With care she lifted it out and gently unfolded it, layer by layer. There were initials embroidered on the edge of the handkerchief. H. B. Harriet Bishop.
It was there. What she needed, the electuary created for Annis to fight Frances’s maleficia. And now it would help her, Frances, to fight the maleficia being visited on her by Harriet.
The rightness of it, the justice, made her give a low, bitter laugh. She plucked the little ball from the handkerchief and popped it into her mouth.
It tasted just like it smelled, sweet, piney, and tart all at the same time. She swallowed it whole, dropped the handkerchief into the drawer, and turned to make her clumsy way back to her own bedroom.
With every step her feet and ankles felt a little better. Her breaths began to come easier, too, and she spared one generous thought for her cousin: Harriet was very, very good, as an herbalist and as a witch. None of her own philters or potions had ever worked as swiftly as Harriet’s electuary, and the admission did nothing to cool her anger.
She slipped inside her bedroom and locked the door from the inside.
As she settled at her dressing table, she felt as if there were two of her. One was imprisoned in Harriet’s manikin, tortured, smothered, bound. The other was preparing to do battle. To protect herself. To win.
She would be ruthless. She would have to be. The maleficia dictated it. Its power was greater than any she knew, and she would wield it however she had to. There would be pain, but it wouldn’t last. Every battle caused pain and suffering, but victory demanded it.
She set a match to her half-burned candle and took up the manikin of the marquess. It hung limply in her hand, all the fire that had energized it the night before expended. She set it back against the mirror.
Hastily she blended the last of the mistletoe and barrenwort and mandrake in her saucer. Her forefinger was still sore from the piercing of the night before, so she stabbed her thumb instead. She squeezed the drops of blood over the ground herbs, and finally, inspired, she plucked three of her eyelashes to add to the mixture.
She held the saucer over the candle flame, too close, because she was hurrying. It grew so hot she almost dropped it, but she gritted her teeth against the burning in her fingers and waited for it to bubble.
When it was ready, she picked up the manikin of Annis.
For the briefest of moments, she admired it anew. It was uncanny, really, how much it resembled her stepdaughter. Perhaps, she thought, her initial success had transformed it, made its little beetroot-dyed mouth more natural, its painted eyes look so real they might blink. Even the wooden-bead head seemed almost alive, its roundness softened by the fluff of Annis’s hair. It was perfect, and it radiated magic. Her magic.
She dipped her finger into the saucer and rubbed the syrupy mixture on the simulacrum’s chest, on its belly, between its legs, and then, turning it over, on its back. She chanted as she did so, her voice throbbing with fury:
Witch’s blood and lashes three
Bring obedience to me.
What is done in candlelight
You will suffer full this night.
She laid the manikin down and took up the cushion with its array of hat pins. She chose an amber-beaded one for its length and slenderness and for the sharpness of its tip, meant to penetrate the thickest straw, the most elaborate hairstyle. She chanted her cantrip again, and when she reached the final line—
You will suffer full this night
—she plunged the hat pin into the very center of Annis’s manikin.
33
Harriet
The last of the stars had retreated before the steady march of morning light, and Harriet was so tired she could barely stand. She wished she had forced herself to eat something the night before. They had repeated their cantrip half a dozen times before, at last, the manikin representing Frances went limp in Harriet’s hand.
“It’s done!” Annis said.
“It looks that way,” Harriet answered. She set the thing beside the candle, but she watched it warily. Something about it troubled her, some sense of work unfinished, though she couldn’t say why.
She was about to blow out her candle when Annis emitted an anguished cry. Harriet whirled and reached for the girl just as she doubled over. She had both arms wrapped around her middle, and she was groaning and gasping for breath. If Harriet had not been there to support her, she would have fallen.
“What is it?” Harriet asked, and at the same time, she knew. Her ametrine was on fire, and the knowing gripped her with sickening surety.
It was Frances. She had surrendered completely to the darkness. She was lost in the miasma of her own witchery.
And she was torturing Annis.
Annis moaned again, and Harriet led her to the bench, where she huddled in obvious misery. “I must be sick,” she grunted. “My stomach…”
“You’re being magicked,” Harriet said in a hard voice. “Breathe, Annis. Do your best to release the pain.”
As Annis drew a ragged breath, Harriet strode back to the manikin. She seized it up in her left hand, gripping it hard. There was no time to make a new slurry, nor to paint the thing. There was no time to create a cantrip. There was only her strength to counter Frances’s, and it was a deadly duel they were fighting.
She took her amulet with her right hand and awkwardly looped the chain over her head so the ametrine settled against her breast. She took the moonstone and pressed it into Annis’s hand. The girl’s forehead was beaded with sweat, and she writhed on the bench, trying to find a position that didn’t hurt.
Harriet said, “Keep the moonstone in your hand. Call on your grandmother Lily to help you. I’ll work as fast as I can.”
The candle was burning down, the wick almost drowning in a pool of melted wax. Harriet held the manikin in both hands over the sputtering flame, lowering it until she could feel the heat of the candle on her skin. She hissed,
Sister witch, it is your turn.
