Chantress Fury

by Amy Butler Greenfield

  “Then maybe it’s not true.”

  “Even if it isn’t, I don’t think there’s any hope for us,” I said steadily. “Some things just aren’t meant to be.”

  You are a monster.

  Sybil looked as if she wanted to ask questions but didn’t quite dare.

  “Lady Clemence hasn’t been to see him, as far as I know,” I went on. “But—”

  “She isn’t here,” Sybil said quietly. “Her sister was injured by the wave, and Clemence is nursing her at her father’s estate in Sussex.”

  So that was why Clemence hadn’t come. Perhaps even now she was hoping to return to London and make her way to Nat’s side.

  “Did she say anything to you about Nat before she left?” I asked.

  “No, but I saw her for only a moment that day, after the wave hit. She came to beg permission to leave my service and look after her sister. We didn’t speak of anything else. Everything was in chaos.” Sybil shook her head. “Half my ladies-in-waiting left me that day, though that may be for the best. Now I know who I can truly rely on.”

  In the distance a bell tolled the hour.

  “Oh, Lucy, I’m so sorry, but I can’t stay. Henry will be waiting—”

  “It’s all right.” I started for the stairs. “We both have places we need to be.”

  And while I was in mine, looking after Nat, I wasn’t going to allow myself to think about Clemence at all.

  When I knocked on the infirmary door, it took some time for Penebrygg to open it.

  “Ah.” He stepped back, steadying his floppy cap over his tired face. “Come in, my dear. Come in. Norrie’s gone off to badger the Royal Physician and see what else can be done for the boy. But I think it’s just possible he’s finally on the mend.”

  There was a note of good cheer in his voice that I hadn’t heard for some time. “Has something happened?” I asked as he shut the door behind me.

  “Nat’s responding when I speak to him,” Penebrygg said with suppressed excitement. “Just for the last half hour, mind you, and only in the barest way. He turns his head toward me. Nothing more. But that’s an encouraging sign, don’t you think?

  “Oh, yes. May I see him?”

  “Of course.” He led me around a screen to the bed where Nat lay. “I’m wondering now if I should perhaps try to exercise his limbs for him—flex his fingers and such. Sir Barnaby was here earlier and suggested the idea to me. He’s seen cases where the muscles withered away from lack of use, and we can’t have that, can we?”

  “No, no,” I said, but I was only half-listening. From what Penebrygg had said, I’d hoped to find Nat looking stronger and more himself. But he looked just as he had when I’d been with him earlier that day—his long legs motionless under the counterpane, his skin pale over the strong bones of his face.

  “Speak to him,” Penebrygg urged me. “Talk to him just as you usually do, and see if he responds.”

  I curled the beloved fingers around mine. “Nat? It’s Lucy.”

  He jerked his hand away.

  Penebrygg looked startled. “He’s not done that before. Try it again.”

  I slipped my hand into his, more gingerly this time. “Can you hear me, Nat?”

  This time he not only yanked his hand away but his whole body started to shake.

  “Nat, it’s all right. It’s just me.”

  The shaking became more violent. Though his eyes remained closed, his face was etched with panic.

  “Come away, my dear.” Penebrygg shepherded me back from the bed. “Come away now.”

  When we were on the other side of the screen, he said, “I must say, I didn’t expect that to happen.”

  Neither did I. My own hands were shaking.

  Penebrygg peered past the edge of the screen. “He seems all right now, but I shouldn’t like to test him again. Very distressing for you both, I think. For all of us.”

  “I understand,” I said. “I’ll come back another time.”

  Penebrygg hesitated. “I think it might be best if you left it for a while, my dear. It may be that your voice reminds him of all he suffered down in Pressina’s realm. And I think we can all agree that it’s best he not be disturbed in any way just now.”

  I won’t say a word, I wanted to tell him. I’ll sit in a corner, quiet as a mouse. Just let me stay near him.

