5
THE NEXT MORNING, SISTER GRETCHEN knocks on my door before breakfast. “We have a problem downstairs. Can you come with me?”
I drop my brush onto my unmade bed. It’s amazing how much sunnier I feel, having reconciled with Finn. And if there’s a chance that he could stay in New London and we could see each other often—
“Of course. What is it?”
Gretchen squints at me through the bright light pouring in through the yellow curtains. “There’s a girl here begging to join the Sisterhood. Miss Elliott. Says she’s a friend of yours?”
I grab a few pins from the dressing table, twisting my hair up as we go. “Rory,” I say from between the hairpins in my mouth. Tess always reprimands me when I do this; she says one day I’ll swallow one. I smile. She and Maura should be here soon—perhaps even tomorrow.
“Is she a likely candidate?” Sister Gretchen asks.
Is she a witch, Sister Gretchen means.
But, in Rory’s case, is that enough?
“Yes and no,” I say. Gretchen and I clatter down the stairs along with dozens of girls streaming toward their breakfasts. “She’s a witch, but she’s unstable.”
Sister Gretchen blinks at me owlishly. “Weren’t we all once?” She waves a hand at the formal sitting room. “She’s in there, with Cora.”
Sister Cora sits on the olive settee. Her face is pale, her blue eyes haloed with pained purple shadows. Rory is pacing before the cold, ash-filled grate. She whirls on me the moment I enter. Her eyes are red-rimmed, and her black hair is sliding out of its messy chignon. She’s dressed with uncharacteristic modesty in a r Fem"uler eyes auffled mint-green taffeta monstrosity.
“Cate! You have to help me.” She snatches my wrist with cold fingers.
“What’s the matter? Is it Sachi?” Her crime—Rory’s crime—was shocking, but surely they would still hold a trial for her?
“It’s my father.” The word is venomous on Rory’s tongue. “Now that she’s been arrested, he can’t see the back of me fast enough. He’s sending me home. I’m to leave tomorrow morning.”
I adjust a hairpin that’s poking me. “Well, that’s probably for the best. You don’t want to spend any more time with him than you’ve got to.”
“Do you honestly expect me to go home and marry Nils as though nothing’s happened?” Rory rocks backward as though I’ve slapped her. “This is all my fault, Cate!”
I glare at her, stalking over to the window. The burgundy curtains are tied back with brown velvet bows, and I gaze out at the empty street, trying to control my temper. “Then don’t make it worse. Sachi wanted you safe, and you can’t do anything for her here. Go home and stay out of trouble.”
Rory collapses onto the brown silk chair, burying her face in her hands. “I want to do better. Be better. And I believe I could, except then I think of how he’s always looked down his nose at me, how he never thought I was good enough to be friends with Sachi, and—I get so angry I could smash everything in sight. Perhaps I could forgive him for the way he’s treated me, if he was a good father to her, but he’s completely renounced her! Said he no longer has a daughter.”
When he had one staring right at him. Brother Ishida is a cruel man.
“I can’t see him at church twice a week. I can’t be in the same town!” Rory presses her fist to her mouth, her breath ragged. “You have to help me, Cate. Please? I can’t go back to Chatham.”
I glance sidelong at Sister Cora, but her face is impassive. I look up at the ceiling, searching for the right words, admiring the ornate cornices fashioned with grapevines and clusters of thick grapes. I’ve never noticed it before, but they do match the hideous purple and olive grape-themed wallpaper. I wonder if the original decorator of this room intended for people to want to escape it as soon as possible. “I understand that you’re upset, Rory, but you mustn’t do anything rash. Just last night, you said you wanted to be a mother more than anything. Has that changed?”
Rory eyes me steadily. “Everything has changed. I want to be the sister Sachi deserves. If—when—she gets out of that place, I want to be someone she can be proud of.”
Oh. The fact that she doesn’t deny what she’s done, that she doesn’t try to make excuses for it, makes me think better of her. I feel a stab of guilt for treating her so coldly, but I won’t coddle her. If I am to vouch for her, I need to know she won’t pose a risk to me and my sisters and the rest of the convent girls.
“Can we trust you not to lose control again?”
