Could Alejandro not see the danger we might have faced without my spell of forgetting? If his master had chosen to repeat that accusation to any of the other Spanish priests and King’s men in the palace, however rambling and unlikely, they would still have listened with eager interest. Father Vasco might be old and sick, but he was still respected. Otherwise he would never have been brought here today to attend the princess’s questioning.
I jerked with guilt, his parting words having recalled the Lady Elizabeth to me. With Blanche Parry gone, and her other ladies still forbidden to her, Elizabeth’s care fell to me alone.
Time was short. I hurried away to find a maid who would sit with the princess. Once I had persuaded one of the Queen’s physicians to examine the Lady Elizabeth, I knew what must be done to save us all. I would disguise myself and visit John Dee in prison. It could be done easily with a bribe – you could achieve almost anything in London with a hefty bribe – and then at least we would know if the astrologer planned to name the Lady Elizabeth as a co-conspirator in this matter of the royal horoscope. Or whether he had already done so under torture.
It would be too dangerous to visit John Dee alone, of course. The city was crawling with foreigners intent on troubling the English. It was no longer safe for a girl to travel about London on her own.
But after our argument, could I persuade Alejandro to go with me?
A more hellish prison than the Fleet I could not have imagined. It was a place straight out of the terrifying en gravings of demons and spirits my aunt had owned. Inside its high walls the air stank so terribly, it seemed to burn my throat, and the smoking tallow of the guard’s lantern stung my eyes until I could hardly see.
Alejandro had agreed to accompany me from Hampton Court to the Fleet prison, but I had refused his help beyond the gate. I knew how reluctant he had been to agree to this plan, and his lack of trust irked me. ‘Wait here for me until I return,’ I had whispered, wrapping myself in my cloak. ‘A young English maid alone, visiting her unfortunate brother in prison, will rouse no suspicion. But in the company of a Spanish priest?’
‘I would not speak a word—’ Alejandro had begun, but I had cut him off with a quick shake of my head.
‘It’s too dangerous for you to come any further,’ I told him. ‘Please trust me and wait near the river gate.’
He would still be there now, waiting in the darkness beyond the high stone walls. Impatiently too, if I knew my betrothed.
I had faced greater terrors than this place, I told myself firmly. Still, it took all my courage not to turn and run as the guard came to a halt before one of the cells and fumbled with his key chain, swearing when none of the keys would turn in the lock. But I had a duty to the Lady Elizabeth. I could not fail her.
I stood ankle-deep in mire, my nostrils assaulted with the stench of the Fleet Prison, while rats brushed my skirts. At last the rusty iron yielded, and the man threw open the door to the cell.
‘A visitor for you, master!’
There was silence. Then a man stirred in the dank shadows. ‘What’s that? A visitor?’
‘Your sister, or so she claims, and a sweet young piece she is indeed.’ The guard turned to me with a grin and spat on his hand, holding it out for the turnkey’s bribe. ‘Three shillings, mistress, was what you offered me at the prison gate to let you see your “brother” one last time. Though I do not believe for a second he’s your brother. What, with his hair as dark as the Devil’s and yours yellow as the sun? Nay, never fear, I’ll not say a word to the prison warden. Every man deserves a little comfort before the end.’
His obscene wink made his meaning plain.
I shuddered, dropping three shillings into his palm. The guard bit each coin, then pressed the bribe carefully into his belt pouch.
‘Thirty minutes is all I can spare you before the guard changes at midnight. But thirty minutes is more than enough for any man to achieve his business, and you must make merry while you can. The Inquisition will be coming for your master tomorrow, and after that . . .’ The guard mimed a neck being stretched by a rope, his face contorted, tongue lolling horribly, then shoved me inside the foul-smelling cell and swung the door shut after me. ‘God have mercy on his soul!’
I closed my eyes, standing motionless behind the closed door, then muttered a word under my breath. A second later I heard the splash as the guard tripped in the filthy water flooding the passageway, falling heavily to his knees, then his muffled curses as he attempted to get up and slipped again. My lips twitched. It felt wonderful to work magick again. Being at court might be more comfortable than the dilapidated lodge at Woodstock, but with so many unfriendly eyes on the Lady Elizabeth’s household, I had hardly felt able to work even the simplest of spells in recent weeks. For I knew that discovery would mean my death, and perhaps the princess’s too.
