After a time, when Iris’s cries were too much to bear, Beatrice sought out the reverend mother in her office.
“She won’t make it through the night,” the nun said, looking at Beatrice with calm gravity. This, Beatrice thought, was the perfect hand to grow an odd child into a substantive woman.
“I know this because it was foretold to me by the Holy Mother herself, who came to me in a vision,” Reverend Mother clarified. Beatrice recalled Persephone saying she’d paid a visit, and it was well regarded.
“Our Lady gave us the particulars of what is to come after,” the Reverend Mother continued. “The burials, the protection of the child. We shall cover her traces as specified. It is uncommon, this night. Uncommon, this charge. But when the Lord decrees something and sends his messengers, so it shall be.”
Beatrice gaped. How wondrous, when mortals could talk of such spectacular goings-on as simple fact, especially those not directly called into the service of the Grand Work. Goodness knows she had not gone so effortlessly into the good night of her own fate.
Closing her mouth, she composed herself and spoke plainly. “I’ll not subject your sisters to such melancholy work. If you would kindly supply me with two shovels, my colleague and I shall make sure a site is ready.” Beatrice pulled bank notes from her reticule. “This shall pay for headstones. Thank you. I do believe, as odd as this is, and odd as this child shall be, that you are doing good.”
“I agree.” She eyed Beatrice. “Don’t speak as though you doubt, Miss Smith. Speak as though you know. If you’re confident good shall win, it will. If you doubt it, it won’t. Do not leave room for darkness, lest it wedge its way in.”
“You are wise, Reverend Mother.”
“No, not personally. I allow for higher truths to flow through me. I am a vessel. So I shall give this child what I can and see that she journeys where the Holy Mother commanded. I promise.”
“Thank you,” Beatrice said.
She exited the convent to find the storm still held back its fury. Good, for there was a grim business yet to be done. Once necessary supplies were brought to the carriage by obedient sisters, she joined Ibrahim inside.
Without a word between them, only an occasional bolstering nod, the two of them went to a small York graveyard. There they began to dig. The physical work felt good, exorcising demons of anxiety and uncertainty as well as the grief of pending loss, of such a sweet soul as Iris Parker. Soon there were two graves set aside from the rest of the graveyard.
Beatrice placed the letter from Iris and the key from the goddess in a metal container, which she closed firmly before setting it into a wooden box the size of a dead infant, provided without question by the sisters, who were unflinching about bringing life into the world or seeing it out.
Lowering the tiny coffin into the grave, she and Ibrahim buried the subterfuge, then took a moment to say many different prayers. It would be well that this ground was blessed with multiple wards against any evils, lest it become the wedge of which the reverend mother warned.
When Beatrice and Ibrahim returned to the convent, they were greeted by the scream of a newborn. Uncannily, almost immediately, it quieted.
Ibrahim waited respectfully in the reverend mother’s office, as the mysterious chamber of childbirth was entirely off limits to him. Beatrice rushed to Iris’s side, stroking her hair and trying to ignore the blood-soaked bedding and cloths that surrounded her. A broken body that had yet birthed a child was indeed a miracle; she tried to focus on miracles instead.
The attendant nun midwife cried out, when the child was wiped clean, “Why, the girl’s a ghost!”
“Let me see her,” Iris murmured, barely audible, her strength gone but tears of love in her eyes.
“Hush,” the reverend mother said to the two sisters who anxiously whispered to each other that the child was a frightful omen. “This is a child of God, and she will be raised as ours. She is sacred to us, and I’ll not hear one word against her.”
“Thank you,” Iris whispered, gazing at the precious bundle in her arms, the baby whose icy-blue eyes were staring intelligently up at her. Iris said to Beatrice, “She’s very special. See how she doesn’t cry? See how gentle and peaceful a soul she is?”
“Beautiful,” Beatrice choked out.
A host of spirits hovered at the edges of the room, making the cool space even colder. Beatrice had never seen them so respectful, not even during Iris’s pregnancy. They hung silent, watching, listening, perhaps worshipping. Neither Iris nor Beatrice acknowledged them, lest the nuns think their strange charge further cursed.
