“Aunt Harriet!” Annis seized her hand and pressed it between hers. “Tell me. I can’t believe it’s as bad as you think.” She freed one hand and dug in her pocket to bring out a clean handkerchief. As Harriet pressed it to her eyes, Annis circled her aunt’s waist with one arm and led her toward the two stools at the far end of the worktable. She urged her to sit on one, and she took the other. She stayed close, one hand on Harriet’s back, the other holding her arm, as if she were afraid Harriet might topple off the stool.
Harriet wept for a time. Annis waited, not speaking, not moving from her side. The handkerchief was soaked through by the time Harriet’s tears stopped, and she realized Annis was patting her back, gently, as you might pat the back of a crying child. It was surprisingly comforting.
She gave up trying to dry her cheeks with the already-wet handkerchief. They would dry on their own in time, she supposed, although she would look a sight. No doubt she already did. She took one deep, shuddery breath and straightened her spine. “I’m going to tell you,” she said, in a voice thready with tears. “But please know I’ve regretted it for twenty-five years, and the thought of it has never failed to cause me pain.”
Annis took the wet handkerchief from her and produced a fresh, dry one. Harriet accepted it gratefully.
“When I was young,” Harriet began, “I met the most wonderful man in the world. His name was Alexander.”
She told her tale as clearly and briefly as she could. Annis listened, rapt, watching her face as she spoke. “And so,” she finished, feeling the gravity of her story afresh, so that her shoulders slumped despite her, “I tried to dissuade Alexander from going to war, but all I succeeded in doing was distracting him so he was vulnerable. He didn’t protect himself. He died because I interfered.”
“Aunt Harriet,” Annis said, speaking for the first time since the recitation began. “Your Alexander might have died anyway. It was the war. So many people died.”
“I shouldn’t have done it, Annis. I knew better. Grandmother Beryl taught me better. We should never toy with the maleficia. Alexander paid the price for my selfishness.” She made herself pull her shoulders back and her spine straight. “It was a long time ago, and there’s nothing to be done about it now except advise you never to make the same mistake.”
Annis sat silently, looking toward the frosty scene beyond the window, her lower lip caught between her teeth. Harriet said, “Annis, do you understand? Employing the maleficia is imposing your will upon someone else. It’s precisely what you don’t want a husband to do to you. In the end it redounds upon the practitioner, as poor Frances learned. The outcome is inevitable.”
Several minutes passed while Annis’s brow creased with thought and Harriet, believing she had said all she could, sat in tense silence. Finally, with a long exhalation, Annis broke the moment. “I understand, Aunt Harriet. Of course you’re right. We can go ahead.”
“I’m relieved to hear that.” Harriet stood up. “Wrap up the manikins, will you? We’ll have to take them to Frances. She never leaves her room.”
Grace was in the kitchen, murmuring to herself. Harriet and Annis went down the hall to Frances’s bedroom. The door was open, and they could see Velma dusting the bureaus and windowsills with a large dust cloth. Frances was seated in an armchair, which Velma had turned to allow the winter sun to shine on her face.
With Velma’s cot added to the room’s furniture, the room felt crowded. Harriet knocked on the door frame, and Velma, dust cloth in hand, turned to see her former mistress. “Oh!” she said. “Miss Annis! Am I coming back?”
“No, Velma,” Annis said gently. “No, we’ve just come to see Frances. Are you well?”
Velma didn’t answer the question. “You’re not gonna take away Mrs. Frances?”
“No,” Annis said. “She’s best here, with Aunt Harriet. With you, I should say.”
The creases of anxiety in Velma’s forehead eased. “She wants me here.”
“Do you think so? Then I’m so glad you’re willing to stay.”
“Velma,” Harriet said, “why don’t you go have a cup of tea? I think Grace is baking scones, and you can have one while it’s hot.”
When Velma hesitated, casting an anxious look at Frances, Annis spoke again. “She’ll be fine for a little while. We won’t leave her until you come back.”
