‘I cannot tell you that.’ She paused, half closing her eyes as though listening to voices from the shadows about us. ‘But I can tell you that when you sent Marcus Dent into the void that lies beyond this world, he ripped away some of your own magick. And he is learning all he can about the craft so that his magick will grow in power. Soon it will surpass your own if you do not stop him.’
I winced, though we had half suspected as much already about my enemy. To hear it from my mother’s lips was terrible, but I did not have time to examine that information now.
‘Is he right? Is the prophecy about me?’ I pressed her.
‘I do not have an answer for you.’
Frustration built in me. It was almost as though she were deliberately blocking me.
But this was my mother. I looked into her eyes and saw a flicker of sympathy there. Sympathy and sadness. I knew instinctively that she would answer if she could, but something was holding her back. Some obscure rule of the spirit world, perhaps. Then I remembered how John Dee had taught me the correct way to question a spirit and interpret the answers. There were indeed distinct rules to the summoning of a spirit, and I had not been following them.
Or perhaps I had not asked the right question yet.
‘Mother,’ I began carefully, ‘is there any way you can help me to find the answer for myself?’
Her look grew keen, her blue eyes suddenly glowing. ‘Do you have the book?’
I stared, then shot a quick glance at Richard. Book?
Dee’s apprentice shrugged, his face blank.
‘Which book?’ I asked.
‘My journal.’ The spirit of my mother moved closer, her intense blue gaze locked on mine. ‘My book of spells.’
I held her gaze, so excited by this information that I could barely respond at first. My fingers were tingling furiously, my body prickling with a sudden violent cold. Outside the house I could hear the whine of the wind rising. There was a storm coming.
‘Y . . . you left behind a spell book?’ I tried to contain my agitation. ‘Where is it hidden? Can you tell me, Mother?’
Her smile seemed strained. ‘I have already said too much. It is hidden. The place will be revealed to you. Watch and see.’
‘But is it here at Lytton Park? Can you at least tell me that?’
But my mother was fading, growing ever more silvery and spectre-like. ‘Watch and see,’ she repeated faintly. Already I could see the wall through her body.
Panic filled me as I realized we were losing her. ‘Wait, please.’ My voice faltered. ‘I . . . I love you . . .’
Her smiling look reached my heart. But it turned swiftly back to sadness. ‘You will be asked to make a hard choice, Meg.’ Her voice was barely audible against the growing roar of the wind. ‘Let your heart guide you. Now Queen Mary’s husband has left England, leaving her bed empty, her malice towards her sister grows. For she knows King Philip desires the princess in her place.’
I stared, wondering what my mother could possibly know of King Philip, the handsome Spanish king who had married Mary Tudor last year, then deserted her to wage war against the French.
‘When I was still living on this earth,’ my mother continued, ‘I served the princess’s mother, the beautiful Anne Boleyn, yet could not save her from King Henry’s cruelty. Now Elizabeth’s enemies threaten her with false accusation too. But we Canley women are powerful. Never forget that, Meg. Do not be afraid to use your gift, as I once was . . .’
I felt tears in my eyes. My mother had failed to save Queen Anne from execution. Now it felt as though I had failed Queen Anne’s daughter by allowing myself to be dismissed from her side.
Her body was fading to a silvery vapour. The visitation was almost over. My mother turned at the last moment and looked directly at Alejandro. Her eyes seemed to widen.
‘Such a bright light . . .’ she whispered.
Alejandro had been frozen throughout the summoning, his gaze fixed on my mother, a curious intensity in his face.
I wanted to shout a warning, but could not seem to speak. It was dangerous to touch a spirit. I had been drawn out of the protective circle during my last summoning, and died a magickal death. Alejandro was not even within the circle.
But as her hands stretched out towards him, Alejandro took a cautious step backward. He bowed, courteous even to a ghost, murmuring in Spanish even as he remained just out of her reach.
Then my mother was gone.
The four candles about the circle flickered and were still. The noise of the wind fell sharply away.
