The Witch Watch

by Shamus Young

  “I certainly don’t hold you responsible for his treason,” the captain said. “Jack has been loyal and eager enough since then. A bit overzealous, maybe, but I always assumed he would cool with age. I expected him to make a fine successor when I retired.”

  “Still, he had to understand that by sending the church to our door he was killing Miss White,” Mr. Moxley said grimly.

  “I suppose that’s true,” said Alice slowly. “I had not thought of it that way.”

  “Well, if he’s decided to attack with gossip and secrets then he has entered my domain. I can disarm him, but not instantly. In the meantime your enemies will multiply whenever he exposes your secret. You should move your prisoner, or finish your business with it, and you should do so as soon as possible. Now that his bid with the church has gone awry, Jack will look elsewhere for allies. I will need to anticipate these and head him off, and to do that I will need to see what the papers have to say.” With this he stood up and made for the door without any of his usual pleasantries. “Curse that I must endure the rain twice in as many days. I will intensify my revenge for this cruelty.”

  When he had gone, they retreated upstairs to find that Gilbert had seen to his own fitting. He’d managed to find clothes that were large enough to be put on. He was perhaps overdressed for their purposes, and looked like he had just arrived from a ball and not the grave. He wore a dark suit, and had found some gloves to cover his ragged hands.

  Alice applauded. “Splendid! But I don’t think the black robe is a good match for the rest of it.”

  “They are of similar color,” Gilbert pointed out.

  “My father was famous for such errors of fashion. I don’t know why men assume that dressing one’s self is simply a matter of matching hues. Items should also match in their purpose, and degrees of formality. The suit is very fine, but the cloak is tattered and singed.”

  Gilbert raised the hood. “Well, Lord Mordaunt has not invited us to a dinner-party. The hood will shadow my face so that I can walk about on my own.”

  “You look rather severe. You have an excess of black, even without the cloak,” said the captain. “Too much like funeral attire.”

  “This seems appropriate, given my condition,” said Gilbert. “Wherever I go, it’s always to a funeral.”

  The captain frowned behind his whiskers. “This makes it safe for you to move about, I suppose. You can walk out on your own when the time comes.”

  “I’m glad of that. Although I have no idea where I would go,” Gilbert said.

  Alice sighed, “I still don’t see the entire picture, but I can tell that to restore Sophie we’ll need to have the two of you in the same room. Perhaps we could bring her here, but it might be better to take you to her. Provided we can find her at all, of course. She will be in some sort of state between life and death. It might not be safe to move her in that condition. Even if it is, I think that walking with you in your disguise is less likely to draw attention than hauling around an apparently lifeless girl. And I don’t think we should attempt the coffin disguise again.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of nailing her highness in a coffin,” said the captain. “But I think you’re right. Once you think you can reverse the spell - or whatever it is - then we should take this one to Ravenstead to try to secure the girl. Hopefully, that’s where she’s being kept. Normally I’d request reinforcements with a job of this importance, but I don’t dare bring more soldiers along with all the sorcery that will be going on. We’d have mutiny or scandal before we managed to set things right.”

  “At least one more night of study, I beg you,” Alice said. “I know time is pressing, but I simply don’t know enough yet. If I was standing over Sophie this moment I could do nothing to save her from her predicament.”

  “In the meantime, we need to do something about these rumors,” said the captain. “Yesterday morning the busybodies saw us bring a coffin in here, and that picture is likely pressing on their minds. We should take the coffin out.”

  “Not occupied, I hope?” Gilbert asked with obvious unease.

  “No, we’ll fill the box with something unwanted. We were given a plot of land near Tyburn for burying troublesome dead. It’s fenced in and locked, so if anything did come back up it would still be caged. Seeing us bury the box will put minds to ease, and the gate will keep anyone else from investigating. Archer!”

  “Sir!” yelped Archer, who hadn’t really been paying attention.

  “How do you feel about hauling a heavy coffin and digging a grave in the rain?” the captain demanded.

  “Mercy no sir!” he whined.

  “Fair enough. Guard duty for you then. Watch Miss Alice.”

  The captain took the other three men with him. “Curse Jack and his betrayal. Apart from all this trouble he’s caused, I could use another set of hands. Archer, keep watch. And no sleeping.”

  Your Lordship,

  I must thank you for your encouraging letter. I am always grateful to see our efforts are admired outside of the newspapers. Additionally, I must express my extreme appreciation for your constant support in Parliament these last two years. However, I must admit I find your question to be more than a little vexing. There is, in fact, no “secret” as to why Ethereal Affairs has been so successful. I have always been happy to share our knowledge in as much detail as any can stand, and yet the accusations of us having secret techniques persist. If our methods are secret, then a man shouting news from the rooftops to the indifference of everyone might be called discreet.

  No doubt you are aware that before I was appointed as the director of Ethereal Affairs, I served the church. First as a lowly Red Sash, and later as a Purifier. I spent nearly a decade there, hunting down necromancers, wizards, and other practitioners of evil magics. During my tenure I advocated many reforms. I did so frequently and loudly, and eventually these debates were the cause of my departure from the order. When I came here I adopted my policies, and I believe that the success of Ethereal Affairs has vindicated my position.

