Her father would die of shame. Phillip would be terribly hurt. Valéry would never know. Perhaps worst of all, she had betrayed her queen at a time when she was needed.
This couldn’t continue. She would have to take action.
Lady Veronica Selwyn, daughter of Lord Dafydd Selwyn, assistant to Queen Elizabeth and engaged to an RAF officer she had not seen in months, could not be pregnant.
Deciphering the venerable French of the grimoire had gotten easier with practice. Veronica had gone all through her French textbook again in order to converse with Valéry, and she had spent hours in search of the protection and disruption and distraction spells needed for her work with the coven. She took the grimoire out again and began to turn the crackling pages, scanning the faded texts and drawings for what she would need.
She found it with astonishing ease. She could guess that the book had been opened to this particular page many times before. At the top, in a spidery hand, was the title La fausse couche. The list of herbs was long, but Elizabeth had ordered an entire apothecary’s shop of herbs to be stored on shelves next to their basement room. With a small torch in her hand, Veronica slipped down the back stairs and made her way to them.
Raspberry leaf was easy. Cinnamon, too. Black cohosh was an herb she had never encountered, but with the help of the torch, she found a packet of it at the back of a shelf, still with its Canadian source label attached. Pennyroyal, tansy, kelp—they were all there. Cautiously she slipped a bit of each into a sack and tied it around her waist, beneath her dress in case she encountered one of the servants.
Oona watched her every move as she mixed her potion on the low parquet table in her bedroom. When she began to measure out leaves of tansy from her sack, the dog began to whine, and to lick her chops.
“Don’t fret, Oona,” Veronica said, without pausing in her work. “I know it’s dangerous.”
She ground the tansy leaves in a mortar and pestle, and crumbled pennyroyal into the mixture. Oona shifted on her hindquarters, giving little groans of anxiety. “Oona, quiet,” Veronica pleaded. “We don’t want anyone coming in to see what’s wrong with you.”
The dog subsided, though she still looked unhappy. She shook herself once, then lay down with her head on her paws so her gaze could follow Veronica’s every movement.
As she lit her candle, sprinkled water, then passed her hands over the crystal, Veronica refused to allow herself to think about what she was doing. She could not afford to feel regret, or sadness, or shame. She didn’t dare. She had a job to do. Her feelings didn’t matter. Her path was clear, though it was tragic. It was an act of war.
She placed the cup of her potion on the table next to the crystal, and proclaimed the words of the necessary spell.
Mother Goddess, hear my plea:
Touch these fruits of land and sea.
Root and leaf full blessèd be,
And from this burden set me free.
Three times three times she repeated the chant. When the rite was completed, she blew out the candle, covered the crystal, and picked up the cup. In the darkness she put it to her lips. She gagged at the taste, but she choked it down, and pressed her hand over her mouth in hopes it wouldn’t come back up. Oona sprang up and pressed against her ankles, whimpering and licking at her shoes with anxious laps of her pink tongue.
By the time Veronica heard the maids beginning their morning work in the corridor outside her room, the cramping had begun, the mockery of labor. Oona was making circles around her, whining. Veronica lay down, still in her clothes, and pulled a quilt over her legs. Oona jumped up onto the bed next to her and lay licking her hand, whimpering when she whimpered, groaning when she groaned. A maid knocked on the door, but Veronica called out that she wasn’t feeling well. When the maid asked if she needed a doctor, Veronica answered that she just needed to rest. The maid went away, and Oona pressed her small body closer and closer, as if she could share Veronica’s pain, absorb some of the misery into herself.
At the worst moments Veronica clung to the dog, gripping her muscular little body with her hands and pressing her forehead to Oona’s flank. Oona twisted her head to lick her face. It was an odd sort of comfort, but it was all there was. For hours the two of them lay on the bed together. When the pains in her body peaked, Veronica staggered to the bathroom. Oona followed, never leaving her side.
