In the first days after Archie found me and moved me into his home, I became more diurnal than I had been, less inclined to stalking the corridors of the university at night. I revelled, I think, in at last being able to be seen doing what I could do – or at least the research part and some of the smaller experiments (all science, those ones, no magic).
But eventually I missed the darkness and the quiet of those cold hours. I’d never been afraid there with only a lantern for company. Never felt the blackness as a threat, and my favourite place was the Great Library with its labyrinthine shelving system, a maze that you could get lost in if you didn’t know the signs carved into the sides of the bookcases, little nubs and dips to show whether you went left or right. Students had been known to become disoriented in there, shouting out for someone to come and collect them and lead them to safety so they didn’t starve, only to be found as bones years later or as unhappy wandering spirits. The head librarian had taught me the codes as soon as I’d begun cleaning there – I don’t think he liked sharing those elevated secrets with so lowly a creature, but equally he’d misplaced cleaners before and didn’t want to repeat the experience, not least because it’s hellishing hard to get decomposition stains out of book leather. And eventually I realised there was another pattern to them, not simply a means to navigate the stacks, but a way to find a path through to the centre of the library, the dead centre of all those books.
It took me a long time to figure that out – I’m embarrassed by how long – but I wasn’t looking for a cipher in the building itself, just in the books it housed. And while they were all valuable and furnished me with much of the knowledge I have today, it was in fact the structure that contained the greatest secret.
In the middle of it all, a painting on a pillar, I thought at first, of a door, with an inscription:
WHAT WE COME FROM,
WHERE WE GO TO,
WHAT WOMEN WILL COLLECT ALL THEIR DAYS.
I laughed, thought of my menial job here, and snorted, ‘Dust.’
The door was a real thing, wasn’t it?
It popped open, didn’t it?
Hesitating only slightly, I passed through and found a set of stone stairs circling down and down and down. My footsteps echoed so that when I finally arrived (and make no mistake I became concerned after a while that I would descend for eternity), they were waiting expectantly.
Three old women, beldams, pale as pale could be, paler than the moon because they saw no sun at all, nor had they for too many years to count. One said a century; another scoffed and claimed two; the third said both were idiots, as if it could have been less than three.
‘So long since there’s been a guest!’ said one, breaking the spiral.
‘Oh, at least a century or two,’ another croaked.
‘No one since that one with the red hair,’ whispered the third and they exchanged a glance that could only be called fearful, then back again to examine my own brilliant red locks. ‘That one. She who might dare anything.’
‘I wonder if she still walks above?’
‘I think we’d know of her passing, sisters. When one such as her goes beneath? The world whispers of it. The air would tell us, the earth and water.’
‘What was her name?’ I asked, thinking of the book I’d found, A Manual for the Students of the Tintern Dollmakers’ Academy. Of the notes therein and my sense that whoever had written them would dare almost anything simply because they could.
Yet they’d not answered, but rather taken another tack. ‘How did you find us? Find your way in?’
‘Your riddle. I doubt any man would know the answer, and there are no women up there.’
‘None but you.’
‘Curious creature you are.’
‘Well, you’ve found us. What do you want of us?’ They spoke in the same sequence every time, a chorus, a round, a set order. Perhaps a habit or perhaps a sort of binding.
‘Who are you?’ I’d asked.
‘We are the mothers, the sisters, the daughters, the aunts, the cousins, the nieces, the grandmothers of all the burned and drowned and hanged.’
‘We are the first.’
‘We shall probably be the last.’
All together: ‘We are the Witches of Whitebarrow.’
I tilted my head. I’d seen no reference to anything like them in any book I’d read. Heard nothing of them from any other woman to whom I’d spoken. Might they be something so old they’d been forgotten? That so few sought them because their entire existence was unknown? How did that other, that one they wouldn’t name, find out about them? So many questions I’d never have the answer to! My hesitation left a gap they did not like.
‘Whatever flows in your veins that makes you different and dangerous? It comes from us. The things we did, what we became, whatever we released into the sky and the dirt and the seas? It chooses at its own wild will. It’s found a home in you.’ With this speech the first seemed she might apologise for that, but before I could dig further – What had they done? – the second chimed in:
‘If you are here, you have a request, you wish to learn something – so, what do you want?’
‘And your time with us is finite, child, so ask.’
‘But…’
‘Come, come! Time has wings and surely you realise this place is not one where you can stay? Not as you are? Alive?’
‘The living may only dance with the dead for a little while, girl.’
‘The world leads you where you need to go. It brought you to us, and we are bound to answer by the laws that hold us here. But you must hurry.’
‘Who bound you?’ I asked, and only then worried that perhaps I might only have a limited number of questions and I was wasting them like a fool.
‘Her name was—’
‘Surely we’ve written it down somewhere?’
