Witchy Kingdom

by D. J. Butler

  The Cavalier cleared his throat. “Zorales commands Your Majesty’s artillery. The majority of the soldiers under her command are former Pitchers. They are also largely women and Firstborn, and I understand they are particularly enthusiastic for Your Majesty’s cause.”

  Even Tarami laughed at that.

  Sir William continued. “Valia Sharelas has also agreed to serve Your Majesty. With Your Majesty’s permission, I should like to offer her the second position after myself, with the appropriate rank. She is acting in that capacity already.”

  “Of course. And our forces?”

  “It is a small army,” Sir William said. “Barely fit for the defense of a city, and certainly unfit for sallying forth to attack a larger enemy. We have artillery for the walls. Most of the wealthy families of the city have contributed some or all of their retinues. Along with the wardens and the beastkind, we are drilling the new recruits. Thank Heaven that, for the moment, the forces outside the walls are nearly as motley as ours.”

  Sarah breathed a sigh, if not of relief, exactly, then of a slight lowering of the tension that knotted up her spine.

  “Still, to break this siege, we will need more forces than we presently have at our disposal. And one more thing, Your Majesty,” Sir William added. “We have taken two prisoners this morning, climbing the western wall.”

  Sarah frowned. “Beastkind?”

  Sir William chuckled. “Pirates, as it happens. And I think you should see them.”

  “Your father gave powerful gifts.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Thomas carried the dead child in his own arms.

  Temple had brought him in to see the boy shortly after dawn. The other Parlett quintuplet was alive, though unconscious and whimpering through some sort of nightmare. Gottlieb, whose duty it had been to watch the children through the night for any incoming messages, lay senseless on the floor, bleeding through his nostrils.

  Thomas took the Parlett boy to Shackamaxon Hall. He wasn’t traumatized by the child’s death any more than he was shaken by the deaths of any of his dragoons or company factors or spies. People died for empire: men, women, and children. Thomas could not begin to hold himself responsible for each of them.

  If the Parlett boys had come to him from their families rather than from the Imperial College, he might have sent their parents money, perhaps even arranged an annuity. He might very well have put all five Parletts on the honors list, once their work was done.

  But he wouldn’t shed a tear.

  Once the other Parlett was conscious, Thomas would inquire whether Director Schmidt had any explanation. First, he would see what he could learn from his guiding ancestral genius.

  The hall was cold. Since Thomas was the only person who used the hall, and that only infrequently, there was no point heating it. The vents that would have brought coal-heated air into the large room were shut, and the stones felt like slabs of ice under his knees.

  He laid the boy on the floor.

  “Grandfather,” he said. “What happened?”

  There was no answer.

  “Grandfather,” Thomas tried again. “This boy died under my roof tonight. He died for his empire and there’s no shame in that, but there is something of a mystery. His brother lives, but raves, and the name that falls from his lips over and over again is Oliver Cromwell.”

  Nothing.

  “The Lord Protector could not be allied with the Cahokian witch.” Thomas pressed his forehead to the stone. “Please. I am trying to understand.”

  The Presence filled the hall.

  Thomas’s heart beat faster.

  “My son,” the apparition said in his voice of cutting wire and shattered glass. “You are troubled by death.”

  “The boy is nothing,” Thomas said. “There are four others to replace him. But he died in my hall. Was it an attack? Did the boy take a blow that was aimed at me? Why does he repeat the Lord Protector’s name, over and over?”

  “Are you troubled by the name of Cromwell?”

  Thomas considered. Was he? “No. The Lord Protector deeded Pennsland to my family. I owe him my wealth. And if perhaps he went astray later in his life, he did it for his land. He took power to benefit the people of his England.”

  The Presence took two steps forward, plate armor gleaming dully in the morning light. Thomas’s heart beat faster; his grandfather was walking toward him. “He took power to benefit all the children of Eve, my son.”

  “But is it the Lord Protector who now attacks me?”

