Toil & Trouble

by Jessica Spotswood

  “It’s damned dangerous is what it is,” Georgie swears, then looks delighted by her own daring. Papa would box her ears if he heard. She is still so young, Jo thinks. Only sixteen. No older than the girls in her vision. Girls who were...Jo’s grandchildren. And her great-nieces.

  Georgie takes Jo’s hand. “Was it a bad one?” she asks, more sympathetic. Georgie is their summer storm cloud, quick to anger, quick to tears, quick for it all to pass. She’s been desperately in love half a dozen times, but those feelings flared hot and bright and were extinguished at the first perceived slight. This time, with Nathaniel, the flame has burned steadily for nearly six months.

  But Jo knows the staircase from her vision. Knows that ring. Her gift has shown her many things, but it’s never shown her anything like this: her own unfathomable future. She never expected to have one.

  In the vision, she wore Nathaniel Winchester’s ring. She descended the staircase of the Winchester mansion; she was the matriarch of a new line of witches. She survived.

  But at what cost? In her vision, Jo married the man Georgie is in love with, a man with whom Jo has only exchanged pleasantries about her health and the weather. Her sisters had left Mercer’s Cove. They had not seen one another in almost forty years.

  “It’s nothing,” Jo lies, her mind spinning.

  “It doesn’t seem like nothing. You’re pale as milk,” Georgie insists, stubborn as always. “Shall I fetch you some tea?”

  “The Book,” Jo says. She needs to see it. Run her fingers over the names.

  “What do you need that old thing for?” Georgie stands and lets go Jo’s hand to smooth her bell-shaped pink skirts. She looks the height of fashion with her puffed gigot sleeves and the pale silk sash around her waist. “Whatever you saw, put it out of your head. We’re not going to be like the others.”

  As if it were that easy. As if they could just decide.

  “Do you want to help me or not? Get the Book, Georgie,” Jo snaps.

  Georgiana’s bow-shaped mouth twists. The flame in the oil lamp leaps. The fire jumps and crackles in the hearth, throwing shadows onto the gray walls. Jo draws back from the sudden heat as Georgie marches from the room. A moment later Jo hears her slippered feet pounding up the staircase. Jo takes in a deep, shuddering breath. Her little sister is getting more powerful. If Jo were to cross Georgie, she isn’t sure it would go well for her.

  And Jo’s visions are not always, strictly speaking, true. They are mere slices of time, possibilities present and future. They show her what could be, elsewhere and else-when. But humans are funny creatures, and their choices always play a role.

  Except, it seems, for Campbell witches. Their fate seems locked in stone.

  Georgie returns and tosses the large, square book roughly into Jo’s lap. “There,” she says, slumping into Papa’s high-backed chair. “It hasn’t changed.”

  Jo opens the Book. It smells of ink and dust. Their family tree spiderwebs through the yellowed pages: the history of the Campbell witches. It and the poison cabinet concealed in another volume were the only possessions Mam brought with her when she fled Scotland. Names and dates of birth and death are written in a variety of hands—precise copperplate and shaky scrawls and looping script. It is not so remarkable on first glance, but upon close inspection, a careful reader would note three irregularities:

  First, no Campbell witch bears only sons, or finds herself barren. Each woman who lives to maturity births at least one daughter. Second, next to every daughter’s name is one of five words—water, air, fire, earth, or spirit—the nature of her elemental gift. Third, there are not very many years between birth and death for these daughters. Most Campbell witches do not live beyond five and twenty. Only one in each generation survives to old age.

  It has been that way since the beginning of the Book, over two hundred years ago.

  In every generation, one Campbell witch goes mad and murders the others.

  It has always been so. Will always be so.

  That’s what Mam taught them. What the Book and her own experience taught Mam.

  Jo’s first clear memory is of her mother leading her through the poison garden, pointing over her shoulder as Elle toddled behind them. “You mustn’t grow too fond of her, nor this one, either,” Mam had warned, a hand on her high, round belly. “We have power that most women can’t dream of, darling, but love—that’s a luxury Campbell witches can’t afford.”

  “But you love Papa,” little Jo had pointed out.

