The Secrets of Life and Death (34 page)

We were dragged, at sword point, to the solar at midday.

Dee stood resolute before the Black Bear. ‘My Lord Nádasdy, our research has led us to a most unhappy conclusion.’

The man was cracking hazelnuts between strong fingers, throwing the shells onto the fire where they crackled. ‘What wisdoms did the priest impart?’ He seemed calm, his black eyes sliding towards me before returning to Dee. He tossed back his head and crunched the meat of the nut.

‘What you ask us to do, is not to save the Lady Erzsébet, but to transform her into a creature of such miserable existence that you will come to regret it.’

Nádasdy beckoned to one of his attendants and spoke into his ear, then turned back to us. ‘I ask again. Can you do it? Can you restore her to health?’

Dee hesitated, and again the count stared at me. I grew hot and fearful under his gaze.

Dee spoke as calmly as if he were talking of the weather. ‘What she would become is a creature of darkness and death. You would regret the day we tied her soul to her dying body.’

Nádasdy jabbed a finger in my chest, making me stagger back. ‘You, sorcerer. Can you do it?’

I looked at Dee who gazed back. ‘I … I don’t …’ I stammered.

Nádasdy nodded to the attendant and spoke a few words in the hissing and spitting language of the Magyars. The man slithered a yard of bright steel from his scabbard, which gleamed in the candlelight. He raised it above his head, and turned towards Dee.

‘Then your master will die and you will do it,’ Nádasdy said to me.

‘No! I need – I need Master Dee’s wisdom, his knowledge. I don’t know how to do it by myself.’

‘He would let my wife die.’

‘No, he won’t, I mean …’ I stammered, looking beseechingly at Dee, who stared at me.

Nádasdy nodded to the attendant who twisted on one foot towards me, the sword cutting the air close to my neck. ‘Then we will sacrifice you, if your master will not oblige. Perhaps then, he will act to save his own life. Mayhap he does not take me seriously.’

I stared at Dee, who looked sad. ‘Edward, you heard Konrad,’ he said in English. ‘Perhaps it would be better if we die, in God’s grace.’ He sounded uncertain.

I was speechless, my mouth flapping open like a landed carp. I could not drag my eyes from the wicked blade, drawing back like a bowstring, the man’s eyes narrowing as he aligned the edge with my throat.

‘Master!’ I reached up with one puny arm, as if to ward off my death.

‘Wait!’ Dee seemed to struggle with himself. ‘We will help, but I want your word that you will let both of us and also Father Konrad and his men go, as soon as the lady’s life is secured.’

The man with the sword stood like a statue, the very end of the blade quivering. Finally, he lowered it, and my breath escaped in a whoosh.

Dee turned to me, held out a steadying hand. As we clung together like children, the Black Bear snapped orders to his guards and we were left alone for a moment.

‘Edward, we are misguided.’ Dee had tears rolling down his face into his beard. ‘I know not what to do.’

I was quite certain. ‘What we do,’ I stopped to swallow a lump, the size of a loaf, in my throat, ‘is do what has to be done. And then we shall help Konrad undo it.’

He looked around the room, and wiped his face on the back of his sleeve. ‘Very well. Then let us set out the candles, Edward.’

By the time we asked the countess to attend, the room was lit by dozens of candles and a fire blazed in the hearth. The bed had been placed in the centre of the circle as Dee had commanded. Incense burned in small bowls at the cardinal points, adding their smoke to the haziness. Servants had shuttered the windows against the dusk.

A dog, somewhere within the castle yards, began to howl with a sound that ran cold fingers up my spine. Its fellows, wolfhounds and other dogs within the castle, began to add their voices, not in the song that the wolves created, but a screaming, as if they were terrified. Then I heard the horses.

When horses suffer great fear, they shriek with almost a human voice. Outside, we could hear men shouting, boots thudding along corridors and over the cobbles. It sounded as if every horse in the castle was being tortured, until I heard the great grinding of the latches and hinges that supported the main gates, and the screaming, yelping, barking, and wailing animals thundered in a great company, over the yard and into the forest.

We stood like statues, looking at each other, when all the bats roosted in the roof of the solar dropped into the room. They poured from niches and corners, dozens of them, and we ducked, as they flew around looking for an exit. Some flew in desperation towards the fireplace, only to catch ablaze and fall to the floor. Dee threw open a wooden shutter, and after a few moments they found their retreat. I longed to follow them.

