She studied his earnest face then said; ‘You are saying Anna is possessed.’
‘I am a medical man, not a theologian,’ he reasoned gently, ‘I have observed your efforts with Anna over the years. I have watched you perform miracles with her withered soul only to see it come to nothing. It grieves me to say so but there is nothing more to be done. You will only torment the child and yourself by trying.’
‘Speak plainly, Anton.’
He averted his eyes, saying quickly; ‘There is a hospital I know of, in Moorfields, the New Bethlehem‒’
With a weary groan, Kate rounded on him; ‘The asylum.’
‘This time you must listen; I have heard good accounts of the work done there....’
She took both of his hands in hers. ‘And I have delivered babies to two unfortunates at the hospital – one was chained to the floor.’
‘They are mostly insensible creatures, Kate. Some have to be restrained for their own good.’
‘Good? There is no good about it. Forgive me, Anton, physicians may understand bodily ailments, they know far better than I what to prescribe, but I defy you to tell me that any one of them understands the workings of a troubled mind ... or soul.’
‘Nor will they unless we give them the opportunity to study the afflicted. Let them try‒’
‘Anna goes nowhere. I will not give my child up to medical curiosity, or the scrutiny of fine visitors who pay for the pleasure of mocking the inmates.’
‘Even if Anna is beyond redemption? If one night she steals into your bedchamber with a knife while you are sleeping?’
Kate’s hands dropped to her sides. She glanced towards the stairs, towards the room where Anna lay. ‘If there is no preparation you can suggest,’ she said flatly, ‘for the sake of friendship, go.’
He reached out to touch the hair at her temple, an impulsive and quickly retracted gesture. Then he fastened his coat and picked up his hat. ‘Your own sleeping draughts would be better than any bleeding or head poultices.’ He stepped over the heap of pottery shards to reach the back door. Hand on the door handle he paused then turned back. ‘Kate‒?’
But she had already gone upstairs to Anna.
Part 2: Invocation
Incubus
Arnaud Chevalier had hired a coach from Seven Dials to take him to Spitalfields. Prompted by a letter brought to him by a link boy the night before, he wasted no time. A business contact had sent news of a consignment of rare tulip bulbs smuggled in with the invading Dutch; flowers so inky purple that they might be mistaken for black. Not black – not that philosopher’s stone of all true horticulturists, the wealth and immortality that would entail – but echoes of it, a commodity so desirable that if bought at the right price would command a healthy profit from his London customers.
If at the same time he could take Louise and Isabelle out of the house to which they had been confined these last two weeks because of the unrest on the streets, to choose cloth and shop for the Christmas feast, so much the better. But on waking he had discovered Louise crouched over a basin so pale and nauseous that there could be no doubt of her condition. Buoyant with the glad news he coaxed her back into bed, overruling her protests, insisting that she stay behind to rest.
He stared out of the coach window at the passing faces: women drawing back their skirts to avoid the splash from the coach wheels, a black beggar holding out his bowl beneath the swinging signboard of the Pig & Whistle, hawkers and soldiers, half-naked trollops leaning out of overhanging windows. Traders were returned to their booths, street musicians were playing to a crowd by the gaol, St Giles Roundhouse. For him Paris and the court at Versailles would always be nearest to his heart, but there was a resilience about London, an earthy vivacity that bolstered the morning’s optimism.
He pressed his periwig back against the vibrating wall between him and the driver and turned his gaze on Isabelle opposite. When she smiled at him as she was doing now – with that excited light in her eye and a slight blush upon her cheek, he saw her mother so clearly. Not quite Élise’s smile, not that same fearless nature which had so bewitched and bedevilled him. Isabelle was as biddable as her mother had been stubborn, he reflected, as indeed her brother was stubborn.
