The Secrets of Life and Death (19 page)

Jack fumbled with the seat belt clasp and Felix reached over to help her with it. The light inside the car shone on a familiar symbol inked below Jack’s throat, just under her scarf.

He sat back, and she stared at him, one hand pressed to her chest. Anger filled him up, choking him. She slowly pulled her fingers away, drawing back the layers of her clothes by a few inches, revealing three of the shapes.

‘I
do
know what these are used for,’ she said, her voice calm. ‘I wanted to explain, but there are other lives at risk.’

‘One life has already been lost, Jack. A girl is dead in the mortuary, and you didn’t tell me … this is all to do with the medals.’ He put both hands on the steering wheel, gripping the cold leather. He felt unreasonably hurt. He had thought the rapport between them was mutual trust. ‘You’ve been lying to me all along.’

‘No!’ She breathed heavily for a moment, as if frustrated. ‘Yes, maybe by omission. I wanted to tell you, I really did. You were right. The sigils are healing symbols, that’s all.’

‘So, you just wanted to find out what I knew.’ He turned the key in the ignition. ‘I’m taking you home. And then you are going to tell me everything you know. Or I’m calling the police, and this McNamara.’

‘No!’ Her voice was fluttery, weak over the purr of the engine. ‘Just take me to my car.’

‘You aren’t safe to drive.’ Her hand covered his, and the touch of her skin shocked him. ‘You’re frozen.’ His anger started to fade.

‘I have this medical condition, it leaves me prone to hypothermia.’ She gripped his hand, pulling at it. ‘Felix, if I tell you everything I can, will you help me get home – safely?’

He hesitated, still angry, but the touch of her fingers was burning him despite their extreme cold. They were vibrating, as if she was shivering, before she withdrew them.

‘I’m tired of being mucked around, Jack. These symbols are somehow linked to a girl’s death.’ A horrible thought hit Felix, as he drove around a roundabout towards the main road. ‘You’re involved in this girl’s death, aren’t you?’ He gripped the wheel harder, thinking how he’d been taken for a fool.

‘I …’ She rubbed her face with her hands, as he glanced at her.

His voice was cold. ‘Tell me the truth, Jack. Did you … kill that girl?’ He looked back to see her expression.

She looked straight into his eyes, a foot away. ‘I didn’t kill her. I failed to save her.’

‘The forests of Poland are dense and wrap themselves around a traveller like a cloak. Within its folds are many hazards: wolves that the guards fought off several times; a bear that crossed the road and held us at bay for many minutes; dark forest men, carrying poached deer and hares. And the deep, killing cold that takes away a man’s senses and burns his face and limbs.’

Edward Kelley
30 November 1585
Carpathia

We travelled for most of five nights and four days, riding on worse roads than I have ever seen. I fell off an assortment of ponies and horses at a number of inns, castles and the odd peasant hovel. There I was fed ale and bread and allowed a few hours’ rest when it was too dark to travel. I slept tied up in the squalid warmth of stables or cowsheds. Our kidnappers seemed to suffer no discomfort at this speed of travel, often by torchlight, but were constantly looking back for pursuit. Dee and I were able to exchange but a few whispers.

Around dawn after the fifth night, the party wound along a curving road that seemed to rise steeply, and I was jerked from a daydream by the shout of one of our guards.

‘Báthory! Báthory!’ The cry was taken up by our group, even the two injured men, who had survived, despite the lack of a surgeon. The men seemed as hardy as their mounts. I shook the hood from my head, and urged my pony onwards to keep up with our escort. They were holding their weapons aloft and chanting in their own language. My mount slowed as it came to the top of the road.

Falling away below me, a deep valley was covered with a patchwork of fields and forest, which then rose to the slopes of a mountain. Perhaps the countess would have called it a hill, I do not know, but it was so steep it looked as if nothing could climb it without wings. Yet perched on the top, like a stone eagle, was a castle. It projected turrets and towers into the sky, the walls tinted in golds and pinks by the glow of dawn.

The leader of the men kicked his mount towards me. ‘Csejte. Báthory!’ He added something in accented Latin and my muddled, exhausted mind ordered the words to make some sense. We were ‘home’.

Dee sat tall in the stirrups to look at the vista. It was as if we faced a bowl made of mountains, which serrated the horizons all around.

