Haunt Me Still

by Jennifer Lee Carrell

  “Put it down, Kate,” he said.

  Beside me, I felt Eircheard flinch. “You’re the pile of shite from the festival,” he grunted.

  “This time, the reach of my arm is longer,” said the dark-haired man. The high whine of a bullet whizzed past my ear, thudding into the oak door behind me. “Step forward to the table and set the book down,” he said.

  “Not worth dying for,” said Eircheard, giving me a nod. Slipping the book from the bag, which I handed back to Eircheard, I did as I was told, rage pressing around me. As I set the book down, he motioned me away again with the gun, and I walked stiffly back to the door. Stepping forward, he flipped the front cover open, revealing the letter, and then he scooped the book under his arm.

  “Step outside,” he said, “and close the door.” Presently we heard him approach the door from the inside, and the key fumbled in the lock. If he locked us out, he’d escape out the fire exit and disappear into London without a trace. “He can’t get away with that letter,” I said. “He can’t.”

  Eircheard moved back three steps and hurled himself like a battering ram against the door, which flew open, knocking our stalker halfway back across the room. Both gun and book skidded away from him. The gun slid somewhere under the table, amid a welter of chair legs. But it was the book he went after and came up with.

  He also came up with a knife. I thought of Sybilla on the rocks, and my insides turned to water.

  He backed up the ladder, holding us both at bay with the blade, and ducked out onto the roof.

  “Go,” said Eircheard tightly. “I’ll be hobbling a bit behind you, but I’ll be there. With some firepower, too, if I can reach the bloody gun.”

  I raced up the ladder and into the night.

  Overhead, the clouds were washed a dull and dirty pink, reflecting the city’s lights. Crouched low, the dark-haired man was running down the spine of the roof. Some way up, he half slid, half ran down the slope to the left, and I followed, mostly on my rear. At the bottom, a low access door hung open. A narrow ladder disappeared into the darkness within. Somewhere below, footsteps pattered downward.

  And music twined upward. A sweet, romantic duet: the first act of Phantom, crooning to its climax.

  I stepped onto the ladder, feeling my way as fast as I dared, suddenly aware of vast space beneath me. I’d gone maybe twenty steps when I heard Eircheard’s voice above. “Kate?”

  “Heading down,” I said.

  Somewhere below I heard a chuckle that might as well have come from the Phantom. I picked up speed. A couple of stories down, I at last came to the fly floor, the narrow ledge to the side of the stage and high above it, used by stagehands to pull the ropes controlling stage equipment and scenery. But the dark-haired man had disappeared up ahead into an intricate netting of ropes and pulleys and weights, though I could hear snatches of teasing laughter. I stilled for a moment, trying to hear him through the billowing music, pinpointing his whereabouts. Eircheard landed with a heavy step beside me.

  Then we saw him, weaving back among the ropes toward the catwalk that crossed from stage left to stage right, along the back wall. I began to run. Up ahead, he reached the catwalk even as the music swelling up from below darkened and picked up speed, cascading into heavy minor chords.

  His voice cutting through the music, Eircheard bellowed at the fleeing man to stop, but he only quickened his pace. I saw a kick of dust hit the wall in front of the dark-haired man and he skidded to a stop. I glanced back. Eircheard had taken a shot and was prepared to take another. Turning, the dark-haired man crossed his arms, waiting.

  I reached the end of the catwalk and started across toward him. When I was ten feet from him, he said, “Me or the book, Kate. Not both.” Around us the Phantom’s manic laughter cascaded through the space. And before I knew what was happening, the dark-haired man tossed the book into the air, sending it tumbling in a high arc back over my head. I had no choice. I turned and raced back in the direction of its fall, catching it just before it plummeted over the rail to the stage below. Below, people in the wings began glancing up. I turned back to the dark-haired man. At the other end of the catwalk, three stagehands appeared, starting out toward us.

