The Age of Witches

by Louisa Morgan

  Annis opened the door of the servants’ entrance and was greeted by a cacophony of cries and calls and running feet. A maid was dashing down the staircase at breakneck speed. She barely paused even to curtsy to Annis, much less ask her where she’d been. Annis hurried up the staircase, and when she pushed through the baize door leading to the upper hallway, the noise intensified.

  James’s valet was just backing out of James’s bedroom, a pile of linen in his hands. He barely glanced at her as he trotted toward the back staircase, though she was dressed so oddly, a coat over her nightdress, her unstockinged feet in boots gone dark with dew.

  Lady Eleanor, wearing a dressing gown, appeared in the doorway of James’s room, bellowing for the housekeeper, something about beef tea. Another maid, one of the young ones, ran past Annis on her way to the stairs, a steady stream of Lady Eleanor’s orders on her heels.

  Lady Eleanor caught sight of Annis, who was hesitating at the turning of the hall. She beckoned, and Annis ran to her.

  “There must be influenza in the house,” Lady Eleanor said. She was, Annis guessed, too distracted to notice her odd attire. “Do you feel ill, Miss Allington? No one else does, but my son fell sick in the night, and now your stepmother—”

  At Annis’s indrawn breath, she put a hand on her arm. “Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have told you like that. Forgive me, but… Rosefield can barely open his eyes, he’s so weak, and Mrs. Allington…” She pressed her plump hand to her lips. “Oh my. I do hope none of the older guests become ill. Some of them are already frail.”

  “And Frances?” Annis choked, though her heart had begun to beat so hard she thought Lady Eleanor must hear it.

  “I don’t—oh dear, Miss Allington, I’m so sorry. We’ve sent for the doctor, of course. He’ll be here in an hour or two, I should think.”

  “Thank you, my lady,” Annis breathed. She stepped back, gently releasing her arm from the older woman’s grasp. “I had better—I suppose I had better go to her.”

  “No, my dear, please don’t! Send your maid, or have her maid come to describe her condition to you. It would be terrible if you fell ill, too.” She pulled at the neckline of her dressing gown and straightened her shoulders. “I’m going back in to my son, if you will excuse me. I must be at his side.”

  “Of course,” Annis said. “Of course you must. Do send someone for me if there’s anything I can do.”

  She hurried to the other wing of the corridor and let herself into her own room, where she found Velma, white-faced and nearly inarticulate with fear. The maid jumped to her feet, twisting her hands in the folds of her apron. “Oh, Miss Annis! You’re in your nightdress! Oh, oh, I thought you were—You must be—”

  “Velma, you goose! I’m fine. It’s all going to be fine.”

  “No, no, Miss Annis,” Velma gabbled. “No, no, it’s—Mrs. Frances is—She looks—I think she’s dead!” She collapsed back into the chair and buried her face in her hands. “Mr. Allington’s gonna be mad! I’ll lose my—There won’t be any—” Her thought was extinguished in a torrent of sobs.

  Annis hurried to her and seized her hands, pulling them away from her tear-streaked face. “Velma! Come now, pull yourself together. What’s wrong with Frances?”

  “Sh-sh-she isn’t b-b-breathing!” Velma gulped. “Sh-sh-she w-w-was on the f-f-floor, and that F-F-Frenchie f-f-found her—”

  “Antoinette? Is she with her?” Velma only wept harder and louder. Annis despaired of getting an answer.

  She caught sight of herself in the dressing-table mirror, hair tumbled, nightdress wet to the knees, coat buttoned wrong. Hastily she stripped off the coat and nightdress, and she wriggled as quickly as she could into a skirt and shirtwaist. “Velma, please,” she said. “You have to stop crying. Help me with my hair so I can go and assist Antoinette.”

  Velma wiped her streaming nose with the back of her hand as she came to stand behind Annis. “Oh, for pity’s sake!” Annis exclaimed. She took a handkerchief from the drawer in the dressing table and passed it over her shoulder. While Velma snuffled into it, Annis undid her braid and began to pin up her hair by herself.

  This offense apparently brought Velma to her senses. She blew her nose, stuffed the handkerchief into the pocket of her apron, and pushed Annis’s hands away. “I’ll do it,” she said. “No more tangles.”

