As Veronica dismounted, Jago said, “A sight for sore eyes, you.” The dog laughed up at her, ragged tail waving. “Oona’s glad to see you, too, it seems.”
She looped the reins over her wrist and went to kiss Jago’s cheek and tug Oona’s ears. “You look well,” she said. She set the package on the fence post.
“Fighting fit,” he said. “Yon Mouse is looking fit, too.”
“I was worried he might still be favoring that left foreleg, but I didn’t feel it, at the trot or at the gallop.”
“I think it’s healed.” Jago came through the gate and bent to run his hand down Mouse’s finely cut foreleg. He rubbed the shin and the pastern and lifted the hoof to flex the ankle. When he set the foot down again, he patted Mouse’s smooth shoulder. “You’ll do, lad,” he said. To Veronica he said, “Come with us into the stables? Ynyr knows you’re here.”
“He always does, doesn’t he?” She chuckled as they walked toward the stables, where the ancient Shire stallion, the horse that had belonged to her mother, lived comfortably in a box stall, with access to the paddock whenever he liked. “I do worry he’s lonely, Jago.”
“I go out to see him every day, Miss Veronica.”
“Are you lonely? I should have asked that.”
“No, no, miss. You’re here,” he said. “And Thomas comes to see me at hols.” A long whinny sounded from the barn, and he nodded in that direction. “He started that an hour ago.”
“I hadn’t even left the stables an hour ago!”
“That’s Ynyr. Always been a funny kind of beast.”
Veronica and her brother, as children, had often visited Jago at the Home Farm, especially when the weather was bad. They would gallop over on their ponies and hurry in to the warmth of the hearth fire to sprawl on the worn rug and drink cocoa brewed on the old-fashioned hob. Their mother, Morwen, had died when Veronica was born. Jago had said enough for Veronica to understand that her mother and the Shire had enjoyed a special bond.
“You’re like her,” Jago said. “Same way of speaking. Ynyr knows it.”
Veronica led Mouse inside the barn, where Ynyr stamped impatiently. Jago took Mouse to unsaddle him and bring him oats and water. Veronica walked down the aisle to Ynyr’s stall, digging in her jodhpur pocket for the bit of apple she’d brought. His teeth weren’t as strong as they once had been, so she had asked Cook to slice it thin. He nibbled the slices delicately from her palm, his big head nodding appreciation as he chewed. She stroked his neck and threaded her fingers through his silvery mane as Jago came up behind her.
“We should have bred him while we could,” she said.
“Aye, perhaps, Miss Veronica. He’s too old now.”
“I know. But I wish I had a colt out of him.”
“Miss Morwen was a sight, sitting up on that broad back.”
“No saddle, you said.”
“Never needed one. They looked like one creature, the two of them.”
“I suppose I’m not the rider Mama was.”
“You are, though. Maybe better. You can ride any horse comes your way.”
She stroked the Shire’s wide cheek. “If so, that’s because you taught me.” Ynyr nibbled at her hair, and she scratched the backs of his ears. “There’s something I want to tell you, Jago. To ask you about, really. I don’t want to bother Papa, because he’s not feeling well.”
“Come into the house,” Jago said. “I’ll make a pot of tea.”
Veronica gave Ynyr another pat, then followed Jago out of the barn and up through the bit of garden to the kitchen door, the terrier trotting at her heels. Raindrops began to spatter the tiled roof of the old stone house as they settled at the plank table with tea and a saucer of biscuits. The sound of the rain was familiar, comforting. Jago took up a knife and a small piece of wood and began to whittle.
“What’s that going to be?” Veronica asked.
He held it up. “Bear, I think. Thomas says he can’t find the one I made him before.”
“I have a whole menagerie. Tiger, giraffe, cow … everything.”
“I thought you would have outgrown my little toys.”
“Never.” Veronica sipped her tea for a moment, thinking how to begin. Jago, as always, waited in patient silence. She said, “I don’t know how you were always so good with us. Since you don’t have your own children.”
“You and your brother are like my children. No disrespect to Lord Dafydd.”
