Half Spent Was the Night: A Witches' Yuletide Read online

  “You must tell him everything,” Eleanor had advised. “There should be no secrets between man and wife.”

  Pacing the floor, Adelaide considers her choices.

  She takes a penny from her pocket and flips it into the air with her thumb. Heads, yes. Tails, no. It falls in a crack between the floorboards and disappears. She has to laugh. Why can’t things ever be easy for me?

  Lifting a book from her desk she closes her eyes, lets it fall open, then places her finger in the middle of a page, hoping the word she’s landed on will give her some direction. Opening her eyes she lifts her finger and discovers the word is “or.”

  What have I got to offer him? I’m no one. Worse, I’m a fraud.

  Shuffling the deck of fortune-telling cards she uses to assist the women of New York in finding their destinies, she pulls a single card and turns it over. A cloaked figure stands on a precipice, staring into a great chasm. CONTEMPLATION.

  Maybe I won’t go to the ball.

  Maybe I’ll say no to love.

  Or maybe I’ll say yes to everything.

  * * *

  Beatrice is sequestered in her room down the hall, recording her thoughts on the day in her book of observations.

  What a magnificent woman the Baroness is! Just as wise as she is generous. I was so impressed by her that I find I can’t recall all she said. I hope I’ll get to speak with her again.

  Lifting her mask from its box, she holds it to her face and ties the ribbons around her head. Gazing at herself in the mirror she whispers, “You vixen.” Perdu watches intently from atop one of the posts of her bed. When Beatrice turns to him and curtsies, he whistles and coos.

  A sudden noise at the window startles them both—a stray cat clawing and crying at the sill.

  Beatrice opens the sash and greets it with a friendly “hello,” forgetting she still wears the face of a fox.

  The startled calico hisses and growls.

  Perdu responds in kind.

  “Come now, you two,” Beatrice scolds, untying the ribbons and setting the mask aside. “Can’t we be friends?”

  This isn’t the first time the cat has visited. It’s been coming to the window every night for the past month.

  “Surely this time you’ll come inside,” Beatrice coaxes. “Even to shake the snow off your paws?”

  The cat refuses, as she always does.

  “Bad kit-ty,” Perdu croaks, as he always does.

  Pulling apart a small hunk of boiled beef she’d taken from the pantry for the pair, Beatrice sits on the window ledge and feeds both cat and bird. “One for you,” she tells Perdu, who’s now on the verge of sitting in her lap. “And one for you,” she says to the cat, who’s poised and cautious just outside the window.

  She hopes eventually to earn the feline’s trust. She adores Perdu but misses having a warm companion curled at the end of her bed as she sleeps. Her dog Cleo had disappeared one rainy evening in the autumn and had never come back. The hound had taken to chasing rats drawn to the refuse Mrs. Stutt threw off the back stoop, and all anyone could think was that the determined animal had chased one of the vermin too far and couldn’t find its way back home. Beatrice had been crushed, repeatedly wondering out loud if there was anything she could have done to prevent the dog’s disappearance. Eleanor had tried to comfort her: “Short of keeping it tethered to your side, I doubt you could have stopped it. When a dog follows its nose, trouble follows it.” Adelaide had been more blunt. “Maybe the pup was just bored.”

  Over time, Beatrice had come to see Adelaide’s point of view. In the year that’d passed since she’d come to live with the two witches, she’s gone from feeling protected and safe and valued for her unique qualities to feeling watched and confined. Tethered, indeed. She knows how it feels to be at the end of a short leash.

  Adelaide, of course (who fiercely relishes her own freedom), has never been one to make her feel that way, but after her abduction by the vile minister—a horrible episode Beatrice tries not to think about—Eleanor swiftly hemmed her in, constantly hovering over her, questioning her every move, and refusing to let her to try magic on her own.

  She wishes her relationship with the wise woman could be more like the one she’s created with Dr. Brody. Her work with him on understanding the ways of the dead has been steady and satisfying—a source of confidence and pride. They’ve solved several ghostly mysteries in Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs—some real, some imagined, some contrived. He often sets aside his experience and scholarship to ask her for advice. He freely gives her praise and respect, and more importantly, responsibility. If only Eleanor would do the same.

