Witchborn

by Nicholas Bowling

  The ravens struck up a chorus. A ragged shape plummeted from the sky and into his face, and he growled and swatted it to one side. Another came at the back of his head. Then another, and another. Hopkins stumbled backwards, harried by beaks and claws on all sides, his hat raked from his head and his ruff already in tatters.

  Wave after wave of black wings flooded over the Tower’s battlements, until the man couldn’t be seen for feathers, and his cries couldn’t be heard for the birds’ cawing. Even after he had fallen to the floor and the wild flailing of his limbs had stopped, they continued to swarm around and over him, heaving like a single entity.

  The storm gradually subsided and the ravens took to the air, circling the remains of John Hopkins’ body in a broad and slow arc. He was almost in pieces. Then they returned to their places on the battlements and waited, alert to every sound, croaking to each other.

  All except one, who sat on the man’s torso, and turned to look at Alyce with mismatched eyes, one black, one white. He poked sharply at the man’s exposed neck, as though to make sure he was dead, then beat his tatty wings twice and flew to her shoulder.

  He stayed perched there while the warders bound her hands and led her away. When she looked into the guards’ eyes, she could see they were far more frightened of her than she was of them.

  At first, Alyce thought she was back in Bedlam. Her cell had the same four grimy walls, the same oppressively low ceiling, the same little wooden door whose spyhole seemed to be watching her even when there was nobody on the other side.

  A glittering white figure stood before her. An angel, come to deliver her from her prison, or perhaps to send her down to Hell. She was dead, Alyce decided. Or this was a dream. The angel had a smoky, spicy scent that she found surprising, and not particularly pleasant.

  Only when he tried to lift her from the floor, and the pain exploded in her ankle, did she realize that she was very much alive, and very much awake.

  ‘Well, you can stay here if you want to, Alyce,’ said a voice that didn’t sound at all angelic.

  The world came into focus, and with it a young man’s face.

  ‘Solly?’ she said without thinking.

  ‘Sadly not,’ said Walter Raleigh. ‘Come on, up you get.’ She grasped at him to steady herself. ‘Careful, this is my favourite doublet.’

  Alyce hobbled alongside him, out of the prison cell. She hadn’t paid attention to where the guards had taken her, and when she emerged from the staircase into the daylight, nothing looked familiar. The sun had been up for no more than an hour, she thought. Everything inside the inner ward had a misty, subdued feel to it, as though the whole fortress – buildings and inhabitants – was still dozing. A few ravens pecked around in the dew for their breakfast.

  They entered the White Tower and retraced their steps to Elizabeth’s chamber. As they did, all of the bizarre pieces of the previous night came back to her.

  ‘In future,’ said Raleigh, when he stopped to open the door to the bedchamber, ‘when I tell you to lock the door, you lock it.’

  Alyce stared at her blistered feet and nodded in vague contrition. They entered the gleaming bedchamber and Raleigh closed the door behind them.

  ‘What happened? Where is everyone? Where’s . . .’ She paused. ‘My mother.’ The word felt strange in her mouth now, like it were in a foreign tongue.

  ‘We captured Doctor Dee. Our masked friend is now at the bottom of the moat, along with the remains of Master Hopkins.’

  ‘Are they definitely—’

  ‘Dead, yes. Not even Mary Stuart would be able to patch them up again.’

  Alyce narrowed her eyes. ‘And where is she?’

  Raleigh sighed. ‘Mary eluded us. Those catacombs go on for miles. Elizabeth – your mother – is contacting our spies. She’s had to return to Whitehall. She sends her apologies, again.’

  ‘Her apologies?’ said Alyce. ‘Does she think that’s all I want from her?’

  ‘No. Alyce, try to understand, she is in a very difficult position. An impossible position.’

  ‘My heart bleeds for her.’

  ‘Try not to be too hard on her . . .’

  Alyce ignored his awkward attempts at diplomacy. ‘How did you find me? How did you know where I was?’

  Now it was Raleigh’s turn to look at his feet.

  ‘Your friend . . .’ he said. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Solomon?’ Something kindled inside her at the mention of his name, a warmth that had been absent all night.