  “Go,” screamed the Phantom, and the dark-haired man loosed a coil of rope over the balcony. As the gigantic chandelier that had been cinched to the ceiling all through the first act now swooped down across the theater at the Phantom’s command, swaying over the stage, the dark-haired man stepped over the side of the catwalk’s balcony and, gripping the rope, slid three stories down to the stage, landing with a reverberating thud and running off stage right. Already rising into their end-of-the-act applause and escape to the bars, the audience gasped, and here and there a woman shrieked. Moments later, the stage door opened and the dark-haired man pushed his way out and melted into the crowd.

  On the far side of the catwalk, the stagehands, looking none too pleased, set out in my direction. I didn’t wait, fleeing back to the other side.

  “Jesus,” said Eircheard as I reached him. “Do you think he thinks he can fly?”

  “He damn near can, apparently,” I said. “Just now, it might be helpful if we could too.”

  Eircheard was already wiping down the gun. “I don’t fancy being caught with this, now that he’s gone,” he said, sliding it behind some ropes. “God only knows what it’s done.” We took off back across the fly floor. Coming to the narrow stairs, we pounded down them.

  Why? I kept thinking. Why take the book at gunpoint and then throw it back?

  At stage level we darted through a gathering crowd of actors staring up at the now empty catwalk and out another door leading to the house. As we funneled our way up the aisle toward the exit, I searched every face in the crowd for the dark-haired man, but he’d vanished.

  In my pocket, my phone, set to vibrate, began to buzz. It was a message of two words: Joanna waiting.

  32

  OUTSIDE THE THEATER, we darted across Haymarket at the first break in traffic, heading back up the narrow lane we’d come down. On a rainy November night, it seemed more like an alley.

  Twice, the ring of footsteps on the pavement gave me pause, but once it was a woman in high heels, head down against the damp, and then an older gentleman who might have been a banker; both of them turned off into the parking garage. Clutching Dee’s book, I felt exposed, as if every window, every shadowed doorway and corner, held prying eyes.

  Eircheard could move surprisingly fast with his odd rolling gait; I had to trot to keep up with him. Passing along the back of the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery, we emerged onto Charing Cross road, still bustling with crowds looking for pubs or restaurants or bookshops open late. One block up, we turned into a small pedestrian street lined with bow windows and hung with carved and gilded signs; it looked as if it hadn’t changed much since Victoria sat on the throne. “Cecil Court,” I said. The heart of bibliophile London. Five doors up was a simple sign in black and white: JOANNA BLACK BOOKS AND ESOTERICA.

  The window was filled with small white lights; inside, the shop looked dark. Eircheard pushed open the door and we hurried inside to the shimmering of small silver bells. It was warm, after the chill damp outside, and fragrant with a spicy incense. The high ceiling was painted a deep midnight blue, and small lights like stars seemed to float and spin like fireflies overhead. Momentarily, I had the impression of standing on a windy hill on a moonless night.

  But the horizon was made of tall shelves of books, each dimly lit so that you could read its titles without the light ruining the overall effect of the room. Up ahead, behind a carved wooden ledge sat a man with long, lank hair and a top hat. At the sound of the chimes, he looked up. His right ear, I saw, was oddly folded over, a quirk he accentuated with a pierced earring of dangling silver in the shape of a pentangle. His eyes were ringed with smoky black eyeliner. “Kate Stanley?” he asked, leaning forward intently, as if murmuring a secret password. When I nodded, he rose, unfolding a body
as lank as his hair. The fingernails on his right hand were long and slightly pointed ovals. His handshake, though, was firm. “Joanna is expecting you. She’ll be right out. Make yourselves at home,” he said with a sweep of his arm.

  In the center of the room, on a round marble-topped table, gleamed a wide silvery cauldron. On its front, in raised relief, was the figure of a horned man sitting cross-legged, a serpent in one raised arm. Below, the space from tabletop to floor had been glassed in, making a cylindrical terrarium. Inside this, on a free-form tree made of antlers, a boa was coiling in slow gleaming spirals. Off to one side, a black cat with emerald eyes sat on a long velvet sofa watching the snake.

  “Meet Medea,” said the man behind the desk.

  The cat or the snake?”

  The cat is Lilith. She will introduce herself, if she pleases.” She swished her tail but did not look away from the snake.

