The Secrets of Blood and Bone

by Rebecca Alexander

  Felix was already booting up his laptop. “What book would you normally consult?”

  “William Turner’s herbal.”

  Within two minutes an online version of the book was ready to search.

  “Look for rankle-weed.” Maggie was jumping with impatience.

  Felix tapped the keyboard. “Nothing for rankle. Another word for it then, irritate, aggravate?”

  Jack tried to remember the book. Herbs were Maggie’s interest but as Jack’s livelihood was selling magical ingredients, she had read the book a few times. “Try chafe.”

  “Chafe-weed, there it is. Galium aparine, cleavers, goosegrass.”

  “That’s everywhere.” Jack jumped up. “Is there any information on the hair-root or hare-wort in the recipe?”

  “Well…” Felix turned back to Thomazine’s book. “Look here.”

  The page was so grayed and dirty it was hard to read, even without the spidery writing that didn’t look English. Jack leaned closer. “I still can’t read it.”

  “No, right along the edges. Do you recognize the plants?”

  Under layers of dirt, a thin brown line wound its way around shapes, leaf shapes, Jack realized. “That’s mouse-ear. The spear-shaped rosette there. That viney thing with the spikes, I suppose that’s the cleavers. That other thing, with the round leaves, must be hair-wort.”

  Maggie leaned in to look. “Maisie, do you recognize this?”

  The old woman waddled forward on her bowed legs, and followed Maggie’s finger. “I don’t know what you would call it, but it grows along Thomazine’s wall.”

  It did. The new plant clung in tiny clusters sparsely inside the garden wall. It took twenty minutes to gather a handful. Felix had been muttering over the manuscript trying to decipher Thomazine’s letters, and finally had a list of twenty or so items. Jack stirred the pot they were cooking the decoction in; then Felix called her over.

  “This is an additional list,” he said. “Amyas’s mixture, she called it.”

  Jack scanned the list. “Amyas wasn’t affected in the same way the rest of the Dannicks were. I think we should give that version to Callum, and give him a chance of not becoming like the rest of them.”

  “I don’t know where we are going to get all these items from. Sapphire, for example. Horsehair, the blood of a corbie, ground spider tangle…”

  Jack tapped the word on his list. “That’s why she kept the raven. Corbie, it’s an old word for crow or raven. She needed it for the potion. I suspect everything we need is right here, and if we don’t have all the ingredients, we’ll still be able to make a potion. You rarely need everything.”

  “Where are we going to get a sapphire in time?”

  Jack called through to the living room, where Maisie was dozing on a sofa. She didn’t have a sapphire, but a cluster of gems on a brooch included a minuscule ruby, which Felix explained was the same mineral.

  Within twenty minutes Jack had pried out the gem, found horsehair in the old plaster of the back wall, picked up dozens of spiderwebs from the garden and dropped them all into the decoction. The raven put up a fight, but with Jack catching and holding him, Maggie was able to clip one of his overgrown claws down to the quick, and several scarlet drops were added to the potion. She passed the stewed liquid through a strainer and left it in a jug to cool.

  Maggie touched her arm. “It’s almost eight, Jack.”

  She looked at the clock. “We need a plan.”

  Felix folded his arms. “They are never going to let you and Sadie out of that house with their secret.”

  “They might. If they know we have the recipe and they don’t know where it is.” Jack rubbed one of the raised welts on the back of her neck. “If they need it regularly.”

  “Have you ever heard of reverse engineering?” He closed his laptop. “With the potion we give them, a good biochemist can almost certainly work out most of the ingredients by analyzing the residue in the bottle.”

  Jack fished in the sieve for the ruby, carefully wrapping it in a piece of paper to restore to Maisie’s brooch later.

  “Maybe. But I don’t see I have an alternative.” She turned to Felix. “Now, you listen to me. This is a battle only I can win. I know what they are going to do, I understand what they think they need.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This is my fight, Felix. This is my world, magic and spells and potions. And Sadie is my responsibility.”