  ‘Hopkins and Caxton . . . interrogated him, to find out where we’d taken you. They questioned him rather forcefully.’

  The warmth disappeared as quickly as it had come. ‘Is he all right?’ she asked.

  ‘He tried to warn Elizabeth that the witchfinders were coming for you but her guards wasted a lot of time. They wouldn’t let him speak to her. She only came out of her chambers to see what all the noise was, and he was just able to tell her what had happened before he passed out.’

  ‘Is he all right?’ she said again.

  ‘He is not well,’ said Raleigh. His face looked odd when he was being serious, like it didn’t fit him properly. ‘He endured a lot for you, it’s a wonder he made it to Elizabeth at all. We brought him here afterwards. But we had to leave him to go and find you.’

  ‘Can I see him?’ Alyce asked, hardly breathing.

  Raleigh nodded. He slipped behind the tapestry into the passage, and she followed him up into Elizabeth’s private chamber. The door was slightly ajar. She could see through the crack that the brazier had been lit again, and the room was forge-red.

  There were actually two people inside. One was Solomon, lying shirtless on a bench, his skin white as marble. She couldn’t work out whether he was dead or not.

  The other was Doctor Dee, strapped to a chair, his face wan and drawn.

  ‘Raleigh, listen to me,’ he said, his beard quivering. ‘Mary . . . the witch. She forced me, addled my wits. She has ways of coercing. I had no choice.’

  ‘Hold your peace, you dog.’ Raleigh didn’t even deign to look at him. ‘There will be plenty of time for talking later. I’m sure your new Queen didn’t leave without telling you where she was going.’

  Alyce stood beside Solomon and laid a hand on his forehead. It was feverish, and slick with sweat. The cuts and bruises on his body seemed especially raw in contrast to his pale skin. His eyes were even more sunken and shadowed than usual, the faint flutter of his eyelids the only sign that he was still alive.

  She couldn’t bear to look at him, but even when she turned away she heard his strained breathing. There had to be something she could do. After all the times he’d saved her, now all she could do was mop his brow. If it wasn’t for her he’d still be with Sussex’s Men – jesting, drinking, toasting to the next few weeks on the road. It was all her fault.

  Dee strained against his bindings. ‘Child, listen to me. I can help him. Heal him. Let me show you.’

  ‘We have seen your healing arts,’ said Raleigh. ‘You’re nothing more than a grave robber.’

  ‘I need to see what herbs Elizabeth has . . .’ said Alyce, going over to the jars and bottles she’d been perusing the previous night. ‘She might have something useful.’

  She racked her brains for every lesson in herblore her mother had ever taught her. No, not her mother any more – just ‘Ellen’, now. But the revelation about her real mother had only made her miss her foster mother more deeply.

  She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to focus. Solly, she told herself. Think of Solly, now. She found thistle, yarrow, goldenrod. No spider’s webs, though. Her fingers trembled as she searched Elizabeth’s supplies.

  Behind her she heard Doctor Dee laugh with contempt. ‘The boy is at death’s door, my girl. A few dried leaves won’t do him any good.’

  Raleigh struck him across his face, but it didn’t make the words any less stinging. Somewhere inside her, Alyce’s own voice was saying the same thing: This isn�
��t going to work. And when it didn’t work, what then?

  ‘The Necronomicon, Alyce,’ said the Doctor, spitting blood. ‘I know you have it. Why pretend that you aren’t tempted? You could choose to save him, here and now. Or you can choose to be weak and ignorant, like your mother.’

  ‘One more word out of you . . .’ said Raleigh, tightening his fist around the handle of his sword.

  ‘My notes. I have written a full commentarium to accompany the black book. It will explain all. If you’d let me fetch it from the catacombs.’

  ‘That’s enough.’

  Raleigh’s threat was suddenly cut short, though. All three of them spun around as the chamber door swung open and a gust of wind sent flames leaping out of the brazier. The smash of the door’s iron handle into the wall was followed by long, guttural snarling, like no animal Alyce had ever heard.

