Chantress (8 page)

“But some people stand against him?” I asked. “Like you and Nat?”

“A few,” Penebrygg said. “But we, too, fear the Shadowgrims’ power. While Scargrave possesses his ravens, we cannot call our souls our own.”

I was shaken by the quiet desperation in his voice. “Couldn’t you leave England, and live abroad?”

“And leave everyone here to suffer?” Nat said indignantly. “Anyway, Scargrave has guards along the entire coast and in every port; you can’t leave without his permission. And even if we did manage to wriggle free somehow, he has ways of finding people, wherever they are.”

“The only answer is to fight him here, with every means at our disposal.” Penebrygg clasped his hands and looked at me. “That is why we need your help.”

“My help? But I don’t see how, or why—”

“We have an old saying here,” Penebrygg said.

“If harm is done by a Chantress song,

Only a Chantress can right the wrong.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, although I was beginning to.

“It means that the Shadowgrims must be destroyed by the same means they were created: by Chantress magic,” Penebrygg said.

Nat jabbed at the wood again. “If we could do it ourselves, we would.”

“But we cannot,” Penebrygg said. “So we must turn to you.”

My heart thumped. “But I wouldn’t know where to begin. I know nothing of Chantress spells, aside from the one that brought me here.”

“You may know more than you realize,” Penebrygg said. “And I am certain there are ways we can help you. Nat, could you bring us the box?”

Nat set aside his carving and went out of the room. Several
long minutes later, he returned with a wide, shallow box. He set it down in the shadows, and I heard the sound of metal against metal, like tiny taps on a pan or the scrape of a key in a lock. When he turned back to us, he held two sheets of parchment.

“It is only a copy,” Penebrygg said. “But we believe this to be the song that will destroy the Shadowgrims, provided it is sung by a Chantress. That, at least, is what the papers that we found with it claim. But we cannot make head nor tail of the notation on the parchment itself. Can you?”

I stared at the tiny spots and whorls that were scattered like blots on the page. Meaningless, and yet even as I shook my head, they made memory speak:

The floorboard in my mother’s room trips me, and when I reach for it, it wiggles loose. Underneath it, I find scraps of paper with strange blots on them. I know my letters, know that this isn’t writing—at least not any writing I recognize. I bring them over to the light, so absorbed that I do not hear my mother’s footsteps behind me.

“Lucy, love, give those to me.” When I do not immediately surrender them, she takes them gently from my hands.

“What are they, Mama?”

“Nothing for you to worry about. We’ll say no more about them.”

Penebrygg took hold of the parchment. “You don’t know what the signs mean?”

“I think they might be Chantress marks,” I said. “But I have no idea what they mean.”

Penebrygg and Nat exchanged disappointed glances.

“Well, never mind,” Penebrygg said. “In time, perhaps we will
work out some way of cracking the code. But first we must know: Are you willing to help us?”

Behind his spectacles, his eyes glimmered with entreaty. And although Nat betrayed no emotion, I sensed that he was listening carefully for my answer.

“But why me?” I was genuinely puzzled. “Why not another Chantress? Someone older, with more skill?”

To my surprise, Penebrygg looked away. “My dear, I thought you understood . . .”

“Understood what?” I asked.

“That there are no other Chantresses left,” he said quietly.

The words were like a winter wind, cutting me to the bone.

“Scargrave hunted them down.” Penebrygg spoke with great care, as if he guessed how difficult this might be for me to hear. “He wanted no one to threaten his hold on the Shadowgrims and the grimoire that made them. And his task was made easier by the ravens. Before they killed the Chantress Agnes, they robbed her memory of the names and dwelling places of every other Chantress she knew. And Scargrave went after them, capturing them by surprise and binding their mouths shut before giving them to the ravens. So it went, with yet more names gathered and more Chantresses killed, until at last they were all gone.”

“But why didn’t they fight?” I asked in distress. “If they were Chantresses, if they had power—”

My words hung in the air.