It was over.
My body was trembling, the raw power of the spell still throbbing and coursing through me.
I swayed there, head bowed, eyes closed, trying to shake off the dizzying effects of the spell. My feet seem to be floating like the spirit’s. It felt as though I had been drenched in ice-water, wrung out like a cloth, then tipped upside down to dry. It was not a comfortable sensation.
Gradually I became aware of a cold draught.
I looked up and promptly wished I had kept my eyes closed, my heart beginning to race.
My bedchamber had disappeared, Alejandro and Richard along with it.
I was soaring like a bird through the chill midwinter night, snow whitening the track leading away from Lytton Park, the dark air humming and alive with strange power.
TWO
Marcus Dent
I was still clad in my thin white shift. A mercifully long garment, it flapped about my ankles as I was dragged above the treetops, struggling in vain against the spell that had wrenched me away from my friends. I would have seemed to any observer like a great white owl haunting the night, though in truth I felt more like the sorrowful ghost I had summoned. Now I knew how it must feel to be tugged from eternal sleep to stand again in the world of the living, forced to obey a greater power.
This being a vision though, there was no one about to observe my undignified flight. Not until I circled the broken roof of an old hayloft and realized where the spell was taking me.
Home Farm.
The site was a desolate ruin now: a collection of empty and tumbledown buildings a few acres past the wood, their fallen stones overgrown with long grass and brambles. Once though it had been a thriving farm, attached to the big house and providing for our family’s needs. But my great-grandfather had allied himself to some minor uprising, and though he had been spared execution, our family fell out of favour at court. So Home Farm had been abandoned, our coffers not deep enough to pay for its upkeep, and now the livestock was kept at the big house instead, and vegetables grown in our own gardens.
The night was very still here, almost expectant. I glanced down, and saw a fair-haired man below me, looking up.
It was Marcus Dent.
Witchfinder, would-be friend to the all-powerful Spanish Inquisition, and my aunt’s murderer.
I felt raw terror for a moment, then deliberately slowed my breathing, trying to control my fear. I did not want Marcus to think he had any advantage over me.
This was the man who had once asked me to marry him, claiming he loved me, yet now wished solely for my destruction. My mother’s spirit had told me he was dangerous. And probably more witch than witchfinder now.
That much I had already known for myself.
Last time we met, Marcus Dent had tricked me into climbing his magickal tower, and there attempted to separate my head from my body. When I managed to escape, he shifted shape, pursuing me first as a hawk, then scuttling away in the form of a black rat. I had always suspected that Marcus had taken on some of my power while in the void, and my mother’s words tonight had confirmed that. But how such a transfer of power could have happened, and what it might signify for the future, I still did not understand.
The darkness shifted, jolting sideways.
Suddenly I was on the ground, standing in front of him. Beyond him stood the old pigsty, its crumbling timbers whitened by frost and overgrown with brambles, its door half hanging off it
s hinges.
How on earth had Marcus managed to break my protective spells and get me here?
Perhaps we had created a weakness in our barrier of spells with the summoning. After all, my mother’s spirit had got in past those spells. Perhaps Marcus had brought me out the same way.
Unless this was all happening in my head.
But how to be sure?
The stars hung far above, cold and vaguely threatening in their majesty, and for a moment the moon peeked out from its hood of cloud, watching us with a doleful face. I could not see the wintry ground but felt the cold strike up through my feet, and shivered.
Marcus studied me in silence, then smiled. ‘Meg Lytton,’ he said with heavy emphasis at last, as though my name were some kind of charm.
‘Master Dent.’
He was dressed all in black, hands clasped behind his back, sleek fair head – no cap – tilted to one side as he considered me.
I searched for the scars he had received when I sent him spinning into the void, but his face was unclear, as though there was a mist across it, shimmering whenever he moved or spoke, like a watery reflection being stirred.
He was not really there, I realized.
And neither was I.