  Felix grasped her shoulders and shook her gently. “I’m not going to sit back and let—”

  “No, you’re not.” She stared up at him, acutely aware that she might not survive the battle that was coming. “But Sadie is my responsibility. Just like Maggie has looked after me since she took me.” Tears tingled behind her eyelids and she blinked, hard. “She’s always been there for me. She couldn’t do more for me if I had been her own daughter. Sadie deserves the same loyalty.”

  “So while you are risking your life, and possibly Sadie’s, I’m supposed to sit here and do nothing?”

  “Of course not.” She touched her lips to his for a moment, softly. He didn’t move, just stared down, anger creasing his forehead. “You are going to carry on reading that book and find a way to break the spell of the ‘wild hunt’ or whatever they call it. And I will need you to get us out of there once I’ve got Sadie.”

  She opened a kitchen drawer, looking for the hill-walking map she used to explore footpaths with Ches. “Here. This is the forest behind the castle, by the wolf enclosure. It’s private land as far as the road. You can turn here, then drive along the ride almost up to the house. It’s a rough path but it’s designed for forestry vehicles.”

  “And you and Sadie will meet me there?”

  “Bring Maggie too. I may need a bit of witchery. I don’t know how they will react if they don’t get their own way, but I’m hoping to get Callum out as well.”

  —

  Jack was as ready as she could be. Remembering the wolf attack, she was carrying a few charms and spell ingredients. She wasn’t a witch, but she knew the kind of sorcery most people could do, and added a bottle of silver solution to help Sadie. She tucked a hunting knife into the back of her jeans, knowing they would probably take it off her, and a thin stiletto into the side of her boot. She hadn’t forgotten the “wild hunt,” and had done a bit of research of her own. Telling Felix would only complicate things. She winced as she pulled a fleece on, her muscles still aching from the fight with Powell.

  “Are you ready?” Felix said when she opened the door.

  “I am. Hopefully they will listen to reason. We have the recipe and can continue to supply them.”

  “But should we? If it forces people like Callum to become…something else.”

  She zipped up the fleece. “It’s what I do, remember? I supply ingredients for sorcery, magic, witchcraft, whatever. No questions asked.”

  “And you aren’t worried that they sent a man to force Ellen to give up the recipe, who ended up killing her?” He frowned. “What are you going to do if they attack you with magic, like they did Ellen?”

  “Maybe the coroner was right,” she said, soothing him. “It was shock and pain from the fire. She was old and sick.”

  “Even I don’t believe that anymore.” He barred her way from the room when she tried to leave.

  “I know something about fighting with magic, Felix. And defending myself.” She let him hold one of her hands.

  “There’s still something you’re not telling me.”

  “I am worried about a few things.”

  He took a deep breath, and sighed it out. “What about?”

  “About the fact that my getaway driver is a middle-aged university professor, my backup sorcerer is an elderly witch who mostly enchants plants, and Sadie may already be dead.” She put a hand on his chest and pushed him back. “I have some residual energy from the blood you gave me but there are a few of them, and they are supposed to be supernaturally strong. I’m outgunned.”
r />   “Then don’t go. Call the police.”

  She shrugged. “That’s your human solution, Professor. They’ll rush Sadie to hospital and she’ll die. Not to mention the fact that she was kidnapped and we faked her death.”

  “To save her life—” He stopped, hung his head for a moment. “OK. You’re right. How can I help, really?”

  “Be there. Be there in the forest and be ready to drive like a teenage car thief.” She smiled at him, and he put his arms around her.

  After the kiss, he murmured in her ear. “You’d better come back.”

  She smiled up at him, a nugget of optimism warming her. “I’ll come back. Or die trying.”

  He half smiled, but his voice was low. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  Chapter 38

  My gracious lord, I write in sorrow and with concern about my great and noble ruling lady, Countess Erzsébet Báthory, whose requests to bury children within the graveyard have raised many questions. This last child, the daughter of one János Barbel, being shrouded within a winding sheet, was unwrapped by myself and my sexton, and many strange wounds were laid upon the body. Please, my lord, advise me most cautiously for I have many such caskets within my graveyard and I fear what is happening even as I fear my Lord Nádasdy and his royal wife.

