The Midnight Witch (39 page)

“Diverted from their journey to the Ritz.” Sister Bernadette grins.

“You must have friends in high places indeed.”

She laughs at this. “Surely the very highest of all!”

In the room that now stands in for a canteen, all is ready. Three enormous containers of steaming broth stand on sturdy tables, two nuns or volunteers behind each.

“Ladles at the ready, Sisters,” Bernadette instructs, glancing at the clock on the wall. One o’clock precisely. It amazes me every day that this small miracle of punctuality is brought about. We are woefully understaffed, and the queues grow longer with each passing meal. So many hungry people. So many weeks, months, years of gritted teeth and hardened hearts.

Sister Agnes unbolts the front doors and those at the head of the line step forward. Each brings with them a receptacle of varying degrees of size and suitability. In the twelve months I have been helping out at the soup kitchen I have seen everything from tin mugs to chamber pots and even a horse’s nose bag presented to be filled with the lifesaving meal. Today there is a buzz among those waiting at the sight of the bread. I take up my position at the end of the last table and break chunks from the loaves to press into eager hands. Some of the children are pitifully thin. It pulls at my heart to see them so.

I have tried to explain to Mama that we cannot sit by and wait for the war to end; that there are those so much less fortunate than us who need our help. But she does not understand. The world she knew is vanishing, and nothing makes sense to her any longer. She has retreated inside her own version of how life is or how it was. If losing Papa tested her, losing Freddie broke her, as I had feared it would. Even now, years after that terrible night on Tower Bridge, I can see him falling, see the blade drawn across the whiteness of his throat. Hear the splash as he entered the water. I will always believe it was my fault that he died the way he did. I should have protected him from the Sentinels. I should have saved him. I failed him, and now he is dead and gone and he has taken the better part of Mama with him.

I can only thank the spirits that Louis survived. He told me later that he had summoned his magic as best he could but that the speed with which everything happened prevented him from saving himself unaided. He recounted how the three of them plunged deep into the Thames, unable to disentangle themselves from one another. Stricklend’s thug broke his neck as they hit the water. Louis said he felt my spirit guardians helping him, pulling him upward. It was his father’s summoned Goth who dragged Freddie from the depths and propelled him to the embankment. But my poor dear brother was beyond help. Death had him in its clutches once more and would not have its fingers pried loose a second time.

The coven was in turmoil, of course. For a while it looked as if I would be cast out. But with war upon us, with the Sentinels’ threat now an open one, with a figurehead who has declared himself, it was decided that to lose a Head Witch, to have to find another, would be too damaging to the coven. I am still goaded and harassed by the Dark Spirit. It is as if the Sentinels, having failed in their attempt to gain the Elixir by controlling me through my love for my brother, are awaiting their moment, biding their time. And while they wait, they send their spirit servant to haunt me, to wear me down, no doubt, in the hope that by giving me no peace I will be less able to withstand their next attack, whenever it comes.

“Are you going to give us some of that, love?” An elderly man stands in front of me, his bowl of soup raised expectantly.

“I’m sorry, yes.” I give him as big a piece as I dare. Too generous a helping would have Sister Agnes remonstrating with me in an instant. I realize I had drifted off into my own thoughts and shake my head as if to banish them. No good can come of dwelling on what cannot be changed. There are others who need me now.

It takes two hours to feed everyone who has come seeking food. By the end of the queue we are scraping the great tin cauldrons and the bread has gone entirely. A further hour is required to wash up and clean away so that the kitchen will be ready for use in the morning. Glancing at the clock I see it is already nearly four. I have promised Mama I would take tea with her, and I must not be late. Small moments of normality seem to help her. I quicken the speed of my washing and wiping until Sister Bernadette, sensing my hurry, bids me go home, assuring me they can manage and will anyway do better without me charging about the place like a clockwork mouse.

I whip off my apron and call my farewells over my shoulder as I go. Outside I break into a trot. I have grown accustomed to looking a sight and no longer pay attention to the looks of surprise my disheveled state sometimes attracts. It is hard to be concerned about such trivia as untidy hair or an unflattering garment. It is little enough that I do in this terrible time. Vanity has no place here.