  They all turned at once. It was Caxton, or what was left of him. His robes were still dripping wet, as though he had only just now hauled himself from the Tower’s moat. He had lost his boots, and one of his leather gloves, as well as his mask. His head was even more of a ruin than when they had seen it in Newgate Market. There was hardly any flesh left on it.

  ‘You . . .’ was the only thing Raleigh had time to say.

  The monster blundered across the room and stretched out his bare, claw-like hand to Alyce’s neck, but before she even had time to step backwards, Raleigh was there, sword raised above his head. Caxton caught it and snapped it in two. Then he whirled one half of it around and caught Raleigh on the side of the head with the hilt, sending him stumbling into the chair that Doctor Dee was bound to, and knocking it and its occupant to the floor.

  Again Caxton lunged at Alyce. She skipped backwards to the brazier and then swung at him with a poker that had been buried in the fire; it didn’t connect, but still flung hot ashes into the man’s unmasked face. While he was temporarily stunned, Raleigh raised himself drunkenly on one arm, and charged at him. He threw Caxton into the table, and its legs broke as he collided with it.

  Both of men grabbed each other by the throat, Caxton making a horrible, wet hissing noise as he was pinned up against the chamber window. Raleigh’s face turned beetroot-red, and it soon became clear that no amount of throttling would cause the fiend to release his own grip.

  Alyce saw what she needed to do. She took the poker and hurled it, not at Caxton, but at the window behind him, sending shards of dark glass down on to the cobbles below. Then she struck the man’s arms, until Raleigh seemed to be able to draw breath once more.

  Caxton flailed at both of them, raking at their clothes and their faces, as they heaved him up into the open arch. Raleigh still had one hand on his throat, while Alyce grabbed one of his legs around the knee. Even when he was halfway out, his head and shoulders suspended in thin air, he continued to grip the savagely sharp edges of the broken window.

  Alyce hit his knuckles with the poker once more, and Raleigh hoisted his other leg, and then he was gone, falling the full height of the White Tower down on to the stones beneath. They didn’t see him hit the ground, but they heard it.

  They peered out of the window. Caxton lay, curled like a sleeping animal, and did not move. The ravens watched and croaked, as guards came running across the lawn.

  Alyce and Raleigh looked at each other, too tired and too horrified to speak.

  They turned back to the room, and groaned.

  The overturned chair was empty. Doctor Dee was gone.

  It was dark outside again by the time Raleigh returned. He removed his hat and slumped into the chair that Doctor Dee had been tied to. Somehow, during the day’s confusion, he’d found time to change his outfit, which was as fashionable as ever, but didn’t stop the man himself from looking worn and tired.

  ‘None of the guards saw him leave. If he went down to the catacombs he’s long gone. They stretch outside the city walls. That’s how he smuggled Mary in.’

  ‘What about his house in Mortlake?’ asked Alyce.

  ‘It’s half destroyed. And he’ll know not to go back there. We’ve placed a man to watch it.’

  Alyce suddenly thought of Solomon’s mother.

  ‘Was there anyone else there? At his house?’

  Raleigh looked at her quizzically. ‘Like who?’

  ‘Like . . . a woman? Or the body of a woman?’

  ‘There was nothing but ruined books and papers. And a cage. Nothing in it.’

  ‘Oh.’ That was it, then. They’d never know where she’d been laid to rest. Or even if she’d been laid to rest. Alyce looked at Solomon, and placed the back of her hand over his mouth. His breath was almost imperceptible. The poultices hadn’t had any effect. But there were still other things she could try.

  ‘I did find this,’ said Raleigh. He handed her a folded piece of parchment, rain-spotted and begrimed with dust and ash. She opened it. It was barely legible any more, but she could still make out the curls of her own mother’s handwriting. The letter.

  ‘I’d forgotten about it,’ she said, not quite believing it was the same artefact she had carried with her all the way to London, that she had rescued from Bedlam all those months ago. She tried to straighten its dog-ears, and looked up at him. ‘Thank you. It’s the only piece of her I have left.’

  They both regarded the letter in silence.

  ‘What does it say?’ she asked. She’d never found out. Half of her didn’t really want to know. Half of her knew how much it would hurt.