  Dressed properly, if not stylishly, Annis said, “Thank you, Velma. You can stay here. I’ll come for you if I need you.” She let herself out of her room and went next door to Frances’s.

  She didn’t have to knock. The door stood partly ajar, and when she pushed it all the way open, she saw Frances on the bed, on top of the coverlet, her head on the pillow. Antoinette had a sponge in her hand, and a basin was set on the bedside table. She was mopping Frances’s face, more roughly than Annis would have thought necessary.

  Annis moved to the opposite side of the bed and stood, heavy-hearted, gazing down on her stepmother’s still, white face. Drops of vinegar water from Antoinette’s ministrations dripped down her forehead and into her hair. Frances’s mouth was open, and her lips were as pale as her cheeks. When Annis touched her hand, it was ice-cold.

  Frances was not, however, dead. Her bosom rose and fell, shallowly but steadily.

  Annis said, “Antoinette. Stop that for a moment. We should cover her.”

  The maid dropped her sponge into her basin and helped Annis work the coverlet and sheet from beneath Frances’s unmoving form, then spread it over her, up to her shoulders. “She was collapsed,” Antoinette said. “I found her in a pile by the window, and I thought—peut-être—elle était morte.”

  That much French Annis understood. “No,” she said quietly. “She is not. But she is terribly ill.”

  “Oui.” Antoinette looked up. “Perhaps she is going to die.”

  “I don’t know, Antoinette. A doctor is coming.”

  “If she die, you give me money. I go back to Paris.”

  Annis glared at her. “Très bien. Now run down to the kitchen and ask the cook for some tea. We’ll try to get her to sip it.”

  The moment the maid was out the door, Annis was on her knees, searching. She looked under the bed and beneath the dressing table, even lifted up the edge of the rug, with no luck. She had to find them. She couldn’t leave them here, in case Frances woke, in case she tried again.

  She moved to the bed and put her hand on Frances’s shoulder.

  There was no reaction, no movement or recognition of the touch, but Annis sensed, in some hidden part of Frances’s mind, an awareness. A consciousness.

  This was, Annis supposed, the empathy Harriet had spoken of, and it was terrible. Frances was still there. She could feel her. She was there, but she was trapped, a captive in her broken body, imprisoned like a fly in a bottle. Annis’s throat closed with horror.

  Despite that, she needed to find the manikins. She bent forward, bracing herself against the cruelty of pressing her stepmother in her moment of profound weakness. “Where are they, Frances?” she whispered. “What did you do with them?”

  There was no response.

  Time was speeding by. Antoinette would return, and her chance would be gone.

  Annis put her hand on Frances’s slender shoulder and closed her eyes. With the other hand she touched her moonstone, making a bridge between it and Frances, who knew where the manikins were, though she couldn’t speak of it.

  The image came to Annis a moment later. She didn’t know if Frances had given it to her, or if it was the moonstone that had made it possible, or if it might be simply her newly discovered ability. Whichever it was, she saw the manikins in her mind. She knew where they were.

  They were behind a cushion on the window seat. When Harriet defeated Frances’s maleficia with such a surge of power it lifted her right from the earth, when Frances collapsed as if she had been struck, she must have dropped them. They had tumbled behind the square of scarlet silk brocade and were caught in its gold tassels.

&n
bsp; Annis opened her eyes, jumped to her feet, and crossed to the window in two swift steps. The manikins were exactly as she had pictured them. She untangled them from the tassels and thrust them into the pocket of her coat.

  When Antoinette returned bearing a cup of tea. Annis took it from her and spooned a little into Frances’s mouth. Frances swallowed some, although most of it dribbled from her lips. Antoinette dabbed at Frances’s chin, murmuring French words Annis couldn’t catch. There was no sympathy in them that she could hear.

  “Don’t leave her, Antoinette,” she ordered. “I don’t want her to be alone.”

  “Non, mademoiselle. D’accord.”

  Annis, exhausted and drained, left her to it. She plodded back to her own room, kicked off her slippers, and fell onto the bed.

  Velma’s tears had dried. As she bent to pick up Annis’s slippers, she asked in a hushed tone, “Is Mrs. Frances dead?”

  “No,” Annis said tiredly. “But not well, either.”

  “What do we do?”