“He’s not Lord Dafydd yet, not until Grandpapa goes.”
“Coming soon, from what I hear.”
“I suppose that’s to be expected.”
“Then you’ll be Lady Veronica.”
She made a face. “Isn’t that ridiculous?”
“Some girls would like it.” She let that go without comment. He knew she wouldn’t care about a title.
An easy silence stretched between them, broken only by the patter of the rain. She watched his deft hands as the bear began to emerge from the wood, ears, blunt little nose, paws crossed on its breast.
At last she found the words she needed to say to him. “Something strange happened to me last year, when I was presented.”
“Oh, aye?”
“I tried to put it out of my mind, all this time. I told myself it was just the heat, or my imagination, or something, but—now it’s happened again.”
He didn’t look up from his carving, but she knew he was paying attention. He had always had the gift of listening, she thought, whether it was to Thomas sorrowing over some dead bird he had found in the copse, or to her describing taking a horse over a jump, elaborating the dangers and exaggerating her speed.
The terrier had been lying under Jago’s chair. Now she wriggled out and sat beside Veronica, staring at her with round, bright eyes.
Veronica absently stroked the dog’s head. “At the presentation, I had this awful vision. At least I think it was a vision. It felt like a vision. Everything was burning, the palace, the city. People were dying. It terrified me.” She left out the part about the queen. It was too hard to explain. “That was more than a year ago. I decided it was all the war talk that made me imagine it, but then, yesterday …”
Veronica’s hand began to tremble, and she set down her teacup. It rattled in the saucer until she released it. She wound her hands together in her lap.
She wasn’t fearful, as a rule. She wasn’t sensitive, like Thomas. When Phillip fell off his pony and cut his arm, Thomas couldn’t look at the wound. It was she who had been the calm one, stanching the blood, pressing the cut closed until the doctor came.
When Mouse pulled the tendon in his foreleg, she had stayed right beside him in the road until it grew so dark she could barely see. She was shivering with cold by the time the searchers found her, but she hadn’t been afraid of anything except Mouse trying to move, and making his injury worse.
But what had happened the day before was so much like the experience on her presentation day that all the nausea and panic had come rushing back. It was because, she thought, she didn’t understand it. How could she?
“I was dressing for dinner. The maid brought the post up, and there was a letter from Thomas. I had time, so I picked it up to open the envelope, and then …” She shuddered and closed her eyes. “Oh, Jago, it was awful.”
“Best to talk it out, you,” he said. His knife kept moving, shaving away precise little bits of wood and letting them fall onto the table.
She took a quivering breath as she opened her eyes. She fixed her gaze on the little wooden bear, thinking that speaking it aloud made it all too real. “This time it wasn’t the palace, and London. It was Thomas! It was as if I could see him, though I don’t know where he was. He was running, and he was wearing one of those hats—the metal kind the soldiers wear, the ones that look like upended pots. He was running, and there was noise all around, gunfire, I think, and men shouting, and then—Thomas—” She pressed her fingers to her lips.
Thomas was the sort of young man who, in another d
ay and time, and without Sweetbriar to inherit, might have gone into the church. He was easygoing, soft-spoken, bookish. He didn’t care much for horses, except to ride off somewhere with a packet of books, to read in peace. He hated sports, and played only the ones he had to when he was at school. No one laughed at him for any of that. Everyone loved Thomas.
“He fell,” she said inadequately. It was a terrible description of what she had seen. In truth, he had jerked into the air as if someone or something had thrown him, and then he had gone limp and fallen to the earth the way a sack of oats might fall, heavy and lifeless. “He looked …” She pressed her palm over her trembling mouth.
Jago set his carving aside. He reached across the table and laid his big hand on her head as she cried. She wept for a few moments, and then, when she managed to choke back her tears, he handed her an enormous blue handkerchief.
She blew her nose and wiped her cheeks. “Sorry,” she said.
“No need.”
“It can’t be war,” she blurted. “It can’t be! Chamberlain says Hitler is a gentleman, and we will have peace in our time.”