When she was gone, Harriet said, “She’s devoted to Frances.”
“She always worries about everything under the sun. Now I’m afraid she’ll worry about Frances.”
“Did you notice what she said, Annis?”
“What?”
“She said Frances wants her here. Now, how do you think she knows that?”
Annis caught a breath, and her clear blue eyes sparkled with sudden understanding. “She senses her, as I do.”
“I think she must. It’s a sign of her good heart, Annis. You may miss her more than you think.”
Annis smiled and crossed the room to pick up something from the bureau Velma had been dusting.
“What’s that?”
“This,” Annis said, “is Velma’s treasure.” She held up the cut-glass swan.
“It’s very pretty.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Annis set it down again, taking care to position it just as it had been. “I was so surprised when I found how much she liked it. Now I’m surprised again.”
“Has George noticed Velma is gone?”
“No. He hardly ever saw her. We’ll just let him go on paying her wages until… well, until we see what’s going to happen.”
“You have ways of managing your father, I see.”
Annis smiled. “I think our little bit of magic has not completely faded.”
Frances had not moved at all since they came in. She had gained a bit of weight since coming to the Dakota. She was freshly washed, her hair brushed and pinned up, but her pretty face was as blank as a statue’s. Her lips drooped open, and with Velma not there, a drop of saliva rolled from the corner of her mouth.
Harriet had become accustomed to the stab of remorse in her breast when she saw her cousin like this. It was all too easy to leave her in the care of Velma, to avoid confronting the result of their battle, but she sometimes felt guilty about that, too.
She took the wrapped bundle from Annis and knelt beside the armchair. “Frances, I hope you can hear me. These are the manikins you made. They need to be destroyed, and you’re the only one who can do it.” She laid the bundle in Frances’s lap and folded back the linen.
She had no expectation of a response, but she waited a moment just the same, in case one might come. Annis came to stand behind her, first bending to dab at Frances’s chin with a towel.
Harriet was about to pick up Frances’s hand, to move her fingers for her, when Frances blinked and took a quick, gasping breath, as if someone had pinched her. A strange sound emerged from her throat, a moan, or a whimper.
Harriet whispered, “Frances?”
The cool sunlight illuminated Frances’s still-white cheeks, her drooping eyelids, her slack mouth. It didn’t seem possible she might actually speak. It didn’t seem likely she was conscious of what was happening, but her hands moved in her lap, lifting and falling like injured birds. The fingers flexed, as if they were searching for something. Annis, standing behind the chair, pressed a hand to her breast as if her heart hurt.
Harriet lifted the manikin that represented Annis and placed it under Frances’s hand. “Undo it, Frances,” she murmured. “No magic today. No cantrip. Just undo it.”
The moan came again, a pitiful, helpless sound. Frances’s fingers touched the little simulacrum, grazing the tuft of hair, feeling the makeshift dress. She smoothed it with uncertain fingers before, feebly, she began to take it apart.
First the cloth came free and fell to the floor. Harriet’s stomach contracted at the crude shape of the body beneath, the legs, the arms, so clumsy and yet so terrifyingly human.
Frances, her gaze as blank as ever, began to cr
umble the wax beneath her fingers. She started with the legs, then the arms. Tears began to trickle weakly down her cheeks.
Annis said, “She’s crying. Frances is crying.”
“I see,” Harriet said. “That hasn’t happened before, has it?”
“No, but… Oh dear God, Aunt Harriet. It’s so awful. She’s aware. She knows what’s happening, but she can’t—she can’t do anything about it.”
They watched, helpless, as Frances scrabbled at the torso of the poppet, unsteadily crumbling it into bits. When Frances reached the head, Annis gasped.
Harriet peered at her. “Do you feel something, Annis?”
Annis’s voice was thin. “In a way I do. I feel—it’s odd, Aunt Harriet, but I feel her sorrow.” Her fingers fluttered up to her throat, where the moonstone rested. “It hurts her,” she said. “She has lost everything, and it hurts her.”
