Witchfall (25 page)

It was King Henry, father to Queen Mary and the Lady Elizabeth; he who had ordered the arrest and execution of Elizabeth’s mother, Queen Anne Boleyn.

As I watched, the King seemed to grow in the window, his body blackening, his face blurring, becoming darker and more grotesque until he was nothing but a terrible vast shadow with hooded eyes that looked down into me and knew my true self.

‘Take her away!’ he roared, and slammed the casement shut.

Someone lifted the child from my arms, wrapped her in a cloak and carried her away. I missed her scent as soon as she was gone, my heart wrenched away with her little body.

‘Be gentle with her!’ I exclaimed. ‘Do not be afraid, Bess. I will come back to you.’

Then the guards were upon me. They seized me roughly by the arms and dragged me away through the gardens. The gold and red skirts of my gown brushed the heady clumps of lavender, snagging on the rose bushes.

I heard a woman crying fiercely, ‘I am the Queen! I am the Queen!’ until the sky seemed to darken and my eyes closed.

As soon as Richard removed the blindfold, I looked up at him, shaking with anger. ‘How dare you? Untie my hands!’

‘Welcome back,’ he said drily, and bent to wrestle with the thin cords with which he had bound my wrists together at my back.

At that moment, the door was flung open. Standing there, rain and wind howling about him, was Alejandro with a drawn sword in his hand.

His face wet with rain, he stared into the smoke-filled hut. His swift gaze took in my bound hands, Richard crouched over me, then John Dee himself, a hooded figure holding a candle aloft behind a table that boasted a horned ram’s skull decorated with strange symbols drawn in what was clearly blood.

‘Stand away from her!’ he said harshly, and took two hasty steps towards Richard.

Before I could warn him of the apprentice’s gift, I saw Richard raise his hand and then Alejandro staggered back, like a man in a high wind.

The Spanish novice groped for the silver crucifix which always hung at his neck. Finding it, he muttered, ‘
In te spero, Domine. Salva me
.’

Richard sighed. ‘How very tiresome he is.’ He spread his fingers and pointed at Alejandro, who dropped to his knees, his whole body struggling against the enchantment, the veins standing out on his throat.

‘Leave him alone,’ I told Richard furiously. ‘Untie my hands.’

‘What, so you can try and throw me against the wall with your witch’s magick? No, thank you.’

His master intervened, throwing back his hood and snapping his fingers at Richard. ‘Don’t be such a fool. Our work is finished here anyway. Untie the Lytton girl and release the Spaniard from your hold.’ He drew a sharp breath when his apprentice did not move. ‘Now,
Richard! The Lady Elizabeth is fond of her young priest.’

‘Oh, very well.’ With a muttered oath, Richard released Alejandro from whatever spell he had used against him.

Alejandro leaped to his feet at once, his sword levelled at the apprentice. His face was flushed with anger. ‘What have you done to her, sirrah? What gives you the right to treat a lady in this way?’ Reaching me, he slit the cords binding my wrists with one stroke and put his arm about my waist, lifting me as though I weighed nothing.

‘Put your arms about my neck,’ he ordered me, and I obeyed, my head dizzy from the smoke.

His chest was sodden with rain, but I lay my head against it gratefully.

John Dee held out his hands in a conciliatory gesture. ‘It was part of the ritual. We could not risk her using magick and disturbing the angelic powers. She was not harmed.’

‘You could just have asked me not to use magick,’ I muttered.

‘You are a woman,’ Dee said apologetically. ‘Sometimes the visions can be very intense and frightening. Even Richard has sometimes defended himself without thinking and angered the spirits. We could not trust you to remember, not on your first attempt.’

‘Her last attempt,’ Alejandro told them bitterly, and turned as though to carry me back to the house.

‘No, no, I want to do it again,’ I insisted, struggling free of his grip. Alejandro released me, staring in amazement
as I stepped away from him. ‘I have to choose my own path.’

‘Meg, you were screaming,’ Alejandro reminded me. ‘These men had you tied up and blindfolded.’

‘I know, I know. And I’m truly grateful you came for me. I was scared, at that moment, and I do feel safer, knowing you are there if I need you. But that doesn’t mean I never want to try it again. It was astonishing.’ I struggled to find the right words to describe how it had felt to live and breathe a vision like that. ‘Miraculous.’

