The Year of the Witching (22 page)

“And do you partake in them?”

She should have been afraid, but what welled up within her now was contempt—for him, for the Church, for anyone who would cast stones at others while hiding sins of their own. “No.”

The Prophet leaned forward in his chair, elbows on the table, fingers steepled. “So you mean to say you’ve never been in love?”

“Never.”

“Then you are pure, of heart and flesh?”

She began to tremble in her seat. “I am.”

There was a long beat of silence.

“Do you say your prayers at night?”

“Yes,” she lied.

“Do you mind your tongue and keep vile words off your lips?”

“I do.”

“Do you honor your elders?”

“As best I’m able.”

“And do you read your Scriptures?”

She nodded. Another honest answer. She read her Scriptures, certainly—just not the ones he was referring to.

The Prophet leaned into the table. “Do you love the Father with all your heart and soul?”

“Yes.”

“Then, say it.” This was a demand, not a question. “Say you love Him.”

“I love Him,” she said, a split second too late.

The Prophet pushed back from his seat at the head of the table and stood. He walked down the table’s length, stopped beside her chair, and put a hand to her head. His thumb traced the bare spot between her brows where wives wore their seals.

It was all she could do not to bolt from her chair and flee.

“Immanuelle.” He turned her name over on his tongue like it was a sugar cube, something to be savored. His holy dagger slipped from the collar of his shirt as he leaned closer, the sheathed blade skimming her cheek as it swung back and forth. “You’d do well to remember what you believe in. I’ve often found that the soul is apt to wander toward the dark.”

Her heart beat so violently she feared he would hear it. “I’m afraid I don’t understand your meaning.”

The Prophet leaned even closer. She could feel his breath against her ear as he whispered, “And I’m afraid that you do.”

“Enough.” The Prophet looked up, his hand slipping from Immanuelle’s head, as Ezra entered the dining room and edged around the table to her side. “She’s answered your questions, and the sun’s setting quickly. We should be on our way.”

The Prophet’s gaze darkened as it fell on Ezra, and Immanuelle wondered if he was even capable of looking at his son with anything other than scorn.

“Let’s go,” said Ezra, and this time there was a threat between the words.

The Prophet’s lips peeled back in a sneer. He started to speak but stopped at the sound of his name.

“Grant . . . the boy is right.” Immanuelle turned to see Abram standing on the threshold between the dining room and kitchen. He leaned on his favorite cane—a birch branch with a pommel he’d whittled into the shape of a hawk’s head—and his mouth was carved into a thin line. He spoke again, louder this time, though
Immanuelle knew every word was a struggle. “The roads are dangerous . . . at night . . . with the sick lurking.”

Immanuelle was so relieved to see Abram in that moment, she could have wept. Gone was the feeble, quiet man who’d reared her. The man before her now stood resolute, his shoulders squared, his jaw firmly set.

She remembered something Anna had once said, how, in the wake of Miriam’s death, after Abram had lost his Gifts and the title of the apostleship was stripped from him, he became a ghost of the man he had been before. But now, in this moment, as he stepped firmly over the threshold to stand alongside Immanuelle, it seemed like that man had been resurrected.

Ezra placed a firm hand on his father’s shoulder. “He’s right, Father. The sick are out of their senses, mad with fever. It’s not safe to travel the roads after sunset. We should be on our way.
Now.
”

Immanuelle waited for the Prophet to rebuke them, but he didn’t. Instead, he turned his gaze on her again. This time his eyes didn’t warm. “These are dark days, that’s certain, but the Father hasn’t turned his back on us yet. He’s watching. He is
always
watching, Immanuelle. That’s why we must remember what we believe in and keep to it, if nothing else.”

As soon as the Prophet departed, Immanuelle stood, the motion so abrupt her chair clattered to the floor. But she didn’t stoop to pick it up. Shaking and without a word, she fled the dining room to the front of the house. Abram called after her as she opened the door and stepped out onto the porch. There, she dropped to a crouch, pressed a hand to the planks to steady herself. She drew several ragged gasps, but the air was thick with pyre smoke and it did little to ease her burning lungs. She could still feel the Prophet’s hand at her head, his thumb pressing between her eyebrows, and the memory of his touch alone was enough to make her quake with fear.

“Immanuelle.” Ezra stepped outside and closed the door behind him. “Are you all right?”

