A Witch Alone

by Ruth Warburton

  After supper I helped Dad clear and wash up, while he chatted about his plans for the weekend. I couldn’t concentrate though; the lowing moan of the foghorn kept breaking in on my thoughts.

  Abe was right. There was something unnatural about this fog, the way it groped its way through the trees and huddled up against the house. I glanced at the thick white blanket pressed up against the kitchen window and shivered, thinking of the sailors out in it, thinking of …

  No. I pushed that away, dried my hands, then filled a glass of water.

  ‘Dad, do you mind if I go up? I’m shattered and I need to pack.’

  It was true. My practice with Abe had taken it out of me, and my grandmother would probably want me to do more tomorrow, although her approach was almost the polar opposite of Abe’s – all rote learning and books and memorizing. She’d taught me how to scry, how to divine, the difference between a charm and an incantation. She’d made me learn every one of the Given Runes. She’d rehearsed me in the Bright Invocations and the Dark Invocations, the spells to protect and safeguard, and the spells to blast and break and maim.

  She believed that the best magic came from books and learning. That you could swot your way out of trouble. Whereas Abe felt that magic came from inside, that instinct was better than memory, that if you couldn’t come up with the spell yourself, you shouldn’t rely on it in a tight place.

  They both agreed on one thing, though: I had eighteen years of neglect to make up for. I had power, but power alone couldn’t make you powerful. For that you needed control and confidence, and I lacked both, a problem which had almost proved fatal a few months ago. Both Abe and my grandmother were determined that if another crisis evolved, this time at least, I’d be able to look after myself.

  Dad was looking at me with concern.

  ‘You do look tired, sweetie. Have an early night. Want a lift to the train station tomorrow?’

  ‘Sure? I’m going early,’ I warned him. ‘I told Elizabeth I’d be up in London mid-morning, so I’ll have to be at the station by eight-ish at the latest.’

  ‘That’s fine. I’d rather get to Brighthaven before the parking fills up anyway. I’ll drop you off and then carry on to …’ He faltered, but then carried on bravely, ‘To the Anchor to pick up Elaine.’

  ‘Oh, you’re going with her?’ I was surprised.

  ‘Well I thought I might, since you can’t come. It’ll be more companionable with someone else and if I go early she can be back before the pub opens for lunch.’

  ‘Good.’ I tried to smile. ‘Great idea. Give my love to Elaine. Ask her …’ I stopped. But Dad knew what I’d been going to say.

  ‘Yes, I’ll ask her for any news.’ He kissed my forehead. ‘Goodnight, sweetie. Sleep well.’

  The concern in his face stayed with me as I climbed the creaking stairs and pushed open the heavy oak door to my bedroom.

  He worried about me. Worried about what I did all night, holed up in my room. He would’ve worried even more if he’d known the truth.

  The bedsprings squeaked as I sat, but I didn’t get undressed, not yet. Instead I spread my hands on my knees and looked at my seaglass ring, smoky amethyst in the light from my lamp. The foghorn boomed again and, suddenly, pulled by a temptation too strong to resist, I wrenched off the ring and picked up the polished wooden bowl that sat on my bedside table.

  For a long minute I just sat on the bed, holding the bowl in my lap and the ring in the palm of my left hand, my breath coming fast. Then, with a quick movement, I emptied my glass of water into the bowl, dropped in the ring, and put my face down inside, so close to the surface of the water that my reflection became broken and meaningless, a collection of choppy refracted lights, too close to focus into a single image.

  As I gazed the waters seemed to shimmer and move, rippling with the grain of the wood, with the trembling of my hands, with each breath I exhaled. Small waves sprang up, lapping at each other, chasing a fleck of light across the bowl. Then, gradually, clouds began to gather, the waters darkened, and the fleck of light dwindled and resolved into a tiny boat racing across the sea, trying desperately to keep ahead of the huge waves that threatened to overwhelm it. Nearly all the sails had been stripped away, until the boat was scudding under almost bare poles. I could see a figure at the tiller, lashed by rain and wind, struggling to keep the prow pointing into the oncoming waves.

  And I could do nothing. Nothing but watch the silent struggle, the figure alone in the dark, in the middle of this vast hostile waste of ocean.

