Witchfinder, Free Novel, Chapter 10

UPDATE:  A SLIGHTLY EDITED AND PRETTIED UP COMPILATION OF ALL CHAPTERS UP TO A WEEK OLD IS HERE

*This is chapter ten of witchfinder, the Fantasy novel I’m posting here for free, one chapter every Friday.  I’ve been posting director’s commentary at the end of chapters, but I think it detracts from the experience, so I’ll do that on Sunday, instead, for the previous chapter.  If your conscience troubles you getting something for free, feel free to hit the donate button on the right side.  Anyone donating more than $6 will get a non-drm electronic copy of Witchfinder in its final version, when it’s published.  And, oh, yeah, the cover sucks, but I haven’t had time for a new one.

Oh, this is in pre-earc format, meaning you’ll find the occasional spelling mistake and sentence that makes no sense.  It’s not exactly first draft, but it’s not at the level I’d send to a publisher, yet.*

For first chapter, look here

For ninth chapter, look here

A Mother’s Heart

They were keeping secrets again.  The Dowager Duchess knew this, though she couldn’t tell about what exactly.

For the two days of her son’s illness – of his lying beneath healing spells, swaddled in blankets and force fed broth – she’d wondered how it had come to this.  And she’d wondered what Gabriel knew that she didn’t know.

Something it was, that she could be sure of.  For one, Gabriel’s face was always easy for her to read.  Had to be, as much as he resembled her own son.  The reasons for that, though she’d tried to forget them, couldn’t but confuse her feelings towards the boy.  She both loved him, almost like her own son, and she hated him as a reminder of a dark time in her own childhood and of the misadventure that had almost lost her to the world of humans.

It had been the same since the moment her husband had brought Gabriel in, and the truth was that if Gabriel hadn’t been a year older than Seraphim, and a few months older than their marriage, the dowager would have insisted on claiming him as a son and brazening the world and the ton with some excuse about one of a pair of twins stolen by magical beings.  But Gabriel was the elder, his age could be found by magical means not too difficult to employ, and there was no way to make that lie convincing.  Not when at the time of Gabriel’s birth the, then, Lady Barbara Hartwit had been dancing the night away at various soires and balls, slim as sylph and still unmarried.

Also, they couldn’t risk Gabriel inheriting.  Not with the blood in him.  Most other people would not have been sure about allowing him into the house.  She remembered her husband asking her “Are you sure Barbara?  We don’t know, after all, how he will turn out.  There are some who say–”

But all she’d done was nod, because he’d told her what he’d taken the boy from, and what fate waited him if his mother’s people got their hands on him, and Gabriel looked so much like Seraphim even then, that Barbara could not imagine consigning the child to death, or worse.  So she’d taken him into the house, and raised him as a fosterling, letting everyone know he was her husband’s son and that some provision would be made for him in the fullness of time.

They’d been more than ready to make provision, too, despite their straightened circumstances.  They’d sent him to Cambridge with Seraphim, and were ready to stand him his beginning in a small magic business, or, perhaps, in law.  Even the church, if he had a bend for it, though considering the magical trouble the boy got into, that seemed like a forlorn hope.

But now, standing in her room, pacing, Lady Barbara realized that had been the first sign of trouble. Gabriel had been sent down from Cambridge, for an offense that her husband would not speak about, that Seraphim claimed to be sworn not to disclose, and that Gabriel himself turned pale but refused to speak of it.

Something had happened there.  For a time, the Duchess had nurtured suspicions, but not if Gabriel was in a fair way to being engaged.

The problem was that she didn’t quite believe he was in a fair way to being engaged.  Not to Miss Felix, at any rate.  She didn’t know who the woman was, but she would bet she was not who she’d said.  For one, the Duchess could feel Miss Felix’s magic quite well.  And it was not the kind of trifling magic that would fall to the lot of an illegitimate daughter or the daughter of a poor family.  A woman who brought that kind of magic with her could aspire to the highest families in the kingdom.  She would not be considering Gabriel, such as Gabriel’s position and expectations appeared to be, and she would not be meeting with him on the sly.

No.  The girl was something to do with Seraphim.  And Gabriel was hiding what he knew of it, and what he knew of Seraphim’s injuries, too.  And it was no use at all denying it.  She’d marked how Gabriel stinted sleep to stay by Seraphim’s side and listen for any stray word, any casually dropped hint that might have told the dowager more than they wished her to know.