‘Edward.’ Dee was looking out of the narrow window, and I followed him to it, and leaned out.

The yard was moving, a teeming sea of rats, mice, movement of all sort. Cats ran over the rats without attacking them, intent on reaching the forest and, I suppose, what they imagined was comparative safety. All living things but the people were fleeing the building. Then the door was thrown open and Zsófia carried her lady into the chamber, followed by Nádasdy and two servants.

The countess was wrapped inside a long robe, her feet bare. The witch lifted the lady over the symbols, making sure she didn’t touch them, and sat her upon the thick mattress. The countess slumped onto the bed, cradled in the arms of the witch, her face turning a shade of iron grey. Her mouth and eyes sagged open, as if life was extinct.

‘She dies!’ Zsófia wailed, looking around the room for us. ‘Doctor Dee, Edward, please save her!’ Her words shook themselves into sobs, as she bent her head over her mistress.

Nádasdy strode forward. ‘Perform the ritual. Now.’

Dee pulled back his heavy sleeves. ‘I can only try, you understand?’ His voice was severe, and the count took one step away. ‘Clear the room.’

I harried the servants out, but the count would not go. The witch had ignored us, and was clutching the body of the countess as if a lover, her whole body jerking with her sobs. I couldn’t understand her words, but she was distraught. In the end, it took Nádasdy’s strength to haul her away, and Dee was able to examine the countess. He pressed a finger to her throat, and listened to her breath.

‘Life is not yet extinguished,’ he announced, flexing his arms. ‘Hurry, Edward, the circle.’

I brought out a glass vessel of sea salt culled from the kitchens. The smell took me back to my childhood, cockling as a boy in the sands in Kent. I breathed the scent in for a moment, stopping the shaking in my hands.

‘Edward.’ The reminder woke me from the past and I scattered a thin line of salt around the circle we had drawn earlier. I left a gap for Dee to cross.

‘Ready, master.’

Dee took up the dagger I had lent him to use as a substitute wand.

His voice took on the timbre of command, which sent shivers down my spine. We usually worked in Latin, but we knew Nádasdy understood that, so we had agreed to try the ritual in English. Spirits understand all languages.

‘Erzsébet, awake.’ He pulled out the bottle of hagweed and earthstar tincture we had made. ‘
Erzsébet
.’

She sighed. Dee lifted her head a little, and tipped the bottle against her lips. She swallowed some, I could only hope it was enough. He stepped back, out of the circle, and I sprinkled salt across the gap. With a loud breath, the countess pulled herself up, to sit on the bed, head back, gasps filling the room as she laboured for air.

‘Zsófia!’ she cried.

‘Raphael!’ Dee intoned, inscribing the first symbol over the eastern corner. ‘Bind this child to the clay of her creation!’ He lit the candle that stood there.

He moved to the south, and I was impelled by a force behind my head to a kneeling position. I found my mouth chanting in a strange language, and the sense of something filling up my body, until I felt I would burst.

Dee continued, this time calling to Uriel. The words my mouth was mumbling became clear to me. ‘Bless the children of the dead, bless the undead, bless the dead …’ I struggled to control my tongue but still the words flowed out of me in a mocking tone, and poured into the room. Then my lips formed the shapes of names. I grew cold with terror as I heard them gushing from my mouth. ‘Bael, Bathan, Morax, Asmodeus …’

‘Gabriel!’ shouted Dee, he must have been in the west at this point, but I had little time to think about it.

I breathed again, feeling the squeeze of my chest as the demons’ names were forced out, as if I were a pair of bellows. ‘Stolas, Aguarès, Astaroth …’

‘Michael!’ Dee roared. I was released, in time to raise my head and see Dee draw the sigil of Michael in the air. Looking past him I could see Nádasdy. He had restrained the writhing witch, and drawn something gleaming over her bare arm. Blood was gushing into a wooden cup, and I sprang to my feet, taking the first step to her aid before I realised what they were doing.

Zsófia was not unwilling. She writhed in the man’s arms as she had writhed in mine, as a lover. Her eyes were open, but not seeing, and her moans were of pleasure, not pain. Nádasdy kissed her with such savagery her lips were reddened and bleeding, even as the blood flowed down her arm, as if he meant to devour her.

