The Secrets of Life and Death

by Rebecca Alexander

  ‘Father Konrad will also wish to examine your story.’ The king beckoned to the servitor, who took the goblet from my hand, and when I did not move, twitched his fingers to make me stand. ‘And your piety.’

  Chapter 17

  Jack shuddered back into consciousness. As she looked around the inside of the car and the crazed windscreen, the noise of the engine intruded, and the memories re-formed in her head. She turned the key, and silence flooded back in. Pushing on the door didn’t even budge it, so she fumbled with the seat belt and dragged herself to the passenger side. That door creaked and groaned open, and she reeled onto the gravel. The memory of the car hitting the graveyard wall crept back.

  A few blocks were knocked askew, but the car had come off worse. The bonnet was crumpled, and steam rose. As she watched, the motion-activated floodlight went out.

  The woman. Damn it, where was she? Jack pulled at the passenger door, and it opened, the interior light glowing yellow. The woman was silent, crumpled half on the seat and half in the footwell. Apparently, she hadn’t used her seat belt. For a moment, Jack thought she was dead, but then the woman raised her head and stared back at her.

  Jack’s instincts hauled her backwards over the loose gravel, out of reach of the woman’s strange gaze. The car park light snapped back on, and Jack jogged to the wall, her feet slipping in painful slow motion in the shingle.

  When they had built the church, they had used any available stone to build the graveyard wall. At the site of a stone horseshoe, the locals had cut up what was lying around. Jack pressed her hands to an ancient block of limestone, and felt her will asserting itself in the dark energy. Behind her, the woman stepped – or fell – onto the stones. Jack took a breath, and turned to face her.

  She fumbled in her pockets for a talisman, anything that might boost her flagging energies. She realised pain was grinding into her shoulder, and burning across the centre of her chest. She focused on the ache, anchoring herself in her body.

  She carried a handful of Maggie’s charms. Talismans to ward off illness, robbery, bad luck, but she couldn’t think of one that would ward off mind control. She looked up at the woman who leaned against the car, dabbing away blood from her forehead with a tissue.

  ‘How resourceful of you.’ She grimaced, and brushed her coat down. She was wearing high heels, which should impede a chase, at least. Jack wasn’t sure she could keep her own will.

  ‘I suppose that answers the question of what you are. Some sort of witch.’ Jack tried to keep her voice steady, but her breath was coming in little sobs, and her voice stumbled through the words.

  ‘No more than you. You created a morturi masticantes. So few can raise the dead.’ The woman took a step, then caught herself against the car and lifted her foot to inspect the heel, which looked like it was loose. ‘I have to admire your skills. The sigils came from Dee’s notes, I assume, or the medals?’ The light flickered off, and a second later, snapped back on. The woman had somehow narrowed the gap between them by half the distance. ‘But you lost that girl, yes? Now you will take me to your new one.’

  One of the carved stones in Jack’s hand was heating up, and she dropped the others back in her pocket.

  ‘No.’ In her own ears, the denial sounded weak. ‘No, I won’t,’ came out stronger. She traced a line in the gravel with her foot and stepped away, pressing her back against the fractured wall. She began to chant the protection spell Maggie had taught her from childhood.

  When the light flickered off again she braced herself for an assault, and waved her arm to set off the sensor. Nothing happened. Must be out of range. But the faint grind of stone on stone suggested the woman was moving. When the light came back on it caught her face, frozen in a grotesque game of “statues”. Stalled at the line in the gravel, her mouth was distorted into a grimace, her lips drawn back from her teeth. She hissed like water hitting a hot iron. She shrank back, her features composing themselves. Jack realised her first impression had been of a woman her own age, with fair hair, and a slim figure. The momentary flash had revealed a different woman, gaunt rather than slim, with wispy hair tinted an unlikely shade. Her neck was creped with loose skin, teeth lengthened by time shrinking her gums.

  ‘I will find her.’ The woman spat the words at her in a shrill voice. ‘And then I will brush you aside like an insect.’

  The sensation of standing in rushing water pulled at Jack’s thighs and back, and she found herself fighting to keep her feet. The air around her seemed to have thickened and was moving along the wall, sweeping Jack with it. The talisman was burning her palm with the energy of resisting the woman, but clutching it gave Jack strength to battle the force dragging her towards the churchyard gate. The car-park light flickered out, and with it the sweep of air vanished, and Jack staggered, and fell to her knees. The motion set off the sensor, and a pool of fluorescent white saturated the front of the church and the gravel drive. The woman had gone.

