Sisters' Fate (10 page)

“It’s all right. You—you can say anything to me.” The words twist on my tongue, and I must sound like a love-struck fool. The flickering candlelight casts shadows over his face, illuminating the late-night stubble on his jaw. It reminds me of the other times we’ve met in secret places: the convent garden, the conservatory, the National Archives. Of the sandpaper feel of his chin against my fingers. Against my mouth.

“We’ve been working together, then? Me within the Brotherhood, and you within the Sisterhood?” he asks. I nod, weak with longing. “Makes sense. But if I was
helping
the witches, why would— Did you hear that?”

There’s a thump from upstairs, followed by a muffled shriek.

“Rilla!” I cry, rushing for the stairs.

“Let me go first.” Finn pulls a pistol from his boot.

I follow right on his heels. We creep up the steps quietly, and he flings open the door to reveal Alistair Merriweather standing behind Rilla, his arm wrapped around her throat, his hand clapped over her mouth.

“Mr. Merriweather!” I gasp. “Unhand her at once.”

“What the devil?” Merriweather gapes at us.

Finn lowers his pistol. “You know this man?”

Rilla doesn’t wait for answers. She bites Merriweather, and when he releases her, she spins around and knees him in the bollocks. He moans and braces himself against a cabinet full of ink. Rilla grabs the broom leaning in the corner and aims the handle at his head like a baseball bat. Her stance is quite incongruous with her dress, which is yellow and dotted with sunflowers.

“Rilla, it’s all right. I know him,” I say, though I’m rather tempted to let this play out. Merriweather’s a good foot taller than Rilla, but my money’s on her.

“It’s not all right. He nearly strangled me!” Rilla narrows her hazel eyes at him.

“What exactly are you doing here, Miss Cahill?” Merriweather’s dressed in a long, double-breasted olive-green peacoat, with a black cravat wrapped around his throat.

“I could ask you the same thing,” I retort, chin up.

“I sleep here sometimes. With Hugh’s permission.” Merriweather frowns. “That key was not an invitation to come and go as you please. This isn’t a space for secret assignations. We’ve worked for years to—”

Rilla smacks him in the head with the broom handle. Merriweather yelps.

From the look of Finn, though, I’d say he got off lightly. “I resent your insinuation, sir,” Finn growls.

“I apologize.” Merriweather’s gray eyes are fastened warily on Rilla. “Surely you can see how it looks. Perhaps introductions are in order?”

“This is my roommate, Rilla Stephenson, and my—friend, Brother Finn Belastra.” I hate the way my voice betrays me. “Rilla, Finn, this is—”

Merriweather grabs my arm and yanks me toward him. “He’s a member of the Brotherhood? Good Lord, girl, what are you thinking?”

I pull away. “He’s loyal to our causes.”

“I helped Cate with the Harwood breakout,” Finn adds, and I cast an anxious look at Merriweather. What if he puts two and two together and realizes that the handkerchief was Finn’s?

“You took part in that?” Merriweather is staring at me, not Finn. “Wait—were you responsible for what happened in the square today?”

I flush, feeling the weight of Finn’s gaze on me. “I had help.”

“Good,” Finn says. “The idea of those girls being hanged—”

“I know.” Our eyes lock, and for a moment it feels—nice. Then I turn back to Merriweather. “Your sister—Prue’s safe. She’s with friends. I’ll bring her to the next Resistance meeting, if you like, so you can see for yourself. If you don’t mind using the space for personal assignations.” I can’t resist the little dig.

Merriweather nods, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I owe you a great debt, Miss Cahill. Prudencia means the world to me.”

“Merriweather . . .” Rilla bends down and picks up her novel, which she must have dropped in the struggle. “You’re the editor of the
Gazette,
aren’t you?”

“
You
read the
Gazette
?” Merriweather gives her a look of disbelief.

Rilla shrugs. “Not normally, but Cate’s left it lying around our room lately.”

“And what do you think of it?” Merriweather preens like a peacock.

Rilla purses her mouth. “That exposé on O’Shea you ran this week was good—it made him out to be the monster he is, but your paper’s still awfully skewed toward what this means for
men.
”

“Well, men are the ones who buy the paper,” Merriweather mutters.

