The Midnight Witch (43 page)

Of course I would rather Fitzroy Square had been spared. It was our family home, and I had been happy there. Its being bombed was yet another cause for heartbreak for Mama, and I forbid her from visiting the ruins. Not only was the house damaged beyond saving, but lives were lost that terrible night. Many of the servants were still downstairs in the kitchens or had moved to the shelter in the basement area to the front of the house. Some, though, had already gone up to their attic bedrooms and were killed the instant the bomb fell. We lost Cook and Sarah, the scullery maid. And our housekeeper, dear Mrs. Jessop, whose absence Mama feels dreadfully.

Iago and I were lucky to escape with our lives. Most of the catacombs caved in under the weight of the collapsing house and the force of the bomb blast. If ever I needed proof of the protection magic can give, it was there when I found myself standing unscathed among the rubble. All around me was devastation. What had been a fine house was reduced toso much debris, broken windows, shattered bricks, even the twisted wreckage of Mama’s beloved iron staircase, like the spine of some great slaughtered creature. Through it all came a pitiful mewing. Iago emerged, ironically saved by the wicked blow Willoughby had dealt, as it had left him lying winded beneath the lintel of the double doors to the chamber. And there was the cask containing the precious vial of Elixir, risen to the surface through the random force of the blast, a precious piece of flotsam amid a sea of chaos. Everything else the coven possessed by way of sacred items for worship and necromancy was lost. The Great Chamber is sealed forever, and in it lay Maygor’s Silver Thread, the witches’ trove, and the chalice. I thank the spirits the priceless drops of the Elixir were spared. The cask holding the single existing vial is now safely hidden in a place I am confident it can remain undisturbed, the Montgomery diamonds nestling snuggly with it.

It has been hard to witness Louis’s grief at losing his father. He loved him, naturally, and I have agonized over whether or not to tell him the real reason for the earl being in the catacombs that night. To burden our friendship, to start our married life together with the weight of such a secret is not easy. But I have decided there is no benefit to him knowing that his father was about to betray the coven. Or that he was prepared to sacrifice me in doing so. The man is dead. He can do no more harm. And how much harder it would be for Louis to accept his death if he knew that his actions were all for him. It would take from him the memory of the father he adored, and saddle him with guilt for his death. No, it is better he never knows. I will simply have to bear this hurtful knowledge alone, for his sake.

As darkness falls, London begins to sparkle with lights. It is a cloudless, late spring night, and the stars are too beautiful to miss. I step back into my bedroom and walk through to the hallway where I take the lift installed specifically to access my roof garden. The mechanism whirs softly as I am borne up through the ceiling, and out onto my very own high plateau. The space is comfortably large enough for reclining chairs, tables, and a small swimming pool, but it is not for these that I have made the ascent today. At the far end of the garden, with its low rendered wall, white-painted, and a door displaying a detailed replica of the dragonfly that once adorned the doors of the Great Chamber, sits the glass-domed construction which speeds my heart a little each time I enter it. Once I realized that the catacombs were lost forever, I knew I needed somewhere I could connect with the Land of Night. If this could not, for practical reasons, be underground, then where better than high up in the darkness of the nocturnal sky, as close to the starry heavens as it is possible to be? The engineers who constructed Waterloo Court rose to the challenge of my request for an observatory splendidly, and I shall be forever grateful for the fine results of their labors.

Inside, although there are in fact walls surrounding the space, they are barely noticeable, for they are less than a yard high, the rest of the construction being entirely of glass. And what glass it is! The specially made panes, some flat, others curved, are slotted into a spider’s web of slim iron, giving a startling view of the skies above, as well as the city stretched out below. I love to come here on stormy nights, when the wind and rain assail my transparent shelter, but I am kept dry and snug, able to experience all the wildness of the elements without so much as getting wet. And on clear nights, such as this one, I feel as if I have been raised up to dwell in the heavens and browse among the crystal stars. There is a telescope in the north of the room, mounted on gleaming brass fittings, so that I may study the celestial bodies more closely. It is a diverting pastime, perhaps the one guilty luxury I permit myself in these troubled times.

