The Witch Watch

by Shamus Young

  “That I will gladly do,” he said, lightly. He was slowly restoring his mask of amusement and indifference. “If you have any other gossip for me, do remember to save it for my next visit. I can tell by your yawning that you are, regardless of your outward beauty, haggard and in need of sleep. I shall leave you to it, and see myself out. Good morning!”

  Mr. Moxley strode from the room, head high. A moment later the front door opened and he cried out, “Blast it!”

  “What?” Alice ran after him, wondering if danger was already come.

  “It has begun raining.”

  Gilbert was drenched.

  He’d had the coach drop him off at the edge of the estate, wanting to get to know the grounds for the first time on foot. The August sun had roasted him for this eagerness.

  He mopped his forehead with his handkerchief as he lumbered up the lane with his bag slung over one shoulder. He suddenly realized that in a few months Mother would move, and the items in this bag would be the entirety of his share in the world.

  To the right was a shady graveyard with a slumbering tomb at its center. Above that, at the top of the hill, was Mordaunt Manor. The manor was a dreary, darkened place, insistent on appearing gloomy even at midday. Drab trees crowded around its feet, strangling out the plants below and the sunlight above. The grounds were shabby. Long grass spilled over onto the path, and pale weeds had wormed their way into the gaps of the stonework. The hazy air had the smell of wet earth and rotting vegetation.

  The path took him through a circle of four statues, which stood perhaps twenty paces from the house. Lifeless grey figures in the shape of military men huddled around the shaded walkway, looking inward.

  Gilbert heard a sound behind him and turned. One of the statues was fidgeting. They were actually men, and didn’t look much like statues at all. Their uniforms were dingy and colorless, but they hardly looked like stone. How could he have mistaken them like that?

  He turned away from the oddity, back towards the house, and discovered a long, narrow face looking at him. The man had hollow cheeks, with dark circles under his eyes. He wore a tattered top hat. The rest of his clothes were a similar mockery of gentleman’s attire, with a fine suit nearly reduced to yellow rags. His eyelids were low and squinting.

  “Good morning?” Gilbert said with a slight bow. “I am Gilbert Hiltman, offering my services as agreed-”

  “The Viscount Mordaunt of Ravenstead is a busy man,” he said. He smiled as he said this, revealing rows of crooked, blackened teeth. “He will not be receiving you in person. You are to report to the guard house behind the manor. From there you will be directed further.”

  “A pleasure to meet you,” Gilbert stammered untruthfully, but the man had already turned away and was returning to the house. “I’m sorry, I don’t know your name, sir? What should I call you?” Gilbert called after him.

  “Headmaster Graves”, he said over his shoulder. The door shut with firm slam, leaving Gilbert alone.

  The front door opened and shut many times. Voices gathered downstairs, although Gilbert couldn’t catch what they were saying. There seemed to be some sort of argument. For a long time he worried that they had changed their minds and were simply going to have his head.

  At length there were footsteps on the stairs, and then the voices seemed to gather around his coffin.

  “So which will it be?” a man asked. “If it’s to be fire, then we’ll need to carry it outside first.”

  “It is not to be fire,” came Alice’s voice. “I merely said it was an option if things take a bad turn. It would be the safest way to resolve this without being revealed, but it should only be used as a last resort. And at any rate, mind your words. It does not sleep and can hear what we say.”

  There was an awkward silence. Finally the captain’s voice emerged, “Your safety from that beast is my primary concern, whatever you may say about its manners. I should like some reassurance that it won’t tear you to pieces as soon as my back is turned.”

  “Fine,” said Alice with exasperation, “Here is what we will do.” Her footsteps crossed the room and there was the sound of her sifting through tools or supplies of some sort. Then she crossed the room again, pausing beside his coffin. Gilbert very much wanted to simply ask what was going on, but he did not want to disturb the seemingly fragile agreement that was sparing him from fire. He hadn’t even considered fire until now. Would it hurt? He suddenly felt a strong urge to escape the coffin as soon as possible.

