With everything set out, the mountebank stood back a few paces and surveyed his stage. He humphed with satisfaction. ‘Good. Very good. Alyce, let us show these men and women something they have never seen before!’
‘Us?’ She turned back to him, aghast. She had hoped, vainly, that Vitali had simply wanted an extra pair of hands to unload his wares. ‘What else do you want me for?’
‘Do not worry yourself! Simply watch the spectacle with everybody else, and when I call upon you, you do as I say, yes?’
He didn’t wait for an answer, but just patted her patronizingly on the head and disappeared around the back of the scaffold.
Alyce scanned the crowd for Solomon, and found him besieged on all sides by dirty, sickly, gormless townsfolk, all jostling for the best view of the platform. Even in his shabby apparel, he looked almost regal by comparison. He had gathered his slender limbs into the sides of his body, trying not to make contact with the men and women around him, and his face showed a look of such distaste Alyce wanted to burst out laughing. She weaved in between the bodies, took his hand, and pulled him to safety at the side of the stage.
‘Can we call it even now?’ she said as he dusted himself down.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Saved your life.’
Before he could reply, she turned back to the scaffold and waited for the show to start.
HOPKINS
‘I don’t see her,’ said Hopkins, loitering by the edge of one of the market stalls.
The crowd had cleared around him, which was really the opposite of what he wanted. Even the stall’s owner had abandoned her table of root vegetables and was having an urgent conversation with the shopkeeper opposite. The only company Hopkins kept in that strange, empty circle of fear was Caxton and the girl, whose shoulders he clutched like an over-protective father.
‘But,’ said Martha, ‘she should be here. She was sent to work with him. She was going to deliver his ingredients, and then help him with his spectacle.’ Her voice was quiet and scared now. All of her usual cockiness had left her the previous night, after they’d arrived at London Bridge, and found Vitali’s home dark and abandoned.
‘I am an honest man, Martha, so I shall speak honestly – things are not looking good for you at this moment in time. First you show us an empty set of lodgings in the middle of the river; then you drag us to this lice-ridden pit, first thing in the morning. And no sign of her all night. Where next? Back to Bedlam? If I didn’t know better, child, I’d say you had us chasing our own tails in the hope of making a couple of quick sovereigns. Or maybe you’re in league with Mrs Thomson after all, and you’re giving the girl time to escape?’
‘I’m not! I promise!’ He could see she was deliberately trying not to look at Caxton, her neck twisted unnaturally. ‘Signor Vitali is there, that’s him. That’s his stage.’
‘But no Alyce.’
‘Please, I was trying to help. Just wait a moment. Maybe she’s late . . . or . . .’
Hopkins could feel her shoulders were now shaking with sobs. He watched the mountebank fussing around the scaffold and exchanging words with his manservant, and gripped a little harder.
A great BANG shook the crowd.
There were gasps from some, screams from others, and, after a moment, a smattering of uncertain applause. A plume of dense, blue-black smoke filled the highest stage where the firework had exploded, and out of it, as though descended from heaven on a thunderbolt, stepped the glittering Vitali. He already had the lute in his hands, and he began to pluck and sing. Alyce and Solomon looked at each other, completely bemused. The rest of the audience were transfixed – young women in particular.
Absurd as he looked, Vitali’s voice was strong and rich. He was not a particularly proficient lute player, and his tune was a simple one, but the crowd found something exotic and intriguing in his Italian ditty – even if they didn’t understand a word of it. He strutted from one stage to the other, singing of salute eterna and his doni divini, and every few paces another firework would boom, releasing more coloured clouds of smoke and setting a few more dogs barking in terror.
He finished his song with a flourish and made several bows to different corners of his audience. Some clapped, others simply began shouting their ailments and their symptoms at him. He smiled serenely and quieted their din with a raised hand.
