Chapter Twenty-Six #3
She stepped into a simple room with a dirt floor.
Ancient candles covered every surface, dripping blood-colored wax, and a fire burned in the hearth.
Herbs hung from the ceiling, pennyroyal and silphium and St. John’s wort, all in dry bunches like witch’s brooms. A central table dominated the room, marked by the thousand cuts of a blade and worn smooth by countless hands.
Lady Sheers was a hedge witch, Elswyth realized.
A practitioner of dubious floromancy that existed somewhere between medicine and magic.
The old woman stood by the fireplace, taking a kettle off of its hook. Her one good eye reflected the flames, seeming amber-bright. Again, Elswyth had the feeling she’d been there before. A cold prickle moved up her spine.
The hedge witch gestured toward two stools that stood by the old table. “Sit,” she said. She took some tea from a jar on the far wall and made two cups, pushing one to Elswyth.
Elswyth remained standing. Something felt… wrong. Some sense warned her that danger was near, although she could not say why. “What do you know of Persephone?”
“I told you, I don’t know anyone by that name,” Lady Sheers said. “Wouldn’t you like some tea?”
“But you do know her,” Elswyth said.
Lady Sheers took a sip. Her old hands trembled around the cup. “She didn’t use that name. She told me her name was Miss Prince.”
Elswyth felt again that cold prickle up her spine. “That was her. That was Persephone,” she said. “But why did she come to you? Why here?”
The old woman said nothing. She simply stared at Elswyth and waited.
Elswyth looked around the room. She saw again the pennyroyal and the silphium, saw again the calipers and the long hook by the fire. And then she realized. “No…” she said.
“Yes, dearie.”
“She could not have been pregnant. She would have taken silphium, if she did not want to have a child.”
“’Twas not a child. A child laughs and plays and cries…’Twas but a seed, taken from its soil. Without the soil, the seed is nothing.”
Everything seemed to collide within Elswyth at once.
Persephone, having an affair with Prince Oliver.
Persephone, becoming pregnant. A royal bastard, especially with a noblewoman like Persephone, would muddy the line of succession.
Wars had been fought over less, and the Elderwoods and the Plantagenets were old enemies, after all.
So Prince Oliver rejected her, denying the child was his.
Sent her to Lady Sheers, to have his bastard removed before it was ever born.
“The pain she must have been in,” Elswyth said, “the shame he put her through. And she had to do it alone. All alone.”
“She was brave, if that helps you,” Lady Sheers said.
“And she… she went through with it. You removed this seed?” Elswyth asked.
“Yes. I gave her the herbs. But the old blood ran strong in her… That makes it more difficult, sometimes.”
Perhaps Prince Oliver couldn’t take that risk.
Perhaps he made sure that, no matter what, Persephone would never bear his bastard.
This explained why Persephone had been in the Rows the night she’d been taken.
But what of the Reaper’s other victims? Certainly they could not all have been pregnant with Prince Oliver’s bastards.
It didn’t make any sense. There were still pieces missing, but she was close, so close.
Elswyth got down on one knee in front of the old woman, taking her withered hands. “Please, Lady Sheers. Is there anything else you can tell me, anything at all?”
The old woman sighed. She took her hands from Elswyth and wrapped them around her tea. “All I know,” she said, “is that I’m tired. Girls come and girls go, and I do what I can, and in return I am called a murderer.”
For a moment Elswyth looked at the old woman—deformed by warping, alone in a dark house, helping women like Persephone, who would decry her as a witch if ever pressed.
In the light of the fire, she seemed less—or more—than human.
Emerald veins arched under her papery skin, so richly colored that if she were to bleed, Elswyth was sure the color of her blood would be green.
Something groaned in the room: the sound of earth shifting, of wood creaking in the wind.
The old woman looked at the ceiling, at the herbs hanging in their bunches, at the shadows flickering on the walls and making the room seem full of ghosts.
Then she sighed and looked down at her tea again and took the final sip.
“I knew that your sister would be the death of me when she walked through that door. The trees told me, whispering through the roots of the world. When I heard the Reaper’d taken her, I thought it was only a matter of time until he came for me. I suppose I was right.”
Elswyth chilled at the sound of her voice, ancient and resigned. “What are you talking about? Who? When?”
Lady Sheers put down her cup of tea. “The Reaper. Right now.”
