The Midnight Witch (5 page)

Such poor imitations of what I saw. The strength and dignity of those mourners, that light … it is here and yet not. No. No. Wait, perhaps in this one? Yes! It is there. The spark of something. I must work on with this. Color. Color will bring it alive.

His food arrives and he reluctantly clears space on the table.

Am I wrong to believe I can do this? Will my new mentor assist me in revealing my talent, or will he simply reveal me to be a fraud?

He dines on what he fears might be his last steak for a considerable time, allowing for the little money he has brought with him, and then completes his journey to the address in Bloomsbury where the sculptor and his family live. He has been cautioned to expect, as Mangan had put it, “a fair amount of lassitude given and advantage taken where behavior, be it by adults or children, is concerned,” along with the warning that neither his wife nor his mistress see the value in housework. As they keep no servants—a result of both principle and thrift—this, he has been told, leads to a degree of “dishevelment” in the household.

He finds the street without difficulty. It is at the very limit of the district, where smart, stucco-fronted houses give way to less grand constructions of London brick. At first glance, the house itself looks reasonably kempt. There is no front garden, just a few stone steps up to the door. The woodwork paint is peeling in places, but the building seems solid enough, and there are gaily patterned curtains at the open windows. The day is fading into twilight, and what appears to be oil lamps give a welcoming glow from the rooms at the front of the house. From these same rooms come sounds of music and shouting, so that Bram assumes some sort of party is in progress. He knocks on the door, and not surprisingly, it goes unanswered, so, finding it unlocked, he lets himself in.

Despite what he has been told, nothing could have prepared him for the mayhem which he finds inside. The air is thick with the smell of oil paint and turpentine, so strong it catches at the back of Bram’s throat. The hallway itself has no lights, but is lit only by what lamplight falls through the doorways off it, or through what appears to be a large hole in the rear wall. There are pictures and mirrors aplenty, but no furniture, not a chair or a table, and nothing by way of hooks on which to hang a coat or hat. There are half-finished paintings propped against every wall, and wrapped lumps of stone, or smaller clay maquettes taking up space. The floor is of bare wood, which makes an excellent surface on which to ride bicycles, as three or possibly four (they move too quickly to tell) small children are demonstrating. Their shrieks of glee accompany some vigorous work on a piano in one of the adjoining rooms and the barking of a large, hairy, excitable, but mercifully friendly hound, which bounds about Bram as he attempts to set down his luggage.

A rosy-cheeked woman, who carries more weight than is flattering, appears in pursuit of two of the smaller children.

“Twins! Twins!” she calls after them as they speed away on a shared tricycle. “I have filled a bath for you. Come along now, do. We mustn’t waste the hot water. Whatever would Pa say?”

The children seem not to care, but only pedal faster and giggle louder.

“Twins!” the woman wails at them as they disappear through the hole in the back wall and out, as far as Bram can tell, into the darkening garden. Noticing him at last, the woman brightens. “Oh! Are you he? The artist, is it you?”

“Well, yes, I am. It is.” Bram snatches his hat from his head and is about to introduce himself properly but the woman spins on her heel and yells up the stairwell.

“Gudrun! Gudrun, he’s here. Will you tell Perry? Gudrun, where are you?” she cries, chasing her words up the stairs.

Bram waits awkwardly in the hall while further chaos swirls around him. More children tear in one door and out of another. The dog decides they are more fun than he is and gives chase. Bram can hear raised adult voices on the floor above. A boy with startling red hair, aged about seven Bram guesses, comes to stand next to him. He stares up with a pale, serious face.

“Pa’s gone out,” he says.

“Oh, I see. Was that your mother? Mrs. Mangan?”

“No, and yes,” says the boy. “She’s not my mother. She is Mrs. Mangan.”

“Ah.”

“My name’s Freedom,” the boy tells him, and then points at various darting figures. “That’s Honesty, Truth, and Purity. Those are the twins. Their names are Leo and Vincent, but mostly we just call them the twins.”

“I’m Bram. Bram Cardale. I’ve come to stay here. I’m a painter.”

The boy receives this information without a flicker of interest.

How many like me has he seen come and go,
Bram wonders.
How many hopefuls with their fragile talent and bright ambition?