  Our success is due largely to two important factors:

  The first is that we employ tools other than death. The church maintains that practitioners of evil should be put to death, and in this much I agree with them. Quite aside from the issue of blasphemy which so preoccupies the church, these individuals are simply too dangerous to be chained. The powers they wield make them a threat to the great and the small, the living and the dead. You may recall that I have seen to the executions of no less than a dozen of these sorts since my appointment. Please do not mistake that I am advocating leniency or clemency for dangerous sorcerers and wizards.

  But not everyone arrested for crimes of magic falls into this category. In fact, many arrests are of much less threatening people. For the necromancer and for the woman caught with a forbidden book (even if she is herself illiterate and ignorant of its contents) the church has but one solution: death. In the lesser cases, death is not only unwarranted, but also counter-productive. In Ethereal Affairs, we send some to death, but others are sentenced to transportation or prison. Still others might go free. In this way we find the tongues of the arrested to be greatly loosened, as they are eager to play for one of the lesser penalties. The corpses that decorate the gates of Tyburn tell us no secrets. Our goal is to keep Her Royal Majesty and Great Britain safe, not to keep the hangman employed.

  I have found that in most cases, the captured are members of some conspiracy. The collection of books and reagents is usually too large an undertaking for a single person. The most common cult is led by one or more nobles who will enlist the foolish, the ignorant, and the desperate to their cause. Only the nobility have the means and the leisure time to pursue such demanding work, but they generally do not like to risk their own necks transporting contraband and searching for illegal books.

  You may notice that the church hasn’t arrested or tried a noble in half a century, even though they have hung or burned more than a hundred commoners in that same time. They are eve
r hacking at the leaves, but rarely do they strike the branches, and never at the root.

  The second “secret” of our success is that we do not burn evidence the moment it falls into our hands. By contrast, the church seems to be eager to burn their evidence in direct proportion to its usefulness to their cause.

  I have in front of me four books. All of them are copies of a work written in the fifteenth century. The original author is unknown, but the book has come to be called Kutná Hora, after the city in which it was supposedly written. The original manuscript has never been found, but many copies have been made over the centuries. By comparing different versions we can see similarities and differences that tell us about where and when these copies were made. Three of the books in front of me form a clear line of succession, where changes (whether deliberate or erroneous) are propagated to later works. The fourth book is clearly of an entirely separate lineage, and we can tell that the person who produced it was fluent in Czech and barely capable of comprehending English. The translator was also fluent in Black Latin, as they made no effort to annotate any of the sorcery, which is unusual in works of this sort.

  These facts give us a picture of how these books have spread over the years, a process which is still wholly mysterious to the church. Of more immediate use, these clues, along with the testimony of several captured parties, very clearly point to the presence of an additional cult somewhere in Wales, run by at least one noble who is fluent in Czech. In addition, we know that this man is either himself left-handed, or he employs a left-handed scribe. I anticipate that we will find this man before the end of the year. If we simply burned books as we found them, we would know none of these things. Not only would we not stop this man, but we would not know that he exists at all! We wouldn’t know about him until his plans were ripe, at which point many might come to harm, and he might himself be a more dangerous adversary.

  Again, I am not ungrateful for your advice and support. I am hopeful that someday people will stop referring to our methods as “secrets” and instead call them “ignored advice”.

  Sir Donovan White

  Director, Ministry of Ethereal Affairs

  August 11, 1876

  IV

  Gilbert paced around the library restlessly. It was early evening. He had been stuck in the room for over a day now, and had begun to feel the urge to move about. Alice was fully engrossed in her work, and he didn’t want to speak for fear of delaying her search for answers.

  The library bored him, but he did enjoy the view of the garden outside, which was both captivating and haunting. A large stone pool was filled with mossy green water. Tattered grass spilled from between every crack in the vine-wrapped stonework. Statues of angels stood guard on either side of the pool. Their arms and faces were intended to show them looking joyfully to the heavens, arms outstretched, but weather and decay had taken their toll. Their faces looked terrified and they seemed to be reaching up, begging for rescue from the vines that clutched at their heels. Gilbert thought it was a thoroughly beautiful ruin.

  “Ethereal Affairs does not employ a gardener,” Alice said without looking up from her work.

  “It’s too late for a gardener,” Gilbert said, still looking out the window. “It would be more practical to hire a forester at this point.”

  Alice laughed. She had a playful, young laugh although she rarely allowed it to escape her lips.

  “Mr. Moxley is always trying to get us to hire servants to look after the house, especially since I came to live here. But we’re fearful of hiring spies from the church, or people who might be terrified of my work, or thieves. And looking for candidates is such a bother. So the positions are never filled.”

  “So you’re not looking to hire a gardener now?”

  “Are you applying for the position yourself? I shall need references,” she said dryly.

  “No. But I am wondering why this fellow is sneaking around in your garden,” Gilbert said, nodding towards the window.

  “Are you in earnest?” Alice asked, suddenly worried.