She pushed to her feet, smoothed the creases from her skirts in a vain attempt to collect herself. “You should be on your way.”

“Humor me for a moment.”

“Why should I?”

“Because this is meant to be an apology.”

She frowned. “An apology for what?”

“For being drunk and harsh and careless. For my actions at the pond in the midst of my vision. For hurting you. For behaving more like an enemy than a friend. I don’t ever want my actions to make you doubt my loyalty that way. Can you forgive me?”

It was, perhaps, the best apology Immanuelle had ever received. It was certainly the most earnest. “Like it never happened,” she said.

Across the pastures and through the rolling smoke, Immanuelle spotted the Prophet on his horse, waiting for Ezra. There was a gravitas to his gaze, and even at a distance, she could tell he was watching them. “You need to go. Now.”

“I know,” said Ezra, but he didn’t move, just stood there staring after his father. It took her a moment to see the expression on his face for what it was: dread. “Do you still believe we can find a way to end this?”

Pyre smoke rolled across the road, obscuring the Prophet from view. “We have to.”

I often wonder if my spirit will live on in her. Sometimes I
hope that it will, if only so I won’t be forgotten.

—M
IRIAM
M
OORE

THAT NIGHT, IMMANUELLE
dreamed she walked through a field of amber. As far as the eye could see, waves of golden wheat rolled with the breath of the wind. Crickets warbled summer songs; the air was thick and sticky, the sky clear of clouds.

In the distance, two figures moved through the wheat like fish in water. The first, a girl with golden hair and a wicked smile. Immanuelle recognized her from the portrait in her mother’s journal: Miriam, her mother.

Walking alongside her, a tall boy with night-dark skin and eyes like Immanuelle’s. She knew, without really knowing, who he was upon first glance: Daniel Ward, her father.

Together, the pair waded hand in hand through the wheat, smiling and laughing, enraptured with each other, their faces warm with the light of the rising sun. When they turned and kissed each other, it was with passion . . . and yearning.

Immanuelle tried to follow them through the amber waves, but they were quick and she was slow, and when they ran she stumbled and lagged behind.

The sun shifted overhead, as if pulled by a string. Shadows fell
across the plains and the couple disappeared over the bend of a hill. Immanuelle struggled after them, catching the scent of smoke on the wind as night fell.

She heard the muffled rush of flames. Dragging herself through the last of the wheat, Immanuelle peered down at the plains below. There was a crowd some one hundred strong gathered around a pyre. Standing on that pyre, shirtless and bleeding, was her father, Daniel Ward.

A scream broke across the plains. Immanuelle followed the sound to Miriam, who cowered weeping at the foot of the pyre. Like her lover, she was bound, shackled at the throat. She lunged for the pyre, crawling on her hands and knees, the iron brace digging into her neck, but one cruel yank on her chain sent her sprawling, and she collapsed into the dirt again.

Immanuelle didn’t want to watch. She didn’t want to move, but she found herself descending the hill, the throng parting to make way for her. She came to stand alongside Miriam, in the shadow of the pyre.

The crowds parted again. A man passed through them. It took Immanuelle a moment to recognize him: the Prophet Grant Chambers, Ezra’s father. In his grasp was a flaming branch bigger than any torch she’d ever seen. He bore it with both hands, cutting across the field to the foot of the pyre in three long steps.

Miriam clawed at the dirt, shrieking pleas and spitting curses, begging and weeping and swearing on what little she had left to swear on—her life, her blood, her good word—to whatever god could hear her.

But for all of her pleas and curses, the Prophet did not heed her. He lowered the branch to the pyre, and with a roar, the flames stormed through the kindling.

Daniel did not move. He did not flinch. He did not plead the
way Miriam did. When the flames chewed up his legs and devoured him, he let loose a single, haunting cry and then fell silent. And as quickly as it began, it was over.

Flesh to bone to ashes.

Immanuelle staggered, stooped, and broke to her knees, hitting the dirt alongside her mother. She clasped her hands over her ears to block out the roar of the flames and Miriam’s keening, the jeering of the crowd. Every breath brought the stench of burnt flesh.

Smoke rolled across the flames, too thick to see through. Immanuelle choked, blind in the darkness; the light of the pyre died to little more than the dull glow of an ember in the night.

