Born Wicked: The Cahill Witch Chronicles, Book One: The Cahill Witch Chronicles, Book One (3 page)

Father coughs. Has he been coughing more lately? He says it’s only the change of seasons, but his face is as tired as his eyes. “I’ll be quite busy. Meetings all day.”
“But wouldn’t you like company? Someone to take meals with?” Maura gives him a bright, wheedling smile. She looks very much like Mother when she smiles. “You’ve been working too hard. I could come and look after you. I’d love to see New London.”
Tess and I both swivel in our chairs. Maura has to know he’ll never agree to it. He doesn’t know what to do with us at home, much less in New London.
“No, no, I’m right as rain. And I wouldn’t have time to look after you properly. New London is no place for a young lady without a chaperone. It’s much better for you to stay here with your sisters.” Father takes a spoonful of soup, oblivious to the way Maura’s face falls. “Now, about this governess. Sister Elena comes very highly recommended by Mrs. Corbett. She was Regina’s governess.”
And Regina married very well
. Father doesn’t say it, but it hangs in the air, heavy as the evening fog. Is that what he wants for us? Regina Corbett is a simpering ninny, and her husband is religious and rich and of good standing. He’s sure to be considered by the Brotherhood the next time they have an opening. There are always twelve members on the town council, ranging in age from ancient Brother Elliott, Brenna’s grandfather, down to Brother Malcolm, twenty and handsome, married just last fall.
Brother Ishida, the head of the council here, reports to the National Council in New London twice a year. Generally, however, the National Council does not involve itself in small-town affairs. They are more concerned with the looming threat of another war with Indo-China, which has settled the western half of America, or Spain, which has colonized the south. It’s Brother Ishida and the Chatham council that we have to be wary of. If they knew what we were, all their fatherly kindness would vanish in the blink of an eye. Young or old, they are united in their fervor to keep New England safe from witches.
I wouldn’t marry a member of the Brotherhood for all the money in the Brothers’ coffers.
“I remember Regina’s governess,” Maura says. She’s tearing her bread into bits instead of eating it. “She’s young. And very pretty.”
I search my memory but can’t come up with a face. We must have seen her at services, passed her occasionally in the street, but she was in town for only three months before Regina married.
“I met the other new member of the staff,” I announce. “Finn Belastra?”
“Ah, yes.” Father shakes his head. “I popped into the shop the other day and spoke with his mother. Marianne tells me the Brothers have been scaring half their customers away. Hoping to find something forbidden and shut them down, I expect. It’s a shame when it’s come to this, people afraid of books!”
Never mind people being afraid of
girls
. I interrupt him before he can get started. “Yes, but does Finn actually know how to garden?”
“He’s a very bright young man. Would have made a fine scholar,” Father says, which does not actually answer my question. He natters on about how Finn was supposed to go to university before his father died, and what a shame it is, and I’m sure Finn would be thrilled to know his mother’s been blabbing his business all over town.
I make polite replies as Father segues back into the importance of learning. I think he means to encourage us about the governess, but I’m the only one listening. Maura’s slipped a novel into her lap. Tess is amusing herself by making one of the candles on the wall sconce flicker. I give her a look, and she stops with a guilty smile. I shake my head and push my apple pie away, appetite lost.
After dinner, we’re free to do as we please. When Father’s away, occasionally we coax Mrs. O’Hare into joining us for games. Often we play at chess or draughts, though Tess is the reigning champion at both and Maura is a horrid loser. Tonight Father drifts back to his study. Maura climbs the stairs to her room with barely a word to anyone. That leaves Tess and me.
I follow my little sister into the sitting room. She settles at the piano, her fingers gliding gracefully over the keys. She’s the only one of us with enough patience to develop any real skill.
I kick off my slippers and lie on my back on the tufted cream sofa. Tess’s sonata washes over me. She used to play lively old folk ballads, and Maura would sing and play her mandolin. We’d push the furniture to the walls, and Mrs. O’Hare would come in and dance me around the room. The old songs were banned years ago, along with dancing and theater and anything else that smacks of the old days before the Brothers, when the witches were the ones in power. But the Brothers have become increasingly strict, and dancing isn’t worth the risk.
Tess’s fingers stutter and stop. “Are you still angry with me?” she asks.
