Witchfall

by Victoria Lamb

  I did not know where her ladyship was going. I had no choice though but to remain where I was, not having been summoned by my mistress to accompany her. Perhaps she would be returning soon, I thought, and glanced down at the small lined basket of sweetmeats the princess had given me to carry. Should I wait here, or should I return to the Lady Elizabeth’s apartments so her sweetmeats did not spoil in the stuffy heat of the Great Hall?

  ‘I have heard there is still good hunting to be enjoyed, despite this changeable weather,’ the King remarked, clicking his fingers for another cup of wine. ‘Once the court has settled at Oatlands, I shall go up to Leicestershire for the month of August and hunt deer.’

  Queen Mary’s face was rigid. ‘Go hunting for the whole of August? But my lord, I have been so unwell. I shall be in great need of your company at Oatlands.’

  King Philip stroked his neat beard, frowning with displeasure. ‘But your ladies and your priests will be on hand to amuse you. I have done little these past few months but play chess and chequers. Your English court is nothing like my own in Spain. I tell you, I am half dead with boredom. And what better sport than hunting to blow away the cobwebs?’

  Someone tugged on my gown from behind.

  I turned, a quick reproof on my lips, and found myself looking into my brother’s face.

  ‘William!’ I cried in joy, then embraced him.

  My brother smiled and stepped back. It was a warm smile, but his face was strained. ‘Dearest Meg, how well you look. That court gown is so fine, I almost did not dare kiss you for fear of creasing it.’

  Alice was standing behind him, a smug look on her face. ‘This one swore blind he was your brother. He does have a strong look of you, Meg, so I brought him to find you. I told the guards he had permission to be at court. I didn’t do wrong, did I?’

  ‘Only if we are found out in a lie,’ I told her, but could not blame Alice for doing exactly as I would have done. ‘Never mind, it’s done now. And I am certainly glad to see my brother again!’

  Some of the courtiers were glaring in our direction, their faces hostile. The King and Queen were still arguing, His Majesty’s voice raised in anger now. I realized it would not do to draw attention to ourselves at such a dangerous moment. Hurriedly I led Will into the passageway outside, which had the virtue at least of being less crowded than the Great Hall, and Alice followed us, her face alight with curiosity.

  ‘I thought you had found employment as a clerk in London, Will,’ I said, examining my brother’s face for signs of trouble. ‘What are you doing here at Hampton Court? Is anything amiss?’

  William had looked close to despair when I had last seen him that spring, following the princess’s entourage back to court bedraggled and downhearted. But some grief was only to be expected. He had betrayed my aunt by helping our father steal the letter that should have saved her, hoping the mere sight of Elizabeth’s signature would sway English exiles to attack Mary’s throne. But with no last-minute stay of execution, Aunt Jane had perished at the stake. ‘For the good of England,’ my father had claimed, showing no remorse except what lay at the bottom of a tankard of ale. But I knew my brother William had loved our aunt, and had perhaps not fully understood that she would be executed without the Lady Elizabeth’s plea for mercy. Though of course we had no way to be sure the letter would have made any difference to her fate.

  He glanced at Alice, then back at me. ‘Perhaps we could talk more privately?’

  ‘You can speak in front of Alice,’ I said, and squeezed the girl’s hand, for I was beginning to think of her as a friend.

  Will still looked wary however, so I gathered my skirts and hurried down the passageway, taking a turn which led out into the courtyard. It was hot and close outside, a dark bank of cloud blocking out the sunlight that earlier had streamed in through the high windows of the palace. It had been a strange unsettled summer, with periods of fierce heat and cold rotting damp following closely on each other’s heels, floods and droughts by turn across the country, and nobody ever sure from one day to the next if the sun would shine or rain would fall.

  I waited for William and Alice to catch up with me, watching the farrier as he rapidly shaped a hot shoe to one of the Queen’s own horses. A young boy of perhaps nine or ten years old leaned against the wall of the smithy, holding a bucket of water for the farrier, his chest bare for the heat but so filthy he might as well have been clothed. As I watched, the farrier straightened and turned, dipping the hot shoe in the bucket of water. There was a violent hiss and steam filled the air like fine mist. The chestnut gelding shifted slightly in the farrier’s grasp, rolling its eyes, but did not seem otherwise alarmed.

