Chapter 58
SUSANNA
When Mountbron does come crawling, you are delighted.
There’s a group of marauding vagrants terrorising the remoter farms, forcing rough hospitality from the homesteaders.
Word is they’re Confederate deserters who changed their colours and fled as far as the road would take them.
They’ve tried to disguise their accents, but what’s been overheard has given them away.
Elora’s absent when the deputation comes to ask for help.
She’s travelled to meet a freed couple from South Carolina who’ve heard of Haven and wrote asking for refuge.
Seems wherever they’ve previously tried to settle, they found themselves unwelcome twice over for their skin and for their magic, even though the husband was his master’s bookkeeper and a literate man.
Your grandmother was eager to help, although Constance Kilpatrick’s nose wrinkled as Elora told the community to prepare for the two new arrivals. She’ll be gone for a week.
There’s a warded perimeter around the house and the three Mountbron men wait respectfully, hats off, at the boundary within sight of the front veranda.
Their humble attitude pleases you, as they unfold tales of milk guzzled, pigs slaughtered, silver spoons pilfered, elders insulted, daughters harassed and worse. They plead for your help.
‘We shall wait till Elora is back,’ says Missus Kilpatrick, who fancies herself your grandmother’s deputy.
‘No,’ you say. ‘This is straightforward, and the need is clear. I’ll help. Girls?’
The Swinson twins exchange looks, but they’re bolder now than they were.
You’re spending time with them each day, encouraging their magic, learning from them how to blend powers and mixing your own with theirs.
They were frightened the first time your magics touched.
Over time they’ve grown accepting, and now, almost welcoming.
‘We’ll come.’
Kilpatrick opens her mouth to protest, her daughter mutters something like, ‘It’s not seemly’, but you’re down off the veranda and the wards rippling over your skin before either of them can object.
Inwardly, you seethe at Kilpatrick’s presumption.
You are a Fenn. Elora’s heir. In her absence, it is you who speaks – and acts – for Haven.
The men have brought a cart for you to ride in, and you rattle down the tracks for a half-hour or more.
You hear what lies ahead before you see it – the noise of angered men.
Raised voices. The clash of dulled metal, perhaps farming implements.
Chants and taunts. The twins huddle into each other as the scene is revealed.
A poor farmhouse, ringed with townsfolk, one of whom clasps an old man in a faded patchwork quilt.
You struggle to place him and are grateful when one of the girls whispers ‘Poor Old Jericho’.
He’s a childless widower, who lives alone on what was once a sturdy little homestead that has slowly slid into disrepair, decay, and poverty.
It’s still got walls, a roof, and a sizeable plot, though.
And now it appears to have new occupants.
Four ragged men, roughly shaven, blackened toes poking from boots split wide in leathery smiles.
Fingers missing, teeth missing. Skin both sunburned and scarred.
Empty bottles on the front steps. Food detritus and bones tossed about.
Dogshit in heaps yellowing the grass, and a snarling, earless mutt roped to the porch stoop.
A summer-hot stink that blends dog, men, shit and trash.
Guns over the shoulders of two of them. A third holding his rifle ready at his side, jittering from foot to foot. The townsfolk are also armed, but not likewise. The elderly marshal has a revolver, but otherwise it’s pitchforks, hoes, a butcher’s knife, a heavy stick.
‘It ain’t lawfully yours,’ the marshal is saying. ‘It belongs to this old fella here, and you need to leave. You’re not wanted. You’ve been putting fear in the hearts of honest folk, and now this is plain wanton theft.’
‘That old fella has let it go to rack and ruin,’ the unarmed leader says. ‘We’re doing y’all a favour.’
And there it is, that Southern tell. Not all of you but y’all.
‘You’re thieves and riotous livers, and like as not deserters, or if not deserters then the enemy pure and simple. If you don’t leave we’ll have to make you.’
The marshal’s fired up by his own pretty speech, but you can see it means nothing to these hard and desperate men.
‘For shame!’ screams one of the Mountbron folk. ‘Get off Old Jericho’s land.’
Quicker than anyone could guess or prevent, the jittery young man has his rifle shouldered and locked, and folk are still reeling from the noise of its discharge when the old man in the patchwork blanket slumps to the ground.
‘It ain’t Old Jericho’s no more!’ yells the youth, cackling at both his jest and his daring.
The marshal cocks and levels his revolver in reply.
‘I wouldn’t be aiming that at my boy,’ warns the vagabond leader.
He eases back his coat to reveal a revolver of his own.
‘We’ve four guns to your one. Let’s be reasonable men.
That old fella wasn’t long for this world anyway.
And sure, we’ve been causing a little ruckus roundabouts, but that’s coz we’ve been without a place to call our own.
There’s no children to turn up and claim this one, so howabout you let us settle in here and I’m sure we’ll all get along a lot more neighbourly in the future. ’
‘The war’s over,’ says the marshal. ‘That means there’s no more guise for murder. You four can clear off away from this district forever, or you can hang for killing Jericho.’
‘Who’s gonna make us do either? A rabble of half-starved townsfolk with rakes?’
You’ve been watching these two men talking back and forth, seeming so calm and collected, though you’re sure inside their breasts their hearts are beating like drums. Well, you’ll show them who’s master of that.
‘I’ll make you,’ you say, stepping forward.
The leader looks you up and down. Half contemptuous, half assessing.
He doesn’t have the measure of you but knows there must be some reason for your bravado.
You silently accept his scrutiny. The moment stretches on.
