“It does seem that way.”
The change in him did seem miraculous. He had gained weight, though he was still lean. He was taller than she was, which she hadn’t known before, and his hair had grown back, black and thick and straight. Almost the only things she recognized were his dark eyes and long-fingered hands. His face still bore the marks of the suffering he had endured, and, she feared, grief.
In these days of so much death and loss, she supposed there was nothing to be gained by avoiding the topic. “I mailed your letter, Valéry. I don’t suppose you’ve had a response.”
He shook his head as he released her hand, and turned to folding his few belongings into a canvas bag. Veronica recognized the bag as one that had belonged to a British officer, one who had not survived his injuries. They kept a little hoard of such things in a storeroom, putting them to good use when they could.
Valéry pulled the drawstrings and tied them before he answered. “I thank you very much for your efforts, mademoiselle, but there will be no reply.”
“Why do you say that?”
His voice was hard. “The news from Drancy is very bad, many deaths, little food. And—” He turned his head away and said softly, “You may not believe, but I dreamed of my mother, and she told me. She did not live long in that place.”
“Of course I believe you,” Veronica said. A girl who saw faces in crystals could hardly deny the power of a dream. “I’m so sorry.”
He lifted the bag and slung it over his shoulder. “They came to the school,” he said. “They asked which ones were Jews, and which were Gypsies, and then they took them, tiny children screaming for their parents.”
“That’s unspeakable.”
“The dead are the lucky ones at this time, I think.”
“What a terribly sad thought.”
“I am sorry to say I am without hope, mademoiselle.”
“We have to find something to hope for, don’t we?”
“I hope only for revenge.”
“There has to be more than that,” she said. “I was thinking of the miracle of Valéry Chirac getting well.” She put out her hand to him and offered a tentative smile.
He took her hand, and though he didn’t quite smile, his expression lightened enough to show her the handsome man he must have been before war stole his youth.
Her youth had been stolen, too, she thought, as they shook hands and said their good-byes. In a different time, she and this intense man might have been friends. Might have been more.
As she left the hall, she twisted and twisted her heavy engagement ring.
6
First,” Queen Elizabeth said, as she poured tea for Veronica, “we will take a few days to establish your position here.” She twinkled at her as she added three lumps of sugar. “The princesses are coming to meet you in a few minutes.”
“Do they know, ma’am, what I—what we—are?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “I don’t see any evidence that either of them has inherited my gift, I’m afraid. It could still happen, especially for Margaret, but all too often it doesn’t. I fear modern life depresses the power, diverts it.”
“Are there any others of your line?” Veronica accepted her teacup, amazed that these were her sovereign’s fingers grazing hers, as if she were any usual hostess. “Your sisters, perhaps?”
“Only one. Mary Frances, Lady Elphinstone.” Elizabeth sipped her tea calmly, but Veronica saw the telltale darkening of her famous eyes. “She has a bit of a gift for simples. When we were children, she used to do something with sugar water so that birds would sit on her hand.” She shrugged. “It wasn’t much. I have hope for her daughters, but of course, I can’t ask.”
“Your mother taught you, then.”
“Yes, thank goodness. I can’t imagine what it’s been like for you, Veronica.” She smiled. “But my friends and I will see to it that you learn what you need to know.”
“Friends?”
“You’ll meet them soon. You left the stone at home?”
“Yes, as you suggested.”
“I think it’s best. There are so many servants here. We wouldn’t want anyone to discover it in your room and have questions. We will establish you first as my special assistant, and prepare for the work ahead. For now—” She glanced up as a discreet knock sounded at the door. “Ah. My daughters.”
Veronica jumped to her feet and curtsied to each of the princesses as she was introduced. The two of them could hardly have been more different from one another. Princess Elizabeth seemed already somber with the weight of the responsibility that would one day fall on her slight shoulders. Princess Margaret was gay and voluble, even now, discussing the responsibilities of the royal family in wartime.