  I watched, until I could bear it no longer. Then I sat upright, ripping myself bodily out of that storm-racked, lonely world.

  My neck was so stiff I could hardly straighten it. I rubbed slowly at the cramped muscles while my eyes got used to the light of the lamp, so warm and soft after the harsh blackness of the storm.

  I fished the ring out of the bottom of the bowl and poured the water on to my African violet, feeling a mixture of fear and disgust. Fear for Seth, and disgust with myself, for spying on him like this.

  I’d watched him obsessively at first. It was part of what had worried Dad so much after Seth left; my habit of keeping to my room, with a charm-locked door. But I wasn’t moping or crying or tearing Seth’s pictures out of my photo album. I was scrying. Fruitlessly at first and then, after I used the seaglass ring to focus my attention, with better and better accuracy. I never knew where Seth was exactly – what coast he was sailing past, what quay he was moored at – but I could always find his face. And it became an obsession: watching him sail, and eat, and sleep, and cry. And, one horrible night, bring a woman back to his boat. She was beautiful, with hair like polished mahogany, and as she walked down the steps to the cabin I saw the tail of her sarong as it fell to the ground. And then I saw Seth, as he turned to follow.

  I threw the bowl out of the window that night and vowed never to spy again. I felt degraded by what I’d done, and by what Seth had done, even though he owed me nothing. Not now. Not any more.

  Tonight, though, with the fog so low – I wasn’t spying, only wanting to make sure he was OK. Wasn’t that different?

  Maybe. But I still wished I hadn’t. What would Seth think of me using my power like a peeping Tom? And what good did it do? I couldn’t help him. I couldn’t change a thing. I could only watch as he battled his demons alone – and I battled mine.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Killer Fog Claims Three! screeched the billboard, as I came up the steps from the tube, my nostrils still filled with the warm, sooty air. South Gripped by Death Mist the banner headline read and, underneath, Three dead in freak fog. Their faces stared up at me from a discarded newspaper; an elderly Essex man who’d tumbled down some steps in the mist and a young couple whose car had ploughed into the central reservation of a lonely motorway. No news about ships. But a year of living in Winter had taught me that sailors’ deaths weren’t usually reported, unless they were well-to-do day-trippers. Real sailors – professional fishermen and skippers – no one was interested in the risks they took.

  The last of the mist still curled thick and strange about the streets as I walked quickly through Pimlico. Perhaps it was the fog, but London looked somehow unfamiliar. It was hard to believe that I’d walked these busy streets every day, that the stink of car exhaust and the warm gush of air from the tube vents had been more familiar than the smell of the sea and of oyster pots drying on the quay.

  I felt a fierce stab of longing to be back in Winter – but I pushed the thought down and turned on to Vauxhall Bridge Road, trying to ignore the growing sense of foreboding about what was to come.

  I hadn’t been back since my first disastrous visit – first and last. My grandmother had come to Winter and I’d visited her house, but every time she’d asked me to come to the Ealdwitan headquarters, I’d refused. I’d made my peace with my grandmother, but I’d never be able to forget the Ealdwitan’s actions last year, not with Bill’s memorial stone still clean and white in the Winter churchyard.
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br />   But the fact was, if I wanted to find out the truth about my mother and myself, I had to go back there. When I’d first suggested it to my grandmother, it hadn’t seemed like such a big deal. But now …

  I stood on the parapet of Vauxhall Bridge looking at the silky swirl of the grey waters beneath and my stomach did a little flip.

  ‘Come on you bloody coward,’ I whispered to myself, steeling myself for the leap. Buses thundered up and down the road and there was a ferry passing beneath, so I murmured a few words and then looked down at my feet to check the invisibility charm had worked.

  ‘Houston, we are go,’ I muttered. And then I jumped.

  The smell hit me first, like the memory of a nightmare. As I opened the door, the rich air flooded into the small anteroom, laden with the scent and feel and taste of magic, like a thousand spices crushed underfoot. I flinched.

  Don’t go in! every bone in my body screamed. I stood, with my hand on the reinforced steel door, and the man at the desk looked at me quizzically. I desperately wanted to turn and flee. But instead I found myself taking a step forward. Back into the heart of the Ealdwitan.