  —LETTER FROM THE PASTOR OF CSEJTE VILLAGE, to his superior in Trenčín, 1592

  We rode in silence, me clinging to the countess around her waist with one hand, and locked to the back of the saddle with the other. Whatever was not bruised in the battle was certainly damaged by that ride. The road stretched before us in the moonlight, a ribbon of pale against the dark grass, and we rode as if all hell chased us. Finally, she pulled the winded beast up and looked around.

  “They will not venture far out of Contarini’s land,” she said to me, over her shoulder, as if we were friends, not sworn enemies.

  I released my cramped arm from her body, and half slid into the road, crumpling onto the ground, my chest heaving for breath. I was not sure that the creature—Enrico—had not cracked some of my ribs. I lurched to my feet and stood swaying before the spent horse, whose head had dropped almost to his knees.

  “I cannot—I cannot travel with you. I will not,” I wheezed, and rested my hands upon my thighs until the breath came easier, my injured shoulder burning as it took my weight.

  “Well, the road goes back to the beasts or forward with me,” she said, with a laugh. She guided the horse around to start walking down the road away from the villa.

  I looked either side but in truth I was sure I would be lost in the low woods in minutes. I started to follow the horse, feeling within my pockets for my belongings. My knife was gone, the powders gone, only the cursed tablet drawing remained. I thanked God that my most precious books were safe at Marinello’s house. The countess paused a few times, listening to distant howls perhaps that I, with my breath laboring and my heart thudding, could not hear. Gradually, she drew ahead, until she stopped at a sign and waited for me.

  “We find ourselves at a farmhouse, dear Eduárd. You shall lend me the protection of the illusion of decency, at least.” I glared at her, but she simply held out her reins. “You shall play the loyal servant who fought off…robbers, I think.”

  Mumbling to myself, for I took no pleasure in the deception, I took the reins and led the horse within what looked like an enclosure.

  The building lay three sides around the courtyard, the main part two stories high. No lights showed at any window, but the faint stamping of a horse told me one of the low wings was stables. The moonlight, growing low in the sky, gleamed off a trough and I led the exhausted beast there. The house, to one side, lay in darkness, and I felt my way to the door.

  “Ho!” I shouted, and thudded my hand upon the door. “Help for my lady!”

  A light flickered within, through the slats of the shutters in a room upstairs. A man’s head was silhouetted against its light. He spoke in gruff Italian, but before I could attempt a little Latin, the lady answered.

  After some parley, she turned to me. “Lift me down, like a gentleman.”

  Thus reproved, I followed the noise of bridle and spurs back to the horse, and placed my hands upon the lady’s waist, lifting her down, which stabbed fire in my side and shoulder and reminded me of my hurts. The man emerged from the door to take the spent steed, and a woman, much wrapped about in a cloak, beckoned us into the house.

  There my lady was much exclaimed over and taken up narrow stairs to be attended by the landlady, and I was shown to a narrow settle barely padded with a horse blanket for my own repose. I had little time to bemoan it, as I fell into sleep so fast I recall nothing until the countess threw open the shutters in the morning.

  “Wake,” she cried, adding a term I suspect equated to “slug-a-bed” in her own language. “Go, feed and water the horse.”

  I moved and my whole body protested. I was stiff with pain, my shoulder screeched when I tried to move it, and I shook with fever. I knew not what infection I had suffered in the bite of Enrico’s madness, and could only pray that it would not be passed to me as country people in France believe. I rolled off the low bench, onto one hand and my knees. I could do nothing but groan in pain for a moment, while she stamped about the room, opening a cupboard here, a shutter there.

  “Good wine, and some bread,” she said, as if to herself. “Here, dried plums and grapes. We have a feast. Get up, weakling, and stop complaining. I have saved your life, and you can at least thank the horse for your deliverance.”

  I staggered to my feet, spots racing toward me in my vision and the room spinning about me. I clung to the rudely crafted table, and waited until the world was still. “I am injured,” I managed to say. She looked as fresh as if she had not fought a battle for my life and ridden off a cliff to save her own. “Where is the farmer? He can serve you.”