“Lady Veronica will be my personal courier to the two of you,” Queen Elizabeth said.
“How kind,” was Princess Elizabeth’s comment, with a nod to Veronica.
“What fun!” exclaimed Princess Margaret. “Are you allowed to drive? Perhaps we could take a spin one day. And is this your dog?” She crouched to stroke Oona, who lay beside Veronica’s chair. Oona responded with a thorough face licking.
Veronica smiled at the younger girl’s enthusiasm. Margaret was only twelve, and though she was second in line to the throne, that apparently did not concern her. She chattered throughout the tea, winning indulgent glances from her mother and a forbearing expression from Princess Elizabeth.
For a week Veronica and the queen kept up the fiction that she had come from Sweetbriar to be Elizabeth’s courier and companion in troubled times. She worked at the palace during the day and rode home to the castle at night, where she had been given a private room with an en suite bath. She was comfortable there, but achingly lonely. She missed her father, and Jago, and Mouse. And, of course, Phillip and Thomas. She worried over them both. Whenever a messenger appeared, which was often in the palace, her shoulders hunched with tension, and didn’t release until she knew the message was not for her.
She dreamed once of Thomas, a dark dream in which he was cold and frightened and hungry. She woke feeling fearful and restive.
She dreamed of Phillip, too, a dream of memory. Thomas was in the dream, too. They were all young, the three of them playing croquet on the lawn of Sweetbriar, laughing, teasing each other, running in the sunshine. It wasn’t the romantic dream of an engaged girl. It was the dream of a lonely and anxious one.
She told herself it would be sorted out, in time. When she was less worried, less frightened, she would feel what she was supposed to feel. She would be able to look forward, instead of back to easier days. She would feel desire as well as affection, would be excited over becoming a bride, would be enthusiastic about her future as Lady Paxton.
In the meantime there was the war to fight.
At the beginning of her second week in London, the queen herself knocked on her bedroom door, at an hour when Veronica was already in her dressing gown. Veronica opened it and hastily curtsied.
Pleasantly, as if it were the middle of the day instead of the middle of the night, Elizabeth said, “Could you dress, dear? My friends are here. Oh, and do wear something warm.”
Veronica dressed hurriedly in a skirt and a heavy sweater, then followed the queen down three flights of stairs to a narrow basement corridor. In a small room, which Elizabeth opened with a key she drew from beneath her dress, two elderly women waited. They were both shrouded in long coats and wearing thick-soled shoes with old-fashioned black stockings. Neither, Veronica noticed, curtsied, though they both inclined their heads to Elizabeth.
The queen locked the door from the inside, and used only given names as she presented the two to Veronica.
One, a wrinkled woman called Rose, was tiny, with a small, foxy sort of face, and thin, perpetually pursed lips. She greeted Veronica with a nod of acknowledgment.
The other woman, named Olive, was tall, lean, and leathery, with a deep voice and a trick of holding her head very high and looking down her long nose at whomeve
r she was speaking to, even Elizabeth.
Olive and Rose were the witches of Queen Elizabeth’s coven.
Olive showed little sympathy when Elizabeth explained that Veronica was an apprentice, and that her mother had died in childbirth. “No grandmother?” Olive demanded in her rough baritone.
“I never knew her.”
“Shame. Always better to learn from your own line. Still, better late than never.”
“Yes, Miss—Mrs.—I apologize. I don’t know how to address you.”
“Olive will do. The less we know about one another, the safer we are.”
Rose, in a high, creaky voice that reminded Veronica of a hinge in need of oiling, pointed to Oona, who was pressed close to Veronica’s calf. “Familiar?”
“What?”
“Your spirit familiar.”
Olive said, “We all wish for one, you know.”
“I don’t know if that’s what she is.”
Olive emitted an impressive sniff drawn through her long nose. “Yes, you do. Foolish to deny it.”