  Raleigh looked surprised. ‘I’m no expert in the Old Speech, Alyce.’

  ‘But can you understand it?’

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘Well?’

  His expression became pained. ‘Are you sure? The letter is of no real importance, not now…’

  ‘No importance?’

  Alyce’s face flushed. Raleigh knew he had misspoken. ‘Very well,’ he said, and plucked the parchment from the palm of her hand. ‘I can’t read all the words. But from what I can make out it, it says:Ellen of the Coven to Doctor John Dee. Perhaps the raven has already found you. The worst has befallen us. I go to meet Our Lady Death…’ He looked at her, and she nodded for him to continue. ‘There is something illegible after that. Then she says: I have sent Alyce to you. Look after her with a father’s love, until she can be returned to her mother. And then…’

  He paused.

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘And then she says:I beg forgiveness.’

  Alyce felt the tears come, but was too tired to cry. Too tired to be angry. She took back the letter and scanned the blurred symbols, not finding any of the meaning that Raleigh had found. Maybe one day she would learn how to read them. But who would teach her now? Elizabeth?

  She laid it to one side.

  ‘It is Doctor Dee who should be begging forgiveness,’ she said. ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Chances are, he’s left the country. I’m sorry.’ Raleigh shivered. The broken window was letting a fierce draught into the room, and even if they had wanted to cover it with something, Pecke had taken up residence on the windowsill and didn’t want to be moved.

  ‘Couldn’t he go looking for him?’ said Alyce, nodding to the raven, who cocked his head to regard her with his good, black eye.

  ‘I discussed it with Bess, but she wants him to stay here. To watch over you. She was sure of that.’

  ‘She could watch over me herself if she wanted to . . .’ she muttered.

  ‘Alyce,’ said Raleigh sternly. ‘You have to stop this. None of it is what Elizabeth wanted for you. Put yourself in her position now. She knows that Mary Stuart wants her unseated from the throne, or dead, and is now apparently able to leave her prison at will. She has been betrayed by her most trusted adviser, and the secret of her daughter is in entirely the wrong hands. Add that to the hundreds of other Catholics, Spaniards, French and whoever else are always trying to kill her anyway. And, on top of all of this, she still has to deal with the business of Court and rule her subjects. She cannot s
imply forget all of that to come and see you at a moment’s notice. She wants to see you. More than anything in the world. It is breaking her heart. But she is the Queen, Alyce.’

  Alyce chewed on her lips in silence. She found it difficult to sympathize with a mother who had been absent for her entire life. But she was starting to realize that, for exactly the same reason, it was difficult to pass judgement upon her. She just didn’t know her. All she wanted now was to talk.

  ‘Where is she?’ she said.

  ‘On her way to the Midlands. To meet with Mary’s gaolers. We think we’ll continue with the pretence that the Queen of Scots is still in prison – if word gets out that she has escaped, all of her supporters, and I don’t just mean witches, will flock to her. We’ll have a civil war.’

  Just as the couple in The Hangman predicted, thought Alyce.

  ‘Will she be executed? If Elizabeth finds her, I mean?’

  Raleigh shook his head. ‘That has always been a principle of Elizabeth’s. She will not murder one of her own, especially someone she was so close to in the past. I get the feeling that . . .’

  He paused.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That Elizabeth still thinks she might be able to bring Mary round. Back into the fold, so to speak. Back to the true Coven. Anyway, executing Mary is just as big an invitation to civil war as letting her go free. Her supporters wouldn’t stand for it. It is all devilishly complicated.’

  They both fell into contemplative silence. Pecke croaked at them and flew up on to one of the bookshelves.

  ‘And what about me?’

  ‘You?’

  ‘What does Elizabeth want to do with me?’

  Raleigh looked at her with that same expression of pity Solomon had once used. ‘I don’t know. We need to think about that.’

  ‘I’ve already thought about it,’ Alyce said bluntly.

  ‘Oh really?’

  ‘Yes. But I’ll need your help.’

  ‘My help?’

  ‘When you brought me here, last night . . .’