The Secrets of Life and Death (2 page)

‘You believe all this?’ Soames was staring at him.

‘Of course not, but some people do. These symbols are used in ritual magic.’

‘Like black magic, satanism?’

‘Colloquially, yes, I suppose so.’ Felix leaned in for a closer look. ‘But black magic wouldn’t necessarily use Enochian sigils, and I can’t see any pseudo-Christian shapes. I think you can rule out satanism.’

‘Sigils?’

‘Designs which are supposed to construct magical intent. Magic talismans and lucky charms sometimes have them.’ Felix stepped back, his legs shaky, whether with tiredness or adrenaline he couldn’t tell. ‘I’ve never heard of them being used in this way.’

‘We’ll photograph them at the post-mortem and let you have a better look. The pathologist says there appear to be more on her back.’

Felix took a deep breath, and stepped out of the circle of genderless suits gathered around the girl. She glowed in the light of arc lamps, propped over the backs of surrounding seats. Soames followed him.

‘You OK?’ Soames brushed the hood back from his face.

‘Yes, fine. It just seems sad – she’s so young.’

‘First thoughts?’

‘I’ll wait for the photographs and then do a bit of research. Inspector, are the symbols in complete circles?’

Soames nodded. ‘We think so; we’ll know more at the postmortem. It looks like two concentric rings of maybe a dozen or so shapes in each, drawn in some kind of pen. Why do you ask?’

‘I’m not sure … I think I’ve seen something like it before, that’s all.’

Soames ushered him off the train and started stripping off the white suit. ‘I’m sure I don’t need to remind you to keep this confidential, Professor.’

‘No, of course.’

Soames smiled. ‘We don’t want a big “black-magic sacrifice” headline in the local press.’

‘I understand. But there is no evidence, in the UK anyway, of Satanist sacrifices of any kind.’

Soames’s smile faded. ‘What about that boy, hacked up in London? I hear you were consulted on that one.’

‘That was a different kind of case altogether. A Muti killing, taking body parts to make magical charms. Terrible, but from a different belief system completely.’ Felix dropped the suit and booties into a bin. ‘Anyway, you said this case is probably an overdose?’

‘Maybe. She was a known drug user and prostitute. But we have three other young women who have gone missing over the last few months. Normally, we trace them to London or they’ve run off with boyfriends, but we haven’t had even a whisper about these girls. No texts, emails, no social networking, nothing. Then one turns up dead.’

‘Well, get the pictures to me and I’ll do the research. I noticed someone in the car park. A woman, she looked distressed, like she might have known the girl …’

‘What did she look like?’ Soames scanned the station.

‘I suppose, medium height, slim, attractive, shortish hair … blonde. Striking. Thirties, maybe, it was hard to tell.’ He looked across the tarmac, the rain drifting through cones of light onto parked vehicles.

The woman had vanished.

‘It is said that the wolves of the Klaj, or the royal hunting forest of Niepolomice, are the largest in the world, fed as they are upon the great aurochs and bison that dwell there. Also the bodies of peasants, thrown out by cruel masters onto the frozen ground when graves cannot be dug, which has given them a taste for human flesh.’

Edward Kelley
Journal entry, 11 November 1585
The Royal Road from Krakow

The darkness was filling the spaces between the trees when the first howl rang out. My horse flinched and tossed her head, I had to cling to the high pommelled Magyar saddle. The mare stumbled behind the main party, flinching at the echo of the strange sound, neither hound nor man. I looked about me, the cry hung around the black trunks lining the forest road. The horse flared her nostrils, huffing in the cold air, rolling her eyes back at me. Whatever she scented put a judder in her trot. Veils of mist dropped through the canopy. Dew beaded on my cloak and ran off the brim of my hat. I turned in the saddle to look behind me, but the silent trees seemed empty.

Doctor John Dee, my master, was sat tall atop a great horse. He was draped about in the cloak given to him by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth herself, at Greenwich palace after Dee had demonstrated necromancy. Another howl, this one more of a shriek, was cut short by a deep rumbling. I jumped, and the nag’s ears flattened onto its sweaty neck.

‘God preserve us,’ I prayed, clutching the pommel. I resisted the urge to cross myself, clinging instead to the greasy leather. Our rented house in Krakow, my mentor’s wife cooking, the sound of Dee’s children playing, all felt very far away. I longed for Richmond and the library at Mortlake.