“What does Lord Dafydd have to say?”
She folded the handkerchief before her on the table, creasing it and recreasing it. “Papa says Chamberlain is a fool. So does Phillip.”
“Ah.” Jago reached for the little bear again and took up his knife. “Phillip is still young.”
“He’s so smart, though, Jago. I’ve always thought so.”
“Handsome feller, too. Fond of him, you?”
“Oh yes. I’ve known him since I was small.”
“Best way to go about it,” he said.
“Go about what?”
“Oh now, Miss Veronica, you’re not such a babe as all that.” Her cheeks warmed, and for a moment she and Jago grinned at each other. Both the Paxtons and the Selwyns had assumed for years that one day she and Phillip would join the two families, but Veronica didn’t think about it much. Phillip had been her playmate, and now was her dearest friend. It was enough for the moment.
After the moment passed she returned to the reason for her visit. “Jago, I don’t understand why this is happening to me. I’ve always had strange dreams, but I was sure they were just that—dreams. I’m not the least bit hysterical, like some girls at school …”
“No.”
“And I can’t worry Papa with such nonsense, not when he’s feeling so ill.”
Jago carved a whorl on one side of the bear’s head, and it became a pert little ear. “Not nonsense. But don’t bother your papa with it.”
“But what if it happens again? What if I’m going mad?”
Jago carved another ear, then set his knife down with deliberation. “Not going mad,” he said. His voice was low, but assured. He set the bear between them, an uncanny little figure that, on another day, she would have exclaimed over. “I have something to give you,” he added, and pushed back from the table. “Wait there.”
He was gone only a moment. When he returned he carried a Fortnum & Mason hamper, one of the heavy, old-style ones, made of wicker gone dark with age. It clunked when he set it on the table. He fiddled with the leather-and-metal fastening, then lifted the top to reveal folds of white silk. Veronica reached for the material, but Jago stopped her with an uplifted hand. “I need to explain first.”
She felt sadness emanate from him like the chill of a fog bank. A crooked furrow appeared between his brows, strangely reminiscent of the one she often saw in her own mirror. “So like your mama, you,” he said. “She thought you might be.”
“What do you mean? Papa says she never saw me, never held me …” It had always grieved her, knowing her mother had been gone from the moment she drew her first breath.
“She never held you.” He passed his hand over the crumpled silk, but without removing it. He sat down, and his gaze drifted to the window, where the autumn leaves glinted gold and bronze in the thin sunshine. “But she saw you. She saw you before you were born.”
“That’s not possible.”
“It was possible for her. As it seems it is with you. I promised, if it came about this way—the way she thought it might—that I would explain to you. I promised to tell you the story.”
“But I don’t—”
He held up one work-worn hand. “I’m not much of a talker. It will help me if you don’t ask me anything until I’m done.”
Feeling uneasy, Veronica leaned back in her chair. She steepled her fingers before her mouth, to remind herself not to interrupt, as Jago began to speak at length. As he did, her discomfort grew. By the end, when he stood to fold back the coverings in the Fortnum & Mason hamper, she was staring at him in disbelief. Her eyes felt dry, as if she had forgotten to blink. Her mouth was dry, too, and she realized it had been hanging open for some minutes.
During the recitation Oona the dog inched closer and closer to Veronica, until her whiskery muzzle pressed against her knee.
Veronica came slowly to her feet, half-convinced there would be nothing at all in the hamper. Oona moved aside just enough for her to lean over the table, but she stayed close, her rough coat catching on the wool of Veronica’s jodhpurs.
“She put it away when Lord Dafydd went off to war,” Jago said, laying aside each fold of silk with deliberate care. “He came home grievous wounded, as you know, and she sat by him in hospital for weeks on end. They married the very day he came out. After their wedding, and all the years after, she never touched the stone, or her grandmother’s old book. Then, when you were expected … She knew, you see.”
“She knew?”
“She was warned not to have another child, but she said—” Jago paused for a moment, and closed his eyes as if the memory still pained him. “She said she needed a daughter. A lass to inherit the craft. To carry on the Orchiére line.”
