Witchy Winter

by D. J. Butler

  ~Kill them! Kill them! Give them to the god!~

  “Kill!”

  Landon was humiliated. He was angry. Did he actually blame Nathaniel?

  Nathaniel, who had tried to pull him back?

  Nathaniel was afraid to find out. He crouched as Landon raced up to the fence, and then sprang up to smash his forehead into the other boy’s nose.

  Landon went down again.

  Nathaniel ran. “Charles! Charles! George!”

  No sign of them.

  Far away, he thought he heard drums, and the roll of thunder. A dream? His own blood, sounding gigantic in his ears?

  Then, definitely, he heard running feet in the autumn leaves behind him.

  But Landon could never catch him. Landon’s feet were bare, and the forest floor was jagged with sharp mountain pebbles, twigs, and splintered fallen branches. His vision wasn’t as clear as he could want, but Nathaniel lengthened his stride to a run—

  Nathaniel ran into a tree.

  He smelled ash wood, and absurdly thought it was a nice change from the reek of pig droppings—and bounced backward, falling to wet earth again.

  “Laugh at me, will you, George?” he heard Landon shriek. The other boy’s voice sounded far away, but then suddenly hands grabbed Nathaniel, picked him up, and shook him. He saw Landon’s face close up, smelling pig shit and anger.

  He smelled blood, too. But Landon wasn’t bleeding.

  White light flashed.

  “I’m not George,” Nathaniel said weakly.

  Landon hurled him to the ground again.

  Nathaniel screamed. This was it. He was going to die.

  “You will never!” Landon kicked Nathaniel in the ribs. He felt one of them break with a wet crack.

  “Ever!” Another kick, this time to his face.

  His limbs began to tremble.

  “Please,” Nathaniel murmured. “Please stop hurting me.”

  “Tell!”

  Landon dragged Nathaniel to his feet again. Nathaniel tried to resist, tried to embrace Landon defensively, but he was weak from loss of blood. The other boy threw Nathaniel down again—

  And this time, he kept falling. He rolled down a slope. Rocks battered him, branches tore at his flesh.

  “Landon,” he murmured as he tumbled end over end.

  He came to a stop, unable to see anything.

  “Charles,” he murmured. “Charles.”

  Nathaniel’s body shook uncontrollably.

  * * *

  The chevalier’s yacht lay alongside one of the prison hulks and dropped anchor. The hulk stank of rotting flesh and bilgewater, but Montse’s attention was drawn to the other side of the yacht, where a mass of blackened stones beneath the waterline and scorched timbers jutting up above the waves suggested a hulk had burnt to the waterline. In the clear waters of the Pontchartrain, she saw a sharp-toothed eel gnawing at skeletal remains that might be those of a man.

  A recent event, then.

  “The Incroyable,” the chevalier said. “Who would believe it?” He smirked gently at his own pun, then invited Montse to walk up the gangplank to the hulk.

  Montse wasn’t tied or shackled. She didn’t need to be, since the chevalier had Margaret back at his palace under guard. Montse was on her best behavior. She was also looking for a way to get a message out.

  The gangplank was sturdy and had a handrail that Montse, river- and gulf-rat that she was, didn’t need. She scampered up to the hulk, noting the name painted on the side in faded letters: Puissant.

  No longer, she thought, but she kept her own pun to herself.

  On the Puissant, she waited until the chevalier joined her. His gendarmes remained on the yacht, and the hulk’s crew of jailers, who muttered and chirped like idiots, mostly kept their distance, skulking at the edges of the ship’s deck.

  “If you’ve brought me here to imprison me,” she said, “you’re taking very little care to prevent me from jumping into the Pontchartrain.”

  Gaspard Le Moyne smiled, like a fox. “Isn’t the child’s welfare enough?”

  Montse shrugged, pretending a nonchalance she didn’t feel. She and Margaret had both denied that the girl had any connection with the Penn family—Margaret sincerely and with growing bafflement, since Montse had, true to her charge, never told her. “My niece Margarida is a good hand, and I’d be sad to lose her.”

