The Silver Rose (31 page)

No, those are your interests, Maman, not mine.
Meg was quick to suppress her thoughts. Maman could not read eyes, but she could still divine thoughts, drawing out secrets and memories with her touch.

She felt relieved when Cassandra released her icy grip, although Meg knew she didn’t dare move an inch from where her mother had placed her. She sought to deflect her mother’s displeasure by complaining about Finette.

“Finette is—is such a sneak, milady. I—I am supposed to be her queen too, but she is very rude to me. And she is always carrying tales—”

“Silence! It’s Finette’s duty to report to me when you forget yourself. If you want Finette to respect you as a queen, then you must act like one, stop behaving in such a familiar manner with your subjects. I hear you even gave Carole Moreau permission to call you Meg.”

Meg stared down at the floor as she mumbled. “I—I like it better than Megaera. My name is so odd.”

“Megaera was a goddess, one of the avenging furies in Greek myth. But what is the point in giving you such a magnificent name if you are going to behave like a commoner?”

“I—I don’t know, Maman. I—I mean milady. I—I will try to do better, I promise.”

“You always promise.” Her mother expelled an exasperated breath. “Why do I never seem able to make you understand, Megaera? From the moment of your birth, nay even before, you have been singled out for greatness. It was predicted that I would conceive a daughter who would be very powerful.

“But it will not be power given to you by any man, but taken through a revolution of wise women. I have told you the legends, child. There was once a time when the daughters of the earth were not the slaves of men, when they could practice their magic without fear and not be burned for sorcery. Nostradamus has seen a time in the future when the daughters of the earth will resume their rightful place, only I cannot force the old fool to tell me when.”

Cassandra spread her hands in an impatient gesture. “I have no intention of waiting for decades to pass, until I am dead and gone. These changes are going to happen in my lifetime. The daughters of the earth will topple thrones and strip all men of their power, beginning here in France. You are the one fated to lead us to this new age of glory, Megaera. A queen among queens, the most powerful sorceress the world has ever known.”

Meg cringed as she peered up at her mother. She hated when Maman talked this way, getting flushed, her features contorting. She looked and sounded a bit mad and Nourice had thought so, too.

Meg frowned, a memory niggling at her, something she had all but forgotten, the quarrel she had overheard between her mother and Nourice the night before Prudence Waters had disappeared.

“Sweet heaven, Cassandra,” Nourice exclaimed. “Bad enough you have been practicing necromancy, but all this talk of prophecy, revolution, putting Meggie on the French throne. It is completely mad. You can’t really believe all this nonsense.”

“I assure you that I do,” Cassandra replied coldly. “And you can either support me in my plans for my daughter or get out.”

Nourice rarely ever looked stern, but she had scowled at Cassandra. “And leave that poor child to be swept up in your insane ambitions? I think not and what’s more, if you persist in pursuing this dangerous lunacy, I will have to send word to the Lady of Faire Isle.”

“The Lady of Faire Isle,” Cassandra scoffed. “She is no one now that she has been banished from her island, forced into exile.”

“You are quite wrong. Ariane Cheney still commands enough respect among decent wise woman to be able to stop you. As for Meggie, I will remove her from your care, take her where you’ll never find her . . .”

Meg scrunched up her forehead in her efforts to remember. Had her gentle Nourice really threatened Maman or did Meg merely imagine the entire quarrel? All she was truly certain of was that the next day Nourice had vanished and Maman had forced Meg to start wearing the medallion.

“Megaera!”

Her mother’s harsh voice shook Meg out of her reverie. “Are you paying heed to me?”

“Yes, milady.”

“Then be so good as to make some response. Here I am telling you about your great future, about how hard I have worked on your behalf. Because of me you now have a considerable following of other wise women ready to kill and die for you. Yet I hear no mark of your gratitude.”

“T-thank you, milady. But—but . . .”

“But what?”

Meg hung her head, knowing she would do better to hold her tongue. How could she explain to Maman she didn’t want anyone killing or dying for her? How much it hurt her, like a huge fist crushing her heart, knowing all these evil things her followers were doing in her name.