“Oh, Frances,” Harriet said, shaking her head. “Poor Frances.”
Frances gave another moan, a thin, formless sob. Her tears were tiny dull droplets that carved crooked paths down her face. With a convulsive movement, she tore the tuft of hair from the wooden bead that formed the manikin’s head and dropped the bead into her lap.
There was no human shape left at all now, no hint of what the figure had been, nothing left but a little gray mound of shredded wax. Annis gently wiped the tears from Frances’s cheeks.
The second manikin soon followed. It seemed Frances needed no prompting, though her fingers fumbled blindly at the task. Her whimpers grew louder, and Harriet had the sickening feeling she wanted to speak, to say something about what she was doing, perhaps about what she had done. The sounds never became words. Frances was locked in her body as surely as if she were shut into a prison cell.
It must be, Harriet thought, a living hell.
They watched Frances pull apart James’s manikin, much as she had Annis’s. She fumbled the bead that represented his head, with its painted eyes and curl of fair hair, dropping it to the floor. It rolled out of sight under the bed.
When it was done, Frances’s head lolled against the high back of her armchair. Her tears had stopped. Her eyelids drooped as before, and her mouth sagged open, as if the brief moment of energy had never happened.
“Can you help her, Aunt Harriet?” Annis asked in a small voice.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I’ll do all I can.”
“I’ll be back to help,” Annis said. “We’re going to Seabeck after the wedding, but I’ll be back in the fall to work with you.”
“I will look forward to that.” Harriet struggled a bit to get to her feet, feeling stiff and old and tired. “Why don’t you gather up all that wax, and we’ll dispose of it in the herbarium. I’ll fetch Velma so we can get to work.”
She found Velma hovering in the corridor, awaiting her summons. When they came back into the bedroom, Annis was just folding the linen over the remains of the manikins.
Harriet forgot all about the bead that had rolled under the bed. When she came back for it, later in the day, it was gone.
49
Annis
James wired his mother, and Lady Eleanor sailed posthaste to New York to be present for the wedding, arriving at Allington House with all the dignity and fuss of a great ocean liner claiming her berth. A lady’s maid and a footman and dozens of trunks and hatboxes and suitcases trailed in her wake, a show of status that would have made Frances weep with envy. Lady Eleanor held out one black-gloved hand to George Allington, and in a gesture that made Annis’s eyes widen, he bent over it as if they were in Victoria’s court.
Lady Eleanor began her visit with her customary icy demeanor but thawed swiftly in the warmth of her host’s easygoing hospitality. Annis, though she was up to her chin in dressmakers and florists and bakers, watched this with bemusement.
“My father,” she told James, on a day when they managed to escape for a ride through the park, “is quite taken with Her Ladyship.”
“My mother has that effect on people,” he answered. “When she chooses.”
“I like her very much,” Annis said. “I believe, once we’re married, I will address her as you do, as Mother.”
He smiled. “I expect she’ll be pleased.”
“She’s not upset that there will be no money?”
His smile faded, and he glanced away, into the bare limbs of the trees stretching into the wintry sky.
Annis said, “James?”
He cleared his throat, something she hadn’t heard him do in a long time. “I’m sorry, Annis, but I—it seemed best to—”
“James! You haven’t told her!”
He looked ahead to the curving drive where it wound through the trees, their silvery limbs laid bare by winter. “It doesn’t matter, Annis,” he said.
“Doesn’t matter! Of course it matters.”
She was watching his profile, and she saw his chin jut in a way that reminded her of her father. Of herself, for that matter. It made him look older. Harder.
He said in a grim tone, “It’s my problem now, Annis. It falls to me to save Seabeck, not to my mother. The decisions will have to be mine, no matter how difficult.”
She chewed her lip, contemplating this. “You mean about the London house.”