They all gestured with identical vagueness to the room around them – and I finally took note of it. A high-ceilinged cavern more like, with three beds, many bookshelves overflowing with tomes, threadbare carpets on the floor and light, I realised, coming from orange globes that floated around the room giving off warmth and illumination. Desks covered with papers and more books, open notebooks blank and filled, inkwells and quills, pencils and brushes. I wondered why the dead might require such things, but restrained myself from asking – besides, wouldn’t I choose these exact items for my afterlife?
The witches wore ebony dresses of indeterminate design, their hair white and eyebrows feathery (as if with great age they’d not thinned and fallen out but grown like developing wings). Their eyes were uniformly black, nails trimmed neatly and clean, each one’s face a roadmap of lines as if each wrinkle represented a year. I’d have given anything to know where they’d come from, who they were before they landed here, but I did not know how long they might tolerate me and my queries – and if I might be trapped here if I tarried too long – so I asked the one thing I’d been trying so desperately to discover.
And when I did they gave a little wail, said I was as bad as that one, another one with red hair, the one who dared. Who’d asked for the very same spell. But they were bound to answer me, weren’t they? Had told me so themselves. They protested, yet still spilled forth more tales of that woman in a tone of gleeful gossip; they named her reluctantly – Selke – spoke of all the great and terrible things she could and did do.
They found the right book and gave me pen and paper so I could copy the spell, the ingredients, the ritual – only that one, they said. One was all anyone got. Then I folded the paper and put it carefully in my pocket and prayed this wasn’t simply some dream and I wasn’t still in Archie’s bed in his house, sleeping beneath his weight, the sounds of his snoring a constant saw that I’d learned to ignore.
When I was done the Witches gave me gifts: a mortar and pestle, and a bag of coins, strange ancient things, unmarked for making change, and I was sure I’d never be able to exchange them for their true value, for the gold was so bright and soft and pure-looking. The old women warned me to be wary of what I might do, what I could do, what I would do – but they said it without much hope. After all, hadn’t they themselves ignored any warnings and changed the nature of the world in doing so?
And then at last, they urged me on my way, up and out, back to the spiral staircase, my lantern held high, up and up and up to a darkness that seemed wrong when I was rising, rising, rising until finally I stumbled into the library, into that secluded spot in the centre of the great building. I found my escape from the labyrinth, wandered home as if starlight lit my path. As if all my obstacles were behind me.
I still think of them sometimes, how they were not strange in their appearance, only hazy in their recall and conversation. There was no sign of food or drink – perhaps they had grown beyond the need for anything but knowledge and spells. Perhaps the dead – if they were truly so – do not eat. They didn’t strike me as malign or threatening, only to say that the cold black hours were best for the making of dark and terrible things.
And in the morning when I awoke fully clothed on top of the covers, I thought I must have dreamed it all until I reached into my pocket and found the piece of paper there, a little crumpled but real enough; that and the heft of the coin purse, the mortar and pestle. I went back that very day, to the Great Library, retraced my steps but could not find where I had been. But from then on I began to plan my departure from Whitebarrow and Archie.
* * *
I awoke heavy-eyed, exhausted. Though the dream of the Witches was never frightening, it bore a weight each and every time. I grumped at the children in the morning and snarled at Albertine before lunch with such venom that we were both shocked and burst into tears. She apologised that she didn’t know what she’d done, and I apologised because I knew full well what I had done. The child had never caused me harm, but I knew Leonora’s plans for her had dug into my skin, my heart, my mind. The jealousy of one grandchild to see another favoured so – neither of her siblings seemed bothered by the time she was spending with their grandmother (indeed Connell had whispered he was glad it wasn’t him), but they had not lived the life I had.
They’d never been deprived of a grandmother – she might not have been the best of them, but she was something. I’d had nothing. I’d had my mother and all her tales and her tempers. I had the version she’d given me of Leonora Morwood, and then I came here. Came to a place I might have belonged but could never claim. Came here and found that I did not entirely hate the woman – that she was like Heloise in some ways, she was as Heloise had said after a fashion, but entirely different in others. And I wanted, idiot child that I was, to be loved by her. To have her approval and her pride. And I thought – more with heart and less with head – that if I helped her gain her desires, I would be given love in return. I would be special. I would be seen. I’d be something other than Asher Todd who hid her hair, made her face plain, kept to the shadows too scared to even let her shoes make a sound in the world.
After all I had done for her, and then to see everything handed so easily to Albertine, through no fault or will or wish of her own… it hurt. It was neither rational nor fair on my part, to strike out at a child who loved me – and I loved in return. But it hurt nonetheless.
When we were friends again and all tears had dried, I was still glad to pass Albertine off to Leonora and the younger ones to a sullen Luned. I encountered Eli as I marched from the house to the surgery; he drew me behind a tree and kissed me, then I sniped and snarled. I was equally short with my first real patients, but no one seemed surprised or complained. Perhaps they simply expected this of both doctors and cunning women.