Something flickered in the corner of Elswyth’s vision. She saw, reaching out from the ground at Lady Sheers’s feet, a single green vine. A second followed, and then a third, creeping in slow tendrils.
“What is—” Elswyth started. Then she looked up at Lady Sheers, who had started to stand. Or so she thought.
A vine as thick as a man’s wrist was wrapped around Lady Sheers’s throat, lifting her into the air. The woman’s good eye bulged. Her mouth hung open, trapped in a silent scream.
Elswyth stumbled backward, falling into the dirt. More vines shot up from the floor, sliding beneath Lady Sheers’s robes, around her wrists, her ankles.
The woman reached out to Elswyth with a single withered hand, a helpless look in her eyes. A scream gurgled from her throat.
Then the vine around her neck tightened. A snapping sound echoed in the small room, and Lady Sheers’s head jerked to the side. The light left her eyes, and a trickle of blood fell from her lips.
Elswyth lay frozen on the ground, looking up at Lady Sheers’s dangling corpse.
Then the floor itself began to crumble, and a shape emerged, lifting itself up from the darkness of the earth.
Vines, hundreds of vines, searching out like tentacles.
They grabbed on to the rafters of the room, onto the hearth, dug themselves into the walls. Slowly, a figure emerged.
At first, Elswyth wasn’t sure what she was seeing.
The head of the creature came first: a nest of vines writhing over each other, reaching out like rays from a dark sun.
But beneath it was the body of a man, tall and strong, wearing a fine gray suit in three pieces.
A black cloak hung from his shoulders, and black gloves covered his hands.
He rose out of the crumbling floor, inch by inch, vines always searching for new purchase.
Elswyth pushed herself up, tangled in her wedding dress.
She bolted for the stairs, throwing what she could behind her.
Jars of herbs shattered, and racks of rusted tools fell to the ground.
Vines shot out at her, burying themselves in the wall behind her head, but she dove for the stairs, scrambling up, up and out of the basement, not looking back.
Elswyth burst through the door and into the alley, screaming, “Percival! Percival!”
She lifted the hem of her wedding gown and ran down the long alleyway and the ivy-covered walls seemed to close in on her as she passed.
Percival stood by the carriage. He looked confused at first, and then Elswyth heard a cracking sound behind her. The Reaper emerged from the house, forcing himself through the door. It flew off its hinges and shattered against the wall next to Elswyth.
The debris struck her in the back, and she fell. She turned to see the creature following her, his shapeless head writhing, arms raised at his sides. He moved slowly, as if he couldn’t be bothered to hurry. Step by step he came, the tendrils of his face reaching out and searching for her.
A thunderclap shattered the air. A bullet hole appeared on the Reaper’s chest, just above the heart, and black blood sprayed from the wound. The creature stopped for a moment, looking down at the bullet hole as if curious. Then he raised his head of tendrils, unbothered, and continued toward her.
“Elswyth, run!” Percival shouted. He loaded his rifle with another round and then snapped the gun closed.
Elswyth leapt to her feet, turning back only to flash her hand at the Reaper. A spray of witch hazel thorns struck him in the chest, drawing more spurts of black blood. Each thorn held enough poison to kill ten men, but the creature didn’t seem to notice. He stepped closer.
Elswyth ran. She sprinted down the alley and past Kehinde, who ran the opposite direction. He’d leapt from the carriage with startling swiftness, sprinting toward the Reaper.
“Get behind me!” he shouted. He produced his walking stick, which seemed longer than before.
Carved patterns now twisted up the side.
He knelt, putting his lips to the bottom of the walking stick, and fired a dart at the Reaper.
It struck the creature’s chest, but the poison had no effect.
Kehinde’s dart and Elswyth’s thorns all fell uselessly to the ground.
Kehinde stood just as vines began reaching for him. He swatted one away with his walking stick and then another, striking them so hard that they sliced in two. They fell to the ground, still writhing.
A vine sped toward him, rearing and striking like a serpent. Kehinde raised his wrist and blocked it, but he was driven back. A second vine slashed across his torso. The fabric of his suit tore open, and black wood shone beneath it where his skin would be.
And then Kehinde began to change. Polished wood grew from beneath his clothes, up his neck and over his face.
Soon his skin was shining black. The Ebony had grown over his scars, making them seem like carvings in the wood.
Even his eyes changed, solid black except for the small dark pinpricks of his pupils.