  “The Lord Protector has no desire to bring down the House of Penn. On the contrary, together we shall work a mighty work. The Eternal Commonwealth that fell in England under the hammer of John Churchill may rise in Pennsland, protected by the sword of Thomas Penn.”

  Visions of an eternal Philadelphia filled Thomas’s mind, a Philadelphia in which every building glowed with the warmth and light of permanent power, and not just the Lightning Cathedral. A Philadelphia in which Thomas had no need of the protection of his Town Coat, in which he didn’t need to cadge shillings to fund the grinding pseudo-war of the Pacification, and in which the most noble and wealthy princesses of Europe came to seek his affection.

  He shook his head. “Grandfather, strengthen my faith. You speak of glorious things, and I find that I am a bricklayer whose task it is to capture the continent’s overflow of liquid feces.”

  Moments of terrible and majestic silence passed.

  “I give you a sign, my son. Rise.”

  Thomas lifted his eyes, surprised that the Presence would command him to stand.

  Then he realized that the order wasn’t directed at him.

  Lying naked on his back, the Parlett boy opened his eyes. A split second later, he gasped, sucking air into his narrow chest with a high-pitched whistle.

  “God be praised,” Thomas murmured.

  “Life,” the Presence said. “So fragile in the individual. So indomitable in its collective flow. Nowhere to be found when needed, and impossible to eradicate when it is not desired.”

  Thomas nodded.

  Parlett sat up. The pallor fled from his cheeks and he shivered.

  “The gift of God poured out uselessly on the undisciplined poor, and grudgingly withheld from the mighty.”

  The Parlett child climbed to his feet, swaying unsteadily.

  “Even John Churchill doubted at the end,” the Presence said. “Even the Hammer of Woden wondered whether he had sided with the powers of death, to the detriment of his beloved land.”

  Odd to hear his grandfather talk of Lucky John so, though of course they had been contemporaries. “I would bless my land.”

  “I know you would, my son. And yet you have no children to follow you. If you die today, who rules Pennsland? Whom do the Electors choose for the throne?”

  Thomas sighed. “I know I fail you in this, grandfather. I am trying. I do not wish Hannah’s rebel get to spoil what you built. What I have built. And I have years yet to take a bride.”

  Parlett tottered toward the door. Thomas turned his neck slightly to keep an eye on the boy.

  “You may have more years than you think,” the Presence said. “I preserve you with my power, my son. You will be vigorous and strong into an unusually old age, as you are faithful.”

  “I am faithful,” Thomas said.

  “And yet, I cannot extend your life forever,” the Presence said. “My power is limited as of yet.”

  Parlett abruptly fell. As if he were a marionette and his puppeteer had cut the strings, the boy collapsed in a tangle of bare knees and elbows and lay still.

  Should he rush to the youth’s aid? But if his grandfather’s power, sufficient to raise the boy earlier, could do nothing now, then surely Thomas was ineffective.

  “What would you have me do?” he asked.

  The Presence strode closer. His armored feet made no sound on the stone, and he cast no shadow. “When the Lord Protector granted the forests of the new world to William Penn, he installed
Penn not merely as landowner, but as king.”

  “Yes.” This felt right. This was what Thomas had always known in his heart.

  “The ceremony took place on board Penn’s ship The Fox. Penn eschewed a literal crown, but he knelt in a box of soil brought from the banks of the Susquehanna River and the Lord Protector anointed and blessed him.”

  Thomas shivered. His own accessions to power had been more prosaic: a legal document, drawn up after the fact, sequestering Hannah for madness; a deed transferring the family lands and properties; a grudging consent from the Electors to his regency, and another to his taking the throne. He had come to power with the blessing of lawyers. He envied his grandfather’s more beautiful ascent.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “This is no secret.” The Presence gestured at the painting of the Fox Anointing on the wall. “It is as public as the history of the Walking Purchase, your grandfather’s alliance with the peoples of the forest. But here are aspects of that history that are less well known.”

  “Yes.” Curious that his grandfather spoke of himself so consistently in the third person.

