Chantress (6 page)

“No.” Despite the late hour and the smoky, shadowy room, I felt wide-awake.

“Very good. Now take the jewel and hold it in your hand. No, not like that. Not in your fist. Let it lie on your palm, like so.”

It was difficult to obey Penebrygg, to release my fingers and let the ruby lie there in the open. The necklace had always been my private touchstone, and I wanted to keep it safe and sound, away from prying eyes. I shifted in my chair, forcing myself to keep my palm flat.

“Do not move,” Penebrygg commanded. “Be still, and let me try to take it from you.”

My fingers closed over the ruby of their own accord. “But it’s mine!”

“If it is truly magic and truly yours, no one can take it away from you. Nat tried in the shed, do you not remember? And he did not succeed.”

No one could take my stone away from me? Curious now, I opened my hand and let the ruby lie exposed on my palm.

Penebrygg reached for the ruby, but as his hand closed around it, a savage music rang in my ears. Penebrygg’s fingers flew back, and his owlish face turned pale.

Nat leaped from his chair. “What have you done to him?”

“Calm yourself, Nat,” Penebrygg said, nursing his fingers. “She did nothing. It was the stone.”

Nat knelt beside him, his face concerned. “Does it hurt?”

“Not unbearably.”

“Let me try.”

“No, Nat. I wouldn’t recommend it. Not when—”

But even as Penebrygg spoke, Nat’s fingers were curving around the stone. The savage notes sounded in my ears again, this time more violently. Nat cried out, and his hand flew upward.

“Ah,” Penebrygg said. “What did you feel?”

“Nothing at all, until I was about to touch it.” Nat sounded shaken. “And then it was as if my fingers were caught in red-hot pincers.”

“Exactly what I experienced,” Penebrygg said. “Tell me, did you feel something like that in the shed?”

“When I reached for the necklace?” Nat considered the question. “I felt a pinch, yes. Nothing like as painful, though.”

“But you were only reaching for the chain then, and not the stone itself. You did not come so close then.” Penebrygg nodded at me. “And what happened on your side? What ran through your mind?”

“Nothing, except . . .”

“Yes?”

“Except that I heard music. Very quick and harsh.” I did not add that I had also been possessed by a strange and disturbing feeling, almost as if I were splitting into two Lucys, the one
shocked and distressed to see the others in pain, the other darkly satisfied by their failure. It had only lasted an instant, but it was no less unsettling for that.

“It is as I expected, then,” Penebrygg said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Penebrygg pushed his spectacles along the wide bridge of his nose. “Bear in mind that I know very little about Chantresses. None of us do, not in this day and age. But some of the old stories say that Chantresses were commonly given magical stones by their mothers. And if anyone else attempted to seize that stone, he would feel the pain of fire.” He bestowed a sober glance on me. “That is the phrase that is used: ‘the pain of fire.’ ”

“But those stories talk of plain stones,” Nat said.

“My stone
was
plain until today,” I said.

“But it’s a ruby now. And I never heard a story about a gem like that.”

“Nor have I,” said Penebrygg. “But I once saw a manuscript about a Chantress whose stone was a pearl of immense beauty. So it would seem it is possible. And what other explanation is there for what we have seen tonight?”

“I can think of none,” Nat admitted.

Relieved to have proven myself, I asked the question that mattered most to me. “Will you help me find Norrie, then?”

“Of course,” Penebrygg said. “We’ll do everything we can.”

The fear I felt for Norrie did not diminish, but I found I was better able to shoulder it now that I knew I was not alone. I looped the necklace over my head and tucked the ruby out of sight.

While my head was bowed, Nat said quietly, “So we have a Chantress among us, at long last.”

Pleased he had accepted the truth of my story, I looked up and smiled. But I saw immediately that it was Penebrygg he was speaking to, not me. And his next words erased my smile entirely.

“A Chantress—but one who knows nothing about magic.” He shook his head in frustration. “That’s not a help, sir. That’s a danger to all of us.”

Me? A danger? Hot words rose to my lips, but before I could speak them, Penebrygg rose to my defense.