  Yet perhaps even that would distress Nat. Perhaps the only thing I could do for him was stay away.

  “Yes,” I managed to say to Penebrygg. “Quite right. If he calls for me, then I’ll come. But not until then.”

  I went out into the hall and pressed my palms against my burning eyes.

  You are a monster.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  REBUILDING

  After that, I could not sleep. I could not eat. I was lost. All that night and into the next day, I didn’t move from the rooms that Norrie and I shared. I refused to see people. I could not bear to show my face to anyone. I felt as if I no longer wanted to live.

  You are a monster.

  Norrie wasn’t worried about me at first. She had heard about Nat’s reaction from Penebrygg, and she thought it was just as well that I was taking a break from nursing. She wanted me to rest. But when she saw from the circles under my eyes that I wasn’t sleeping, she became concerned.

  “You mustn’t take it so hard, lamb,” she said as I stared blindly out the window. “Patients take all kinds of fancies when they’re ill, and it means nothing at all. You should try speaking to him again tomorrow.”

  “Penebrygg thought I should stay away.” My voice sounded leaden even to me.

  “Well, if not tomorrow, then perhaps the day after. I’ll have a word with Penebrygg myself, shall I?”

  “No. He’s right.” It was almost too much effort to speak. “Just leave it—please.”

  Norrie was quiet for a moment, then laid a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll leave it, if that’s what you want. But in exchange, you need to do something for me. You need to put on your boots and your cloak, and you need to go out in the fresh air. Only for a little while, mind. But you need to do it right now.”

  I’d heard that tone of voice from Norrie before but not for a very long time. Back when I was a little girl and I was grieving for the loss of my mother, she’d spoken to me with just that mixture of kindness and absolute firmness. And I had always obeyed—as I found myself obeying now, despite everything.

  Five minutes later I was walking through the courtyards of St. James. And once I was walking, I kept going, like a clockwork figure that dumbly marches on the path set for it, without seeing or feeling anything.

  But I was hardly clear of the palace walls when someone rushed up to me.

  “You’re the Chantress, an’t you?” It was a child—ragged and small but bold as a sparrow.

  I forced myself to nod.

  “There, what did I tell you?” she said to another child, even smaller and more ragged, standing behind her. She turned back to me in satisfaction. “I knew you’d come. I knew you’d help us with the house.”

  My sight sharpened. Beneath the satisfaction, there was something that looked a lot like desperation—a desperation even deeper than my own.

  “House?” I repeated.

  “Ma and Pa say they can’t save it.” There was a tremble in her voice; I’d been right about the desperation. “The mud’s higher than I am, and when they tried to slop it out, the side wall gave way. And we’ve nowhere else to live.”

  A wall. A side wall that needed fixing. And a child who needed a home.

  I could do something about that.

  “Chantress?”

  I took a deep breath and forced myself to stand tall. Maybe Nat didn’t need me, but there were others who did.

  “Show me,” I said to the child, and I offered her my hand.

  A week later, I stood on the northern section of London Bridge, looking out over its broken edge. Far below me, the Thames sparkled in the late afternoon sunlight, alive with small skiffs a
nd rowboats that people had salvaged from the flood.

  It was hard to believe that this was the same wild river that had smashed the bridge down. But then, it wasn’t the river that had been to blame.

  “So you see the difficulty, Chantress.” The King rested his hand on a wooden rail that had been hastily affixed to prevent people from falling. “The cracks in the remaining parts of the bridge can be mended easily enough, but in order to join the two parts of the bridge together, we’ll need to sink in new supports. And we’d want to get them in quickly, before winter sets in. Do you think you could hold back the water while we do that?”

  I listened to the Thames for a moment before answering. There were so many strains in its music. It could be demanding, haughty, peaceful, and mischievous all at the same time. But ever since my return I had not heard a single note that truly worried me.

  “Yes,” I said to the King. “Of course I can hold the water back for you.”