Veronica almost laughed aloud. She was unused to being called foolish by anyone, much less a woman clearly of lower rank than herself. She was prepared to dislike this tall, mannish woman. She soon changed her mind.
Olive and Rose had been practitioners for decades. The vocabulary and techniques of the craft seemed to come as naturally to them as walking did to Veronica. Olive, despite her abrupt manner and evident lack of sympathy, took it upon herself to become Veronica’s instructor.
There was a great deal to learn. Olive explained each detail of the rites as they worked.
“We use a new candle to prevent contamination by any earlier intention,” she said. “Salt water is for protection, because salt is necessary to our survival, and is therefore strengthening. It’s important. We make ourselves vulnerable to evil elements when we cast.”
She made a gift to Veronica of a white silk scarf to drape over her head. “It has no practical meaning, but tradition is part of the craft,” she told her. “In another place, at another time, we could go sky-clad, but—”
“What’s sky-clad?”
“Naked.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, that practice goes back a long way. To quote Leland:
And ye shall all be freed from slavery,
And so ye shall be free in everything;
And as the sign that ye are truly free,
Ye shall be naked in your rites.”
“Bit silly, really,” Rose said in her creaking little voice.
“Why?” Olive snapped.
“Cold.”
Olive repeated, with a bite in her voice, “Tradition, Rose.” Rose pursed her wrinkled lips even tighter and didn’t answer. Veronica suspected it was an old argument.
It was all a bit like being back at school. Veronica sometimes felt as if her head would burst with the information Olive poured into it, expecting her to remember everything, but she welcomed the intensity. When she had free time, she pored over the grimoire in her room, trying to understand its secrets. On the days when there was no coven, she ran errands for Elizabeth, sometimes accompanying the younger princess to the park with Oona bounding alongside, or carrying private correspondence to the elder princess, who was learning to repair motors as a member of the Auxiliary Territorial Service.
She was so busy, at all hours of the day and night, that she lost track of how long she had been in London. She wrote her father often, as she had promised, but she had to make up stories about lovely luncheons with the princesses, tea with the queen, outings to libraries or museums. She was shocked to realize, one morning, that she had been away from Sweetbriar nearly two months.
It was another dream that reminded her. It had been weeks since she dreamed. She had been, she thought, too tired, and too distracted by all that was happening. But this dream—this dream was so real, so vivid, that it was as if it had actually happened.
She dreamed of Valéry Chirac, in the brown uniform of a French soldier, holding a fearsome-looking rifle with a bayonet attached to it. In her dream they were saying good-bye, not as a nurse and her patient, but as sweethearts, with kisses and a lingering embrace. She woke with tears on her face, and an ache of parting in her chest. But not, she realized with shame, a parting from her fiancè. She hadn’t seen Phillip in weeks, yet it was a Frenchman she barely knew who made her cry in her sleep.
It was the bloody war, she thought. Or the bombs. Or even just the strangeness of being away from home, lonely despite the people around her. She reminded herself how grateful she was to have found others like her, to be doing good work, to be able to serve her queen. She showered and dressed in haste, and refused to think of the dream again.
She was breakfasting alone in a small dining room of the castle when the queen appeared. Veronica jumped to her feet and curtsied. “Ma’am?” They had had a very late night in their basement room, and she had expected the monarch to have a lie-in.
“Yes,” Elizabeth said, with a distracted air. “Something’s come up. The king will need me today, and tomorrow as well—the rest of the week, in fact. He has a terrible cough, and I’m going out to Sandringham with him, try to get him to rest.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Veronica said. “What would you like me to do?”
“Get word to Rose and Olive—you know where they live, don’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Drive yourself. No one must know.” Elizabeth ran a hand over her face, and had she not been the queen, Veronica would have gone to her, patted her shoulder, tried to offer words to ease her anxiety. But she was the queen, and such an action was impossible.
“Anything else, ma’am?” she asked quietly.
Elizabeth gave her a sad smile. “Go home for a few days, Veronica. You’ve worked hard. Your father will be glad, and a rest will be good for you, too.”