  I was too wound up to do anything but wander restlessly. The bookshelves bore titles like Divinatory Arts, Shamanism, and Goddess Spirituality. But books were only part of what the shop had to offer. An open hutch was stacked with candles of all colors—VIRGIN BEESWAX, read a placard, TOUCHED ONLY BY A SOLITARY CANDLE-MAKER IN SUSSEX, A HEDGEWITCH. There were ritual soaps and bath crystals for various kinds of cleansings; goblets of blown glass, pewter, and carved wood; blown eggs of various sizes and colors; wands—BLANKS, TO BE PERSONALIZED BY THE OWNER; and blank books bound in tooled leather and marbled paper, to be used as Books of Shadows—a witch’s or coven’s private diary/collection of spells. The tiny drawers of an antique spice cabinet held herbs—ORGANICALLY GROWN, PICKED AT THE FULL MOON IN DORSET—as well as spices I’d never heard of and aromatic resins and gums: frankincense, myrrh, aloe, and bright red dragon’s blood.

  “Look at these,” said Eircheard. Hands behind his back, he was bending over a bow-fronted Victorian display case. On its upper shelf lay a varied collection of knives with handles of black bog oak; beneath that was a shelf of smaller white-handled knives. “Some of them are beauties,” he said gruffly.

  “Quite a compliment, from a master swordsmith,” said a woman’s low voice with some amusement.

  We both straightened to see a slight woman, about my height, with long curly black hair and wide dark eyes barely hatched with laugh lines, standing in a doorway behind one of the tall bookshelves, which had hinged outward from the wall. She wore a low-cut tunic of some rich tribal material that showcased her necklace, an intricate Afghan collar of silver mesh set with lapis. Heavy silver bracelets clinked on her wrists. Something in her stance and her wary amusement reminded me, a little, of a younger version of my old mentor at Harvard, roz Howard.

  “Joanna Black,” she said, stepping forward to shake hands. “Lady Nairn has been singing both your praises. What can I do for you?”

  My grip on the book under my arm tightened. “John Dee’s garden,” I said anxiously. “Where is it?”

  She raised one brow. “Mortlake. About seven miles west. Halfway to Heathrow, more or less. Right on Mortlake High Street. Only, I’m afraid the question ought properly to be past tense. It’s under concrete, I’m afraid. A block of flats called the John Dee House. Used to be council housing. ‘Projects,’ I suppose Americans would say. It’s been privatized, but it’s still 1960s ugly.”

  Lily. A lump rose in my throat. If the play lay entombed beneath a block of flats, it was unreachable. If it had been moved—well, I had no trail to follow.

  She looked from me to Eircheard and back. “from what Lady Nairn said, you’re not just looking to spend some quiet hours in an Elizabethan garden.”

  Having lost the last string through the labyrinth, I had nothing to lose. I held out the book. “We’re looking for some of Dee’s papers. Not his plants.”

  She ran a finger along the spine, its gilt lettering winking up at us. DEE and the Theatre.

  “Come with me,” she said, turning back through the door behind the shelves. We hurried after her down a long passageway, passing half-glimpsed rooms and other corridors as we turned this way and that, going up five steps, turning, and then down three again before coming to a stair that took us up two stories to a landing with a heavy arched door, ajar. Pushing it open, she ushered us inside.

  Candlelight played on paneled walls, and two deep windows lined with old-fashioned shutters overlooked the street below. Beside the fireplace stood a tall gray stone covered with Celtic knots; on the mantel was a carved African mask. A long, empty library table was surrounded by several high-backed chairs upholstered in deep green brocade. Unlike the rooms below, this room was spare, a setting for displaying rare treasures.

  Pulling a red velvet cradle such as archival libraries use from her desk, Joanna set the book down on the table. One finger on the cover, she looked at me. I reached across and opened it. Her breath caught in her throat, the tip of her tongue between her teeth, as she saw the letter.

  “Read it,” I said.

  As she did, her fingers twining in the mesh of her necklace, I let my mind play back through Arthur Dee’s words. How had he put it? A sly piece meant to shadow Lady Arran forth on the stage? Surely that was Macbeth, borrowing from an earlier manuscript of dark rites. Lady Arran and her husband eerily echoed the Macbeths, from their ambitious scheming and their interest in witchcraft right down to their deaths. Lady Arran had died miserably, according to some Scottish chronicler. Fading out in torment, well off the world’s stage, as Lady Macbeth does. And her husband had been ambushed, his head struck off and raised on a pole.

