Witchstruck (24 page)

‘Where is it, then?’ I demanded.

‘Since there is little harm in it, I shall tell you. We had just turned south towards London and the coast when we heard a troop of soldiers coming towards us on the road to Woodstock Palace.’

I stared, horrified. ‘Troops, heading for Woodstock?’

My father shrugged. ‘I do not know what their business was there. We turned aside into the woods to avoid being seen, but my horse stumbled in a rabbit-hole. Once we saw that he was lame, we knew my part in this mission was finished. Malcolm rode on alone with the letter while I led my horse back here,’ my father admitted, and smiled when I stood, looking at Alejandro with fresh hope. ‘Do not waste your time. As soon as he reaches the coast, your cousin intends to buy a passage on the first ship to the Low Countries. In a few days’ time, both Malcolm and the letter will be safely abroad.’

I felt sick with disappointment. ‘I do not understand. Why . . . why do this, Father?’

He did not meet my gaze, fiddling with the papers on the table, though his voice hardened. ‘Someone had to do
something
,’ he muttered angrily. ‘This country has been sold out to a foreign power. Our too-pious Queen has married a Spanish Catholic and brought England to its knees. Already we are overrun with these Spaniards and their idolatrous priests. The Inquisition roasts heretics in our streets every day. The whole world is afraid.’ He shook his head. ‘You weep for the princess. Yet her life, my life, even your brother’s life . . . none of these are worth losing England for.’

I shook my head, sure beyond everything that his way was not the one to choose. ‘You’re wrong, Father. Elizabeth will be Queen soon enough, and to risk her life by trying to hurry that day . . . that is how you will lose England.’

‘How can Elizabeth be Queen unless we rise up against this Spanish union?’ my father scoffed. ‘The Queen is with child!’

‘There will be no child,’ I said quietly. ‘Not now, not ever. I have seen it.’

‘Where? In the fire? In your aunt’s crystal?’

My father was laughing at me. He thought I was a fool, an apprentice who had overstepped their place. My fists clenched at my side. I wanted to show him precisely what I could do, stifle that mocking laughter in his throat. How surprised he would be when he saw that my skills were no longer those of a mere apprentice. Though I would not allow my temper to get the better of me this time. He might be a traitor to his family but he was still my father, after all.

‘I have seen it in a horoscope calculated by the hand of John Dee.’

‘The astrologer?”

I should not have said anything and I knew it. I had promised the Lady Elizabeth that I would hold my tongue and tell no one of John Dee’s visit to Woodstock.

Still, at least my father’s mockery had been silenced. He stared from my face to Alejandro’s, half disbelieving, half excited by this revelation. He might mock and loathe women’s magick, but it was clear that he believed in John Dee’s skill as an astrologer.

Alejandro touched my arm gently. ‘Time to go.’

I nodded, and left my father’s room without another
word
. I did not know if I would ever see him again, and at that moment I did not much care.

We made our way down the narrow stairs in silence, only a single lantern at the bottom lighting our way. Reaching the last stair, I sagged against the wall, suddenly too exhausted to go on.

Alejandro put an arm about my waist to support me. ‘You can’t travel any further tonight.’

‘I must,’ I whispered, though in truth I could hardly keep my eyes open, the lids were so heavy. ‘The letter . . .’

‘Will have to wait until first light,’ he finished sternly. ‘There’s no moon tonight and the roads will be treacherous. Your cousin can hardly be riding through a moonless night to the coast. No, he’ll be waiting until morning too. Besides, you’re barely able to stand, let alone travel. Let’s get some sleep now and pursue your cousin tomorrow.’

I stared, too tired to follow his logic. ‘But the landlord said the inn was full, that there were only stables left.’

‘Then the stables it will have to be.’ His mouth twisted in a smile at last, seeing my surprise. ‘What? If a lowly stable was good enough for the Blessed Virgin Mary, it should be good enough for us.’

Slipping quietly between the horses, I made my way to the back of the stables and set the lantern on a dusty shelf there. I made a nest by its flickering light amongst broken and discarded saddle leathers and old horse blankets. There was
straw
and muck underfoot, and the whole place smelled powerfully of horseflesh.