Rilla reaches up and straightens the yellow feather in her short curls. “Perhaps more women would buy it if you wrote about what concerns them. You ought to talk to some of the girls we broke out of Harwood. You couldn’t use their real names, of course, but you could reveal the conditions there. And you should interview some of us, too. Interviews with real witches!
That
would get you some readers.”

“I don’t have any problems finding readers.” Merriweather looks a bit stunned, and I daresay he was expecting praise, not criticism, from this freckled slip of a girl. Then he lowers his voice, gesturing to Rilla. “Wait. She’s a witch, too? Is the Sisterhood nothing
but
witches?”

“
She
doesn’t much care for being spoken about as though she’s not in the room,” Rilla says loudly, but her eyes are anxious. “You—you won’t print that in your paper, will you?”

“No. I’m not interested in getting you all killed.” Merriweather lounges against the cabinet, arms crossed in a condescending posture. “You’re a brash woman, Miss Stephenson.”

“I’ve got four brothers. Teaches you to throw a punch and speak up if you want to be heard,” Rilla explains, pulling on her cloak over her bright dress. “Cate, we ought to be going. The carriage will be waiting.”

“Of course.” I’d forgotten all about Robert. “Thursday, then, Mr. Merriweather?”

“What’s Thursday?” Finn wonders, and Merriweather looks even more affronted.

“The Resistance leaders meet here.” I pull my hood back up over my hair. “They talk about—well, I’m not quite sure. Clearing Brennan’s name? Ousting the Brotherhood in favor of a proper democracy? Giving women the right to vote?”

“The last one isn’t part of our agenda,” Merriweather points out, and Rilla snorts.

“Well, if you could use a spy inside the Brotherhood, I’d be interested in joining up,” Finn says.

“It isn’t really open for—” Merriweather begins. I can tell that he’s going to say no.

“You owe me, for Prue,” I interrupt. “Let Finn come to the meetings, and think about Rilla’s ideas for the
Gazette.
Please.”

“All right.” Merriweather spreads his hands out. “If you’ll wait a minute, I’ll give you the information.
Belastra,
was it?” There’s a suspicious glint in his eye.

Rilla peeks her head out the door. “The carriage is waiting, Cate.”

Ag. I don’t relish the notion of leaving Finn alone with Merriweather. What if he questions Finn about Harwood? He was distracted about Prue earlier, but once he thinks about it, he’ll realize that the handkerchief was Finn’s and that his memory’s been erased and then where will we be?

“I’ll see you Thursday?” Finn asks. I nod, and he gives me a gap-toothed grin. “Good. I’ve got more questions for you.”

• • •

Rilla and I creep back into the carriage, then into the convent through the back gate, and then upstairs into our room, Rilla grumbling the whole time about “that patronizing egghead Merriweather.” We’re changing into our nightclothes when a shriek rends the silence.

I freeze. I’ve been awakened by that shriek before, after Mother died, when Tess used to have regular night terrors.

I’m out the door and running down the hall, heedless of the impropriety. I burst into the room Tess and Vi share without knocking. Tess is sitting up in bed, and she’s still in one piece, her face flushed with sleep, her blond hair tumbling out of its plait.

But she’s sobbing, her entire body shaking with the force of it.

“What happened?” I ask, but she’s buried her face in Cyclops’s fur and she’s crying too hard to answer. I turn to Vi, who’s sitting up and blinking in her bed.

“I don’t know. I was sound asleep when she screamed and scared me half to death.” Vi throws her covers back and stands up. Her black hair falls in two braids over her shoulders. “Tess, honey, what’s wrong? Did you have a nightmare?”

Tess points a wavering finger to the other end of her bed. “It was all around me.”

“What?” I ask.

“Fire.” Tess wipes away tears with the backs of both hands. “I heard something—a door shut somewhere—and I woke up, and my bed was on fire!”

My stomach plummets, remembering the threat she received a week ago. Nothing’s happened since then. But now—

“It was just a nightmare,” Vi says soothingly, lighting a candle. “It’s no wonder, after everything that’s happened today.”

“No!” Tess’s voice is shrill. “Someone’s playing a trick on me. It was real. Or—not real, but an illusion. I felt the heat of it. I smelled the smoke.”

“Who would do that?” Rilla asks. She and half a dozen other girls crowd in the doorway. She pulled her yellow dress back on but didn’t bother buttoning it up the back.

