Harriet remembered this necklace. “Your choker…, ” she began.
Annis dropped her hand. “It was my mother’s, I think. She died when I was small.”
“I know. Such a tragedy, and so hard for you to grow up without a mother.”
The girl shrugged. “I had our housekeeper, Mrs. King. And then I had my horses.”
Harriet considered horses a poor substitute for a mother’s love, but she kept the thought to herself. She pulled her grandmother’s amulet from her bodice and lifted it up in her fingers. “This was my grandmother’s. Your necklace once belonged to your grandmother. I remember the stone—a moonstone.”
“Is that what it is?”
“Yes. Moonstones have wonderful properties, and this one has a special power.”
Annis caught a breath and touched the stone again. She whispered, the words almost inaudible, “I thought I imagined it.”
“Has it spoken to you?”
“Well, I suppose… you could say that, I guess. I didn’t know what to make of it.”
“Perhaps I can help with that.” It was a good introduction to the subject of witchcraft. Harriet gave Annis a tentative smile as she slid her amulet back inside her dress. “I have a great deal to tell you, my dear. I hope you’re comfortable. This will take a while.”
“But how can you be sure,” Annis asked, “that I have any ability at all?”
Harriet had finished telling the story. Their story. Annis had listened, her lips open in wonder at first, then set with determination when Harriet reached the part about Frances and what she had done.
Harriet had left nothing out. She explained the Bishop heritage, the divergence between the practices of Mary and Christian, and the difference between her own practice of enhanced herbalism and Frances’s maleficia. She had talked for nearly an hour. Annis had barely moved in all that time, watching Harriet’s face intently, as if to see beyond her features and into her soul. As if to decide whether to trust her. Harriet hoped that their family resemblance would help to convince her.
In answer to her question, Harriet said, “It’s a gift of mine. I think of it as the knowing, for lack of a better word. Insights come to me, usually when I’m working, sometimes when I’m not. They have never been wrong.” She added, with a twist of her lips, “It can be a mixed blessing, but I’m glad to know you have inherited the ability. Knowing how your pearls affect you is confirmation.”
“I thought they would strangle me last night at dinner.”
“But not now.”
“No. Now they’re—they’re comforting.”
“Very good. Last night, they were warning you.”
“Warning me about Frances?”
“Yes.”
“Are we—then are we—” She swallowed, as if it was difficult to speak the word. As if it felt alien in her mouth. “Are we—witches?”
“Don’t be afraid of it. Today, when women have little power that is not granted to them by men, to be a witch is a very good thing.”
Annis drew herself up, as she did in the saddle, her chin tucked, her spine ramrod straight. She said, her voice deepening, “This is all true.”
“Yes, my dear. This is all true.”
“You must know how hard—I mean, it must have been hard for you to grasp it all, the first time you heard it.”
“I don’t think I ever learned it, exactly. Lily and I simply knew, from an early age. It was easier with a sister.”
“She was older?”
“Yes, much.”
“I can hardly believe you came all this way just for me. No one else—I don’t think there’s another person in the world who would have done that, not for me.”
“And yet I did,” Harriet said. She let her tone soften, now that the hard part had been accomplished, now that she could admit to the emotion welling up in her heart. “We’re Bishops. Family.”
Annis touched the moonstone. “I’m grateful, truly, just still… it’s hard to grasp. Things have been so odd.”
“There’s no need for gratitude. We Bishops must support each other.”
“What happens now?”
“Now,” Harriet said, “we have to undo a work of maleficia, and it will be both difficult and dangerous.”
“Dangerous for me?”
“For you. For me, for Frances. Also for the young marquess.”
Annis shivered, suddenly, involuntarily. “The marquess? Why is he in danger?”
“Because Frances has included him. I haven’t seen his manikin—I told you what that is—but I have no doubt it exists.”
The girl’s upright posture suddenly sagged, and she put her hands to her cheeks. “Oh no,” she groaned. “You mean the marquess has been feeling the same things I’ve been feeling? It’s awful, Aunt Harriet! It’s embarrassing, and—oh, this is terrible!”
Harriet put her hand on Annis’s shoulder. It was a surprisingly sturdy shoulder for such a slender girl, the bones and muscles strong under her fingers. “Annis, we’re going to do our best to fix this. That is, I am, and you’re going to help me.”
Annis dropped her hands and squared her shoulders again. “Tell me what I need to do. It was I who brought these troubles to James’s door.”
“It was not your fault,” Harriet said firmly. “It will only weaken you to think that way. Now I’m going back to the village, and I would imagine you need to dress for dinner. Behave as normally as possible, but once everyone is in bed, change into something warm and join me here. I will be back at midnight. Can you manage that?”
“I will manage it,” the girl said.
“Wear the moonstone.”
“I will.”
Lily would have been proud of this girl, the granddaughter she had never known. Harriet would ask Lily’s intervention in their work this night, and Beryl’s, too. They would need all the support they could get.
