‘I know it is the wood of white magick, that it protects the witch and helps her see far,’ I told him, struggling to answer his questions while keeping my spell steady to prevent the wand from reappearing. ‘I know it brings healing, and . . . and great wisdom.’
‘And that a circle drawn by the hazel wood is one of the strongest barriers against evil,’ he added, then nodded grudgingly, dropping his hand to his side. ‘Very well. If you will not relinquish the wand, so be it. But try to be sparing when working spells with it, Meg. You may find its effects more powerful than you intend.’
‘Thank you. I shall bear that in mind.’
‘You should not have disappeared today without telling anyone where you were going.’
‘I wanted to be alone.’
‘Marcus Dent is still out here somewhere. And he wants you dead.’
‘Sometimes I think everyone wants me dead.’
‘I don’t.’ His mouth twisted. ‘And nor does Alejandro. Though your doting Spaniard will want me dead if anything should happen to you again in his absence.’
‘Better make sure it doesn’t, then.’
His frown disappeared at that and he grinned, seating himself before me. ‘That is my plan.’ He looked at the grimoire. ‘So, what have you discovered?’
‘Not much,’ I admitted, and passed him the book.
He flicked through the pages as I had done, almost idly, then paused, raising his eyebrows.
‘What?’
He shook his head. ‘Nothing.’ He turned a few more pages, shrugging. ‘There was a spell to see from a distance, that is all.’
I stared, not understanding, then held out my hand for the grimoire. ‘Let me read it.’
‘No.’
‘The book belongs to me, not you. May I have it back, please?’
‘No point,’ Richard said shortly, turning the pages with a distracted frown as though looking for something. ‘It won’t work. My master tried to develop a similar spell some years ago and it was a disaster. I doubt a country witch would have fared better than the Queen’s conjuror.’
‘A country witch?’ I gasped. ‘Richard!’
‘How else would you describe her? Oh yes, I remember now, your mother served Queen Anne when she was younger. A court witch, then. But all the same, only a woman.’ He glanced at me sideways, surveying my face. The straight line of his mouth twitched. ‘You go very red when you’re angry, did you know that?’
I wrestled with the desire to turn Dee’s arrogant apprentice into a toad, or some other slimy or scaly creature, and watch him hop away, croaking. He would not be able to mock me then, nor withhold my mother’s grimoire from me.
‘Give me the book,’ I said, emphasizing each word so he could not fail to miss how annoyed I was.
Richard shrugged, then deposited the manuscript heavily in my lap. He stood, muttering, ‘Take it,’ and limped to the broken loft door as though intending to jump down into the farmyard.
But of course he did not jump.
Leaning against the gap in the wall, Richard looked out in silence, staring across icy tumbling meadows to where the river twisted and broadened in the valley bottom. It was a beautiful view, and one that I had always loved, but it was clear his mind was elsewhere.
I was puzzled by his abrupt withdrawal, and more than a little concerned that I had offended him. I had few friends and none but Richard who understood magick as I did. Chastizing myself for a too hasty tongue, I considered how I could mend this. It would be stupid to lose his friendship because of my headstrong temper.
‘Forgive me,’ I said in the end, unable to bear his silence. ‘It was my fault. I’m too ready to speak when I should listen.’
He made no reply, still staring down towards the river. But I saw his hand clench into a fist.
‘Perhaps we could go through the spell together,’ I suggested lightly, hoping he would take the bait. ‘It might work better with two.’
His head turned blindly, his face tight, the hurt shining in his eyes. ‘You do value my judgement, then?’ he asked. ‘I thought you did not.’
‘Only because I am a stubborn idiot.’ With my best smile, I patted the floor next to me. ‘Come back, I pray you, and help me decipher my mother’s hand. Many of these spells are in Latin and I cannot always make them out.’
Richard was flushed, his gaze not quite meeting mine. I must have offended him indeed, I thought, and was at once contrite.