I’m tidying up when I hear a noise at the door; thinking it might be Luned giving me warning, today I turn. I wonder what she’ll say after yesterday’s performance, but it’s not Luned. It’s Archie O’Sullivan and he does not look at all pleased.
‘You’re a liar,’ he spits with more fire than I’ve ever seen from him. He comes towards me and his gaze is locked not on my face but my finger – on Meliora’s ring. I step back, keep the stone table between us, hold up the opposite hand signalling him to stop.
‘Archie. What are you doing here? I told you I would meet you in Whitebarrow.’
‘You’re a liar,’ he repeats. ‘Thinking you can get me out of the way like I’m some simpleton. Well, I didn’t go home when you told me to. I stayed and I watched. I watched you.’
I’ve had no sense of being observed. But then, I never thought Archie would find me, did I? But he did. He’s clearly got skills unsuspected, has Dr O’Sullivan. ‘Archie, what is wrong? What has brought this on? Why did you stay?’
He pouts, an unloved boy. Mama hasn’t paid enough attention. ‘I felt ill. Something I ate. So I stayed another night.’
Which means he gorged when he returned to the inn that day, ate himself sick when deprived of what he’d come for. Oh Archie. You child. Silly little brat. Then I notice flecks of foam are forming at the corners of his mouth, his eyes are wild and wide like a horse under duress. His voice goes up a notch. ‘I listened to them all talking last night about their marvellous fortune, how wonderful to have a doctor for good. For good!’
‘Archie, you’re being—’
He gestures at the surgery, the little kingdom I’ve made. Even he can see the care I’ve lavished on it. ‘Your promises have no value. I trusted you!’
‘Archie, that’s just—’
‘And I saw you with him!’ He leaps at me, but can’t surmount the high table, sort of crashes into it with a thigh, a knee. The pain registers on his face but he keeps talking. ‘You whore.’
‘Who? Who did you see me with? Archie…’ I speak as if aggrieved. But every fibre of my liar’s heart knows I’m caught out. Yet that word, that single word thrown so often at my mother – that’s a dart. I try to ignore it.
‘That man outside this afternoon, some… common groundsman.’ He says it with such contempt I almost want to laugh. As if I’ve sullied myself. I say, ‘Peeking, Dr O’Sullivan? Surely that’s beneath you?’ And that’s quite bad enough. Should have kept my mouth closed, but it flies out, roars out, sick of being hidden inside me, behind this façade of a sparrow. Sick and tired of pandering to spoilt little boys. And that word. Again.
‘Liar and thief. Whore!’ He begins to sob and I don’t think he knows how much is jealousy, how much is fear of losing Meliora – or me. ‘You promised you’d give her back to me. Then you ran away. And now you’re here with another man.’
‘Archie.’
‘I know what you can do. I know. I’ve seen you resurrect the dead – that little wolf!’
I don’t tell him that was different, that what went into that cub wasn’t its own soul. And it doesn’t seem to occur to him the irony of mourning my faithlessness when he’s begging his lover to bring his wife back to life. I could never have done it anyway – for she died before I even knew it and I was not in a position to do what was needed, what I had done to Heloise as she breathed her last. To take what was necessary. But if I’d told Archie that all those months ago, he’d not have given me everything I required to keep conducting research on how to fulfil my promise to my mother.
I’m abruptly exhausted. By everything. By everything I have done and said, by everyone who’s demanded something of me these past years. By every lie I’ve told and promise I’ve made. So, I tell him the truth, or part of it at least.
‘Archie. I’m sorry. I can’t do it because I don’t have a body to put her into.’ He gives a cry and moves much faster than I’d have thought possible, dashes around the table and I’m too slow, not expecting him to put on such a burst of speed. He has me. His hands are in my hair, then around my throat and he’s squeezing and squeezing and squeezing. Staring into my face while I try to pry his fingers apart. A sliver of me thinks Stop fighting because if I die then I no longer have to carry on with this awful, awful plan. The lack of oxygen burns my lungs; I can feel my eyes bulging, my tongue thickening.
But then I think Whore.
The word rolling off his tongue so easily. All that he wanted of me, all he gave to get it, all the time spent in his bed listening to him weep for another woman. And that word was the first thing he reached for.
I bring up a knee, between his legs, hear the breath puff out of him, then push him away as hard as I can. He stumbles backwards, is brought up short by something. Then long thin fingers reach over his shoulder, something sparks silver, and is drawn across his throat.
Bright red and arterial is the spray, slowing to a cascade, then a dribble, and he finally drops to his knees, eyes glazing over.
Leonora Morwood stands behind him, one of my scalpels clutched in her hand.