  There was the sound of scratching on the floor nearby. Irritated mutterings were heard from some of the men.

  “What sort of work is this, Miss White?” This was the captain’s voice. There was no answer.

  The scratching sound continued, eventually migrating to the other side of the coffin.

  “There,” said Alice at last. “Better than chains, and less cumbersome.”

  “I hate this business,” a voice muttered.

  A moment later there were footsteps everywhere. Gilbert expected to be hoisted into the air and carried off to a fire, but instead hands began working at the seams of his prison. Light appeared through the cracks and soon the lid was pulled from his coffin.

  Miss White was the first person he saw. She was standing at the foot of his coffin, arms folded, regarding him with a curious expression. This time she was dressed in what was probably fashionable lady’s clothing. He might not have recognized her if not for the distinctive colorful ribbons that bound her hair.

  “Abomination,” she said firmly and threateningly, “I have placed magic around this coffin.”

  Gilbert sat up, still bound in rope, and examined the floor around him. A sorcery circle had been drawn. It was very different from the circle Simon had drawn days earlier, and much less elaborate. But it was still a work of sorcery and it made his dried skin crawl.

  “This circle is a prison for you. If you set even the least of your parts outside of this circle, it will sever your connection to this world. Your spirit will flee and you will return to death, dooming young Sophie to a similar fate. Do you understand?”

  “Clearly. I’m quite content in my circle, although I hope it doesn’t seem ungrateful if I ask: Do I still need to be bound?”

  There was more grumbling and arguing, but eventually the ropes were removed and the coffin taken away. Gilbert found himself standing adrift in the middle of the room.

  It was night, and the room was alive with flickering candles. The curtains had been drawn. The door was blocked by the men, who all had weapons in their hands. On the other side of the room, looking very small and quite pleased with herself, sat Alice. She had an open book on the table in front of her, none other than Simon’s book. She had another book, mostly blank, where she was making notes. It was very strange to Gilbert to see the young girl (she looked more like a young girl now that she was in proper clothes) writing about such profane business, like seeing a child readying to perform an autopsy.

  As Alice had promised, there were many books about, and few of them seemed to be in English. Many looked to be linguistic crossbreeds, to the point where the author could not constrain themselves to a single tongue, even when composing the spine. They were dusty and worn, as anyone expects of piles of old books, but there was something genuinely unsettling about seeing the work of so many deviants and murderers piled up, sorted, and catalogued. Some hung open, and Gilbert was torn between the desire to shut them and revulsion at the thought of touching them at all.

  The interview dragged on into the night. After some hours it became clear to the men that Gilbert was not going to pounce on Alice and devour her. They became restless and wearied of the uncanny talk. Eventually most of them retired back to the barracks. The sorcery circle, at any rate, seemed to be enough of a cage that they could leave the room without worry.

  Gilbert had expected that the process would begin with strange symbols and signs and horrifying magics, but it turned out that her investigation was every bit as mind-numbing as his
morbid imprisonment. She asked him many questions about what his health was like before he died, how old he was, and if he had ever dabbled in any sort of witchcraft. The conversation impressed upon him what a completely mundane and uninteresting fellow he was, aside from his being unusually tall and deceased.

  At length she left him alone and turned her attention to the book. She busied herself making tracings and copies of certain material that she found interesting. Once in a long while she would consult one of the other books in the room to find the meaning of obscure words or ideas. Gilbert had nothing to do during this time. He eventually requested a chair be brought into his circle so that he wouldn’t feel so much like he was loitering. He felt like a man whose physician had abandoned him in the middle of the examination in order to finish medical school.

  “So what have we learned?” Gilbert asked after an hour of listening to rain splatter against the windows and Alice’s pen scratch against the paper.