“We don’t know,” Penebrygg admitted. “Not for certain. But most of those he captured were Chantresses in little more than
name. As far as we can tell, they knew only a few weak and worn spells, and they had only a cursory understanding of their heritage. Many were very old, as well, and most lived in remote places. They had little chance against Scargrave and his Shadowgrims. We did hear that at least one young Chantress had been hidden away before the rest of her family was killed, but we thought that was only rumor, until we met you.”

“My mother . . .” I whispered. It hurt too much to say anything more.

“What was her name?” Penebrygg asked gently. “There are lists, you see, and those of us who have seen them keep them alive in memory.”

I heard myself give the answer, almost as if someone else were speaking. “Viviane Marlowe.”

There was a long pause. And then Penebrygg said, “Oh, my dear, I am so sorry.”

I stared at my empty hands. I had accepted long ago that my mother was dead and would never come back. It was a sad fact, but a settled one—part of the flint-hard rock on which my life was built. So why did it shake me so much to learn exactly how my mother had died? To know that it was not the sea that had killed her, but Lord Scargrave’s Shadowgrims?

No matter. It shook me. I pushed my palms against my hot eyes, and hid my face.

“I think,” said Penebrygg, slowly and kindly, “that you need rest and quiet, yes? We must find you a place to sleep and some warm blankets. I shall give you my own bed—”

“No, sir,” Nat interrupted, his voice low. “It’s not right that you should give up your bed. Your back’s not up to it. She can have mine instead.”

“That’s good of you, Nat.”

“But sir?”

“Yes?”

“She still hasn’t said whether she’ll help us.”

“And you would ask her now, when she is mourning her mother?” Penebrygg’s hushed voice held a note of reproof. “We have waited a long time for a Chantress, Nat. Surely we can wait a little longer for her answer.”

I barely heard them for thinking of my mother, so loving, so gentle, so determined to save me. My mother, surrounded by Shadowgrims . . .

I had spent half my life wanting to come back to this place, this England. I had believed my life would begin here. But I had never imagined anything like this. Desperately I wished myself back on the island, with Norrie at my side, my voice locked away, my magic untapped. This terrible world unknown.

But that was not possible.

Sing and the darkness will find you.

Desolation swept over me. But through my grief and bewilderment, I could sense something else growing in me, something alive, something stronger than fear: a burning and angry resolve.

My hands fell away. I looked Nat and Penebrygg full in the face.

“If you want my help, you have it,” I said. “I will do everything in my power to destroy the man who murdered my mother.”

“Lucy?” a voice called.

Fogged by sleep, I thought:
Norrie?
Eyes still closed, I listened for the customary sounds of an island morning—the pots clattering, the cockerel crowing, and Norrie’s wide-awake call, “Up now, and no dawdling!”

Instead, I heard dogs yapping, and hammers tapping, and hoarse voices hawking wares: “Had-had-haddock!” “Small coal, penny a peake!” And beneath everything, a rumble like a hundred handcarts rolling by.

Where on earth was I?

London, my sleepy mind said. I was in London with Norrie and Mama, in the narrow garret by the River Thames. Only for the winter, Mama had said, and then we would move out into the country . . . .

“Wake up!” The command was sharp as a slap on my cheek.

I opened my eyes and saw a boy with hazel eyes looming over
me. Memory flooded back: Nat and Penebrygg. Scargrave and the Shadowgrims. The singing and the ruby.

My mother, murdered.

And Norrie lost.

I sat up, and my stone swung forward on its chain. Still there. And still a ruby.

“You sleep like the dead.” Nat sounded cross and a bit alarmed. Apparently my commitment last night had made us close enough comrades that he thought it worth worrying about me. It hadn’t made him any friendlier, though. “I’ve been shouting your name, and you never even moved.”

“Well, I’m awake now.” And feeling at a distinct disadvantage. Neatly dressed in dark breeches and fresh white linen, Nat had the look of someone ready to take on all comers. I, meanwhile, was facing the world with wrinkled skirts, a rumbling stomach, and fingernails that still bore traces of mud from the island garden. I put a hand to my hair and wished I hadn’t: It was a scraggle of snarls.

My only comfort was that Nat did not appear to notice.

Striving to sound self-possessed, I asked, “What time is it?”

