The Secrets of Blood and Bone

by Rebecca Alexander

  He nodded slowly. “I have heard also of a Bohemian captain of guards, seeking a refugee from imprisonment.”

  I opened my mouth but, like a fish, naught came out. It was true that a lien upon my person and belongings had been issued in the empire, but I had not thought even the Bishop Malaspina angry enough to pursue me as far as Venice. “I merely disagreed with the papal nuncio,” I stammered. “My mission is entirely to speak with Lord Contarini and view a carving.”

  “Papal Nuncio Malaspina is an idiot,” Konrad said. His smile faded. “I hear the faintest of dark rumors about Contarini, nevertheless. But we have something more important to consider.”

  I waited, shaking my head at the servant bringing me a drink upon a tray.

  Konrad took a cup, then looked into its depths. “Dee is not with you?”

  “He stays in Prague, my lord, with our families.”

  “And no one has approached you upon that other matter?”

  My memory lurched back to the time when we, Dee and I and Konrad, were prisoners in Csejte castle, fighting for our lives and coerced into the most dangerous sorcery: necromancy.

  “We have sworn that we will never revisit that time,” I said. “We only seek ways to undo that which was done.”

  “You embodied a soul within a corpse, Edward. That is the pact that you struck, you animated a womb so that the countess could bear a child to the cursed Báthory dynasty.”

  I bowed my head, in truth in shame, but also to wonder why he had sought me out. I had no intention of revisiting that cruel country with its warlike people.

  He sighed, and for a moment we listened to the sound of logs crackling in the fireplace. “But now,” he said, “you can put right that unnatural outcome.”

  “My lord?”

  “I am here to gain information about her whereabouts. I have intelligence that she has traveled from Transylvania into France and then toward Venice. Since the Inquisition is following her, she must have left the sanctuary of her own lands with a special objective. I wonder, Edward, if you are not that reason.”

  “I am not.” It was my immediate reaction to deny that I was in mortal danger, but my stomach churned at the thought. “None but I knew that I visited Venice. And when I have completed my task I shall return to Prague as soon as I may. This city has not been kind to me, and I shall be glad to return to Bohemia and then to England.”

  And receive my handsome reward, I thought, a little excited at the alchemical experiments I intended to set up when I returned to my workshop.

  “Then promise me, if you hear anything of her, or even a rumor of her presence, you will send word immediately. I have loyal men ready to undo your sorcery by sword or fire.”

  “I shall. I promise.”

  “See that you do, my young friend.” Konrad rose then, and murmured a blessing. He smiled down at me. “For with her death may come redemption.”

  Chapter 18

  PRESENT DAY: KNOWLE CASTLE, LAKE DISTRICT

  The garden breathes along the threads that tie it to the fields behind, the copse of trees up on the rise, the hedge running along the road. It stretches its further reaches into the forests beyond, the fells covered with their thin veneer of soil, life trickling into cracks in the rock, oozing into the springs and streams. Underneath, the rumble of all life ripples.

  Sadie stared up at the tower, the stone wall reaching up to battlements along the top. “Wow.” Looking up made her dizzy.

  Jack turned the car into the visitors’ car park, avoiding a few tourists. “Well, he did call it a castle.”

  “Yeah, but—wow.” Sadie leaned back in the seat, savoring the warm feeling she always got from being in the car between two circles of sigils. “We won’t be long, will we? I don’t want to get too cold.”

  “I’ll send you back to the car if it gets too much.” Jack parked the car in the mostly empty gravel apron in front of Reception. “You’ve got your own key.”

  Sadie wobbled when she got out of the car, breathing deeply to avoid the nausea she still struggled with and had grown to hate. Her “cause of death,” barely avoided, would have been to choke to death on an overdose of alcohol and fast food. She had long since decided she would never drink anything alcoholic again. Ever. The cold flowed into her, despite the sunshine.

  “Are you OK?” Jack pulled her rucksack out of the boot, looking at Sadie’s face.

  Sadie made an effort to smile. “I’ll have a bit of the disgusting potion, and I’ll be fine.”