When the darkness cleared, Immanuelle found herself alone. The pyre was gone, as were the crowds. The Prophet and Miriam were nowhere to be seen. The plains were empty.

Overhead, the moon hung, fat and full.

Immanuelle squinted. In the distance, she could just make out the crude shadow of the cathedral, breaking above the waves of wheat. Immanuelle started toward it, crossing through the empty pastures, traveling east by the light of the moon.

When she arrived at the cathedral, she faltered, standing motionless in the shadow of the bell tower. The doors swung open slowly, and even from a distance, she caught the stench of something raw on the air, all blood and butchery.

Immanuelle climbed the stone steps and entered into a darkness as thick as night. She staggered down the center aisle, hands outstretched, moving from one pew to the next.

A flame flickered to life behind the altar. In its glow, Immanuelle could make out the shadow of a figure, Miriam. She wore a white cutting dress, its folds spilling over the swell of her belly. As Immanuelle drew nearer she saw that she was smiling—a wet
gash of a grin. In her right hand she held a broken antler like a dagger, its jagged point dripping blood.

A great shape moved from behind her, like a spider emerging from the edges of its web. Lilith prowled to the front of the altar and hovered at Miriam’s shoulder. Upon her arrival, the darkness retreated, and candlelight spilled through the cathedral. And as Immanuelle’s eyes adjusted, and the room came into focus, it was all she could do to bite back a scream.

The place was a tomb.

There were scores of corpses, slumped over the pews and crammed into the adjacent aisles, heaped beneath the stained-glass windows and in the shadow of the altar. All of them were mangled and ravaged, limbs twisted, heads skewed, jaws broken open.

Among the throng of the dead were faces she recognized. Judith lay in the pew at her side, her throat slashed above her collar. A few feet away, Martha lay facedown in a puddle of blood. By her side, Abram, his neck twisted on its axis. Cradled in his broken arms was Anna, her lips smeared ink black with blood. At her feet, Glory and Honor lay motionless, as if asleep, but their eyes were open, their mouths agape, as if they’d been struck down in the middle of a prayer. Leah lay stretched across the altar, her pregnant belly carved open like a gutting lamb’s. High above her, bolted to the wall with the sword of David Ford himself, was Ezra.

Immanuelle’s knees buckled. The floor went soft beneath her feet. She pitched forward, tripping over the cobbles. “What have you done?”

Candlelight played over Miriam’s face. That terrible smile of hers widened, like a wound ripping open. She began to laugh. “You know what this is.”

Overhead, the ceiling bowed, stones grinding like the
cathedral was collapsing in on itself. Immanuelle staggered back, but there was nowhere to run. “Why? Why would you do this?”

“Because they took him from me,” Miriam whispered, and at the sound of her voice the candlelight died, plunging the room into darkness. “Blood for blood.”

A child is a gift greater than any other.

—F
ROM
T
HE
W
RITINGS OF THE
P
ROPHET
E
NECH

GET UP.” IMMANUELLE
woke to the glow of lamplight and the harsh cut of Martha’s silhouette in her doorway.

Immanuelle snapped to attention, the memories of the massacre flooding back to her—the bodies, the blood, the slaughter.

“Ezra’s here from the Haven.”

“Again?” Immanuelle asked, her voice thick and hoarse with sleep. “Whatever for?”

Martha snatched her cloak off its hook on the wall and tossed it to her. “Leah’s in labor and she’s bleeding badly.”

“But she’s not due for weeks—”

Martha wheeled to face her. “You knew?”

Immanuelle fumbled with the buttons of her dress. “Yes, but she only told me a few weeks ago. I wanted to let you know, but she made me swear to keep the secret and—”

Martha raised a hand for silence. “Now is not the time for your confession. We need to go to the Haven. I’ll need your help at the birthing bed and Leah needs you too.”

MARTHA AND IMMANUELLE
rushed to the Haven by the light of the purging pyres. Ezra rode ahead of them on horseback, galloping across the Glades. By the time they arrived at the Haven’s gate, he was waiting for them. Immanuelle hopped out of the wagon before it slowed to a stop and broke toward him, sprinting through the rolling smoke of the pyres. He ushered them into the foyer and down the hall toward the bridal ward.

