Page 8 of The Moorwitch
“Sister Rose, I am sorry.”
My lungs squeeze, depriving me of breath. “Sorry for what?”
“For you. For our school, in what it loses in you. It’s undeniable that you are uncommonly skilled in your technique. It’s been many years since we had a teacher as clever. But the neatest Weaves in the world are useless if you cannot fill them with magic.”
“But Ican,” I whisper. This will pass. Surely it must pass. I am not a woman of high ambition. I don’t wish to embroider for the queen or Weave in battle with the Telarii. I don’t wish to sit at a loom inWestminster Abbey. I want only to teach. To help other girls like me find their way in the world. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.
“I’m sorry, dear.” Mother Bridgid rises to her feet. Her tone is firm, but the pity in her eyes is worse than any pain in my chest. It is the expression of a doctor informing his patient that her illness is much worse than she’d feared. “I am afraid I have no choice but to—”
“I just need time!” I say, before she can go further and speak the words I fear most. “To rest, to recover. Please, Mother.”
Her lips press together, as if she is warring against her own conscience. I hang upon her expression, breathless with dread, waiting to see which way she will go. Her eyes, though sunken into her lined face, are bright and calculating as she studies me. I keep my shoulders straight and try not to looktoodesperate, but I fear I am not accomplished enough a liar to be convincing.
“This school is my home. My entire life.” I rest my hands on my knees, palms up and pleading. One small white scar shines on my wrist where the sleeve pulls up.
“Time, then,” she says at last, and my eyelids flutter with relief. “A year’s leave. If your pains persist after that, however, I am afraid I will have no choice but to dismiss you from the Order.”
I swallow a knot of sudden dismay. Ayear. I’d hoped for a week, a month at most, but ayear... ! Still, better this than the alternative—being dismissed entirely. Which I am sure she was about to do.
She gives my hand a soft pat. “This is for your own good, my dear. You are playing a dangerous game. My uncle had a bad heart, you know, and he was a Weaver. We told him to give it up, or he’d kill himself.”
I wait, my voice frozen in my throat.
“He didn’t listen, and he’s dead now,” she adds, her words slow with emphasis. She gives me a hard look. “Magic, my dear, is not for the faint of heart.”
Chapter Two
That evening, after packing up my threads and hoops, I leave my classroom and make my way down Pye Street, heading for the boarding house where I and the other teachers have rooms. The towers of Westminster Abbey are at my back, their needlelike points piercing a low skein of grim cloud. An early spring chill coils about my throat, leaching the warmth from my skin. Despair sweeps over me in a black fog.
Ayear. I’ve been put on leave for an entireyear. And Mother Bridgid made it clear I would not be given accommodations in that time, suggesting I seek lodging in some country village for the benefit of my health.
I wonder, now, if she expects I will not return. Perhaps she hopes I will settle down into some other life, or perhaps she suspects my condition will worsen.
Clenching my teeth, I press on. Iwillreturn, whatever her suspicions. This is where I belong. It is the only place I haveeverbelonged.
Dirty slush, deposited by winter’s last feeble cough, piles along the wall, heaping in the gutters. Boys with brooms race each other to push aside more of the stuff, clearing the way for the carriages and carts clotting the road. A Weaver moves from streetlamp to streetlamp, Weaving quick fire spells with scarlet string to light the wicks above. He nods to me when he passes by, his gaze flicking to the battered threadkit hanging over my shoulder; it is a nod between colleagues, a wish ofgood fortune. Frost clings to the edges of his beard, despite the warming knots embroidered on his collar and hat. The street is busy, mostly with beggars stumbling back to their corners and bridges, or with furtive men seeking the warm beds of the comfort houses. Everyone I pass is locked inside their own world of trouble, with little thought or compassion to spare for mine. We all scuttle on our individual ways, heads down and arms folded, skittish as ghosts.
I have not been so alone since losing my aunt. For twelve years, the Perkins School has been my home, my sanctuary, an island of surety and hope amid the tossing chaos of London’s unforgiving streets. It gave me the magic I had always craved, the thread and needles with which I wove my own path through the world, and then purpose when I was brought on to teach after my graduation. The Order of the Moirai even delighted in me once, the sisters intrigued by my aptitude for patterns and the deftness of my hands. There was talk of promoting me to some higher rank, moving me to teach at the more prestigious Westminster School.
But then my magic turned against me, fickle as a gambler’s luck.
I try not to think of my students. Of sweet little Carolina, of clever Edwina, of the timid but gifted Anne. They are Sister Agatha’s responsibility now. I can only hope they will still be here if—when—I return.
I sag against the cold wall of an inn, the strength draining from my knees, staring at a patch of flickering light cast by the lamp around the corner. An illusion of warmth, of sunlight, just enough to make the cold all the more bitter and cast light over a scrap of discarded newspaper under my shoe. Advertisements shout at me from the page. A threadshop boasts the strongest silk in England. A theater invites one and all to an Illusion Spectacle, the likes of which has never been beheld. The Order of St. Edgitha of the Needle is ordaining a new bishop, a Weaver renowned on the continent for his prayer knots.
“Sister Rose?” says a small, whispery voice.
I turn and see a shivering girl, her ragged shawl clutched around her.
“Carolina? What are you doing out here?”
She sniffs. “Is it true you’re leaving?”
I sigh and take her hand. “Come with me. You’re freezing.”
Her lips are blue. I guide her out of the alley and up the rickety steps to my tiny rented room. It’s scarcely larger than my narrow bed, and frigid. Shutting the door against the cold, I pull out the thread and needle I keep in the brim of my bonnet. It takes three attempts to thread the needle with my cold fingers.
Carolina perches on the edge of the bed while I stab the needle through the hem of her dirty dress, but her shivering makes the job difficult. The light is weak and my fingers are stiff, but I know these knots too well to make a mistake. I’ve been stitching them all winter, for my students, for myself, for any shivering soul who came begging at the school doors.