8

The First Charm: The Fish

IT IS 1746.

Leonore leans against the door frame, listening. Her maids gossip about someone who lives at the edge of the village and who can use magic.

A conjurer, a magician, newly arrived . . . or maybe not. Who appeared from the mists of the moors, or the hollows of the hills . . . no one knows.

When questioned, her maids tell Leonore that he can help her, yes, surely, for he is the magister. She finds her own way to the ramshackle hut.

The magister listens while he stirs his fire. When Leonore falls silent, this is what he tells her. He can make her wishes come true. The chatelaine that hangs from her belt holds, he says, an ancient magic, and he can release it. Then she can use this magic for a child, not her own, exactly, but a child nonetheless.

“There is a price,” he says, and stirs his fire. There is always a price.

“I’ll pay,” she says, and pay she does.

The magister takes in trade a part from her. No: he takes a part of her.

By flesh and bone, by rock and stone; I’ll charm a child to call my own.

“The child must see the charm he will wear,” the magister says. “He cannot be asleep or with senses dulled.” When he whispers the incantation she’s to recite, the fire dims.

Leonore shivers. She hears the cruel words. But she wants a child so badly . . .

The magister watches as Leonore retreats into the mist. He has begun to work his own magic, and she does not know how he will use her, how he will twist her dream into a nightmare. She does not know that the chatelaine was his gift to her. She does not know the terrible things the magister will do.

Leonore of Rookskill Castle will make magic to please her lord. But when she returns to tell him, her changed left hand hidden by a glove, she finds that he has been thrown by his stallion and lies in a deathlike stupor. She must find a willing child quickly now, quickly.

“I bring you good news,” she says to her unconscious lord as she stands by his bed surrounded by weeping servants. “Of a child to come.”

For which she has sacrificed to the magister a finger. Payment made of flesh and bone.

Leonore makes a gift of the fish charm to the child Rose in the very presence of the child’s mother.

The fishmonger’s wife, making deliveries, has been complaining, say Leonore’s maids. “All these children! All girls, worse luck. I can’t bear it! To keep them fed and clothed . . .” Leonore sees the opportunity she needs, and pays a visit to the hut by the shore.

Rose, the youngest girl, is beautiful and sweet and—Leonore hopes—an easy mark. She prays that a child so much desired, even if only a girl, will spur her lord’s recovery and secure her future, as he wakes to see she is able to give him an heir. With the magister’s enchantment Leonore can confound her lord, make him believe the child is theirs by blood and bone.

“Aye, then, go and live in the castle, Rose,” Rose’s mother says. “You’ll have a fit life, you will. You have my blessing.” And she mumbles, “And I’ve one less mouth to feed, thank the heavens.”

Leonore holds a silk handkerchief to her nose with her gloved hand.

The fishmonger’s wife is glad to see such emotion in her Rose’s new protector. She herself wipes away a tear or two before chasing down Rose’s older sisters.

Leonore feels emotion, for certain: she can scarce stand the fishy rotting stench in the dark and crowded cottage. She’s grateful when Rose moves outside to examine the charm by the light of day.

A moment later, as Rose hangs the charm around her neck and Leonore repeats the whispered words from the magister, the child cries out, then slips into a vacant-eyed silence. Leonore bites her lip. Was that a cry of pain? Has she done something wrong?

But no—Leonore assures herself that Rose’s mother is right. Rose will have a fit life in Rookskill Castle as the daughter of a lord, even if the enchantment has changed the child in some way Leonore does not yet understand.

It is only as she makes her way back to the castle that Leonore feels something else. The charmed child Rose walks behind her, silent as a shadow, frail as a wisp. But Leonore is stronger than she was before she cast the spell, less the young bride and more the rightful lady. She smiles for the first time in years. Instead of feeling lighter for the loss of the little fish charm, Leonore’s chatelaine feels a wee bit heavier.

She brings the charmed Rose to her lordship’s bedside. “See what I have made for us?”

But he does not stir. His staring eyes are fixed upon a point in the space above his head.

The chatelaine tugs on Leonore’s belt. A newfound strength snakes through her blood. A thin strand of white weaves through her black hair. The rooks, her only friends, wait at Leonore’s window.