  The chevalier chuckled. “Good. You’re not here to be imprisoned. You’re here to meet someone. Follow me.”

  He descended a steep ladder belowdecks. Montse followed, wishing her weapons hadn’t been taken away.

  The hulk retained its individual cabins, though many of the doors were rotting on their hinges and some of the walls themselves had been eaten away by the salt water of the Pontchartrain. The holes in the hull and in the deck above let in enough light to see. The chevalier led the way aft, to a large cabin. Montse had never served in any navy, but she had captured enough naval vessels to guess that this cabin would once have belonged to the captain of the Puissant.

  Perhaps a quarter of the windows retained their glass. Others retained their wooden shutters. Many were now simply gaping holes, and a breeze came through the cabin. In hot weather, those shattered windows would be a blessing to anyone in the cabin, but in a storm, they would let in all the Pontchartrain’s fury.

  The cabin’s single occupant lay chained in the corner, sprawled on his back out of reach of the door and the windows alike. He was old and thin, and the faintest smear of rouge persisted under a crust of grime and salt. His breeches, once fine and black, were stained with gray spots by the sea, and his once-white shirt was mottled dark brown with old, dried blood. His face was built on fine, high bones. Wispy hair circled his skull like a tangled cloud.

  “Don Luis Maria Salvador Sandoval de Burgos,” the chevalier said. “Until recently, a prominent merchant in our international shipping trade. Silver and rum imported, and cotton taken away, mostly.”

  The Spaniard raised a single blue-veined eyelid and stared at the chevalier, a faint smile curling his lip. “Y ahora, gracias a Dios,” he said, “a man who has again found his soul.”

  “Though not, as you might suppose, through monastic spiritual exercises aboard my ship,” the chevalier said. “Rather, Don de Burgos regained his soul, if that’s how you wish to describe his change of heart, by attempted murder.”

  The Spaniard spat, a tiny spray of spittle that settled on his own chest. “I should have killed your son myself. That would have been an honorable duel.”

  The chevalier nodded. “And we would be here, in exactly the same circumstance, no doubt.”

  “It’s against the law to duel in New Orleans,” Montse said. She wasn’t a duelist herself, favoring poison or a knife in the kidneys to giving an enemy an open shot at her, face to face. “Shouldn’t you hang this man?”

  “Perhaps I will,” the chevalier admitted. “But not yet. He has a nephew who claims he can raise a ransom, in which case I may yet free Don de Burgos to ply the waters of the Caribbean and the Atlantic, provided he no longer sets foot in my city.”

  “In case you and I are to become fellow-ascetics,” Montse said to the old man, “I have something to confess.”

  “Something against me?” Don de Burgos smiled. “I forgive it, freely.”

  “I’ve stolen from you. I know your name, Don. Also, I’ve competed against you, and unfairly. I have…not fully cooperated with the chevalier’s customs men.”

  De Burgos chuckled drily. “If not you, then your cousin. I hear Catalonia in your accent. I forgive you still.”

  “You aren’t going to become a nun of the Puissant, Mademoiselle Ferrer i Quintana. At least, not unless by your own choice.” The chevalier leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’ve brought you here so you could see your choice clearly.”

  Over the cypress trees on the far side of the Pontchartrain Sea, storm clouds gathered.

  “One possibility is to be chained in this
wreck,” Montse said. “You brought me to see Don de Burgos so I’d understand that you’re willing to imprison even powerful and wealthy men aboard the hulks. If you’d do this to the worthy don, how much worse would you do to me, a common criminal?”

  Lightning across the sea flashed in the chevalier’s eyes. “But fortunately, you’re not a common criminal. You are Montserrat Ferrer i Quintana, captain of La Verge Caníbal.”

  “Eh.” Montse shrugged.

  “Once companion and friend of Hannah Penn.”

  Thunder.

  “That was a long time ago,” Montse said. “I didn’t very much improve the Empress’s reputation by hanging about in her company. And if you’re hoping I can win you some favor at the court in Philadelphia, then I think you misunderstand the relationship between Thomas and Hannah.”