“No. Yes.” If I don’t discipline her, who will? Father doesn’t know about the magic, and he mustn’t find out. Mother was convinced he wasn’t strong enough to handle it. She cited his weak chest, the cough that seems to leave him a little frailer each year. But it’s more than that, even if she couldn’t bring herself to say it outright. Father grumbles about the Brothers’ censorship and hides books in secret compartments all over the house, but that’s an easy sort of rebellion. I don’t think Mother believed he’d be strong enough to stand against them when it came to something that really mattered. Like us.
She loved him anyway, but I can’t see how it was much of a marriage, honestly.
I sit up, hugging my knees to my chest. “You can’t do magic anywhere you like, Tess. You know that. I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you.”
Tess looks very young in her pink pinafore, her hair in two braids that stretch to her waist. Now that she’s twelve, she’s been bothering me to let her put her hair up and her skirts down. I suppose the governess will advise me to allow it. I can’t keep her from growing up. “I know,” she says. “Me either. If something happened to you, I mean.”
I glance up at the portraits above the fireplace. There’s one of Father with his parents when he was a boy, a retriever puppy asleep at his feet. Next to it is a painting of the five of us—Father, Mother, Maura, Tess, and me. Tess was still a baby with pale blond hair sprouting like dandelion fuzz all over her head. Mother is looking down at her lovingly, a Madonna cradling the child in her arms. She had lost a baby between Maura and Tess—the first of five buried in the family cemetery.
“This governess—she’ll be living here, taking meals with us, watching our every step. Even if you think it’s to help someone—Father, or even me or Maura—”
Tess swivels to face me. “Is this about what happened at services last week?”
“No, but that’s a perfect example.” As we were leaving the church last Sunday, someone stepped on Maura’s skirt. Her dress ripped—right across the middle of her admittedly tight bodice—exposing her corset cover for everyone to see. It would have been mortifying if Tess hadn’t thought quickly and cast a
renovo
spell.
“Maura would have been humiliated,” Tess argues.
“A little public humiliation wouldn’t have killed her. We would have gotten her into the carriage and out of sight, and no one would have remembered it in a few days. If anyone had seen what you did—”
“They would have thought it never ripped in the first place,” Tess insists. “I was very quick. They would have thought it a trick of their eyes.”
“Would they?” I’m not so certain. “The Brothers have been leaping on anything that even hints of magic—and they wouldn’t assume it was you— they’d think it was Maura. You meant to help, I know, but it could have ended very badly.”
Tess fiddles with the lace at her wrist. “I know,” she whispers.
“Brenna Elliott. Gwen Foucart. Betsy Reed. Marguerite Dolamore.”
I reel off the names like the multiplication tables Father taught us. They’re the four girls arrested by the Brothers in the last year. Gwen and Betsy were sentenced to labor on the prison ship off the coast of New London. The conditions there are horrid—backbreaking work and very little food. There are rats, I hear, and disease, and girls don’t often survive it. But Marguerite—no one even knows what happened to her. She disappeared before her trial, taken away in the middle of the night.
“Would you have it be Maura? Or you?” I’m relentless. I have to be.
“No. No, never.” Tess’s rosy cheeks drain of color. “I won’t do it again.”
“And you’ll be more careful at home, too? No more magic at the dinner table?”
“No. Only—I wish we could tell Father the truth. Perhaps he’d stay home more. Look after us better. I’ll never get anywhere with my lessons this way.”
I stare at the gold flowers on the carpet. There’s so much hope in Tess’s voice. She wants a regular father, someone she can depend upon to protect her.
But we’re not regular girls. If Father knew how I’d gone into his mind, compelled him, and destroyed Lord knows what other memories in the process, would he ever forgive me?
I want to believe he would, that he’d come to understand. But he hasn’t given me any reason to think he’d fight for us.
That only means I have to fight twice as hard. I rest my chin on my knees. “We don’t know what he’d do, Tess. We can’t chance it.”
Tess’s pale fingers twist in her lap. “I don’t understand why she didn’t trust him,” she says finally. “I wish I did. I wish Mother were here.”
She turns back to her piano, finding some solace in her sonata. I pick up the post from the tea table. There are a few bills for Father, a letter from his sister, and—to my surprise—a letter with no postmark, in an unfamiliar looping script, addressed to Miss Catherine Cahill. Who would write to me? I’ve fallen behind on correspondence with Father’s side of the family, and Mother has no living relatives.

