Born Wicked

Page 7

 

  She loved him anyway, but I can’t see how it was much of a marriage, honestly.

  I sit up, hugging my knees to my chest. “You can’t do magic anywhere you like, Tess. You know that. I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you. ”

  Tess looks very young in her pink pinafore, her hair in two braids that stretch to her waist. Now that she’s twelve, she’s been bothering me to let her put her hair up and her skirts down. I suppose the governess will advise me to allow it. I can’t keep her from growing up. “I know,” she says. “Me either. If something happened to you, I mean. ”

  I glance up at the portraits above the fireplace. There’s one of Father with his parents when he was a boy, a retriever puppy asleep at his feet. Next to it is a painting of the five of us—Father, Mother, Maura, Tess, and me. Tess was still a baby with pale blond hair sprouting like dandelion fuzz all over her head. Mother is looking down at her lovingly, a Madonna cradling the child in her arms. She had lost a baby between Maura and Tess—the first of five buried in the family cemetery.

  “This governess—she’ll be living here, taking meals with us, watching our every step. Even if you think it’s to help someone—Father, or even me or Maura—”

  Tess swivels to face me. “Is this about what happened at services last week?”

  “No, but that’s a perfect example. ” As we were leaving the church last Sunday, someone stepped on Maura’s skirt. Her dress ripped—right across the middle of her admittedly tight bodice—exposing her corset cover for everyone to see. It would have been mortifying if Tess hadn’t thought quickly and cast arenovospell.

  “Maura would have been humiliated,” Tess argues.

  “A little public humiliation wouldn’t have killed her. We would have gotten her into the carriage and out of sight, and no one would have remembered it in a few days. If anyone had seen what you did—”

  “They would have thought it never ripped in the first place,” Tess insists. “I was very quick. They would have thought it a trick of their eyes. ”

  “Would they?” I’m not so certain. “The Brothers have been leaping on anything that even hints of magic—and they wouldn’t assume it was you— they’d think it was Maura. You meant to help, I know, but it could have ended very badly. ”

  Tess fiddles with the lace at her wrist. “I know,” she whispers.

  “Brenna Elliott. Gwen Foucart. Betsy Reed. Marguerite Dolamore. ”

  I reel off the names like the multiplication tables Father taught us. They’re the four girls arrested by the Brothers in the last year. Gwen and Betsy were sentenced to labor on the prison ship off the coast of New London. The conditions there are horrid—backbreaking work and very little food. There are rats, I hear, and disease, and girls don’t often survive it. But Marguerite—no one even knows what happened to her. She disappeared before her trial, taken away in the middle of the night.

  “Would you have it be Maura? Or you?” I’m relentless. I have to be.

  “No. No, never. ” Tess’s rosy cheeks drain of color. “I won’t do it again. ”

  “And you’ll be more careful at home, too? No more magic at the dinner table?”

  “No. Only—I wish we could tell Father the truth. Perhaps he’d stay home more. Look after us better. I’ll never get anywhere with my lessons this way. ”

  I stare at the gold flowers on the carpet. There’s so much hope in Tess’s voice. She wants a regular father, someone she can depend upon to protect her.

  But we’re not regular girls. If Father knew how I’d gone into his mind, compelled him, and destroyed Lord knows what other memories in the process, would he ever forgive me?

  I want to believe he would, that he’d come to understand. But he hasn’t given me any reason to think he’d fight for us.

  That only means I have to fight twice as hard. I rest my chin on my knees. “We don’t know what he’d do, Tess. We can’t chance it. ”

  Tess’s pale fingers twist in her lap. “I don’t understand why she didn’t trust him,” she says finally. “I wish I did. I wish Mother were here. ”

  She turns back to her piano, finding some solace in her sonata. I pick up the post from the tea table. There are a few bills for Father, a letter from his sister, and—to my surprise—a letter with no postmark, in an unfamiliar looping script, addressed to Miss Catherine Cahill. Who would write to me? I’ve fallen behind on correspondence with Father’s side of the family, and Mother has no living relatives.

  Dear Cate:

  You don’t knowme, but your mother and I were once very dear friends. NowAnna is gone, and I, who ought to be there to guide you in her absence, can be of no help besides this: look for your mother’s diary. It will contain the answers you seek. The three of you are in very great danger.

  Affectionately yours,

  Z. R.

  The letter flutters from my fingers to the floor. Tess plays on, heedless of my terror. I don’t know Z. R. , but she knows us. Does she know our secrets?

  Chapter 3

  I HAVE NEVER FOUND IT EASY TO sit still during Sunday school. Some of my earliest memories are of squirming on the hard wooden pews. I suspect the Brothers had them constructed this way on purpose, lest we get too comfortable. It’s called Sunday school, but we are required to attend twice weekly: on Sunday before regular services and again on Wednesday evenings. There are two separate classes: one for children under ten, held in the classroom down the hall, to teach them basic prayers and the tenets of the Brotherhood’s beliefs, and one for girls aged eleven to seventeen, to teach us about how wicked we are.

  The air in here is stifling, though the wind blows cool and fresh through the trees outside. The Brothers never open a window. Lord forbid we get distracted, even by something as innocuous as the September breeze tickling over our skin.

  Brother Ishida, the head of the Brotherhood’s council here, teaches our class today. He is not a very tall man, only perhaps my height, but up on the dais he looms over all of us. His face is hard, and his mouth perpetually tilts down, as though he’s used to frowning his way through life.

  “Submission,” he announces. “You must submit to our leadership. The Brotherhood would lead you down the path of righteousness and keep you innocent of the world’s evils. We know youwantto be good girls. We know it is only womanly frailty that leads you astray. We forgive you for it. ” His voice is full of fatherly compassion, but his eyes are contemptuous as they rove over us. “We would protect you from your own willfulness and vanity. You must submit to our rule, even as we submit to the Lord. You must put your love and faith in us, even as we put ours in him. ”

  Maura and I exchange scornful glances. Love and faith, indeed. Back in Great-Grandmother’s day, the Brotherhood burned girls like us. We are not without our faults, to be sure—but neither are they.

  “We will never lead you into sin and temptation. Indeed, we will do everything we can to keep you from it. When the witches were in power, they did not encourage girls to take their rightful place in the home. They cared nothing for protecting girls’ virtue. They would have women aping men— dressing immodestly, running businesses, even forgoing marriage to live in unnatural unions with other women. ” Brother Ishida allows himself a shudder of disgust. “Because of their wickedness, they were overthrown. It was the Lord’s will that the Brotherhood take their place as the rightful rulers of New England. ”