Rory and I both spin to look at Sister Cora, who has obviously figured out the truth of last night.
“The Sisterhood is a refuge for dozens of girls,” she adds. “We can’t have you jeopardizing us.”
“A refuge for . . .” Rory repeats slowly, and I can practically see the gears in her mind turning. She looks from me to Cora and back again. “You’re witches? All of you? But that’s perfect! I’d make such an awful nun.”
“But you have to be able to pretend,” I point out.
Rory looks at me with eager puppy’s eyes. “I’ll be good, I swear it! I grew up with Sachi, didn’t I? I know how to dissemble when I need to. I can do this, Cate. I know I can.”
I look at Km">sweSister Cora. She hasn’t moved, has barely blinked. It’s impossible to deduce what she’s thinking. “Let me speak to Sister Cora alone for a moment, Rory. You can wait in the hall.”
Rory tugs at her awful green skirt. “I know what I’ve done, and I’ll never forgive myself for it. If I could take Sachi’s place, I would, truly. But as I can’t—I need to be near her. And away from my father. Give me this chance. Let me prove that I can be better, Cate, please.”
I nod, and Rory plods out into the hall. Her bouncy, hip-swaying gait is gone; she walks head down, as though she’s on her way to a prison sentence of her own.
When the door closes behind her, I sit next to Sister Cora on the settee. I want to be seen as her equal, not a supplicant student. I want a say in this.
“So Miss Elliott and the girl who was arrested last night are sisters?” she asks.
“Half sisters. Rory’s a bastard.”
“She’s the one who did magic in the square? And she let her sister take the blame?” Cora’s feathery eyebrows arch in disapproval.
“Rory would have stepped forward, too, but I stopped her. I couldn’t see any good in them both getting arrested,” I explain. “Rory hasn’t had an easy life. She’s got a lush for a mother and a sherry habit of her own. And that mad oracle—Brenna Elliott—that’s her cousin.”
“Interesting. Perhaps she could give us some insight into Brenna.” Sister Cora’s blue eyes rest on me. “You want to send her away?”
I stare back, lifting my chin. “On the contrary, I think we should take her in.”
“Why?” Cora drums her fingers on the carved mahogany armrest. Almost a dozen silver rings line her hands. “You’ve just outlined a damning case against her.”
“But we’ve got a duty to Rory. Isn’t that why the Sisterhood exists, to take in witches like her and teach them to control their magic? Half the reason she’s so reckless is because she doesn’t want to be a witch; she doesn’t know what to do with it. And the other half is because—because she’s never felt like she belongs anywhere except with Sachi,” I say, puzzling it out as I go. “We could help her.”
Sister Cora rises, wincing, and reaches for her cane. “It’s a risk.”
“It is.” Rory has her faults, but so do I. So do my sisters. And what Rory did was only a more public version of what Maura did after Elena betrayed her.
I frown, remembering Maura on the night before I left Chatham: a small hurricane of heartbreak, shattering everything in her path.
I would want someone to give my sister a second chance.
“She said she’s betrothed,” Sister Cora points out. “Breaking her intention could cause quite a stir.”
I rise, too, gray skirts swaying. “Brother Winfield would be glad to get rid of her. We cou
ld use Sachi’s arrest to explain her sudden religious devotion. The two of them have always been inseparable.”
Cora purses her lips thoughtfully. Behind her, three former headmistresses stare at me accusingly from their gilt-edged frames. “You’re certain this is what you want?”
I nod. “If we turn away the girls who need us most out of a desire to save our own skins, what good are we?”
Cora smiles. “Your affinity for healing—your decision on this matter—how swiftly you sent for your sisters, despite the potential danger to yourself—it all speaks very well of you.”
I stop Cora as she hobbles toward the door, wanting to correct her on one point. “It wasn’t a sacrifice, you know, sending for Maura and Tess. They would never hurt me.”
Sister Cora’s mouth twists in pity. “For your sake, I hope that’s so, Catherine. I truly do. K. Ie.”