Dear Cate:
You don’t knowme, but your mother and I were once very dear friends. NowAnna is gone, and I, who ought to be there to guide you in her absence, can be of no help besides this: look for your mother’s diary. It will contain the answers you seek. The three of you are in very great danger.

Affectionately yours,

 

Z. R.

 

The letter flutters from my fingers to the floor. Tess plays on, heedless of my terror. I don’t know Z. R., but she knows us. Does she know our secrets?
CHAPTER 3
I HAVE NEVER FOUND IT EASY TO sit still during Sunday school. Some of my earliest memories are of squirming on the hard wooden pews. I suspect the Brothers had them constructed this way on purpose, lest we get too comfortable.

It’s called Sunday school, but we are required to attend twice weekly: on Sunday before regular services and again on Wednesday evenings. There are two separate classes: one for children under ten, held in the classroom down the hall, to teach them basic prayers and the tenets of the Brotherhood’s beliefs, and one for girls aged eleven to seventeen, to teach us about how wicked we are.

The air in here is stifling, though the wind blows cool and fresh through the trees outside. The Brothers never open a window. Lord forbid we get distracted, even by something as innocuous as the September breeze tickling over our skin.
Brother Ishida, the head of the Brotherhood’s council here, teaches our class today. He is not a very tall man, only perhaps my height, but up on the dais he looms over all of us. His face is hard, and his mouth perpetually tilts down, as though he’s used to frowning his way through life.
“Submission,” he announces. “You must submit to our leadership. The Brotherhood would lead you down the path of righteousness and keep you innocent of the world’s evils. We know you
want
to be good girls. We know it is only womanly frailty that leads you astray. We forgive you for it.” His voice is full of fatherly compassion, but his eyes are contemptuous as they rove over us. “We would protect you from your own willfulness and vanity. You must submit to our rule, even as we submit to the Lord. You must put your love and faith in us, even as we put ours in him.”
Maura and I exchange scornful glances. Love and faith, indeed. Back in Great-Grandmother’s day, the Brotherhood burned girls like us. We are not without our faults, to be sure—but neither are they.
“We will never lead you into sin and temptation. Indeed, we will do everything we can to keep you from it. When the witches were in power, they did not encourage girls to take their rightful place in the home. They cared nothing for protecting girls’ virtue. They would have women aping men— dressing immodestly, running businesses, even forgoing marriage to live in unnatural unions with other women.” Brother Ishida allows himself a shudder of disgust. “Because of their wickedness, they were overthrown. It was the Lord’s will that the Brotherhood take their place as the rightful rulers of New England.”
I stare at the pew in front of me, at the blond curls dripping down Elinor Evans’s neck. Is he right? Almost one hundred twenty years ago, in 1780, angry mobs stirred by the rhetoric of Brother William Richmond burned the temples up and down the coast—often with the witches still in them. Ultimately, the witches’ magic wasn’t enough to subdue their subjects—not when the witches were so vastly outnumbered. The Great Temple of the Daughters of Persephone in New London was the last to fall. Most witches were murdered; the few who were left went into hiding.
Brother Ishida’s voice rises, his face going red, his black-marble eyes shining. “Our rules were made to
protect you from yourselves
. The witches were headstrong and lustful. Perversions of what women should be. Lord help us all if they ever rise again! We must never forget the evil they perpetrated—the way they corrupted our girls, and the way they used mind-magic on their opponents. These are women who left their enemies empty husks.”
I can—and do—mock much of what Brother Ishida teaches, but I can’t argue with this ugly bit of history. Mother confirmed the truth of it. When the early members of the Brotherhood first came to America, seeking religious freedoms, they were allowed to practice in peace. But as their numbers grew greater, they and their followers began to speak out against the witches, and they were systematically compelled to forget their objections. When the witches fell from power, the Brothers discovered asylums full of the witches’ enemies, the occupants reduced to childlike states or outright catatonia.
Elinor Evans shivers and waves her hand in the air. She’s a plump, placid girl of thirteen whose father is the chocolatier. “Can we go over the signs of mind-magic again, sir?”