  ‘We will not be overheard here,’ I told my brother im patiently as he and Alice emerged from the gloom of the passageway. ‘Say what is troubling you – and quickly, please, before I burst!’

  ‘You are right, Meg. I did find work in London,’ William told me, and I was surprised to hear his old childhood stammer return as he told his story. ‘I was private secretary to a merchant near Aldgate. His name was Lumdsen and he was quite a wealthy man. I lived well for the first month. Nor was the work too difficult, little more than keeping his accounts each day and overseeing shipments at the docks. I thought to have stayed with Lumsden a good few years, perhaps even settled there in the east of the city. But then one day we had an unexpected visitor.’ My brother shuddered, real fear in his eyes. ‘A Catholic priest, one of those they call the Inquisition.’

  I began to understand. I gripped his arm as he faltered. ‘Go on, you are among friends now.’

  ‘My master was one of those who had sought reform before Her Majesty came to the throne. Everyone knew that in Aldgate and no one held it against him. Once the Queen’s rule was heard, that we should all be Catholics again, Lumsden returned to the old religion like everyone else. That is what he told us and I believed him.’ William hesitated. ‘Only . . . only he did not burn all his papers and books, as he ought to have done.’

  ‘So they arrested him?’

  William nodded, swallowing hard. ‘And charged him with heresy before the week was out. Once they searched his house and discovered his chest of forbidden writings, my master was put to the rack and confessed it all. It seems he and two other men had been meeting secretly each Sunday night to worship as Protestants. One of their servants got wind of it, told the local priest, and that was when the Inquisition came to his door.’

  Alice was staring, her blue eyes wide with horror. ‘The poor man. What happened to him?’

  ‘Master Lumsden was burnt before the city wall at Aldgate, him and his two friends.’ William crossed himself and closed his eyes. After a moment, he seemed to shake the memory away, then carried on in a low voice. ‘It was only by the grace of God that his wife did not burn with her husband, for they arrested her too. But the priests could find no evidence against her. Though her life was ruined anyway. After my master’s death, his goods were forfeit and his land confiscated by the crown. His widow and three young children were turned out of their home and forced to leave London.’ William’s face was hard. ‘I wanted to help the family, but Mistress Lumsden would have none of it. She said I was as much a Protestant as her husband and should have burnt too.’

  ‘Oh, William!’ I embraced him tightly. ‘She must have been in great distress to have said such a thing.’

  He nodded grimly. ‘I know it, and hold her no grudge.’

  ‘So you came straight to court?’ Alice asked.

  ‘Not quite,’ my brother admitted. He looked at me warily. ‘I wanted to see our father first, so I went home to Lytton Park.’

  I was shocked at first, then found myself ridiculously eager to hear news of home. I had always felt out of place at Lytton Park, a misfit who did not deserve such a delightful ancestral home, even if the house itself had become a dilapidated heap under my father’s care, its roof forever needing to be repaired, its lawns and formal gardens overgrown. But now, even more of a misfit as a
witch at the court of Queen Mary, I had to admit to a little homesickness. It would cheer my heart to see the twisted red chimneys of my childhood home rising above the leafy trees in the park. Yet I was far from home at Hampton Court, and could not indulge such childish fancies for fear they might weaken me.

  Besides, my father would be at Lytton Park, unless he was on one of his lengthy trips abroad. The last time I had seen my father had been in a smoky upper room at the tavern in Woodstock, where he had drunkenly confessed to being part of a secret rebellion against Queen Mary and having left my aunt to the witchfinder rather than betray his cause.

  ‘Was our father at home?’ I asked awkwardly. ‘How is he?’

  ‘Father is well enough, though he drinks more than he should. His conscience troubles him sorely, I think.’

  ‘So it should,’ I said sharply, thinking how he might have spared my aunt that hideous death.

  ‘But there is worse.’

  I frowned. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Dearest Meg, I hardly know how to tell you this . . .’ William laid a hand on my shoulder, his voice dropping to a hoarse whisper. ‘It’s Marcus Dent. He’s back.’

