Morwen stalked away from the parlor, taking care not to step on the rug. She left her father immersed in the Times, contentedly ignorant of the flame of rebellion he had kindled in his daughter.
She marched upstairs and saw that her mother’s door stood ajar in anticipation of Lady Irene’s coming up to dress for dinner.
In the throes of her anger, Morwen conceived a daring idea. Though she hesitated, wary of her mother’s temper, she couldn’t banish it. It was dangerous, but she felt an overwhelming urge to try the crystal for herself. To try it by herself.
She glanced down the corridor, but no one was about to see her. The maids would be in the kitchen, assembling china and silver under Chesley’s critical eye. Mademoiselle would be having tea in her own room. Papa was still in the parlor, Irene sitting dutifully at his side.
Morwen slipped into the boudoir and closed the door behind herself. With a sense of daring, she turned the key in the lock.
She didn’t know where her mother hid the crystal, but it had to be somewhere in her bedroom, a place Morwen had never seen. Until this moment she hadn’t cared, but now she crept forward on tiptoe and tried the cut-glass knob. It clicked, releasing the door. With a cautious finger, Morwen pushed on it.
The door swung soundlessly on well-oiled hinges, revealing a room in semidarkness, curtains drawn, windows closed. Morwen stepped inside and looked about in wonder.
Morgan Hall was adorned with Oriental carpets and heavy draperies, an abundance of bric-a-brac, statuary, and what seemed a hundred ugly family portraits festooning the stairwell, the foyer, the dining room, even the morning room. It was a well-appointed manor house. What it was not, and Morwen understood this, was tasteful. It was a Georgian house with a Victorian interior and Edwardian aspirations, all jumbled together by Lord Llewelyn and his forebears in the apparent conviction that overdecoration proves worth.
Lady Irene Morgan’s private bedroom demonstrated a profoundly different aesthetic. Morwen clasped her hands beneath her chin and turned in a slow circle, absorbing every detail.
The walls were not papered, but painted a delicate ivory. The polished wood floor was bare except for a single rug, finely woven in a pattern of pastel flowers, so pretty Morwen didn’t dare put her foot on it. The bed was white wood, a French design, Morwen thought, its delicate carvings outlined in gold. The coverlet was a pale green with white fleurs-de-lis. An enormous mirror filled the wall behind the bed. The wardrobe was the same creamy color as the walls, and a single painting hung on the wall opposite.
Morwen forgot her mission—indeed, forgot about the passage of time—as she stood gazing at the painting. The art books her governess employed featured page after page of Greek sculptures and Renaissance religious figures. Morwen had never seen a painting like this one. A girl in a scarlet robe held a glowing crystal ball in her two hands. On the table beside her lay an enormous book with some sort of wand across it, and next to the book a skull. The woman in the painting could have been Lady Irene herself, slender, dark haired. But she could never have sat for such a painting! Lord Llewelyn would never have allowed her—
The roar of the Vulcan’s motor startled Morwen, and reminded her of her purpose. Hastily she cast about for someplace her mother might hide the crystal. She bent to look under the bedstead, but there was nothing there except a pair of bedroom slippers, set side by side. She opened the wardrobe. A cloud of parfum de rose wafted from the gowns and cloaks and peignoirs hanging there. She pushed aside the long skirts of these garments and pulled open the drawer to peer among the slippers and boots, but there was no linen-wrapped bundle.
She persisted in her search, though she felt the minutes spinning by. She wondered if Irene had taken the stone with her, carried it to the place where she did her “scrying.”
A moment later she knew that was not the case. She felt its presence. It was here, and calling to her as surely as if it could speak her name.
The same way, it occurred to her now, she had been called to the ruined castle, where an old woman said, “I wanted to see you.”
All of this spun through her mind in a heartbeat. She backed up until she stood in the very center of her mother’s beautiful bedroom, her toes just touching the pretty rug. She closed her eyes and turned her palms upward. She listened, not with her ears, but with her heart.
