Gideon

by Alex Gordon

  “She has the right to it,” Maude said as the saloon door slammed closed. “I’m sure her concern for its safety is what led her to hunt for it before searching for her husband.” She scraped up a handful of snow, and patted it into a ball.

  “Maude?” Laura Petersbury walked to her friend, boots sinking into the snow as her emotions overtook her. “What are you doing?”

  “The snows hide them.” Maude held up her hand, the snowball resting on her palm. “Let the snows find them.” She tossed the orb into the air, and it flew apart with a sound like a sigh. The flakes remained still for a few moments, suspended, catching the sun and flashing it back like flecks of diamond. Then they spun off in all directions, one swirl after another. Toward the pyre, the doorways of buildings, down alleys, flitting back and forth like dragonflies before finally stilling at scattered points above the square, glistening like ripples in a sunlit pond.

  Nan Petrie screamed.

  Eliza counted the lights, even though she knew there would be one for each of their men. Grave lights. Markers.

  When the last light halted, Maude made as if to speak, then stopped. Laura took her by the hand, and said something to her in the old language. They both stood silent for a time, heads bowed. Then Maude looked up, her eyes glittering. “Call to us.”

  And the lights sent out streamers, links from the dead to the living. One finger licked out from a place beside the pyre and whipped around Maude Hoard’s wrist. She reached out her free hand to Sam, her middle boy, and together they walked to uncover their own private piece of hell.

  Eliza watched as the other lights found other women. Laura. Kat. Alice and Nan and Peg and Carrie. She waited, counted the passage of time, and felt her heart lift. Hoped that by some twist, some unimaginable blessing, Tom had managed to flee. That he had found a place to hide, sanctuary from Blaine’s wrath. She prayed, and prayed harder, even as the other women’s grief sank its claws into her, brought tears to her eyes and an ache to her chest.

  But the hope shriveled as her own light found her and coiled around her wrist, tingled and sparked along her skin, filled her nose with the metallic tang of the air before a storm. Eliza let it lead her across the square, walked as best she could on legs gone to wood. Her light had settled above a squared-off mound the length of a man, and she brushed away snow to reveal the edge of a water trough.

  She fell to her knees and dug with her hands. The wet chill soaked through her gloves. Thrown snow sprayed across her face, melted into her skirt, her coat. The light had let loose her wrist and shimmered around her head now, dipping in front of her eyes, swirling and eddying with her every movement.

  Then she struck something hard yet soft. Brushed away snow, and saw the rich black of fine wool.

  She kept digging. Uncovered a leg, a booted foot. An arm, encased in the sleeve of a white shirt, the cloth too thin to provide any protection against the wind and the cold.

  “Mistress Blaylock?”

  Eliza looked up into a round, pale face, cheeks red with cold and speckled with the first hints of beard.

  “Ma sent me to help,” Sam Hoard said as he hefted a small spade and started to dig. Behind him, a wheeled cart settled into the snow, its magic spent, weighted down by its blanket-wrapped burden.

  “Thank you, Sam.” Eliza kept digging, even as she edged away to give the boy room to work. Uncovered a collar, a neck. Held her breath, and scooped enough snow to expose a cheek, an ear, hair as black as the wool.

  “They all just fell asleep, Ma said.” Sam’s voice came light, as though they dug in his mother’s garden. “She said she could tell from the way Pa lay on his side, all curled up. By the look on his face. So peaceful. ‘Just like he fell asleep, Sam,’ she said. ‘No need to worry ’bout him having felt any pain.’”

  Eliza’s hand hovered. Then she flicked lightly, as though brushing away a fly—

  “‘Just like sleeping,’ she said.”

  —and uncovered Tom’s eye. It was closed, dark lashes stark against his skin. He looked as he had in the hours toward dawn, when he slumbered so still and deep that Eliza wondered if he would ever awaken.

  “See, Mistress?”

  Eliza looked up to find Sam staring at her.

  “Sleeping. Just like Ma said.” His voice held a brittle edge, as though he forced words he didn’t quite believe yet needed to say. “Just like.”

  Eliza looked back down at Tom. Ran a finger over skin sallow and stiff as wax. “Just like.” She smoothed a lock of her dead husband’s hair, then resumed digging.