The problem with the maleficia was that once employed, it was difficult to undo. Dark magic had a crude force her own practice lacked. She had always believed it was because its practitioners were untroubled by conscience. With nothing to distract them, all their energy could be poured into the thing they wanted to make happen. Her own practice, by its nature, divided her attention in a hundred ways.
It was a warm evening, the height of summer. Harriet had no lantern, but the path from Seabeck Village to Rosefield Hall was brightened by the field of stars shining from a clear black sky. Off to her right, the calm sea glistened in the starlight. Ahead of her, the house bulked against the stars, a great dark lady skirted by sleeping gardens.
She had gauged her time well. As she descended the slope to the folly, the village church bells tolled midnight.
Annis, brave girl, was waiting, alone in the darkness.
Harriet gave her a nod of greeting. “This is not the way I would have preferred to begin your instruction, Annis. Needs must, I’m afraid.”
“It’s all right,” Annis said. She reached to help Harriet with her basket and set it on the bench where she had been sitting. “You can’t imagine what a relief it is to understand what’s happening to me. Even at dinner tonight, I—I mean, I have to sit next to him, and I have these awful feelings. Animal feelings. I don’t even like him, Aunt Harriet.”
“Do you not? He seems all right to me, but I’m an old woman. It’s different.”
“When have you met him?”
“I haven’t, not properly. I watched you this morning. He appeared to be polite to you.”
“He thinks I’m unladylike. Worse, he thinks I’m immoral, and only because I refuse to ride sidesaddle. He’s a stuffed shirt!”
“Ah. An unforgivable sin.”
That made Annis smile. “I’m supposed to call him my lord. It’s stupid.”
“What does he call you?”
“Miss Allington, of course. Truly, we hardly know each other, which makes this so much more disturbing. All wrong.”
“The good thing, though,” Harriet reminded her, “was that you
sensed it was unnatural, though you didn’t understand. You must trust yourself about such things.”
“I will try.”
Annis took the two thick candles Harriet handed her and set them behind a pillar, to protect them from the wind. She lit the candles as Harriet unwrapped the herbs she had brought from New York.
She laid them out between the candles, naming them as she did so. “These are flowers of the linden tree. They help to calm the nervous system. This is starwort, to restore proper bodily function. This is wormwood, a purgative. Honey, from the village. It’s always better to use local ingredients when you can.” She reached into the pocket of her skirt and brought out a tiny bunch of mistletoe sprigs. “I found a nice cloud of mistletoe in the woods,” she said. “Mistletoe is beneficial for a suffering heart, but it can be toxic. You must use only a tiny amount.”
Annis repeated each name and touched each with her finger.
“These are all useful taken alone,” Harriet told her. “In combination, we hope they will reverse the maleficia. You’ll have to ingest the mixture.”
“Ingest? You mean swallow it?”
“Swallowing it is the easy part, I’m afraid.”
“It’s going to make me sick?”
“It might, depending on what Frances does. James needs to take one, too.”
“James!”
“Oh yes. He is no less affected than you are.”
“I hope I can find a way to give it to him.”
“We’ll create an electuary, and that will help.” At Annis’s blank look, she said, “I usually make electuaries for children. The honey helps to mask the taste of the remedy.”
Harriet took the jar of honey, a mortar and pestle, and her herb scissors out of her basket and set to work. When the linden flowers, the starwort, and the wormwood were thoroughly crushed and blended, she cut a sliver of mistletoe leaf and mashed it in the mortar with the other herbs, then dripped a generous dollop of honey over everything.
Finally she drew a fold of thick paper from the bottom of the basket. Inside was a single sewing needle that gleamed silver in the candlelight. She held it in her right hand and positioned her left over the mortar. With one quick motion, she pierced her finger. She ignored Annis’s gasp and concentrated on counting the drops of blood as they fell. Three might have been enough, or five, but she knew Frances’s strength. She shed seven dark drops of her blood into the mixture.
“Is that necessary?” Annis whispered.
“It is. Frances uses it in her rite, and my blood must answer hers.” She wrapped her wounded fingertip with a bit of cloth. “I am the stronger practitioner, Annis. Believe that.”
“Yes, Aunt Harriet.”
“Good girl.” Harriet used a tiny silver spoon, darkened with age, to blend the drops of blood into the herbs and honey. When the mixture was as smooth as she could make it, she scooped up a fingerful and rolled it in her palm until she had a small, pungent ball. She held it out for Annis to see. “This is our remedy. You do the other one. Then our rite begins.”
Annis did as she was told, and they set the two electuaries side by side on Harriet’s clean handkerchief. Harriet cleared away the remnants of the ingredients, stowing them back in her basket. She moved the candles a bit closer to each other, then drew out her amulet and held it in her hand. “This is our practice—our art, as I like to think of it.”
“Our magic?” Annis asked.
Harriet nodded. “Yes. Magic is wisdom and power, wielded well. That’s what we’re going to do, wield power.”
“How?”
“We will speak a cantrip. A verse, rather like a chant, always with a specific purpose.”
“Like a prayer? We chant prayers in church.”
“It’s a bit like a prayer.” Harriet considered, cradling Beryl’s amulet in her palm. “Words have strength, and spoken words have the greatest weight. They express our intent, and for such as we—”
“You mean, witches?”