But I was too exhausted to care about these smelly and dirty surroundings. Sleep was the only thing I could think about. Sleep, and Alejandro.

Shaking out the straw-soiled blankets, I tried to think back to those simple days before the Lady Elizabeth was brought to Woodstock. The days of my childhood with Aunt Jane at Lytton Park. But the memories were so hazy; they seemed to belong to another life, another Meg, who had long since forgotten and outgrown them. That haziness distressed me. I did not want to forget Aunt Jane, however painful the memories.

I shuddered. I would never forget her death.

Sorrow was throbbing inside me, raw as a fresh wound. But I would not allow it to drive me towards the same fate my poor aunt had suffered. Not least because I could hardly retrieve Elizabeth’s letter if I was dead. And since my shameful family was to blame for its theft, it was up to me to get it back.

Alejandro came back just as I finished making my bed. ‘Juan won’t have to sleep under the cart after all,’ he told me, clearly suppressing a grin. ‘He’s found himself a room upstairs in the inn.’

I was astonished. ‘How did he manage that?’

‘Oh, some serving woman who’s already sampled his Spanish charms has given him her bed to share. That’s what
the
old rascal told me anyway. So at least one of us will be warm and comfortable tonight.’

I felt my cheeks grow hot as I realized what he meant. I glanced down at the nest I had made, padded liberally with horse blankets, the coarse wool prickly with hairs but making a softer bed than straw and hard earth. There was more than enough room for two.

‘Do you want to . . . to share my bed?’ I struggled to find the right words, my face growing hotter as I saw him turn back from trimming the lantern, his eyes on my face. ‘That is, you won’t get much sleep lying on the hard ground. I have plenty of blankets here, and . . .’

Alejandro’s expression changed and began to harden, as though I had offended him deeply. His whole body had stiffened while I was speaking, and now he seemed to be drawing back into himself, his jaw clenched against whatever he was thinking – once more refusing to speak his mind, as he so often did in my company.

Did he want to share my bed?

What a question to have asked, and in a poor lantern-lit stable with only these rough beasts for company. If I had leaped over and kissed him full on the mouth, I could not have thrown myself at him more wantonly. I wished myself a thousand miles away from the Bull Inn, seeing how his mouth had tightened, the brooding in his aristocratic face intensifying.

Yet despite my embarrassment, I heard myself finish
what
I had intended to say. ‘There’s no need for you to be uncomfortable tonight, Alejandro.’

It was the first time I could remember ever having used his name.

Alejandro closed the lantern with a soft click and trod silently towards me, his face unreadable as ever. ‘Meg,’ he remarked quietly, looking away from me as though the would-be priest could not bear even this single moment of intimacy between us. ‘I’m flattered by this invitation to share your bed, truly I am.’

‘No, indeed I—’

He hushed my breathless denial, holding up a hand. ‘You and I had a difficult beginning, Meg. When we first met, I considered you an unsuitable companion for the Lady Elizabeth. You seemed so wild, headstrong, opinionated, even immoral. But I’ve come to understand you better over the past few months, and I realize now . . .’ Slowly his gaze rose from the muck-strewn stable floor to my face. ‘I realize you would never offer such a thing lightly.’

The longer he spoke, the redder I became. By the time he had finished his speech, my cheeks were so hot I could probably have outshone the lantern. Hurriedly, I tried to back out of the noose I had so provocatively thrust my head into.

‘I just meant you could sleep here too,’ I stammered. ‘As in
sleep
. It wasn’t meant to be an invitation to do something else.’

He had come so close now, we were almost touching. His body blocked out the light from the lantern. My heart hammered in my chest. I stared up at him, suddenly unsure. What did I want here? To beckon him on, and risk both his rejection and his disgust? Or to say no, and live with this turmoil in my heart?

Alejandro had stopped. He looked at my face for a long moment without speaking, perhaps seeing some shadow of my pain there. Then his hand came up slowly, as though approaching a wild animal, and stroked the loose hair back from my face, tucking it under my cap.

‘Of course not,’ he murmured. ‘Pray accept my deepest apologies. I mistook your meaning.’