“Patience, my lad,” he said. “To have a Chantress come after so many years of darkness—to have her arrive on our very doorstep, and enter this house safely—to my mind, that is a miracle. And if one miracle has already happened, who knows what others may be possible?”

I had just enough time to wonder exactly what miracles he hoped for, when he leaned forward and patted my hand.

“My dear,” he said, “I do believe you are going to save us all.”

“Save you?” I regarded Penebrygg with alarm. “I don’t understand. I thought it was me who needed saving—and Norrie.”

“We will help you there, never fear,” Penebrygg said.

“Of course we will,” Nat said impatiently. “But there’s more at stake than just you, you know.”

I looked from him to Penebrygg. “But that’s just it. I
don’t
know.”

“Small wonder, given the circumstances.” Penebrygg pulled his spectacles down the bridge of his nose. “Perhaps it would be best to start at the beginning, then. What do you know about Chantresses?”

I shook my head. “Almost nothing.”

“Then I shall tell you what we know. Which is not a great deal, admittedly.” Penebrygg sighed and pushed his spectacles back into place. “According to the old stories, the wall between the mortal world and the faerie realms is a strong one, and it cannot be bridged in any enduring way. But long ago, when the wall
was easier to cross, there were a few faerie women who married mortal men and bore them children. In doing so, the women lost most of their power. Weak and frail, they rarely lived long. But something of their blood lived on in their daughters and their daughters’ daughters. Their voices were magic, and they could sing strange things into being.”

“They were Chantresses?” I guessed.

“Yes. Or at any rate, that is the word we use for them now,” said Penebrygg. “The old French term for it was
enchanteresse
. And that, in turn, has a root that goes back to Roman times. Nat?”

“Incantare.”
Nat spoke as if he were used to supplying Latin verbs on demand. “
Cantare
, meaning ‘to sing,’ and
in
, meaning ‘in’ or ‘against.’ ”

“ ‘To sing something into being,’ in short,” said Penebrygg. “Or, if you like, to sing it into a form that bends it against its true nature. Enchantment—that is the work of a Chantress. And has been for time out of mind.”

“But what
kind
of enchantment?” I pointed to the fire, little more than a pile of smoky cinders. “Could they—we—make that fire burn brighter?”

“A Chantress could set a lake on fire, if she wished to,” said Penebrygg. “Or at least the most powerful ones could. I speak, of course, of the days of Arthur and Camelot, when the faerie blood still ran strong. That was when the Lady of the Lake gave a sword to Arthur, and the Chantress Niniane beguiled Merlin.”

“An interfering bunch, the Chantresses,” Nat said, eyes on his carving.

“You’re too hard on them, Nat,” Penebrygg said. “They generally did more good than harm. But in any case, their power waned over the centuries, and eventually Chantresses of any kind became rare.”

“Why?” I asked.

“No one knows for sure,” Penebrygg said. “It is said that some Chantresses kept themselves apart and never married or mated. Some say, too, that many Chantresses were unusually susceptible to plague and other ills. In any case, by our own time, there were almost no Chantresses left, and their powers were in such abeyance that people had almost forgotten they existed. But they could be found here and there, if you listened to the old stories and had a mind to look for them. Which few people did, until the Great Devastation.”

“The Great what?” I asked.

“The Great Devastation,” Nat repeated with a touch of impatience. “The explosions at Hampton Court Palace that wiped out King Charles, his heirs, and half the aristocracy almost eight years ago. Surely you remember? By your own account, you were in England at the time.”

“I was very young—”

“So was I, but it’s impossible to forget.”

My reply was choked off by a fragment of memory that suddenly rose in my mind.

Winter sunlight pokes through a basket as I hide beneath it, pretending I’m a chick inside the egg. And then, my mother’s hushed voice in the wind, speaking in strained tones.

“He is dead, Norrie. The King is dead, and his family, and hundreds more with them, and they say it is magic and treason that murdered them. And now they are hunting for magic workers—”

“Have a care, mistress, or Lucy will hear you.”

The voices dwindle into whispers.

I swallowed hard. Treason? Murder? Magic?

“I—I do remember a little,” I said faintly. “We heard he was dead. The King, I mean. I remember my mother was very upset.”

