Witchborn

by Nicholas Bowling

  ‘Let me go.’ She heard the sleeves of her smock tearing as she squirmed, the man’s fingers printing bruises all over her upper arms.

  ‘Not until you and your mother have been reunited, child. It won’t be long.’

  ‘Why?’ cried Alyce, eyes stinging again. ‘Why me?’

  There was the sound of footsteps on the staircase behind them, coming down from the basement of the Tower. Mary ignored her question and walked past her to meet the intruders. Alyce was forced around to face the doorway that had led her into the catacombs.

  The footsteps became louder, more urgent. Two people, it sounded like, although the echoing made it difficult to tell. She strained her eyes to peer into the gloom.

  A figure materialized in a plain white dress, with a face almost the same colour, topped with a mess of rust-coloured hair. Behind her was a tall man in a travelling cloak, his sword drawn. Doctor Dee retreated into the shadows, the look on his face less fear than embarrassment.

  ‘Welcome, Your Majesty,’ said Mary, giving Elizabeth a mocking curtsy. ‘This is a pleasant coincidence. You’re just in time.’

  Elizabeth herself didn’t take her eyes off Alyce.

  ‘Give her up, Mary.’ It was that same melancholy voice Alyce remembered from the night in Bedlam. If only she had gone along with their ruse back then, she could have avoided all of this.

  ‘I’m afraid I cannot do that, Your Majesty. When one has been wrongly imprisoned for nearly ten years, one becomes less inclined to negotiate.’

  ‘I have treated you fairly. I have indulged you. I allowed you, fool that I was, to continue practising your Craft – although I can see it is more corrupted than ever.’ She briefly pierced Doctor Dee with a glance. ‘Let Alyce go, and we can talk.’

  ‘The time for talking has passed, Your Majesty. For us, at least. For you and Alyce, though, there is plenty to discuss.’

  ‘Mary . . .’

  ‘In fact, now would be a very good time. The girl was just asking: why me?’ She turned back to Alyce. ‘Weren’t you? It’s a very good question. Perhaps you can answer it, Your Majesty? Why her? Why is she so special?’

  Elizabeth had frozen. Raleigh looked from one face to the other, his sword point wavering with uncertainty.

  ‘Why did you come down here without the Tower guards, Your Majesty? It would have been easy to overwhelm us. Why would you not want anybody else to be here?’

  ‘Don’t listen to her, Alyce,’ murmured Elizabeth. ‘Her words are poison.’

  ‘Is it because you didn’t want anyone else to see you reunited with your illegitimate daughter?’

  Silence.

  ‘There,’ said Mary, satisfied. ‘I said I would bring your mother back, didn’t I, Alyce? And I didn’t have to use any dark arts at all.’

  Once, when Alyce was living in Fordham, she had fallen into a well. Not fallen – was pushed, by one of the villagers’ children as she reached in for the bucket. She still had nightmares about it – the shattering cold of the water, the slick, black stones that encircled her and reduced the sky to a tiny buttonhole of light. The boys cackling somewhere overhead.

  She felt the same now. Just as cold, just as dark. Drowning in air, breathing in and in and in and feeling like her lungs would never empty.

  ‘Is it true?’ she whispered.

  ‘Alyce—’

  ‘You are the Bastard Princess of England,’ interrupted Mary. ‘How do you like that title?’

  ‘Listen to me, Alyce,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I only wanted to keep you safe.’

  ‘So it’s true, then.’

  Elizabeth looked at her sadly. ‘Yes.’

  The world collapsed a little more. Alyce felt like she was sliding away from herself. Her whole life, a fiction.

  ‘Why?’ It was all she could think to say. She knew how pathetic she sounded.

  Mary laughed again. ‘Another good question! It seems callous, does it not, to give up one’s own child? But don’t worry, Princess. We are going to give your mother the chance to redeem herself. To prove how much she loves you. Master Hopkins?’

  She turned and nodded at the witchfinder, who was stood beside her. The man who should have been dead now drew his sword and put the freezing blade to Alyce’s throat. Alyce watched Raleigh’s fingers twitching on the hilt of his own weapon.

