Page 55 of Her Majesty's Necromancer
"Tell me about the ministry," I said.
"I thought I already had."
"You've told me what its purpose is now, and why there is a committee, but not its history. You all seem to have quite different opinions about ministry business, and what to do with people like me, and I thought understanding the ministry's past will help me understand its present."
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Don't let Gillingham upset you. His is one opinion among several."
"I know. And he doesn't upset me." Not anymore.
He leaned back and sat very still. He was often still, whether sitting or standing, as if conserving every ounce of energy and storing it for later use. "The ministry grew out of an order that has existed for a long time. It was renamed the Ministry for Peculiar Things when I became its head."
"Things?" I chuckled. "Who thought of that name?"
His lips drew together. "It was more recently given its current name The Ministry of Curiosities. Prior to my taking over, it had been dormant for many years, with no leader and only a committee to remember its function and pass on information about it from generation to generation. And to store the archives, of course."
"How old is it, precisely?"
"Perhaps a thousand years. No one is certain."
"Good lord. It's been in existence all this time? That means people with supernatural abilities have been around for just as long, or there would have been no need to harbor them."
His gaze drifted away. His hands shifted ever so slightly on the chair arm.
"What is it?" I asked. "What aren't you telling me?"
He seemed surprised that I'd picked up on his cues. "The order wasn't originally formed to find and harbor those who knew magic, but destroy them."
I drew in a breath. "People like me?" I whispered.
He nodded. "The order thought anyone who performed magic, as they called it, was unholy, unnatural."
"Like Anselm Holloway does."
"A thousand years ago, the church declared all supernatural people abominations against God, and that put a price on their heads, so to speak. It gave ordinary folk free reign to burn witches, lynch necromancers and anyone else who displayed magical abilities. The order grew from those times of persecution here in England and, for hundreds of years, it thrived as it hunted down anyone accused of witchcraft."
"How awful," I whispered.
"Yes and no. Not everyone has a good heart and conscience like you, Charlie. Magicians and witches have been known to cause great harm. They're people, after all, and as with any group of people there are good and bad. Some did terrible things. The order, however, didn't discriminate. Good and bad supernaturals all fell victim to their form of justice. Innocents were persecuted alongside the guilty."
"So…magicians and witches are real," I said carefully.
"They are. You're one."
I scoffed. "I'm a necromancer. It's hardly magic or witchcraft. I can't change into a bat, or turn you into a frog. I can only do one thing, and it's only moderately useful."
"From what I've read in the ministry archives, that still qualifies you for being a witch. Most witches and magicians seemed to have a specialty, only one trick they could perform. I found no records of turning anyone into a bat or any other animal, but I did find accounts of mind control, changing one's own appearance, speaking to ghosts, that sort of thing."
I shook my head slowly, not because I didn't believe him, but because it was so fantastical. It was difficult to understand the scale of what he was telling me. "Why do we know nothing about witches and magicians now? Well, except for me, that is."
"I've observed others who possess strange powers. They're not hard to find, if one listens to rumors and talks to the right people. I expect they keep to themselves for precisely the reason you did—fear of reprisal. Society would ostracize them at the least, and hurt them at the most."
"I suppose so." Holloway had tried both ostracizing me and hurting me. He'd succeeded at the former and only failed at the latter thanks to Cook and his meat cleaver.
"The order accounted for many, many deaths of supernaturals in those early centuries," he said. "Times have changed drastically, fortunately. You have nothing to fear from the ministry. No one wants to eradicate supernaturals now."
Except, perhaps, Lord Gillingham. "The others wanted to exile me."
"Exile is not death."