“Give her the pendant, Beatrice, and my letter, please.”
“She will be provided for,” the reverend mother said, seeing Beatrice struggling for composure.
“And so it is finished,” Iris murmured. She kissed her daughter on the forehead; the baby’s tiny arm reached out, pressing its small fist against Iris’s cheek. “Good-bye, Percy. Always remember, no matter what, you are a child of Power and Light. Unique as you look, you’ll likely not think yourself powerful, but you must have faith. I did, and you were my reward.”
She closed her eyes and was gone. Simple. Peaceful. Beautiful, in a way. In that moment the storm broke and the rain came. So did Beatrice’s tears.
The others left the room, but Beatrice, weeping, curled over Iris’s body, doubled over her as if she might yet catch a bit of the young woman’s effervescent, wonderful soul. A cool draft encompassed her, and she looked up to see Iris’s spirit, luminous and radiant, hovering above her, a veritable angel, suffused with joy and life. The ghost stared at Beatrice and at the tiny, colorless baby still cradled in her mortal shell’s dead arms, then blew them each a kiss. The room grew blindingly bright, and Iris vanished, just as the goddess had.
Beatrice lifted the newborn into her arms, surprised by Percy’s preternatural quiet and her inquisitive, eerie eyes. But then again, the child was an older soul than any could possibly know. She hugged her tight, brushing away tears that had fallen into the baby’s pearlescent hair.
“Persephone Parker. You’d best make things right, young lady. You’ve a lot of work to do, do you hear me? Grow up fast, my girl. Grow up fast.”
The baby made no sound but stared at her almost as if she understood. If not now, she would someday. She had to.
Beatrice carried the baby into the reverend mother’s office. Ibrahim stared at the infant in awe. Handing her to the reverend mother, Beatrice said, “I’ll stay the night here, if I may.”
The reverend mother nodded and scrutinized Beatrice, aware of her unease. “Of course. You needn’t worry, Miss Smith.” She stared down lovingly at Percy before reassuring Beatrice. “A wet nurse will be found for the child at once, and there will be a funeral mass for Iris in the morning. This is hardly the first orphan we’ve reared. All has been provided for.”
“Thank you. God bless you.” Turning to Ibrahim, she added, her voice shaking, “Tomorrow we are free.”
Ibrahim said nothing, just pressed her hand in support and love. She waved him gently off, and he left. The reverend mother had Beatrice shown to a spare, clean room. Sleep, when it came, was heavy.
She woke to the cry of the novices. At first Beatrice was afraid something was wrong, that the baby was ill, that any number of strange phenomena, the aftershock of divine interferences, was taking hold of the convent. But no. Looking out her window at the bright dawn, at the storm clouds rolling away, Beatrice saw the gifts Iris Parker had left and her tears flowed anew.
In the sky were a hundred rainbows.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-FOUR
Alexi slept fitfully through the terrible storm. His fingers felt wet, as if still soiled by those bloody roses from months earlier, their grim oil impossible to wash away. Midway through the night, the wind of the Grand Work swept through his room, carrying the brief cry of a newborn and then a great and glorious peace. It was a dream so powerful that his hands and heart were cleansed.
Awaking with tears on his cheeks and his heart beating wildly, he strained his eyes against the bright morning light. Out his window he found multiple rainbows in the sky, an impossible act of nature but a beautiful omen.
Throwing back the covers, he found a talisman at the foot of his bed: a luminescent feather. He held it up to the light, and it reflected every color, as if the rainbows outside shone directly upon it. The goddess who had revealed herself to announce Prophecy came to mind, a goddess he’d kept close in hazy dreams.
“‘From the flame of Phoenix, a feather did fall and Muses followed,’” he murmured. It was the mythology that bound them, words ingrained in his brain when he was first chosen by Phoenix.
Seizing a notebook from his bedside table, he began to write furiously. Something had been born today; his destiny was closer than ever. How long before it all reached fruition he could not know, but something of Prophecy had been completed. He wanted to tell the others, yet this joy felt so personal, so private that they couldn’t possibly understand.
