

  Frustration gripped me. I had forgotten so much. “Why don’t I remember?”

  “She didn’t want you to.”

  “Oh?” This had never occurred to me.

  “It was too much for a child to carry, she said. And if you remembered, she thought you might put your life in danger by singing. So she sang a song of forgetting to you. She feared it might take too much away—that you might even forget her—but she said it had to be done.”

  After years of blaming myself for my bad memory, it was a shock to learn it was my mother’s magic that had done the damage.

  “Can it be fixed? Can I get those memories back?”

  “I’m afraid not. They were gone for good, your mother said.” Seeing my expression, Norrie added, “I’m sorry, child. She meant it for the best.”

  A wave of loss crashed into me. My mother had wanted so much to protect me, I understood that. But at what price? My memories of her—and of my own past—were like a smashed stained-glass window, cracked and skewed and missing half the pieces.

  “I don’t remember Lady Helaine, either,” I said, measuring the losses.

  “Well, no,” Norrie said. “You wouldn’t. But that’s nothing to do with your mother. You only met Lady Helaine the once, right after you were born, when she and your mother made your stone. As far as I know, you never saw her again.”

  “I didn’t?” The surprise of this distracted me from my sadness. “She didn’t mention that.”

  “She probably didn’t want to bring it up right at first,” Norrie said. “But the truth is, she and your mother didn’t get along very well. Nothing to do with you,” she hastened to add. “Their first falling-out came long before you were born.”

  “What was it about?”

  “I don’t know. Might have been anything—or nothing. Lady Helaine’s a bit high-handed, as you’ve seen. And your mother was a strong-minded girl who didn’t like to be told what to do. It’s hardly a wonder they didn’t always get on.” Norrie eyed me sternly. “But just because your mother argued with Lady Helaine doesn’t mean you should. She’s a wise woman, your godmother. There’re plenty of us who respect her. And your mother did too, at bottom, or else she’d not have gone to her when she heard about the ravens.”

  Norrie stacked our trenchers and took them over to the sink.

  Following her, I asked, “If Lady Helaine never came to visit us, then how did you know who she was?”

  “Oh, I knew her years and years ago,” Norrie said. “When she and I were young. She’s much older now, but she has the same bones, the same eyes, the same . . . presence. She’s not the sort of person you’d confuse with anyone else, is she?”

  “No.” Proud Lady Helaine and down-to-earth Norrie—how on earth had they met each other? “Did you grow up together?”

  “Heavens, no. I was a serving girl from the village, working at the big house for your mother’s family, and she was a grand young lady who came to visit now and again. She made quite an impression. A great beauty, she was, and the men and boys used to follow her about. Some said it was magic that drew them to her. I don’t know about that, but I did once see her turn invisible right before my eyes. Made me go all queasy, it did.”

  I heard footsteps in the hall.

  Evidently Norrie did too. “But that’s enough for now,” she said. “Answering questions is one thing, gossip another. I shall have to mind the line. Now be a good girl, and fetch me those trenchers up on the shelf there.”

  As I pulled them down, Penebrygg and Nat came into the room, followed swiftly by Lady Helaine. My time alone with Norrie was over, at least for now.

  Once we reached Gadding House, however, I was determined to ask more questions. Answers, gossip—I was eager for whatever Norrie could give me. My memory was riddled with gaps, and I wanted to fill in the holes.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  UNDER THE GROUND

  After breakfast, we embarked for Gadding House in two separate groups, the better to pass unnoticed. Nat, Norrie, and I set out first.

  “We’re in luck,” Nat said, right before we stepped into the gray street. “The fog’s so thick, it’ll keep prying eyes at bay.”

  Even so, it was a harrowing trip. The creeping mist made me shiver with cold, and the talk I overheard in the sullen, stinking streets chilled me even more:

  . . . Ravens’ Own . . .

  . . . guards at the gates . . .

  . . . Chantress-hunters everywhere . . .

  I was afraid that we might lose Nat in the fog, but this time he stayed close, only a foot or so away from me. He took Norrie’s arm when she began to flag, and she seemed to draw strength from him—enough, at least, to get us to the apothecary shop.

  Once we entered the tunnel, however, Norrie balked. “I . . . I can’t.”

  Caught behind her, I could barely see the flicker of Nat’s lantern up ahead. Trying not to think of the darkness and what it might harbor, I touched her trembling back. “What’s wrong?”

  “This.” Shielding her eyes, she pointed upward. “All that earth, pressing down on us. Ready to swallow us up . . .”

  “It won’t, Norrie. It won’t. Try not to think about it.” I was trying hard not to think about it myself. A difficult job in the still, damp air.

  “I can’t help it.” It was almost a sob. “I’m sorry.”

  I tried to comfort her, but the tunnel was narrow, and I couldn’t do much except pat her shaking shoulders.

  A flash of light: Nat was coming back with the lantern. “What’s the delay?”

  Norrie didn’t speak.

  “She doesn’t like being underground,” I said quickly. “It scares her.”