  “Rest for now,” Annis said. “I’m too tired even to think. We’ll decide later.”

  Velma pulled a comforter over her mistress, tucking it around her shoulders before she drew the curtains over the window. Annis was asleep before the door clicked shut.

  Annis woke heavy eyed and dazed from having slept through a hot morning. She had dreamed of Frances pacing in circles in a tiny prison cell, and then of Harriet floating inches from the earth as she ripped the head from a manikin.

  Annis threw off the coverlet and set her bare feet on the floor, rubbing her eyes with her fingers. Her mouth was dry, and her tongue felt swollen. Velma had left a glass of water already filled beside the bed, and with a silent word of thanks for her forethought, Annis took it up and went to stand by the window to drink it.

  Between the water and the fresh air from the window, she began to feel more like herself. She tugged the bellpull before she went to the ewer to splash water on her hot cheeks. Velma arrived, out of breath from having hurried, the last morsel of her luncheon still in her mouth.

  “Worried,” she said, once she had swallowed. “You don’t never sleep so long, miss.”

  “I know. Run me a bath, please, Velma.”

  As Velma started for the bathroom, she said over her shoulder, “You wasn’t in your bed this morning.”

  “I went for a walk.”

  The maid stopped, turned, and stared at her, hands on her hips. “In your nightdress?”

  Annis settled onto the stool of the dressing table. “Bath, Velma,” she said. She knew she sounded cross, but she couldn’t think of any way to explain.

  Velma frowned, wrinkling her forehead beneath the band of her cap. Her lips parted, and she ran her tongue over her bad teeth. It was painful to watch her trying to think things through, and it gave Annis a pang of compunction.

  “Velma, I’m sorry. I had a reason, but I can’t talk about it. Just run my bath, will you please? Unless Mrs. Frances needs it.”

  “Mrs. Frances ain’t awake,” Velma said, on certain ground now. “She ain’t waked up at all, not like His Lordship.”

  “Oh! Is the marquess awake?”

  “Awake, but still in bed. If he had a fever, it’s broke.”

  “Does Mrs. Frances have a fever?”

  “Don’t know. I’m not going in that room, in case it’s that there influenza. That Frenchie says she’s probably going to die.” She went into the bathroom, and the taps squeaked as she started the bathwater.

  Annis seized the opportunity to take the manikins from the pocket of her coat and hide them in her jewel case. By the time Velma came back she was untying her plait and brushing the kinks from her hair. Velma took the brush from her, and Annis gazed into the mirror as she brushed, thinking hard. If Frances died, should she say it was the influenza? Would Papa want her to bring her home or bury her here? If Frances didn’t die but continued as she was… What should she do then?

  Lady Eleanor would know. She was the sort of woman who always knew what was best.

  Annis took care in dressing, in hopes that perfect propriety now might erase the multiple signs of impropriety from the night before. She allowed Velma to do her hair in a Psyche knot, though it took extra time. The pink dress had irritated her at first, but now, when she wished to appear as an innocent young girl, she was glad of it. Its puffed sleeves and gored skirt accentuated her slenderness. Frances had deplored her meager bosom, but Annis suspected Lady Eleanor would envy it. She pinned a girlish pink ribbon to her hair, and over the embroidered neckline of the bodice, she wore her pearls with the moonstone in the center.

  Before going in search of Lady Eleanor, Annis peeked into Frances’s bedroom. The only difference she could see in her stepmother was that Frances had closed her mouth, or her maid had done it for her. Antoinette still sat beside the bed, but she was drowsing, her chin on her chest. Annis let her sleep. She gazed at her stepmother and wondered if she, like James, would eventually waken.

  But James’s manikin had not been destroyed. It was safe in her jewel case, next to the one meant to represent herself, while Frances’s manikin was irreparably broken. Harriet had lumped the shattered bits of it into her basket. Did that mean Frances was broken, too?

  She had no answer. She withdrew in silence and closed the bedroom door.

  At the suggestion of one of the footmen, Annis knocked lightly on the closed door of Lady Eleanor’s study and heard a peremptory, “Yes?”

  Annis opened the door and stepped inside, but not too far, in case she wasn’t welcome. With a careful curtsy, she said, “Lady Eleanor, if I may, I’ve come seeking your advice.”

