Chantress Read online

  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.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE DEVASTATION

  “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, e
ven 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.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE SHADOWGRIMS

  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 . . .”

  I could remember nothing more. But the fear in my mother’s voice stole my breath away.

  “In the library, Lord Scargrave spoke of the Shadowgrims.” I forced myself to say the word out loud, though it left an unpleasant taste in my mouth. “And I think I remember my mother mentioning them. But I don’t know what they are.”

  “Count yourself lucky, then,” Nat said.

  It was left to Penebrygg to give me a proper answer. “In the beginning, they were ravens, a type bred by the Ravendon family since ancient times, and which Scargrave brought with him to the Tower of London: clever black birds, large as a man’s head, with mocking eyes and dagger-sharp beaks.” He paused and added softly. “But now they are something else entirely, and all because of the Chantress’s song.”

  “What did she do?” I asked.

  Nat jabbed his knife into the carving. “She made a stupid mistake.”

  “A grave one, certainly,” Penebrygg said. “Her intention, or so she said, was to create truth seekers who would help Lord Scargrave find the true culprits behind the Great Devastation. But instead, her song-spell turned the birds into instruments of torture. By day, they sleep—an enchanted sleep from which none can wake them—but by night, they are hunters like none the world has ever known.”

  “It’s like being in a nightmare,” Nat said, his knife still. “The kind where you’re caught so fast you can’t even scream for help. The terror seizes you first, and then comes the heat, smoky and suffocating, pressing at you from every direction.”

  My hand went to my mouth. The terror I had felt in the cart, the burning fear . . . had that been the Shadowgrims?

  I put the question to Nat and Penebrygg. Nat nodded. “We were near home when two Shadowgrims spotted us. One Shadowgrim swooped down and hovered over us, and the other went to summon the Watchmen. We were out after curfew, you see.”

  “Weren’t you frightened?” I asked.

  “Enough that it wasn’t easy to talk,” Nat said. “Or move. But the ravens kept back while the Watchmen checked us out, and I knew they would only come close if the Watchmen called them down, or if I tried to bolt. Since we had a proper pass—well, almost proper—I thought it would be all right. And it was.”

  I tried not to stare at his confident face. How could he be so matter-of-fact about an encounter that had terrified me?

  Penebrygg guessed what I was thinking. “Nat’s more resilient than most,” he explained. “I’d not let him go out in the night otherwise. But you shouldn’t feel you need to match him. For most of us, the fear is crippling. And it’s most paralyzing of all, they say, for Chantresses.”

  He meant to make me feel better, I knew. Instead, I felt worse.

  “I wouldn’t have been resilient if the Shadowgrims had come closer,” Nat said. “No one can stand up against that. And I would’ve been more afraid if I’d known you were there. But I didn’t.”

  “Thanks be that the Watchmen accepted your pass,” Penebrygg said, “and that nothing more dire happened.”

  “What could have happened?” I asked.

  “You really want to know?” Nat met my eyes squarely.

  A shiver went through me. “Yes.”

  Penebrygg shook his head. “Nat, I’m not sure this is the best time . . .”

  “She ought to know,” Nat said. “She’s a Chantress, and she’s already felt their fear. Someone should tell her the rest.”

  Penebrygg bowed his head. “I suppose you are right.”

  To me, Nat said, “The Shadowgrims kept their distance this time. But if someone tries to run from the Watchmen, or if the Watchmen want to make an arrest, the Shadowgrims come close. And when they do, you feel hotter and hotter, and you hear their wings fanning the flames. Then you’re taken prisoner—and if Scargrave wants to know what’s in your mind, he orders them to attack.”

  “And attack they do,” Penebrygg said. “But not with beaks and talons. They brush their feathers against your skin, feeding on your thoughts as they once fed on carrion and flesh. Their touch is like fire, scorching and searing you. The terror scalds your very soul. And as you burn, the Shadowgrims pick at your mind, stripping away thoughts they later share with Scargrave.”

  “They can speak?” I said.

  “To their master, yes,” Penebrygg said. “Not with their raven croak, you understand, but in their own peculiar way, from mind to mind. Memory by memory, thought by thought, they rob you of everything that makes you human, and everything that you hold dear, until at last their dark fire consumes you.”

  The smoke from the hearth seemed to thicken around me. “You mean, you die?”

  “The fortunate ones do,” Penebrygg said. “They become nothing more than a pile of ash. But now and again, people live through it—in body, at least. And when that happens, they belong to the Spymaster from then on. Their own minds are gone, and their only thought is to do his bidding. Scargrave has found them very useful as Warders at the Tower, and as Watchmen to guard the city, for they are not paralyzed by the Shadowgrims as the rest of us are, and they obey every command he gives.”

  “You can see it in their eyes, if you get close,” Nat added. “There’s a dullness there that tells you they’re the Ravens’ Own.”

  I remembered how they had looked in my eyes out in the shed, and how Penebrygg had reported they were normal.

  “Why didn’t the Chantress undo the spell, or stop it somehow?” I asked.

  “To her credit, she tried to undo her handiwork,” Penebrygg said. “But when she sang, she stumbled and seemed confused, and the song did not work. Before she could sing another note, Scargrave ordered the ravens to flock around her face. She became their very first victim.”

  The hairs on my neck rose. Nat, however, was unmoved. “Done in by her own magic,” he said. “There’s ju
stice for you.”

  Penebrygg frowned. “Have pity, Nat. No one deserves such a death.”

  “Maybe not. But she oughtn’t to have interfered.” Nat chipped off another bit of wood. “She did terrible harm.”

  “Well, on that we can agree, at least.” Penebrygg said to me, “After she died, the Reign of Terror began. Not that many saw it that way back then. Magic workers were deeply mistrusted, and Scargrave was applauded for his quick action against the Chantress. In those early days, he used his new powers with restraint. He caged his ravens in the depths of the Tower—even today, that is where they roost—and he deployed them primarily against those suspected of treason.”

  “The way people talked, you’d have thought Scargrave was a hero,” Nat said in disgust.

  “Little wonder, since the Shadowgrims helped him to locate the traitors who had caused the Devastation.” To me, Penebrygg explained, “Once they’ve been in the grip of raven fear, most people will do anything rather than be shut up in their company. And those who resist have their secrets taken from them anyway, once they become raven pickings. So names were supplied, details shared—and within a fortnight, the knaves were found: a clockmaker and his cousins, as it turned out. Nothing to do with magic.”

  “Why did they do it?” I asked.

  “Because they considered King Charles a tyrant, and they wanted to be rid of him,” Penebrygg said.

  “Was he?” It felt strange to be asking questions like this about my own country, but I had no other way of telling.

  “Yes,” Nat said. “Not like Scargrave, not with magic at his command. But bad enough in his own way. He bankrupted the country, and he crushed anyone who opposed him. He even did away with Parliament, so the people had no voice.”

  The whirring in the room echoed in my ears. Clocks everywhere around me . . .

  “And it was a clockmaker who killed him?” I said uncomfortably.

  “Yes,” said Penebrygg. “A member of our own guild, as it happened.”