She couldn’t have explained how the information came to her. It was a sensation. A throb, deep in her chest. It intensified until it became a near pain, piercing her breastbone from front to back. She turned to her left and it sharpened. When she turned the other way, still with her eyes closed, it eased. She turned again and it became a tug, as if a thread were attached to her rib cage, and someone—or something—was pulling on it.
She opened her eyes and allowed the thread to draw her toward the window. The window seat was deep, long enough for a woman to stretch her length, and piled with cushions in green and white and beige plush. Morwen removed the pillows and explored the wooden base of the window seat with her fingers. When her fingertips reached the edge, she lifted, and the base rose smoothly to expose a spacious cupboard. A hiding place.
It had probably been meant to hold blankets, or extra pillows. Now it held a linen-wrapped object that Morwen recognized by its shape. She had found the crystal.
At that moment a step sounded in the corridor, followed by a brief knock on the door of the boudoir. There was no time to think. Morwen caught up the crystal, keeping its linen covering securely around it. She replaced the top of the window seat and piled the cushions where they had been, then hurried across the boudoir on her tiptoes. Gingerly, doing her best to make no sound, she unlocked the door, then dashed back into the bedchamber.
There was nowhere for her to go. Someone was at the door, and would report to her lady mother that Morwen had defied her by going into her bedroom. She spun, looking for someplace to hide, but of course there was only one. It was the holy of holies, her mother’s private, specially installed, famously expensive bathroom.
It was another forbidden room, put in when Morwen was small. She remembered her father’s grumbling over the procession of plumbers and carpenters and tilers trooping up and down the servants’ staircase, then his scolding as the invoices arrived. When it was finished, Morwen and her nanny hurried to Lady Irene’s rooms, expecting a tour of the marvel. They were refused, without explanation or apology.
The nanny had said nothing, but Morwen saw the raised-eyebrow glance she exchanged with the head housemaid. Only Lady Irene and her personal lady’s maid, they soon learned, were allowed to enter the bathroom or, by the next year, the renovated bedchamber. Her Ladyship’s maid was a tiny, silent woman who regarded herself as the top of the staff in importance. Morwen heard her nanny, and the housemaids, too, teasing her to tell them what the bathroom was like. They received nothing for their pains but a dismissive sniff.
Now Morwen discovered its glories for herself, and it was astonishing. There were gleaming marble tiles inlaid with mosaics. White was the predominant color, with splashes here and there of azure and scarlet and emerald. The fixtures were white as snow, and the bathtub, standing on four enormous claw feet, immense. The taps gleamed silver, and on an array of silver hooks set into the wall hung a dressing gown, an embroidered sponge bag, and an assortment of brushes and cloths.
Beyond the commode, hidden by an appliqued curtain hanging from a curved rod, was an odd little door, narrow, painted white, with a low lintel. Morwen pushed aside the curtain to open it. It was dark beyond, but she ducked below the lintel and went through.
Morgan Hall was not old enough to have a priest hole, but the space beyond the door made Morwen think of one. There was a cramped landing with no light, and an even more cramped staircase leading downward. Morwen puzzled over this for a few moments, trying to think where the exit of this secret stairway might be. While she pondered, she heard the door of the boudoir open and close, and the voice of Mademoiselle calling, “My lady? Miss Morwen?”
&nbs
p; Mademoiselle would never dare to enter the bedchamber, or my lady’s private bath, either, but Morwen was trapped just the same. Cautiously she closed the little door behind her. The light disappeared. She stood for a moment in darkness, hoping her eyes would adjust, but it didn’t help, and she began to fear she would meet her mother coming up the stairs.
It was obvious this was how Lady Irene absented herself from Morgan Hall. Morwen sniffed, but there was no smell of dust or dankness. The staircase was used, and used often. Irene no doubt carried a candle, or a lamp.
Morwen had neither. She did have the crystal, though she had never intended to steal it. There was nothing she could do about it now. She held it tight under her right arm and stretched out her left until it met the wall of the staircase. One cautious step at a time, she began to grope her way down the stairs.