Not until it was all over, and Veronica had bathed and put on a fresh frock, did Oona trot down the stairs to go out into the back garden. Veronica followed more slowly, her body sore and aching. Two gardeners watched her with curiosity, but they didn’t approach her. She sat on a set of stone steps that wound through the shrubbery, holding her overheated face up to the cool sunshine. Only then did she allow herself to contemplate the gravity and the import of what had just happened. Of what she had done.
She had committed a sin, she supposed. Indeed, a great deal of what she had done in the past months might be considered a sin. Fornication. Deception. Witchcraft. Now abortion.
A cloud settled over her soul, dark with implication, thick with guilt. She shivered under its shadow, and wondered how she would find the strength to go forward. For a long time she sat there, hugging a sweater around her tender body and trying to discern her way.
She didn’t rouse herself until Oona nudged at her ankles, asking for food. Veronica expelled a breath. Moving gingerly, her belly hurting and her head buzzing with exhaustion, she came to her feet. This was a time for discipline.
What had happened was bad, but the world at this moment was inundated with bad things. It was sad, but there was sadness all around her. She had done what she had to do. She hadn’t been detected. She would have to be grateful for that, and carry on.
She must. If she succumbed to remorse, she would never recover.
Phillip needed her, and Thomas, and her father. Her queen needed her. Her country needed her. There was work to do. She dared not think about anything else.
8
The war had taxed everyone. Queen Elizabeth still smiled gallantly in public, but in private she was a different person entirely, bone weary and grim. Rose and Olive had already been old when the coven was called by the queen. Veronica guessed them to be in their seventies. Elizabeth was forty-four, but she looked twenty years older.
Veronica supposed she, too, looked older than she should, but she wasted no time thinking about it. The coven shared one certainty: if England lost this war, they and others of their kind would end up in the death camps with the Jews and the Gypsies. Olive had seen the possibility in the stone one night when the witches were trying to foce the commander of a panzer division to lose his way.
With a look of horror on her craggy face, Olive described what the crystal was showing her. “It’s divided in two, like an egg with two yolks. I’ve never seen this before. On one side is victory, a free England, but on the other—on the other we have lost. The wrong king is on the throne.” Her deep voice dropped even lower, and it made Veronica’s skin prickle. “It’s King Edward … and his Queen Wallis …”
Elizabeth spit on the floor, as a man might have done, and gritted, “Over my dead body.”
“Oh yes,” Olive said dully. “Many dead bodies, too many to count. There’s a camp, right here in England. They’re burning people—oh Goddess, I can’t watch anymore!” Olive pulled back from the stone and turned her back on the altar.
Veronica cried, “It doesn’t have to be, does it? You saw two scenes!”
“Yes. Victory is possible, of course.” Olive’s shoulders slumped as she turned back, very slowly, to face the other women. Between them the stone roiled with ominous, muddy mists. “The danger is far greater than we have realized.”
Rose said, in her thin voice, “What can we do?”
“I can tell you,” Elizabeth said, “that the next weeks are vital. We will end this war soon, if we’re going to end it at all.”
“Invasion?” Olive said.
Elizabeth hesitated for a fraction of a secon
d, then nodded. “Yes.”
Veronica said, “Our strongest tool is our weather spell, ma’am. We can affect the weather over the Channel, if we know the dates.”
“I’ll get them. Be ready. It’s coming soon.”
It wasn’t easy, with such knowledge weighing on her mind, but Veronica did her best to muster a smile for her fiancé when he came on leave to see her. They met in a café, with other couples around them embracing, laughing, chattering as if they hadn’t a care in the world. Phillip smiled, too, and kissed Veronica’s cheek, but the air was electric with tension. She was certain he no more felt gay than she did. Phillip, too, had aged beyond his twenty-nine years. Squint lines had appeared around his eyes from flying. His fair hair, worn short and combed straight back, had begun to gray, and he was whip thin.