‘I have a sharp tongue and often forget to be grateful. It is a fault that has been much remarked by my father, my brother . . .’ I had sent Alejandro away and might never see him again – I did not wish to lose Richard too. ‘I value your judgement very much, Richard. Please come and sit down with me.’
At last he moved, pushing away from the wall and limping back to my side. His eyes met mine briefly as he took the manuscript back and set it down in front of us on the dusty floor.
‘Very well, but we shall share the reading,’ he muttered, still defensive, then gave me a dry smile. ‘If that suits you, madam witch?’
‘What can you see?’
My eyes were closed, my hands resting lightly on my thighs as I knelt in the chilly hayloft. I had let my mind empty of distractions, or as many as I could block out. Now I drew a slow breath and tried to obey the terms of the spell.
But it was not a promising start.
‘Nothing,’ I admitted.
‘I told you the spell would not work.’ Standing above me, Richard waited another moment, then made an impatient noise. ‘Come on, we might as well go back to the house. It must be nearly supper time.’
‘Not yet,’ I insisted. ‘My mother would hardly have gone to the trouble of inscribing such a lengthy and detailed spell in her book if it did not work. Five more minutes, then we shall go back for supper. You have my word on it.’
When the place was still again, I tried harder, letting my mind sink into the silence, thinking as powerfully as I could of my father’s house. I conjured up in my mind the creaking stairway from the hall to the bedchambers, the narrow landing with the crack in the floor where you could see straight down into the heat and bustle of the kitchen, the smell of fresh-baked bread and meat turning on the spit rising to the rafters . . .
‘Aspicio,’ I whispered.
Suddenly I was flying.
I gasped as my body left the ground. There was a frightening weightlessness, and a tight feeling in my chest, a fear that I might fall. Colours spun about me in a blurred rush, green fields and the cold grey of the wintry sky. My hair was loose, blowing back over my shoulders as wind dragged past me, my body flying faster and faster.
Yet I knew that I had not moved, that I was still kneeling in the abandoned hayloft with Richard watching me.
Abruptly the world tilted.
My eyes opened, and that was when I realized they had been screwed tight shut, for the flying sensation had left me a little sick. I gazed about myself, breathing shallow, my eyes slowly adjusting to darkness. I was standing on the upper landing in my father’s house, looking down the stairs into the hall. Or rather my mind was there, my body still a good two miles away in the hayloft.
The detail shook me. I could see knots and cracks in the wall beams, a beetle crawling in the dust at the top of the stairs, and down in the hall I watched as one of the serving women came hurrying out of the scullery, three or four brown eggs cradled in her apron.
There was a sound behind me. I turned in my dream, and saw my brother’s door open.
Without moving, I found that I was inside his bed chamber, as though my thought alone had taken me there.
William was lying on his bed, his arm over his eyes, a small book open on his chest. As I watched, he sighed deeply as though distressed by some memory or imagining.
‘Alice,’ he whispered. ‘Alice . . .’
After a moment, his arm fell away from his eyes and I realized that he had been crying.
William rolled onto his side and continued to read f
rom his book. In my head, I heard him reciting a poem softly to himself. A love poem. The words fell away into shadow, but my brother’s red-rimmed eyes were clear enough.
‘Meg.’
I started violently, thinking William knew I was there in his chamber and was saying my name. My eyes blurred, there was a hideous rushing in my ears, then I was back in the hayloft, staring at nothing like a mad thing, my whole body aching, with Richard on his knees before me, his face pale and drawn.
‘Come back to me, Meg,’ Richard said urgently, and snapped his fingers in front of my face.
A shudder ran through me, everything turned misty, and I felt horribly sick.
Richard nodded unsympathetically. ‘Good, you’re awake.’
‘What . . . what did . . .’ I tried to stand up but Richard pushed me back.
I did not argue, for I was dizzy, my head spinning unpleasantly.
‘Stay where you are. God’s blood, Meg, you turned cold and seemed to lose your senses there. I could not rouse you for several minutes. I told you not to be too free with these spells from your mother’s book, that they were dangerous.’ He sounded furious. ‘When will you listen to me?’