  ‘I wonder,’ said Mary, ‘whether this time around she will choose her realm over her daughter?’

  For a moment, Elizabeth’s dry lips moved but made no sound. Then, finally, she said: ‘You cannot be Queen, Mary.’

  ‘Then the girl dies.’

  Alyce swallowed, and felt the sword’s edge graze her skin as it moved. It wasn’t fear she felt, though. A silent, hopeless rage was bubbling up from her navel. Daughter. The word seemed meaningless.

  ‘No, you misunderstand me,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Even if I were to hand you the throne, tonight, willingly, you cannot be Queen. Your subjects – my subjects – will not accept you, if you show them your true nature. There will be no witch queen, Mary. It is madness.’

  ‘You could have been that queen,’ hissed Mary. ‘But look at what you’ve become. You deny who you are. Conceal it from the world, just as I did. You are so suspicious of your own kind you lock me up and you drive your closest advisor into the depths of the earth, to carry out his research in the darkness.’

  ‘What you and the good Doctor practise is not witchcraft, Mary. It is an abomination. A corruption of all we know.’

  ‘We,’ Mary laughed. ‘Who is this we you speak of? Most of our kind hate you, Bess, because you do nothing for us. It’s as though the Coven doesn’t even exist. I will restore us to our rightful place.’

  ‘The Coven’s rightful place is in the darkness. It is where we belong.’

  ‘In the darkness? Listen to yourself, Bess! You could be the most powerful woman on earth. Aren’t you tired of it all? The suitors, the arranged marriages, the advisors speaking to you like some idiot girl? Living your life as a pawn of ambitious men? Aren’t you tired of pretending you’re weak?’

  ‘It is the way things must be. It is the way things have always been.’

  ‘Then you are doomed. I have spent enough time being that kind of queen. Being that kind of woman. All my life I have been surrounded by others who have plotted, endlessly, to use me for their ends. My own son conspires against me. In the meantime, everyone I ever loved has died or been killed. Husbands, uncles, fathers. And I am expected to do nothing. To remain in the darkness, as you so wisely counsel. Well. I will not suffer it any longer. I will show the world a queen who is truly strong. I will show my people mastery over Death. And they will love me and fear me for it.’

  Alyce’s frozen muscles screamed at her. Along with the anger she felt at the reappearance of her ‘mother’, she found herself more than a little persuaded by Mary’s words, just as she had back in Doctor Dee’s house. Why should they be forced to live in the shadows? Why should they accept death so blithely, if they had the power to control it?

  ‘Fear,’ Elizabeth repeated. ‘Yes. That is what it comes down to, isn’t it? That is how you will ensure the obedience of your subjects. You will take their fear of death and replace it with fear of you – fear that you won’t offer them your help, that you won’t save their loved ones from death. Or, perhaps, fear that you will? Is that also how you will govern? Terrorize your enemies with visions and visitations from the Other Side? Am I close to the truth?’

  Alyce’s head swam. ‘Visions and visitations’ sounded a lot like what had happened back in the Great Hall, in the yard of The Swan, on the quayside of the Thames. She’d definitely terrorized the man who tried to rob her. Been proud of it too. So whose side was she on?

  Mary smiled. ‘You sound envious, Bess. Of course you would be, given how surrounded by enemies you are. Given how much you are hated.’

  ‘Then I am right. Of course. Necromancy will be both the reward and the punishment. How neat. And, I suppose, your followers will administer t
his justice? Uphold your rule of fear?’

  ‘Our kind will be given the power that is rightfully theirs. The power you deny them.’

  ‘And those witches who do not share your vision?’

  ‘There will be no place for you here.’

  ‘I see. And what of our enemies abroad? Will you send witches into battle for us? Will you conjure an army of the dead to defend us when our shores are invaded?’

  ‘If need be.’

  For the first time, Alyce glimpsed the full, horrifying panorama of what Mary might be capable of. And then, somehow more frightening: what Alyce herself might be capable of. An army of the dead.

  Elizabeth laughed, and looked at Mary, Queen of Scots with something that seemed to Alyce like pity. ‘Listen to yourself, Mary. You are no fool. You know where this will end. We both do. Aside from the oppression, aside from the fear, aside from turning my realm over to tyranny, there is something much bigger at stake here, and you will not admit it.’