  “Gone away.” She said the word with such certainty that for perhaps a minute I believed it as I shuffled toward the door. The morning light stunned my eyes and made my head ache, and my mind thought upon her words.

  “Gone where?” I said, as I turned to face her. She looked like a young girl, her hair around her body, her form immodestly revealed by her man’s attire.

  “Gone,” she repeated. “Feed the horse, and I will make food for us.”

  I struggled to the stable, where the man had at least unsaddled the poor beast the previous night and rubbed him down. I gave him an armful of hay and refilled the water trough. I added a handful of grain for his gallantry and courage last night and spoke gently to the creature. His body had survived but his spirit seemed broken, for he shivered in fear, rolling his eyes even as I fed him. The farmer’s other two horses were tethered at the back of the stable, and were grateful for hay and water. I wondered how the man and his wife had gone when their horses remained. I could not shake off my unease at their absence.

  I returned to the house, holding on to the doorway, feeling as ill as if I had an ague. She had lit a fire and water was warming in a pot hung over the bright flame.

  “Now, Master Kelley, we will attend to your wounds. Take off your jacket.”

  I was reluctant to do so in the presence of a woman not my wife, but also because she had laid upon the table some torn strips of cloth, some sort of herbal ointment, and, at the end, a knife that looked as sharp as a razor. I undid the laces on my jacket, and squinted inside to see the damage.

  My chest, under the torn shirt, was purple with bruises. The edges of a ragged wound were scarlet and swollen and stuck to the shreds of the linen with black blood. I felt unwell just to see it. She reached impatiently toward me, and helped drag the jacket from my torso.

  “Sit, sit,” she said, all the time peeling back pieces of the shirt. “You are lucky,” she mused. “The doublet took more damage than you did.”

  There were two half-crescent-shaped bites that had torn into the skin and revealed the meat underneath. Nauseated, I looked away, as she bathed away blood and scabs a
like. She turned to the pot upon the fire, and pulled out of it a small glass jar or bottle, suspended within the water by means of a string. I looked around the room, seeing signs of modest prosperity, a few shirts hung to dry in the adjoining room, one that of a child.

  “Where did you say the farmer went?” The answer struck me almost as fast as I spoke the words. “Are they gone or are they…dead?”

  “They are the vassals of Contarini,” she answered, stirring the contents of the bottle with the knife. “They would tell of our presence, and the direction of our travel. This will be hot but will draw out any bad humors,” she said, as she smeared the contents onto the wounds.

  The pain was enough to take my breath, take my words, take even my thoughts about the farmer’s fate, but slowly the fire became an intense throbbing, glowing from my shoulder, which was swiftly bandaged by the countess.

  “I have often bound the wounds of my husband and his troops,” she said, tying up the ends. She pulled down one of the farmer’s fresh shirts, and held it for me to ease my shoulder into. I winced at the sharp pain in my ribs, and allowed her to dress me. Then she helped me into the torn jacket, which was at least warm. “Get horses. We need to be away. Contarini will find us here. I will pack food for us to eat upon the journey.”

  I stepped into the stable, struggling to lift down the saddle but finally throwing it over the shaking animal’s back. For myself, I saddled the farmer’s cob, a hearty-looking gelding with a placid eye.

  I went around the stable, looking for a bridle for the cob, and that is when I found her in an empty stall.

  She lay in the rough straw like an angel. Her arms were raised, her nightgown spread about her, her bare legs white as the linens and her hair tumbled about her. Her face gazed unseeing, her eyes a little a-cock, as if one eye gazed at the stable and one at the heavens above, which had surely embraced such a tiny creature. Around her throat, the ruby flesh was torn, the wounds ringed about like a parody of a necklace. I staggered out of the stall, and emptied my stomach upon the stable floor, fighting for my feet in the memory of that gaze, those brown eyes already milked in death. I shed tears of pity, then, that I had brought such a cruel fate upon an innocent family. It took me some moments to wipe my face with my sleeve and do the countess’s bidding.