Brother Ishida smiles. True mind-magic is rare as hen’s teeth, but the Brothers like to keep us frightened of it. “Of course we can. Headache. The feeling that someone is pulling on your hair, only inside. And your memory goes all foggy.” Brother Ishida’s eyes sweep over the crowd of assembled girls. “But if the witch is strong enough, there will be no symptoms. You may never know that she has invaded your mind and destroyed a memory. Witches are very clever and very wicked. That is why we must hunt them down and contain them, Elinor, so they don’t contaminate good girls like you.”
“Thank you, sir,” Elinor says, lifting her double chins with pride.
“You’re welcome. We’re nearly out of time. Let’s go over a few of the tenets of womanhood, shall we? Miss Dolamore! What is a woman’s highest purpose?”
Gabrielle Dolamore shrinks back in her seat. Her sister Marguerite is the one who was taken away last month, and the Brothers have been scrutinizing Gabby ever since. She’s a tiny girl of fourteen, all birdlike arms and legs. “To bear children and be a comfort to our husbands?” she whispers.
Brother Ishida strides forward to the very edge of the dais. He’s an imposing figure, cloaked in the Brothers’ black robes. “Speak up, Miss Dolamore. I can’t hear you.”
Gabrielle says it again, louder.
“That is correct. Miss Maura Cahill! To whom do you owe obedience?”
Next to me, Maura stiffens. “The Brotherhood. My father. And someday, my husband,” she replies, her voice crisp.
“That is correct. And what must you strive to be, girls? Answer all together!”
“Pure of heart, meek of spirit, chaste of virtue,” we chant.
“Yes. Good job, girls. That concludes our lesson. Let us clear our minds and open our hearts to the Lord.”
“We clear our minds and open our hearts to the Lord,” we echo.
“You may go in peace to serve the Lord,” he says.
We bow our heads. “Thanks be.”
Indeed, I am thankful that it’s over. I stand and arch my back as we wait for the children and adults to join us for the service proper. Some of the girls promenade down the aisle and back; others huddle together and giggle. I elbow Maura, who’s staring at Brother Ishida’s back as though he’s a two-headed calf.
“Perversions of what women should be,”
Maura mimics. “Because they loved other women? Or because they refused to submit to a man’s authority?”
She has a point. The Brothers say that women having romantic relationships with each other is a very great sin. But in other, freer places, like Dubai, women live openly with other women—and men with men. It’s not common, but it’s not illegal.
“I loathe him,” Maura hisses, her pretty face distorted with anger.
“Maura,” I say warningly, putting a hand on her yellow sleeve. I turn to see if anyone is within hearing distance. Thankfully there’s no one’s left in the pew behind us.
But Sachiko Ishida is just passing our row, arm in arm with Rose Collier. “You should see some of the new hats from Mexico City, they’re so dear! All decorated with feathers and flowers,” Sachi says loudly. “But Father says they’re far too gaudy. Only meant to draw attention, you know. Just like rouging your face. Only ladies of loose morals do
that
.”
“I hear girls in Dubai are wearing blouses separate from their skirts,” Rose adds in a scandalized whisper. “And sometimes trousers, just like men!”
Sachi gasps. “How positively indecent! I’d never go that far. Father says it’s only my womanly frailty that makes me wish for pretty things.” She catches me looking and winks a dark eye. “I shall have to pray harder to rid myself of sin.”
Is she joking? I’ve never seen the slightest indication that Sachi has a sense of humor. She is her father’s pet, a model of good behavior, and the most popular of the town girls. Her sixteenth birthday was a few weeks ago, and he threw her a grand garden party with croquet and chocolate cake. We were not invited.
I hold back a sigh. What I wouldn’t give to share in the freedoms of Arab girls. They’re allowed to inherit property and go to university; they’ve even been given the right to vote. But we never hear about witches living there. We never hear about witches
anywhere
. It seems like most of the world’s witches were drawn to New England by the promise of freedom—and within a few generations, they were all slaughtered.
Even if witches were allowed to live openly elsewhere, there’s no way for us to leave New England. Girls have more freedoms in the Spanish colonies to the south, but the borders are closed.
All
the borders are closed, except for official Brotherhood business and trade. Stowaways are punished as harshly as witches themselves.
Running away is impossible. We have to stay here and solve our problems. I reach into my pocket, where my fingers brush against the crumpled note from Z. R. It’s been nearly a week since I received the letter, but I’m no closer to figuring out her identity. I haven’t been able to find Mother’s diary, and there’s no mention in her correspondence of anyone whose name starts with a Z.
Who is Z. R.? And what sort of danger is she warning me about?