The feather in his pocket, Alexi was en route to a meeting when something glimmering caught his eye in the window of a small jewelry shop. He spotted an elegant silver ring in the shape of a simple feather wrapped into a circle. As he looked at it, a terrible pain seized his body and soul, an agony he’d never before felt. A field of heather, a phantom embrace, a hand being dragged from his. Something wonderful, stolen away, leaving a hollow in his heart.
Shaking, he had to steady himself with his hand upon the bricks of the shop. A concerned customer clutched her purchase tight as she hurried off the doorstep, murmuring to her top-hatted escort, “Why, that young man looks mad.”
In his ear sounded a whisper, the voice of an old, familiar friend. Or lover.
“I promise.”
Whatever had lurched and ached within him lost its breath in a sudden rush of hope as his thoughts narrowed to that one word. Promise? His pain was supplanted by determination. By hope.
Straightening, he put himself to rights, smoothing his waistcoat, tightening his scarlet cravat. In a matter of minutes the ring had been purchased and placed on a chain and was hidden beneath Alexi’s clothing. There it would lie against his heart for however long it took to find the mystery he hungered for.
Everything marched toward Prophecy.
* * *
“Did you see the sky?” Beatrice asked Ibrahim when he collected her from the convent.
He nodded, touching her arm. “I did—heralds of a new dawn, releasing us to our lives.”
Freedom. Was it possible? A gnawing feeling had Beatrice wondering what the goddess had meant by “blood and fire” in the midst of her final instructions. Such intense words had her wondering if the Grand Work would yet call on her at some future date.
As they walked out onto the road to town, where they supposed they’d take a hired carriage onward, a familiar ripping sound made them whirl. There stood an open vertical rectangle, through which Beatrice could see her father’s apartment building in Cairo.
“Home! Oh, Father…” Beatrice choked. It was only now that she allowed herself to entertain how dearly she missed him. How she missed the simple human interactions she’d known before being one of the Guard. Perhaps it was time to gather family back again and cherish each and every moment.
Crackling threads of light coursed about the edge of the portal: Liminal light.
Ibrahim asked warily, “Are you here to carry us home? Is this the reward for a job well done?”
The edges sparked and flickered, but the Liminal wasn’t one for conversation.
Ibrahim approached and gingerly pushed the tips of his fingers into the space. He said, “It feels like the air of home.”
Beatrice chuckled. “Well, stepping through would beat weeks on a steamer. See? You’ll take my hand and we’ll go home. A much better vision. Not everything we fear comes to pass as we fear it.”
The word “fear” seemed to shudder through him and he stepped back. “Having escaped death, I do now fear it. I fear these thresholds, Bea. I have been warned of them.”
“A portal like this?”
“Well, no, not quite like this.”
“Then shall you be ruled by fear? Or by your own decisions?” she asked gently, but firmly. A quality she knew he admired.
He considered her a moment, Cairo waiting patiently before them. “You know, one of the reasons I chafed against loving you was that a few of my countrymen once chided me for living among English people. They would have shunned me for our relationship.
“Yet I think upon the benediction of Ahmed Basri’s smile, and the encouragement of our friends. I am that which I choose, as simple or as complicated as I may be. No other opinion has a right to that choice. Indeed, Miss Smith. My choices shall not be ruled by fear.”
When Ibrahim offered his hand, she took it. They smiled and stepped through, into warm golden light.
Once a dizziness had passed, it was as simple as if they’d walked between rooms, not across continents.
“Hello, Father,” Beatrice said tentatively, whole worlds having passed since she’d last spoken those words, even if only one of them noticed.
Leonard Smith looked up from his clay fragments with a smile. The blue eyes she’d inherited sparkled. “Ah, Bea! Hello! Seems I haven’t seen you in a while. School, wasn’t it? Did it go well? Are you back, then?”
“Yes.”
He stood, acknowledging the newcomer. “And who’s this?”
Ibrahim stepped forward. “Ibrahim Wasil-Tipton, sir, at your service.”
