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.
Chapter Twenty
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.”