  If the play was indeed Macbeth, then it did contain a rite of black magic. Surely that was the implication of the younger Dee’s letters—that bits had been copied wholesale into the play from a work of wickedness so dark it had frightened even Dee.

  Dee senior had called Lady Arran Medea, a sorceress who had a habit of carving up aging kings on the promise of making them young again—a promise she did not always feel bound to keep. She was also said to have poisoned her husband’s mistress and to have killed her own children, feeding them to their father in revenge for his desertion. What had possessed Dee to liken Lady Arran to Medea? Was her magic, like Medea’s, bloody cauldron magic? Aubrey, for one, implied that she had blood on her hands.

  What would Carrie Douglas, carver of cauldrons, make of that? And what was her relation to the Winter King?

  Joanna looked up as she finished the first page. “Do you know what you have?”

  “Some idea,” I said.

  She rose, pacing before the fireplace. “The manuscripts—you’re after the missing rite in Macbeth, aren’t you?”

  I hesitated, but I needed her help. After a moment, I nodded. “Do you think that’s wise?”

  Probably not.”

  Beside me, Eircheard snorted. “Wise! It’s about as daft as things get. But we’re after it nevertheless. Can you be of any help, madam, other than telling us that they’re buried under a building?”

  “Not yet,” she said. Lifting the page, she glanced at me, the question in her eyes. I nodded, and she turned it over. Eircheard and I drew in around her, so that we all read it together.

  The Manuscripts, should you find them, are yours. There is One Object, however, that I would reserve for myself. I am not at all certaine that it is there to be found: The Howards wanted it, and I do not knowe whether my Father kept it from their greedie grasping.

  The Howards! One of the most powerful and ruthless families of renaissance England. I’d met up with them before, clashing with Shakespeare on another subject. And here they were, pursuing Dee—in a matter that I hoped also included Shakespeare.

  It is a Mirror.

  Many years before I was born, when Lady Arran was almost still a child herself, she presented herself to my Father in Antwerp, asking to be taught his Art. When he refused on account of her tender years and her sexe, she flew into a furie. That night, she stole the Mirror, knowing that he set great store by it, and fled awaie.

  Years later, it was returned, from an
Unexpected Quarter, along with another Treasure, this one hers: a Manuscript of words so evil that my Father himself quaked to read them, and indeed woulde not until urged to it by his Angels. I never learned how he came by them, but with these gifts, Mr. Shakspeare established himself as one of my Father’s Schollars.

  There it was: Shakespeare, Dee, and Lady Arran in a triumvirate linked by the study of magic and an evil manuscript. And also a mirror.

  Could that be Lady Nairn’s mirror, which had once belonged to the King’s Men? The one stolen from her tower? My breath caught in my throat as I hurried on:

  An Honour which he rather trampled in the muck than burnished bright, not only in word, but most appallingly in deede. In later years, he asked to borrow the Mirror back, along with the Boy who was then my Father’s Scryer, for use in a play before the King. My Father was reluctant, but the Boy was talented—he had foreseene the Powder Plot—and the request came from a Quarter impossible to refuse. When he understood, however, that the Boy was not to play a Scryer, but to be prinked and powder’d as a Queene, and a Witch Queene at that, he grew fiery with rage and demanded to read the play.

  Dee’s boy had been set to play a part…the part of a queen. Had he played Lady Macbeth? Had Hal Berridge, the boy who died, been John Dee’s scryer?

  “A boy?” asked Joanna in some consternation. “His scryer was a boy?”

  I nodded, and she began drumming her fingers on the table. “All Dee’s scryers were grown men. But there is an ancient tradition—one that Dee certainly knew—that boys were better: The purer the vessel, the clearer the sight. Which put youth and virginity at a premium. And we don’t know who he was using in 1606, around the time of Macbeth; the diaries of his last years are lost.”

  “We do know,” I said quietly, pulling out the page from Aubrey and handing it to her.

  While she read Aubrey, I went back to Arthur Dee.