Not for the first time of late it struck him that he could not keep her with him forever. With a pang of guilt he realized that she had been his female companion for too long. In Paris she had so often accompanied him to balls and the opera that by some she had been mistaken for his wife, or his mistress. Despite this he had been proud to have her at his side. Only now did he recognize the selfishness of his pride. For all the changes since he married Louise Morin he did not doubt that Isabelle would dance attendance on him to the end of his days, if he should let her. He sighed, seeing now that such a thing must not be allowed to happen – that he must put the matter to rights while youth was still on his daughter’s side.
‘Quel domage that Louise fell ill,’ she said, ‘she was looking forward to this outing even more than I.’
Leaning forward he took her hand and studied it. ‘Your stepmother’s indisposition ... I think you should be the first to know that she is expecting a child.’
He studied her reaction. Her selfless delight at the news only deepened the sense that he had bound her to him for too long. To have a wife and a daughter of an age was one thing, to have one deny herself so utterly was quite another.
‘To have such news in time for the Feast of the Nativity! Oh, papa, it’s wonderful‒’
The coach suddenly pulled up. There was shouting in the street and the coach rocked as the driver jumped down from his seat. Arnaud raised a finger, a sign that Isabelle was to stay inside, then found the door catch. The fighting spirit which had won him decorations while serving in King Louis’ household cavalry, which had more recently seen him through troubled times in Paris, was never far away.
A sharp rapping on the window had him out of the door in a split second. He pointed his pistol at the head of the soldier who stood with there, musket held upright in his hands.
‘I mean you no alarm, sir,’ said the soldier, parrying Arnaud’s weapon with the muzzle of his musket.
‘What is the meaning of this, lieutenant‒?’ Arnaud demanded.
‘Lieutenant Louis Veron, Dutch army ... and you are, sir?’
Arnaud frowned. ‘I am a private citizen, on private business. I was not aware that curfew extended to daylight hours.’
‘No, sir it does not, but as you see....’ Veron pointed past the mail coach in front, beyond a snarl of wagons and sheep to the noisy brawl around Newgate gaol and the Old Bailey up ahead, ‘....these streets are impassable.’
As Arnaud glanced round for their absent driver a loaded dray drew up behind locking in their coach. ‘How long will this take?’
Veron glanced across at his captain who having dealt with the two mail officers in front, was now coming towards them. With a curt nod François announced himself. A riot, he explained, founded on rumours that petty criminals were being executed to make way for sympathizers of King James. The militia were doing what they could to contain the affray until Dutch reinforcements arrived. Meanwhile it was his duty to marshal the traffic.
‘Captain Fuller,’ Arnaud remonstrated, ‘My name is Arnaud Chevalier. I have pressing business on the east side of the city and my daughter is travelling with me.’
Keeping an eye on his men’s attempts to clear the way ahead for the mail coach, François was only half listening. He did however follow Chevalier’s gesture towards the figure inside the coach. And he recognized her face at once; St Martin’s Lane, the hand at the throat, the glimpse of white breast. The superiority of the brother, the stern protectiveness of the father surely meant that she was not madame as he had addressed her that day, but mademoiselle.
‘Captain,’ she exclaimed, opening the carriage door. The warmth of her greeting was not lost on him: the way back to St Martin’s Lane had presented itself.
Standing in the windo
w of her bedchamber Louise watched her father turn his mare out into St Martin’s Lane. It was early evening, his work in the surgery done for the day. Just one last house call to make, he had told her, Theodore Hawkins on whom he had operated for a gangrenous leg earlier in the week, then he would retire to his lodgings in Chaney Lane.
He had come up to see her before leaving but the ritual had not been enough tonight; the few words, the tender kiss, had made her want to cling to him – to beg him to either to stay or else to take her home with him.
She willed him to look back and wave at her. Her heart leapt as his head turned, as for an instant it seemed he would. But it was the rattle of crates in the courtyard that drew his attention; Arnaud attending to the unloading of a consignment of bulbs he had bought, too valuable to be stored at the warehouse. So her father lifted his hand in a salute not meant for her, but for her husband.