“Nearly nine. You need to stir yourself.” Nat no longer sounded alarmed, only impatient. “Dr. Penebrygg will return anytime now, and he’ll want to see you as soon as he’s back.” He gestured toward a washstand in the far corner. “There’s clean water there. And a chamber pot under the bedstead. When you’re done, come and find me upstairs.”

He sped out the door, leaving me grateful for the privacy—but relieved, too, that he had been frank in addressing the essentials.

I slid out of bed and set about making myself ready. Everything proved straightforward enough, except for my hair. As I struggled to smooth it back, I could almost hear Norrie scolding.
Your hair’s a tangle of seaweed, child. Plait it back now, there’s a good girl.

Last night, before I had gone to sleep, Penebrygg had reassured me again that they would do their best to help me find Norrie. “She could be anywhere, I’m afraid. But if you give me a description of her, I will make some inquiries. Very discreetly, of course. Anything else might endanger her—and you.”

The nature of those dangers was not something I wished to contemplate. Instead, I remembered my last evening on the island with longing—a fire warming up the hearth, and Norrie and I cozy in our chairs in front of it. Of course, the fire had been built to rule, and I had chafed whenever Norrie gave me pointed reminders on tending it. But we both had been safe, and that seemed a blessing to me now.

However much I wanted to, however, I could not turn back time. And even if I could, it would not undo the Shadowgrims.

What’s done is done, and we must make the best of it.

With Norrie’s words echoing in my ears, I forced myself to concentrate on the job at hand, plaiting my hair. As my fingers worked, I stood by the tiny window and tried to make sense of the view: a scrap of muddy yard enclosed on three sides, with a sloping shed along the other. Aristotle’s stable, I guessed.

There. I’d done the best I could with my hair. As for my clothes . . .

I looked down at my skirts and sighed. No amount of shaking out would make them look anything less than bedraggled.

I did the best I could, gave my plait one last tug, and went to find Nat.

† † †

Upstairs, he had said. So up the narrow flight I went, touching the walls for balance, until I reached the attic room where we had talked last night. Remembering the reason why I’d left the room last night, I couldn’t help but feel a certain trepidation as I opened the door, yet it passed the moment I saw the sunlight on the walls. The place felt bright and safe and altogether wonderful—perched so high that it belonged not to London, but to the sky.

I shut the door behind me and looked out the nearest window. In the chinks between the rooftops, I saw a wide river, its banks tight-packed with houses, its quays bustling with skiffs and cargo. Swimming through my memory, I recalled another river view, the one from the London garret we had stayed in so long ago. I could remember nothing else about the city or our stay in it, but for a moment, as I stood at that window, I felt my mother at my side.

“You can see the Thames from there,” Nat said, “if you know where to look.”

At his words, the fragile memory collapsed in on itself. I swung around and looked at him. He was sitting at a tilted desk at the far end of the room, almost hidden by a horde of curious objects.
The largest was a leather-covered coracle, a good four feet across, improbably stuffed with a set of globes, a cracked bellows, and a long length of poppy-red silk. Next to this stood a pile of bones, several colossal vases overspilling with feathers and grasses, and a cabinet containing scores of smoky-colored bottles with strange inscriptions on them.

Most of the remaining space was a jumble of shelves, books, shells, pulleys, scales, paintings, and pots. And then, of course, there were the clocks: two dozen, at a guess, their ivory and gold faces tucked into every nook and cranny in the room.

As I picked my way toward Nat, I pointed to the smoky vials. “What’s in there?”

“Elements of various sorts,” Nat said. “And other things. Dr. Penebrygg collects curiosities.”

“What does he do with them?”

“We use them for our experiments.”

“What kind of experiments?” I asked, with a dubious backward look at the vials.

“Oh, we’re interested in almost everything: the nature of gravity, the properties of light, the motion of the planets, the music of the spheres, the circulation of blood.”

I stared at him, surprised by the enthusiasm in his voice. For once, he sounded almost friendly. “You really do mean everything.”

“Pretty much. New ways of thinking are in the air, and new discoveries are being made every day. It’s exciting to be part of it.” Enthusiasm dimming, he added, “Well, as much a part of it
as our fight against Scargrave allows us to be.” He took up a pen and bent over his desk.