  She’d thought the aim of being Eleanor’s apprentice was to help her find her way to her powers as a witch, but now she’s wondering if maybe she’d thought wrong. The more she tries to take initiative, the more Eleanor resists, so she’s resorted to keeping things to herself, not just her dreams of the Stranger, but the spells and incantations she attempts in secret. How will I learn to trust my instincts if I’m never allowed to follow them?

  The cat, noting Beatrice’s distraction, bites the ribbon at the end of the girl’s long braid. Tugging it loose, the stray runs off with it.

  “Come back!” Beatrice calls, too late.

  Hopping to the sill, Perdu squawks his disapproval. “Baaaad kit-ty.”

  “Some witch I am.” Beatrice says. “I can’t even tame a hungry cat.”

  * * *

  Eleanor is tucked away in her room, thinking on her own condition. Kissing an inky smudge in the left corner of the page, she longs for her lover’s touch. She misses Georgina’s voice too, and the quick ease of her smile.

  I would leave if I could.

  I would fly to your side…

  Georgina Davis had stolen Eleanor’s heart almost as unexpectedly as she’d entered her life. All ink and broken pencils, honesty and forthrightness, this woman who made her living illustrating the highs and lows of New York life for the newspapers, was now someone Eleanor didn’t wish to live without. Georgina’s kindness had seen her through the terrible days when Beatrice was missing. Her love and affection had helped her find her way back to herself.

  Folding the letter, Eleanor tucks it in her pocket. She plans to reread it many times before the night is over, but she needs something to soothe her sadness and heal her heart first. Tea will have to do.

  She tightens her robe about her and goes downstairs. As she enters the kitchen, she’s met with a strange sight. Mrs. Stutt is standing before a steaming teapot, eyes closed, arms outstretched, hands to Heaven in the posture of magic, of prayer. She is half-singing, half-chanting in a haunting language Eleanor has never heard.

  When she falls silent at last, Eleanor gently says, “Mrs. Stutt?”

  The housekeeper gives a start. “Miss St. Clair, I didn’t see you there.” Wiping her hands on her apron, she glances at the china teapot. “I was just making some tea for Miss Dunn.”

  “What kind?” Eleanor asks. “I might like some for myself.”

  “Just an old family recipe, a winter tonic of sorts.”

  Eleanor sniffs the air. Elderflower—to clear the lungs, cool the blood, and quell one’s fears. “Is Beatrice unwell?”

  The steam escaping the spout of the pot now swirls and gathers, taking on the shape of an unearthly spectre. “Blicket auf!” the spirit commands. As Mrs. Stutt opens her mouth in shock, it slithers between her parted lips.

  “Behold!” the housekeeper says, in a voice not her own. Reaching into her pocket, she takes the lead from Beatrice’s divination and holds it up against the light of the fire.

  Eleanor watches in fear as a demon’s shadow spreads and grows upon the wall and opens its hungry maw.

  “What have you done?” she cries, snatching the object from the woman’s hand.

  “He is coming for her. He’ll arrive before the dead days are done.” Grasping for Eleanor, Mrs. Stutt collapses and slumps to the floor.

  “Mrs. Stutt.”
Eleanor cradles the woman in her arms, attempting to revive her. “Mrs. Stutt…”

  I would leave if I could.

  I would fly to your side…

  But Beatrice needs me.

  * * *

  Mr. Gideon Palsham sits in his parlour in front of a roaring fire. Every so often he spits whiskey between his teeth at the flames. He likes to make things dance and leap.

  A soft thud sounds at the window behind him, followed by the loud, steady purr of a cat. He’d left the window open, anticipating her return. He smiles when the feline’s purring changes to footfalls at his back and her breathing assumes the cadence of human form. “Miss Miles, I’m so glad you’ve come home.”

  A naked, lithe, Sophie Miles comes to him and sits in his lap, clutching Beatrice’s hair ribbon between her teeth.