  Lady Eleanor waved a hand to a chair opposite her. The tray holding the remains of her lunch was on her desk, and Annis could see she had eaten almost nothing. Her plump cheeks looked sallow, and her eyelids were swollen. She wore a loose-fitting gown with no corset beneath, and no jewelry at all.

  “How is Lord Rosefield?” Annis asked as she sank into the upholstered armchair. “I’m told he’s awake, which is the most wonderful news.”

  “Yes. He’s awake, but the doctor says he will need weeks of rest. Perhaps months.”

  “Oh dear. He must have been very ill indeed.”

  “No one seems to know what it was, but of course, Mrs. Allington has it, too, so we must assume it’s infectious. I feel terrible for her. I was so fearful—” She pressed a hand to her chest. “I could say I feared for the estate, and for the title. It would go to some cousin or other, someone I don’t even know, but I don’t care about that. I love my son very much. A ridiculous amount, actually. It’s something I don’t speak of often. I suppose, if I had had other children—”

  She closed her eyes for a moment, and Annis almost reached for her hand in sympathy. She was sure Lady Eleanor would hate that, so she resisted the urge.

  When Lady Eleanor opened her eyes, she gazed at her linked fingers in her lap, saying softly, “I don’t believe I’ve ever expressed those feelings to Rosefield. I expect he thinks I’m a hard woman. A cold woman.”

  Annis didn’t know what James thought of his mother, beyond her wish that he marry money, so she said nothing. She couldn’t think of anything to do but sit and listen.

  Lady Eleanor drew a small, shuddery breath. “He’s a dear boy, truly, Miss Allington. A dear man, I should say. An admirable one. He’s smart. Studious. Disciplined in every way. He’s never been athletic—hates most of the things other young men do for sport—but he’s devoted to Seabeck, and I’m so very proud of him for that.”

  “As you should be, Your Ladyship. It’s clear in everything he says.”

  “I was terrified, when Perry found him this morning…” Her lips suddenly trembled, and she put a finger to them. “Well, never mind that,” she said, with an attempt at her customary briskness. “He’s going to make a full recovery. We must believe that. Hold to it.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “And now,” Lady Eleanor said, unfolding her
hands and spreading them on her knees. “Now we must speak of your stepmother. Ghastly business, all this.”

  “Did the doctor see her?”

  “He did. It seems to be the same ailment, but she shows no sign of coming round. James awoke almost immediately when Perry shook him by the shoulder.”

  “I’ve just stopped by Frances’s room. I could see no change at all.”

  “You must be terribly worried.”

  “I am. This is the day we were to leave, but I don’t see how to manage that.”

  “Obviously you can’t leave until she is much better.”

  “This is why I’ve come to you,” Annis said. She folded her own hands and sat as straight as she could in the overstuffed armchair. “I don’t know how to prepare for the chance Frances may die.”

  “I’m afraid that’s possible. I’m very sorry, but it’s wise of you to face it straight on.”

  “If that happens, what do I do? I suppose I could wire my father for instructions, but I hate to alarm him.”

  “I would say that’s a bridge you don’t need to cross until you come to it.”

  “We can’t impose indefinitely on your hospitality.”

  “I assure you, it is no imposition. However, our other guests are going home this afternoon, and with Rosefield confined to his bed, this will be a dull place for you.”

  “That isn’t important,” Annis said. “All that matters is that James—I mean, Lord Rosefield—gets well. And that my stepmother does, too, of course.”

  “Allow me to invite you to remain with us as long as you need,” Lady Eleanor said. “At the very least, until Mrs. Allington has recovered. Please say you will, Miss Allington. That will relieve my mind greatly. I feel responsible for what has happened.”

  “I accept with gratitude, my lady,” Annis said. “Although I’m confident you bear no responsibility. I’m accustomed to being occupied, however. You must tell me if there’s anything that needs doing, if you’re busy, or you’re tired…”

  “Very kind.” Lady Eleanor’s brief spurt of energy seemed to dissipate all at once, and she sagged back in her chair. “I am tired, Miss Allington,” she murmured. “First the death of my husband, so unexpected. The debts—the worries about Seabeck’s future—and now Rosefield’s illness. I confess I feel quite done in.”