“You’re the oracle,” Vi adds, smoothing her wrinkled lavender nightgown. “Who would want to see you hurt? You’re too important to all of us.”

I turn away from Tess to the girls hovering in the doorway: Rebekah and Lucy and Grace, whose room is to the left, and Parvati and Livvy, whose room is to the right. “Were any of you up and about? Did you see anyone leaving Tess’s room?”

“You and Rilla look like you were out,” Parvati says.

I flush, glancing down at my ivory petticoats and blue corset. I’d just pulled off my dress and corset cover when Tess screamed. “We’re hardly responsible for this.”

“Don’t tell me you’re taking this seriously. It was a child’s nightmare!” Parvati insists.

Tess crosses her arms over her chest. “I’m not a child.”

Parvati shoots a pointed glance at Cyclops. “Your teddy bear would beg to differ.”

“I know what I saw,” Tess says, flushing. “It was an illusion. Someone cast it on purpose, to frighten me. Someone’s trying to—to get into my mind.”

“Well, it seems as though it’s working. Didn’t the other oracle go mad?”

I turn on Parvati in a rage as Tess starts to cry. “This is the second time someone’s threatened her, and I won’t have you or anyone else making light of it. A threat to her is a threat to the entire Sisterhood.”

Parvati shrugs one bony shoulder. “I seriously doubt anyone here is out to get her. It’s been quite a day. They said she had a vision earlier. Perhaps she’s cracking up under the stress of it.”

Tess cries harder, burying her face against her knees. I resist the urge—just barely—to shove Parvati out the door. She’s suffered, I remind myself.

“Everyone out,” Vi announces, sensing my tilt toward violence. “Tess needs her rest, and so do I.” She marches over to her bed, picks up a tattered stuffed white rabbit, and thrusts it out in front of her. “And for what it’s worth, there’s nothing wrong with teddy bears. I’m fifteen, and this is my Bunny.”

Rilla and the others laugh and file out. Vi flushes but stands her ground, fierce, and I feel a swell of pride. When I came to the convent two months ago, she was one of Alice’s lackeys, always currying favor, embarrassed by her father the coachman. She hardly ever said a word for herself. She’s grown up a great deal since then.

Parvati hesitates in the doorway. “You want this child to run the Sisterhood? To have a vote on the war council? Truly, Cate?”

“Yes,” I say, and shut the door in her face.

“I’m not going mad.” Tess sniffles, raising her tearstained face. “Someone is trying to scare me or discredit me or both. I’m sorry for waking everyone. I should have realized straight off that it was an illusion, but it looked so real, and it was hanging right above my bed, and—”

“You’ve got nothing to apologize for.” Vi sits on the edge of Tess’s bed and strokes her back while I pace the room angrily. “Anyone would have screamed. It sounds terrifying.”

“Perhaps it was Parvati,” I suggest. “You heard her.”

“I don’t know.” Vi flips a braid over her shoulder. “She’s not very handy with illusions yet. I’m not sure she could have managed something that complicated.”

“Who, then?” Would Maura lower herself to torment Tess like this? I don’t want to think it, but I can’t rule out the possibility. “Tess, do you want to come sleep in my room?”

Tess draws herself up. “I’m not a baby, Cate. I’ll be fine.”

“I’ll look after her,” Vi promises. She stands and pushes open the curtains, letting the moonlight spill across the room. “Perhaps you ought to have a little lie-in tomorrow, Tess. I could bring up breakfast for you. I’m sure no one would mind if you missed class just this once.”

“No. Please don’t coddle me,” Tess begs. “That’s just what they want—whoever’s doing this.”

I drop onto the bed next to her. “But you’ve got to take care of yourself. I know your visions give you headaches, and now this—”

Tess shrinks away from my ministrations. “I’m fine. Go back to bed.”

I bite my lip. “All right. Good night, then.”

I glance back at Tess as I close the door behind me. She’s pulled the blue quilt up to her chin and turned to face the wall, but I can tell by the way her shoulders are shaking that she’s crying again, and trying to hide it.

What else is she hiding from me?