  I was afraid he might scold her, but instead, he spoke to her gently as a bird. “You’re not the first to feel that way, believe me,” he said. “But don’t worry. We’ll put you to rights.”

  The nightmare I’d seen in Nat’s head came back to me. Walls dark and glistening as jet. Walls so tight they scraped hands and knees . . .

  No, Norrie wasn’t the first.

  “Take my hand, will you? And now look at the lantern,” Nat said to her. “That’s it. Concentrate on the light, and think about the sun, warm and bright on a summer’s day. The sun on an open meadow, with the sky wide and blue above you. Now take a deep breath . . .”

  His voice went on and on, soothing
and kind, without any sharp edges to it. I hardly recognized it as Nat’s, yet as I listened, I felt my own shoulders relax.

  It had the same effect on Norrie. He coaxed her into taking first one step, and then another, until she was walking steadily down the tunnel.

  “And now we’re almost through. Can you hold the lantern for me while I turn the lock? Keep looking into the light, that’s it. Watch that soft, bright flame. And here we go, straight through . . .”

  The moment we entered the cellars, matters improved. It was still dark, but the hallways were taller and broader than the tunnel, and fresh currents of air stirred as we walked.

  By the light of the lantern, I saw Norrie’s expression ease, though she still kept her eyes on the lantern.

  “Thank you,” I whispered to Nat.

  “No thanks needed. She did it herself.” He nodded at Norrie encouragingly. “I’d say the worst is behind us now.”

  I believed him until we reached the rooms Sir Barnaby had in mind. Even as we crossed the threshold, my spirits sank. The first room—the largest, Nat informed me—was small and low-ceilinged and covered with dust, and the dingy walls had no windows. Indeed, once we were inside, it was almost impossible to see where the door was, so carefully was it concealed.

  A refuge, Sir Barnaby had called it. It looked more like a prison to me. And from the look on Norrie’s face, that’s how she saw it too.

  Only Nat seemed pleased. He carefully settled Norrie into the sturdiest chair available, resting the lantern on the table beside her. “It’s good to see the old place again.”

  “You’ve been here before?” I said.

  “More times than I can count. It used to be Sir Barnaby’s alchemy laboratory.”

  I regarded the smoke-begrimed walls of the room with dismay. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes. But that was a while ago. The IC is more interested in practical experiments nowadays—though there’s hardly any time for those, either. It’s been over a year since we last met here.” He nodded toward the hampers in the corner. “It looks like you’re well set for provisions.”

  “For now.”

  “I gather you’ll be getting regular baskets delivered. The cook here is one of our confederates, and no one bakes a finer pork pie.” He glanced back at the half-open door behind us. “Let me check the back room—the pallets should be there, and some blankets to go with them.”

  I was about to follow him when I saw Norrie shiver.

  “Chilly?” I asked.

  “A b-bit.”

  As I wrapped my cloak around her, she covered her face. Not just chilly, then. I knelt beside her. “Norrie, what can I do?”

  She kept her hand over her eyes. “I—I need a moment to get used to the place.” She shuddered again.

  “Everything’s shipshape there,” Nat said, coming back into the room. He cast one quick look at us and crossed to the fireplace. “Let me see what I can do to warm things up.”

  He pulled open the doors of a black box that squatted in the middle of the hearth.

  “What’s that?” I asked, not because I cared very much, but because I thought conversation would comfort Norrie more than cold silence.

  “A firebox.” Nat stacked coals inside, then kindled a flame. “It gives out more heat than an ordinary fire.”

  “More heat?” I said, my curiosity piqued despite myself. “That small box?”

  “Yes.” He stepped back from the fire, now merrily crackling, and shut the door on it.

  I looked down at Norrie, wondering what she thought of the device, but her eyes were closed. She seemed to have forgotten us entirely.

  “That should do it.” Nat twiddled a few levers and looked with satisfaction at the black box. “You won’t need to add more coal for another six hours at least.”

  I started to worry about how I would manage the box once he was gone. “You’ll have to teach me what to do. I’ve never seen one before.”

  “It’s a new design.”

  “Yours?” I guessed.

  He looked a little abashed. “Mostly, yes. Though I had some help from the IC. We needed something safer than an open hearth, and something that made better use of coal. Luckily, there’s a good circulation of air here, even though we’re underground. We’ll have these rooms warm in no time.”

  I looked at the metal contraption again, thinking that I was in favor of anything that would heat the room quickly. “How long did it take you to build it?”

  “Off and on, about a year,” Nat said. “Christopher Linnet and some others helped me with the plans, but after that it was a matter of trial and error. Quite a lot of error, sometimes: The second firebox nearly blew us all up.”

  I gave the walls a startled glance. The grime I’d seen there . . .

  “Scorch marks,” Nat confirmed. “But you needn’t worry. I won’t be doing any experiments while you’re here, and neither will anyone else in the IC—”

  Next to me, Norrie let out a strangled sob.