She said in a small voice, “I guess there is so much I don’t understand. Especially about all those helpless babes, those little boys. Why do they have to die?”

Her mother pursed her lips. “How many times do I have to explain that as well? Male children are of no use to the coven. I realize abandoning them seems cruel to you, but the same thing has been done to helpless infant girls for centuries.”

“But how does that make it fair to treat little boys the same way?” Meg argued. “It—it just makes two bad things instead of one. And if this is what must be done to make me queen, I don’t want to be.”

Meg realized at once that she had gone too far. Cassandra’s hand tightened on the medallion so hard, her knuckles turned white. Meg could feel her mother’s rage pulse through her own amulet, like a hot searing knife piercing Meg’s heart.

She clutched her chest and cried out, sinking to her knees, almost dizzy from the pain. “Maman! P-please don’t.”

“Never let me hear you say anything like that again,” Cassandra grated.

“I won’t, Maman. Milady! Please . . . please stop,” Meg sobbed, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Cassandra released her medallion, letting it dangle back around her neck. Meg’s pain eased as though the knife was being inched from her heart. She cowered at her mother’s feet, weak and trembling.

Cassandra bent down, reaching out until her hand came to rest atop Meg’s head. Her wrath spent, she looked suddenly drained and exhausted.

“Oh, child, why do you force me to punish you this way?”

She dragged Meg up and into her arms, holding her so tight Meg could hardly breathe. But she was so hungry for any scrap of affection from her mother, she sniffed back her tears and endured the bruising embrace without protest.

Cassandra edged back until she struck the chair. She sank down into it and did something that shocked Meg, something she could not ever remember her mother doing before. She drew Meg onto her lap and held her close.

Meg scarce knew how to respond. Cautiously, she rested her head against her mother’s shoulder. Cassandra trailed her fingers over Meg’s face until she found her tears and wiped them brusquely away.

“Megaera, you have had so little experience of the harshness of life. That is my fault. I have protected you far too much in ways that I was never sheltered as a child. Did you know that I grew up here in this very same house?”

“N-no.”

“I did, but unlike you, I did not sleep in any lovely bedchamber like a pampered princess. I spent most of my years here confined to the hidden room below the house.”

Meg lifted her head to gape at her mother. When they had first moved to the house, Maman had shown her the secret passage behind the aumbry in the great hall. Should the coven ever be surprised by witch-hunters or the Dark Queen’s soldiers, Meg was to flee down those stone steps and hide, but she shuddered at the prospect. The chamber below was dark and cold like a dungeon, infested with spiders and the occasional rat.

“You lived in that awful hidden room? But why, Maman?”

For once her mother did not rebuke her for failing to call her milady. Cassandra’s face was clouded with memories and judging by the crease in her brow, they were not pleasant ones.

“I had to hide from the witch-hunters. They raided this house, capturing my mother and my three sisters. Do you know what witch-hunters do to sorceresses?”

“Yes,” Meg quavered. Finette delighted in telling her lurid stories of the fate of captured witches and always right before bedtime so that Meg’s dreams were haunted with dungeons, women screaming in pain as their arms were racked from their sockets, their thumbs crushed, their fingernails ripped out.

“Sorceresses are tortured until they confess and give up the names of their friends. Then they are all burned at the stake.” Meg shivered. “Alive.”

“That is right, and out of all the women in my family, only I escaped such a dire fate.”

Meg pondered this, thinking of her mother’s most recent séance, which had somehow gone wrong. How pale and frightened Maman had looked when that other spirit had appeared, the one Cassandra had called . . .
Mother.

Had that shrill voice and clawlike hand belonged to Meg’s own grandmother, a woman she had rarely heard of until now? If that was true, why was her grand-mère so angry and accusing, as though she somehow blamed Cassandra for her terrible fate?

Cassandra was not inclined to discuss her past or answer any questions about the family Meg had never known. But seated upon her mother’s knee with Cassandra absently stroking her hair, Meg was emboldened to ask. “What were my grandmother and aunts like?”