“Tipton. Tipton…” Mr. Smith’s brow furrowed before he suddenly lit up. “Are you James Tipton’s boy, then?”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“What a good man, Tipton! One of the best I knew at university! He spoke so fondly of you, said you were brilliant. I’m so sorry about what happened—he’s sorely missed—but am grateful you’re alive. Have you met my daughter, Beatrice? Bea, you remember my telling you about the good father from England? Why, this is James Tipton’s boy, Ibrahim.”
“Yes, Father,” Beatrice replied patiently. “I brought him here to see you.” The Grand Work had made some people lovers and some strangers. She was trying to bridge her world once more.
“Sit, both of you, I’ll send for tea. I’m so glad you’ve come! Bea, the new dig, it’s exquisite! I have to keep idiot tourists from tromping around in it, but the government’s giving me permission to cordon it off.”
“I look forward to seeing it.”
“Oh, yes, do come,” Mr. Smith enthused. His thoughts shifted visibly as if struggling to pierce the clouds of Belle’s lingering magic. He turned to Ibrahim. “Pardon me, my boy, why are you here?”
“I’ve something to ask.”
Her father seemed not to hear. “Good, good. I’m so glad you’ve met my daughter. I always meant to invite Tipton over, Bea, and then, you know, you just take life for granted…” His eyes watered. “Then it’s gone. But I’m so glad you’ve met. Isn’t that fortuitous? How did you meet, anyway?”
“On the street,” Ibrahim replied.
Beatrice looked down to hide a helpless smile. Her mind replayed the first time she had seen him, when he’d turned the corner outside Abu Serga. When his eyes had met hers, her breath had caught and her heart had skipped multiple beats.
“You see, Mr. Smith,” Ibrahim continued, “I’m here to ask for your daughter’s hand. On that fateful day, my life changed. I could have died that day. Yet I lived. I was saved. I was visited by an angel.”
Beatrice looked at him, shocked by his pronouncement and by the softness of his tone. She’d never heard him use that voice apart from that night in the inn, with Iris sleeping in the chamber across the hall.
“That angel was fated to be mine,” Ibrahim continued. “Heaven sent, against all odds.”
Beatrice smiled, suddenly realizing that he hadn’t meant the goddess. He’d meant her. This was even lovelier than she’d imagined.<
br />
Her father blinked. The young lovers sat still and silent, terribly anxious. Guard magic could no longer simply influence people to do what they wanted, even though the traces of it remained. They did have to navigate permissions, proprieties, and barriers of the age. She stared at her father, hoping he could be as open and loving as his friend Tipton seemed to have been.
Mr. Smith jumped up. “Ho-ho, Bea! I can’t think of a better man than Jim Tipton, so the boy he so dearly loved … Why, I daresay you couldn’t do better! Tell me, son, do you have an interest in the digs, as your father did? Would you like to come along?” He clasped Ibrahim in an enthusiastic embrace.
Beatrice’s hand flew to her mouth, grateful tears leaking from her eyes. Ibrahim tentatively returned the embrace, a bit shocked himself. Shrugging at Beatrice with an amazed little smile, he seemed moved to be so effortlessly called son again.
“I would like that, Mr. Smith. Very much.”
“We’ll all go! A family expedition to relish and cherish the exquisite riches of this marvelous land!” His excitement couldn’t be contained; Beatrice felt that perhaps she should have simply trusted her father all along. He had raised her to be the woman who loved Ibrahim; why, then, wouldn’t he feel the same? He threw wide the door and without a hint of propriety cried, “Scratch the tea. Champagne! There’s going to be a wedding!”
* * *
There was indeed.
The ceremony was simple but powerful. Beatrice had heard so many heralds and prophecies that all she wanted was a quiet, meaningful pledge. So under a golden Cairo sun, she and Ibrahim were wed, in a simple ceremony. Ahmed read a Rumi poem on marriage. Verena sat beside Mr. Smith, who looked on, proud.
Belle and George surprised them by turning up. Beatrice had sent the pair an invitation but hadn’t expected them to hop right on a steamer. Belle claimed she’d been packed for weeks and took full credit for their relationship.
For the first time since fire coursed in her veins, Beatrice felt a sense of contentment.
Perilous Prophecy Page 29