Alejandro recoiled at my use of that word, then crossed himself against the taint of blasphemy. His dark eyes sought mine through the smoky air.

‘Tell me truthfully, are you under a spell?’

I shook my head, though I was still a little dazed from what I had seen and felt in my vision. ‘I thank you with all my heart for coming to my aid, Alejandro,’ I murmured, not wanting to hurt him, ‘but it would be best if you returned to the house. This is no place for you.’

Alejandro looked at me, disbelieving. ‘You expect me to walk away and leave you here?’

‘Yes.’

‘With this conjuror and his boy?’

Richard had come silently to my side. Now he gave an angry laugh. ‘One more word, novice, and I swear—’

A fight was stirring here, their faces taut with aggression. I put up a hand between them, looking from one to the other. ‘I don’t want any more disputes. Alejandro, please do
as I ask and leave me. I am not in any danger, as you can plainly see. My mistress asked me to be here, to see this business through to the end, and that is what I intend to do.’

Alejandro stood there a moment longer, his face a cold mask, his sword in his hand, still pointing lethally at Richard. When I raised my eyebrows, he reluctantly sheathed his sword and bowed to me with customary politeness. But I could see the fury in his face.

Then he stalked out without another word, dragging the door shut behind him.

I closed my eyes in silent apprehension after his departure. Perhaps I had done the wrong thing. Perhaps I had driven him away for ever. Yet if Alejandro truly desired us to become man and wife, he must accept this side of my nature.

‘Meg?’ the astrologer asked gently.

I turned back to Master Dee and nodded, putting my grief behind me. There was still much to be done this night if we were to make sense of my outlandish visions.

‘So I was in a high place, and then somehow in the body of Queen Anne. But what does any of it mean?’

When my throat was dry from talking, and every inch of the astrologer’s paper was covered in his fine black scrawl, Richard rose and threw me my cloak. It stank of wood smoke, but I wrapped myself in it gratefully, too exhausted to care. Everything I could remember from my visions had
been noted down meticulously, yet I suspected we were no nearer solving the problem of what was haunting Elizabeth. Master Dee seemed more puzzled than enlightened by the words of the angel, and if he could not understand what I had seen, it struck me that nobody could.

‘Time for you to sleep,’ Richard said shrewdly, looking into my face. ‘It will be dawn in a few hours. There is little more we can learn tonight.’

‘But was it enough?’ I asked, glancing at Master Dee.

‘There is much here to ponder. And one of my books may yet reveal what we do not understand.’ Dee stood up from his seat wearily, stretching. He gestured to Richard to clear the table. ‘I must return to London, but I shall leave Richard and the more arcane books at Hatfield. He can search through them in my absence, and perhaps discover an answer to these most perplexing visions.’

I shuddered. ‘I wish you did not have to leave.’

‘I have no choice.’ John Dee closed his eyes, pain twitching the thin brows together above his sensitive face. ‘Bishop Bonner demands my presence in his house, and I have no power to say him nay. To refuse would be to draw down the same terrible fate on my head as the heretics he burns daily. But I have seen in the stars, his time is nearly at an end. Another year or two, and I shall be free again.’ He opened his eyes and gazed at me intently. ‘Meanwhile, you must serve the princess and help to keep her safe from those who would harm her. Marcus Dent is such a man. If you ever have
the chance again to destroy him, take it. And this time do not hesitate.’

Annoyance pricked at me. ‘I already tried to destroy him. I thought he was gone for good.’

‘Then try harder, Meg Lytton. This is not a game. More than your own life and that of your mistress may be at stake here. If he can, Marcus will take great pleasure in condemning your mistress to the Tower, and you to everlasting torment, and England will not be far behind.’ John Dee turned away, staring into the dying embers of the fire. ‘Marcus was always cruel as a young man, taking pleasure in the suffering of others. Now I fear his cruelty has grown to monstrous proportions. He may not even fully be a man any more, but a creature of darkness. In a way, your banishing spell may have made him stronger, perhaps even given him the power he needed to trick death.’

My voice was high with incredulity. ‘You mean he cannot die?’

The astrologer shrugged. ‘The only way to tell if you can still kill Marcus Dent is to face the man – and defeat him.’