Cassandra frowned as though taken aback by the unexpected question. Then she shrugged. “They were sorceresses, although not as skilled as me. I was the best of all of us, even without my eyesight.”

Meg recalled troubling whispers she heard amongst her followers, rumors regarding her mother’s blindness. She ventured timidly, “Maman, I—I have heard some of the women say that—that my grandmother made a pact with the devil. She traded your eyes so that you could have the gift of necromancy.”

“A foolish tale,” Cassandra said, much to Meg’s relief.

Playing idly with a strand of Meg’s hair, she continued, “But your grandmother
was
responsible for the loss of my eyes. All because she loved my father, the bishop, more than she did me.”

“My grandfather was a bishop? But isn’t that a holy man? I didn’t think they were supposed to have wives.”

Cassandra’s lip curled in an ugly sneer. “My mother wasn’t his wife and my father was far from holy. My mother, my sisters, and I were his eminence’s shameful secret. Although he gave us this fine house, he had to skulk here to visit us, which he did infrequently. But whenever he deigned to come, the entire world stopped for my mother. She was consumed with pleasing him. So much so, the night that I was sick with scarlet fever, she neglected me for his bed. That is how I came to lose my eyesight and I never forgave my mother for that.”

Meg squirmed, uncomfortable with these confidences, only able to understand part of what Cassandra was telling her. But she could feel her mother’s bitterness and pain. Impulsively she hugged Cassandra, wishing things could have been different for her mother, for herself as well.

How much more pleasant it would have been to return to Paris if, instead of this house full of demanding half-mad women, she had been greeted by her grandparents. Not some cold bishop and a witch, but gentle, affectionate
married
grandparents who would hug her and call her Meggie, welcoming her to their house.

And her father would be there, too. Not a king perhaps, but still handsome and charming. He would be terribly in love with Maman and then maybe she would forget about conquering France and be happy just to—

“Stop it!” Meg winced as her mother’s nails dug into her shoulder.

“Damn it, girl. I know what you are doing. I can read you like an open book.”

Meg cringed. Caught up in her daydream, she had forgotten her mother’s ability to discern her thoughts through touch. Cassandra gave her a hard shake.

“I hate this habit of yours. This penchant you have for losing yourself in pretty dreams to escape the real world.”

You do the same thing, Maman. Only you use a bottle of whiskey.

The resentful thought popped into Meg’s head before she could suppress it. Cassandra sucked in her breath with a furious hiss. She dealt Meg a ringing slap that caused her eyes to water. She shoved Meg off her lap. Meg tumbled down, her hip hitting the floor with a jarring thud.

She sat up slowly, rubbing her throbbing cheek and blinking back fresh tears. She felt a stab of some emotion so foreign, it took her a moment to understand what it was. Anger.

But the emotion fled before her usual fear as Cassandra sprang to her feet. Meg’s hand flew to the medallion suspended about her neck. She held her breath and braced herself to be punished.

Although Cassandra’s lips thinned, she made no move to reach for her own amulet. “Enough of this nonsense,” she declared. “It is time you were about fulfilling your duty to me and the rest of your courtiers.”

Cassandra fumbled with the belt that held her chatelaine and produced a heavy iron key. “Here. Go fetch the
Book of Shadows.
”

Meg picked herself up off the floor. She accepted the key from her mother with shaking fingers and went to unlock the small chest beside her mother’s bed. It contained only two objects. A heavy signet ring bearing the letter
C
and a book no bigger than Nourice’s bible had been.

The dread
Book of Shadows
looked so harmless, an old volume with yellowing brittle pages bound together by a worn leather cover. But as soon as Meg lifted it into her hands, it was as though the
Book
took on an eerie life of its own. She could feel the pulse of its dark lore in some strange way that repelled and called to her.

Meg carried the
Book
over to the table and laid it down, nervously wiping her hands on her gown. Cassandra had retrieved her walking staff. Using it to test the path before her, she made her way to Meg’s side.

“What do you want me to work on today, Maman?” Meg asked bleakly. “The spell to restore your eyes?”

“If you were any kind of daughter at all, you would have already mastered that,” Cassandra replied scornfully.