  Jack wrote a note to the effect that her brakes had failed, propped it in the shattered windscreen of her car, retrieved her bag and started walking along the road. She could see no sign of the woman, and took the footpath across the fields away from the house to make sure she wasn’t being followed. Working her way through the copse at the edge of the village, with years of experience stalking deer to creep over the paths, she surprised a fox and a number of rabbits before climbing the last stile onto the main road. Slipping through a garden, she clambered over the fence onto the footpath that came out on the lane opposite the cottage. She still waited in the shadow, observing the hedges and trees, the thatch and tall chimneys just outlined against the starlit sky. She paused, her head thumping and her stomach contracting.

  She tried the handle of the back door, the dog rushing over and pawing at the paintwork, but she was locked out. Maggie walked into the kitchen, turned the key and opened the door.

  ‘What happened? You look terrible. Oh … you’re hurt, sit down.’

  It was all Jack could do to fend off Ches, who was frantic, whining and butting her thighs for attention.

  ‘Ches, get down. I’m OK, but I crashed the car.’ As she looked into the living room, Sadie’s white face was leaning forward from one of the settees. When Jack lifted her arms to take her jacket off, the muscles ached with the effort, and she staggered.

  Maggie maintained a flow of motherly comments as she ushered her to the other sofa. Jack had to clench her teeth to stop them chattering. She slumped, shivering, onto the empty couch, and leaned against the worn cushions.

  ‘Now, tell me what happened.’ Maggie moved as if to touch Jack’s head, then grimaced and pulled away.

  ‘There was a woman on the back seat, I don’t know how she got in. She cast a hell of a mesmer spell. I had to crash the car to break it, before I drove her right here.’ She winced as Maggie’s fingers brushed her hairline. ‘She’s looking for Sadie.’

  ‘What?’ Alarm creased Sadie’s sharp features, making her blue eyes look even bigger.

  Maggie ignored her. ‘Does she know about you? You said Pierce was very interested in another borrowed timer.’

  Jack shook her head. ‘She thinks I’m the witch.’

  Maggie took a blanket from the end of Sadie’s sofa and draped it around Jack’s shoulders. She touched her cheek with the back of one hand.

  ‘You’re freezing. And that’s a terrible bump on your forehead. Let me clean up some of the blood.’

  ‘Blood?’ Jack stood, her legs shaky under her, and looked in the mirror over the fireplace. It had poured down one side of her face from a split in her scalp along her hairline, and had dried. As she grimaced, she could feel it crack. ‘I must have banged my head on the steering wheel.’

  ‘You may need stitches. Let me do a healing spell …’

  ‘Just put strips on it.’ Jack sat back on the settee with a sigh.

  ‘Lie down and let me look after you, for a change.’ While Maggie helped get her boots off, Jack let herself relax.


  ‘Why would someone want me?’ Sadie pulled at a loose thread on the sleeve of her jumper. ‘You said before, I’m valuable, you could sell me. But what would they want me for?’

  Jack rolled her head on the cushion, looking at Sadie, who was curled up on the end of the sofa, hugging her legs.

  ‘Borrowed timers have some kind of special magic in their blood, I don’t understand it myself. But healers use it to treat terminally ill people.’

  Sadie recoiled, hunching herself up tight. ‘So that’s the real reason you rescued me?’ She glared at Jack, her hair sweeping across one eye in a flat curtain. ‘You’re going to keep me like … a blood bank?’

  ‘No, it’s not why – well, it’s not the only reason.’ Jack sighed, her head throbbing.

  Maggie came back in, carrying a tray. ‘What happened?’

  ‘A man was watching the professor in the pub.’

  Maggie set the tray on the box in the middle of the room, and Jack noticed a large bottle of antiseptic and a bag of cotton wool with some reservations.

  Maggie parted Jack’s hair with gentle fingers. ‘Ouch. That looks deep.’

  Jack looked across at Sadie. ‘I know how hard this is. I asked all the same questions, and I was a lot younger than you.’