  That took the crease between Jack’s eyebrows away, and she even managed a small smile. “Keep the bottle in your pocket, just in case.”

  The hagweed and earthstar potion, which gave Sadie and Jack energy, smelled disgusting, as if a lot of vegetables had gone to die and someone had spooned up whatever seeped out of them. It didn’t taste too bad, but Sadie held her breath as she took a sip. She felt warmth creep back into her.

  “Come on, then.” She led the way to Reception, Jack crunching on the gravel behind her. Inside was a typical gift shop, rows of stuffed animals and books about the castle. While Jack talked to the woman smiling a welcome at the desk, Sadie looked through the toys. The one that had caught her eye was a large toy wolf, the pelt almost as soft as Ches’s. “Look, Jack.”

  She turned to show Jack and became aware of a man, holding her attention.

  He was old but dressed in a suit and shiny shoes. When he strode forward, she revised his age. Maybe as old as Felix, maybe a bit more. While she was puzzling over it, Jack turned to Sadie.

  “—my daughter, Sasha.”

  What—oh, yeah. New name.

  “Hi.” Sadie looked away from the man to see an electric wheelchair beside him, driven by a skinny boy about her own age.

  “And this is my grandson, Callum.” The boy drew his chair alongside them, staring.

  Jack reached out a hand and shook the boy’s white fingers. Sadie confined herself to a small smile. There was something about the boy that made her reluctant to get too close.

  “Shall we go somewhere private, where we can talk?” The older man led the way up a ramp into a vast hall, echoing with the sounds of footfalls and the chair’s whining motor.

  Jack and the man drew ahead, leaving Sadie to walk alongside the boy. Cold, that was it. The boy reminded her of the feeling she got when death crept closer.

  “Sasha. Nice name.” Callum coughed, a dry sound like dead leaves being scrunched.

  “I’m trying it out.” She looked down at him as he pulled ahead. His hair was the most alive thing about him, thick, long enough to cover his neck, and the color of fudge. “I liked Tara, too. I just wanted to change my name.”

  “I’m not mad about Callum. It doesn’t matter, really, I won’t be using it much longer.”

  He stopped abruptly at a large door that the adults had just gone through.

  “What do you mean?” said Sadie.

  He coughed again, an effort that left him gasping for a few moments. “I’m—dying. Didn’t your mum tell you?”

  “Jack? No.” She looked more closely at his face, freckles showing against the white skin. He looked bad. “Well, she did say you were ill.”

  “I need this medicine. Ellen used to make it, but now she’s dead—”

  “Oh. Right.” Sadie didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry.” Seeing him was different from talking about him. She could feel the sickness radiating from him.

  “It’s OK. I’ve had a long time to get used to the idea.”

  Sadie followed him into another room, completely paneled, with a dark carpet in the middle and painted boards around the edges.

  Jack was waiting at a door in the paneling. “I have to talk to Sir Henry. He suggested Callum might show you around.” Her eyes were fixed for a moment on Sadie’s, then she nodded. Sadie shrugged one shoulder, and turned back to Callum.

  “OK.”

  Great. Talk with this geeky-looking boy getting colder and colder, when I could be sitting in the car.


  “What school do you go to?” Callum had light blue eyes that looked faded against his white skin.

  She shrugged again. “I don’t go to school.” She followed him back through the echoing hall. She stared at paintings that hung on both sides of the huge staircase that wound up each side of the hall and ended at a gallery.

  “Grandpa said you’ve been ill too.”

  She swung around to look at him. “How does he know that?”

  He managed a chuckle before the coughing started again. “Everyone knows—everyone around here. You stayed at Walnut Grove for a whole month, you’re in remission from some disease, probably leukemia. The locals think so, anyway, and you have moved into the witch’s house.” He grinned at her, looking a bit pinker, and reached a paneled door. “Can you open that for me? I’m not supposed to bash it open with my chair. It’s about a thousand years old.”

  Sadie held the heavy door open and he whirred his wheelchair in. “So, what’s wrong with you?”