He paused, his hand on the last layer of old silk. He spoke with the kind of infinite sadness that never abates. “Morwen had great power, Miss Veronica. Real power. She set it aside for love.” As he said the words, he pulled back the last of the fabric. “And she asked me, if it turned out you also had the power, to see you received your birthright.”
It was there, just as he had described it. The crystal in its bed of granite glowed gently in the filtered light. Beneath it lay the grimoire in its ancient leather binding.
“Jago, what am I supposed to do with it?”
“I can’t tell you that. Your mama said some can use it, some can’t. Same with the book.”
“How do I know if I have the power?”
“Can’t answer that, either. I guess you’ll just have to try.”
Veronica wrapped her arms around herself, chilled by the import of Jago’s story, and the thought of what might lie ahead for her. Oona, watching, thumped her tail on the floor.
Strangeness followed strangeness after her visit with Jago. She rode away with the Fortnum & Mason hamper balanced on her saddle. Oona, the terrier, trotted at Mouse’s heels. Veronica ordered her to go home several times, and even turned Mouse to guide the dog back to the Home Farm, but Oona refused to stay there. When Veronica reached Sweetbriar, the dog followed her in from the stables, staying close beside her as she lugged the old hamper up the stairs to her bedroom.
The rain had eased during the ride home, but now, as Veronica went into her bedroom with Oona close behind, it resumed with a roar of thunder and a torrent of raindrops that rattled her bedroom window. The housemaid had laid a fire, and Veronica set a match to it to banish the chill. As the yellow flames leaped around the little pile of dried cedar, she faced her bed. The hamper lay there, looking ominous in the dimness, its old, shiny wicker reflecting the firelight.
She was torn between an aversion to opening it and a compulsion to see the stone once again, to prove to herself it was really there, that Jago’s story was—at least when it came to the old crystal—a true one. She had always trusted him, and she didn’t want to stop now. But what he had told her seemed as unreal as the visions she had
experienced. Another clap of thunder shook the house as she stood, irresolute, staring at the mystery Jago had delivered over to her.
Oona, as if she understood Veronica’s ambivalence, gathered her small body and leaped up onto the bed, muddying the beige coverlet with her paws. She nosed the hamper, then sat down next to it, her tongue hanging out, her sparkling black gaze fixed on Veronica.
“You think I should look at it, don’t you?” Veronica approached the bed, and Oona jumped to her feet. The dog’s scruffy tail waved steadily as Veronica released the leather straps and lifted the lid. She folded back the slippery layers of fabric, braced both hands on the sides of the hamper, and bent to look inside.
What she saw made her dizzy. Her stomach clenched. Lights glimmered and spun within the cloudy stone. She hadn’t touched it, yet images began to peer out of the maelstrom, the more vivid because of the dimness of the room. There was a succession of half-seen faces, dark eyed, dusky skinned, all of them—every single one—female. Her hands grew slippery with sweat on the wicker, and she swallowed, wondering at the sensations in her body.
What did it all mean? How would she make sense of this, all by herself?
With a groan she slammed the lid of the hamper down. Oona backed away and leaped down from the bed. Veronica retreated to the fireplace, shivering.
It was real. It was all true. Though it went against everything she had always believed, everything her church taught, that her father put his faith in—
She, Veronica Selwyn, daughter of the English aristocracy, was descended from a line of witches.
She had no idea what to do about it.
3
About Hitler, Papa was correct, as he so often was. Phillip was, too. Chamberlain was disgraced, Churchill returned to Number 10, and England winced over the reports of Kristallnacht and the invasion of Poland. In September of 1939, just over two years after Veronica was presented at court, the war began.
The staff of Sweetbriar melted away. To a man, everyone who worked for Lord Dafydd Selwyn joined up before the conscription law was passed. Most went into the infantry, but one went into the Royal Artillery and another into the 27th Armoured Brigade. The youngest cook left without notice, and they learned she had joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service. An elderly gardener joined the Local Defence Volunteers, later to be called the Home Guard.
A Secret History of Witches Page 32