  Maggie spoke with an edge in her voice. ‘I think Sadie would be safer downstairs, in the priest hole.’

  Jack looked over at the girl, whose mouth was set in a hard line, her eyes glaring but filled with tears. ‘I think this concerns Sadie as much as any of us.’

  ‘Jack—’

  ‘No, Maggie. I hated it when you kept me in the dark, and you had to tell me eventually, right? If we had told Carla more, explained—’ She choked up for a moment. ‘Sadie, I’m going to tell you things and you won’t believe them. But at least hear me out.’ Jack looked at the thin arms folded over the blankets.

  ‘Listen to my kidnappers.’ Sadie’s voice was thin. ‘Right.’

  ‘If I meant to hurt you, I could just have left you to die, couldn’t I?’

  Sadie opened her mouth, then seemed to think better of it. The girl’s eyes seemed huge in the dim light. ‘So you claim.’

  ‘Twenty-one years ago, I was supposed to die of a broken neck, a riding accident. I was ten years old, competing in a local gymkhana.’ Jack spoke distantly, shivering under the blankets. ‘I had just competed, and my pony threw me at a jump.’ She could remember the fall, it wasn’t even a bad one, she had landed on her feet. ‘My arm hurt, so my parents sent me to the trailer to sit down. I started to feel dizzy and breathless, and my neck hurt. Maggie grabbed me, put me in a hard collar and locked me in her van. My neck was broken … I would have died, no matter what doctors would have done. She saved my life, became my family.’ She watched Sadie open her eyes, look at her. ‘It takes a long time to come back from the moment you were destined to die. It took a year for my neck to heal – nothing works as fast when you’re half dead.’

  Sadie’s gaze flickered over Maggie, who was frozen, one hand holding a bloodstained swab. ‘Why? Why would you do that to someone you don’t even know?’

  ‘Charley.’ Maggie choked on the word. ‘My daughter, Charley. She was only two, she was dying. Acute myeloblastic leukaemia.’ She started dabbing at dried blood on Jack’s forehead. ‘It was her last chance.’

  ‘Maggie is a healer.’ Jack watched the tension drain from the girl’s body. ‘But she couldn’t save her own baby.’

  ‘I was told of the spell,’ Maggie said. ‘A ritual my grandmother knew about. I needed to try it. I would have tried anything.’

  Sadie snorted as if in disbelief, but her face looked uncertain. ‘Magic spells.’

  Maggie peeled the backing off a dressing. ‘It needed blood from someone who had died, but not died.’ She carefully applied the dressing to Jack’s hairline. ‘I knew John Dee had written a book about necromancy, my grandmother left me some old papers of his. She studied his books; my family have a long tradition of folk medicine and healing. I started researching her diaries, and the papers and medals, and found these symbols.’ She rounded up the detritus of the first aid. ‘I knew a seer; Roisin was the midwife who had delivered Charley. I asked her to find someone destined to die that we could try to save. Jack was the third one we found.’

  ‘Third?’ Sadie looked at Jack. ‘What happened to the other two?’

  Jack winced at the gentle pulling on her scalp. ‘Ask Maggie.’

  Maggie drew a deep breath beside Jack. ‘They died, despite my efforts. They couldn’t be saved. It was awful.’

  Jack closed her eyes for a moment. ‘But I survived and then, because of me, Charley made it. Not just Charley … my blood has saved a dozen people.’ She glanced at Sadie.

  Sadie pressed one hand to her chest, over her heart. She looked back, eyes wide.

  Jack dabbed at her forehead with a cloth as disinfectant trickled into an eyebrow. ‘You can feel your heart wavering, can’t you? You can feel the cold coming. That’s death, actual death.’ Jack let the words flow over Sadie, watched their meaning sink in. ‘That’s what Dee’s symbols do, keep death at bay.’

  ‘Who is this … Dee?’

  Jack pulled her sleeves over her cold fingers. ‘Dee was an Elizabethan magician, looking for the secrets of life and death. He’s supposed to have raised the dead several times. He wrote his research down, and people have been using it to keep borrowed timers like you and me alive ever since.’

  Sadie huddled into her blanket. ‘So this is it, I’m stuck like this?’

  Jack nodded. ‘For the moment. As time goes on, you will get better, be able to manage away from the circle for longer.’

