Deborah Harkness - Shadow of Night

“But you are a grown woman!” Susanna said, her hands settling on her hips. “Even Annie has more skills than that, and she is but fourteen. Can you concoct philters from plants?”

“No.” Sarah had wanted me to learn how to make potions, but I had declined.

“Are you a healer?”

“No.” I was beginning to understand Annie’s browbeaten expression.

Susanna sighed. “Why Andrew Hubbard requires my assistance, I do not know. I have quite enough to do with my patients, an infirm husband, and two growing sons.” She took a chipped bowl from the shelf and a brown egg from a rack by the window. She placed both on the table before me and pulled out a chair. “Sit, and tuck your hands beneath your legs.”

Mystified, I did as she requested.

“Annie and I are going to Widow Hackett’s house. While we’re gone, you are to get the contents of that egg into the bowl without using your hands. It requires two spells: a motion spell and a simple opening charm. My son John is eight, and he can already do it without thinking.”

“But—”

“If the egg isn’t in the bowl when I return, no one can help you, Mistress Roydon. Your parents may have been right to bind you if your power is so weak that you cannot even crack an egg.”

Annie gave me an apologetic look as she lifted the pan into her arms. Susanna clapped a lid on it. “Come, Annie.”

Sitting alone in the Normans’ gathering room, I considered the egg and the bowl.

“What a nightmare,” I whispered, hoping the boys were too far away to hear.

I took a deep breath and gathered my energy. I knew the words to both spells, and I wanted the egg to move—wanted it badly. Magic was nothing more than desire made real, I reminded myself.

I focused my desires on the egg. It hopped on the table, once, then subsided. Silently I repeated the spell. And again. And again.

Minutes later the only result of my efforts was a thin skim of perspiration on my forehead. All I had to do was lift the egg and crack it. And I had failed.

“Sorry,” I murmured to my flat stomach. “With any luck you’ll take after your father.” My stomach flopped over. Nerves and rapidly changing hormones were hell on the digestion.

Did chickens get morning sickness? I tilted my head and looked at the egg. Some poor hen had been robbed of her unhatched chick to feed the Norman family. My nausea increased. Perhaps I should consider vegetarianism, at least during the pregnancy.

But maybe there was no chick at all, I comforted myself. Not every egg was fertilized. My third eye peered under the surface of the shell, through the thickening layers of albumen to the yolk. Traces of life ran in thin streaks of red across the yolk’s surface.

“Fertile,” I said with a sigh. I shifted on my hands. Em and Sarah had kept hens for a while. It took a hen only three weeks to hatch an egg. Three weeks of warmth and care, and there was a baby chicken. It didn’t seem fair that I had to wait months before our child saw the light of day.

Care and warmth. Such simple things, yet they ensured life. What had Matthew said? All that children need is love, a grown-up to take responsibility for them, and a soft place to land . The same was true for chicks. I imagined what it would feel like to be surrounded in a mother hen’s feathery warmth, safely cocooned from bumps and bruises. Would our child feel like that, floating in the depths of my womb? If not, was there a spell for it? One woven from responsibility, that would wrap the baby in care and warmth and love yet be gentle enough to give him both safety and freedom?

“That’s my real desire,” I whispered.

Peep .

I looked around. Many households had a few chickens pecking around the hearth.

Peep . It was coming from the egg on the table. There was a crack, then a beak. A bewildered set of black eyes blinked at me from a feathered head slicked down with moisture.

Someone behind me gasped. I turned. Annie’s hand was clapped over her mouth, and she was staring at the chick on the table.

“Aunt Susanna,” Annie said, dropping her hand. “Is that . . . ?” She trailed off and pointed wordlessly at me.

“Yes. That’s the glaem left over from Mistress Roydon’s new spell. Go. Fetch Goody Alsop.” Susanna spun her niece around and sent her back the way she came.

“I didn’t get the egg into the bowl, Mistress Norman,” I apologized. “The spells didn’t work.”

The still-wet chick set up a protest, one indignant peep after another.

“Didn’t work? I am beginning to think you know nothing about being a witch,” said Susanna incredulously.

I was beginning to think she was right.

Phoebe found the quiet at Sotheby’s Bond Street offices unsettling this Tuesday night. Though she’d been working at the London auction house for two weeks, she was still not accustomed to the building. Every sound— the buzzing of the overhead lights, the security guard pulling on the doors to make sure they were locked, the distant sound of recorded laughter on a television—made her jump.

As the junior person in the department, it had fallen on Phoebe to wait behind a locked door for Dr. Whitmore to arrive. Sylvia, her supervisor, had been adamant that someone needed to see the man after hours. Phoebe suspected that this request was highly irregular but was too new in the job to make more than a weak protest.

“Of course you will stay. He’ll be here by seven o’clock,” Sylvia had said smoothly, fingering her strand of pearls before picking up her ballet tickets from the desk. “Besides, you don’t have anywhere else to be, do you?” Sylvia was right. Phoebe had nowhere else to be.

“But who is he?” Phoebe asked. It was a perfectly legitimate question, but Sylvia had looked affronted.

“He’s from Oxford and an important client of this firm. That’s all you need to know,” Sylvia replied. “Sotheby’s values confidentiality, or did you miss that part of your training?”

And so Phoebe was still at her desk. She waited well beyond the promised hour of seven. To pass the time, she went through the files to find out more about the man. She didn’t like meeting people without knowing as much about their background as possible. Sylvia might think all she needed was his name and a vague sense of his credentials, but Phoebe knew different. Her mother had taught her what a valuable weapon such personal information could be when wielded against guests at cocktail parties and formal dinners. Phoebe hadn’t been able to find any Whitmores in the Sotheby archives, however, and his customer number led to a simple card in a locked file cabinet that said “ de Clermont Family—inquire with the president .”

At five minutes to nine, she heard someone outside the door. The man’s voice was gruff yet strangely musical.

“This is the third wild-goose chase you’ve sent me on in as many days, Ysabeau. Please try to remember that I have things to do. Send Alain next time. There was a brief pause. “You think I’m not busy? I’ll call you after I see them.” The man made a muffled oath. “Tell your intuition to take a break, for God’s sake.”

The man sounded strange: half American and half British, with blurred edges to his accent suggesting that these weren’t the only languages he knew. Phoebe’s father had been in the queen’s diplomatic service, and his voice was similarly ambiguous, as though he hailed from everywhere and nowhere.

The bell rang, another shrill sound that made her flinch, despite the fact that Phoebe was expecting it. She pushed away from her desk and strode across the room. She was wearing her black heels, which had cost a fortune but made her look taller and, Phoebe told herself, more authoritative. It was a trick she’d learned from Sylvia at her first interview, when she had worn flats. Afterward she’d vowed never to appear “adorably petite” again.