When the coven lost its home, it fell to me to provide, or at least to find, a new one. There were many ideas put forward by senior witches, all of a uniformly gothic and gloomy nature. But I felt the need for change. For a sacred space that would signify our commitment to the future, as well as the past. Who is to say that we must dig downward to reach the spirits? It is only tradition that has dictated this. We are not in the business of plucking the dead from their graves; we do not require them to physically clamber to the surface, so why must we burrow underground like moles? Spirits exist on a plane all of their own. It is the night that gives us best access to them, not the subterranean dark. There was much dissent among the coven at my idea. I expected it. But I held to my view. I even said that I would be happy for the senior witches to have an alternative venue for their meetings, so long as they realized that I, as Head Witch, would maintain the sacred space where I chose to. They were, after all, free to stay away from meetings held here if they wished. After a deal of argument it was agreed that the observatory would be the new home for the Lazarus Coven, so long as it proved successful. I had cushioned seating installed around the inside of the low wall, and the floor is painted exactly as the one in the Great Chamber had been. If spirits were reluctant to come to it, the matter would be reviewed. In fact, the spirits have shown themselves happy to come here when called or summoned, and to feel very at home in the airy, ethereal space.

There was another reason for my wish to free our rituals and meetings from such a place as a catacomb. I still wake gasping and panic-stricken some nights when the sight of what I saw in the Darkness when Freddie was nearly taken into its depths fills my nightmares. To think that I might have lost him to such a place. To such … beings. The Darkness holds all that is bad in this world once it no longer treads the earth. I will do all I can to stay away from it and not to put my fellow witches near such danger ever again.

A bell in a small alcove by the door rings gently, alerting me to a visitor. I pick up the telephone on the wall next to it.

“Who is it, Terence? Oh, please send her up to the observatory. And would you be so kind as to bring a tray of gin and tonic, too?”

One further advantage of the observatory over the catacombs is that it can be used for entertaining my friends. I could hardly have invited them into the Great Chamber, even if its existence had not been a secret.

Charlotte arrives in her customary flurry of excitement, with Terence, my rather aged butler trailing in her wake bearing the tray of drinks. I know him to be uneasy with heights, so that he has to steel himself to walk about on the roof garden. He is certainly no Withers, but he is quiet and diligent, and since he’d been wounded in the war and lost an eye, I know he would have struggled to find a position elsewhere. He lives with other servants in the building in the staff rooms in the basement, which suits us both. There is a restaurant on the ground floor from which food can be sent up, as well as my own small kitchen where Terence assembles breakfasts and suppers. Mama cannot fathom how I manage to live like this, but I find it blissfully uncomplicated and far more private than life at Fitzroy Square ever was.

“Lilith, darling!” Charlotte kisses me quickly and then flops onto a chaise longue, tugging off her gloves and removing her hat. “Goodness, coming up here is like visiting some rare bird up in its aerie.”

“I think that would make me an eagle.”

“Really? Oh no, that won’t do. Much too predatory.”

“An owl, perhaps? I am something of a night bird.”

Terence hands us both tall glasses of gin and tonic with generous slices of lime and lashings of ice. He picks up Charlotte’s discarded accessories and leaves us, walking a little unsteadily back to the lift door on the far side of the garden.

“No, owl won’t do,” Charlotte goes on. “They are too plump, somehow. I have it! You are a phoenix! You have risen from the ashes of Fitzroy Square and flown up to this lofty perch in all your glorious colors!”

I laugh at her. “Charlotte, what nonsense you spout. I am the least colorful person I know.”

“Oh well, have it your own way.” She sips at her drink. “I must say, that new man of yours might be unsteady on his pins, but he’s a whiz with the gin bottle.”

“He’s settling in.”

“How you manage without a lady’s maid I simply cannot imagine. Lord knows it’s an utter nightmare trying to find servants these days. Any worth having are all snapped up. Perfectly good maids have got all sorts of modern ideas into their heads since the war and now don’t want to be in service. I mean to say, how is one supposed to function? Mummy says if things continue the same way we shall be forced to give up Glengarrick.”

“Oh, surely not. The estate’s been in your family for generations. Can’t you just, well, manage with fewer footmen?”

Charlotte looks at me as if I have taken leave of my senses. “Lilith, darling, these are my parents we are discussing. They have no notion of ‘managing’ when it comes to servants. They think the setup you have here quite extraordinary. No, it will be down to me to save them, I fear. I shall simply have to marry well, marry quickly, and marry money.”