“The London house, the High Point parcel, and more. There’s no way out of it.” He drew a ragged breath through his nostrils. “Seabeck will never be what it was, I fear, but it will survive. I mean to see to it.”
She reached out and put her gloved hand on his sleeve. “We’ll see to it together, James.”
He looked at her then, his autumn-hazel eyes glistening in the thin sunshine. “I’m grateful you’ll be at my side, Annis, but I warn you—it may not be easy.”
She smiled affectionately at him. “Any task is easier when shared, I believe.”
“Indeed.” He smiled back. “Easier when shared.”
“I do hope your mother won’t resent me, James. You could have married a real heiress, one with a decent settlement, one who could have saved you all of this trouble.”
“I could have done that, it’s true.” He grinned, and the look of worry left his eyes. “But she wouldn’t have been you, Miss Annis Allington. I should never have been happy!”
Annis had spoken to her father about the subject of her dowry, but he had been unmoved. “Proves he really wants you,” he said. “Never liked Frances putting you on the market that way.”
“You didn’t stop her from doing it.”
“I got tired of her complaints.”
“You were willing to let me be married off just to make her happy?”
He said, as he had before, “You had to marry someone.”
It was the same old argument, and she didn’t have the energy to pursue it. Her father had a reputation for being tight with money, and in the past, she had admired it. Now—she didn’t care so much for herself, but she could see the weight that lay on dear James’s shoulders, and there seemed to be nothing she could do to lighten it.
It was a busy time. She was occupied from morning till night, either with Harriet in the herbarium, entertaining James, or dealing with the issue of a trousseau.
One of the first things Lady Eleanor had done, upon learning that Annis no longer had a maid, was to engage one for her. She knew well how to go about these things, quickly producing a woman of middle age called Myra, already trained by an elderly lady in Manhattan. Myra was a marvel with a sewing needle, quick with a cup of tea or broth or cocoa when it was needed, and willing to travel across the Atlantic with her new young mistress. She took on the task of supervising the trousseau, and Annis surrendered all decisions regarding clothes, lingerie, shoes, and hats to her.
The idea came to her one afternoon, bursting into her brain all at once, like one of the fireworks going off over the park in the summer. Simmering with suppressed excitement, Annis persuaded Myra to go to the milliner’s shop without her. It would give her a couple of hours of freedom. Lady Eleanor was r
esting. James, at her father’s invitation, had gone in the carriage to visit the Allington Iron Stove Factory. She could be alone.
She had no herbarium, of course. She had only her corner of Mrs. King’s pantry, though she hadn’t used it in months. She hurried there now and found her space as tidy as ever, her stores of herbs and ointments still in their jars. Of course she had a great deal still to learn, but she had been working with Harriet nearly every day since their return. She thought she knew enough to do this one small thing.
She remembered the day in the herbarium when she and Harriet had made, and magicked, the salve that brought Bits home. She had everything she needed, the rosemary, the wormwood, the mandrake, and a bit of honey.
She could have asked Harriet to help her, but what if Harriet refused? Then, if she had the result she wanted, Harriet would suspect what she had done. If Aunt Harriet said not to do this, then doing it anyway would be a betrayal of her trust. She meant—with one possible exception—never to betray Harriet’s trust.
She chopped and pounded until her ingredients were smooth, then rolled them into a small, perfect ball. She found an unburned candle and carried it and the electuary up to her bedroom. She laid her moonstone at the base of the candle and set the ball of herbs and honey next to it. She recited the cantrip from her memory, pleased it was still so clear in her mind, changing only one word.
The touch of this remedy will move the heart
So kindness is the better part.
Leaf and root and flower bless
The heart that always answers, Yes.
It made her smile to remember how easy it had been to persuade Mr. Neufeld to return Black Satin and Sally to the Allington stables. It had been even more simple to beg Papa, under the effect of the salve, to return the price Neufeld had paid.
The Age of Witches Page 35