  Mam had shrugged. “Men are different. Campbell witches, like you and your sisters—you cannot trust one another. You cannot survive together.” Her blue eyes had narrowed. “But it’s not so easy surviving apart, either.”

  Mam had fled Scotland as a girl, but whatever she ran from gave her nightmares. She would not speak of her own sister, or her cousins (dead, according to the Book), or of the terrible burns on her back that no amount of salve could heal. When Jo was fourteen, Elle twelve, and Georgie only ten, Mam dove off the cliff behind the Winchester mansion and straight down into the furious sea.

  Her death only drove the three sisters closer. Despite her warnings; despite her awful, clever tricks to set them against each other; despite their many differences, Jo and Elle and Georgie do love one another. Three headstrong, motherless, mundane girls might not have got up to much trouble under the lenient watch of their ancient housekeeper and their father, a Portuguese pirate turned shipwright. But these girls are hardly mundane. Between Jo’s prophecies, Eleanor’s proficiency with poison, and Georgiana’s flare for fire, their fights have become downright dangerous.

  And now this baffling vision. Jo runs through it again and again in her mind, sinking deeper into the settee, the velvet soft through the thin blue muslin of her dress. Georgie grows bored and picks up her novel, absently petting one of Papa’s liver-spotted hounds as it lounges by her feet. Outside, the clouds collect on the late-afternoon horizon.

  What had Josephine told those blue-eyed girls?

  My sisters—they ran. They may still be alive because of it.

  An unfamiliar feeling washes over her. For once, it isn’t the dread of knowing the future and being unable to stop it. How many visions had she had of Mam, all wet black skirts and dark hair tangled with seaweed, her body battered on the rocks below the cliff? How many times has she foreseen fevers and flu and fire?

  Mam ran, and—for a time, at least—she survived. Till she was two and thirty. Jo pages through the book in her lap, doing the calculations in her head. That was unprecedented for a second Campbell witch. But Jo and Elle and Georgie—they’re strong. Their love for one another makes them strong.

  Jo glances over at her little sister. The future she saw is a sharp fork from the present. She does not see it happening without her intervention. If she chooses that future—decides for both of them—Georgiana might never speak to her again.

  But, estranged, they might all live. It’s not so easy surviving apart, either, Mam had warned. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

  There are a number of complications, of course. Chief among them, Jo cannot do this alone. She will need assistance. She’ll need Elle.

  * * *

  An hour later, she strolls into Eleanor’s bedroom. “Elle, we’ve got to talk. It’s impor—”

  She stops mid-sentence when she finds her sister in her four-poster bed, astride a sailor. At least, Jo assumes from his thick black beard and the tattoos spiraling up his muscled arms that he is a sailor.

  “A bit occupied!” Elle tosses over her shoulder.

  Jo’s face flushes. “Good Lord, Elle. You could have locked the door.”

  “You could have knocked!” But Elle sighs and clambers off the sailor, wrapping herself in a sheet. The man catches Jo’s eye and winks. He really is quite handsome, all golden skin and dark chocolate eyes. “I’m afraid my sister is quite de
termined that her business come before my pleasure, Rafael. Could you remove yourself to the dressing room?”

  “Of course, love.” He saunters into the dressing room adjacent, though not before offering Jo an eyeful of every inch of his anatomy. She supposes she could have dropped her eyes to the floor. But she’s never seen a naked man before, and frankly she’s curious. If she is to be married—if her scheme is successful—her wedding night will be much sooner than she thought.

  While Jo is ogling Rafael, Elle slips into a green silk dressing gown. “What is so important, sister?”

  “Must you be so free with yourself?” Jo asks, mortified. “What would Papa say if he knew you were entertaining a sailor in your bed?”

  Elle gives her an arch look. “I imagine he’d say I’m taking after Mam. What, you don’t think she sampled his wares first? She meant to start a new line of Campbell witches, didn’t she? She’d want to ensure her husband was virile enough for the task.”

  Jo sits at Elle’s dressing table. “Does Alice know you’re still dallying with sailors?”

  Something flickers over Elle’s face. “Alice and I have come to an understanding.”

