Witchy Kingdom

by D. J. Butler

  “It was lovely,” Montse said. “Until my uncles were accused of stealing a ship called La Flor de Andalucia. It was the pleasure yacht of a New Spanish merchant who traded in slaves, silver, and rum.”

  “A false accusation?”

  “The accusation was true. The ship had been full of silver and rum, and was left unattended.”

  “Completely unattended? That seems like a shocking dereliction of common sense in a successful merchant.”

  “Let us say, barely guarded. Who could be expected to resist such a temptation? Not someone surnamed Quintana. My uncles could not be found, so the chevalier threatened to hang my father if he didn’t turn them over. He refused to do it, because he loved his wife and her family more than he loved his life. The chevalier hanged him.”

  Bill had never known. “The current chevalier?”

  “His grandfather. And so my mother took up the family trade again, because she loved her husband and her family more than she loved her oath. She sailed La Flor de Andalucia as her vessel, only she had it rechristened with a different name. I was born on that ship, three weeks after my father was thrown into a pauper’s grave. If I had had a daughter, I would have given it to her.”

  “La Verge Caníbal. Heaven’s jawbone, you sail your mother’s ship.”

  “In her wake, and in the wake of my father, and in the wake of Hannah and Kyres both. I sail for love.”

  “And will you give the ship to your foster child? To Margaret?”

  “I have promised it to Josep. I have sailed and smuggled and pirated for fifteen years in part to give Margarida a good life, so that she would not have to sail and smuggle.” Montse smiled. “For love, I do not want her to inherit La Verge.”

  Bill considered. “I’m glad Margaret has been in your care these last fifteen years. I can scarcely conceive of anyone who might have offered her a better refuge.”

  “I can only hope Hannah feels the same way.”

  “I have no line to the dead,” Bill said. “Though I must say, it appears that they wish to have a line to us.”

  “What? May I borrow the spyglass?”

  Bill handed the glass over to Montse. What she saw, what he had been looking only moments earlier, was a shambling column of men and beastkind that approached the Treewall with lurching step. They left behind fragments of themselves, including whole limbs. Behind them came more conventional Imperial forces: soldiers and militiamen and armed traders.

  “We come to it now,” Bill said. He called down the line again, this time to Valia Sharelas. “Prepare to fire silver shot!”

  “Prepare silver shot!” Sharelas passed the instruction to her troops.

  “I have no silver shot prepared,” Montserrat Ferrer i Quintana said.

  “Can you find a source of fire?”

  “It’s good mystery-logic.

  We take the path that would seem forbidden to the uninitiated,

  because they do not know the deeper truth.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  By the time Luman had finished his prayer and rubbed the burnt, ground calves’ bone he carried in a pocket into the wound, some combination of the man’s fatigue, his injury, and the tincture of laudanum had knocked him unconscious.

  Luman was therefore shocked when the man opened his eyes and spoke.

  “Luman Walters,” the man said.

  Luman hadn’t mentioned his name. He touched his coat to feel the reassuring crinkle of the Himmelsbrief inside.

  “What if I am?”

  “I know you are,” the wounded soldier said. His voice sounded mechanical, as if a bellows were squeezing air over reeds constructed to sound like a voice. “I’m Sarah’s brother.”

  Luman sat back on his heels and thought. “Are you dead?”

  “No. But there are…well, look, that doesn’t matter. It’s time for you to join us.”

  “Coming from the lips of a man with a broken spine and blood spiked with the juice of the poppy, you’ll understand why I feel some trepidation.”

  The man was silent for a moment. “Sarah wants you to join her on the Great Mound.”

  Luman looked around the field hospital Cathy was running. There were other workers dealing with the injured; he could leave without being too much missed. And besides, he was being summoned.

  He climbed the Great Mound, looking over his shoulder at the eastern horizon. Flashes of light told him the Imperials’ cannons were busily firing at the wall. The defenders, much less frequently, were firing back.

  The swarming patterns of the defenders atop the Treewall suggested that attackers were coming up the wall on ladders, as well. Or maybe climbing or jumping.