  The Spaniard on the floor cackled, but the chevalier was untroubled.

  “No, I’ll send you to an entirely different court. I assume you know that Margarida, your niece, wasn’t an only child.”

  “Oh?”

  “She’s a triplet, one of three children born living at the same time.”

  The chevalier knew. What was this conspiracy whose agents he had unmasked?

  And how much did he know?

  “Tell me what you’d like me to do.”

  “Margarida’s sister, who speaks with an Appalachee accent as thickly as Margarida does with her accent català, is currently making a bid to regain their father’s throne in Cahokia. You’ll be my ambassador to her court.”

  Montse took a deep breath. “You have many servants already, My Lord Chevalier. Why not send one of them?”

  The chevalier smiled faintly. “I think she’ll take the message more seriously if it comes from you.”

  “And what missive am I to bear to this Appalachee Cahokian Penn?”

  The Chevalier of New Orleans smiled. “A simple one. That you’re the embassy I promised to send her, and that my wedding gift to her will be her sister’s life.”

  * * *

  The turnout for the vigil the night before had been impressive, but the crowd that came to participate in the funeral liturgy of their beloved Bishop of New Orleans was staggering. It flowed out all the doors and halfway across the Place d’Armes. Armand had told Etienne an hour before he began the ceremony that the dueling ground behind the cathedral was also full. Etienne had quickly posted men at each cathedral door, choosing those he knew to have large lungs and voices that carried.

  A man who could bellow across the crowded floor of the casino on Saturday night and make himself heard was a man who could pass on the words spoken, sung, and prayed inside the cathedral on Sunday morning.

  These were not, by and large, the same people who had participated in the funeral procession Etienne had led earlier through the Vieux Carré and the Faubourg Marigny. These were churchgoers, the pious, and the citizenry of New Orleans too respectable to participate in a Vodun parade.

  Etienne felt the power of the crowd in the air as he welcomed them from the pulpit. He felt it in his bones, like electricity, when he took his father’s aspergillum and used it to sprinkle holy water on the coffin containing nothing to do with his father, and instead an effigy of his father’s murderer. The aspergillum was a short rod with a perforated ball on its end, and he imagined it as a mace, crushing the chevalier’s skull as he repeatedly struck it. This mental act was no idle fantasy, but part of the magical assault he was building. Etienne spoke such words of love and welcome as “I am the resurrection, and the life” and “blessed are they that mourn,” and in his heart he gave free reign to hatred.

  In his heart: vengeance is mine.

  He felt the energy of the crowd during the Penitential Act, as they cried repeatedly for mercy. He had adjusted his houngan’s sash to fit over the bishop’s priestly vestments, wearing it now from right shoulder to left hip. The power that came to him through the crowd caught in the sash and spun around him, filling him, burning him, warding him, expanding him to gigantic stature.

  The energy swelled nearly to the point of exploding when he led them in the Kyrie Eleison chant. The crowd must have felt it as well, and it distracted them from noticing that Etienne changed the words after the first iteration from kyrie eleison—Lord, have mercy—to kyrie kteinon—Lord, kill.

  His gede loa had helped him with that; he was no Greek scholar, but apparently there were many Greek among the dead willing to help him in his quest for vengeance.

  For the chant, Etienne held a wafer of the host, consecrated in a previous ceremony, in his mouth. It was an old houngan’s trick to channel stolen powers of heaven into your magical deed, and it was a good one. He also held his mother’s locket concealed in the palm of his left hand the entire time. Of that, neither his father nor even his judgment-prone brother Chigozie could disapprove.

  He led the congregation in singing the ninety-fourth Psalm.

  Lord, how long shall the wicked, how long shall the wicked triumph?

  They slay the widow and the stranger, and murder the fatherless

  But the Lord is my defense; and my God is the rock of my refuge

  And he shall bring upon them their own iniquity

  And shall cut them off in their own wickedness

  Yea, the Lord our God shall cut them off

  It was not the entire psalm, but Etienne’s own selection of the psalm’s words. A hired quartet of Igbo musicians had written an appropriately dirgelike melody for the words, and the quartet’s singer and bandleader led the congregation.