CHAPTER

10

THE NEXT DAY, MEI, ADDIE, PEARL, AND I
walk down to Richmond Hospital after classes. We carry doctors’ bags stuffed with bandages, Bibles, and medicinal herbs. There are guards on every street corner. With Christmas just a few days away, the shops should be bustling, but a hush has fallen over the city. The gallows still stands in Richmond Square; workers are scrubbing bloodstains from the cobblestones on Church Street. A good portion of the populace is frightened enough to stay home—but is it the escaped witches or the Brothers’ overzealous soldiers that scare them?

When we walk through the front door of the hospital, the fevered stench nearly knocks me over. I breathe in through my mouth, fumbling in my bag for a handkerchief. Next to me, Addie gags.

The lobby is a madhouse. The sick line the walls, faces red and shiny with sweat. Those too weak to stand have lain down on the cold tiled floor. A nurse spins around, trying to direct a dozen different people at once, and more tug at her sleeves. Three little boys run up and down the hall while babies sit slumped and unnaturally quiet in their mothers’ arms.

“Good Lord,” Mei whispers. “I heard it was getting bad, but this . . .”

“This is dreadful.” I scan the crowd. Judging from their clothes—plain, twice-turned dresses for the women and blue jeans and workmen’s shirts for the men—it looks like most of the patients hail from the poor neighborhoods near the river. That makes a terrible sort of sense. They can’t afford private physicians, and they live one on top of another, with whole families squished into two-room flats. The fever is bound to spread faster there. And it’s not as if those already scrambling to feed their families can take a holiday to rest and recover; likely they keep going until they drop—and infect others when they’re out.

Does Merriweather know about this? I’ve made a point of reading the papers lately and there’s been nothing about a possible epidemic in the
Sentinel
or the
Gazette.
People have to be made aware. With Christmas coming up, everyone will be crowded into shops and churches. It could reach a crisis level all too quickly. I cringe, remembering the influenza epidemic of 1887. I was only seven, but I remember how the coffins piled up in the churchyard and the Brothers canceled services for a week, urging us to pray at home for an end to the sickness. Mrs. O’Hare’s sister died. So did Rose and Matthew Collier’s baby brother—and dozens of other neighbors. That was just in our small town. What must it have been like in New London?

A nurse clad in a gray dress and a long white apron strides briskly down the hall. When she sees us, she pushes her way through the crowd. “Oh, Sisters, thank the Lord you’re finally here! We ran out of beds yesterday and now we’ve got folks dying on our doorstep. Half of them don’t come until it’s already too late. We give them valerian to calm them, or salicin to try and break the fever, but there isn’t much else we can do. We’re being run ragged. I had to send three of my nurses home sick.”

“I’m sorry we weren’t here sooner. We had no idea it was this bad,” I explain.

She clucks, heading up the stairs at a pace so quick, I’ve nearly got to run to keep up. “Inez has seen it with her own eyes, hasn’t she? I’ve been telling her all week we needed help,” she complains. “Lord, I didn’t even introduce myself. I’m Mrs. Jarrell.”

“I’m Cate.” I pause on the landing to catch my breath, introducing the others, and then: “Sister Inez has been here?”

“Every day.” The nurse runs a hand through her bobbed, chin-length brown hair. “She’s awfully devoted. I suppose you want to see her before you start?”

“No, we—” Addie begins, but I elbow her.

“Yes, please.” Now that I think of it, Inez has been missing from the convent most afternoons. She teaches the advanced illusions classes, then disappears. But why? She’s not the type to nurse the sick. Not unless there’s something in it for her.

We follow the nurse through two of the contagious men’s wards. They’re full, a patient in every one of the thirty beds. Nurses scramble back and forth, dispensing midafternoon tonics and milk punch. The air is filled with the sound of wet, hacking coughs. As we pass through, an aide delivers two bags bulging with freshly laundered sheets.

Mrs. Jarrell leads us down a hallway with a few private rooms. “She reads to him every day for hours. I doubt he understands a word, but it’s kind of her. They don’t get many visitors. Sad, really.”

She stops before a closed door, and I peer through the window into a dim room with a dozen beds. Four windows line the far wall, but the white curtains are all drawn shut; nine of the men are sleeping. The tenth seems fascinated with his own hands, clenching and unclenching his fists like a baby. Inez sits in a wooden chair, a book of Scripture open on her lap, murmuring prayers over the eleventh bed.