  “He’s hiding behind the bushes now, but I saw him slip in a moment ago. Crafty fellow. If I could blink, I might have missed him.”

  Archer and Alice joined him at the window. For a while they saw nothing. Then a slight movement gave the visitor away. He turned his head, clearly examining the house. He was still again for a long time, and then he suddenly darted to other bushes, closer to the house.

  “I should think that white would be a bad color for an assassin to wear, but in this rain he looks like a spot of mist,” Alice said.

  “I saw his sword clearly enough,” said Gilbert.

  Archer cleared his throat nervously, “Do you think I should...?”

  Alice was quiet.

  “I think you should stay here,” said Gilbert. “You could go out into the garden and shoot him, but the sound would bring unwanted attention. Especially if you had to shoot more than once.”

  “I would not need to shoot more than once,” Archer insisted with uncharacteristic confidence.

  Gilbert continued, “You could face him with a sword if you have one available, but you could end up not winning the exchange and leave Alice without a proper guard. I should go.” Gilbert turned from the window and headed for the stairs.

  “Don’t be absurd!” Alice scolded. “You should stay in the house. You don’t want to be seen!”

  “I don’t care if an assassin sees me. What will he do? Run away and tell the police he saw an abomination while he was trying to break into a house? Besides, if he was sent by this Jack fellow then he probably already knows about me.”

  “Foolishness!” she shouted down the stairs after him.

  Gilbert aimed to go out and give the man a beating until he told them who he was and who sent him. Gilbert didn’t fear the sword, but he did hope to find some metal object to ward off blows until he could get within punching distance. He did not want to see his new suit slashed apart. He looked around, hoping to find a fire poker or a cane. He came to the sitting room, and found it bristling with blades and guns.

  He picked through the selection in amused awe. He didn’t want to take anything too nice. He was going to be brawling in the rain, and didn’t want to dirty a well-kept blade in the process. He found a plain sword and took it with him. He exited the house through the rear door, stepping into the rain-soaked garden.

  Gilbert held the blade out as he moved cautiously. The overgrowth afforded many hiding places for the intruder. He crept from one likely spot to the next, occasionally swatting at the bushes with his sword. Finally he completed his circuit around the stone pool without finding anything. Had the intruder slipped away? Perhaps he went around the house?

  Gilbert turned back to the house and saw movement above. The man had climbed the wall (Gilbert had no idea how he’d accomplished this in the cold rain) and was studying one of the library windows.

  “The front door is not locked,” Gilbert called up. “Perhaps if you knock you might-”

  Gilbert's taunt was cut off in a flash of white clothing and silver steel. The man had jumped down, drawing his sword in mid-air. Gilbert was just fast enough to deflect the stroke before it struck his head. The attacker landed on the mossy ground behind him and lunged towards Gilbert in a storm of blows.

  Gilbert had always prided himself on his sword-work. During his time in the military, he found rifles to be untrustworthy, and so invested his extra time in fencing. He was fast for a man his size and his long reach and strength gave him an amusingly unfair advantage. But here both his skill and his reach were failing him. This fellow was furious and flawless in his swordplay. His blade carved through the air, sending arcs of raindrops outward as he darted past Gilbert’s defenses.

  Gilbert gave way, stumbling backward under the relentless strikes. He kept trying to establish his footing, to get himself standing upright, but every time he had nearly gained his composure the man made another play for his neck. Gilbert didn’t like retreating a
mongst the overgrown bushes, and so he tried to move into the open. The man in white always seemed to know which way he wanted to go, and would circle around him to frustrate his movement. Gilbert felt himself being steered away from where he wanted to be. He began to get angry.

  He hadn’t wanted to hurt the man when this began. He just wanted some questions answered. But now he was enraged and confused. Finally he cried out and slammed his sword forward, hoping the sheer weight of the attack would knock his foe backwards. Instead, he carved at the air and stumbled forward. There was a blow at the back of his head as he tumbled face-first into the mud. He rolled over, reflexively throwing his arm in front of his face. There was a jolt, and his opponent’s sword was embedded deep into the bone of his arm. The blow had been aimed at his neck.

  Gilbert’s hood had been thrown off, but the man didn’t seem surprised to find he was fighting an abomination. Gilbert had many small cuts on his arms and thighs. If he were mortal, he would be losing a great deal of blood.

  They were at a bit of an impasse. Clearly, the man somehow knew that he needed Gilbert’s head to win the fight, but Gilbert was on his back. Gilbert could just curl up and deny him the target. The man certainly wouldn’t come closer, or else Gilbert would be able to change this contest from fencing to wrestling. Gilbert remained on his back, holding his sword up in a futile gesture of self-defense.

  Finally the man stepped back. He flicked the water from his blade and nodded for Gilbert to stand.

  The man was about thirty. He had narrow, angular features. He was built like an athlete, or a dancer. He had a thin mustache and head of parted brown hair, now slicked back in the rain. He was not dressed in proper fighting clothes, but instead was wearing a fine suit and tie.

  “I’m quite happy here, thank you,” Gilbert said in response to the man’s offer.