  She stretched and rubbed her neck, “Little. The bulk of this book - the book we found in your tomb - is a simple translation of an already-familiar book. I have another copy on the shelf behind you, although the handwriting in this one is superior and the diagrams are more carefully reproduced. Then here,” she put a finger in the book, indicating a spot slightly past the halfway point, “it stops being a reproduction and matures into a work of its own. The author - who is likely Lord Mordaunt, but not for certain - has begun exploring different ways to use, extract, and store vigor. You said that your friend admitted to being capable of performing a revivification on a dog. That’s this page.” She held up the book and showed him a wheel of symbols drawn around a skull, which he assumed belonged to a dog. “Your friend’s perception of it was incomplete. The full experiment is to slay a dog, capture the vigor, and then use the vigor to revive the dog as an abomination. It’s an exercise, to test the magic before trying it on more costly subjects.”

  “But to what end? What’s all this nasty business for?” Gilbert asked.

  “The aim of Lord Mordaunt was, I’m sure, to become a lich, an unliving wizard. I’m sure you’ve noticed the advantage of being dead?”

  “I don’t know that I would call anything I’ve experienced an advantage.”

  “Well, you’ve been stabbed several times without harm. Getting stabbed with swords is a wizard’s chief fear. Particularly swords owned by the church.”

  He thought back to the night he was captured, and how she had thrown fire at him. “That reminds me. How is it that a member of the Witch Watch is both a sorceress and a wizard?”

  “Do not jostle my line of thought, it is already precariously balanced,” she said, “I will come back to that question. As I said, an unliving wizard is a lich. There have been three documented cases in history, as well as many others which may be fiction or embellished. A lich is frightfully difficult to destroy, generally requiring small armies. Many malignant wizards aspire to lichdom. Perhaps they all do. The only thing saving us from being overrun with them is that a wizard must die and trust in compatriots to revive him. Their own cowardice, isolation, and mutual treachery keeps them from attaining it. That, and it’s frightfully complicated business. I often wonder how many wizards simply off themselves and accidentally stay dead without us ever having to deal with them.”

  Gilbert had heard of liches, but the stories about them were generally confused and contradictory. He had assumed they were just fictional creatures, like dragons. “So, if I had been a wizard in life, I would now be a lich?”

  “Yes. It was very close. It was only their blunder of bringing back the wrong corpse that saved us from that terror.”

  “But what’s to stop them from collecting more vigor and trying again to raise him? Assuming they find his body, I mean,” Gilbert asked.

  “Because they believe - incorrectly, I think - that they can only do so with royal blood. You have Sophie’s vigor, and members of the royal family are generally not available for kidnapping. Now, you are determined to steer my line of thought aground. Please stop interrupting. Where was I? Yes. Not all of the Viscount’s work was based on attaining lichdom. A great deal of this book is still mysterious to me. It also seems like he was being scientific about his learning.”

  “This is surprising?” asked Gilbert.

  “Shocking, in fact. Most wizards are in a great hurry to unleash their schemes. I study magic out of curiosity, but they study it simply as a means to an end. They don’t care how it works, as long as it does.”

  “I am sympathetic to this point of view,” admitted Gilbert.

  “You told me you were a soldier, so I am not surprised. How can I explain this to you? A rifle is a useful object, is it not?”

  “When the alternative is waving a sword as I charge into a line of muskets, I must say I am very fond of my rifle.”

  “Imagine they were unknown in warfare, and you obtained one. A soldier will see it as a means to an end. He will investigate only as much as is needed to discover how to use it. When it runs out of ammunition, he will conclude that his treasure is ‘broken’. Confused, he will return to his sword. But a scientist will study the rifle and determine how it works, and why. A scientist would rather learn how to make her own rifle, and her own ammunition. In time, she will improve upon it.”

  “That makes wizards sound sort of brutish and simple. I’d always imagined them as intellectuals.”