The man in it is none other than William Covington, former head of the Brotherhood.

I press my ear to the glass, straining to hear. Her voice rises and falls, but I can’t make out the words. I glance back in, noticing the way her eyes rest on Covington’s face, not the Bible, even as her mouth continues to move.

The hair on the nape of my neck prickles. Something about this is wrong. Deeply wrong.

I reach for the doorknob, but Mei grabs my arm. “We shouldn’t intrude. She looks so prayerful.”

Mrs. Jarrell heads back the way we came. “We’ve got plenty of work for you. The laundry’s come back, so we’ll need to change the sheets. If you help the junior nurses with that, it will free me up to talk to the matron and see if we can’t find somewhere to put these new patients.”

Addie and Pearl follow at her heels like spaniels, while Mei and I lag behind. “We need to find out what Inez is doing,” I hiss. “Why would she come to visit Covington and the other council members?”

“Perhaps this is her way of atoning for what she did?” Even Mei sounds dubious.

We cross back over the landing and into the women’s wing. Mrs. Jarrell pauses in the first contagious ward to speak with the senior nurse.

“Please,” I say. “You can’t tell me Inez is praying for their health and recovery, not when she’s the one who put them here in the first place.”

“Well, confronting her wouldn’t do any good. If she’s got some nefarious plan, she’s not going to confess it straight out.” Mei watches as a portly Brother shepherds an old woman toward the nurses. She’s small and stooped and dressed in a fine mauve cloak with white rabbit fur at the wrists.

“I’m going to find out what it is. Inez has already hurt enough people.”

Mei nods absently, her attention elsewhere. The old woman coughs so hard that strands of iron-gray hair tumble down around her face. The Brother taps the head nurse on the shoulder, interrupting her conversation with Mrs. Jarrell, who steps away. He lowers his booming voice, but snippets of it still carry: “My mother . . . wretched fever . . . see to it that she gets . . .” The head nurse nods and hurries off with the old woman in tow.

Mei scowls. “How do you like that? The rich get prompt treatment—and a private room, no doubt!—while the poor have to wait in line to die.”

The Brother sees us staring and doffs his hat. “Good afternoon, Sisters!” he says, crossing the room to join us. “Here to do a bit of nursing?”

Mei casts her face down as I nod. “It is our privilege to help the less fortunate,” I parrot.

He wrinkles his bulbous nose, fishing in his pocket for a handkerchief. He pulls one out and presses it to his face. I can smell the pungent, piney scent. “I don’t know how you can stand the stench,” he confesses. “I wouldn’t set foot in the place except my mother’s come down with the blasted thing.”

Mei peers up at him through her spiky dark lashes. “I’m surprised you didn’t call for a private physician. You’re obviously a man of means.”

“That I am.” He smiles proudly. “But private physicians haven’t got what Ma needs, do they? She’s got to see Brother Kenneally straightaway.” He winks one dark eye at us. “Can’t have people like us coming down with a thing like this just because some river rats don’t know their place! I say we should set up a quarantine till it passes. Keep them all down by the river where they belong.”

He is not particularly quiet. I glance around the crowded ward, where women of all ages are racked with coughing and flushed with fever. They’re sick, but they’re not deaf. A skinny woman with hair like cornsilk is glaring at us, and if looks could kill, we’d all be dead.

“What a marvelous idea,” Mei says through gritted teeth.

“I thought so.” The Brother grins as his mother reappears, shuffling down the hall. He doffs his hat again. “Well, I’ve got to be going. Take care, Sisters!”

He saunters away, and I stare at Mei in horror. “I don’t—what an awful man.”

Mei grabs up a bag of fresh laundry. “I’m not even surprised anymore.”

• • •

Hours later, we stagger home through the twilight streets. Mei sniffs hungrily as we pass a bakery and the delicious smell of bread wafts out. We missed teatime
and
dinner. “Are you still thinking about Inez?” she demands. “How can you think about anything but food or bed right now? I’m half starved.”

My stomach is rumbling, and I’m longing for my bed, too, but I have been dwelling on what we saw in Covington’s hospital room. Even as Mei and I changed sheets, dispensed suppers, and made patients comfortable for the night, Inez hardly left my mind.