All day it seemed her mind had been leaping from one extreme course of action to another. The draft her father had dosed her with in the morning had helped her to sleep for an hour, maybe two, but she had woken to find Pierre leaning over her, the key to the bedroom door in his pocket. And when at last he was done with her the retching had returned with such violence that she had vomited blood. Her floundering mind had gone from the poisons chest, to hurling herself into the Thames ditch, to running away.
Finally her thoughts had turned to Kate. Kate was strong, she would know what to do. Kate would know what to do.
A creak from the landing shattered the stillness of the dark room. Her mouth went dry, her hands began to tremble. Not him, please God, not him.
‘Louise‒?’ Isabelle’s voice. She stood in the doorway, a lamp in her hand. ‘Are you unwell?’
The tension drained from her body taking with it the strength in her limbs. She steadied herself on the bedpost and sank down on to the bed. ‘No, no, I’m much better,’ she said, producing a smile and holding out her hand. ‘Come on in, close the door behind you.’
‘But the fire is almost out ... let me fetch Ursula to bank it for you.’
Louise patted the bed beside her. ‘It will wait, come – I have something to tell you.’
‘I’m so pleased for you,’ Isabelle hissed happily, ‘father told me that you are with child.’
Louise took Isabelle’s hand in hers and studied her face in the lamplight. ‘Dear Isabelle, you are a good friend ... more sister than stepdaughter.’ Though they were close in years, Isabelle suddenly seemed so much younger; carefree in a way she felt she could never be again. And she sensed a new radiance about her tonight; something other. ‘What is it?’ she breathed.
Isabelle squeezed her hands. ‘Father has changed so much since he married you. I never hoped‒’
Huddled together in the half-light upon the bed where earlier her brother perpetrated unspeakable indecencies and earlier still Louise had allowed Arnaud to believe that she had conceived his child, Isabelle whispered; ‘I knew him at once....’
Isabelle blushed as she described how impressed her father had been that Captain Fuller had arranged for their carriage to receive safe escort along with the mail coach – how he had personally ridden the footplate until they were clear of the affray. Hardly able to sit still she related how in the parting moment her heart had skipped a beat when the handsome captain had asked her father’s permission to escort her to Vauxhall Gardens; how to her astonishment, Arnaud had shown no anger at all, merely insisted that the captain visit her at St Martin’s Lane rather than expose her to the vagaries of the town.
Louise listened, trying to picture the face she had seen down in the lane that morning after the night of the Irish terror. But now as then the face of François superimposed itself.
Isabelle sighed. ‘Ah Louise, you cannot help but admire the man; he is dark and strong. His eyes are the colour of hazels, and he knows French....’
With a sickening jolt Louise realized why it all sounded so familiar. Isabelle, the room, everything seemed to telescope away from her.
It had all been there in her nightmare of the night before.
Christmas Eve
Kate was looking forward to the Christmas feast. That she who had long before renounced religion and the church; who had received sore usage at the hands of one priest and then another in their attempts first to indoctrinate and later to condemn her for a witch, should have any regard for the birth of their Saviour, surprised those closest to her.
But just as she knew that evil existed, so she knew that there was goodness too – let it take whatever form a mind could fathom. For her mother Elizabeth, it took the form of the Trinity; of a folklore passed down through the generations. When they hanged her for a witch, when that dread hour came though Kate the daughter beseeched God, though her young fingers held back the hand of the larum watch – for that Kate – for many years they destroyed goodness itself.
But time had done its work and she had come to understand that Elizabeth lived on in her; in the prayers and the hymns she had learnt at her knee; in the knowledge of herbs and of healing. Kate could now distance herself from the rites and the dictates of the priests, and once more accept her mother’s God as her God, her mother’s saviour as her own.
Besides, François had been born on this day two-and-twenty years before. The long lost son who was now found again. And London, so much at odds with itself of late, seemed to have cast strife aside to honour Christmastide. Church bells vied with the cries of street market traders, the waits and the mummers were back in the parks and the lanes.