  Beside us, Sir Christopher Linnet looked up from the wide book where he was sketching out plans. Ever since the King had put him in charge of the rebuilding effort, that book went with him everywhere. “Now that I have you both here, I wonder if we might discuss some other projects—”

  “We need to focus on the essentials, Kit,” the King cautioned him.

  “Yes, yes,” Sir Christopher nodded. “The bridge, the exchange, a place for Parliament to assemble—I have that down here. But it would be foolish to ignore all the other possibilities that present themselves . . .”

  I looked out across the river to low-lying Southwark and down to the curve of the river at Whitehall and Westminster. So much devastation—and yet it was true that there were great possi­bilities as well. We’d had to put off the opening of Parliament by three months, but the flood had given us an excuse to rebuild and enlarge the traditional chambers at Westminster. All of us were determined to build a city that was stronger and more resilient than ever.

  Even Gabriel, now recovered from his head injury, was working around the clock, to the great admiration of the remaining ladies-in-waiting. Although he was brusque with me, I’d heard him bantering with a few of them the other day. It was a relief to know that my refusal hadn’t destroyed his buoyant nature.

  As for me, I was a long way from banter, but at least I was keeping one foot in front of the other. There were times when it tore me apart to think of how Nat had pulled away from me—and how even now, a full week later, he still hadn’t recovered. But London needed me, and that kept me from sinking into despair again. Day by day, I could see that I was helping to bring London back to life.

  And Londoners appreciated what I was doing. Instead of holding up iron crosses, they cheered me for even the smallest acts of magic—drying a cellar, shoring up a wall, retrieving a carriage wheel from the riverbed. Their goodwill helped keep me going.

  “We have done a great deal already, of course,” Sir Christopher said, flipping through his book of plans. “But rather than merely rebuild this city, I propose that we redesign it. We must seize the moment we have been given. Take this bridge, for instance.” He held up one of his sketches. “We could simply replace what is missing, of course. But how much better if we were to build an entirely new bridge, a bridge along Italian lines, with a much more graceful structure—”

  “We will discuss it later in Council,” the King said firmly. “But I’m not at all certain it could be considered essential work, Kit.”

  “It depends on how you define ‘essential,’ ” Sir Christopher argued. “This bridge would be a thing of beauty. A beacon for the ages. Speaking of which, Your Majesty, we might think about rebuilding St. Paul’s, too. It was a rather decrepit structure to begin with, and I strongly suspect the floods have weakened the foundations. I have some drawings here . . .”

  “And I should like to see them sometime,” the King said. “But just at the moment there is something more critical I must discuss with the Chantress.”

  As Sir Christopher wrestled with his sketchbook, the King motioned for me to accompany him back down the bridge. “You have done magnificent work for us here in London, Chantress. But there are other parts of the kingdom that were hard hit by flooding too. Of course the damage was worst here, but now that the situation is improving, I should like to send you on a quick tour of the coastline—”

  “All of it?”

  “As much as possible, yes. Repair whatever you can. Of course we’ll need you to come back to London to fix the bridge and help us prepare for the opening of Parliament. Once that’s done, you can go back out again. This crisis has revealed all kinds of weaknesses in our sea defenses, and I expect there will be enough work to keep you occupied all winter and well into the spring. Perhaps even for a full year.”

  So he was sending me back on the road. I would be continually on the move again, continually lonely. My heart fell at the thought. But perhaps a life of loneliness was the only one open to me. Perhaps it was all I could hope for.

  Yet something in me rebelled.

  “Your Majesty,” I said quietly, “I think that is more than I can take on.”

  He looked at me, eyes startled and very blue beneath his copper hair. “What’s that?”

  “I can’t do it,” I said more firmly. “I pledged myself to serve this kingdom, and I will. I want to. But I can’t do everything you want me to do.”

  In the Depths, emotions were a source of power. And perhaps they could be in this world too—if I stopped damping them down, if I approached them with honesty. I wasn’t shifting; I wasn’t changing my form. But with every word I spoke, I could feel that I was becoming more truly myself.