  He turned his chair side on to her, and pointed at the wall above their heads. “See him? The man on the horse?”

  He was everything Callum was not. Tall, muscular, wearing what she imagined was a doublet and hose. A jacket, and short puffy trousers over tights. His face was hard, with a large, curved nose like an eagle, and the same light hair as Callum’s.

  The boy coughed again, and fought to get his breath. “That’s Lord Robert Dannick, the third viscount.”

  “I like his horse.” The black steed had a mane running down its arched neck almost to its knees.

  “He had this.” Callum waved his hand over his wasted body. “This type of muscular dystrophy runs in my family.”

  Sadie turned back to the portrait. “He looks fine to me.”

  “He had the cure in about 1570, when he was a teenager, like me.”

  “Wow.” She looked across at a smaller portrait over the fireplace. The artist had captured some humor in the eyes, around the mouth, as if he were trying not to smile. He had the same toffee-colored hair. “Who’s he?”

  “Amyas Ratcliffe. Ellen’s ancestor.”

  Sadie thought back to the story Maggie had told about the first owner of Bee Cottage. “Thomazine’s son.”

  “When he was growing up, his mother noticed he kept falling over. That’s how it starts. She confronted Lord Robert, and he told her about the cure. She and her family kept us supplied with it after that, and she refined it, made it work better.”

  “So that’s the cure you want us to find?”

  He hesitated and pointed back at the viscount. “That’s what they want, yes. I just want to get better.”

  Sadie turned to glance at him. There was a strange look on his face, as if he didn’t know what to feel. “Well, I can tell you, anything beats being dead.” The second she said it, she regretted it. “I mean, it’s instinct, isn’t it? You try to avoid dying.”

  He looked back at her, his face blank. “The cure comes with a downside.”

  “Like being sick all the time, or all your hair falling out?”

  He looked up at the man on the horse again. “He was really cruel. Once, after the reivers had come down to steal our cattle, he formed a hunt to chase them through the forest.”

  “What’s a ‘reiver’?” Sadie’s eye had been drawn again to the smaller portrait. It was more realistic than any of the others, almost as if the expression of the man, Amyas, was subtly changing.

  “Scottish thieves. The castle was built to defend the area from them. Well, there was a house here before, but the first viscount made it bigger, and built the tower.”

  Sadie dragged her attention away from the portrait. “So, what’s the downside? He must have been pretty fit to do all that.”

  He stared at her for a long moment. “He killed every last one. For fun.”

  “Oh. Well, they were bloodthirsty times.” Sadie walked around the walls, looking up at the pictures.

  “The cure, it makes people very strong, but it makes them more…focused. More selfish, aggressive.”

  Sadie ran her hand along a tabletop that was thick and polished, and almost black, the brown was so deep. “But, that’s a choice, surely? Was Amyas like that?”

  “No.” Callum’s head sagged back, as if it were too heavy. “Thomazine changed the cure for him. She didn’t want him to be a psychopath like the others. But she didn’t tell us how she did that.” He jumped as the door creaked, and Sadie turned as it opened. A tall, blond woman walked in, her high heels clicking on the wooden boards.

  “Ah, there you are.” She spared a small grimace for Sadie, maybe meant to be a smile. “Helen has made your lunch, darling. I expect your friend will want to find her mother.”

  Sadie realized she was already very cold, and had started to shiver. “I need to get back to the car.” She turned back to the boy. “Nice to meet you, Callum. I hope you get your medicine.”

  He managed a small smile, and waved a hand weakly.

  Sadie turned to leave the room, her feet swaying under her. When she got into the hall, she brought the bottle out of her pocket and drank a mouthful.

  Disgusting as it was, she still felt better. On the way through the hall, she saw a picture of another light-haired man, this one barely older than she, dressed in Tudor clothes. Behind him, holding a small pile of books and offering the young man a pen, was another man, slight, with a short, dark beard. She put the cap on the bottle as she studied the picture, wondering what had caught her eye. Under dark varnish were rows of words. “Lord Robert” was prominent, and beside the smaller man the words: “Edwarde Kelly.”