I was hugely relieved to know this was a vision, not truth. But it was still a shock to be looking directly at Marcus Dent. He looked real enough, I thought. Too frighteningly real.
Beware a traveller who comes over water, over land.
My late aunt, also a witch and the woman who had trained me to follow in her footsteps, had warned me to beware such a man. We had initially feared her prophecy was about Alejandro de Castillo, fresh come from Spain, but now I knew it had concerned this villain, Marcus Dent, who had recently returned from Germany at the time.
How long it seemed since Aunt Jane had been my tutor, and we had lived in peace together in this place, secretly practising our craft under the full moon each month.
But then my father had forced me into the disgraced Lady Elizabeth’s service, and Dent had burned Aunt Jane at the stake as a witch. Only last spring he had accused me of witchcraft too, condemning me to face trial by water. I had found the strength to escape my bonds that day and turn my skill against the witchfinder. I had opened a gate into the void beyond our world and Marcus Dent had been sucked into darkness.
He had returned, of course. Many times more powerful, not quite human, and now intent on my death.
Nothing was ever simple with dark magick.
‘Very well, Marcus, you have my attention.’ I looked at my tormentor boldly. ‘What do you want? Why are you in my dreams again?’
‘Is this a dream, Meg?’
The air was cold against my cheek, the icy track beneath my feet solid, and I could hear the faint rustling of some wild creature in the overgrown ruins.
He was right. It did not feel like a dream.
‘A waking vision, then. What do you want, Marcus?’
There was a flicker of rage in his face, hurriedly suppressed. ‘I want you to know that you will fail.’
‘Fail at what?’
‘The quest I am setting you.’
‘Go away, Marcus. I’m not interested in your games.’
‘You will be.’
I looked at him, distrusting his smile. ‘You can forget your quest. And keep your distance from Alejandro,’ I told him. ‘Or I’ll make you sorry you came back from the void.’
‘Threatening me, Meg?’ The witchfinder’s confidence infuriated me as always. ‘You are hardly in a position to be threatening anyone, my dear. But perhaps you mistakenly believe it will not be long before your mistress inherits the throne, and your fortune changes with hers.’
I raised my eyebrows, not answering.
He showed white teeth, shaking his head as though I had spoken. ‘Wrong again, Meg. Your mistress is no closer to the throne than she was, for the wayward princess has been making the most unfortunate friends in your absence. And when the Queen hears of this latest scandal, Elizabeth will be thrown back in the Tower of London where she belongs.’ He smiled with satisfaction – Marcus Dent was no friend to the Lady Elizabeth. And that was partly my fault . . .
‘I no longer serve the Lady Elizabeth. And I’m serious about Alejandro. Stay away from him, do you hear?’ I struggled to keep my voice level, my hands clenched into fists by my side. I did not know what he was trying to say about the Lady Elizabeth, but it sounded like mere nonsense, designed to distract me from his intentions towards my betrothed. ‘You can stay away from me too, while you’re at it. I’ve had enough of your foul company to last me into Hell itself.’
Behind him the outline of the pigsty wavered, and I caught again that odd rustling sound, more muffled now, like some unseen animal was digging in the ruins.
‘Come, Meg, you don’t mean that. We were so close once. And I like to think you might come to love me if we met in Hell.’
‘Not a chance.’
‘That remains to be seen.’ His gaze moved slowly down my body, and I felt my skin crawl under that scrutiny. ‘Would you not rather spend your days and nights with a man you are destined to kill than a man who is destined to kill you?’
The witchfinder was speaking of the two prophecies that touched me. First that Marcus Dent would be killed by a witch with the power to summon a dead king – a feat I had already achieved that spring when I raised Henry Tudor from his grave. And second, that Alejandro’s wife would die in childbirth, a curse laid on him by a dying witch he had mistakenly betrayed.
‘Who can you trust in this business?’ Marcus continued smoothly when I did not reply. ‘That is the question you will have to answer.’
‘I don’t have to answer any question of yours, Marcus Dent,’ I said hotly, losing my slender grip on my temper. ‘You are nothing to me. You are a shadow in the darkness.’