  Inside, the atmosphere closed around me like a thick blanket. I felt the layers of charm and countercharm, magic and deception, settle like a physical weight upon my shoulders.

  ‘Good morning.’ The man at the desk gave something that was probably supposed to be a smile, if you gave him the benefit of the doubt. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Um … thanks. I’m here to see my grandmother, Elizabeth Rokewood.’

  ‘Of course.’ He barely thawed an inch. Must be one of the rival factions. There were five Chairs and, from what I’d heard from my grandmother, no more than two were generally on speaking terms with each other. Their camps followed suit.

  I signed in at the book on the table. The office behind him was shadowy, but I could just make out rows of shelves, each stacked with dozens upon dozens of similar leatherbound tomes, and a thought struck me.

  ‘Do you keep these sign-in ledgers? Old ones, I mean.’

  ‘Of course.’ He gave me a hard stare.

  ‘What’s in them?’

  ‘A list of all the visitors each day and an account of any noteworthy occurrences and meetings.’

  ‘And can … um … can people see them?’

  ‘Certainly not.’ His stare deepened into a frankly suspicious glare. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘No reason.’ My heart was thudding. Just as I was wondering what to say next, I heard a voice I recognized and turned to see my grandmother walking briskly down the long, carpeted corridor, dictating to her secretary as she went.

  ‘… in light of this a security reassessment is essential, underlined, comma, including the withdrawal and reissue of all current passes and security clearances stop. New paragraph— Anna! … No, Miss Vane, of course that wasn’t part of the memo. We’ll resume later.’

  I felt her thin, jewel-laden hand close on my shoulder as she kissed me lightly, once on each cheek, and I inhaled the scent of her bitter perfume.

  ‘Hello, darling. I’m afraid I’m going to be rather busy today. It’s fortunate you suggested meeting here, as I would have had to come in anyway.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ I asked. She grimaced, her skin stretched tight over the bones of her face, and we began to walk down the corridor towards her office, the velvet shushing beneath our feet.

  ‘A long story. Security issues, combined with some recent worrying events. We’re having an emergency meeting about it today and I would like you to attend.’

  ‘Me?’ I gulped. ‘But—’

  ‘Anna, I realize this is throwing you in at the deep end. I didn’t want to introduce you to the Chairs like this. But just now everything is in flux. The Chairs are panicked; I think this could be the moment.’

  ‘The moment?’

  She looked up and down the corridor and then drew me inside her office and shut the door.

  ‘For holding Thaddeus Corax to account.’

  Thaddeus Corax – who had ordered the attack on Winter; who had sent his servants to terrorize me and my friends; who, according to my grandmother, was to blame for everything that had happened in Winter one year ago. She’d promised me that we would confront him one day and prevent him treating anyone else the same way. But now? So soon?

  Elizabeth must have read the doubts flickering across my face, for she spoke decisively.

  ‘Thaddeus has been destabilized more than anyone by these events, Anna. If we have any chance of damaging his authority, it is now.’

  ‘So what … You want me to talk about – about last year?’

  ‘No, at least not at the moment. I taxed him a few months ago with his actions in Winter. His stance is unwavering and his account unchanged; according to him, he sent a party of people to investigate you and to try to persuade you to stop practising magic unguardedly. They became carried away and operatives on the ground exceeded their responsibilities, entirely unbeknown to him. It’s very hard to prove either way.’

  ‘Then – why? Why do you need me?’

  ‘Because, Anna, you are the last of the Rokewoods.’ Her dark eyes were unfathomable. ‘And I am old. Because Corax is holding on to his mortality with a tenaciousness that frightens me, using methods I cannot bear to think of. And because when I am gone – and if Corax has his way that may be sooner rather than later – the Chair will fall to you.’

  ‘No!’ I took a step back, crashed into an ornate coffee table. ‘No! I don’t want it. I don’t want it!’

  ‘You must seize it. Or Corax will install one of his camp and all will be lost.’

  I shook my head, imagining myself entombed in this underground maze for ever, chained to a Chair I didn’t want, enslaved to a duty I never sought. I imagined the weight now on my grandmother’s shoulder’s settling on mine.

