“No, I’ll be fine. I know the way, and it’s not completely dark yet. You must be exhausted, in any case.”
“I’m a bit tired, yes. Now, I have to ask you to do something for me.”
“Anything.”
“I need something of Frances’s. Something personal, to add to the manikin. A bit of hair is best, but a piece of jewelry will work, or a snippet of fabric she has worn close to her body, such as a chemise or a corset.”
“I can do that.”
“I’m very sorry to involve you in this, Annis.”
“I want to help.”
“I know you do, but I must warn you that the maleficia is not only dark but dangerously powerful. Such power can be intoxicating. It can corrupt the practitioner.”
“You think that’s what has happened to Frances.”
“The darkness was always within her, I’m afraid. It’s in her Bishop line. The maleficia brought it out, and now that she has tasted it, I don’t know if she can turn away. I want you to understand.”
“I think I do.”
“Good. Best hurry now. You have a long walk ahead of you. I’ll meet you tomorrow in the folly. Come after breakfast.”
Annis bid Harriet farewell and hurried out of the room and down the narrow staircase. She walked as quickly as she dared up the street, and when she reached the path to Rosefield Hall, she broke into a run.
27
Harriet
It was the dinner hour, but Harriet couldn’t face the smoky dining room of the Four Fishes. She wasn’t very hungry, but she was, as Annis had said, exhausted. She decided on an early night, the first since her arrival at Seabeck Village. It would be good to have one full night’s sleep.
As she laid out her clothes for the morning, she lamented Grace’s absence. None of her shirtwaists were particularly clean. She had washed out her smallclothes as best she could, but there was little she could do about her other things. Grace would be appalled at the state of her meager wardrobe.
Harriet sighed. She would be glad, just at this moment, to be bathed in a flood of Grace’s soothing, inconsequential chatter, to be free of the anxiety that gripped her, her worry for Annis, her fear for James, her horror of the maleficia. She remembered how difficult it had been to resist its appeal once she had felt it thrill through her body and her mind. Beryl had been right about that. She had been right about Frances, too.
Annis’s description of Frances’s rage brought back the memory of the shade of Bridget Bishop, still furious after two hundred years. It boded ill for them all.
Harriet closed the little wooden box, hiding the manikin from view. Her belly had roiled as she shaped the figure, added the pebbles and bark and fur, and wrapped it in flannel. It was still a dead object, nothing but a collection of oddments. With nothing of Frances added to it, it could be discarded without a thought, and with all her heart, she wished she could leave it that way. If Frances would only stop now, give up her assault on the marquess, let him and Annis be, Harriet would not have to take this perilous step.
She extinguished her lamp but left the window open to let the night birds soothe her troubled soul, to be lulled by the distant swish and pull of the sea. She fell asleep watching the stars begin to sparkle, one by one, tiny distant jewels coming alive in the darkness.
Far into the night a nightmare woke her. It was a dream she had suffered before.
It was of her beloved Alexander on his deathbed, grievously wounded through the chest by a rifle bullet. His injury had been beyond her skill to heal. She could do nothing but watch as his life slipped away.
He had, they told her, hesitated at a crucial moment. He had been leading a charge, his men behind him, the enemy dug into their places, waiting. Just at the time he should have taken cover, leveled his own rifle, he stopped. His men raced on, but he stood, an officer frozen on a hillock where anyone could see him—the perfect target.
She had tried to stop him going into battle. She had made a manikin of him and created a cantrip to make him crave peace instead of war. She had tried to extinguish his wish to fight, but she had succeeded only in weakening him, making him vulnerable. It had cost him his life. She