  “Which entails you acting like a trollop?” The harsh words are out of Jo’s mouth before she thinks them through. She came to ask Elle a favor, after all. But she likes Alice Winchester. Unlike most of the other girls in town, Alice has always been kind to her.

  “I’ll let that go, just this once, because I know you’re fond of Alice,” Elle says evenly. “As it happens, Alice’s father has arranged her marriage to Emma Colchester. Alice shall be Lady Colchester next spring. It will be announced in a fortnight, at the Winchester ball.”

  Elle—fierce, unstoppable Elle—looks suddenly brittle as china, as though she might break into a thousand pieces at any moment. Oh, Elle. Jo hadn’t seen that coming at all.

  “Can’t you poison Emma?” she asks. “We could make it look an accident.”

  “I offered.” Elle tenderly strokes a pink-and-white leaf of elephant’s ear. Beneath her touch, it shivers and grows. “Alice does not wish it.”

  “Alice is too good by half.” Jo does not mean it as a compliment.

  “A rich viscountess.” Elle moves on to the heart-shaped leaves of a young arrowhead plant. “I cannot compete with that. Lady Colchester is beautiful, and titled, and very powerful.”

  “Not as powerful as you,” Jo points out.

  A smile crawls slowly across Elle’s face as she looks down at her plants. Those harmful to the touch are sequestered in her greenhouse or the poison garden, but Jo knows that, ingested, these could cause severe ill effects. “It does bring me some small comfort, knowing that I could poison the bitch in a heartbeat.” She turns back to Jo. “But enough about your poor, lovelorn sister. You came to ask me a favor, I think?”

  Jo checks to be sure the dressing room door is shut tight. It is, but she keeps her voice hushed nonetheless. “A poison and a potion.”

  Elle sprawls at the edge of her bed, her dressing gown open to mid-thigh. She is utterly unselfconscious in her own body in a way that Jo never feels. “For?”

  “I...would rather not say,” Jo hedges.

  Elle shakes her head, her long dark hair tumbling down her back. “You know I won’t give you anything without knowing what it’ll be used for, and on whom.”

  “I want a love charm of sorts. Something to make a man feel...romantic.” Jo flushes.

  Elle runs her palms along her down blanket. “I’m intrigued. How romantic, exactly? I’ll need to know the particulars. Are you looking for a dance or two, or—” she waggles her eyebrows “—something a bit more scandalous?”

  “I need him to kiss me,” Jo explains. She might be the eldest, but she suspects she’s the only Campbell sister who’s never been kissed. Georgie has allowed her suitors a few liberties, and before Alice, Jo caught other men sneaking out of Elle’s rooms. “Perhaps more than once. Enough to compromise me, but not enough to cause a real scandal.”

  Elle’s blue eyes go wide. “You’re the subject? Jo, darling. You don’t need a potion to make a man kiss you. You’ve just got to give him a bit of encouragement. I can show you how. You’re a pretty girl... If you didn’t look so sour all the time—if you relaxed your shoulders a bit, and smiled like you can’t see straight into a person’s soul, then—”

  Jo isn’t interested in this cataloging of her flaws. “He’s in love with someone else.”

  “Oh. That is trickier.” Elle frowns. “Is he the faithful sort? Never mind, it doesn’t matter. I know just the potion. He won’t be able to keep his eyes—or his hands—off you.”

  “Perfect.” Despite the ignominious beginning, this is going rather well. “I’ll let him compromise me, and then—being a gentleman—he’ll have to propose, won’t he?”

  “If he’s a gentleman.” Elle frowns, obviously disappointed. “But the spell won’t last forever. Are you sure this is what you want? To trap some poor fellow into marriage? He might come to resent you, especially if he’s in love with someone else.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” It’s worth it to ensure a future where she survives, and her sisters are safe, even if she doesn’t know where. A future where Jo is rich and powerful and respected...nay, judging from the look in those girls’ eyes, feared. She allows herself a small smile.

  “And the poison? For the girl, I presume?” Elle is frighteningly clever sometimes. “What did you have in mind?”

  Jo’s smile fades. “Something to make her sick. Just enough to miss the Winchester ball.”