Release her now or you will burn.
Nothing happened. Annis groaned in agony.
Harriet lowered the manikin still farther, letting it dangle from the head, dropping it closer and closer to the flame until the waxen feet began to drip. As the wick hissed and flared, Annis breathed a sigh of relief.
Harriet lifted the manikin again, but it was damaged now, what remained of the bottom of it misshapen and lumpy. “Is your pain gone?” she said in a low voice.
“Almost,” Annis said. “I thought—it was as if a sword had pierced me right through!”
“Yes. She did something horrible to your manikin.”
Annis straightened, her eyes wide with horror. “What if she does it now to James’s? He’s unconscious! We have to—”
“Yes. We do.” Harriet thought fast. “Tell me, Annis—can she see the folly from her bedroom? It’s light now. Can she see me?”
“I think so.”
“Good. Stay there. Hold the moonstone close.”
The knowing washed over her again, a terrifying image of blackness overcoming them all, of evil building to a horrible end. Harriet sensed the other witch’s fury as if it were a hot tide pouring out of Rosefield Hall and down over the lawn, and her own anger, cooler, more controlled, rose to meet it.
Frances would be in pain now, her feet and legs on fire. She would be beside herself with rage, all integrity devoured by the intoxicating power of the maleficia. She would use James. She would abuse his manikin as she had Annis’s. She was beyond conscious thought.
Harriet couldn’t fail. She didn’t dare. Frances’s judgment was gone. If Frances won this battle, both young people could be lost.
Carrying the manikin, Harriet dashed out of the folly and onto the lawn. Annis, ignoring her command, followed to the steps of the folly, still hunched over her middle. “Which window is it?” Harriet asked.
Annis pointed. “It’s that tall one, the third from the front. It’s open, can you see?”
“Oh yes,” Harriet gritted. “I can
see. And she can, too.”
Frances’s strength shocked her. She had never known her cousin had such ability. She glared at the open window Annis had pointed out, willing her cousin to appear. Ordering her, with all of her power, to appear.
Frances responded at once. She pulled back the drapes and stood in the open window, fully revealed in the morning light. She wore a flowing nightdress and a peignoir over it. Her hair tumbled around her shoulders. She looked taller than usual, her back very straight, her head thrown high.
Harriet held up the manikin for Frances to see.
In response, Frances held up two of them.
“Don’t do it,” Harriet whispered. “Please, Frances, don’t do this.”
Annis had stumbled onto the grass, and she clung to one of the pillars of the folly as she peered up at Frances in the window. “What is she doing?” she asked. “Are those the manikins?”
“They are,” Harriet said. “I don’t know what she’s going to do, but this isn’t about you anymore, or about James. This is between us.”
“But she doesn’t have a manikin of you!”
“No. She will use yours, and James’s, as weapons against me. She is in the grip of the maleficia, without conscience or control. Courage, Annis. This might be—” She broke off as Frances, with a deliberate motion, turned one of the manikins upside down and shook it.
Annis, with a long moan, collapsed to the grass, senseless.
Harriet couldn’t help her. She focused on Frances, not with her eyes but with her mind. The ametrine grew hot against her breast as she brought all of her power to bear in this moment, and proclaimed,
Sister witch, let her be,
Or you will have to deal with me.
Annis didn’t make a sound. Harriet didn’t look back at her, couldn’t allow her concentration to waver.
She tried one more time, although in her heart she knew it was pointless.
What we were taught was always true.
This evil will redound on you.
She opened her eyes then, cast one swift glance back at Annis, and saw that she still lay on the dew-damp grass, her head at a terrible angle, her hands thrown out. Her slender bosom rose and fell, but shallowly. And how long would that continue?
Harriet squinted up at the hall again. Frances, fixing her with a gaze she could feel even at this distance, held both manikins far out her open window. One, which she was sure must be James’s, was limp, unmoving. The other was still upside down, its makeshift dress falling around its wooden bead head, its poor legs helpless in Frances’s grip. If Frances dropped the manikins from the second floor, they would be smashed. Even if she regained consciousness, Annis would never walk again. And James? He was already weakened, unresponsive, with no way to fight this attack. He might never wake.
Frances called, in a carrying voice,
I will do it, this I swear.
The guilt will then be yours to bear.
Harriet had done her best. She had tried to avoid the worst thing. The fatal thing. Frances would not expect it. She would be sure Harriet could never bring herself to do it.
The entire crisis was proof of everything Harriet had ever believed about the maleficia. All of them—Frances, Annis, James, Harriet herself—were caught in its dangerous web.
There was only one thing left to do, though it offended all her principles, and despite her awareness that it would haunt her always.
She feigned surrender. She lowered the manikin and hung her head as if in defeat.
Peering up from beneath her eyebrows, she saw Frances pull her two manikins back, away from the drop that would destroy them. When they were safely inside the window again, Harriet muttered a swift, impassioned plea: May all the Bishops aid me to save one of our daughters.