  The black birds of the Great Mound objected as Luman disturbed their sanctuary. Standing within the door was Sarah, wearing a white linen shift and holding a tiny clay lamp, unlit, in one hand. Over her other arm she carried what looked like a blue wool blanket. Her horse-headed staff leaned against the door frame beside a single bracket, whose torch lit the scene.

  “Your Majesty.” Luman knelt.

  “I am going to ascend the Serpent Throne,” Sarah said. “I’m going to walk my own Onandagos Road, and get that grip of peace. I will access the throne’s power, or die trying.”

  “On the twenty-first of March, the vernal equinox, at dawn? Propitious timing to enter the Temple of the Sun. But I think you should seriously consider the possibility that death might indeed be a result of the attempt.” Luman looked into his queen’s eyes. Was she serious? Was she committed?

  She seems to be.

  Sarah nodded. “I believe it. I’ve convened a kind of committee to help me.”

  Luman looked around. “Am I the only member of the committee? That’s an honor, but it may be a mistake.”

  “The others are convened elsewhere. You’re here, so I assume you’ve heard from Nathaniel.”

  “He assures me he’s not a ghost.”

  “Did he speak to you through someone else’s body?”

  Luman laughed. “He’s done it before, I gather.”

  Sarah nodded. “I need you to join them because of your ritual knowledge. And I think the only way for you to do that is to be asleep. Nathaniel can reach me while I’m awake, I think because of our blood, but also because of my Eye of Eve. But others need to be unconscious to see him. To be where he is.”

  “Where is that, exactly?” Luman asked.

  “I can’t explain it. But it’s a place of spirits. I think it’s within space and time, but it’s upside down, and things work differently. Nathaniel is powerful there. He’s a healer.”

  Luman was unsure how any of this fitted together, though it sounded vaguely like some of the things the Ojibwe said about their Midewiwin healers. He confined himself to nodding.

  “If you had told me earlier, Your Majesty, I could have brought some laudanum to knock myself out.”

  Sarah laughed, a sound that was sharp and free and utterly lacked music. “I need you asleep but alert, Luman. Don’t worry, I’ll ring your bell myself, no problem. But there’s something else.”

  Luman bowed and waited.

  “I think the way this is going to work is that you’re going to be my liaison. I’ll talk with you, you will talk with Nathaniel and the others, and they will…operate the liturgy.”

  “Who are the others?” Luman asked.

  “They’re dead,” Sarah said. “Jacob Hop was in my service, and was killed by the Emperor’s henchman. The other man is named Isaiah Wilkes. Apparently, he’s an actor from Philadelphia.”

  “Ah, yes.” Luman chuckled. “How often I have said, what I need most right now is an actor to guide me.” An idea occurred to him, and he checked himself. “Wait…is he one of the Lightning Mummers?”

  “I ain’t sure what that is.” Sarah dropped into her Appalachee accent without warning, but then pulled back out again. “But he’s one of those who act out the Philadelphia Mystery Cycle. Franklin’s Players.”

  Luman nodded. “That’s who I had
in mind. I take it back. I’m very interested in meeting both these men.”

  “I think the easiest way for us to stay in touch,” Sarah said, “is for you to wear my coat.”

  Luman shrugged out of his own long coat, and then hesitated. “Your Majesty, I don’t know what’s about to happen, but may I ask you to bear a talisman with you where you go?”

  Sarah hesitated, but then nodded. “You mean the angels in your pocket?”

  Luman laughed. “I do. It’s a Himmelsbrief, a kind of amulet of protection. It’s a letter from heaven. If you just wear my coat, you will have it with you. Shall I…can I open the coat’s lining and show you?”

  Sarah looked at him with her unnatural eye. “No, I believe you.”

  Luman nodded.

  “Did you write it?” Sarah asked.

  “I copied it out. The words themselves are believed to come from heaven. This is their power.”

  Sarah shrugged into Luman’s coat. “It’s German work, isn’t it? What do I do with it? How do you know it will work?”

