Witchstruck

by Victoria Lamb

  ‘Father Vasco?’ Blanche echoed blankly, staring at him over the edge of her apron.

  ‘Some robes that need mending before tonight’s Mass. Bedingfield will spare none of his servants for the task, and I have no skill with a needle and thread. Forgive me, Mistress Parry. My master is waiting.’

  Alejandro pushed the herb basket back into my arms and led me away from the garden, his hand firm on my shoulder.

  I was still trembling with rage when we reached Father Vasco’s dark little room at the top of the lodge. Alejandro gestured me inside and shut the door. There was nobody there. He threw back the shutters and the tiny room was flooded with daylight.

  I stood blinking. ‘Where is Father Vasco?’

  ‘In the chapel,’ Alejandro said calmly.

  ‘But you said—’

  Silently, he indicated a pile of old robes on the bed behind me. I sat down beside them and began to turn over the robes, hunting for rips and tears as though my life depended on it. At least it gave my hands something to do while I cooled my temper.

  ‘What was all that about?’ he demanded. ‘What did you think you were doing, behaving like that in broad daylight where anyone might have seen you?’

  ‘Mistress Parry insulted my mother,’ I muttered.

  Alejandro drew a sharp breath. ‘Did she indeed?’ I looked up to see him nodding, very sombre today in a plain shirt and hose, his dark jacket unfastened. He leaned back against the wall, watching me. ‘Then I can see how you might have lost your temper with the foolish woman. But that is still no excuse for working your . . . your . . .’

  He could not seem to bring himself to use the word. ‘Magick?’ I suggested.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘For working your magick against her. You cannot be too careful after last time.’

  The room was silent for a moment. My skin prickled with apprehension. Why had he brought me here?

  I glanced at the closed door. ‘We should not be alone together,’ I pointed out lightly. ‘Father Vasco would not approve. Nor would Sir Henry Bedingfield.’

  Alejandro did not move, leaning at his ease, his arms folded across his chest. ‘True.’

  So he was living dangerously now. I could not help some amusement at the thought and hurriedly bent my head to hide my smile, running my hands over the old priest’s coarse robes. There was a tiny rip along the hem of one white robe, barely worth the mending. But I would play along.

  ‘Where is this needle and thread, then?’ I asked.

  ‘Do you not have one?’

  ‘In my chamber, yes. I don’t carry them about with me,’ I told him tartly.

  Our eyes met. I could see Alejandro was remembering the last time he had been in my bedchamber, just as I was too. I had thought that would be my last night on earth.

  ‘Promise me,’ he said softly, ‘you will not work magick again.’

  ‘I cannot promise that.’

  Alejandro frowned, and came to crouch before me. ‘Do you not see how magick puts your life in danger?’

  ‘What is my life to you?’

  ‘I care what happens to you,’ he said simply, and took my hands in his.

  I looked down at him mockingly. ‘What, will you pray with me now?’

  ‘If not with you, then for you. Your immortal soul is under my protection,’ Alejandro reminded me, ‘by order of la princesa.’

  ‘Magick is my power. You are asking me to lay aside my only power in the world.’

  ‘There is power in being a woman.’

  I raised my brows at that, and Alejandro laughed. His hands tightened on mine. ‘Come, Meg. You are still young in the dark arts, not yet an accomplished witch. Lay magick aside before your soul is burned away for ever.’

  ‘I am not as unaccomplished as you think,’ I muttered.

  He was smiling. ‘Have I touched a nerve? I beg your pardon, Mistress Witch. Do not hurt me, of your kindness.’

  ‘You want me to prove my skill?’

  ‘No more tricks, I pray you.’

  ‘Tricks?’

  Anger stirred inside me, mingled with a certain pride in my skill. I narrowed my gaze on his. So he thought my power was that of a trickster, a street magician with his cups and cards, not a true witch?

  ‘Meg,’ he whispered.

  ‘Hush.’

  I focused my attention on the cross hanging from his neck. It was a heavy silver cross, ornate in the Spanish style, beautifully engraved along the cross-beam. I allowed its weight and substance to enter my mind, to become one with it. Then I imagined the metal growing hot again, almost as hot as it had been at its first making, the silver beginning to glow and soften against the plain linen of his shirt, too hot to touch now.