  Palsham had plucked her from the lunatic asylum on Blackwell’s Island after he’d discovered that she’d been the person responsible for Adelaide Thom’s disfigurement. They’d quickly formed a pact: she is to do his bidding (in whatever manner he wishes) and he’ll refrain from killing her (for the time being). He may have also promised her immortality, but that doesn’t really matter much right now.

  Sophie runs Beatrice’s hair ribbon between her teeth, then drapes it around her master’s neck. “Mr. Palshammmm,” she says, rubbing her cheek against his beard and sinking her nails into his arm.

  He appreciates the pain. “Does this mean you went inside her room?”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t like the bird.”

  Palsham laughs. “Scaredy cat.”

  “You’re mean,” Sophie complains. “Just like the raven.”

  Palsham grins and runs his tongue along the edge of his teeth. “I know I am.” Taking the young woman’s chin in his hand, he holds it steady and stares into her eyes. He can see Beatrice in her room, sitting at the window, wearing her fox mask. “She’s going to the ball,” he says, pleased.

  Sophie writhes against him, hungry for affection.

  Palsham shifts in his seat, shrugs her off. “Be gone.”

  As the young woman passes through the firelight, she resumes the form of her imprisonment. With a hiss she scampers out of the room and down the hall.

  Winding Beatrice’s ribbon around his finger, Palsham can barely control his excitement. And why should he? He’s been working hard for the moment when the girl will be delivered to him. He’s followed her for months, watching her from the shadows, always from a distance, waiting for his chance. Soon she’ll be mine.

  For the longest time, he’d had plans to destroy her, just as he’d done away with countless other witches throughout the ages. But she was singular, powerful, different. His plan to have that incompetent preacher end her had gone horribly wrong, and he’d only had himself to blame. Now the places where she lives and works are fortresses of vexation, heavily guarded by witchcraft he can’t overcome. One should never send a man to do a demon’s work.

  As bothersome as that failure had been, it’d given him time to see how truly spectacular the girl was meant to become. One evening, while sucking the marrow from her dead dog’s bones he’d seen the light. He’d come to realize that destroying her wasn’t the thing that would be of greatest benefit to him, but rather possessing her. Now it was a race to catch her while her power was ascending, her mind still supple and longing to learn, eager and foolish enough for magic that she would agree to his terms. The longer he waits, the greater the chance that she and the other witches she lives with will seek to thwart his plan. The time is now.

  Letting the ribbon go, he watches it spiral and curl to the floor. Oh, how he loves to make things dance.

  The elder tree has long been revered as a plant with both medicinal properties and magical qualities. Various European cultures associated it with the Elder Mother, or Holle, or the White Lady, claiming that the tree was her dwelling place and its roots, the entrance to the underworld. Planting an elder tree near a home was believed to bring blessings to the house’s occupants. Falling asleep under an elder tree in full bloom was said to lead to supernatural visions. Harvesting flowers or berries from the sacred plant without giving proper thanks to the goddess would surely bring bad luck. Some even referred to the plant as “the witch’s tree” because its flowers and fruit were favoured among female healers who knew of the plant’s curative effects on respiratory illnesses, fevers and anxious hearts.

  This lovely golden syrup is made in spring when the elder trees are in bloom, but its light, delicate flavour will surely brighten even the coldest of winter nights.

  15–20 elderflower umbels

  6 cups water

  6 cups sugar

  1 teaspoon citric acid

  2 lemons

  Harvest elderflowers while in full bloom but before they begin to turn brown and fade. If you’re gathering them in the wild, make certain they’re plants that yield blue-purple berries (Sambucus canadensis or Sambucus nigra) rather than red. Snip the entire umbel from the plant with scissors and use a cloth bag or basket, not plastic, for collecting them to prevent the flowers from sweating and wilting.

  Clean the umbels of debris and insects, then trim the individual blossoms from their stems. Put the blossoms in a large bowl and set aside.

  Combine the sugar and water in a pot; set on stove over medium-high heat and stir until sugar is dissolved. Bring to a boil then reduce heat and keep at a low boil for five minutes. Remove from heat and stir in citric acid.