  —

  Sadie was too excited to rest although she could barely drag the car door open and climb in. Jack was only a few minutes behind.

  “Are you OK? You’ve gone very pale.” Jack did her seat belt up and started the car.

  “I’m fine.” Sadie looked at Jack’s profile as she pulled out of the car park. “What did you find out?”

  Jack glanced at her. “Go on, you first. You probably had more luck than me.”

  “Oh, just the Callum illness stuff. But when I was in that big hallway I saw a picture of Robert Dannick and guess who?”

  The corner of Jack’s mouth lifted. “I don’t know. Thomazine?”

  “No!” Sadie couldn’t stop herself smiling, and she draped her coat over her. “Edward Kelley.”

  “What? No—our Edward Kelley?”

  “Yep. The one who wrote all those papers you sold.” Sadie snuggled into her makeshift blanket. “The one who made our borrowed time symbols up.”

  “You don’t know that for sure.”

  “Well, how many Edward Kelleys were there in the fifteen hundreds who would get painted in a picture?”

  “That does make sense,” Jack said, slowly. “I mean, this is where the papers and medals came from in the first place, Ellen’s loft. And that’s what he did, I suppose. Make magical cures and study sorcery.”

  Jack drove in silence for a few moments, scanning the quiet road ahead. She slowed, then stopped for a man herding cattle across the road.

  Sadie thought back over what Callum had said. “But his magical cures came at a price. Callum said there was a change he was worried about. He said the cure can make you really aggressive. But that Thomazine changed the medicine so her son could get better but, you know, stay nice.”

  “That’s not exactly how Sir Henry put it.”

  A cow stared at them through the windshield, chewing. Sadie smiled. “I’ve never seen a cow up really close. I’d hardly seen one in a field before I came to live with you.” The man whistled, and a dog swept in front of the car as the cow moved on with her sisters. “I don’t think I would like to live permanently in a town. But I do miss the shops.” Sadie leaned back in the seat. “So, tell me what Sir Henry said.”

  “He said the family have this inherited condition. Affected boys have this gene. But the boys also have a healthy gene, and this medicine activates it somehow so they g
et better. Normally they give the medicine much earlier, before the children are too badly affected.”

  “It might be a bit late for Callum, then?” Sadie felt a twist of anxiety inside her for the pale boy.

  “I don’t think so. What did he say about this treatment?”

  Sadie tried to remember. “He talked about this Lord Robert, I think that was his name. He had this disease where he fell down all the time, and the cure made him better. But then he became really cruel. He hunted down some Scottish thieves and killed them all.”

  “But this didn’t happen to Amyas, who must have been born around the same time?” Jack drove on, across the mucky road and toward the main road.

  “Thomazine changed the cure.”

  “Well, apparently, Thomazine wrote down the formula for the cure and her descendants have kept their own notes. They’ve treated more than a dozen of the family members.” Jack scowled. “He offered me money for Thomazine’s book, when we find it. He was insistent. I explained we still haven’t found it.”

  Sadie leaned back in her seat, and closed her eyes as the car turned into the sun. The warmth started to spread through her. “Well, we can’t just let Callum die.”

  Jack didn’t answer, and when Sadie opened her eyes, she had turned the car toward the town. “I thought we were going home?”

  “We are. I just need to stop for something first.”

  Sadie stared at Jack’s profile. “Are we going to fetch the bird? I’ve never seen a raven before.”

  “We are. But I also thought that Maisie might tell us more about Thomazine’s book.”

  —

  Sadie was instantly reassured in Maisie’s house. It had a sense of her great-grandmother’s home, with every surface covered with knickknacks and the chairs dotted with cushions. She wrinkled her nose at the smell of stale smoke everywhere. Maisie was waiting for them, the front room cleared of cats except for a big tabby, stirred into purring by Sadie’s stroking.

  “Well, he likes you,” Maisie said, putting a tray down on a coffee table. This time she had made a special effort. There was a cracked teapot, stained almost black with tannin, two mugs and a small bottle of a generic cola, presumably for Sadie. “So, you’ve been up to the castle, eh?”