Once out of the city, this country closed in on all travellers. No one dawdled on these roads, nor ventured off the track into miles of dense forest. I had long since lost all sense of where we were. Dee was the navigator, keen to add to his collection of maps and charts. We met few people on the road, and they treated us with equal suspicion. The Hungarian Magyars galloped everywhere on shaggy ponies, often with swords in their hands. The Poles travelled in armed caravans, guarding themselves against the Hungarians, the Lithuanians, the gypsies and, most of all, the forest. I caught a drop of the mist on my tongue. Winter came early in the mountains of Poland; the rain had the taste of melted snow.

A flicker of movement in the edge of my vision made me lean back in the saddle. In the scrub that separated the forest from the road, blackened brambles shivered and cast silver droplets to the ground. The lead escort shouted to his countrymen with urgency in his tone. They kicked their horses into a canter, Dee’s horse swept along with them as the party rode away from me. I shouted at my steed in good English, then in poor German, but all the rangy mare could manage was a jaw-jarring trot. Then I saw it, a grey pelt sliding between decaying brackens. The wolf – for it was certainly no dog – threw back a long snout over the leaves, and howled with an eerie, halting voice.

The sound echoed between the trees. I could see, in the fading light, Dee’s horse being dragged by one of the bearskinned escorts towards a bend in the track. Dee was looking back, his face and long beard pale against his scarlet cloak, as the wolf loped onto the road. My mount stopped abruptly and only the saddlebow stopped me sliding over its neck. The horse squealed, backing, hooves catching on the road. I saw other shadow shapes oiling out of the undergrowth, hesitant at first, then bolder. They were thin, their bellies arched like siege mongrels, open mouths blood-red in the greys of dusk. I kicked the horse with renewed energy and it was startled into a canter past the wolf before us. Another leapt at the horse’s throat but a cut from my whip made it cringe away. It was then that I felt my seat slide loose on the horse’s back, the girth slack. Perhaps when she had stopped, it had loosened or snapped. The saddle, with both packs tied to it and I perched between them, fell into the road. I managed to land on one foot and to stagger into the crowding creatures, waving the whip. One of the beasts had stopped the mare again, who was now screaming in panic, backing step by step towards me and my protection. She lurched into me, so I lost my footing for a moment. The stumble to one knee brought the gleam of white teeth all around me as they closed in. I lashed out with the whip, and shouted at them in English. A few wolves scattered but then re-formed, into a loose circle of gleaming fangs and scarlet tongues.

The gurgle of the horse made me turn. She was caught by the throat, and fell to her knees even as she tried to pull away, her gaping mouth and whitened eyes a horrible sight. I used the distraction to grab at my leather pack, wrestling with the straps that held it onto the saddle, in an effort to reach a weapon.

‘Edward!’ Dee, his voice very far away, began shouting in a mixture of English, Latin and German. I feared any rescue would be too late as another wolf leapt at me, only to be repelled as I swung the bag in panic.

Hooves pounded in the distance and two of the Magyar escort approached, Dee cantering in their wake. The men drew up short of the circle of wolves and the now dying horse. One man, heavily bearded, called to me in his barbaric language and gestured for me to run through the circle towards them. They had drawn their heavy swords and were using the flats to urge their ponies on.

A shout from one of the men made me spin around to see the open jaws and flattened ears of a wolf bounding towards me. I swung the pack again, knocking the beast sideways, its teeth caught in the hide. As I grappled with the bag, now in a tug of war with the animal, it yelped and cringed back. The smell of burnt fur rose in the air. The wolves fell back into a wider circle, even the ones that had started to open the horse’s belly, which sprayed red mist with each of the moribund mare’s laboured gasps. I could now see, in the half darkness, the glint of pink flames around me, a narrow circle of foxfire, even as I heard Dee’s deep voice chanting. I could see his hands inscribing the symbols in the air as he strode towards the pack, his cape flowing out from his shoulders making him look twice his usual size.

The guards had retreated, looking as feral and wild in the gloom as the wolves. The beasts were circling maybe a dozen yards away, salivating at the stench of the mare’s entrails spilling into the mud.