She explored each tread with her toes before putting her weight on it and trying the next. A sliver of light appeared at the bottom, and she moved a bit faster, keeping her eye on it. As she neared the light, she caught the spicy smell of wintersweet, which told her precisely where she was. Unlike the main staircase, which broke at a wide landing between the first and second floors, this one led straight down.
The gardener kept the planting of wintersweet against the southern wall, tucked behind an ell, out of sight of the drive or the front entrance. It caught the sun there, he said, and though it was a dull plant when it wasn’t in flower, it was useful for perfuming soap. Morwen loved the yellow, waxy blossoms that bloomed when everything else in the garden had gone dormant for the winter. Sometimes she plucked a few to carry to her room.
At the bottom of the stairs was a plain door with an old-fashioned latch and no window. The light came from around its edges, where the wall must have shifted and left the door hanging unevenly in its frame. Morwen lifted the latch and put her head out.
The slanting sunlight of early evening dazzled her eyes, and she blinked away tears. The gardens lay to her right, with the stables beyond. To her left was the wide expanse of the river, glistening lazily in the late sunshine. She stepped outside, closing the door behind her. She had to duck beneath the sprawling branches of wintersweet, and when she glanced back, the door was invisible.
She hurried through the garden toward the stables. She had no clear plan other than to avoid a chance encounter with Mademoiselle, or worse, her mother. Her feet carried her instinctively to the one place she was always welcome.
She was still a hundred yards from the stable when she heard Ynyr’s questioning whicker. She broke into a trot, careful to steady the crystal under her arm.
Jago came out to meet her, a piece of harness in one hand and an awl in the other. His hands were rarely empty, and sometimes she suspected he spent his evenings working, too, repairing tack or mending feed sacks. “In a hurry, you,” he said.
She slowed to a walk. “I have to get back to change for dinner,” she said.
“No time to ride? Yon great horse won’t like that.” His eyes crinkled at her, eyes as dark as her own. Tall though she had grown, Jago was a head taller, with legs even longer than hers.
“Maybe I’ll take a quick trot down to the river.”
“Saddle?”
She laughed as she walked past him into the cool dimness of the stable. It was a jest between them, Jago suggesting the saddle and Morwen refusing. Even the halter and rope were more than she needed, but they kept people from asking questions.
Ynyr was waiting, his head over the half door of his loose box. Morwen unlatched the door, and he stepped out, careful where he set his big, feathered feet. She took his halter from the wall hook and slipped it over his head, then stepped up onto the mounting block.
Jago pointed to her bundle. “What’s that? Shall I keep it for you?”
“No, thank you,” she said. “It’s … It’s sort of a secret.”
He touched his forelock with one finger. “Yes, Miss Morwen,” he said solemnly. She stuck out her tongue at him, and left him chuckling as she rode out into the golden twilight.
There was a place beside the River Thaw where she sometimes passed a lazy afternoon when she could escape from Mademoiselle. It was a nest of sorts, or a bower, shielded by a stand of three weeping willows so old that their roots extended down the bank into the river itself. Their golden-leaved branches hung right down to the earth, like the ribs of a broken umbrella. Ynyr turned toward this place, and at a steady walk carried her to it in no more than a quarter of an hour. She slid from his back and ducked beneath the drooping branches, leaving him to browse in the shade.
She knelt on the damp earth between the leaning tree trunks to unwrap the crystal.
In the shadows of the yellow boughs, the old stone shone with a light like the setting sun, gold and bronze and rust. Morwen could have been content simply to gaze at it, to let it soothe the sensation in her chest. She marveled at the way the crystal had drawn her, and at how much easier she felt with it resting before her. She caressed its rounded surface. The stone should have been cool beneath her fingers, but it felt strangely warm. She almost expected it to move, to breathe, or to wriggle under her touch.
Instead it flickered to life.