“You’ve noticed, I suppose, that I avoid saying that.”
“Why is that?”
“Ah. You’re making me think about it.” Harriet lifted the amulet so it caught the candlelight directly, its two halves glowing gold and violet. “Witch should be a beautiful word, signifying wisdom and knowledge and discipline, but it isn’t used that way. It’s been made an insult, implying evil, causing fear. The word has been perverted.”
“Will it always be that way?”
“I can’t claim to know the answer. It would mean seeing rather far into the future, which is a magic I don’t possess.”
“And the cantrip?”
“We speak the cantrip to express our intent. The intentions of our kind have more force than those of ordinary people. If we’re successful, we make things happen.”
“So if we’re witches, a cantrip is a spell.”
“You prove my point. Words are powerful things.”
Harriet lifted the amulet’s chain over her head and bent forward to set the ametrine between the two electuaries. When she stepped back again, she watched Annis unclasp her choker and lay it next to the amulet. The jewels glistened in the flickering light of the candles, the creamy moonstone, the yellow and violet of the ametrine.
“Now,” Harriet said softly. She and Annis stood shoulder to shoulder. Harriet felt the power flowing between them and around them, the beginning tingle in her belly and her bones as she gathered her energy.
“Now,” she repeated. “Let us begin.”
She recited:
Stem and leaf and root and flower,
Witch’s blood and witch’s power,
All the wicked art unmake,
And, in its place, the good awake.
She felt Annis’s shoulder brushing hers, and her throat tightened with emotion. How long since anyone had touched her, beyond shaking her hand? Grace brushed her hair sometimes, but it was not the same. No one had really touched her in years. Despite the grim circumstances, it was a blessing.
This was not the time to think about it, though. There was work to be done, work already begun. She swallowed away the constriction of her throat and fixed her gaze on the amulet, waiting for the sign that her rite had been accomplished.
She tried not to think of the risks, but she knew they were there. Two powers were about to go to war with each other, with two innocent young people caught between them. It was a conflict she would have preferred to avoid. It was a conflict, she feared, that had been building for a long time.
She felt the faint tremor of Annis’s shoulder against hers. She supposed the child was anxious, and that was proper. She should be.
Harriet waited for the sign, but the ametrine did not respond. When she had waited fifteen minutes, twenty, with nothing happening, she repeated her cantrip. Annis stood steady beside her, watching, listening, her eyes glinting ice blue in the candlelight.
The waiting began again. It had happened before with difficult rites. The sea whispered through the darkness. Night birds called now and then. The breeze through the folly grew chilly, but the thrill of energy through her blood kept Harriet warm.
Annis was a different matter. Harriet became aware that the girl was shivering. Although it meant starting again, Harriet said, “Annis, get your shawl. There’s no need to catch a chill.”
Annis, her eyelids dragging with fatigue, nodded, and stepped to the side of the folly where she had left it.
“You can sit,” Harriet said. “You can watch from there.”
“But I want to know when it’s done,” Annis said, hesitating. She pulled the shawl around her shoulders and knotted the ends together. “How can you tell?”
“It’s easier to show you than to describe it,” Harriet said. She hadn’t thought about the cold or her tiredness until this moment, seeing them in Annis. Now her feet felt chilly, standing on the stone floor of the folly, and her neck began to prickle with the predawn mist. She found her own shawl in her basket and wrapped herself in it.
“
One more time,” she told Annis. “Don’t despair. Sometimes it’s like this.”
Annis came to stand beside her once again. They were of a height, the two of them, similar in their dark hair, their slenderness, both with the prominent Bishop chin. It occurred to Harriet that this could have been her daughter, hers and Alexander’s. She had once longed for a daughter of her own, a daughter to love, a daughter to teach.
She straightened her shoulders. She knew better than to allow random thoughts into her mind at such a moment. She needed to concentrate, to focus all her energy on her rite.
To make magic.
Stem and leaf and root and flower,
Witch’s blood and witch’s power,
All the wicked art unmake,
And, in its place, the good awake.
She spoke the cantrip in a steady voice, standing as still as one of the sea stacks in the bay below Seabeck. The magic would happen. It must happen.
Annis seemed to sense the intensity of her concentration. She, too, stood very still, no longer shivering, her eyes fixed on the amulet shining in the candle flames.
Before a full minute had passed, the ametrine filled with a shifting, trembling mist. It began to glow from within, as if it had its own flame, illuminating the purple veins in the stone. Harriet’s fingers and toes began to ache as the light brightened until even the purple threads disappeared.
Annis gave a soft cry and clasped her hands before her. Harriet put up a finger to ask her to be silent. The girl pressed one hand to her lips, her eyes brilliant in the dimness.
By the time the light in the stone began to fade, the stars were also fading, the eastern sky turning gray. When the ametrine was itself again, a simple stone of yellow and violet, Harriet spoke in a voice dry with fatigue. “It’s done. We’d better get you back to the house.”
“But what about you?”
The Age of Witches Page 16