‘Look, Edward.’ His voice was dry and rough, as I suspected mine would have been, but his eyes were shining and his bruises yellowing. ‘We have been travelling south and west. This must be the Little Carpathians. We have travelled sixty leagues or more.’ He coughed, and spat onto the road. He shook with cold, and wrapped his wet cloak around his shoulders.

‘I know, master …’ I spat dust in an effort to make enough saliva to speak. ‘I know where we are. The captain said Csejte, it’s one of the Báthory castles. The countess was talking about it.’

‘Clever. Istvan is a fox, Edward. He cannot refuse Rome, but he still wants us to cure his niece. So he allows Nádasdy to kidnap us, and he can avoid responsibility.’

It hadn’t taken me more than a night to work that out, but I hesitated on the path, looking down the shaggy flank of my stolid mount. Viewed occasionally in a bare ribbon, a road cut between the forest and fields lining the valley. A mountain goat, perhaps, could negotiate it, but I could not imagine …

I did not have to envisage it for long. A calloused hand grasped my reins, and with my pony squealing like a pig, dragged us all over the edge into the valley. My poor nag half walked, half slid on its rump down the path, the man on the horse ahead of us calling out some heathen war cry, as others followed. In places the track cut along the edge of the cliffs, barely a yard wide, my patient horse slipping and tripping on boulders larger than my head, each lurch giving me a falcon’s-eye view of the trees from above.

As we rode past farms and cottages, cries of recognition met the riders. The slope softened and we reached a village with a small, pointed church, much fortified. Here we paused, and were greeted with foaming tankards and handfuls of dumplings to be dipped in bowls of some meaty soup. I ate with the men and I filled my belly with the hot, greasy food. I wiped my mouth on my cloak, which, I am ashamed to say, had been used as a napkin and worse over the journey. Then I was led to a midden and allowed to relieve myself, while children peeped around the wall at me and giggled. They seemed well fed enough, and strong, unlike some of the thin, white faces we had seen along our ride. I sought about me for some hay or shavings, and a child, just a girl of maybe six or seven, shyly ventured forward with some leaves. I smiled at her, but she dropped them beside me and ran back, laughing. The encounter cheered me, and when I walked back to my pony under the eye of a captor, I looked up to the castle, which seemed to loom overhead.

The clatter of iron-shod ponies on the stone courtyard within the open doors of the citadel was muted with a foot of mud. The count and countess appeared to keep a garrison of many servants as the ground was covered with the marks of traffic. Horse, hound and boot prints were criss-crossed with cart tracks. I was pulled off the saddle to sprawl upon the ground, a laugh rising from the men who had accompanied me. I was full of gratitude that at least I wouldn’t have to ride again for a while. Seeing them standing by their horses, I realised only the captain and one of the injured men was actually taller than me, and neither was taller than my mentor. Dee was staggering across the yard to help me to my feet. We supported each other in the dull light, clouds racing across the sky, so close it felt like a broom would reach them. Dee was unable to stand upright, and his face was tight with pain. But his voice was warm and his smile wide.

‘Safe from the Inquisition, Edward, at least. Though I’m afraid I am becoming too old for riding above a trot.’ He looked quite grey with exhaustion. ‘God grant us rest, at least.’

‘And dry clothes,’ I answered, brushing the mud on my jacket with an equally muddy hand. My courtly dress – or Dee’s, as it happened – was ruined, torn under one arm, soaked in mud and stinking of horse sweat and urine from hours fettered in stables. ‘And food.’

Our captain strode forward, buffeting my shoulder with one hand so I reeled again. ‘You are safe, safe, understand?’ he said in his strange Latin. ‘Safe from the poxed Inquisition and their whoreson priest.’

I attempted a grin, and nodded. ‘Safe, yes. Good.’

He bowed his head a little to us, then reached inside his jacket for an inner pocket.

‘My master bade me give you this, and grant you sanctuary in his castle.’

Dee took the folded missive, and opened it, holding it so I could read.

At your service Doctor Dee and Master Kelley, may God continue to grant you long life. At the bidding of the countess, my wife, I have taken the liberty with your safety to remove you from the court of his Highness Istvan Báthory, our esteemed uncle, and place you in the castle at Csejte for your own protection. My men have your possessions with them, that you might continue to work upon your studies, that the countess will, with the grace of God, be healed of her afflictions.