In the corner of your eye you see Mountbron men shifting and exchanging doubting looks.
‘First I thought you was a whore sent to ’tice us out for a turn with your girls there,’ the vagabond says. ‘But none of you’s pretty enough, so I guess you’re a witch. How’re you going to make us, then? Confuse us and turn us about a bit? I’d like to see you try.’
‘Why thank you,’ you say, all nice. ‘It’s lovely to be invited. Such agreement’s the very foundation of magic.’
You beckon the twins, who stand at each shoulder. Uncurl your palms. Ruin on your right, Command on your left. These men’s destruction. A dozen different ways of doing this ran through your head even as the man studied you, aiming to intimidate. More fool him for giving you so much time.
For the first Command, your own magic suffices.
The more contrary to a person or thing’s nature the order you give, the more power is required.
Here, your sigil pushes against the men’s will, and because they are weak – as all men are, and all mundanes – they capitulate without a murmur.
The three with rifles turn like marionettes and toss their weapons to the ground before the astonished Mountbron townsfolk.
You hear their approving murmurs, ‘Nicely done, missy!’, and don’t miss the complaint that you forgot the leader’s revolver.
You didn’t forget.
Your next Command is more fiercely resisted, so you tap a little of the twins’ deep, slow, strong magical reserves. You hear them gasp in your ear, a gentle, pained, yielding sound that’s almost erotic. The ragged leader’s hand goes to his revolver.
‘Yeah, Pa, yeah!’ urges his son.
The puppeted man turns to face his boy. Raises the gun.
‘No!’, he gasps, and you permit him to say it, for the dark pleasure it brings.
‘Pa?’ the lad asks, not grinning now.
His father shoots him in the face. Then again, in the chest, as he falls.
You walk the man across to stand over the body.
Tears are streaming down his face. You know he wants to curse you, but you’re less inclined to hear that, so his mouth stays shut.
You aim his hand downward. A final bullet enters his son’s skull.
‘Jesus!’ cries one of their two companions. ‘We’ll go! We’ll leave! He’s the one that shot the old fella. Take him for justice. We never wanted to follow him anyhow. He made us. Said there was safety in numbers. That if we had his back, he’d have ours.’
‘Your hands are innocent of Old Jericho’s blood,’ I agree. ‘But what about Mr Hempstall’s daughter? They say the man who forced her was blond. Hair as yellow as Kentucky corn. I wonder who can have done that?’
‘It weren’t me.’ The man pulls his cap down low over dirty blond curls. ‘It was the boy that done it.’
‘Or the fellow who stole the Andersens’ pig – he carried it off marvellous well despite having only three fingers on one hand.’ The fourth man flinches beneath your gaze. Digs his stumpy hand into his pocket. ‘By my reckoning, you’re all guilty.’
The Mountbron men are liking this. They applaud and cheer. ‘Let us have ’em!’ one calls. The marshal promises they’ll be under lock and key tonight and for years to come, excepting their leader, who’ll hang. But you can give them all something better.
Using Command, you turn all three about, march them inside the tumbledown farmhouse. Everyone hears the bolt shoot from inside. You release your Command and the men within, who maybe have some inkling of what you intend, begin calling for mercy. Begging to be allowed to face trial.
‘Miss Fenn?’ the marshal asks you. ‘We need ’em out here, not in there. Let ’em back out, there’s a good lass.’
There’s a good lass? When you just Commanded a man to shoot his own child? The men of Mountbron still don’t understand. This is a lesson for them as much as for the vagabond gang.
You’ve practised with both your sigils. Command, easily, unobtrusively, on those you live with.
Just nudging their will. Steering it. Nothing so as they’d notice.
Occasionally Connie Kilpatrick looks startled at how readily she agrees to your request that she helps Abner clean the stable, or that the community’s undergarments could do with a rinse by hand, or the vegetable gardens would be helped along by a layer of fresh manure.
But Connie knows herself to be an angel of helpfulness, so why wouldn’t she comply?
Practising Ruin has been more difficult.
You’ve had to creep into the woods, and even then confined yourself only to dead trees.
Searched the carcass-trunks for sheltering creatures to be shooed to safety, before incinerating the dead wood, exploding it.
Truth be told, you’ve been itching for a chance to unleash this sigil fully.
How glorious you would have been in battle!
You ignore the marshal. Raise your left hand, palm out. Reach inside the twins again, for the pleasure of it, though your own magical reserves are more than enough. You want them to feel the same thrill you do.
You call upon Ruin.
The men inside the farmhouse haven’t a moment to cry out.
But the men of Mountbron do. They cower.
Arms fly up to protect faces, eyes. A couple have fallen to their knees.
One makes the sign of the cross. You laugh at him.
You laugh at the world, that calls women good lasses and fails to see that a witch’s will can accomplish more than twenty men.
Where the farmhouse stood is now a reeking crater, like a cannon larger than any used in the war went off right here, on the outskirts of snivelling Mountbron, Maine.
Three men are dead in there, but not a trace of them remains.
Not a sliver of bone or gobbet of charred flesh.
Nor a stick of the house that Old Jericho and his wife called home for half a century.
That smoking rag fluttering down from the sky, ember-bright and already mostly ash, could have been a scrap of her prized lace.
Or the remnants of a christening robe for a child born dead and followed by no others. Nothing else remains.
Your chest heaves like a warhorse’s, and you are equally exhausted and elated. You turn to the folk of Mountbron to collect your due adulation.
In their eyes is only fear.
You delight in that, too.