  ‘You are a Rokewood.’ My grandmother’s voice was harsh.

  ‘I’m not, I’m a Winterson.’

  ‘You are a Rokewood – and Anna, whether you choose to believe it or not, there are greater evils than Thaddeus Corax out there.’ My grandmother’s voice was grim. ‘Right now, the Ealdwitan, imperfect though we may be, is what stands between your friends and that evil.’

  My heart thudded in my chest. But there was no way back. There never had been, not since I first opened the pages of the Grimoire. I could only press on, blindly.

  The chamber was domed, with a vaulted roof studded with ornate bosses. It was late afternoon by my watch, but there were no windows in the hall and by the shadows in the rafters it might have been midnight. The witchlights in the sconces around the walls flickered softly, casting an uneven light on the stone walls and the carved backs of the five imposing chairs arranged in a circle at the centre of the room. Four of them were already occupied; these people must be the famous Chairs, representatives of the most important witch clans in Britain.

  Around them, at their backs, were ranged their followers, clustered into little camps on the high, tiered benches. I was seated behind the empty chair, with my grandmother’s secretary, Miss Vane, and a number of others whose faces I didn’t know.

  ‘Who are the people in the middle?’ I whispered, under cover of the general rustling as people settled themselves, spread papers, took out pens and plumped cushions.

  ‘The lady sitting opposite us, the young one, she’s Margot Throgmorton,’ Miss Vane whispered back. ‘She’s deputizing for her husband, Edward Throgmorton, who’s very elderly and too ill to attend at present. If he dies, no one knows what will happen. Margot will try to seize the chair, I’m sure, and she will probably have support from Erasmus Knyvet – they’re said to be lovers.’

  I looked down at the beautiful, vivacious face of the woman Miss Vane had indicated and I wasn’t surprised at the rumours. She couldn’t have been a day over forty, even allowing for a witch’s habit of smoothing away wrinkles. As I watched her, I noticed something coiling sinuously around the legs of her chair – an anim
al too large to be a cat. A flash of red and I recognized it: a fox. Margot Throgmorton’s hand crept down and scratched the creature behind the ears, and it writhed with pleasure before vanishing in the shadows under her seat.

  ‘Knyvet is the man next to her,’ Miss Vane continued. ‘He’s very proper, very traditional. His wife –’ she nodded subtly towards a very pregnant woman high on the benches at the back, ‘– is due in May with his eighth child.’

  Eighth? I looked from the grey, drawn face of the woman opposite, down to the thin foxlike visage of Knyvet. He was leaning in, speaking confidentially to Margot Throgmorton, every line of their bodies exuding mutual amusement.

  ‘Next in the circle is Charles Catesby,’ she nodded down at a leonine man, with a grizzled mane of hair and a blond beard streaked with white. ‘He’s an old friend of your grandparents.’

  ‘And the last man?’ I asked, my throat dry. Miss Vane shot me a look.

  ‘Yes. The last man is Thaddeus Corax.’

  I looked down through the dimness of the chamber at the back of his head. He was small, wizened, impossibly old. I’d hated him, feared him, for so long. And now here he was.

  As I stared, he turned, as if he could feel the intensity of my gaze. Two hooded eyes swept the chamber and I glimpsed yellowed teeth, a beaklike nose, a face so graven with lines he looked carved from stone. Then he ducked his head with a curious bobbing motion and turned back to the circle.

  Last to be seated was my grandmother, and I watched as she moved to take her place, a strange suffocating feeling in my chest. It felt like … affection. Love, even. But that was impossible, surely. How could you love someone as hard, as indomitable as my grandmother?

  Perhaps it was because she looked – strangely – frail. She was old. Sixty, even seventy perhaps. And there wasn’t an ounce of spare flesh on her bones. Her wrists were skin and sinew, her rings hung heavy on her thin fingers. Her still-black hair was scraped into an immaculate chignon so heavy it seemed impossible that her neck could support it. She’d been a hard mother, I knew that. Hard on her daughter. And she’d be hard on me too, if I let her. But now, seeing her bow her neck beneath the weight of all this authority and malevolence, I could see she’d been harder still on herself.