“As were we all,” Penebrygg said. “It was a kingdom in deepest mourning—and deepest shock. No one could quite believe the scale of the destruction. And people panicked, too, because the new heir to the throne, Henry Seymour, did not inspire confidence. He was only a distant cousin of the King, and he was a mere ten years old. To many, the kingdom seemed rudderless. People talked of civil war. And perhaps it would have come to that, if Lord Scargrave had not taken young Henry’s part.”

“Scargrave.” I seized on the name. “The man I overheard in the library?”

Penebrygg nodded. “The very same: Lucian Ravendon, ninth Earl of Scargrave. A good man, once upon a time. Thoughtful and resolute, a warrior born and bred, of ancient family and seemingly incorruptible. Many urged him to claim the throne for himself, but instead, he threw his support behind Henry, the rightful heir.

“To safeguard the boy, Scargrave installed him in the Tower of London, and that ancient fortress became the seat of royal power, as it was in the days of William the Conqueror. Right away
Henry appointed Scargrave as his Spymaster and Lord Protector, but Scargrave refused to use his new offices for his own gain. His only concern was to protect the King—and to bring the traitors behind the Devastation to justice.”

“He was a man possessed,” Nat said bluntly.

“And is it any wonder?” Penebrygg asked. “For the Devastation cost Scargrave not only his King and most of his friends but also his wife and only son, who were at Hampton Court that day. To avenge one was to avenge them all.”

Nat dug deep into the wood with his knife, but he did not contradict this.

“To find the culprits, Scargrave used every power at his disposal,” Penebrygg continued. “But the search proved fruitless—and the failure made the new regime look weak. It was whispered that another attack was coming, that France might invade, that England was doomed. Which only made Scargrave more desperate to track the traitors down. And so he began to take the gossip about magic more seriously.”

“What gossip?” I asked.
The gossip my mother had heard?

“Many said that such explosions could not be the work of ordinary humans, that magic must be involved.”

“As if magic were the only power under the sun.” Nat sounded annoyed.

“It was muddled thinking,” Penebrygg agreed. “And to Scargrave’s credit, he ignored it at first. But when the initial investigations led nowhere, he ordered that magic workers be questioned about possible involvement in the Devastation.
Within days, a frenzy of witch-hunting swept over the country. Fortune-tellers, soothsayers, alchemists, even midwives and herbalists—all feared for their lives, and with good reason, for many towns put suspected witches and wizards to death without trial.”

“They died like flies,” Nat said.

I winced as Penebrygg went on. “And then one day an old woman came to the Lord Protector and told him he must make it stop. ‘A person may practice magic,’ she said, ‘but it does not follow that she is a traitor.’ And to prove it, she offered to sing a song for Scargrave that would allow him to catch the real traitors.”

A coal crackled in the grate and broke in two.

“She was a Chantress, of course,” Penebrygg said. “A frail granddame by the name of Agnes Roser, somewhat addled in her mind, but utterly determined to do what she believed was right. In Scargrave’s presence, she offered up a grimoire that she claimed had been hidden by her family for centuries.”

“What’s a grimoire?” I asked.

I had not liked to expose my ignorance, but Nat answered straightforwardly enough. “A book of spells.”

“Yes,” said Penebrygg. “And yet the book the Chantress Agnes showed to Scargrave did not appear to be a grimoire. It was instead a Book of Hours, gaudy with bright portraits of kings and queens and courtly life. Very beautiful in its way, of course, but Scargrave chided the old woman for wasting his time.

“But then the old Chantress began to sing, and the illuminated pages shifted and dissolved. In their place, a dull, leather-covered
book took shape, mottled with age, with most of its pages bound shut. It was a Chantress grimoire, the old woman said, and only a Chantress could sing its spells to life. But she was willing to sing one for Lord Scargrave.

“And that is when she sang the Shadowgrims into being.”

Shadowgrims.
As the word echoed in my mind, another sliver of memory surfaced.

My mother’s hushed voice floats up to the loft where I am meant to be sleeping: “I must hide her, Norrie. Hide her where the Shadowgrims can’t find her . . .”

An indistinguishable muttering: Norrie replying? And then my mother again.

“What they would do to a child is beyond imagining . . .”