‘Of course,’ the witchfinder murmured, watching me with raised eyebrows. ‘I am a shadow. I am what you made me, in fact.’
‘I thought I made you dead.’
He was smiling again, the thin curve of his lips malevolent. ‘Death is life’s mirror, only the glass is kept dark. A lesson you should have learned by now, my young witch.’
He took a step backwards, and I realized that his outline was fading, just as my mother’s spirit had faded in my chamber as the summoning-spell wore off. Already I could see snow-covered brambles and the timber ruins of the old pigsty more sharply through his body.
The place was silent again now, the wild creature I had heard vanished into the night, though above our heads a brilliant single star was shining, bright and clear in the heavens.
His ghostly smile lingered in the darkness a moment after his body had disappeared, taunting me.
‘When you are ready to face me again, Meg Lytton, you will easily find me.’ Then the last trace of Marcus Dent was gone, only a thin echo of his voice floating back to me on the chilly air. ‘Unless I find you first.’
The room was dark, suffocatingly so. I swam slowly up out of the vision, my head aching. Someone had wrapped me in a warming cloak or blanket, and was tilting a cup of something spicy to my lips. A fiery liquid burned my throat and I struggled, pushing the cup away.
‘Faugh!’ I spluttered. ‘What is that stuff?’
‘She’s awake,’ Richard said drily, and straightened up, smiling down at me. ‘Thank God. I was beginning to think we would never get you back, Meg. Your father is coming up the stairs to see what all the commotion is about. I’d better head him off before he bursts in here and has a fit. You know how little he likes your Spanish priest, and if he should catch the two of you like that . . .’
Richard vanished through the door, and a few seconds later I heard him talking on the stairs in a soothing voice, using his own not insubstantial magickal powers to persuade my father back down to his study.
I frowned, still light-headed, not quite understanding what Richard had meant.
If he should catch the two of you like that . . .
That was when I realized that I was lying on the floor in my bedchamber, my shift rucked up about my bare knees in a most undignified fashion, my head on Alejandro’s lap. My face flushed with embarrassment and I struggled to sit up, dragging my shift down to cover my legs.
‘What on earth . . .?’
‘Hush,’ Alejandro insisted, holding me by the shoulders. He did not sound upset but his smile was strained. ‘It’s awkward, I agree, but I don’t think you should move yet. You’re very pale. Have another sip of Richard’s concoction. I don’t know what’s in it, and it smells and probably tastes foul too, but it brought you back to us.’
‘What happened?’
‘You tell me.’ His gaze searched my face upside down. ‘Your mother’s ghost vanished and you collapsed. You lay still for a moment, then gave a dreadful shriek and started drumming your heels on the floor and waving your arms about like a lunatic.’
I blinked, considering that information, and my face grew hotter than ever.
Richard came limping back into the room. He had been beaten by his drunken father as a child, one leg broken so cruelly it had never quite recovered. His bad leg was what made him sharp with Alejandro, I felt sure of it, for where Richard was physically awkward, Alejandro was tall, handsome and startlingly graceful at times.
Besides, Richard was in love with me. He had told me so himself only a few weeks ago when trying to stop me pursuing Marcus Dent. So to see me with my head in Alejandro’s lap must hurt.
Richard closed the door behind him with a quiet click. ‘No need to fret, I told your father you had suffered a nightmare,’ he told me, seeing my worried face. ‘I assured him that I had only come up to check you were all right, and to administer a sleeping draught. Your father seemed to believe me. Though you never know. Perhaps he thinks there’s something going on between us.’
Above me, Alejandro said nothing in response to this but ground his teeth audibly.
‘Don’t even joke about that,’ I warned Richard.
‘Very well. I can do a straight face when required. Though I suspect your father would be ecstatic if he thought Alejandro was no longer your betrothed.’ Richard looked at me, dropping the act. ‘Some kind of vision, was it?’
Witchrise Page 2