She closed her eyes and opened herself to the ancient magic. It throbbed in her bones and burned in her bloodstream. A savage and familiar pain shot through her belly, and her head pounded. Her mind felt as if it would break free of her skull, rise above the physical essence that was Harriet Bishop. She could command the power of her ancestresses, their wisdom and learning, their suffering and endurance. She felt as if gravity disappeared beneath her, and the sky opened above her, a universe of energy.
She kept her eyes closed as she lifted Frances’s manikin in her left hand. Swiftly, the way a farmer might wring the neck of a chicken, she twisted the head of it with her right hand. It was mercifully quick and utterly awful. She wrenched the head from the body of the manikin.
With the head in one hand and the body in the other, she opened her eyes. She looked up just in time to see Frances’s head lift high, proud in the moment of her triumph. An instant later she dropped out of sight.
Still prone on the grass, Annis suddenly, noisily inhaled. She groaned, “Is it over?”
Watching Frances’s window, Harriet responded with bitter conviction. “I believe so.”
“I looked up, and I saw—” Annis took another noisy breath and coughed. “I saw—”
“What?”
The girl’s voice shook with wonder. “Aunt Harriet, you—you were flying.”
“I—what?” Harriet tore her gaze from the window and stared down at Annis. “What do you mean?”
“I mean—” Annis dropped her hands and pushed herself up to her knees, then, unsteadily, to her feet. She clung to the nearest pillar, the rhododendron leaves drooping over her shoulder. She said, breathlessly, “I looked up from the grass where I was—why was I there?”
“You fainted.” Harriet thought it would be best to explain the details later. “But, Annis, what were you going to say?”
Annis pressed her back against the pillar, as if she hadn’t the strength to stand upright. In a trembling voice she said, “You rose from the ground, Aunt Harriet. You—it wasn’t flying, exactly, but—your feet didn’t touch the grass.”
“You must have been dreaming.”
Annis shook her head. “I wasn’t. I saw you rise above the grass, and then you—” She grimaced. “You ripped the manikin in two. I saw you do it.”
“I did.” Harriet looked down at the two halves of Frances’s manikin. With distaste she crumpled them together. She walked back up the folly’s short steps and laid the mess of wax and pebbles in her basket.
The sun had risen, and its slanting rays set the waters below Seabeck gleaming like pewter. It woke the gulls, who swooped above the shore, announcing the new day with joyous squawks. The damp grass steamed in the morning light, and Harriet saw, looking up beyond the lawn, the first ribbons of smoke curling from the chimneys of Rosefield Hall.
“They’ll all be awake, Annis,” she said. “Do you feel strong enough to get back to your bedroom? There will be staff about.”
Annis was supporting herself on one of the pillars of the folly, but she nodded. “I feel fine,” she said, which Harriet was certain was not true. “I’ll say—if I see anyone, I’ll tell them I went out for an early-morning walk.”
“There will be a shock this morning.”
Annis straightened with obvious effort. “What is it? Frances?”
“Yes. I think—perhaps you could say she and the marquess contracted the same illness.”
“Will she recover? Will James?”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t know. I had to do something, because you—she threatened to drop both of those manikins from her window. I was convinced she would do it.”
“She would have killed me?”
“Or crippled you. Crippled you both.”
“But she wanted us to marry!”
“She was as much in the grip of the maleficia as you and James. She was no longer rational.” Harriet picked up her basket. “I wish I didn’t have to leave you, but I can’t risk being discovered here, an uninvited guest. Will you be all right?”
Annis drew herself up and straightened her shoulders. “Of course, Aunt Harriet. What will you do?”
“I’ll go back to the inn and sleep. I’m exhausted.”
&n
bsp; “Will I see you?”
“If you need me.”
“We were supposed to leave today.”
“That may not be possible now.”
“I want to go home,” Annis said. “But I’m worried about James.”
“I’m afraid there’s going to be an uproar. Whatever condition Frances is in…”
Annis’s eyes went wide. “Could she be—could she be dead?”
Harriet exhaled a long, tired breath. “I don’t know,” she said wearily. “But I have to leave you to deal with it, I’m afraid. Whatever it might be.”
“I can do it.”
Harriet gave her a last, tired smile. “I know. I’m proud of you.” She buttoned her jacket and picked up her basket. “You must find those manikins and keep them hidden.”
“I will.”
“Let us promise to see each other again in New York.”
“I promise.”
Harriet, with her basket over her arm, went back down the steps to Annis. She pressed her cheek to hers, and the feel of the girl’s sweet, smooth skin was like a balm on the fresh wound in her soul. “Take care, dear heart. Be safe.”
Annis nodded, whirled, and dashed up the lawn as if none of the stresses of the past hour had affected her in the least.
Harriet smiled after her, but wearily. She was tired enough for both of them. She pulled her hat over her forehead against the brilliance of the rising sun and set out on the long walk back to the Four Fishes.
34
Annis
The Age of Witches Page 24