  “Ohio German. You shouldn’t have to do anything, just don’t take off the coat. And I know that such letters work, because I have experienced their power. You’ve seen the angels yourself, in my pocket. And I have faith that this letter will accomplish its task.”

  “I have faith, too.”

  Luman put on Sarah’s coat. It was a blue Imperial military coat, too wide and too long on Sarah, but on Luman it fit reasonably well.

  Sarah gripped both lapels of the coat Luman wore. “Hoc est corpus meum,” she said, her voice taking on a commanding vigor, “quod tibi do.”

  Luman shivered at the words. Were they a deliberate echo? Should he repeat them in turn?

  “Accipio,” his Latin was good enough to say.

  The shiver along his spine enveloped his whole body. Luman tingled, and then had the strangest sensation of being in two places at once. He was standing inside his own body, looking at Sarah, but he was also standing inside Sarah’s body, looking at Luman.

  Sarah smiled. “I can see it worked.”

  Luman nodded, afraid that if he moved too much, he’d upset the spell.

  “Dormi.”

  Luman fell to the ground in deep sleep.

  * * *

  Isaiah Wilkes was dead. The chill water of the Hudson had stunned him. He’d sunk beneath the surface and died quickly, with little pain.

  And then he had come back above the surface and found himself standing in a creek, under a sky full of stars, but no moon. He hadn’t recognized the place, and had been reciting all the geographical knowledge he possessed in an attempt to identify it, when Nathaniel Penn and Jacob Hop—the latter also dead—had approached him and asked him to help them reconstruct the Cahokian enthronement rite.

  Being dead didn’t feel much different from being alive. The land about him seemed fluid, as if the distance between two points could be now long and now short, depending on…Isaiah didn’t know what. That fluidity seemed to harden when Nathaniel Penn was around.

  When he rode away on his four horses—or were they a drum?—leaving Wilkes and Hop alone together, the land again seemed to melt, stretch, and bend.

  The stars, oddly enough, were constant. If he squinted at them, he could make out the stars he knew, and their familiar rotation around the celestial pole. But if he relaxed his vision, the shapes they made together were not the shapes he was accustomed to.

  “How did you die?” Hop asked conversationally.

  “Drowned. Two men in love with the same girl were riding in different canoes. When they started fighting, all of us fell into the water.”

  “Have you seen the others here?”

  “No,” Isaiah said. “I assume they must not be dead. And you?”

  “Stabbed repeatedly by the Emperor’s Machiavel.”

  “Temple Franklin?”

  “Yes.”

  “I know the man. I’m not surprised he has murder in his heart.”

  “And now on his hands.” Jacob Hop grinned affably.

  It was altogether the strangest conversation Isaiah Wilkes had ever had, and he’d had more than his share of odd ones.

  Nathaniel returned, and on his horse—or on a horse following his?—rode a man with curly dark hair and spectacles. Nathaniel and the new arrival dismounted, and the horses leaped onto Nathaniel’s shoulder, where they became a drum.

  “I’m Luman Walters,” the new man said. “Hedge wizard, dabbler in braucherei and Memphite magic, among other disciplines. Formerly in the employ of the Imperial Ohio Company. From the Haudenosaunee territory. Physically in the city of Cahokia, which is besieged by Simon Sword’s beastkind and by the Emperor’s soldiers.”

  “Jacob Hop. Formerly a deaf-mute, and after that, briefly possessed by the spirit of Simon Sword. Dead. Physically, maybe lying on the bottom of the ocean. I have an idea about the Tarocks.”

  “Isaiah Wilkes. In life, I was the Franklin of the Conventicle, and also the head of Franklin’s Players.” Somewhat to his own surprise, Isaiah felt comfortable speaking openly about subjects on which he’d been sworn to secrecy in life. “Former apprentice printer, actor, and musician. I am committed to ending the reign of Simon Sword by any means possible. Also dead. Frozen at the bottom of the Hudson River.”

  “Nathaniel Elytharias Penn. Son of Hannah Penn and Kyres Elytharias. I’m a healer. I have…the ability to travel this land. I’m alive, and in Pennsland somewhere. Simon Sword is attacking my father’s land, and my sister.”

