The Year of the Witching(31)
“I know. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important, but—”
“I’ve made you stomach my sin, so now you want me to shoulder yours?”
Immanuelle hadn’t wanted it to come to that, but she nodded. “I’d have something on you, and you’d have something on me. We’d be even. A secret for a secret.”
Ezra considered this for a moment. Then: “When do you need access?”
“Tomorrow afternoon, preferably, while our farmhand can tend to the flock.” When she’d have the time to slip away unnoticed.
He pushed to his feet. “Tomorrow, then. I’ll meet you by the gates of the Haven at noon.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
We are the consecrated, the Father’s chosen. And what belongs to Him is His, forevermore.
—THE HOLY SCRIPTURES
THE PROPHET’S HAVEN was the oldest building in all of Bethel, built in the Dark Days before their faith had scriptures or a proper doctrine. It stood on a lone hill that overlooked a stretch of rolling cattle fields. It was a tall, looming structure, comprised of the main quarters—a collapsing stone cathedral where the first of the faith had once worshipped—and a series of expansions, some of them constructed as recently as a month prior.
The entire estate was ringed by a wrought iron wall that stood some nine feet tall. It was said that during the Holy War, the severed heads of the four witches and their allies had been mounted upon its spikes. According to those same legends, Lilith’s headless corpse had also been strung from the wall’s gate and, on the orders of David Ford, crowned with a deer skull diadem to make a mockery of her reign and slaughter. Walking toward the gate, Immanuelle could almost picture it: the severed heads of the sinners gawking down at her, their jaws nailed shut by the wall’s iron spires; beside them, the witch queen’s skull-crowned corpse strung from the archway, swaying with the wind. Immanuelle shook her head to clear it of the ghastly image and continued on through the entryway.
She found Ezra waiting for her just behind the Haven’s entrance. He sat beneath the branches of a tall cottonwood, back pressed to its trunk and legs crossed at the ankles, reading a palm-size book.
There were a great many people wandering the yard—mainly servants and the farmhands who tended the Prophet’s sprawling ranges—but Ezra still raised his head at her approach, as if he knew her from the sound of her footsteps. He slipped his book into the back pocket of his trousers as he stood, nodding toward the doors of the Haven. “Right this way.”
* * *
IF THE PROPHET’S Haven appeared grand on the outside, its interior was nothing short of immaculate. The entry hall was almost as big as the cathedral itself, with ceilings arching high overhead. Each of the hall’s windows was ten feet tall, and every casing was fitted with panes of stained glass so the sunlight shafting through them tinted the walls and floor with the colors of the rainbow. The air smelled of spices, a good, heady stink that brought to mind harvest feasts and meat roasting on bonfires in the wintertime.
Ezra led her down a series of long corridors, their footsteps echoing as they went. He distanced himself by a few paces whenever others passed them, but when they were alone, he took the time to point out little details about the house. Among these were the paintings that hung from the walls (mostly portraits of the first prophets who’d reigned in the days after the Holy War), and the corridors that led to places like the Haven’s kitchen or the confinement wards, where new brides were housed.
Immanuelle wondered, in passing, which hall led to the room where her mother had stabbed the Prophet, but she didn’t dare ask.
They rounded another corner, entering into a small, bright hallway. Here, a series of thin windows lined the walls, each less than a half a pace apart from the next. Opposite the windows was a row of doors, each with a name painted on the cross rails in golden ink: Hannah, Charlotte, Sarah, Charity, Naomi, Esther, Judith, Bethany, Justice, Dinah, Ruth, Tilda. These were the wives’ chambers. Immanuelle read each name in turn, looking for Leah’s.
“Ezra, is that you?” A voice seeped out from an open door down the corridor. It was thin and graced by a faint accent Immanuelle had never heard on the tongue of any Bethelan native.
Ezra stopped short, breathing a low curse. Then he composed himself and strode to the doorway. “Yes, Mother?”
Immanuelle slowed to a stop at his heels, gazed into the room just behind her. There, standing at its center, was Ezra’s mother, Esther Chambers. Immanuelle had only ever caught passing glimpses of her—from across the cathedral or on the other side of the churchyard—but those brief encounters were enough to distinguish her as one of the most beautiful women she had ever seen. Esther was tall like Ezra, if a little slight. Pale veins threaded along her neck and skimmed up to her temples. Her hair, which was the raven-black color of her son’s, was heaped atop her head and held by a single golden pin. As she neared, Immanuelle caught a whiff of jasmine on the air.
The woman surveyed her, and a thin smile crossed her lips and disappeared within the span of an instant. “Who is your friend, my son?” she asked, her gaze returning to Ezra.
“This is Miss Immanuelle Moore.” He sidestepped to give his mother a better view of her. “Miss Moore, may I present my mother, Esther Chambers.”