“Do you know when your father is expected home?” he asks.

The boy shrugs.

“Who can ever know for certain what Mangan will do?” says a voice on the stairs. A woman comes down, her hair the exact color and texture of the boy’s, but worn long, loose and flowing about her shoulders. She is very tall and very beautiful, and her accent gives away German origins. Her skirt is loose and covered in paint, and the shape of her blouse suggests the absence of any sort of corset. She moves with fluid, graceful strides. “Mangan will do whatever Mangan wants to do whenever Mangan pleases,” she says, coming to stand in front of Bram.

Now that she is close to him he can see there is oil paint on her face, too. She takes a slim cheroot from a silver case and puts it in her mouth. “Have you a light?” she asks.

“I’m afraid I don’t smoke.”

“Pity.” She looks him up and down slowly. “Are you as strong as you look?”

Somewhat taken aback Bram says, “That’s a difficult question to answer. How strong do you think I look?”

“Quite. Though you are pretty, too. Or you would be, if you weren’t wearing those terrible clothes.” She makes a despairing gesture at his outfit. “If you keep all those buttons done up in this heat you will surely die, Artist. Do you wish to die young?”

Bram does not know which slight, comment, or question to respond to first. Before he can think of a suitable response the apparition turns and calls up the stairs in her slow, deep voice. “Perry. Come down and meet our new pet artist.”

Bram isn’t sure he likes being described in such a way and thinks he has never met anyone so strange.

But then,
he reminds himself,
this is London. This is an artist’s home. People do things differently here. I must embrace such freedom, not shy away from it.

Recalling reports of Mangan’s private life, he takes the woman to be his famous mistress from Berlin, a successful painter in her own right. The smaller, plumper one, the boy has confirmed as the sculptor’s wife. Freedom is clearly the mistress’s child. As he hasn’t noticed the vivid red hair on any of the others he assumes them to be Mangan’s legitimate children.

Mrs. Mangan descends the stairs rather breathlessly, followed by a somewhat skinny young man with a kind face and sandy hair.

“Gudrun, there you are. Perry, you don’t need a muffler, dear, it’s such a warm night.” She unwinds the scarf from around the young man’s neck and pushes him gently toward the door. “Now hurry along, do, all of you. There’s not a moment to lose.”

Bram finds himself being steered out of the house.

“Where are we going?” he asks, his feet not yet recovered from all the walking he has done, and feeling his arrival has somehow not received the reaction he was hoping for.

Gudrun dips her hand into Perry’s inside jacket pocket and removes a lighter. She lights her cheroot and replaces the lighter, letting her hand rest a moment on the lapel of the jacket as she does so. It is a small gesture, but one that strikes Bram as intensely intimate. All the more so because the young man does not take the slightest notice of her doing it. She inhales deeply, leaving her friend to answer Bram’s question.

“Jane wants us to retrieve Mangan,” he explains.

“Fetch!” says Gudrun through whirls of smoke. “Like we are the good little dogs.”

“He went off in a frightful tizz, determined he was going to Mr. Chow Li’s place.”

“Mr. Chow Li?”

Perry’s legs are fractionally shorter than those of Gudrun and Bram, so that he has to scamper to keep up.

“He has an opium den. It’s quite famous, you know. Down by the river.”

“Wouldn’t it be quicker to take a cab?” Bram suggests.

Gudrun looks at him keenly.

“Are you rich, Artist?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Then keep your money. You’ll need it.”

Perry laughs. “She’s right. We’ve never a shilling between us, any of us. It’s not that far to walk, really.” Remembering his manners, as if they were some unpracticed skill, he sticks out his hand. “I’m Peregrine Smith, Mangan’s assistant. Call me Perry, everyone does.”

“That’s what you think,” says Gudrun cryptically.

“Bram Cardale.” He shakes his hand. “Does he let you help? Really? With his sculptures, I mean?”

“Oh.” Perry colors. “Hardly. I just help with … you know … things. Make myself useful. But I do dabble a bit. When I have time. Nothing in the same league as Mangan, goes without saying…”

“Then why bother saying it?” Gudrun lengthens her stride and puts some distance between herself and the men.