‘Never,’ I muttered.
Richard crouched down, looking at me, his head on one side. ‘I’m not made of stone, Meg. I have no taste to see you die again under my care. I have not forgotten that night at Hatfield. Having to carry your dead body back to the house nearly finished me. Not a night I wish to live through again.’
‘But it worked,’ I said eagerly, and struggled to my knees, blenching when my stomach rebelled at the too abrupt change in position. I put a hand to my mouth and waited, eyes closed. ‘Oh God.’ I slowly dropped my hand as the sickness abated. ‘Richard, I have to tell you,’ I whispered. ‘I was there.’
‘Where?’
‘I thought of my father’s house. Built it in my mind’s eye as the book says to do, then said the spell. And straight away I was flying. At least, it felt like I was flying, and I could see the ground flashing past me. Then I was there, in the house.’
He was staring. ‘Go on.’
‘I saw my brother—’ I began, then stopped myself. I had been going to say ‘crying’ but it seemed unjust to betray William’s privacy, for if he had known anyone was watching, he would never have wept. And over Alice too, the Lady Elizabeth’s maid. I had not realized his feelings for the girl ran so deep, though I remembered now they had grown close during the autumn we passed at Hatfield.
‘Reading a book,’ I finished lamely.
Richard’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Reading a book? How very exciting.’ He clearly did not believe me.
‘Listen, I was there,’ I insisted, ‘in my father’s house. I saw my brother reading a book, and stood as near to him as you are to me, and he never saw me. It was no dream, nor was it a memory. It was a true seeing.’
For a long moment Richard looked at me without speaking, seeming to consider that possibility. Then he took up the grimoire and studied it, running his finger across my mother’s spell.
‘If what you say is true, this spell could . . .’ Richard hesitated. ‘It would be a powerful work of magick indeed.’
I held out my hand. ‘Help me up, please.’
He did not argue this time, but stood and took my hand. His grip was strong, reassuring. ‘Lean on me.’
‘I thank you.’ My legs were still trembling from the power of the spell, and the heavy folds of my gown were always a hindrance, so I did not consider it a weakness to ask for his help. ‘Now you can kneel where I was, and try my mother’s spell for yourself.’
‘What?’
I almost smiled at his stunned expression. ‘Why so surprised? You will not need to “believe” if you can see for yourself that the spell works.’
Richard shook his head. He handed me back the manuscript, this time taking more care not to damage the fragile binding. ‘Forgive me, but I cannot. I do not have your skill as a witch.’
‘I have seen you use magick.’
‘Nothing akin to this.’
‘Oh, come!’
He folded his arms, looking at me grimly. ‘I am serious, Meg. Catherine Canley’s book is not for me. It is women’s magick. To be permitted to observe but not to speak. To see great works, but not influence them yourself. My art lies in quite another direction.’ He paused. ‘Besides, her spells may only work for you because you are her daughter.’
That had not occurred to me. But it was possible.
‘Women’s magick,’ I muttered, and tucked the book under my arm, for I felt too tired to continue that day. It seemed that ‘far seeing’ was a physically exhausting spell, even though no actual movement was required on the part of the one travelling. ‘And what is a man’s magick, pray?’
Richard grinned, knowing how much such jibes infuriated me. ‘Everything that is not for a woman to perform. Which is most things.’
I resisted the urge to hit him with my mother’s book, for I knew he only spoke thus to tease me. ‘Come on, I’m eager to get back to the house and see William. If he tells me he was in his chamber all morning, reading a book, we will know it was a true vision.’
‘Which it was.’ Richard believed me now. ‘Wait, you’ll need this.’ He threw my cloak about my shoulders and took a long moment to fasten it against the cold.
I studied him, amused by the look of concentration on his face. He must have cut his hair in recent days, for the dark unkempt curls that used to brush his shoulders had been shorn, his hair razored short up his neck. The forelock which always hung over his forehead like a pony’s was still in place though, giving him a vaguely dishevelled look, as though he had only just risen from his bed.