Veronica set out on the train that very afternoon, happy to be on her way home, even briefly. Jago met her at the station, giving her a broader smile than was his custom. Despite his objections she put Oona in the back seat and sat beside him in the front. She savored the familiar sights of the lanes leading to Sweetbriar, and the chance to talk to Jago. “How is Papa?”
“Well enough, I think,” Jago said. “I can’t help him with his pain the way you do.”
“I know. I worry about that. But you’ve been able to manage the rest of it?”
“In my way,” he said. “Not as well as you do.”
“Mouse?”
“Mouse will be happy to see you. He could use a gallop.”
“As soon as possible! Ynyr?”
“Much the same.”
She found things just as she had left them, in the private rooms of Sweetbriar and those of the hospital. She toured them with her father, and then left him resting in the morning room with his tea as she went out to the stables to see Mouse. Oona was overjoyed at being in the country once again, and dashed here and there, barking at squirrels and birds.
Veronica stood in Mouse’s stall, letting him nibble a carrot from her palm. She rested her cheek against his mane to breathe in the comforting and comfortable scent of horse.
“He’s a beauty,” came a deep voice from the door of the stables.
Veronica gave a little start, and Oona, who had been nosing in the corner of the stables in search of mice, lifted her head. “Valéry!”
“Lady Véronique,” he said. She smiled at the sound of her name in French, and at the color in Valéry’s lean cheeks, the fullness of his hair brushing his forehead. He leaned on his cane as he walked toward her, but lightly. He said, “You have come home.”
“There was a break in my—in my work,” she said, giving Mouse a last pat and stepping out through the stall door. “You look well.”
“Well enough. I leave in three days.”
Veronica paused, one hand still on the stall door. Oona trotted toward her, sensing a change as Veronica’s dream came rushing back to her.
Valéry said, “Are you all right? You look tired.”
“I’m fine,” she said, but her hand trembled a little as she put it out to shake his. His skin was warm and smooth, and the fineness of his fingers sent a thrill up her arm. He wore a thin gold ring on the little finger of his right hand, and she felt the scratch of its pale stone—a peridot, perhaps—against her palm. “Where are you going when you leave?”
“Somewhere I can fight,” he said.
“Yes.” She withdrew her hand, but slowly. He seemed equally reluctant to relinquish the contact. They gazed at each other for a moment, and though neither moved, something flashed between them, unspoken but intense. Veronica felt her engagement ring drag at her left hand. Hardly knowing she did it, she hid her hand in her pocket.
“And you?” he said. “How long do you stay?”
Her heart began to thud so loudly she thought he must hear it. She said, “The same. Three days.”
“How fortunate we are to see each other one more time, then.”
She breathed, “Yes.”
He broke the moment by smiling. The expression took years from his face. “I am sorry,” he said. “I should have told you how lovely you look in your city clothes. My manners have left me.”
“Oh no!” she laughed. “Wartime manners follow different rules.”
“Perhaps.” He offered his elbow. “But let me escort you back to the house.”
She took his arm and tried to resist the frisson it gave her to walk with him, their shoulders touching, back over the lawn to the house. They parted at the hall, Veronica for tea with Lord Dafydd, Valéry to assist in repairing a broken wheelchair.
She promised herself, as she made her way toward the morning room, that she wouldn’t think of him again. Probably, she told herself, he wasn’t thinking of her at all.
Her three days passed all too swiftly. She spent them mostly doing small things for her father. Jago had the other tasks of the household more or less in hand, with Honeychurch to help. She conferred with Cook, and was pleased at how she had managed on her own, with Jago to run to the shops for her. She rode Mouse down to the Home Farm, with Oona trotting alongside. The destruction there made her heart sink. She feared it would never be rebuilt, that old house where she and Thomas had enjoyed so many pleasant afternoons. Thinking of it made her miss her brother with a physical pain.
A Secret History of Witches Page 36