  DUSK HAD SETTLED by the time they moved the last of the bodies into the catacombs. It proved to be Carrie Tuckwell’s Simon, which caused Maude to remark that he brought up the rear as usual. And they all laughed, because it reminded them of a time they would never know again, and because it was either laugh or go mad.

  Eliza tied one last knot in the cord that bound Tom’s shroud, then wiped a small puddle of snowmelt from the top of the bier. She knew that she would visit him many times over the course of the winter, but at that moment she could not connect the blanket-wrapped form with the man she had awakened beside only a few mornings before. He didn’t speak much. She managed to draw only one-word answers to her questions about the burning-to-come, and they had ridden in silence to the Petrie barn. His kiss good-bye had held no trace of warmth. He believed her. Her breath caught. Instead of me, his own wife, he believed—

  “—not right!”

  Eliza started, her heart thudding, as more voices, sharp with anger, rose from below. The third level beneath the meeting hall, a place of meditation and sacrament, of baptism and final rites.

  Eliza whispered farewell to Tom and hurried down the narrow, crypt-lined corridor. She descended the packed-dirt stairway, one hand braced against the damp wall. The flames from oil lamps cast shadows that flickered across every surface, altering with the movement of the air. She ran past the baptismal cistern, the roughhewn altars, to find the other women crowded near the opening to the largest chamber.

  “It’s not right.” Carrie Tuckwell pointed to the bier on the far side of the crypt, the sheet-draped object that lay atop. “That thing doesn’t belong under the same roof with our men.”

  “Jacob decided this was the place for him.” Ann Cateman stood in the opening, and held the Book against her chest like a shield. Like the rest of them, she looked exhausted, bedraggled, dirt smearing her face and clothes. “It’s my duty as his widow to see that his wishes are carried out.”

  Laura Petersbury stood slumped against the wall, face gray and drawn. “I don’t believe Jacob expected to—”

  “His last words to me. ‘Annie, see to it. Even if I die.’” Ann made a show of looking around the room. “He told me this was the only safe place. We know Blaine had followers. If we put him anywhere outside Gideon, shattered his bones to dust, and spread them far and wide, they’d divine a way to bring them back together.” She stroked the Book, as though it were a baby needing comforting. “Great men keep their friends close and their enemies closer. We must keep Nicholas Blaine as close as our hearts.” She stared down Laura, then Carrie, then the other women in turn, her gaze sharpening as it settled upon Eliza.

  Eliza met the woman’s stare with a cool smile. The grief that had consumed her since the day of the burning had ebbed since she had entered the catacombs, replaced by something harder. She had always felt at ease here, hemmed in by rock and dirt, the spring that fed the river close under her feet. She had never been one for the light. Darkness cleared her mind.

  “Let her have her way,” Maude Hoard said softly, to no one in particular. “For now.” With that temporary reprieve, the women dispersed, leaving the Mistress of Gideon alone with her Book and the remains of Nicholas Blaine. They mounted the stair in silence, some stopping on the second level to bid tearful good nights, others continuing upstairs to the meeting hall.

  Eliza returned to Tom’s small crypt, lowering to the floor and hugging her knees to her chest.
“Can you hear me?” She waited for a sign, a whisper of air or any errant sound. “Darling, why didn’t you trust me? We could have stopped them.” She huddled in the dark and waited for steps to die away and voices to fade. Reached into her pocket, and felt for the dried apple. Waited longer, and finally heard the quiet crunch of Ann’s boots on the stair. Held her breath as the steps paused at the entry to the second level, and exhaled ever so carefully as they resumed, grew softer, faded to nothing.

  Eliza waited, until the silence pressed like a weight. Then she rose. “Watch over me, love.” She left Tom’s crypt and wended her way once more down the narrow corridor, the curving stair. This time as she entered the lowest level, she detected things that she had missed before. The gentle movement of the air. The lap of the water in the baptismal cistern. The barest whiff of burned flesh.

  Eliza entered Blaine’s chamber, pausing as the scorched smell strengthened and a whisper of heat brushed her cheek. Then she approached the body. So withered, the form beneath the shroud. Shrunken, as though a child lay there instead of a grown man.