‘Gentlefolk of London,’ he called to the crowd. ‘Most worthy patrons. A thousand thanks.’ He paused to survey the sea of faces, beaming. ‘Salute. Health! O, health! This is what you clamour for, is it not? With not only your mouths, but with your very souls, I think. Nourishment corporeal and spiritual! I, Doctor Vitali, with rarest Aesculapian skill, can grant you both of these. Give me leave, honourable gentlemen and ladies, to amaze and delight you with this humble scene –’ he gestured around the grand, tottering scaffold – ‘and, by virtue of extraordinary chemical art, dispel all of your ailments and ill vapours. No cheap salves these, no dust of dried caterpillars and beetle wings, nor greasy unguents of sheep’s eyes, but true elixirs that may grant new life even in the very throes of death.’
He took the stuffed dove from the cage on the highest platform and displayed it to the onlookers. Then he turned his back, and suddenly, with a flourish, the bird was flapping noisily into the air, very much alive. The crowd whooped and clapped.
While Vitali launched into a tirade against the scheming, duplicitous nature of virtually every physician in London, Solomon whispered in Alyce’s ear.
‘He’s the one who should be performing at Court. Our plays are nothing like as impressive as this.’
Alyce turned to reply, but suddenly realized that everyone in the crowd was staring at her. So was Vitali. He was extending his hand to her.
‘Behold, my beautiful daughter, Maria!’ he cried.
He’s forgotten, Alyce cursed silently. I’m supposed to be a boy. Look at what I’m wearing, you fool.
He hauled her up on to the stage.
‘A poor, sickly, wretched thing when she was born. She killed her mother as she fought from the womb.’ That jarred with Alyce’s nerves. ‘But from this tragedy I learnt my arts. And look at her now, hale and healthy, and kissed with fire!’ He took off the hat that Solomon had lent to her, and let her red and gold ringlets fall around her ears.
Perfect, she thought. There goes my disguise. Thank you, signor.
At the release of her hair, several of the balder members of the audience suddenly began to pay more attention. Others were losing interest and were beginning to mutter or wander away. Vitali sensed their waning attention and puffed himself up a little more.
‘Maria will aid me in a demonstration of a new creation of mine.’ He picked up the sword that had been left on the highest stage and handed it hilt-first to Alyce. She took it, frowning. ‘I intend to show you, honourable patrons, a salve so wondrous as to be beyond belief – a gift from God, no less.’ The crowd began to shout, some of them goading Alyce for her strange choice of clothing. She looked down at Solomon. He was fidgeting with his ruff.
‘Well. To be a drunken knave, this is an incurable disease, beyond even the powers of Vitali. But with this salve you may heal any wound dealt by a man who wishes you ill.’
A housewife at the front of the crowd snorted. ‘Ha! Is this a jest? I seen physicians try and stitch up me husband, an’ even they make a bloody mess of it more often than not. What good’s a bit of oil going to do?’
‘You are as wise as you are beautiful, my lady.’ Vitali winked. Alyce rolled her eyes. ‘But you shall see anon. This divine liquid need only touch the offender’s lips, and the flesh will heal with not even the slightest scar.’
The same woman cried out. ‘The offender? So you got to find the man who did it, and get him to drink your potion? I don’t think murderers are such an agreeable sort!’ Others began to murmur in agreement.
Vitali’s fixed smile was beginning to twitch into a grimace as the crowd grew restless. Alyce wasn’t helping mat
ters – she had lowered the sword, and was looking at him sceptically.
‘Cut me,’ he hissed.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Cut my arm. It is not a real sword.’
Still she hesitated. The mood among the onlookers was beginning to turn hostile. Some of the murmuring had turned to booing.
Vitali’s face looked panic-stricken. It was perhaps the first time Alyce had ever seen him express a genuine feeling.
‘Please.’
Alyce opened her mouth to reply, but no words came out. Something was wrong. The roaring and booing of the crowd had stopped. The press of bodies had parted, and walking towards the stage were two men dressed in black.
At least, she assumed they were both men. The figure who caught her eye first moved spectrally, more floating than walking, and wore a nightmarish, bird-like mask under a broad-brimmed hat.