I arrive at Fitzroy Square flushed and perspiring. My dress is one I chose for the freedom of movement it allows me and for the durability of the fabric. I hope that I might sneak upstairs and quickly change and redo my hair, but my mother’s voice reaches me in the hallway.

“Lilith? Lilith, is that you?”

“Yes, Mama. I’m just going up to change.”

“I have been waiting. Withers has brought the tea up. Come along. You know I hate to drink it when it has become stewed.”

With a sigh I brush down my skirts and attempt a cheerful expression before heading into the drawing room.

As always my mother’s frailty distresses me. She has become so insubstantial, so delicate. She sits by the fire in a winged chair that dwarfs her.

“There you are. Oh, Lilith, darling, you surely haven’t been out of the house looking like that?” Her hand flies to her mouth and her shock is genuine.

“I’ve been helping out at St. Mary’s, Mama. You remember?”

“Of course I do. I have not entirely lost my wits, whatever you may think.”

“I think no such thing.”

“Don’t you? You regard me as if I were an imbecile at times. And yet I am not the one who goes about looking as if I have fallen from a carriage into a puddle.”

“There is no point in dressing up, Mama.”

“I am not suggesting ‘dressing up,’ as you call it. I am merely observing that if anyone appears to have lost their sense of what is reasonable it is not me. Really, Lilith, when everyone else is making such an effort. Look at all those brave young men going off to war. Do you see them looking a fright?”

“No, Mama.”

“No, of course you don’t. They wouldn’t dream of turning out shabbily. It would be letting the side down.”

I have to bite my lip to prevent myself from saying something I know I will later regret.

I continue to plead a headache so that I am able to avoid having to dine anywhere with Louis or indeed with Mama. Mrs. Jessop has a light supper sent up to my room on a tray, but in truth I have little appetite. The sight of the poacher’s pie, pickles, and crusty rolls all lovingly and lavishly prepared by Cook earlier in the day starts up the gripe of guilt in my stomach. How is it that I have so much when others must go to their beds hungry? And is Mama right, after all? Am I a hypocrite? It has taken a war to wake me from my privileged slumbers. And yet my engagement to Louis continues. I never told him of my feelings for Bram. I should have, perhaps. Should have offered him the chance to turn me away, knowing that I had been in love with someone else. I fully intended doing so. But then, after Freddie, well, it seemed to matter less, where my affections lay. Bram had gone, and I had let him go. There was a moment when I thought I would find him, find him and tell him what had happened. Attempt to explain the inexplicable. Ask him to forgive me for letting him down. Make him see that I loved him still. Love him still. But the events of that terrible night served to remind me of how difficult it would be to make my life with a non-witch. Of how much danger—
constant
danger—Bram would be in if he were to be with me. How could I hope to protect him? How could I ever convince myself I could keep him safe when I had so utterly failed Freddie?

And Louis had nearly died trying to save my brother. Trying to undo the harm I had caused. And Mama, poor Mama. She has so little left to light her dark existence now. The prospect of my marriage to Louis is some small crumb of comfort that it is within my power to give her. And yet I put off and put off and put off the wedding. So long as this dreadful war lasts no one is able to press me on the matter of a date. To celebrate a marriage with all the fanfare and expense such a union would demand—it would be in poor taste, unseemly, simply wrong, when so many are suffering. As long as the war continues I can avoid becoming Louis’s wife.