She took a deep breath.  She was afraid for the boys.  This time, whatever trouble they’d managed was far more severe than the forcing house.

A scratch at the door called her attention.  It was the sort of gentle scratching that she’d taught her daughter to employ, instead of the far more brash knocking.  “Come in,” she called.

Caroline came in.  She looked like a younger replica of her mother, her features small and well place in her oval face. Only her eyes were the same as her brothers’, the large, intensely green eyes of the Ainslings.  Right at the moment, they were wide open, and her skin, which tended towards a more golden color than that of the boys, had gone pale.  The dark hair which she wore in demure braids had become lose and she was clutching the skirts of her white muslin dress in great handfuls, probably as a result of having run up the stairs, “Mama,” she said, without preamble.  “There was someone…”  She swallowed hard.  “There is someone killed in the garden.”

The Duchess clutched at her skirt, in an involuntary reaction, “There’s been an accident?” she asked, and then as it occurred to her that the hour being late, her fifteen year old daughter, barely out of the nursery, and certainly not out of the school room, should not be up.  “And pray tell, where were you?  And why are you not abed this late at night?”

But Caroline only looked at her as though the dowager had taken leave of her senses.  “I was looking for Michael,” she said, as though that were of little or no importance.  “But Mama, there was a death.  Seraphim killed someone.”

“Impossible!  Seraphim is in no state to–”

“Pray, listen, Mama.  Just listen.”  The girl was far too high spirited, and now she would carry her point in the face of her mother’s disapproval.  “I went out to the garden, to look for Michael, because he is not in his room, and I thought he might be in his workshop.  You know how he can get absorbed in his magical machines, and forget the hour.  He didn’t come for dinner, either, so I thought I’d go and drag him indoors to eat and go to bed.”  She paused.

The dowager nodded.  Her daughter’s attachment to her twin was well known, though why she should fancy herself as though the boy’s mother, Barbara Ainsling would never understand.

“He was not in the workshop,” Caroline said.  “And I thought perhaps he’d come in and was in the library doing some research.  So, I came in through the side servant entrance, and that’s when I heard the footmen going out there.  They went by me in the second floor landing, and have no fear, Mama, they never saw me, for I knit myself with the wall, but they were talking, and they said his Grace had sent out a killing bolt.  That they’d felt it.  And it was no use at all Mr. Penn saying it had been in self-defense, because how could it be, when it must have sought out the poor bas– the poor victim at the bottom of the garden, as the cook had seen it fly, true and fiery all the way there.   It had to be a targeted murder, and his Grace probably had done it while out of his mind with fever and knowing no more what he was about than he’d known in his ramblings these last two days.”

“And you came to tell me of what you heard?” the Duchess asked.

Caroline looked faintly shocked at the idea, “Oh, no, Mama.  Nothing so cowhearted.  I followed them, of course, in the dark.  No, Mama, don’t scold, I promise they did not see me.”

At any other time, the Duchess would have scolded the hoydenish behavior, but now she could only say, “And then?”

“What do you think?  They got a man from the bottom of the garden.  A very well dressed man, Mama.”

“Alive?” the Lady Barbara asked, on a sudden impulse of hope.

“Oh, no, Mama, very dead.”  Caroline pulled back her hair, which had loosened completely from her braid and fallen in front of her eyes.  “And I’m sure it was done with a killing bolt, Mama.  It had that feel.”  For the first time fear superseded excitement and she added, “Only…  Mama, Seraphim can’t have known what he was doing.  They can’t hold him responsible, can they?”

Only the Duchess wasn’t sure that her son wasn’t responsible.  There was the something he and Gabriel were holding secret.  But the time for hesitating was over, “I don’t know,” she told Caroline.  “But I intend to find out.  You go to your bed.  You did well in telling me, but not well in wandering about the house at this hour.  Go to your room and to your bed, and leave me to find out what happened.  I’m sure your brother wouldn’t do such a thing unless there were a legally defensible reason for his actions.”  At least she very much hoped so.  As was, a problem of this magnitude, legal or not, might be the end of all his chances with Honoria, particularly on top of the shamefully delayed engagement announcement.  The unworthy thought that perhaps this was planned crossed her mind.  But no.  Why would the boy insist on the engagement, then seek to escape it by dangerous means?

She kissed Caroline’s forehead and said, “Go to bed now, child.”

The Duchess was out of her room and halfway down the hallway to Seraphim’s, before she heard her daughter’s voice at her back, “But Mama!  I still have not found Michael!”