Far from reassuring me, this confused me even further. His touch sent my poor nerves skittering. I caught my lower lip between my teeth, and saw his gaze narrow on the movement. I was acutely aware that we were alone in the stable. There was no one else here to see or know if we kissed each other, to run and tell my father.

Nor even if we chose to . . . to go further.

With great daring, I placed one hand flat on his chest, next to the silver cross which hung there. I remembered making its silver burn his hand. Tonight it was cool.

Alejandro stiffened at my touch, but did not draw away. I cocked my head to one side and listened to the erratic thud of his heart under my fingertips. His heart was beating as fast as my own. Perhaps faster.

Alejandro might be a Catholic priest in training. But he was still a man, and he
wanted
me.

I looked up into his eyes. ‘Alejandro.’

He made an odd sound under his breath, and his hand came up to cover mine. In the chill darkness of the stable, the warmth seemed to beat off him in waves. Then slowly, with deliberate care, Alejandro unpeeled my fingers from his chest, one by one, and lowered my hand back to my side.

My cheeks flared with shame. How could I have been so wrong
twice
? He did not want me, and my touch had embarrassed and offended him.

The cruel hurt of his rejection was like a punch to the stomach. Biting my lip hard, I turned my head away. I did not want Alejandro to see my expression. He must not know the pain I was in, thanks to my idiotic mistake.

He was to be a priest!

How could I have forgotten that?

‘I’m sorry,’ I muttered, risking a quick glance at his face.

His face was twisted in a grimace, his brows drawn together as though in pain. ‘No, it is I who should be sorry. I told your father you would be safe in my company. Instead, I have allowed an unacceptable intimacy to take place. Now you ought to get some sleep. It’s very late and we’ll be leaving at first light.’

I stumbled as I turned away.
What had I been thinking?

Alejandro caught my arm. ‘No, wait. Let me explain.’ His voice sounded tortured. I turned, staring up into his face.
‘You
do not understand, and why should you? It is not merely that I will become a priest soon, for members of my order are permitted to marry, so long as they marry under the strict rules of chastity handed down to us in the Order of Santiago, where a husband may only spend a few nights of the year with his wife. But . . .’

I touched his cheek, unable to bear his pain. ‘But you cannot be with a witch?’

Again, with the utmost gentleness, Alejandro removed my hand from his face and lowered it to my side.

‘If it is a witch who does no harm to any living person and works only good magick, never killing nor conjuring the spirits of the dead—’

‘I have always followed that path,’ I interrupted him. ‘And my aunt too. It is the path of white magick, the path of the hearth fire.’

‘Hush,’ he said, and shook his head. There was pain in his face. ‘No, I could not be even with the purest of witches, a woman who works both magick and God’s will. For you do not know my past. You do not know what I have done.’

‘Then tell me,’ I urged him, not understanding.

‘When I was a young boy, about seven years old, I knew a woman named Julia. She was one of my father’s servants. One day, I was walking in the woods near our country home, and I saw Julia . . .’ Alejandro hesitated, then frowned. ‘I saw her working magick, casting some kind of spell over a fire and making incantations. I realized then that Julia was
a
witch. A servant from our own household . . . a witch!’

My blood ran cold. ‘What did you do?’ I whispered.

‘I ran straight home and told my father. Even at that young age, I knew witchcraft was evil. But I swear I had no idea how severe her punishment would be. There was a trial, at which I gave evidence of what I had seen that day, and Julia was condemned to burn as a witch.’

He stopped, and I saw a damp sheen over his eyes. Was Alejandro crying?

‘It was a warm bright spring, all the new buds opening on the trees in the square. My father made me stand and watch her execution. I remember the smell of the smoke, the priests’ faces, her cries for mercy . . .’ His voice became low. ‘There is one more thing to tell. Just before she died, Julia cursed me. She swore by all the demons in Hell that if I ever fell in love, the woman I loved would die in childbirth. And my baby son with her.’

I stared up at him, horrified, my skin creeping.

‘So you see,’ Alejandro finished, ‘I can never allow myself to get too close to any woman. For death is the fate that would await both her and my unborn child.’ He dropped my hand at last and took a step backwards. His gaze lingered on the makeshift bed I had made. ‘Now you must get some rest. I will wake you just before dawn.’