The second man frightened her even more. He was the most handsome, healthy-looking corpse she’d ever seen. He was dead, and she knew it, because she had been the one who had killed him – a knife in the stomach while he’d stood triumphantly over the entrance to her mother’s cellar.
The townsfolk watched in bewildered silence as the pair mounted the stage. Out of the corner of her eye, Alyce could see Solomon desperately trying to shoulder his way forwards. And behind everyone, her stooped posture unmistakeable, she glimpsed Martha skulking away between the market stalls.
The little snake . . .
‘Gentlemen and ladies,’ said the dead man, his voice every bit as commanding as Vitali’s, but with none of the warmth. ‘I beg you, put away your purses. Avert your eyes. Stop your ears. Turn away and never come back. For this foul pair – I swear it by Almighty God – desire payment not with your coin, but with your souls.’
The audience’s faces were blank, unsure of what to think or to say, waiting to find out whether this was a genuine interruption or just another contrived piece of Vitali’s theatre. Vitali himself, oddly, was still smiling; but it was a vacant smile now, as though something had broken in his brain.
‘My lord,’ he said, ‘if you are not convinced by my craft—’
The dead man laughed. ‘Your craft? You flatter yourself, signor. You are a trickster, a charlatan like every other man of your kind. Your only skill is deception – though I’ll admit, you are most talented in your practice of it.’
Vitali spluttered with indignation. The crowd murmured. Somebody shouted in agreement, and others began to join in. For Alyce it was horribly familiar – she was back in Fordham, crouched in her mother’s cellar, listening to the witchfinder work his audience in exactly the same way. Her fear was as cold now as it was then.
How is he still alive?
‘No, your tricks are the least of our worries. This girl, however . . .’ He finally turned to look directly at her, although his words were directed at the townspeople. She stared back, and saw nothing behind his black eyes. ‘She really does have a Craft. One that is strange and terrible. Try as she might to conceal it under this boyish apparel, this creature who comes before you is a foul—’
A black blur suddenly flew into the pair of them, and the scaffold shook with the weight of a body falling upon it. Somebody screamed. Alyce shut her eyes. It was a few seconds before she opened them again and realized what had happened.
The dead man was no longer standing in front of her, but lying on the stage, his feathered hat rolling away into the dirt. The raven was on top of him, savaging his neck and face.
The masked man tried to step over his companion’s body to grab Alyce, but the bird flew up at him, and for a moment their black, beaked heads were a bizarre mirror image of each other. Then it sank its talons into the leather mask, and they both tumbled into the crowd. The on lookers scattered, shrieking, and Alyce saw Solomon’s face disappear and reappear and disappear again, swallowed up by the stampede.
She struck the dead man on the arm with the sword as he rolled himself over, but Vitali had been quite right. It was a prop, about as sharp as a table leg. It made a satisfying thud when it hit flesh, but it wasn’t enough to stop the man getting to his feet and lunging for her. She backed away and clambered up on to the next level of the scaffold. Behind her, Vitali simply ran and jumped headlong into the street, landing awkwardly and twisting his ankle. Then he crawled, whimpering, under the stage.
On the second level, among the pots and bottles, sat one of Vitali’s homemade fireworks, and next to it a still-smouldering taper. Alyce stuck one inside the other and hurled it at her pursuer. It made a pathetic thump as it hit him on his embroidered chest, then sat uselessly at his feet for a moment before exploding with a burst of pretty pink flames and knocking him backwards. The decorative backdrop of the scaffold caught fire, and began to disintegrate.
The dead man howled, clutching at his face. As he stumbled blindly towards her, Alyce climbed higher still, and from her vantage point saw the raven and the masked man still struggling in the dirt.
Then, above the roar of the flames, she heard the voices again. The world seemed to slow like she’d been plunged underwater, and the red and orange turned to silver. There was a kind of patience in the way she looked at everything. Among the rushing crowds were other, indistinct figures, drifting and swaying like seaweed. They were made of an intense, radiant blackness, as opposed to the living bodies, which looked grey and dull. The Other Side.