  Alejandro frowned, and shifted uncomfortably at my feet. He seemed aware of the growing heat at his chest. ‘Meg, what . . . what are you doing?’

  ‘Touch your cross,’ I instructed him. ‘Go on, touch it.’

  Alejandro stared up at me, then slowly released one of my hands to touch the cross. He recoiled, his hand jerking away.

  ‘It’s hot!’

  I relaxed my mind, and felt the heat leave the cross on my command, hardening to cool silver again.

  ‘Try it now,’ I prompted him.

  When Alejandro’s fingers gingerly touched the cross again, I saw his eyes widen and fix on my face.

  ‘So tell me,’ I demanded, ‘was that a trick? Or a mark of true power?’

  ‘Madre de Dios,’ he muttered under his breath.

  I smiled then, childishly pleased that I had impressed him. ‘God gave me this gift, surely? I do not believe God would give me such a powerful gift, yet not allow me to use it. And if I hurt no one, what harm can there be?’

  Alejandro said nothing for a moment but continued to stare at me, his eyes troubled. Then he raised my hand to his lips and brushed the lightest of kisses across it.

  ‘Tread carefully, mi querida, and do not risk the sin of blasphemy,’ he warned me, his voice quiet. ‘Your gift may indeed be from God. But you are right, the Lord does not give such power lightly. Some gifts are a test, and others are a curse.’ He met my eyes seriously. ‘Which is yours?’

  EIGHT

  A Face Amongst the Leaves

  WITHIN A FEW weeks of my interrogation by Marcus Dent, Elizabeth received several more letters from friends at court. One of these letters she read out to us, her voice steady despite the momentous news. This was what the whole country had been waiting for all these months. The worst had finally happened: we were now a Catholic nation.

  Her sister Queen Mary had married the Spanish prince in the great cathedral at Winchester before many hundreds of courtiers, lords, ladies and exalted guests from Spain, along with other foreign dignitaries and ambassadors, in a ceremony of great pomp and expense. And although many had grumbled privately about this Spanish marriage, thousands of the common people, we were told, had lined the streets on her journey back to London.

  Elizabeth came to the end of the letter and laid it aside, staring into the distance.

  It was early August and the three of us were sitting on our cloaks by the river in the afternoon sunshine: Elizabeth, with Blanche Parry and myself serving lunch from a cloth-covered basket. Thirty paces away, seated on a fallen tree trunk and munching stolidly on an apple, was the solitary guard who had come to watch over the Lady Elizabeth.

  Blanche moved into the gentle shade of a birch tree after she had finished eating. She was mending one of the princess’s gowns and seemed drowsy, with nothing much to say, besides tut-tutting from time to time as the names of various courtiers who had attended the wedding were read out.

  I looked at Elizabeth and wondered how she must feel, knowing that any hopes of her becoming Queen would be destroyed by a child from this Spanish marriage – though she seemed less concerned by that possibility than by her exclusion from court. She could not have expected to be invited to Mary’s wedding, for she was still under suspicion of treason against her sister. Yet it mus
t have stung, the thought of these great events happening so far away, while she – an English princess of the blood royal, daughter of King Henry and half-sister to the Queen – was left to pace a few cramped rooms in the dilapidated gatehouse at Woodstock, alone and unvisited.

  Somewhere off in the old palace grounds, one of the wild peacocks screamed, a last bedraggled remnant of the manor’s ancient glory.

  Elizabeth suddenly laughed. ‘So it begins,’ she murmured, then shrugged as though such fine doings meant nothing to us here at Woodstock, and asked me to pass her a dish of raspberries.

  Squinting up at the afternoon sun, a fine perspiration on her forehead, Blanche Parry paused in her needlework. ‘I can’t remember a hotter summer. Come under the shade with me. You’ll brown like a blackamoor in this heat, my lady.’

  Elizabeth looked up with some quick retort on her lips, shielding her eyes, then exclaimed, ‘Señor de Castillo!’

  I sat up, rearranging my untidy gown and cap, suddenly flustered. When I looked round to see our visitor, Alejandro was rising from his bow.