  “Poor girl. That’s the event of the whole spring.” Elle clucks her tongue. “Who is she? For that matter, who’s the man lucky enough to be my future brother-in-law?”

  Jo sets her jaw. “Nathaniel.”

  “Nathaniel who? Nathaniel Winchester?” Elle asks. There is only one Nathaniel in town: Alice’s older brother, the handsome only son of the richest family in town, and—

  The penny drops. “Georgie’s Nathaniel?”

  Jo nods, her stomach sinking but her eyes resolute.

  “I won’t do it.” Elle stands, hands on her voluptuous hips. “I won’t poison my little sister so that you can steal her sweetheart.” She begins to pace the room like a restless cat. “Why would you ask me to do something so cruel? Are you in love with him?”

  Jo shakes her head. “No. It’s not like that.”

  “Then for heaven’s sake, Josephine, tell me: how is it? What would possess you to do something like this? To flounce in here and ask me to help you do it? Georgie loves him. It might be just puppy love, it might be something real and lasting, I don’t know. But she deserves the chance to find out. She deserves to have what Mam had with Papa, before...” Elle swallows, and Jo knows they are both remembering those last years with Mam, when she drank whiskey in the poison garden all day and paced the cliffs all night. “I’ll never get to have that. Not with Alice. You don’t even want it. One of us should be so lucky, don’t you think? Why would you take that from your own sister?”

  “I saw it, Ellie. In a vision.” Jo’s voice catches. “A vision where I was old.”

  Elle looks at her for a long moment. Then she goes to the dressing room and holds a murmured conversation with Rafael. He emerges, dressed in a black waistcoat, shining black boots, and fawn-colored pants that taper from ankle to knee. “Another time, love,” he says, before kissing Elle plumb on the mouth. She returns the embrace, then shoos him out the door.

  “All right.” Elle fixes Jo with her blue stare. “You’ve got my undivided attention. I think you’d better tell me about this vision.”

  * * *

  A fortnight later, Jo sits at Elle’s dressing table again. She watches in the gilt-edged looking glass while Elle styles her hair into artful curls topped by a ridiculous feathered headdress. She is wearing a pink silk organza evening dress, in
laid with imitation-pearl beads. Its low décolletage shows the top of her breasts, which Elle has padded and plumped to great effect. A white sash accentuates the smallest part of her waist, made smaller by Elle’s ruthless cinching of her corset. White gloves stretch from her fingertips to just below her elbows. She is beautiful.

  She is miserable.

  I’m doing this for Georgie, she reminds herself. For all three of them. But she isn’t sure her little sister will understand that. She hopes that Elle’s poison will work, because if Georgie finds her with Nathaniel, she may be in real danger. Just last week she went down to the deserted beach at night and watched as Georgie transferred fire from the oil lamp to her palm, and then practiced aiming fireballs among the waves.

  Elle eyes Jo critically. She reaches out, tweaks one of her curls, and smiles. “You look lovely.” She reaches for a small vial on her shelf.

  “Are you sure this will work?” Jo asks.

  Elle raises one eyebrow. “Do you doubt my skill?”

  “No.” Elle learned poisons at Mam’s knee. She inherited Mam’s garden and has only improved it in the last few years. “Only my own charms. People will think Nathaniel’s taken leave of his senses, to throw Georgie over for me.”

  “He’s a man, isn’t he? They’ll believe it easily enough,” Elle jokes.

  A knock sounds on the door, and a chill runs up Jo’s spine. What if something has gone wrong? Shouldn’t Georgie be asleep by now?

  “You see? She knocks,” Elle hisses. Then, louder: “Come in!”

  Georgie enters, her cheeks flushed, wearing a dressing gown. “Why aren’t you dressed?” Elle asks, feigning ignorance.

  “I’m not feeling well,” Georgie says. “I’m sorry, Elle. I know tonight will be difficult, with Alice’s engagement being announced publicly, and—”

  “Oh, don’t worry about me,” Elle interrupts. Guilt flashes across her face. “Are you feverish? You look a bit feverish. Do you want me to stay home with you?”

  Jo gives her a sharp look. She needs Eleanor at the ball. She can’t do this without her. Is Elle having second thoughts?