  I stared, feeling the blood drain from my face. Marcus Dent, the witchfinder, was back from whatever violent hellhole I had flung him into when last we tangled. I had known this day would come, for powerful though my banishing spell had been, it had not dealt the man a killing blow. Anger alone had seemed to fuel that moment of power, channelling everything I knew into one purpose. But my anger had not been great enough to kill a man. Instead, I had hurled Marcus Dent into some other dimension, some hellish void I could not begin to imagine, and ever since I had thought myself safe from his malignant influence.

  Now Marcus was back from the void, and that meant only one thing. He would soon be looking for me – and vengeance.

  My skin crawled with horror as I tried to imagine where Marcus might have been all this time. I had spoken the words of the spell which banished him from this world, yet I had no inkling of where he had gone, nor how he had managed to return. It must have been hard for him to explain his long absence when he finally returned. No doubt when he caught up with me, I would discover the truth. Because I knew for sure Marcus Dent would find me one day, whatever spells I used to conceal and protect myself from him.

  Suddenly, Alejandro was there at William’s shoulder. His urgent glance barely acknowledged my brother’s presence before searching my face. ‘Meg, there you are! What are you doing out here? You are needed at once in the Great Hall. The Lady Elizabeth has returned from her prayers.’

  ‘She will not miss me,’ I muttered defensively.

  Alejandro looked at me grimly. ‘She needs you, Meg. You had better hurry too. The King and Queen have argued in the Great Hall. His Majesty has overturned a table and sworn that he will leave England.’

  Alice’s eyes bulged. ‘What?’

  ‘The whole court is in uproar.’ Alejandro took my hand in a firm grasp and refused to let go. ‘Come, all of you. The Lady Elizabeth will need friends about her after this.’

  Hurrying back into the Great Hall with the others, the atmosphere hit me like a dark wave of evil and I recoiled from it instinctively. It felt like a poison slowly creeping through my veins.

  I stopped dead in the ornate doorway and stared up through the excited, whispering crowd at the dais. The Lady Elizabeth was motionless against the far wall, her face very pale but with red burning in her cheeks as though she had been struck. Queen Mary sat stiff and upright on her throne in her black gown finely threaded with silver, skirts spread wide to conceal a still-swollen belly. Her husband stood in the midst of his Spanish courtiers, arms crossed and with his back turned to his wife as though he had been raging against her. No one dared look either monarch in the face but all there gazed at the floor or studied the brightly embroidered tapestries on the walls. I dared to look at them though, staring from King to Queen in a horrified daze, and wondering why I felt so sick.

  ‘My lord King, my good Philip,’ the Queen was entreating him, her voice shaking with anger and fear, ‘you cannot leave England. I . . . I am with child again. I feel it.’

  The King shot her a contemptuous look that sent half the courtiers bowing swiftly from the room, sensing a battle ahead which might end in disaster for anyone too close to the throne. ‘You are not with child, nor is it likely you will ever be now.’

  The Queen blanched, clearly distraught at such a cruel statement delivered in front of the court. ‘Your Majesty!’

  ‘I had already made arrangements to leave by the end of this year. Our quarrel merely brings my plans forward a few months. Don’t pretend you thought I would remain here for ever. I cannot stomach this English climate, nor the blandness of your food and the rank acidity of your wines.’ The King made a disgusted face, turning as though to leave immediately. A few strides took him to where we stood shocked in the doorway, but a wild cry from the Queen made him turn. He sounded furious. ‘What was that you said?’

  ‘I only brought my sister back to court for your sake, because you said that . . . that you desired her . . . her presence. Now you would leave me with her?’

  The Queen seemed to choke over her words, her cheeks flushed and her eyes swollen with tears.

  I shook off Alejandro’s hand. For I had finally seen what I had somehow missed before, this horror hanging over the court, all of them as blind as I had been . . .

  Behind the Queen’s head was the vile misshapen creature I had seen clinging to the roof of the Great Hall. Now it was perched on the canopy above the throne like some kind of monstrous insect, glossy-backed and swollen, its ringed body convulsing and contracting. As I watched, it turned as though satisfied with its work, and leaped for the wall. The noise it made as it scaled the panelling was disgusting, like something squelching through mud. Yet no one else seemed able either to see or hear it.