  ‘I trust that I do not intrude on your meal, my lady,’ he addressed Elizabeth, replacing his feathered cap on his head. ‘I was walking out in this fine summer weather, and saw you and your ladies unaccompanied’ – he glanced sideways at the guard – ‘by any gentleman.’

  Elizabeth smiled at him invitingly. ‘You are most welcome, sir,’ she murmured, and signalled him to join us. ‘Are you thirsty? We have wine and ale.’

  ‘Thank you, my lady, I am not thirsty.’

  ‘Perhaps we should both join Blanche Parry in the shade of that tree, then. If there is one thing I cannot abide it is freckles, and she claims I will freckle in this sun.’

  Alejandro examined her face seriously. ‘If there is any danger of that, allow me to help you to a shadier spot at once. Mistress Parry is right, your skin should not be exposed to this heat.’

  I felt my skin prickle, and had to look away before my frown betrayed me. For some reason, the thought of Elizabeth lying under that tree with Alejandro made me . . . not angry, but uncomfortable. And her smile seemed to be for him alone.

  Was this jealousy?

  I did not want to feel jealous. He was nothing to me, the young Spaniard. Besides, he would be a priest soon, he had told me himself. Only another year, and Alejandro would return to Spain to be examined for his readiness to enter the priesthood.

  Still, when Elizabeth laughed and did not move, I knew a lightening of my mood that could only be relief.

  Irritated by my own weakness, I jumped up, averting my face from Alejandro’s. ‘Shall I hunt for more honeysuckle for your skin lotion, my lady?’ I suggested, fearing my desire to escape must be transparent to everyone there. ‘It is so scarce near the lodge. And your last pot is nearly finished.’

  The princess looked surprised by my sudden request, but readily agreed. My aunt had taught me how to make skin lotions when I was young, and Elizabeth had been delighted with the ones I had already made for her, with Blanche Parry’s help, from easily found plants such as the yellow primrose, blue-flowering rosemary and the soft-scented ground-rambling honeysuckle. Ground into pulp and mixed with spring water and vinegar, they kept Elizabeth’s face and throat soft and white in the dry heat of summer.

  Much to my annoyance though, she did not want me to go alone, which had been my only motive in asking.

  ‘You may go, but Alejandro de Castillo will accompany you,’ Elizabeth said pointedly, and her sharp look reminded me that I was supposed to be finding out whether or not the Spanish priests were here to spy on the princess. ‘It is not fitting for you to be wandering about on your own.’

  Alejandro rose at once, his movements fluid and graceful, and bowed to the princess. ‘It will be my honour, madam.’

  Elizabeth smiled, and made some remark in Spanish. He replied quietly in the same language, bowed again, then gestured me to lead the way. ‘After you, mistress.’

  ‘This way,’ I said, a bite in my voice, though I made sure the others could not overhear me. ‘But I hope you don’t mind thorns. We may need to go deep into the thicket to find the best honeysuckle.’

  ‘As long as the thorns are no sharper than your tongue, Meg Lytton, I shall survive the encounter.’

  Narrow-eyed at this reply, my cheeks a little flushed from the day’s heat, I walked into the little thicket, holding my skirts tight about my legs, in case any thorns should snag at the material.

  Alejandro followed close behind me, silent.

  The trees and bushes were so crowded together there that it was hard to get close to where the honeysuckle grew, twined fragrantly about the trunks. Spotting a strong, darkly green honeysuckle still in bloom ahead, I pushed back the thorny twigs to avoid them scratching me, then let them swing back so violently that he had to jump aside.

  What was it Alejandro and the princess said to each other when they spoke in Spanish?

  It was so frustrating, not being to understand their muttered comments and jokes. Small wonder that Sir Henry Bedingfield forbade the speaking of foreign languages in the lodge, for he thought it a breach of security to allow such conversations to go unmonitored. I loathed the man’s strict rules, and his stern lectures on decorum for royal prisoners, but in this I shared his dislike. Elizabeth was an incorrigible flirt, and there was something unsettling about Alejandro’s smile when the princess addressed him in his own tongue, her voice like warm honey.