• • •
The carriage jolts forward as it turns off the well-traveled road from New London and begins to wind up the hill toward Harwood Asylum for the Criminally Insane. It’s begun to sleet; tiny drops of ice ping off the windows. I shove the curtain aside and press my face to the clouded glass, watching as the frozen countryside rattles past. Cows lie in the muddy pasture near a half-frozen pond. A moment later, Robert stops the carriage to let a farmer lead a herd of shaggy brown goats across the road. It’s nice to be out of the city—or it would be, if I could forget our destination.
There are five of us crowded into the carriage: five wide black bombazine skirts, five pairs of hands shoved into identical black fur muffs, five pairs of black buttoned boots hovering over the hot water bottles on the carriage’s chilly wooden floor. Our disguise is more important here than ever.
Sister Sophia pulls her hood up over her black curls, and the rest of us follow suit. We must be getting close now. Anxiety twists my stomach.
“Good Lord, I’m nervous,” I blurt, then immediately blush. What kind of leader admits she’s frightened?
But the other girls are nodding. Mei squeezes my arm, her dark eyes sympathetic. “First time I came here, I was scared half to death. Nothing to be ashamed of.”
“It gets easier.” Addie pushes her spectacles up her long nose. “At first I was furious at the way these girls are treated. But that doesn’t help anything. Now I just try to do whatever I can to make it a little better for them.”
Even shy Pearl, who hardly ever says a thing, smiles at me encouragingly. She has enormous buckteeth that she’s very self-conscious of, and no wonder; Alice is forever making fun of them.
The three of them come here every week with Sister Sophia. I marvel at their quiet bravery. Don’t they worry that someday they might not be allowed to leave?
When it comes right down to it, that’s what frightens me most about this visit. Not the fear that Zara won’t speak to me, or seeing the suffering of girls who, but for the Sisterhood’s interference and Tess’s mind-magic, could be me. No, I’m afraid that the moment we roll through the gates looming ahead of us, an alarm will peal, announcing the presence of a witch, and I will be stuck here forever.
It’s mad, going to this place on purpose. I can’t help the nameless, superstitious terror that sweeps through my veins, turning my entire body to ice.
Sister Sophia puts her warm hand over mine, and my nausea subsides. “Calm yourself, Cate,” she murmurs. “You won’t be able to help anyone if you’re in such a state before you walk through the doors.”
I feel such a coward. If Cora hadn’t suggested that I talk to Zara, would I have volunteered to come on a nursing mission? Or would I have hidden behind being the prophesied witch, the one who mustn’t be endangered, and let others go in my stead, even though my gift for healing has surpassed everyone else’s? I’ve been practicing, and though healing leaves me weak and sick, it gives me satisfaction that no other magic ever has.
The carriage rolls to a halt before an enormous wrought-iron gate with HARWOOD ASYLUM spelled out on top. The high fence stretches away on both sides, topped with barbed wire.
Robert exchanges a few words with the guard. Peering out the window, I catch my first glimpse of the monster that lurks on the barren hillside. It’s a menacing three-story building of weathered gray stone. Two wings stretch out to either side, and at either end, huge chimneys puff charcoal smoke into the pale sky. Iron bars cross most of the windows; some are bricked over entirely.
The carr K1em smiage rolls to a halt. Robert hands us down one by one onto the icy carriageway. Inside my fur muff, my fingers are clenched into fists. The four of us trail Sister Sophia like frightened ducklings.
Before we can ring the bell, a white-aproned matron opens the door. She has gray hair that waves back from her wrinkled forehead, a bulbous nose, and flushed cheeks. “Sisters, bless you for coming.”
“It is our duty to tend to the less fortunate,” Sister Sophia says.
“Thanks be,” the matron murmurs, ushering us in. “Come in, come in, get out of the cold. The uncooperative ward first, as usual?”
We troop up two flights of stairs, hesitating outside a large door that shuts off the whole south wing. The matron takes a brass key from a chain around her neck and fits it into the lock. As she pushes the door open, I clasp my hands behind my back to still their trembling.
I don’t know what I expect—a bedlam of voices, girls shouting and cursing? angry rants and desperate pleas for help?—but it’s silent as a cemetery. The faces that swivel to stare at us are blank, their eyes devoid of emotion. It’s positively chilling.