Anna had not been out of her bedroom for days, her eyes become darkened wells in a face deprived of air and sunlight. The girl’s malaise hung heavily on them both. So when the girl Jenny turned up as usual to help with the laundry – her face swollen and bound with a scarf, Kate treated her tooth with oil of cloves and decided that they should go out, all three of them. Go hang the laundry, hang the letter she had received from Anton Morin – each word so carefully chosen and yet still so offensive for repeating all that he had suggested to her on the day he examined Anna. Hang it all, they would lose themselves in the revels.
It took the length of Tyburn Lane for Anna’s eyes to accept the weak December light and though Kate and Jenny supported her, she tottered like a child, trembling beneath the layers Kate had wrapped her in.
Laughter and piping drew them to a fair in Jermyn Street. On a makeshift stage close by the stocks a troupe of actors were drawing howls of laughter from the audience on the street and leaning out of windows. Booths and barrows vied with established shops to sell pies and well-hung fowl. The smell of roast chestnuts sweetened the reek of dung and the open sewer.
Steering the girls clear of the urchins brawling to divert attention from the thieving antics of the friends threading their way through the crowds, Kate peeled chestnuts for Anna. For the first time since her violent turn in the kitchen, Anna met her gaze. Better still, she smiled.
It was Jenny’s idea to take shelter in the parish church. The rain had gone from spit to lash and the church door stood open. A prayer of thanksgiving, Jenny suggested, a chance to see the decorations and greenery inside.
‘Come mother,’ Anna urged. And despite a faint uneasiness Kate followed the giggling girls under the pointed archway.
She would remember only snatches of what happened next. There was Anna standing at the altar rail and Jenny, self-conscious Jenny with her eyes squeezed shut and her half-remembered words, kneeling beside her. But by then Kate’s head was already spinning and the whisperers – those ethereal voices she had thought long gone – were masking all other sounds.
A sudden suffocating pressure in her chest, a gnawing tightness at the base of her skull. She could feel the carved wood of the box pew door as she grabbed it for support; could see the vaulted ceiling blurring and resolving itself ... and Anna turning to look at her; a cold, detached expression on her face. Then the vision overtook her.
....a man lying on his side – curled in upon his hurt
. The cloying taste of blood – blood sluicing between fingers, over exposed gut, rattling in his lungs.
Blood everywhere – splashed over the brick floor, imprinted with hand and footprint.
His chin jerked up ... face unscrewing, appealing to her for help....
A face Kate recognized. She heard a racking sob and knew it was her own.
....and in his eyes a reflection – a flitting figure ... the widening of his eyes, his body shrinking in terror – then confusion, a violence there was no escaping....
The faces of strangers wafted in and out of focus as Kate came round on the cold stone floor of the aisle. The weathered features of an old man loomed over her. He was screwing his hat in one hand, with the other he raked his scalp.
‘Took a turn, did thee missus?’
‘Some kind of fit, you may count on it, sextant,’ declared the verger, his hands buried inside fur-trimmed sleeves.
Drained and distracted, Kate could not speak for herself. The sextant kindly helped her into a nearby pew. Then Anna stepped forward. Kate reached for her daughter’s hand.
‘Your ma, is she?’ enquired the sextant. ‘Given to fits, is she?’
Anna shook her head.
‘It is the witch in her,’ she said.
From her inglenook seat Joanna Drew spotted the ostler pointing in her direction. Standing beside him in the doorway of the inn a rough-looking cove raised his tankard at her. She had been here before with other men – a fact clearly not lost on the ostler. And by the way he tipped his cap and walked back out, her being alone tonight was not lost on him either.
The door from the street opened. She squinted through the smoky haze, hoping that this time it was him. But he was not among the three who came in on a wintry gust and made their way across to the fire. From the corner of her eye she saw rough trade making his way over to her.
She had not meant to be careless. Personal callers only, that was the house rule. Cassy had laid the law down about it from the start; respectable punters only – none of that up-against-an-alley-wall stuff. The clients had to be vetted; for her safety ... for the safety of all the girls. On Cassy’s say-so or not at all.
The Sorcerer (The Witch Trilogy Book 3) Page 6