  “I will tell them to you now.”

  Thomas found he was holding his breath. He forced himself to exhale steadily and nod.

  “In the anointing, Oliver Cromwell passed more to William Penn than just land. He placed himself into the landowner and traveled to the new world in Penn’s breast.”

  “Do you mean a copy?” Thomas was confused. He had listened to lectures on the theory of gramarye at Harvard, but Ezekiel Angleton had sat all those exams for him. “A doppelgänger, or a simulacrum?”

  “The copy stayed behind. John Churchill was rising, and the Lord Protector saw that his reign would be ended in England. He had to leave a shade, a mirror image of himself to act and rule in England, and that cost him much of his power. But his true self traveled to the new world with William Penn.”

  Thomas shook his head, not meaning to. Could this be true? “A sizar at Harvard reported such a rumor to me,” Thomas said. “I had to pay a pretty purse to the Yankee he served after I killed the fellow in a duel.”

  “The rumors have at least a kernel of truth within them. Your family, my son, has prospered with the blessing of the Lord Protector. The blessing, and often the counsel as well.”

  Counsel? “What do you mean?”

  The Presence stepped forward again and reached down to graze Thomas’s shoulder with a mailed hand. “I am your ancestor William Penn. I am also Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector, great benefactor of your family. The loss of my other half to John Churchill was a crushing blow, and I have been regaining power slowly for decades. I guided you to the throne because it was imperative to keep the Firstborn from seizing its power. I will guide you now to take even greater power.”

  Thomas swallowed. His throat was so dry, the action hurt. “My sister…what did she know?”

  “Nothing,” the Presence said. “My power descends through the male line alone. She was the first landowner not to bear me in her breast, the first not to hear my wisdom in her ear.”

  “And my father? Did he see you?”

  The Presence squeezed Thomas’s shoulder, a sensation like a gentle breeze. “The men of the House of Penn have heard my voice in their hearts from William Penn through to you. They have taken me to be the Holy Ghost, or their own intuition, or the phantoms of dream.

  “You are the first to see me.”

  “You appeared to me here.” Thomas could never forget the moment he knew his grandfather had chosen him. His grandfather, who was also Oliver Cromwell. The shade had appeared to him in the empty field that would one day become the site of Horse Hall, the night before Hannah’s installation as Empress. Thomas had seen the Presence sitting in a ghostly image of the Shackamaxon Throne, surrounded by a phantasmagorical Shackamaxon Hall.

  That first conversation had started Thomas on the path that had brought him here.

  “You will be the greatest Penn ever to sit the Imperial throne, my son. My power is recovered. The pieces are moving into position. The time is right.”

  “The stars favor us.”

  “You will unite your lands. Not as a loose coterie of squabbling fiefdoms, but as the true and eternal Empire of Pennsylvania, as it was always intended to be.”

  “Yes.”

  “You will crush your rebel niece and all her allies, grinding them beneath your heel and adding their lives to your honor and the glory of your house.”

  “I will.”

  “You will open up the shell of the Moundbuilders, and you and I shall drink their life. You will live forever, and all mankind will know you as their benefactor and great leader. Your name will be whispered with the names Moses, David, Cromwell, and Christ.”

  Thomas trembled.

  “You will end death.”

  Thomas fell forward onto the stone. He pressed himself flat to the slab, arms extended before him.

  “It is time I again took a body,” Cromwell said. “Or rather, bodies.”

  Thomas turned his head slightly to watch. The Lord Protector—did Thomas think of Cromwell as the Necromancer, or was that the invidious slander of his enemies?—stepped slowly to the body of the Parlett boy.

  “Turn him for me,” Cromwell said. “Lay him on his back.”

  Thomas made slow, small, solemn motions. He rose to his knees, approached Parlett slowly, and then rolled the corpse onto its back. He arranged the arms by the boy’s sides, straightened out his legs, as if he were preparing the boy for burial.

  Then he moved back and knelt.