“Well, that sounds straightforward. Have you a lucky groom in mind?” I ask, sitting on the chair next to her.

“Don’t tease me. All very well for you to be smug. You know you’ve bagged one of the few decent bachelors going. How is darling Louis?” Charlotte settles deeper into the chaise and savors more gin.

“He’s very well, thank you.”

“Counting the days to the wedding, no doubt. Should be quite an occasion. Though so sad he won’t have his dear father there.” She pauses for form’s sake before adding, “Still, nice to be marrying an earl instead of a viscount, one would imagine.”

I know I should disapprove of so many things about Charlotte, but she has been a stalwart friend to me through difficult times, and she does make me smile.

“I’m sure the perfect knight, armor gleaming, will come galloping up to your door any day now, begging for your hand,” I tell her.

“Huh! I’ve had precisely two proposals of marriage since the beastly war ended. One was from a friend of Father’s who is more than twice my age, and the other from Sticky Stackpole. I mean,
really.
Someone has to tell him that cultivating an abundant mustache will not disguise the fact that he has a weak chin and an even weaker mind.”

“But he is ridiculously rich.”

“There is no such thing, Lilith. Which you should very well know. Once you and Louis unite the Montgomery and Harcourt fortunes you will be quite the wealthiest couple in London, shouldn’t wonder.” She is thoughtful for a moment and studies me closely. “You are looking a little thin. Are you eating properly?”

“Now you sound like Mama.”

“You won’t do that gorgeous gown justice if you’re all thin and scrawny.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.”

“Most likely wedding day nerves getting to you.”

“It’s weeks away yet.”

“But it will be a splendid event. Any girl would be a bit jittery, I’d have thought. So long as that’s all it is?”

“What do you mean?”

She sits up and puts her hand on mine. “You are happy about marrying Louis, aren’t you? Oh, I know I joke about marrying for money and all that, but you understand what I truly believe, Lily. One should marry for the right reason. You do love him, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” I reply with practiced ease, though I no longer know whom I am trying to convince more, Charlotte or myself.

“It’s just that, well, he has wanted to marry you for so very long, and you always said no before.”

“Things change, Charlotte. People change.”

“I suppose so. Only…”

“Charlotte, if you have something to say don’t you think you ought to come out and say it?”

She sits up, setting her glass down on the pale ash table. She takes both my hands in hers and squeezes them tightly.

“You simply do not look like a love-struck bride to me.”

“Oh, Charlotte, really, we are not silly girls…”

“No, listen, it’s just that I know how you look when you are in love, Lily, because I have seen it once before, and this is not the same.” She smiles at me and adds, “I have never seen anyone as
infuriatingly
beautiful as you were when you were with Bram!”

I keep my voice level but avoid meeting her eye.

“That was a long time ago, Charlotte. Everything is different now.”

“Is it? Are you telling me if he were to walk through that door now I wouldn’t see that same transformation in you? Because to be perfectly frank, darling, I believe you are still every bit as much in love with him as ever you were, and what you feel for Louis is not the same, is it?”

“Perhaps not,” I say, “but who is to say it is not more … sensible?”

Charlotte lets go of my hands and waves hers in a gesture of despair. “Lily,
please
! We are talking about being in love—I don’t see in the slightest what
sensible
has got to do with anything.”

I say nothing, for what can I say? I cannot tell Charlotte that, before that fateful zeppelin raid, I had myself decided I would find Bram again and tell him how I felt, because I believed love matters above all else. I cannot tell her how what happened changed things yet again. That how Lord Harcourt acted, what he was prepared to do, and what I must do to fulfill my obligations as Head Witch of the Lazarus Coven, all these things made me realize that no one but another witch could understand me. That it would be unfair, in fact, to love and be loved by a non-witch, for they could never understand the danger that surrounds me. The constant vigilance I must maintain because of what I am. Louis understands. Louis accepts all of these things, because we share that common path. Marrying Bram, even if I could find him, even if he would forgive me, even if he still wanted me, would be wrong. It would be unfair, unkind. It is better I do not see him again. Yes, marrying Louis is the right thing to do, however unromantic Charlotte thinks me. It is the sensible thing to do.