Once the guard’s angry oaths had finally died away, I pushed back my hood and looked around. My eyes struggled to see anything in the dim light – the guard had given me just one candle to keep darkness and the rats at bay.
The cell was so chilly, I drew my cloak about myself instinctively, unable to believe anyone could survive even a single night in such a place. The walls glittered with water, a constant trickle adding to the slurry of the mud floor. An iron grate in the wall revealed a black rushing current but a few feet below us, and I realized with a shock that the sound I had taken to be a northerly wind howling about the walls was in truth the Fleet River, flowing down into the Thames.
‘Master Dee?’ I whispered.
The astrologer stepped forward into the candlelight, a shadowy figure whose gaunt face and piercing eyes I would have recognized anywhere.
‘Meg Lytton?’
‘I am here on behalf of a mutual friend.’ I saw from the slight widening of his eyes that he had understood me. ‘Is it safe to talk?’
‘As safe as any place can be for a man charged with treason,’ Dee replied, but glanced warily at the door. ‘Come closer, let me look at you.’
I approached the astrologer, placing the candle on a small table. He removed my gloves with trembling hands and examined my palms, just as he had done once before in a small upper room at the Bull Inn.
The Lady Elizabeth had been the prisoner then, I realized, and John Dee had come secretly to help her. Strange how rapidly the wheel of fortune had turned to reverse their positions, with the Lady Elizabeth back at court and John Dee in prison himself.
‘Let us stand against the river wall,’ he muttered, dropping my hands as though satisfied. ‘The water is loudest there.’
Following him across filthy rushes to the dampest part of the cell, I watched the black swell of the river rolling below us and thought of the man I had left waiting at the prison gate.
‘Who is this friend on whose behalf you visit me?’ John Dee asked, his gaze searching my face. ‘Is it the lady in whose company we first met?’
I nodded, and began the speech I had rehearsed all the way along the river from Hampton Court. ‘My lady fears you may name her when they ask why you drew up the Queen’s horoscope. I trust you will remember that she neither asked nor paid to see the chart, but was offered it freely.’
‘Her name will never pass my lips, I swear it.’
‘Not even under torture?’
‘Not even then.’
‘You might not mean to betray her,’ I pointed out gently, ‘but even the strongest of men have failed to stay silent under the torments of the Spanish Inquisition.’
‘I am not afraid of the Inquisition,’ John Dee insisted, and indeed I saw no fear in his face. ‘I have read the stars and my life does not end in this foul place. My only true fear is that I may lose the last of my family estate over this matter. My confiscated papers will prove beyond doubt that I did cast the Queen’s horoscope, which is considered treason.’
‘How do you think to escape a traitor’s death when the Inquisition hold such proof against you?’
He shrugged, strangely calm a
s we discussed his possible death. Perhaps he truly had astrological proof that he would survive this accusation. ‘I shall argue that my only thought in casting these horoscopes was for the Queen’s welfare and that of her unborn heir. My defence will be that I was consulting the stars on her behalf, as any court astrologer should do during a royal pregnancy.’
‘They will never believe you. These Spaniards are fanatics. They see the casting of a horoscope as akin to working magick, and as such your life will be forfeit.’
‘We shall see,’ was all John Dee said, and his smile made me suspect he had some deeper game to play.
God defend him if he has not, I thought, for all the world knew how dangerous a pregnant woman could become when threatened – and Mary was no ordinary woman, but the Queen of England herself.
‘But can you know for sure that you will not betray my lady under torture?’
‘I have asked the spirits and been given a sign of good omen,’ he told me quietly, and the hairs rose on the back of my neck at his words. ‘I know that you understand such things. When voices call us from the celestial spheres, we must respond.’
The celestial spheres?
He meant the stars, I realized. One of his horoscopes covered with tiny black scrawl, the symbols I did not fully understand.