She gasped and fell back on her heels. Her mother had said she had the gift, but this evidence of her own power stunned her. Could it be true? It had been hard enough to believe that her mother, the remote Lady Irene Morgan, was a witch, but she …
She had not yet caught her breath when the light within the scrying stone coalesced into an image.
It was the crone from Old Beaupre Castle. Her seamed face and aureole of silver hair were unmistakable, as were the black eyes that glittered from the shadows as she leaned forward. She gazed out of the scrying stone as if it were a window in some fantastic door. Her lips moved, and she lifted one of her dirty hands and crooked a finger.
Morwen heard nothing with her ears, but the word the old woman spoke sounded in her mind as clearly and as loudly as if a gong had been struck. “Venez!” Come!
The image faded as quickly as it had appeared. With trembling fingers Morwen awkwardly covered the crystal, as if by hiding it she could deny what she had seen, and ignore the command that had thrilled through her head.
It did no good. She couldn’t unsee the old woman’s face any more than she could deny the summons. Though she stayed where she was, kneeling before the shrouded stone, the impulse to obey the call was too strong. She didn’t dare carry the crystal up to the castle. She tucked the wrappings tighter around it, then lodged it as securely as she could in a crumbling space between two of the tree roots that rose knee high out of the ground. She ducked out from beneath the willow branches and found Ynyr waiting beside the boulder she used as a mounting block. His head was lifted, and his ears pricked toward the ruined castle.
“You heard it, too,” Morwen sighed.
He blew gently and shook his head from side to side.
“All right. We’ll go. But I have no idea what any of it means.”
Ynyr shifted his feet, which also felt like a command. Morwen stepped up on the boulder and swung her leg over his back. He was off almost before she settled herself. She only just managed to seize the halter rope before it trailed to the ground beneath his feet.
She would be late for dinner. Her father would be irritated. Her mother would be furious. Jago would be worried, which was the worst, but there was nothing she could do about it. Ynyr knew as well as she did that she had to go.
She took a handful of his mane and tightened her legs around his barrel. Feeling her secure in her seat, Ynyr moved into his swinging trot, eating up the path by the river. It seemed no time before he turned up toward the castle, sitting brooding and broken atop its hill. Ynyr slowed to a walk, and Morwen did her best to breathe evenly, to steady her nerves for whatever new mystery awaited her.
4
The shadows stretched long by the time Ynyr reached the broken wall surrounding the castle. He stepped around bits of rock and fallen maso
nry, picking his way into the outer courtyard. Near the pillared porch he stopped. Morwen, her pulse fluttering in her throat, slid down from his back and stepped forward.
The lowering sun didn’t reach inside the walls. Morwen wrapped her arms around herself for warmth, and squinted into the darkness.
The dim figure, shrouded as before, resolved from the shadows bit by bit. Morwen smelled her before she saw her. The crone lurched into the light and peered up at Morwen from beneath her hood. She lifted a hand in greeting, but before she could speak, a voice interrupted.
Morwen’s heart jolted when she heard it, and she spun around, even as Ynyr snorted and took two steps backward.
“What are you doing?” Lady Irene’s voice was harsh with anger, and something like fear. Morwen struggled for a response that would forestall the storm of temper about to break.
The crone answered in her clear voice. “What do you think I’m doing, Irène? I’m going to speak to ma petite fille.”
Irene snapped, “Who told you Morwen was your granddaughter?”
Morwen gaped at her mother. She hadn’t denied it. The old woman moved farther out into the fading light, and put back her hood to show her mass of silver hair.
“I needed no one to tell me,” the crone said. She smiled, showing her sharp white teeth. “You misunderstand, Irène. Even though I no longer have the crystal”—her smile faded, and her black eyes flashed like reflected lightning—“the craft has not entirely abandoned me. I see things in puddles and ponds, in tea leaves, in spilled flour. The crystal was far stronger, but—”
Irene interrupted her, directing a furious glance at Morwen. “What did you do with it?” she hissed. “You went into my room, which I’ve forbidden you to do, and you stole it!”
A Secret History of Witches Page 24