  “This is an odd crew.” Hop smiled.

  “I should tell you that I can see what Sarah sees,” Luman Walters said. “She can hear me. I don’t know if she can hear the rest of you.” He paused. “Sarah, can you hear the others?” Another pause. “No, she only hears me. But I will be the link to her as we reconstruct this rite.”

  Isaiah Wilkes studied the other men. “I assume you are all at least Freemasons.”

  They looked at each other blankly.

  “What exactly will we reconstruct this lost rite from?” Wilkes asked.

  Jacob Hop produced a deck of Tarocks and spread them before him. “I have a theory about the Tarocks.”

  Isaiah raised his eyebrows. “Another man than I might express skepticism. But those cards were designed by my master Ben Franklin. If you tell me they encode esoteric information, I’m inclined to believe.”

  “I think they do,” Hop said. “Look, if I choose the minor arcana and spread the cards out, each suit appears to tell a story.”

  “A story is essential,” Luman said. “Many stories encode memories of lost mystery rites. The Hymn to Demeter, for instance, is known to tell the ordinances of Eleusis, if only one knows how to read it.”

  “The Hymn to Demeter is thought to record memories of Eleusis,” Isaiah said. “But in fact, no one does know how to read it.”

  “A salutary reminder,” Luman said. “Apuleius’s Golden Ass is another, with respect to the mysteries of Isis. The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz. The oldest versions of the grail legend. The stories of Orpheus.”

  “The Philadelphia Mystery Plays,” Isaiah added quietly. “Allegedly.”

  “What do they have in common?” Nathaniel asked.

  “They show features of initiatory experience,” Isaiah said. “A journey, either in a circle or else in a direct line to the center. Trials, by which the initiate gains wounds and also wisdom. Transformation from one state to another. Healing or empowerment.”

  Nathaniel was staring at him. “A journey into the sky, where one is torn to pieces by monsters and reassembled with iron bones, healed of the falling sickness?”

  Isaiah smiled. “That is a colorful example. But yes, maybe.”

  “And if there is a story, then in the liturgy, the initiate must reenact the story.” Jacob Hop gazed thoughtfully at his cards.

  “It is the essence of liturgy to repeat the deeds of the gods,” Luman said. “Paul teaches us as much. ‘Therefore we are buried wi
th him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.’ Baptism is a simple initiation, imitating the death and resurrection of Christ.”

  “The gods or the heroes,” Jacob said.

  Luman nodded. “Christian Rosenkreutz is not a god. Nor are the grail knights.”

  “Nor was Onandagos,” Jacob said.

  “That is a provocative choice,” Isaiah said. “Why do you think of the Firstborn prophet?”

  Jacob showed the Tarocks. “I believe this person’s journey involved Simon Sword, Peter Plowshare, and the Serpent Throne. A journey along a mighty road, arrival at a great river, and the Temple of the Sun. The building of a great city, and a staff with a horse’s head. Who but Onandagos would that be?”

  “It might be every man, properly understood,” Isaiah said.

  “Agreed,” Luman said. “And yet, it’s not a bad guess. Sarah herself has described what she is attempting as her own Onandagos Road.”

  “The pilgrim road,” Isaiah said. “And the Haudenosaunee who are called the Onandaga…their name means ‘mountaintops,’ in their language. Is Onandagos the man of the mountaintops? The man who ascends?”

  “Do they take their name from him, or the reverse?” Jacob asked.

  “What do we get, then, if we lay out the ten cards in a suit?” Nathaniel asked. “Not counting the face cards.”

  Jacob frowned. “It depends on the suit.”

  “Two of these suits show women wayfarers,” Nathaniel pointed out, “and two show men. Do we assume that’s significant?”

  “Yes.” Jake pocketed all the minor arcana bearing the sigils for sword or lightning bolt. Nathaniel stood his drum upright on the ground and Jake spread the cards out. “Sex is meaningful to the goddess, who chooses Her Beloved in part based on an alternation between women and men.” He looked around at the other three. “If I understand the theology correctly.”