Her pursuer looked different too. His body had the same definite edges as the living, but he seemed to have a second, darker figure inside him, one that twisted and writhed. Like it was trapped in there against its will.
Even as she stood, she could feel the floorboards rotting beneath her. She knew that she was the one doing it. Again, that feeling she’d had at The Swan, of the veil being torn. Of something crossing from the Other Side to this one. And of her being powerless to stop it.
‘Jump down Alyce! I’ll catch you!’
Solomon’s words came to her suddenly, as though through a mist.
She wiped the soot from her eyes, took hold of the waist of her breeches, and leapt down from the charred, disintegrating scaffold. Solomon didn’t so much catch her as break her fall, and he collapsed underneath her, arms splayed.
The air was blissfully cool away from the fire, and Alyce took a deep breath as they got to their feet. The visions disappeared. Solomon was massaging the small of his back.
‘I think Mrs Thomson fed you a little too well – you’re a lot heavier than when I carried you to The Swan.’
‘It’s not my fault you’re such a waif—’
‘Look out!’
The scaffold was now totally engulfed in flames, and blackened timbers were crashing to the ground around them. They saw Vitali scurry out from his hiding place, his golden cloak turning to ash as he disappeared into the crowd.
Terrified onlookers huddled under the arch of Newgate. In front of the conflagration, the dead man was still spitting and coughing. The other man had lost his beaked mask to the raven, who had wrenched it free with its talons. The ravaged face beneath it was too horrifying to look at. Beneath the bridge of his nose, there was no face. Just a blackened, blistered, skeletal grin.
‘Come on!’ said Alyce, seizing Solomon by the arm. ‘Back to the palace! They won’t be able to get in there, will they?’
He was paralysed, though, and it took a couple of tugs on his elbow before he started to move again. He looked at her as though he’d never seen her before in his life, then blinked, and nodded. They forced themselves through the crowd, ducking and weaving through the crush until they were outside Newgate. They could hear the clatter of the scaffold finally collapsing from over the city walls.
From there they ran up Holborn Hill, and once they were back on the road to Whitehall they slowed to a walk, so as not to appear suspicious.
It was only then that Alyce realized the raven had kept pace with them the whole way, and was gliding patiently through the ash-flecked air.
Alyce stared
into the cold, soot-stained hearth in Solomon’s bedchamber. He had offered to light the fire, but that was the last thing she wanted. The skin on her face was still pink and tender, and now and again she would catch a whiff of her own burnt hair.
‘Well, that’s proof, then. That witchfinder was dead. Now he’s alive. Mary Stuart really can do what she promised.’
‘Are you sure you killed him? People can survive a knife wound, you know.’
‘I’m sure. I waited. Right until the end.’ The memory of it was a weight she felt like she always carried. More than a weight. A stain too, a black stain.
‘Tip of the cap to your feathered friend, though. He did a good job.’
Alyce smiled despite herself. ‘Yes.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Did your mother ever have a familiar?’
‘A familiar?’ said Solomon, sitting at the desk and thumbing through the pages of the Arcana. ‘No. I never thought they existed, to be honest. Having an animal companion that just follows you around, doing your bidding. Sounds a bit fanciful, doesn’t it?’
‘You’ve picked the wrong time to start being a sceptic, Solly.’
He turned a few more pages.
‘Well. There are lots of nice pictures of animals in here, but nothing about familiars,’ he said without looking up.
‘He was trying to find me all along,’ said Alyce distantly. ‘Even on the night I escaped from Bedlam, he found me. He’s been watching over me ever since. In fact . . .’
She paused.
‘What?’ he said.
‘I think he’s been watching over me since even before that.’
Solomon’s puzzled expression turned suddenly to dismay as there was a tapping at the door.
‘Hide!’ hissed Solomon. He looked around frantically. ‘In the chest? Can you fit?’
But Alyce was not in the least concerned. The tapping and scratching continued, and small clusters of shadows shuttled back and forth across the gap at the bottom.
Witchborn Page 16