Let her live,
Immanuelle prayed, to the Father, to the beasts of the Darkwood, to the witches, to whoever was willing to heed her.
Please, let Leah live.

After a walk that felt leagues long, they entered into a ward Immanuelle didn’t recognize. Here, the cries of the blight sick faded to silence and only one voice sounded above the rest. A wet, gargling wail that slapped against the walls and echoed.

Immanuelle’s hands began to shake.

“This is as far as I go,” Ezra said, and his gaze fell to Immanuelle. “Be strong.”

She started to respond, but Martha cut her short. “Tell your father I’m here.”

Ezra nodded and, without another parting word, left.

Martha started forward ahead of Immanuelle, murmuring a prayer under her breath as she opened the door. They entered the room together. It was small, all aglow with firelight. The air thick with the scent of sweat and wood smoke. Toward the back of the room, speaking in harsh, urgent tones, were Leah’s mother and a few of her older half sisters. Their eyes were bloodshot and almost all of them were weeping.

At the center of the room—crowded by a throng of the
Prophet’s wives—was the bed where Leah lay, writhing. She wore nothing but a thin nightdress, its skirts pulled up to her armpits. Between her thighs was a dark puddle of blood. Her belly was swollen and striped with stretch marks that looked like knife wounds, badly scarred. The child turned within her, and each violent contraction elicited a scream from Leah that seemed to tear the air in two.

Martha paled. Her gaze turned to Ezra’s mother, Esther, who stood behind the headboard. She wore a long, bloodstained smock and her hair was pulled back into a fallen bun. It was the first time Immanuelle had seen her looking anything less than pristine.

“How long has she been like this?”

“Two days.”

Immanuelle stared at her, stunned. “You let her labor for
two days
without calling for aid?”

“Physicians in the Haven were by her side—”

“You should have sent for me sooner,” said Martha, a harsh rebuke.

“I know, but we were only acting on the Prophet’s orders,” said Esther, rushing to explain. “He asked if we might . . .
withhold
information about the circumstances of Leah’s condition for a little while longer.”

At once, Immanuelle realized why. He was trying to keep the birth a secret. Let Leah labor silently, in the confines of the Haven, attended only by personal physicians of the Prophet who were sworn by holy oath—on penalty of purging—to serve him and keep his secrets. By withholding that information, he could expunge the details of the child’s illegitimacy and, more importantly, his sin. In a few months’ time, he would announce the child’s birth, and no one would question the circumstances surrounding its conception. All would be deemed right and well.

Martha stepped around the birthing table and began her examination. As she worked, Esther moved a damp cloth across
Leah’s brow. She paused to whisper something in her ear, and whatever she said was enough to make the girl smile through her tears, if only for a moment. The woman turned back to Martha, lowering her voice to a whisper so quiet Immanuelle had to read her lips in order to understand her. “Were we too late?”

The midwife didn’t answer.

“Immanuelle.” Leah’s swollen eyes split open, and she threw out her hand. “Please, come.”

“I’m here,” said Immanuelle, breaking forward to take her friend by the hand. “I’m right here.”

Leah smiled and a few tears slipped down her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for what I said last time I saw you. Forgive me. Please. I’m so sorry.”

“Hush.” Immanuelle brushed a strand of hair from her face. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

“I didn’t mean it. I don’t want to be alone. I don’t—” A violent contraction cut her words short, and she grasped Immanuelle’s hand so tightly her knuckles popped. “I don’t want to be alone.”

“You’re not. I’m here now and I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

“But
I am
going. I can feel it—” Whatever she was going to say died into a scream. It was plain to Immanuelle that she wasn’t herself. Her cheeks were flushed with fever, and when her eyes weren’t rolled back into her head, they bore the same frenzy Glory’s did.

“It’s the fever,” Esther hissed, bracing both hands at Leah’s shoulders to keep her pinned to the bed. “She’s been this way ever since her labor began. No nurse or maid can calm her.”

Martha rolled up her sleeves and washed her hands in a basin of water by the window. “That’s the way of the plague.”

“Will it hurt her child?” Esther whispered, at which Leah loosed another long groan.

Martha cast her a glance so sharp it could have withered an oak tree. Esther fell silent. The midwife walked to Leah’s side and pressed her hand to the bare swell of her belly, her fingers shifting over the bruises and stretch marks.

“What is it?” Leah asked, her eyes wild. “What is it?”