  “Norrie, what is it?” I leaned in close, trying to take her hands in mine, but she was hunched over so tightly that I couldn’t reach them. “Is it the room?”

  “All that weight on top of us,” she gasped. “Like being buried alive . . .”

  I tried to reassure her and so did Nat, but this time nothing worked. She only curled tighter and tighter, shaking so hard I was afraid she would do herself an injury.

  “Dear Norrie, don’t.” I tried to stretch my arms around her. “Please don’t hurt yourself.” But she hardly seemed to know I was there. As her breathing grew shallower and shallower, I looked up at Nat. “What do we do?”

  “We’d best get her out of here,” he said.

  Send Norrie away? “No.” The answer flew out of me before I’d had time to think.

  Nat looked like he was about to argue with me, but a soft fusillade of knocks interrupted him. He went to the door. “Dr. Penebrygg’s signal. He must be having trouble with the locks again.”

  When Nat pulled back the latch, Lady Helaine swept past us. Penebrygg tumbled in afterward. As Lady Helaine looked the room up and down, Penebrygg came straight to my side. “Is Miss Norrie ill, then?”

  I explained what the matter was, rubbing Norrie’s back as I spoke. She never stopped shaking. I wasn’t even sure she understood what I was saying anymore. “Is there anything we can give her?”

  Penebrygg looked down doubtfully. “We might perhaps be able to find some poppy syrup to make her sleep. But that won’t solve anything in the long term. If it’s being underground that does this to her, she’ll have trouble staying here even for a day, let alone months on end.”

  Shaking out her beads, Lady Helaine came over to view Norrie. “She can’t stay here, not like that.”

  Nat nodded in agreement. “We can’t leave her like this. Her heart could give out.”

  Under my hand, Norrie shuddered again. I had wanted her here beside me—here to mother me, if the truth be told. But not if it meant she had to suffer like this. And certainly not if it meant risking her death.

  I turned to Nat. “How fast can we get her out?”

  Very fast, was the answer. While Nat improvised a litter out of his cloak and some odds and ends in the room, Penebrygg explained what he had in mind: They would carry Norrie to a secret entrance that led up into the upper cellars of Gadding House. There was a set of hidden rooms there, with half windows that let in air and light. “She can stay there till she’s herself again. Then we’ll leave through the servants’ entrance and take her home with us.”

  Nat gave me quick instructions on how to work the firebox and turn the locks and everything else he thought I needed to know. By the time he was done, Norrie’s breathing was so shallow that she fainted away. We bundled her in blankets and shifted her over to the litter, making as quick a job of it as we could.

  Before I knew it, I was giving Norrie’s slack hand one last squeeze. Then Nat and Penebrygg braced the litter between them.

  I’ll
come with you, I almost said. But I knew I needed to stay here in the darkness, here in the depths, here with my teacher, Lady Helaine. No matter how much I wanted to be with Norrie instead. I held the door, and they left, Norrie unconscious between them.

  By rights, the room ought to have felt more spacious after they were gone, with only two of us left to share it. Yet somehow it felt more confining than ever.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  LESSONS

  Trying not to think about how many floors of Gadding House were piled above me, I turned to Lady Helaine. “Will they be all right, do you think?”

  “I expect so,” Lady Helaine said briskly. “In any case, it does no good to worry about it. We have more important matters to attend to.”

  More important than Norrie’s health? I frowned.

  Lady Helaine guessed what I was thinking. “The greatest threat to us all—even Norrie—is Scargrave. And only you can save us. That being so, we cannot afford to become distracted from our true purpose, which is to train you as a Chantress. Every other worry and concern must be set aside.”

  Heartless though it sounded, there was a certain logic to what she was saying. I silenced my objections and tried to listen.

  “Where to begin?” Lady Helaine said. “This is what I have asked myself. You are foolish, you are impatient, you are shockingly ignorant—and your instincts are deplorable.”

  I felt as if I’d been slapped in the face.

  “Fortunately, all is not lost,” Lady Helaine continued. “You come from good stock, and blood and breeding count for a great deal. Your gift, though so far misused, appears uncommonly strong. The stone you bear is a sign of that. Although every Chantress has one, few are as extraordinary as yours. If you will put yourself in my hands, doing everything I tell you to do, then I have every hope we will succeed.”

  My cheeks stopped stinging, though they remembered the slap. “I will do whatever you ask of me,” I promised her. I will do whatever it takes to defeat Scargrave and make us all safe.

  For a long moment, Lady Helaine regarded me in unblinking silence, as if probing the strength of my resolve. Then she nodded sharply and said in a voice that was even rougher than usual, “We shall begin, then. But where?” She ran an impatient hand over her bone beads. “If you had started your apprenticeship with me at age ten, as is customary, we would have had a full five years to cover the rudiments of Chantress magic. But there is nothing normal about our situation, and time is short. We must concentrate only on essentials. Still, you must understand something of our background, our history. So let us start with a question, an easy one: How is Chantress magic worked?”