  Cut the lemons into slices and put in bowl with elderflowers. Pour syrup mixture over the flowers and lemons and stir gently. Cover the bowl and store in a cool, dry place for 48 hours. Stir once per day.

  After 48 hours, strain the syrup through a sieve lined with cheesecloth into a clean pot. Bring the syrup to a boil, then pour into canning jars and screw on lids. Place jars in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes to sterilize.

  The syrup should keep for up to a year. Opened jars should be refrigerated.

  Elderflower syrup is a wonderful addition to tea, sparkling water, lemonade, and cocktails. It can be used on its own over waffles, fresh fruit, pavlova, or ice cream; or used to flavour whipped cream, sponge cake or frosting.

  DECEMBER 31

  he day of the ball has arrived. All along Fifth Avenue, eager guests rush from dressmaker to haberdasher to shoemaker to hairdresser in anticipation of the evening’s festivities. Those without an invitation attempt to curry favour with the Baroness, sending wildly generous donations along with note after note to the hotel believing there’s still time to win her over.

  One leading lady of Gotham, unaccustomed to exclusion, sends ten baskets of roses, five pounds of chocolate and a jewelled brooch from Tiffany & Co. to the Baroness’s suite, all before eight in the morning.

  I would be honoured…

  I would be forever grateful…

  I’ll be indebted to you always…

  While enjoying a breakfast of coffee, fried mushrooms, toast and sausages, the Baroness thumbs through the towering stack of missives on her desk. She spins the brooch between her fingers, amused, yet unmoved. She’d made her list ages ago and checked it several times over. There’s no room for last-minute stragglers, no matter how exquisite their bribery.

  * * *

  One floor below, Adelaide and Beatrice are ensconced in a suite that belongs to Judith Dashley. The wealthy matron has a palatial mansion further uptown, but keeps rooms at the hotel for special occasions and emergencies. She considers the preparations for the ball to be both.

  Due to the meagre amount of time the women have been given to ready themselves for the masquerade, Judith has insisted she supply the witches with gowns from her vast collection. “The fit won’t be perfect, mind you, but with a few strategically placed pins and the ballroom’s dim lighting, you’ll both look smashing.” Pointing to a third dress draped across a nearby chaise, she adds, “There’s one for Eleanor, in case she changes her mind. Be sure to take it with you.”

  “She w
on’t change her mind,” Adelaide says.

  “But that’s very kind of you,” Beatrice interjects. Truth be told, she’s somewhat glad Eleanor’s not going. She’s certain the woman would insist on trailing after her the entire time.

  The trio settles down for morning tea before getting on with the rest of their day.

  Judith pours first for Adelaide, then Beatrice, and then for herself. “The hotel staff has been scurrying about day and night to do the Baroness’s bidding. I tried to steal a peek at the preparations, but the ballroom is under lock and key. No guests are allowed in until tonight, and the maids have been sworn to secrecy. I stood in the hallway outside the room for over an hour, hoping I might overhear something.”

  “And did you?” Beatrice asks, stirring sugar into her tea.

  “Not a peep,” Judith admits. “I’m starting to think the work’s being done by elves in the middle of the night.”

  Adelaide grins as she lifts her cup from its saucer. “Maybe the Baroness brought them with her, along with everything else.”

  Beatrice rolls her eyes. Adelaide is always so flippant. “I can’t wait for tonight. I find it all very exciting.”

  Judith asks, tentatively, “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to call on the hotel’s resident spirits for their thoughts on the matter? The suspense is killing me.”

  Beatrice shakes her head. “As dear as you are to me, Judith, I must decline. I prefer to be surprised.”

  This was something of a lie. On her way to Judith’s suite, she’d slipped away from Adelaide and into a linen closet to corner the spirit of a charwoman and ask her what she knew about the ball. The ghostly maid had refused to answer. “And none of the rest of us will tell you neither, so don’t go asking around.” Beatrice couldn’t tell if the spectre was afraid of the Baroness or simply in her thrall like everyone else clearly seemed to be.