  Etienne preached his sermon on Genesis thirty-four. He kept it short and focused on the need for active response to acts of great evil. If anyone noticed that he failed to condemn Simeon and Levi for murdering the Shechemites who had raped their sister, or for abusing the rite of circumcision by using it to render the Shechemites vulnerable, they kept it to themselves.

  If any gods objected, they didn’t make their concerns known, either.

  He shuddered with the power of the rite.

  For the closing doxology, Etienne offered the Lord’s Prayer from Matthew six, again with a slight amendment of his own. “Forgive us our debts,” he cried, and then lowered his voice to mutter, “as we pursue our debtors.”

  The crowd duly asked for forgiveness.

  “Amen.”

  The energy that had been building for the entire rite in Etienne and his vestments flowed through him and was gone.

  Into the coffin? Into the Chevalier of New Orleans?

  Was it done? Was the man now dead, or would Etienne’s spell require time to play itself out?

  Exhausted, Etienne leaned on the altar for support.

  Throughout, Etienne’s men stationed in the doorways did their best, calling out what they could hear to the multitudes outside, or describing what they were witnessing. No one objected at any point; they were not pious enough to know the proper rite, or not focused enough to notice Etienne’s alterations. They were too grief-stricken still at the loss of their humble bishop to cavil if one of the funeral liturgy’s ushers reordered a few words here and there or identified the Kyrie as “Carry Me, Elation.”

  And how did they feel about the bishop’s replacement?

  At the very least, for a debut appearance as a Christian cleric, Etienne had brought in a large crowd.

  “Now let us give the kiss of peace.” Etienne straightened up and steadied himself with a deep breath. His Brides, awoken and aroused by the rite and participating in it with all the concentrated venom of their will, wanted kisses. He kissed the deacons and old Père Tréville from the Faubourg Marigny, who had helped Etienne organize the funeral rite in innocent ignorance of Etienne’s true intent, but these did not satiate the Brides.

  He descended through the rood screen to kiss parishioners.

  Etienne did not intend to seek specifically female mass-goers, but the Brides drove him to them. Or perhaps the Brides drove the women to their houngan husband by the maryaj-loa, but Etienne found himself ki
ssing one woman after another. They were Igbo, Bantu, Catalan, German, Spaniards, Cavaliers, Cherokee—all the many-colored races of New Orleans, but especially French.

  They were all beautiful.

  Each kiss fed his loa brides. Each kiss restored a little of the energy he had lost.

  Sweat poured down Etienne’s skin beneath the heavy chasuble and stole. His nostrils filled with the spiced scent of women eager for him.

  The Brides.

  The Brides and, under their invisible and irresistible influence, the women of the congregation.

  He felt lightheaded, and leaned against a pillar.

  Far back in the nave of the St. Louis Cathedral, Etienne saw men coming for him.

  Beware, my son.

  At the tingle he felt in his mother’s locket, Etienne became alert. He looked closer at the men. They were tall and lean, not with the underfed emaciation of beggars but with the fighting muscle of leopards. They dressed strangely, even for New Orleans, in padded pourpoints that covered them from neck to wrist, and then dropped halfway to their knees. They wore silk scarves wrapped around their heads, concealing their faces but for their eyes. Long beards emerged from the folds of the scarves to tumble down their quilted chests.

  At their waists, they carried curved swords.

  To go armed in New Orleans was no particular distinction. It was the unarmed person who was extraordinary. But these men looked foreign, like fighters of the Old World in centuries past. They looked like warriors of the Caliphate. What mussulman would come to pay respects at the funeral rites of a dead Christian bishop?

  And what funeralgoer would walk with such a blaze of determination in his eyes?

  He counted three of them, coming up the nave.

  A quick look at the side chapel told Etienne that that door too was blocked by two such men.

  There would be men in the back, too. He was trapped.