I glanced, horrified, towards the countess, Erzsébet. She was alive, and watching, with such a lustful expression on her face I was ashamed to see it. Her skin was pale, but had lost the greyness of death.

Nádasdy dropped the witch, who fell to the floor almost insensible, and kicked through the salt barrier. Erzsébet was kneeling, hands outstretched to take the goblet. She drank the blood greedily, and threw the cup to the ground. Newly filled with energy, she clawed at her lord’s clothes with such strength that she ripped his dolman almost in two, the remains falling to the ground. The count’s heavy body emerged from his shirt, and he pulled her against him.

Dee gathered himself, and turned to me, his face as shocked as mine.

‘Master,’ I mumbled, now my voice was my own. I took his arm, and led him towards the stairs. ‘Come. You have saved her. The ritual worked.’

‘This cannot be what the angels wanted,’ he said, distraught. ‘Stop them.’

I looked back to Zsófia, who had dragged herself to her feet, and was cradling her bleeding arm. I called to her. ‘Zsófia, come with us, for God’s sake.’

‘What do I care for God?’ she called, watching the pair on the bed, who were now coupling like animals. ‘She is my life.’ She was swaying, grasping her injured arm.

She staggered to the bed, and I watched as she was gathered into the countess’s embrace. Erzsébet kissed Zsófia on the mouth, smeared with her own blood, and threw her down between them.

Jack channelled all the rage she had been building from looking at Sadie’s bruised, shaking form. Distracted by the ritual to come, and her bloodlust, the woman hadn’t seen her enter the church. Jack had crept under scaffolding and over rubble, carrying the sword.

She harvested all her feelings from remembering her dog’s unconscious body, Maggie’s injuries, the fury that consumed her when she looked at the injured teenager, and spat the binding spell at the woman.

The ritual words, enough to enervate a normal person, were devastating to a borrowed timer, as Jack had previously learned in an encounter with Pierce. They hit the countess with a force that knocked her to her knees. Caught by the nimbus, even in her protective circle, Sadie folded like a rag doll. Jack forced the rage into the words as she strode forward. She held her weapon – Maggie’s sword – in front of her, but could feel the air thickening as she moved closer to the huddled old woman.

Jack raised the sword above her head with both hands, calling out the ritual words again. The woman turned her head, and Jack’s mouth was frozen in the icy-blue stare.

‘You don’t think your tiny spells can stop
me
?’ the woman hissed, before an energy bolt hit Jack and knocked her onto her back. The sword clattered away and she scuttled after it.

Jack climbed to her feet and swung the weapon. It hissed through the air and she could feel the words inscribed along its length whisper in their own musical sibilance.

‘All I have to do is delay you,’ she shouted. ‘The Inquisition have stopped you completing your ritual for too many years. This is your last chance. You are dying, old woman.’

‘The only way you can stop me is to run that toy through the child’s heart.’ The woman dusted off her clothes, and Jack could see Sadie struggling to all fours. ‘Assuming you can get past me.’

For one moment, Jack contemplated the arc of the sword spinning through the air and into the countess. She knew the chance of success was too low to risk it, so she walked around the side of the woman, step by careful step, avoiding the many shapes drawn on the floor.

‘Sadie. Are you OK?’ The girl looked up, blinked, and nodded. The countess grabbed Sadie’s wrist and tugged her to her feet, and before Jack could react, drew the silver blade across the girl’s forearm.

Sadie wailed in pain, still weaving from the effects of Jack’s spell. Blood welled up and before it could run onto the ground, the woman dropped the knife and snatched the chalice off the table.

Jack went to step nearer and found she couldn’t. There was some sort of protective inner circle, unseen, but cold to the touch. She recoiled, feeling delicately with the sword to find its boundaries.

The invisible circle included Sadie in her own small sanctuary, the table and the witch’s tools. It excluded four separate circles at each of the cardinal points. Jack recognised a few symbols from Felix’s laptop.

‘These are summoning circles,’ she said, hazarding a guess.

The woman squeezed Sadie’s arm to catch the last drops as the bleeding slowed. Then she held up the cup, calling out some words Jack didn’t recognise, and lifted the chalice to her lips.

‘No!’ Jack shouted, but the woman started drinking. When she lowered the chalice, her mouth was scarlet, and she looked dazed. Sadie fell to her knees, her face even whiter than usual.