His Lordship Count Ferenc Nádasdy, written at Niepolomice, St. Matthew’s eve, 1585, by his own hand.

The whole was scribbled in untidy and misspelled Latin, as if in a hurry, but the intention was clear. We had exchanged one prison for another.

Felix drove in silence, perhaps shocked by the revelations of the night, Jack couldn’t tell. She touched her face, feeling the smooth tightness of the swelling beside her eye. It hurt, more than expected, and she winced, the skin pulling. Felix glanced at her.

‘You said you fell.’

‘Yes.’ She swallowed, her throat dry and her voice croaky. ‘I went to consult someone about this woman, this Bachmeier. He must have tripped me up or something.’

‘Tripped you?’ His voice was dry. ‘You aren’t as good a liar as you think you are, Jack.’

‘Well, if I explained how he tripped me you wouldn’t believe it.’

‘Try me.’

He took the turning to the village.

‘This guy, Pierce, hit me with a charm to knock the energy out of me.’ She reached for her bag and started looking through it. ‘I managed to get to the high street before it really hit me.’ She found it in the small pocket on the outside. It was a charred circle of thorns and plaited herbs, and greasy with some sort of animal fat. ‘It’s called a hex grenade. He must have planted it in my bag.’

He held out one hand for it, and she dropped it onto his palm. He started for a moment, then weighed it, glancing down. ‘It feels cold.’ He gave it back to her, replacing his hand on the wheel.

‘That’s how it works, it pulls the energy out from whoever’s near it. It’s spent now.’

He drove for a few moments, staring ahead. ‘Dee wrote about something similar, but not to hurt people. To store up energy that could be released in magic spells.’

‘Well, Pierce uses them to debilitate.’

‘Did this man know anything useful?’

‘Pierce? He’s met her, the woman in the back of my car. She’s offered him money. It’s the only language he understands.’ She reached for the charm, and opened the window a few inches. ‘It’s got to go, I don’t want him tracing me through it.’

He smiled crookedly at her. ‘So he’s some sort of witch doctor, here in Devon?’

‘No, he just knows a few people, a few tricks.’ She directed him through the crossroad. ‘Just take me to the village. I can walk from there.’

‘You don’t trust me.’ Felix’s voice was soft.

‘This isn’t just my secret to tell, there are other people involved.’

‘OK.’ He looked at her, one eyebrow raised. ‘Go on.’

She watched his jaw tighten, his lips thin. He had nice lips, she thought. ‘This is half legend, half tradition. You probably know more about its origins than I do.’

‘This is something to do with the Dee medals, obviously.’

‘Some people believe that we are fated to die at a certain time.’

‘OK.’ He didn’t sound like he was one of them, but she pressed on.

‘So, for most people, that moment comes and they die. But for others, they will
probably
die. There’s some uncertainty.’

‘And this is related to the symbols on your chest?’

‘On my back, too, and every room in my home. These keep me alive.’

He frowned. ‘Are they drawn on?’

‘I have tattoos, they last longer.’ She wrapped her coat tight around her neck, her fingers stiff with cold. ‘They are healing sigils, Felix, nothing more sinister than that. The dead girl, Carla, was dying of an overdose when we found her. She had seconds, a minute, no more. The magic kept her alive long enough to get her to safety. We call it borrowed time.’

‘You didn’t call an ambulance, get expert medical care?’

‘There isn’t medical care for what was wrong with Carla, or with me.’ She caught his arm and shook it for a moment. ‘Her time was up, Felix, she was dying. A seer predicted her death.’

‘And these shapes saved her, somehow, where medicine wouldn’t have?’ He looked angry. ‘You don’t know that, you can’t be sure.’

She was piqued by the cold tone. ‘I have a fair amount of evidence backing that belief. Carla was fine all the time she stuck to the rules. The second she stopped, she …’ Her voice thickened, and she choked on the word
died
.

He looked at the darkness out of the window, his face reflected in the black glass.

‘What do you mean by seer?’

‘A seer predicted when she would die, where she would be. We—’

‘We?’ he jumped on the word.

‘Maggie, my foster mother and I, we went there to find Carla. She was in an alley, dying, was all but dead, because it was her time to die. She was emaciated, covered with sores, septic. She’d taken a huge overdose, was barely breathing.’