I hefted both packs, one with its precious books, the other with my clothes, and ran towards Dee. I staggered around the dying mare, my boots splashing in the blood, and jumped over the flames between the two Magyars. Dee had one of the pack mules reined to his saddle, and I clambered onto its bare back, careless of my comfort, lodging the packs in front of me.

As soon as Dee stopped chanting the fires started to fade. ‘Edward! Are you injured?’

‘I – I am well. Thank you, Master Dee.’

My master hauled on the reins and the mule was forced into a gait somewhere between a trot and a canter, rattling every tooth in my head. The Magyars rode their ponies tight around us, waving swords and shouting strange battle cries. I fought the urge to burst into tears with gratitude or relief and concentrated my efforts on staying on the rough-coated beast. I grasped a handful of bristly mane and urged it forward.

‘The castle is ahead. Barely half a mile.’ Dee’s bridle was grasped by one of the men, who spoke in a guttural dialect to Dee, who nodded his head. ‘Come, Edward, not much further now. The king’s castle will offer us refuge,’ he shouted, as if exhilarated. I shivered inside at the memory of the circle of red mouths, and the stink of the mare’s death.

As we rounded the corner, I could see the curve of a hill silhouetted against an ultramarine sky, jutting above a layer of mist. Perched on the side of the peak were the shapes of defensive walls, surrounded by smaller hovels. The remaining guards had raised the alarm, and an escort of fur-clad men rode out, bearing torches that hissed and spat in coils of smoke. The men’s faces were impersonal, their sharp eyes darting everywhere, their teeth flashing white in dark faces. Surrounded by the stink of burnt tallow and horse sweat, I had the strange sense of being trapped. Behind me, the feasting wolves raised their voices in the song of the forest.

Standing at the station had left a chill that Jackdaw Hammond couldn’t shake. Two days later, she wondered why she was putting herself through it again. Another girl … but first, she had some business to transact.

She let the rain trickle over her collar and her eyes adjust to the low light. One hand rested against the coat touching her thigh, and against her fingers she felt the outline of the dagger sewn into the lining. Street lights lit the underside of low clouds, glowing to infuse the passageway in front of her with a faint orange.

She crept along the side of the alley, remembering every cobble, the raised drain, tussocks of weeds. She allowed a fingertip to trail along the brickwork wall, counting steps in her head. Three – four – five – six – seven. She could see the archway onto Thistle Street, the light reflected off water on the pavement. As she approached the entrance she stopped, letting the sounds and sights sink in. There were voices from a few directions; a dog barking somewhere, quickly shushed; traffic humming into the city on the A road. She sniffed the air, getting wet stone, the trails of car exhaust, the waxy scent of her own coat. Colours flickered over a bedroom ceiling, perhaps from a television. She pulled her leather hat lower on her forehead against the rain.

Yellow light spilled out of a pub doorway. The Seven Magpies, George Pierce’s preferred rendezvous. She walked past the Tudor building to the narrow yard that led down its sagging flank. The darkness was greyed by the flicker of a fluorescent light in a back kitchen. Jack glanced around the street, then slipped into the alley. She switched on a pencil torch, found a blank piece of wall and started chalking. The rain came down harder, inching down her neck and smudging some of her handiwork. She let her mind settle, alert to any change, switched off the light, and waited. She checked her phone again, for the clock.
Don’t be late, not tonight …

‘Jack.’ He surprised her, his voice reaching her at the same time as the smell of stale cigarettes and sweat. His outline must be melted into the shadows along the wall.

‘Pierce,’ she said. He was there somewhere. She slid one hand to the hilt of the knife.

‘You got my merchandise?’ He coughed, and spat, close to her boots by the splat of it.

‘I have. You got the money?’

‘Two grand for five grams, as agreed.’ He stepped out, silhouetted against the end of the alley and the lit street beyond. He was a small, thin man, somewhere between fifty and seventy, barely taller than Jack. The glow from the kitchen window dropped spots of light onto his eyes and illuminated a shock of white hair, yellowed at the front.

‘Two thousand for
four
grams of pure merchandise.’ She reached into an inside pocket, past the hilt of the dagger, for the folded bag of powder. It shimmered as she lifted it out. He shuffled forward in anticipation and she stepped back, closer to the wall and the symbols. Adrenaline rushed through her, warming her.