No one spoke of the coming invasion, but everyone knew it had to happen. The country couldn’t survive another year of bombings, losses, food and medicine shortages. Even the Americans were running low on resources. The occasional glimpse of spring sunshine only served to accentuate the looming threat of defeat.
They found a table in a corner where there was relative quiet, and Phillip helped Veronica out of her coat and pulled out a chair for her. She said, “You’re so thin, Phillip.”
“We all are, I’m afraid.” He set his cap on the table. “But it will be over soon.” He spoke with the confidence they were all pretending to feel, but weariness emanated from him, as distinct as a cloud of cologne.
Veronica sighed, sensing it. “I can’t believe you’re still flying sorties. Surely you’ve done your bit by now.”
He gave her a tight smile and covered her hand with his. “Mostly I instruct,” he said, squeezing her fingers.
“You’re just telling me that so I won’t worry.”
“It doesn’t help if you worry.”
“I know.”
She did worry, though. She worried all the time, especially since the ghastly news had come about Thomas.
She expected no word of Valéry. They had agreed, before they parted, that there would be no letters. She couldn’t help, though, dreaming of him at night, when the self-control she exerted during her waking hours relaxed. She dreamed of Valéry, and woke to a fresh pall of guilt and shame. Occasionally she thought of giving away his ring, or burying it somewhere she couldn’t find it again, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She had tucked it into a small silk bag, and kept it with her other modest accessories. Sometimes her fingers encountered it when she was searching for a pair of earrings, and her body shivered anew, in memory.
Phillip Paxton had been her friend all her life. If she didn’t feel the passion for him that she felt for Valéry, she still cared about him very much. She hated to break the news to Phillip, but she knew she must. She hadn’t wanted to tell him in a letter, but now, faced with the difficult task, she could almost wish she had.
“Several weeks ago,” she began, “the queen sent me home to recover from—from a brief illness.”
“Thoughtful of her.”
“Yes. She’s very kind.” Veronica hesitated, toying with her ring once again. “It was a blessing I was there, Phillip. We received the worst possible news.”
“God, no. Not Thomas.”
She bowed her head. “We were at luncheon, Papa and I. The maid brought the telegram on a tray, the way she might bring the post.”
“I suppose she didn’t know any other way to do it.”
“I’m sure. Papa turned so white I thought he would faint, and his hand shook so badly he couldn’t open the envelope.”
Phillip covered her hand with his, and she gripped his fingers, grateful for his strength. “I had to read it to him, and I—he slumped forward as if he had lost consciousness. I didn’t know what to do, so I sent for the doctor, but—it was the worst day of my life, Phillip.”
“Of course it was. My poor darling.”
She didn’t tell him, of course, that the vision of Thomas that had troubled her for so long had returned in force. She knew exactly how her brother had died. She had seen it far too many times. She asked Olive about it once, after a long session in their secret room.
They were trudging up the stairs, whispering so as not to wake the servants in their bedrooms. Veronica murmured, “Do you have visions, Olive? Premonitions?”
“Naturally,” Olive had answered. “All our kind do, if they practice the craft.”
“If I stopped practicing, would they go away?”
Olive cast her a sidelong glance. “Do you want them to go away?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes I don’t want to know what’s going to happen. It doesn’t help to know, does it? Not when there’s nothing I can do.”
“It’s part of who we are, I’m afraid.” Olive spoke more gently than usual. “You mustn’t repress such things. They’re part of the gift.”
“And the burden,” Veronica sighed.
“Yes. Power is a burden. It’s the price we pay.”
It was, Veronica thought now, gazing at Phillip’s war-weary face, a terrible price. Her heart twisted, and her eyes began to sting. She blinked hard to make them stop. She couldn’t show her true feelings. It would be a betrayal.
All of them—civilians and soldiers alike, all the men and girls in this room—worked hard on the appearance of confidence. They kept a stiff upper lip. They held their chins up. They joked and laughed and danced, denying their dread of what might come.
Veronica lifted her head. “Phillip. Let’s get married now. As soon as possible.”