‘Voices?’
‘We live in light and darkness beneath the Sun and the Moon. But there are spirits dwelling above us. Not only the spirits of the dead, but also of the celestial realm itself. Some call these spirits daemons, others elementals. I think of them as the spirits beyond the stars. Certain men are destined to be born with the power to conjure and converse with those spirits.’ He hesitated, running his finger over my palm again. ‘And certain women too.’
I recalled what John Dee had asked me at our first meeting. Can you speak with the spirits?
This was too near my own dreams and imaginings to be comfortable. I shook my head, pulling my hand out of his grasp. ‘Only my aunt possessed such power and she is dead.’
‘So I heard. Burnt at the stake by Marcus Dent, a man at whose name every English witch must tremble.’ His eyes narrowed on my face. ‘Yet somehow you escaped him.’
‘I was lucky,’ I lied.
‘Some might call it destiny, not luck. The celestial spirits wished you to live. But for what purpose?’
I did not like his searching gaze. ‘I should go.’
He called after me. ‘Before you leave, Meg Lytton, do you wish to see your aunt again? To speak with her as I am speaking with you? For I can bring her spirit to face you in this godforsaken cell – even poor as I am, stripped of my books and instruments. This is my power, and I wield it whenever and wherever I choose.’
He held out both hands towards me in a dramatic gesture, his long thin fingers pale in the candlelight.
‘To summon spirits is a power you too could possess, if only you would drop your girlish fears and learn from a master.’
I stared at the man, deeply shocked by his offer. ‘My aunt is dead. It is not possible.’
‘Anything is possible.’
‘I would not see her peace disturbed.’
‘The dead have no thought of life or death, of peace or disruption. Your aunt would be here with us, but not of this world.’
Dee took my hand and began to stroke my palm, watching me. I did not resist, for to own the truth I was curious to see the extent of his power. I did not believe he could summon my aunt from the grave, nor did I wish him to try. But his power fascinated me, made it hard to deny him.
His gaze fixed on my face. ‘What was your aunt’s name?’
I hesitated, then whispered, ‘Jane Canley.’
He closed his eyes and spoke in Latin, muttering under his breath, and I heard him weave my aunt’s name into the spell. His fingers continued to squeeze and stroke my hand as he spoke. Suddenly his eyes snapped open and his narrowed gaze lifted to stare over my shoulder. His lips twitched as he glanced down at me.
‘Look behind you, Meg,’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Slowly, slowly! Show neither fear nor surprise.’
My skin prickled. Following his instructions, I turned my head with exquisite slowness and looked over my left shoulder. There in the darkness stood Aunt Jane. Not as I remembered her in those last terrible moments as she slumped against the village stake – a smoking husk of blackened skin and bones – but as she had looked in her younger years, when I was but a child. My dearest Aunt Jane, her skin smooth again, her fair hair rich and glossy under her white cap, dressed in a simple gown and apron.
Terrified as I was, I found myself smiling at her instinctively. My lips opened to speak her name. ‘Aunt Jane!’
But my aunt did not reply, nor did she smile back at me. She stood – or possibly floated, for I could not see if her feet were touching the dank floor – in perfect stillness, staring at a point beyond us in the dark cell as though not even aware of our presence. Her mouth remained level and closed, her blue eyes tranquil and empty of all emotion.
Staring, I was suddenly aware that I could see through my aunt’s body to the filthy wall beyond. There was her gown of coarse linen, yes, but through it I could see the wall’s roughcast stones glistening with water. It was as though Aunt Jane had performed the spell of invisibility on herself, and it had only partially worked.
I could not stand it. My heart rebelled, knowing this was not my aunt as she had been in life, but a shadow of her soul, a phantom that could never replace the woman I had known and loved.
‘Begone, spirit!’ I cried, wrenching my hands from John Dee’s grasp and pointing at the wavering vision.
And we were alone again in the prison cell.
John Dee looked at me oddly. ‘Impressive,’ he said, commenting on my ability as a witch. ‘Though your aunt would have spoken, if you had waited to question her.’