There was a long and terrible silence during which I struggled not to weep at this news. Even though I had long suspected he might not be properly alive, I had still hoped Master Dee, with all his knowledge and experience, might have some simple answer that would solve everything. Perhaps a magickal instrument to keep the witchfinder away from me, or a darker spell than those in even my aunt’s most
secret books which would allow me to banish Marcus for good.

Instead, he seemed even more convinced than I was of my own impending failure.

Richard held out his hand. ‘Come,’ he said brusquely, and there was no sympathy in his face, ‘I’ll see you safely back to the house.’

The path back through the woods showed a glimmer of light above the trees; dawn on its way, in the far east. We walked slowly, for I was cold and tired, and Richard’s limp slowed his progress over the uneven ground. Once or twice he caught me looking at him sideways, though I tried to contain my curiosity. By the time we reached the back of the house, Richard was frowning heavily, a sneer on his lips.

‘Not as fleet of foot as your tame novice, am I?’ Leaning against the wall beside the back door, Richard looked hard at me as though expecting an answer.

I was embarrassed. ‘That wasn’t what I—’

‘Were you wondering if I was born like this?’ His near-black gaze held mine angrily. ‘A cripple with one leg shorter than the other?’

‘Forgive me.’

‘Why? It’s not your fault, but my father’s. Would you like to hear the story?’

I did not know what to say, but waited.

‘My father liked to beat me when I was a child. Once, he got drunk and beat me until my leg was broken, for giving him “black looks”. When he had passed out, my aunt hid me in the cellar. So he beat her too. I lay in the dark there three weeks, barely alive, living off what she could smuggle down to me. By the time my aunt was able to bring help, my leg bone had knitted wrong.’ Richard slapped his right hip, watching me. ‘So now I walk with a limp, like the Devil’s child that I am. That’s what my father used to call me. Said my mother played him false with the Devil one night, and I was the child that came of it. My mother died when I was five years old, so I could not ask her if it was true.’

‘Cruel man,’ I muttered, my face averted.

‘No, for it allowed me to hope he was not my father.’

Instinctively, I touched his hand and was surprised when he flinched, jerking it away.

‘I was not looking for your pity, Meg Lytton,’ he said harshly.

‘You have it, nonetheless.’

His eyes narrowed on my face. ‘Why did you send your novice away like that tonight? He’ll not have you now. They’re arrogant, these Spanish priests. They don’t like a woman telling them what to do.’

‘You know why. It was no place for him.’

‘True, but that won’t stop him trying to save you from our evil ways. I could see it in his face.’

I know he was speaking the truth. Alejandro would not give up easily. Nor did I want him to, for my heart had thrilled at the sight of him bursting through the door to save me tonight. I was in love with Alejandro – what other sign did I need of my feelings for him, when my heart beat faster at the sight of him, and everything else fell away into dust before my need to be with him, to have him at my side for ever?

Yet my head was confused, for our love could only end in disaster. A marriage between a witch and a priest was unnatural, as I had told Alejandro many times before, and a malevolent star would almost certainly darken our sky if we were to wed.

So why could I not let him go?

‘Master Dee said Alejandro was in danger.’ I reminded Richard of his message the day he had ridden into Hatfield. ‘Perhaps he needs my protection.’

‘Or perhaps he is only in danger because of his nearness to you.’

Now he was voicing my own fear. I looked away, unable to hold his gaze any longer, and stiffened in horror.

‘What is it?’ he demanded, turning to follow my stare.

Just for one fleeting instant, as dawn lightened the skies about Hatfield, I had caught a glimpse of something –
someone
– watching us, half-hidden in the shifting shadows between trees, out there beyond the low wall of the herb
garden. Then a soft breeze blew, rustling the dark leaves, and there was nothing between the trees.

‘I thought I saw—’

He turned back, apparently having satisfied himself that no one was there. His eyes searched my face, careful and astute. ‘Your witchfinder?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘My master says this Marcus Dent may be more powerful than he seems. That you should be wary of him.’

‘I am, thank you.’

Richard noted my wry smile, and shrugged. ‘You said that you’d laid spells of protection about this place. So he cannot come at you here.’

‘Hopefully not.’ But I shuddered, remembering the axe Marcus always carried in my dreams. ‘He means to kill me. That much is certain. I have seen it in my visions.’