The room is cloaked in gloom, without benefit of candles or gas lamps. I wrinkle my nose at the unpleasant smell—a combination of chamber pot and harsh lye soap. Two long rows of beds march down to the far end of the room, where an unlit fireplace takes up most of the wall. I suppose fire would be too great a hazard here. I shiver into my cloak, grateful for its warmth.
The women here must be freezing. They wear thin white blouses and coarse brown skirts like the burlap sacks of flour at the general store. Some of them have rough woolen blankets wrapped around their shoulders. The girls themselves are thin and hollow-eyed, as though they don’t get enough to eat, and unkempt, with snarled hair and dirty faces and stains on their blouses.
Two nurses sit just inside the door. They rise as we come in; the plump one groans as her knees creak. “Look, girls, the Sisters are here to pray with you before tea!”
The girls look at us, then they go back about their business without a shard of interest. Our arrival barely penetrates their fog.
Sister Sophia warned me that the patients are kept drugged with laudanum in their tea. It prevents the real witches from focusing enough to do any magic and keeps the others quiet and obedient.
I am used to seeing women quiet and obedient. But I’ve come to understand that more often than not, it’s a facade. This is a different thing entirely. Fury cuts through me, rooting me in place. It’s not enough that the Brothers have taken these women away from their families and their homes, condemned them to live out the rest of their lives in this miserable prison. They’ve also taken away their abilities to think and choose, their ability to fight.
“Sisters!” A beanpole of a girl tumbles forward, falling at Sister Sophia’s feet. “I am very wicked. I fear I cannot be saved.”
“Get up, child,” Sister Sophia says. “You should pray to the Lord to help you.”
The girl shakes her head, her blue eyes morose. Her skin looks sickly and yellow with jaundice. “He doesn’t hear me. I’m too lost. I’m a wicked, wicked girl.”
“The Lord hears all his children.” Sister Sophia crouches, her plump face soft and sympathetic. “What’s your name?”
The girl huddles on the floor, her dark braid hiding her face. “Stella. Oh, Sister, help me, please. The Lord comes to me in my dreams, and I beg him for forgiveness, but he never speaks.”
“It’s a hallucination from your medicine, you ninny,” the skinny nurse barks. Beneath her frilly white cap, h
er black hair looks limp and greasy. “The Lord does not appear to wicked Kar you ningirls.”
Sister Sophia rises, pulling Stella with her. “Come sit with me, Stella, and we will pray together.”
“This is your first time here, ain’t it?” The fat nurse notes my interest as Addie kneels at the bedside of a girl with bouncy cinnamon curls who lies on her back, eyes staring at the ceiling like a corpse. “That one was a wildcat when she came. Bit and scratched the matron. Wouldn’t know it now, would you? Won’t say boo to a goose!” She chuckles, and spittle hits my cheek. I resist the urge to wipe it away.
She gestures at the blond girl curtsying to Pearl. “That one says she’s engaged to a prince! Still does her hair real nice, just in case he comes to call.”
“They aren’t permitted visitors, are they?”
At the end of the row, several other girls are curled up, sleeping, beneath threadbare brown blankets.
The nurse shakes her head, double chin wagging. “Oh, no, they’re best kept away from normal folks. ’Specially the girls up here. They’re the ones what fought us when they came in or what don’t take their tea. They get extra medicine now. Gives a few of them right funny ideas, but keeps most of ’em quiet as mice.”
I work to keep the horror off my face. Mei heads down the second row of beds, taking the hands of a beautiful brown-skinned Indo girl who is swaying back and forth to music only she can hear. As she turns to Mei, I see the bruise blackening her right eye and the cut on her cheekbone.
“What happened to that girl?”
“Oh, she’s one of Brother Cabot’s favorites. Doesn’t usually put up such a fuss anymore.”
“His . . . favorites?” I echo uncertainly.
“He likes the pretty ones.” The nurse winks at me.
“Is that . . . common?” I ask, remembering lovely Mina Coste and Jennie Sauter and all the other girls from Chatham who have been sentenced here.
“Well, he ain’t the only one who comes by for inspections regular-like. The matron before this one tried to put a stop to it, you know, and got sacked for her trouble. It’s best not to get involved.”
Star Cursed: The Cahill Witch Chronicles, Book Two Page 8