  “Hello, Young Nick.” Eliza detected no movement. Even so, she heard the softest rustling, like autumn leaves lifted by a breeze. “You can hear me. That’s good. It would be a waste of time, me standing here talking to a bucketful of charcoal, wouldn’t it?” She felt another waft of ovenlike air. Hotter, this time, the smell stronger.

  “I’m not the one you expected, am I? She’s gone above with the others, but I’m sure she’ll return. Ann Cateman. Gideon’s mistress”—Eliza smiled—“and yours.” She laughed as the rustling intensified. “Did you think you kept your secret so well? Did you truly believe that no one suspected? Or had you grown so arrogant that you didn’t care?” She stepped closer, but the heat flared as though she’d opened a furnace door, and she stopped. “You should have been hanged. We knew what you were. Trial by fire was not necessary. But you had to burn for this spell to work. What would it have brought you? Eternal life? Unimaginable power? Whatever it is, it demanded you die by fire, by something you could control. Hanging wouldn’t have served your plan. So Ann convinced Jacob that you had to burn, and you had to be interred within Gideon, and he fell for it. Poor, stupid cuckold.” She paused. The rustling had ceased. There was a sense of listening now, of waiting.

  Eliza’s smile faded. Her hands clenched. “Do you remember the harvest gathering, late last year, when we officially welcomed you and Adam into the body of the host? It began there, after you had been here but two days. Your plan to cleave me from Tom. The night was so clear and the stars so bright, and you asked Tom’s leave to dance with me. You swept me around the bonfire once, then again, making sure everyone saw us even as you steered me away from them. Away from the light and warmth, into the darkness and the cold. Then you stopped, and bent close enough to kiss me. Before I could back away, I heard a cough, and when I turned there was Tom, watching us. You stepped back so quickly, stuttering as you spoke. You couldn’t have looked more guilty.” She brushed a finger along the earthen wall, and felt the stiff chill of Tom’s cheek. “Did you ever read Milton? ‘Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.’” She spread wide her arms. “You’ll do neither after I’ve finished with you.” She drew strength from the darkness, found the words, stood her ground even as the thing beneath the sheet groaned through a throat gone to ash and tried to sit up.

  “Dead by fire, by water be bound. Held within earth, by air be bound—” Eliza gasped as heat enveloped her. From the corner of her eye, she saw flames flicker along the wall, knew that Blaine would trap her within an inferno if she let him, that she’d burn like tissue if her nerve failed and her spell with it. “Water feeds earth and air feeds fire.” Her voice rose as hellfire pressed in from all sides. “Let them form thy eternal mire. Thy binding circle.”

  The flames roared around Eliza as though she stood in the center of a firestorm. Then, like a loving hand, she felt coolness through the heat. The magicked blaze vanished. She looked to the bier, and saw that Blaine had lain back, grown smaller, as though the conflagration he had willed on her had consumed him instead.

  Eliza lowered her arms. Every spell demanded a price and she felt her debt now. Weakness as the sweat bloomed and trickled beneath her clothes. The dull ache in her limbs, as though she had hiked for days. “You shall never leave this chamber.” Her voice rasped like a crone’s, her throat battered by heat. “Dormant as you are now or alive as you plan to be, someday. Until the end of time, never will you know the sun’s warmth. Never will you feel the breeze, or the rain on your face, or the drift of a snowflake.” She closed her eyes, and remembered the snow. How it had fallen steadily for three days. How it had settled on Tom’s face. “Damn you, Nicholas Blaine, and damn her who aided you. You two will never meet again, in this life or the next.” She fell silent, savored the cool, the quiet. The damp mustiness of the air.

  And she waited, for the sound she expected, the soft footfall.

  “Eliza?”

  Eliza turned. Saw the slender form in the shadows. “Mistress.”

  “I heard your voice.” Ann Cateman stepped into the lamplight. Her arms were empty, her prized Book of Gideon left above. “Why were you talking to Blaine?”

  Eliza felt the probing in her mind, and closed herself off to it, brushing it away as easily as a greedy child’s hand. “Why did he kill Dolly?”