  ‘So I’ll be stronger?’ The appeal was in the voice of a child. ‘Then you’ll let me go home?’

  Jack shook her head. ‘You will always be dependent on the magic.’ She sighed, and let her head fall back on the cushions. ‘You can never go home.’

  Chapter 18

  Jack woke up, finding aches the moment she moved. She dressed slowly, and followed the smell of food downstairs. Maggie must have gone before breakfast, but had left a casserole in the range. Sadie was still asleep in the priest hole, but Jack unlocked the chain anyway and replaced the bucket.

  She went back to the kitchen, stirred the stew and put it back in the top oven. The radio in the kitchen played something classical, it suited the old house. She hardly noticed the break for the news as she turned baked potatoes over on the bottom shelf.

  ‘… and local news. The mother of missing teenager Sadie Williams has appealed on national television for local police forces to consider all missing children abducted rather than runaways. Fourteen-year-old Sadie disappeared one week ago—’

  Jack switched the radio off. Shit. No one even noticed Carla; they just wrote her off as a runaway. Jack looked through the open door in the panelling to find Sadie sitting up in bed, her face tense.

  ‘I heard that. The police are looking for me.’ Sadie climbed out of bed and clung to the wall.

  ‘I know.’

  Sadie climbed the steps, wobbling at the top between the sigilled stones in the priest hole and the edge of the living-room circle. Before she could throw up, Jack half pulled, half lifted her into the room, and onto the sofa.

  ‘If they do find me, they’ll arrest you. For kidnapping.’ Sadie pushed Jack away, and pulled the folded throw over herself. The dog greeted her with a wag.

  Jack shrugged. ‘Then they would try to take you to hospital. You would die before you reached the ambulance.’ Jack took a deep breath, and locked the chain onto the ring in the floor. ‘I didn’t take it as well as you. I cried and screamed a lot.’

  Sadie shifted her weight and turned her bright blue eyes on Jack. Her thin fingers clutched the edge of the blanket. ‘I miss my mum.’

  ‘I know.’ Silence built up in unseen layers in the room. The clock on the mantelpiece, left from the days when the cottage belonged to Maggie’s mother, ticked off the seconds. I still miss my mum. �
�What about your dad?’

  Sadie shrugged one shoulder. ‘It’s just me and Mum.’ She ran her hands over Ches’s head. ‘So, you really believe in this … this magic stuff?’

  Jack could almost see the thoughts racing in Sadie’s mind, as expressions chased across her features. Jack knelt in front of the wood burner that sat, surrounded by logs, in the inglenook fireplace. She opened the door and threw on more fuel. Sparks shot towards the flue before yellow flames started curling around the bark.

  ‘I don’t know what I believe. I tested it, I challenged it – and fought Maggie. But I understand now, the symbols keep me well and alive. I just don’t know how they work.’

  Jack jumped when someone rapped on the kitchen door. The dog started whining and trotted to the frosted glass panel. Jack turned back to Sadie.

  ‘It’s Maggie’s daughter, you’ll like her. Charley! Come in, don’t mind the dog.’

  Charley shouted through the glass. ‘I would come in, if he wasn’t leaning on the bloody door!’

  Jack walked into the kitchen and pulled Ches away.

  Charley dropped her coat onto the rocking chair, and set a box on the table.

  ‘Shit, it’s cold out. Sunny, but freezing. Oh … ouch, your head’s a mess. Mum said you’ve been in the wars.’ Jack tolerated a quick hug, then Charley leaned back to look at the dressing on Jack’s hairline. ‘The police are doing house-to-house enquiries in the village.’ She bent, threw her arms around the dog, and hugged him. ‘Stupid beast!’

  Jack glanced over her shoulder and lowered her voice. ‘It’s all over the radio. They are calling it an abduction.’ The girl was huddled on the sofa, apparently oblivious.

  ‘I know. It’s Sadie’s mother, she’s on the telly every night,’ Charley whispered.

  Jack put the kettle on as Charley walked away, and heard the exchange of voices. Maybe Sadie would talk to someone nearer her own age. Charley was twenty-two, red hair straggling down her back, and clad in her own eclectic, charity-shop style. Today she was wearing a pair of leggings, a leather jacket and a tulle skirt. And was the picture of health.