  “I’ve been on the road for the past year and a half, and I’m weary,” I said. “Norrie is growing older, and I see too little of her. I miss Sybil, too. And I want to make some kind of home out of Audelin House before it falls apart. I’ll go to the places that most need me, I promise you. But I can’t go everywhere, and I can’t travel all year long. Not anymore. I’m sorry, but that’s how it is. I’m a Chantress, but I’m human, too.”

  The King didn’t flare up in anger, or crumple in despair. Instead he looked resigned, almost as if he’d been expecting me to say this for some time.

  “I’m sorry to hear it, Chantress. I won’t lie. But I can’t say I wasn’t warned. Walbrook used to say I took too much advantage of your magic, that it would be better for everyone if it were employed less often. Penebrygg’s said much the same. And Sybil has been worried that I’m working you to death.” He sighed, then gave me a rueful smile. “I can’t promise to leave you alone; we need you too much. But from now on, I promise to think more carefully before I call on you. A bit more self-reliance will do us no harm.”

  I felt as if a heavy burden had been lifted from my shoulders—and now that it was gone, it was much easier to give what I could.

  “I still do want to help,” I said to the King. “I meant it when I said that I would go to the places that most need me. Tell me what towns have been hardest hit, and let me see what I can do.”

  “There’s Gravesend in Kent, down the Thames from us,” the King said immediately. “Their docks and their ferries were swept away by the backwash of the great wave, and they’ve been begging me to send you. And there’s Tilbury Fort, too. You know how critical it is to our defenses—and we’ve been told half the cannon are gone, and all the gunpowder is soaked through.”

  I’d been reluctant to leave London while Nat was still unconscious, but these places weren’t very far away. And—as long as I was being honest with myself—I had to admit it wasn’t as if Nat needed or wanted me here.

  “I’ll go today,” I said. “With some of my men, if they can be spared.” They had been working hard on the rebuilding effort.

  “Of course,” the King said. “And when you get back, you must take whatever rest you need.”

  As we left the bridge, a twisted piece of illustrated paper fluttered in the brisk wind and landed by my feet. Glancing down, I saw the
word “monster” and froze. Was this a new broadside about me? Despite all I’d done, did people still see me as a horror, a freak?

  With dread, I picked up the sheet.

  The King had turned away to have a word with Sir Christo­pher, who had caught up with us. “About those sketches . . .”

  Flattening out the paper, I saw the title plainly: OUR ANGEL SLAYS THE MONSTER. Beneath it was a woodcut of a singing woman with wings, slaying a fearsome beast. A scan of the lyrics revealed that the woman with wings was meant to be me.

  I stared at the title again. Angel? Monster? Whatever they called me, it had nothing to do with reality. The truth was far more complicated.

  Shaking my head, I crumpled the paper. Maybe I couldn’t stop other people from judging me, but I could stop looking to them for approval. Maybe most people would never be able to accept me for who I really was—not the broadside makers, not the Court gossips, not even Nat—but I didn’t have to follow suit.

  I could still decide to accept myself.

  I held up the crumpled paper and let the brisk November wind take it from me. As I watched the paper fly away, I felt lighter than I had for a long time.

  It took me five full days to set things to rights in Gravesend and Tilbury. I couldn’t resent the time I spent there—the people were too grateful, and they were in desperate need—but I was glad to get back to London.

  My men and I came into the city in the small hours of the night, on the incoming tide. When we reached St. James’s Palace, only the guards were up, and even the torches were giving up the ghost.

  “I think we’ll wait till the morning to make our report to the King,” I said to Captain Knollys after we passed through the gatehouse. “You and the men should try to get a little rest before then.”

  Knollys raised a graying eyebrow. “And you?”

  Just behind us, Barrington piped up, “Chantress, would you like an escort to your rooms?”

  I had to smile. He was ready to drop, I knew, but he was loyal to the core. They all were.