  Ann watched her for a time, head cocked. Then she looked past her toward the bier. “He offered his brother first, but Adam proved too tainted. The spell required a cleaner gift.”

  Eliza felt her strength return, the ache in her limbs ease. “You wept at her funeral.”

  “I will weep at Jacob’s.” Ann smiled. “We study the Book all our lives, but do we understand what it means? The possibilities it offers?” Her face looked like a young girl’s, the dim light softening the feral edge. “The Lady teaches us how to fight demons, but that same power may be used to summon them and bind them to our will. That knowledge is there, for those with the courage to use it.”

  Eliza stepped out of Blaine’s crypt. “We guard the borderland, and protect this world against the demons that roam the wilderness. That is our meaning. That is our possibility.”

  Ann laughed, the sharpness of the sound muffled by the dirt walls. “Nick thought you different. He feared you. But you’re as stupid as the rest of them.” She pointed to her lover’s remains. “When he returns, I’ll see that he casts you out with them. You’ll toil in his fields, and build his temples, and worship his greatness.” She circled Eliza and approached the crypt. “You will—” She stopped, and stared into the dark. Then she turned to Eliza, eyes wide. “What did you do?” She tried to step through the entry, but stopped short, as though she met a wall. Passed her hands over the invisible barrier, then backed away. “What did you do?”

  “What the Book commands. Which you would know, if you read it as it was meant to be read. We guard the border between this world and the next, we who serve the Lady.” Eliza turned so that she faced Ann. “We vanquish the demons—”

  “No!” Ann hurtled toward her, hands out, fingers curled.

  Eliza braced for the impact. She pushed Ann’s arms out of the way with her left arm as she drove her right fist into the woman’s stomach, a lesson learned from a youth with four brothers and honed by every fight they had ever teased her into. She grabbed Ann as she crumpled, stumbled herself as she felt the knifing in her mind as her foe scrabbled for purchase. Fought off dizziness and confusion as she dragged her burden to the edge of the cistern. Smelled smoke and burned meat in the woman’s hair, the tainted remains of Blaine’s touch.

  “Nicholas!” Ann wheezed, coughed, twisted and writhed like a beast in a trap. “Nic—!”

  “He can’t give you his power.” Eliza pushed Ann’s head into the water. “He can—never help you—again.” She steeled herself to the tumult of sensation that the woman hurled. That fistfuls of snakes sank their fangs into her hands. That the water into which sh
e had plunged her arms boiled, and that her skin blistered and peeled. She struggled to block the pain, held on for dear sanity to the reality that she fought Ann Cateman, who had killed Tom as surely as if she had buried a knife in his back. Told herself that the water that splashed her face and clothes was cold, and that she was strong, and that vengeance for Gideon was hers.

  “By the Lady.” Eliza pressed a knee between Ann’s shoulders. “In her name.” She leaned with all her weight, pushed Ann’s head deeper into the cistern. The woman’s thrashing slowed, then ceased. The bubbles from beneath the water’s surface stopped.

  Eliza waited. After a time, the pain in her hands broke through, the ache from immersion in the frigid water. She tasted the dank air, saw the flicker of the oil lamps, and knew her mind had cleared. Knew that Ann Cateman could no longer reach her. That Ann Cateman was dead.

  Eliza stood, then dragged the woman out of the water and flipped her on her back. Studied the blued lips, the skin pale as parchment. Heard the sounds behind her, the rustle of skirts and the squeak of leather boots.

  “Is it finished?” Maude Hoard drew next to the body, knelt beside it, pressed her fingers to wrist, then throat. “I knew you could do it.” She looked up at Eliza, and smiled. “You were the only one strong enough.” She struggled to her feet. “He didn’t help her?”

  “He couldn’t.” Eliza looked to Blaine’s crypt, sensed the finger of hatred that labored to push through the barrier of her spell.

  “Did you hear it all, Laura? Jane?” Maude Hoard turned to her fellow elders. “Do you all know the truth now?”

  More footsteps followed, hushed voices murmuring prayers.

  “We heard.” Laura Petersbury offered Eliza a grudging nod, then stepped around her and prodded Ann’s body with the toe of her boot. “Drowning. An elemental death. She could come back.”