  I stared up at the creature, half out of my mind with terror. I could not think of a single word of power that might destroy it. Part of me feared that I had summoned this monster myself. When I had first re-entered the hall, I had seen the creature as a mere shadow above the throne, shadow and light naturally rising and falling as the sun shifted behind a cloud and the Great Hall darkened. But now I saw it for what it truly was, evil incarnate in a hideous nightmarish body, shining like a vast black maggot. And I recognized its wickedness and greed, its darkness . . .

  I recalled the summoning of the Lady Elizabeth’s mother, her ethereal silver spirit – and the furious black cloud that had accompanied her back to life, not retreating into oblivion as the dead Queen had done afterwards, but roaring up the chimney and out into the world.

  Was this creature my doing?

  King Philip looked at his wife with pity in his handsome face. ‘It did not seem right that your sister Elizabeth should be kept away from court once her innocence was no longer in doubt. However, you are Queen here. You must do as you see fit.’

  Turning to leave the Great Hall, King Philip stopped and hung on his heel as he passed us. The King looked briefly at me, then reached out and gripped Alejandro’s shoulder. He made no attempt to lower his voice, as though the Queen was already far from his thoughts. ‘Take care of la princesa, de Castillo. I leave her in your charge as a fellow Spaniard and a nobleman, and would have no harm befall her. The welfare of the Lady Elizabeth is of great concern to me – and to Spain.’

  For a moment after the King had left, there was a terrible silence in the hall. The shiny black maggot on the ceiling writhed and gloated over its prizes in the stifling heat, a broken marriage and a divided court. I looked at Alejandro, sensing his stillness, and saw the strain on his face as the King’s command sank in. The princess’s safety lay in his hands now, and her enemies were many.

  Realizing she had failed, that nothing would stop her husband from leaving, the Queen looked wildly about the Great Hall in search of supporters. But most of her English courtiers had slunk away during the sh
outing, and the Spanish had departed with their King, their faces haughty and disdainful. Even her closest advisers seemed to have left the chamber, perhaps fearing the consequences of this latest blow to England’s stability.

  Humiliated and alone on the dais, Queen Mary’s voice broke as she pointed an accusing finger at the Lady Elizabeth.

  ‘As soon as the Spanish fleet sets sail, you can take yourself and your entourage back to your precious house at Hatfield. Yes, go . . . I will not hold you any longer against your will. Though if you value your immortal soul, Bess, you will listen to young de Castillo’s teachings and embrace the true faith before it is too late.’

  I saw Alejandro glance at me inadvertently, his eyes very dark. Since both the King and Queen had made it clear he was now part of the princess’s household, that must mean Alejandro would be accompanying us to Hatfield as Elizabeth’s spiritual advisor. My heart leaped with joy at the thought, even while I shuddered at the horrors I had seen here today; we would not be separated after all.

  Hiding her triumphant expression, Elizabeth curtseyed and began to back out of the Great Hall. The Queen called after her bitterly, ‘And when it is your turn to marry, may your husband make your life as wretched as mine is now!’

  PART TWO

  Hatfield House

  TEN

  Rain, Lutes and Pigs

  It began to rain the day we left Hampton Court and did not show any signs of stopping even after we had arrived at the modest country house the Lady Elizabeth had called home as a child. For the first few miles, riddled with guilt, I tried to shake off the image of the hideous black creature I had seen on the ceiling at Hampton Court. Was I going mad, or had my summoning of Anne Boleyn somehow brought the monster into being?

  Looking back, it seemed too incredible to be true. Yet my instincts told me I had not imagined the creature – nor its evil purpose. It seemed to hate the Queen and wished her ill, even to the point of destroying her. Perhaps it was because Mary had not been intended to inherit the throne; both she and Elizabeth had been termed ‘illegitimate’ by their father, King Henry, and disinherited in favour of a male heir. Now that their younger brother – Edward, a mere nine years old when he had succeeded to the throne for his short reign – had died, however, it seemed likely that a female Tudor would reign for years to come.