  For once, Mary was silent.

  ‘You cannot master death,’ said Elizabeth. ‘No one can. Death will master you, if it has not already done so. Every time you summon the dead, you bring our worlds closer together, when our purpose should be to keep them apart. Every one of your black spells rends a hole in the veil that separates us. Now picture your glorious kingdom: hundreds, thousands of witches dabbling in necromancy they barely understand, bringing death into the world on a whim, every hour of every day. Do you really think all of them can control the things they summon? Do you think they can send them back where they came from? Do you think you can? What happens to your legions of the dead when you no longer have use for them? You know what lies on the Other Side, Mary. It is not just the spirits of the dead. There are more ancient, more powerful things. They will use you. You will open the gates of death, and invite them in to devour us.’

  Again, Alyce’s innards tightened as she listened. This was what it felt like she’d been doing all along. Opening the gates. Inviting the dead in. Whether she wanted to or not.

  Mary sighed.

  ‘You are talking about things you cannot possibly comprehend. It’s sad, really. How ignorant you are. How timid. We could have ruled together, you and I, Bess. I considered that once. What was it I used to call you? My queen sister? But now we are come to this.’ She gave a hollow laugh. ‘The funny thing is, if you had even half of my skill, if you had read even a handful of pages from the Necronomicon, this situation wouldn’t even concern you. You could revive your daughter in a heartbeat.’

  ‘Tell your man to lower his sword,’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘No. I need certain assurances from you.’

  ‘I cannot simply hand the throne over to you like I’m selling you a horse.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, you can.’

  In Alyce’s ears, the bitter exchange was slowly being drowned by different voices. The dead were everywhere in the catacombs, centuries of entombed souls. Their resting place probably predated the Tower itself, hundreds, thousands of them. And the fact that Alyce was probably going to join them shortly, with a wound across her throat, had made her sense of them particularly acute. It was as if they heard her worries. Dark, fluid figures bled in and out of the light, encircling her and the two queens like a restless, whispering audience.

  ‘We are not discussing any terms until your men release my daughter.’ Elizabeth’s voice was vague and watery.

  The spectres were clearer now than they had ever been, more present than they had been at The Swan, or on Vitali’s stage, or in the Great Hall during the play. More than that: she felt like she knew them, knew their lives, could pick individuals out of the dead crowd and speak with them. And, she was sure now, if she spoke they would listen. The Other Side was here, everywhere, hers to command. Queen Elizabeth’s warnings seemed meaningless, and untrue.

  Alyce made her decision. The only way out of this situation was with the help of the dead, otherwise she would be joining their number. She would have to open the gates.

  When she spoke, the cold blade broke the skin under her jaw. The words did not sound like her own. Her voice was deep and ancient, as though coming from a different place and time altogether. The shadows came together and dispersed like a flock of birds, and between the fleeting shapes she could see the looks of shock on Elizabeth and Raleigh’s faces, and the horror on Mary’s.

  The dead heard Alyce, and they obeyed. At once, the black tide surged towards Hopkins. It licked over him like fire. From the hilt upwards, his sword turned to rust, and then to ashes, and crumbled between Alyce’s feet. Before Hopkins had even realized what was happening, Raleigh leapt forward and drove his own sword precisely, almost delicately, into the man’s ribs. The witchfinder grunted and slumped to the floor in the dust of his weapon.

  Alyce tried to speak again, but felt the masked man’s long, inhumanly strong fingers curl around her neck, pressing on her windpipe. With his other hand he caught Raleigh’s sword by the blade itself, and Alyce could see it biting through the leather of his gloves and into his flesh, but still he wrenched it from its owner’s hand and tossed it aside.

  Mary fled.

  ‘Bring the girl,’ she shouted behind her.

  She disappeared down one of tunnels of the catacombs, Doctor Dee by her side.

  Alyce’s vision became grey and fuzzy as she fought for air. Disarmed, Raleigh lowered his shoulder and drove the masked man back into an alcove, sending the remains of one of Doctor Dee’s experiments skittering over the floor. The masked man grasped desperately at the sharp surgical instruments on the table, but Raleigh took a glowing alchemical globe and brought it down on to his adversary’s head in a shower of glass and phosphorus. The giant black beak lolled sideways. He didn’t get up again.