Richard was an attractive young man, I mused. Then I could not believe I had just thought such a thing. But it was hard not to at least acknowledge it when he was standing so close.
‘Through if your brother was out on his horse this morning,’ Richard added cheerfully, unaware of my thoughts, ‘or helping your father catalogue his book collection, then it was a deception of the mind and we must beware your mother’s spell book. Agreed?’
Climbing the stairs of my father’s house, I hesitated, then turned towards my brother’s chamber. The door stood open.
I pushed it slightly, just as I had done in my dream, and peered inside. My brother’s bed was empty and in disarray, his bolsters askew, the blankets tossed higgledy-piggledy onto the floor.
‘Looking for me?’
I jumped, turning to find William directly behind me on the narrow landing. He looked at my face, grinning. ‘Did I startle you? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.’
A ghost, I thought faintly. I had seen one or two in my time, thinking back to the dark spirit I had inadvertently summoned at court, to poor Anne Boleyn’s silvery outline floating above the Lady Elizabeth’s bed. And to my own mother . . .
I would almost have welcomed a ghost at that moment if it meant my mother’s spell book could be trusted. It would kill me to think that her spells and secret musings on magick – written in her own hand and set down purposely for me to study – should be considered suspect.
‘What have you been doing this morning?’ I asked.
‘Nothing much. I was just reading, that’s all.’ William pushed past me into his chamber, his look defensive.
I followed him, noting the shutters thrown open to admit the chilly daylight, and the general untidiness of his room, soiled clothes strewn on the floor, last night’s candle a puddled stump on the table beside his bed. ‘Reading what?’
My brother was frowning, a slight colour in his face. ‘And how is it your business what I was reading?’
‘Will, please tell me.’
‘Very well,’ he said gruffly. ‘I was reading poetry. There, now you know the truth. Will you tell me what all this is about?’
So it had been a true seeing.
I shook my head. I was not ready to tell Will about the far-seeing spell, nor admit that
I had spied upon him in the privacy of his own chamber.
‘I have never known you read poetry before.’ I smiled, teasing him. ‘You must be in love.’
‘In love?’ Now my brother was scarlet, stumbling over his words. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. If you were a man, Meg, and not my sister, I’d . . . I’d . . .’ Then William saw my knowing smile, and his confusion grew even worse. ‘Oh, forget it!’
SIX
A Natural Death
The weeks advanced with infuriating quietness towards spring at Lytton Park. The snow stopped falling and a wintry sunshine melted the last of its icy whiteness from the verges. New flower stalks broke the hard earth, the trees in the park came into bud at last, and my father’s vast sow gave birth to a litter of eight wriggling piglets. A robin red-breast came to sing and beg for crumbs on my windowsill every morning, its nest hidden amidst the tangle of foliage below. The world felt very fresh and new, though the air was still chilly in the early hours when I would wake from some confused dream and stare up at the stars.
Meanwhile, I walked or rode out with William and Richard during fine weather, helped to run the household for my father, and spent my evenings by the fire in my chamber, reading my mother’s grimoire and occasionally heading outdoors to attempt a few of her minor charms when neither Richard nor my father was on hand to catch me.
Then one afternoon in late February, supervising the beating of some filthy old tapestries hung over a wall in the spring sunshine, I heard a shout and turned to see the outline of a horseman riding steadily down the track from the main road, the sun at his back.
I blinked and coughed in the wealth of spinning dust from the tapestries, unable to see clearly. Above me, William was hanging out of one of the casement windows, no doubt to get a better view. He shouted again and began waving his hand violently. I could not hear him, so turned, asking the servant to stop beating the tapestry for a moment.
I shielded my eyes against the sun, frowning up at William. ‘Who is it? Can you see?’
‘It is Alejandro de Castillo,’ he called back excitedly. ‘Your Spaniard has come back!’
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