I finish brushing the tangles from my hair, and Iago springs onto my bed beside me, his legs moving a little stiffly now, and a few gray hairs around his eyes giving away his age. I lie back on top of the covers, too restless for sleep, yet weary. I cannot recall the last night I slept well. I know only it was some time before the Anstruthers’ ball. Before Stricklend murdered my brother. Now the small, quiet hours are filled with the threat of nightmares and remembering. Nightmares about Freddie, about what I did to him, and how I failed him. And remembering the one other living person in this world who has ever made my heart dance. Bram. I know him to be living, even though I have not seen him or heard from him since the ball, because I frequently call upon one of the more reliable spirits who can assure me that he still treads the earth. It gives me such comfort to know he is safe. Comfort and hope, though I do not deserve such a gift. Would he ever forgive me for treating him so badly? I failed to meet him at the station that day as I had promised, and I sent no word of explanation. Mangan told me he had left London, returned to Yorkshire. I started so many letters to him but never posted one. He has never written to me, but then, why should he? I later discovered that he enlisted soon after war broke out.

My spirits tell me they do not see him in Darkness, so I know he still lives. At present, they do not hear heavy guns near him, so I am certain he is not in France now, and I thank the heavens for this. I pray daily that he be spared. Even if he is lost to me, I dearly want him to be safe. To be happy. I hope that he is able to know true happiness again one day. I fear I never may.

Iago sets up a rumbling purr and curls up next to my feet. I lean forward and stroke him gently.

“You may be ready for sleep, my little friend. I am not.” I pull on my robe and step into my brocade slippers. The rain has ceased gurgling through the gutter outside my window, but it will be a damp and cool October night outside. I pull my green cloak about my shoulders and make my way down the wooden stairs and out into the garden. The trees have already shed most of their leaves, and their branches drip water onto the sodden lawns and paths. It is really too wet to sit anywhere, so I settle to pacing around the garden, slowly shutting out the nighttime noises of the city that drift over the walls. The streetlamps are no longer lit at night, and their glow has been replaced by the sweeping searchlights that scour the skies for the deadly zeppelins that come to drop their bombs on us. But tonight all is quiet. Quiet, that is, save for the urgent whispering of the spirits who have been waiting for me to come to them.

Where have you been, Morningstar?

Lilith! Lilith!

We thought you had forgotten us, Daughter of the Night.

I am here. I will always be here.

So many dead! So many terrible things.

The way I commune with the spirits has undergone such a change since war began to tear countries and families asunder. Now, all I have to do is to still my thoughts, to open my mind and my heart, to allow them to come, and the voices start up their clamor for my attention. Some are old friends, and all I recognize. There is the kindly grandmother who frets over suffering and is horribly dismayed by the war. She frequently tells me of young men, so very young, who have passed to the Land of Night, cut down before they had a chance to live their lives. She often weeps, setting up a chorus of wailing among the more sensitive spirits. Since the Yulemass calling, Amelia has come to speak with me from time to time. I am pleased to hear from her, but her sadness endures, and I wish there was more I could do to help her. I never hear from Father, which is a constant source of sadness for me. Sadness and guilt, for I know why he will not come. At times, I find communicating with the spirits brings me more pain than comfort, but I am a necromancer. I am here to allow those spirits to have their voice. It may be that their divinations can be of help or give solace to those of us still treading the earth. Or it may simply be that I am a cypher for the anguish of those who have crossed the Rubicon. Either way, I cannot turn my back on them.

I pause under the denuded walnut tree, leaning against its ancient trunk, the smooth bark cool against my back even through the thickness of my cloak.

Morningstar, you are welcome.

Good evening, Grandmother, who have you brought with you this peaceful night?

Oh, there is no peace to be had in these terrible times! The living have lost their wits and the dead cannot rest.

We must all do what we can to help one another.

Use the Elixir!

Who said that?

I am astonished to see a shadowy shape form on the grass in front of me. The earlier clouds have drifted away and a fair moon allows me to see that the figure is that of a young man. It is most unusual for a spirit to actually show themselves outside of the chamber, and without being formally called or summoned. I feel a chill enter my body as I realize he is wearing the uniform of a British soldier from the present. As he takes a step closer I gasp, for the slanting moonbeams fall upon his youthful face to reveal he is missing an eye and half his jaw has been blasted away. The wound is horribly fresh. Wet mud glistens upon congealing blood. I fight to keep my reaction hidden.

What is your name, soldier?