  Queen Elizabeth had not chased Mary or Doctor Dee. Instead, she was strangely still. She began muttering to herself, and then knelt and drew a large circle in the dust of the catacombs’ floor.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Alyce, massaging her throat.

  ‘I’m going after her,’ said the Queen.

  She scratched several runes around the circumference of the circle with her finger, and continued to chant. The whole design glowed red, as though branded into the earth with a hot iron.

  Alyce watched her calmly preparing her escape, and screamed somewhere in the pit of her stomach. She wanted to spit.

  ‘Abandoning me again, are you?’

  ‘Please, Alyce.’ Elizabeth turned to face her. She looked so tired and wretched, Alyce’s anger faltered for a moment. ‘Stay here. Wait for me.’

  Then she stepped into the circle. It swallowed her whole, the runes turned dead and cold, and she was gone. Who knew where to. Alyce told herself she didn’t care.

  Suddenly there was another scratching sound, behind her this time. A groan too. She turned away from the magic circle. Hopkins had hauled himself to his knees. Of course he wasn’t dead. He hadn’t been alive in the first place.

  She ran. Not just from Hopkins, or Mary, but from everything, from everyone. She wanted to run out of the city walls, to the sea, and beyond. She didn’t want to be anywhere.

  Raleigh’s voice echoed after her, but she ignored it and leapt up the wet stone steps leading back to the Tower.

  The staircase seemed ten times longer in the opposite direction. Her legs burned and her head swam from the endless spiralling, and only the heavy tread of Hopkins’ boots further down kept her from collapsing against the slimy walls. Everything had become so nightmarish, so unreal, she considered quite calmly the possibility that the staircase would not end, ever, and that she and Hopkins would circle each other into eternity.

  Suddenly, a square of dirty red light penetrated the darkness over her head. She had reached the trapdoor. She hauled herself up into the basement of the Tower, grateful for the brief rest she could give her legs. She picked a sharp stone out of the sole of her foot, and then she was up and running again, up the stairs to the Tower’s lowest flo
or, and the way out.

  It was blocked. Two of the warders stood slouched and obviously bored in the archway, the torchlight picking out the gold embroidery on their red uniforms. Between their shoulders Alyce could see the outer battlements of the Tower and the deep purple of the night sky, just on the cusp of becoming dawn.

  They heard her panting, and just as they turned to investigate she dived through the middle of them, sending their halberds clattering against the door’s stonework. She landed off-balance and tumbled down the wooden stairs that led into the courtyard below.

  ‘Oi!’ The guards came thundering after her. ‘You get back here!’

  Alyce rubbed at her twisted ankle, and began limping across the courtyard to the outer ward. After a few painful steps, the sound of the pursuing guards was suddenly silenced. She turned. They were both in a heap on the steps, Hopkins stepping over them, dagger in hand.

  Her ankle sent a jolt of pain through her as she tried to run. She hopped another couple of feet, groaned, and fell into the straw and manure among the cobbles. Hopkins’ approach was slow, considered, wolf-like. He still clutched at the wound that Raleigh had given him.

  More guards were running along the walls and emerging from doorways, roused by the commotion. But among their shouts and footsteps there was another noise. A croaking, and a ruffling of feathers.

  In the corner of the courtyard a raven pecked at the dirt, apparently unconcerned by the scene. It stretched its wings and hopped towards Alyce, tossing grass and grit with its beak. Then another one appeared, behind Hopkins this time, and watched him curiously with one beady eye. Two more followed it, and then half a dozen, cawing to each other. Only when another raven descended upon them from above did Alyce look up and see that the walls and the towers were completely fringed with black feathered bodies, hundreds of them, far more than she had seen when Raleigh had brought her in.

  They simply sat and watched, in silence, sleek heads occasionally twitching.

  Hopkins looked at Alyce, and then back at the rows of birds who were scrutinizing his every move. Then he laughed, swapped his dagger from one hand to the other, and lunged.