  Cromwell in turn descended to his knees. He then lay on the boy’s body, stretching himself out to full length and intoning heavy syllables Thomas didn’t understand.

  Then Cromwell sank into the boy’s body and disappeared.

  Thomas gasped, despite himself.

  The boy opened his eyes again, but they had changed—they were entirely white. As the boy stood, a dark gel began to form in the corner of his eyes.

  The boy turned to Thomas. “This is not eternal life.” His voice was the grating sound of church bells being ground to pieces, the Lord Protector’s voice. He reached a hand forward to grip Thomas by the shoulder. This time Thomas felt flesh and bone, if not warmth. “This is puppetry. But eternal life will come.”

  “Yes.” Thomas was surprised at how eager he felt. “Tell me what to do.”

  * * *

  Calvin Calhoun’s ride down the Mississippi was troubling.

  An Imperial Ohio Company canoe intercepted the keelboat early and exacted a toll. After that, two Memphite barges threatened, though the keelboat captain and all his crew waved, smiled, and promised not to dock at Memphis, and the Memphites let them pass. But the perils of the river were not what disturbed Cal.

  The work didn’t bother him. He poled, he sang, he cooked grits and bacon to earn his keep, but Lord hates a man as don’t know how to work when it’s called for, and this was light going, by his standards.

  The refugees carried by the boat were distressing. Cal heard tales of ravaged farms, of men impressed into the local militias or the military entourages of backwoods barons, leaving women and children defenseless when the beastkind attacked. A kingdom Cal had never heard of before, some kind of Firstborn land out beyond the Missouri, raided and stole from the farmers as well. It was as if something had driven all the beastkind mad, and their riot had knocked everything out of order, so everyone in the Missouri was fighting everyone else for land, food, and the joy of killing.

  What had happened to start the frenzy of killing, Cal knew, was the death of Peter Plowshare and the coming to the throne of his son, or self, or alter ego, or shadow, or whatever—Simon Sword.

  The refugees’ stories broke his heart, and Cal gave half his food at every meal to the Missourians huddled in their match coats, blankets, and furs. When not poling or sleeping, he threw a line into the river and tried to catch fish. His success was limited, but the occasional bass or catfish
he managed to pull from the water was expertly dissected by his knife, cooked at the boat’s small stove, and then passed in chunks to wide-eyed, sooty-faced children.

  The refugees didn’t trouble him. If anything, they gave him the opportunity to show what the New Light meant to him.

  He needed that, after what he’d seen and heard in the Firstborn city, Cahokia.

  What troubled Cal were thoughts of Sarah. Was she queen of Cahokia now? Was she an angel? Was she some kind of Firstborn girl Jesus?

  He didn’t know.

  He hadn’t abandoned her; he’d been driven away. He would tell his grandpa, Iron Andy Calhoun, with a clean conscience, that he’d protected Sarah all along her road. He’d brought her to her throne, and there, to defend her rights, he’d killed a man.

  And then she had rejected him.

  Maybe she had to. Maybe the goddess had made her do it.

  Maybe the necessary killing Cal had performed had left him unclean, and unfit for her company.

  Still, it hurt.

  If she’d come to the throne and the news had gone out, Cal was outracing it. He felt a pang of regret wishing he could meet his grandpa in the Elector’s Thinkin’ Shed and tell him proudly his foster daughter had become queen.

  Still, he did have some astonishing things to report.

  He also had something to show, something he’d been carrying close to his skin for weeks—a letter. It was a confession, written by Bayard Prideux, confessing to the murder of Kyres Elytharias.

  The letter identified Thomas Penn as the man who had ordered the murder.

  Cal disembarked by jumping into the river in shallow water and splashing ashore. He did it under cover of night and on land he knew belonged to the Clays. This was deliberate; he had personally lost cattle to Clay rustlers, taken from spring pasture. Cal had seen beasts he knew as well as he knew his own cousins, for sale in Knoxville in the autumn. The Clays were rustlers as much as the Calhouns, as much as Cal himself.