  I kneeled to gather a few of the thicker strands of yellow-flowered honeysuckle, tracing the long tendrils back to the main stem. But they were tough to pull free, and my hands were soon sore, with red lines scored across my palms. My hair fell into my eyes as I wrestled with them, and I brushed it back irritably, hot-faced.

  ‘Permit me,’ Alejandro murmured, and leaned past me with his knife. With a few neat cuts, he severed the strands of honeysuckle, twisted them into several thick green coils and handed them to me. He crouched a moment longer, wiping his blade on the underside of his tunic, then looked into my face.

  We were so close, almost touching. I could smell his breath on my face, sweet as the honeysuckle I was clasping to my throat and chest. I felt dizzy, as though the sun had been too strong for me after all.

  I had the oddest feeling that Alejandro was going to kiss me, and tilted my face towards his, watching his mouth through lowered eyelashes.

  But it seemed that I was wrong.

  Through the yellow tumble of hair over my face, I saw Alejandro’s eyes, so warm and laughing before, grow distant, almost aloof.

  It was as though the novice priest had thought to amuse himself with the princess’s humble country servant, and then had suddenly remembered who I was – a suspected witch. Someone to be shunned, not kissed.

  Then Alejandro was gone, straightening into the sunshine as he returned to the Lady Elizabeth’s side.

  Following on with my fragrant armful of honeysuckle, sweaty and a little angry at having suffered such a humiliation, I caught a rustle behind me in the thicket, the crack of a twig underfoot.

  Turning swiftly, fearing it might be a boar or some other dangerous animal, I glimpsed a man’s face amongst the leaves. My mind flashed to the Green Man, the wild pagan god who lurks unseen about the woodlands and to whom we sometimes dedicated our sabats. Then I saw the coarse edge of a cloak, a plain cap, and knew it was the face of a man there, not a god.

  Someone had been watching us!

  Yet even as I drew in my breath to call for help, the dark cloak whirled and the man was gone.

  I stared a moment longer, blinking into slanted sunlight. The little thicket stood empty and silent except for the piping of birdsong. Bemused, I turned back to rejoin the others, and sat down by the princess without saying anything, and certainly without meeting Alejandro’s searching gaze.

  But I was flushed and worried. For I had recognized that face amongst the leaves. The man watching us through the undergrowth had been my cousin, Malcolm Lytton.

/>   ‘Show me again!’

  I sighed, using my sleeve to wipe fingermarks from the face of the scrying mirror. ‘Divination does not work like that, my lady. The mirror will remain cloudy if asked to reveal the same vision again. Each glimpse of the future can only be seen at one fixed time, and no other.’

  ‘And how is that time determined?’

  ‘By the asking of a question,’ I replied, as patiently as I could. We had already been through this twice, both of us sitting cross-legged on her bed, the door to her chamber securely locked and only a single candle lighting our work. I repeated what my aunt had told me many times. ‘The scrying mirror must be consulted at the moment when the question is asked, not before or after.’

  Elizabeth looked at me stubbornly. ‘Very well. Then I ask the question again. When shall I be Queen?’

  ‘Better to change the terms of the question, my lady, or the outcome will be unclear. To ask the same question twice is like stirring the depths of a pond with a stick . . . all you do is muddy the waters.’

  Elizabeth seemed to understand that comparison, though she was clearly dissatisfied by the way magick worked. No doubt the princess was too used to bending the rules to take kindly to being told these rules were utterly inflexible. ‘Let me see . . .’ Her eyes sparkled mischievously in the candlelight. ‘When will my sister die?’

  I stared at her, and the twinkle in Elizabeth’s eyes faded.

  ‘Oh, very well,’ she said reluctantly. ‘Maybe that is a dangerous question. And a cruel one too. I do not wish my sister dead. Though she wishes for my death, I suspect. We were never close as children, for Mary is much older than I am, even old enough to have been my mother. She was forced to look after me sometimes at court. I know she must have resented that, for my father divorced her mother to marry mine. Yet Mary was always so devout she would say it was her Christian duty to care for me. Never any word of sisterly love, but only duty.’

  Hunched over the dark mirror, I waited for her question.