Martha paled. “She’s dying.”

“A girl,” Leah said, her eyes rolling back into her head. “It’s a little girl.”

“We have to save her.” Esther cut around the bed to where Martha stood. “She’s the Prophet’s daughter.”

From the far corner of the room, an old woman started forward, leaning on her cane. Hagar—the first wife of the last prophet—raised her voice above Leah’s cries. “Cut her.”

There was utter silence. Even Leah’s screams were swallowed by it. A few of the brides clasped hands over their mouths. The youngest among them bolted to the door.

Immanuelle heard her own voice rattle through the room. “What?”

Hagar’s gaze shifted to Martha. “Cut her. Save the child. It’s the Father’s will.”

“No,” said Immanuelle, shaking her head. “You can’t do that. She’ll die.”

“My baby,” Leah mumbled, out of her senses. “I can hear her heartbeat.”

Immanuelle stepped forward, catching her grandmother by the sleeve. “Martha, please—”

“Get me binds,” said the midwife, tightening the laces of her apron, “and something she can chew on. A bit of leather, even a wood chip sanded smooth. We’ll need the poppy tincture too, for the pain.” Her gaze shifted to Immanuelle. “The child comes first. There is no other way.”

THE SERVANTS TRANSPORTED
Leah to another room, lifting her onto a wide oak table that looked like a wooden altar. Immanuelle stood at Leah’s shoulders, whispering stories into her ear as she had done for Honor and Glory.

“It’s going to be okay,” Immanuelle cooed, pulling a damp strand of hair behind the shell of her ear.

To this, Leah said nothing. She was gone now, lost to the stupor of the poppy tincture, which Martha had administered minutes before. Her bruised belly pulsed in a series of violent contractions, but she was so sedated she scarcely registered the pain.

“Get her out,” she slurred. “Just get her out of me. She can’t breathe. I can’t breathe with her in there.”

Martha entered from the hall, her hands still damp with the spirits she washed with. Her eyes met Immanuelle’s as she neared the table, scalpel in hand. “Hold her down, if it’s the last thing you do.”

Immanuelle nodded, bracing her hands on either side of Leah’s shoulders.

“This will hurt,” Martha said, gazing down at the girl, though Immanuelle wasn’t sure that Leah—drugged and drunk off the fever of the blight—was even capable of hearing her, “and it will hurt terribly, maybe worse than anything you’ve felt before. But you must be still and strong for your daughter, or she’ll die.”

Leah’s head rolled to the side. “Get her out. Just get her out of me.”

Martha lowered the scalpel to her hip, just beneath the bulge of the baby. She cut deep and steady, Leah wailing through gritted teeth as she worked the blade.

When she reared and struggled, Immanuelle threw her weight against her shoulders, forcing her down to the table. Opposite her, Esther pinned her legs and a few of the other girls broke forward, grabbing her arms to hold her fast.

All the while, Martha worked with stoic efficiency—hands and forearms bloodied, cheeks glistening with sweat. Immanuelle wanted to close her eyes and plug her ears, shield herself from the screams that rang through the room, but all she could do was watch as the midwife carved the wound wider and wider until it yawned open like a bloody grin.

Leah keened.
“Get her out of me!”

Baring her teeth, Martha dragged the baby through the wound and into the warm light of the hearth, the slick rope of her umbilical cord slithering after her like a viper.

Leah collapsed to the table, spent, and Immanuelle moved from behind her to Martha, who stood cradling the child, eyes wide, mouth agape.

“She has no name,” Martha whispered, hands shuddering around the child’s head so violently Immanuelle feared she’d drop her. “She has no name.”

Heart pounding in her throat, Immanuelle peered over the folds of the swaddling blanket. The child was small and pink, and her eyes were wide, irises a brilliant blue. She looked like a normal, healthy baby, except for the small cleft that dimpled her upper lip. Immanuelle extended a hand, and the baby grasped her by the finger, cooing a little as she peered up at her.

Leah groaned, fresh tears rolling down her cheeks. The dark puddle between her legs stretched wider and wider.

“No,” Immanuelle whispered. “She’s not dead. She’s breathing. She’s all right.”

Martha started to shove the child into Hagar’s arms, but she
refused it, cane striking the floorboards as she backed against the wall. “It’s cursed.”