“Is she always this … difficult?” Bram asks.

“Oh no,” says Perry, “sometimes she’s much worse.”

They laugh, and then fall to silence as they make their way through the teeming streets. They quickly leave the more salubrious area of the city and begin to wind between narrow rows of dingy little houses. The roads are, in many cases, nothing more than alleyways, and soon the summer stink of the river water drifts up from the Thames, guiding them toward Mr. Chow Li’s dwelling.

3.

I have to resist the near overwhelming desire to throw myself into my father’s arms. I know, of course, that he is walking in spirit, that his body lies in the gleaming coffin newly placed among our ancestors behind him, and that, however heartfelt his gesture, he cannot embrace me. I am not, as many others would have been, in the least bit alarmed or afraid to see my father’s ghostly form standing in front of me. I understand the dangers and the benefits of calling on the dead to aid magic and to divine the future. It has always brought me great comfort to know my loved ones are reachable in this way, if they themselves are willing to be called. Even so, I have to prepare myself for the fact that I will miss Papa’s physical embrace, and that it will take time to adjust to his nonmaterial presence. Standing here with him now I remember the first time I was called upon to fully summon a spirit on my own. It was a thrilling moment. The first time I not only heard but
saw
someone from the Land of Night. Saw them take shape in front of me. Watched them walk toward me. Spoke with them. Listened to them. All the time knowing they were there because I was a necromancer, and they had answered my call.

It is not a skill that comes to anyone on the first time of trying.

For weeks, Louis and I had been charged with perfecting the art of calling spirits to speak with us, without asking them to show themselves. As ever, Louis was bored with the mundane business of repetition and practice, and eager to move on to what he saw as necromancy proper.

“I mean to say, Lily, how many times are we expected to do this? I can call the voices at the drop of a hat. Your father knows that. So does Lord Grimes, and Druscilla. It’s a waste of time, doing it again and again.” He paced the floor of the antechamber restlessly.

My other teacher, to whom I owe any skill with magic that I might lay claim to at all, is the eldest senior witch of our coven, Druscilla Larkspur. Druscilla is a woman who has magic at the core of her bones. To stand next to her is to feel it. I wonder that non-witches are not disconcerted by the force that emanates from her, for they can have no understanding of what it is that makes her eyes shine and her skin glow, even though she has at the very least passed her ninetieth year. True, she looks in all other respects like an elderly woman, if rather tall and surprisingly straight backed, and though she carries a walking stick she appears never to need to trust any weight to it. She is very thin, and her face shows the struggles and cares that have afflicted her through life. Yet there is such a strength about her. She was a patient teacher, but loathed laziness, and would suffer neither pride nor false modesty in her students, so that each of us trod a fine line if we were not to incur her displeasure. She often conducted her sessions in total darkness, which was a test in itself.

I smiled at Louis. “Druscilla says practice is never a waste of time, not if you are striving for perfection.”

“I don’t think it’s something one can be perfect at. It’s not as if the spirits are all orderly, organized beings who do what they are told…”

“You are not supposed to
tell
them anything, not when you are calling…”

A noise from the doorway to the catacombs made us both jump. We turned to find Father standing there, wearing an expression of barely contained irritation.

“I am glad to hear you have learned that much from your studies at least, Lilith,” he said.

Somewhat stung, I answered, “I do my best, Papa.”

“I hope so. Let’s hear it, then. Let’s see how much you both know, if you are so very
expert
.” He spat out the final word, pointedly directing it at Louis. “Which of you can tell me the difference between ‘calling’ and ‘summoning’?”

To his credit, Louis responded without a trace of rancor in his voice.

“A called spirit is requested to attend, invited to step into the Land of Day and commune with the living. A summoned spirit has no choice. If the necromancer is skillful, whoever he summons must at the very least speak with him. At best he must show himself, too, whether he wants to or not.”

“And if the necromancer is lacking in skill? What might be the outcome then?”

“That would depend,” said Louis, ignoring the intended slight, “on what sort of spirit was being summoned. If it is a Gentle Spirit, merely … reluctant, it might happen that no connection is made. If, however, it is a Dark Spirit, and vehemently resists the control of the necromancer, well, it might … cause difficulties.”