‘That was not my aunt.’
‘No,’ he agreed mildly. ‘But it was as close an embodiment of her spirit as you will get now, this long after her death.’
Dee poured some ale from a flagon into his wooden bowl and sipped at it, then offered the bowl to me. I shook my head, still a little angry with the astrologer, and he smiled. ‘If you wish, I can teach you to work the spell yourself. It is a powerful magick for a woman, but I can see you are not without talent. You never know when it may come in useful to call a spirit to your side.’
‘I came here to serve my mistress, not to learn how to summon the dead.’
‘Wait,’ he insisted as I turned to the door. Dee set the bowl of ale on the table and beckoned me forward. ‘Look into the bowl and tell me what you see.’
Did he intend me to scry for him? Curiosity brought me to the table’s edge, but I did not wish John Dee to know the extent of my skill. I pretended not to understand.
‘What do you mean?’
‘If you are a woman of power like your aunt, not a country witch, then a simple act of divination should come easy to you.’
The astrologer was taunting me, and I knew it. A child’s trick, goading me to play his dangerous game.
Still listening for the guard’s return, I lowered my gaze to the bowl. I waited a while, trying to empty my mind of thought. Still nothing stirred in the cloudy liquid but the flicker of candlelight.
My reflection looked back at me helplessly: a pale, wide-eyed girl, her face tense and unsmiling under a plain white cap. The silence dragged on. My eyes began to sting and my belly hurt in anticipation of his contempt. From somewhere in the depths of that vile prison I caught what sounded like a scream, muffled by thick walls. Some unfortunate captive being tortured in pursuit of a confession, guilty or not.
At my side, Master Dee stirred at last, perhaps growing uneasy as he contemplated his fate, and I drew breath to admit my failure.
‘I cannot read the future, I do not have the skill.’ Suddenly I frowned, my attention snagged by some movement in the cloudy liquid. ‘Wait, what was that? I thought I saw something.’
‘Yes?’<
br />
My gaze fixed on the bowl as the dark vision inside it swirled and shifted. With a chill sensation, I recognized what I was looking at. ‘I see a girl. A girl kneeling in a high lonely place. I cannot see her face, her head is bent. It is sunset and there are dark clouds on the horizon. At her back, I see—’
I gave a horrified cry and broke off.
‘Speak on,’ he urged me, close at my ear. ‘Do not be afraid of what has been shown to you. These visions have no power to hurt you and may bring much secret information.’
I shook my head and was relieved to hear the heavy tread of boots and jangle of keys outside in the corridor. It was the guard at last, returning to release me from this hellish place.
‘My time here is done,’ I muttered, averting my eyes from the bowl and hurrying to the cell door. I dragged on my gloves with shaking hands, banishing the vision from my mind. ‘I wish you good fortune when they come to question you tomorrow. And I pray you most fervently, Master Dee, to remember my mistress and the terrible hurt that might be done to her by uttering the wrong word – even under torture.’
This time John Dee did not attempt to stop me, and I was soon outside again in the night, gulping at the river air, desperate to rid my lungs of the foul stench of his prison cell.
Alejandro was waiting for me near the river gate as he had sworn. He looked more Spanish than ever in the moonlight, his eyes keen and fierce as a hawk’s beneath his feathered cap, his cloak hiding a jewelled sword and the richness of his court suit. I remembered standing by another river bank in the daylight, listening to his proposal of marriage and promising to give him my answer in a year and a day’s time.
His sharp gaze searched my face. ‘What is it? You look pale. Did the meeting go badly?’ He frowned when I did not reply. ‘Does the astrologer plan to betray the Lady Elizabeth?’
I shrugged helplessly. ‘He said not, but I do not know for sure. We must return to court as quickly as possible. The princess will wish to hear what I have learned. If you want to help me, call a link boy to light us back to the barge.’
Alejandro did as I asked, then turned back, still frowning. ‘You are cold.’ He removed his cloak and swung it about me. His hands lingered on my shoulders. ‘I wish you would trust me, Meg, and tell me what has upset you so much.’
Witchfall Page 4