He gave a startled laugh. “You can’t be serious! What brings this on?”
“I know you want the wedding to be in your family church, with your sisters there, your parents. But this war has dragged on five years already! Our engagement is—it’s ancient!”
Phillip laughed again, but his expression lightened a bit. “It’s a crazy thing to suggest.”
“Why? Everyone’s doing it!” she said. “Besides, it’s not as if we could find enough sugar for a wedding cake—or enough satin for a bridal gown!”
“Perhaps you’re right, but I wish it could be different. I want you to have the wedding you dream of.”
“I don’t dream of a fancy wedding, Phillip. I never did.”
“The one my mother dreamed of, then! I suppose that wedding will never happen now. Certainly we’ve waited long enough.”
And time is running out.
Veronica didn’t speak that thought. She wasn’t even sure she believed it. She wished it had not come into her mind.
Lady Veronica Selwyn married Squadron Leader Phillip Paxton in a civil ceremony that was brief and businesslike, as if even the registrar felt the rush of the war. They didn’t tell anyone, not even their families. Phillip placed a narrow gold band on Veronica’s finger, and kissed her briefly before they signed the forms and shook hands with the registrar and the two witnesses who had left their desks for the purpose.
It all seemed terribly anticlimactic until they got to the Palace Hotel, where Phillip had arranged a room for the one remaining night of his leave. They had just reached the door to their room when the air raid siren went. They dashed down to the shelter below the hotel, hand in hand. When the thump of a bomb reached them, Phillip put an arm around Veronica’s shoulders and kissed her forehead. “There’s your organ music,” he said.
“And fireworks,” she answered, with a fierce smile. “Just like a royal wedding!”
Around them were other officers, a few girls, and a number of hotel staff. Everyone was talking and joking as if they had simply brought the party down with them. No one seemed to be afraid, and in truth, the bombings rarely reached the city anymore.
Phillip cocked his head for a moment, listening. “There go the fighters,” he said.
Veronica closed her eyes, trying to sort out the sounds, but she couldn’t distinguish which airplanes were English and which were German. She could feel, though, the tension in Phillip’s body as he strained his ears t
o follow the battle above their heads.
The all-clear sounded before midnight, and the shelter emptied swiftly. Phillip guided Veronica back up the stairs, through the lobby, and into a crowded lift. When they reached their floor, Veronica felt a sudden reluctance to go into the room, to be alone with her new husband, to do the things that were expected of her. She had to force herself to walk swiftly down the carpeted corridor, pretending to be as eager as he.
She was startled, when Phillip unlocked the door and held it open for her, to see a bottle of champagne and a slender spray of white roses waiting for her on the dressing table.
“Surprise!” he said softly.
“Why, Phillip! However did you manage?”
“The Americans have ways of making things happen. I know a lot of Americans, and I called in a favor.”
He opened the champagne, and they each drank a glass. She put the roses into a tooth glass, then opened her small valise, which contained little but her sponge bag and a nightgown. When she had washed and changed, she found the bed already turned down, the lights dimmed, and Phillip waiting for her.
It wasn’t easy. There was none of the aching need that had drawn her to Valéry, no trace of the desire that had made every touch, every movement, every intimacy a precious experience, something to be savored. But Phillip was not only her friend, he was now her husband. He was a hero many times over. He was a good man, and a brave one. She loved him as she loved her queen, and her country.
Veronica put her arms around Phillip and held him close. She couldn’t give herself to him as passionately as she had given herself to Valéry, but she did her best. She hoped and prayed Phillip wouldn’t know the difference. He deserved everything she could offer, and more.
Rumors of the coming invasion swirled through London. The bombing raids had dwindled almost to nothing. The Germans had been routed in North Africa, and the Allies had taken Italy. Though ordinary Londoners couldn’t know the exact dates, or the scope of the plans, the sense that something big was approaching pervaded every square, every shop, every street.
A Secret History of Witches Page 38