  “I suppose they are intellectual when compared to other sorts of villains. But Lord Mordaunt is not ‘brutish’, as you put it. His book is old. This was not an abrupt or hasty undertaking. No fit of passion led him to these things. I imagine he’s been working on this since before I was born. His studies have been careful and thorough, and his writings contain much that is new and original. Or at least, much that does not appear in any other of our many confiscated books. His aim was clearly to become a lich, but there are many pages here that do not contribute to that purpose at all, but are simply essays in grotesque knowledge and a salve for profane curiosity.”

  “What about Sophie? Have you discovered a cure for her?”

  She yawned. “No, I have not unwound that secret yet. And if I spend all of our time answering your questions I will never see to my own.”

  Alice sat upright with a jolt. A furious banging had awoken her, and now her mind was groping for purchase. She had apparently fallen asleep in the library, again. The candles had all expended themselves. The curtains were drawn, and fingers of daylight reached between through the gaps. Her fingers were blackened with ink.

  The abomination - Gilbert, she reminded herself - was sitting in the middle of the room. The men had left, save for poor Archer, who had once again been chosen to guard her in the last hours of the night. But he had inadvertently abandoned his duty by falling asleep in his chair.

  Another series of pounding blows came, followed by a bell. The door! Archer was startled from sleep by the sound, and military reflex compelled him to leap to attention. His rifle, which had been reclining in his lap, now clattered to the floor. He wobbled slightly and rubbed his eyes. “I’ll answer it,” he said blearily.

  What time was it? Alice often thought she should add a clock to the room. It would make her more able to see when it was time to go to bed, and make it less confusing the next morning after she had failed to do so. But she only ever thought of it in moments like this, and forgot about it once she was fully awake.

  She heard the door open downstairs, followed by the sound of something heavy being dropped. There was the sound of raised voices, which did not belong to anyone she knew.

  She motioned to Gilbert to keep quiet and hurried downstairs.

  “Get off!” shouted Archer as Alice reached the entryway. Two young men in shabby clothes were sitting on him. A few more were standing by, rummaging through her things. All of them wore red sashes about their waist. Those that did not bear swords were carrying rope. An old man, whose face was stern and encumbered by great hanging jowls, stood in the center of t
he room holding a high scepter. The scepter matched his height, and at the top was a great bronze circle with a star affixed in the center. The Church had come to visit.

  “What is this?” Alice demanded. “You are all trespassing on the property of His Royal Highness Prince Albert, Duke of Saxony. Furthermore, this organization is under the leadership of Ethereal Affairs Minister Sir Robin Moxley, and you have no authority or right of arrest over us.”

  The man looked at her disdainfully and snorted, as if he believed these were the most blatant and offensive lies she could possibly have contrived. “You have named many honorable titles, but none of them are yours. I take it you are Alice White?”

  “I am,” she said defiantly.

  “I am Hierarch Prothero. We are here seeking the unholy abomination you and your associates willfully brought into this house only yesterday. It must be destroyed.”

  “You have no authority,” she repeated, but her voice faltered. She knew her words could not turn away this many armed and determined men.

  “The church has tolerated your blasphemous collection of unholy knowledge, but you have tested God’s patience one time too many, Miss White. You are a witch and a transvestite. Give over your contraband and you will be shown mercy.”

  Alice struggled to master her fear and anger. She saw her situation was hopeless. Archer was overpowered, she was unarmed, and their adversaries had come with tools of violence. Her only thought was that she could perhaps delay the Hierarch until other members of the watch happened to arrive, or until she could contrive an escape. “God has not expressed any impatience to me,” she told him. “Perhaps you are mistaken. Perhaps you should ask again. And while you are at it, you could find someone to teach you the proper meaning of the word ‘witch’.”

  “You are perverse,” he said hotly. “And your words will be added to the charges against you.”

  “Perverse? I would say that an organization that murders suspects and burns evidence in the course of conducting an ‘investigation’ is perverse. And again, you have no right over us.”