I was able to calm the more excitable patients, abate their fevers, and ease their breathing, but I couldn’t heal them entirely. The fever is tricky; it evaded my magic, shifting away no matter how I tried. I hope my efforts will be enough to set them on the road to recovery—but not so miraculous that a canny nurse notices how our visit coincided with a marked improvement. Doing magic at the hospital is riskier than at Harwood, where the nurses cared precious little for their patients.

It’s such a waste. If we were free to practice our magic openly, we could help so many more people. And it wouldn’t be dependent on whether they could pay us or not.

“I can’t wait for it to be warm.” Pearl shivers into her cloak, her buckteeth chattering. “You know what I’d like right now? A tomato and cheese pie.”

Mei groans, and Addie presses her snub nose to the window like a street urchin, her breath fogging the cold glass. “Is that a beef pie? It looks delicious. That’s what I’d like.”

“Let’s get some, then.” I fumble in my bag for coins. “My treat. Four beef pies?”

“Bless you,” Mei says fervently.

I smile as they rush into the warm bakery. All the stores in the market district are open late this week for holiday shopping. The display windows are decorated with pine boughs, and the spicy scent mingles with succulent meat and oniony gravy and fresh bread.

Father’s told us how, when he was a little boy, he and Grandfather cut down pine trees, brought them inside, and decorated them with handmade ornaments and strings of popped corn. They put a feathery angel on top and stacked presents beneath. The year he was ten, though, Christmas trees were forbidden. Too pagan, the Brothers said, like the caroling that neighbors used to do, traveling from house to house with hot cider and song. Christmas Day is for venerating the Lord’s birth—for church services in the morning, followed by fasting and quiet contemplation—but at least the Brothers haven’t stopped people from feasting and exchanging gifts on Christmas Eve.

It will be a strange holiday this year, away from home, barely speaking to Maura.

• • •

It’s late when we get home. We scrub our skin until it’s red, and Mei volunteers to boil our dresses. When I pop into the sitting room to look for Tess, Vi tells me she’s already retired for the night and doesn’t want to be disturbed, even by me. I’m tempted to check on her anyway, but she does need her rest. So do I, for that matter. And yet . . .

My other sister is huddled with Parvati, Genie, and a few others around the pink settee. It seems Alice has fallen permanently into disfavor. Maura switched rooms again—with Livvy this time—in order to share with Parvati. But Alice seems happy enough now that she and Vi have made up. They sit squashed together in a blue armchair, paging through a fashion magazine from Mexico City. Livvy is playing a lovely sonata on the piano. Sachi is sitting on an ottoman by the fire, while Rory lies on her stomach on the red hooked rug and Prue reads a novel nearby. Pearl is knitting another soft gray scarf—for convalescents in the hospital, sweet girl—while Mei decimates Addie in a game of chess.

Contentment washes over me. Despite Finn—despite Inez’s scheming—despite the Brothers’ cruelties and the uncertainty of our future—I am not unhappy here. I never dreamed I would have friends like these. Three months ago, I didn’t think I could trust anyone in the world save my sisters.

How wrong I was, on both accounts.

I want to fold my tired limbs into a chair and watch Mei maneuver her queen across the board, or throw myself on the floor next to Rory and laugh my worries away. Instead, I cross the room to Maura.

“May I speak with you a moment?”

“You can speak freely in front of my friends,” she says, smoothing her sapphire skirts.

“I really can’t.” I try to keep my voice pleasant. “It’ll only take a moment.”

“Oh, fine.” Maura makes a show of reluctance, though I can read the curiosity on her face. She stands, interlacing her hands behind her back and stretching her shoulders. “Excuse me, girls. I’ve been summoned.”

The girls titter like the brightly colored parrots in the pet shop down on Fourth Street, and I resist the urge to roll my eyes. I lead Maura across the hall into the healing classroom, careful to leave the door open a few inches. Less chance of either of us misbehaving that way.

Maura perches on top of Sister Sophia’s desk. “What is it, Cate? I don’t appreciate you dragging me away from my friends.”

I lean against the wooden cabinet that holds Bones, the skeleton we use for anatomy classes. “Something very strange happened to Tess last night.”

“I heard,” Maura says. “Not from her, of course. From Parvati. Lord forbid either of you tells me anything.”