Witchfall

by Victoria Lamb

Richard knelt at my side and joined in with the Lord’s Prayer, his voice cool and calm. I had not been told to kneel so stayed where I was on the stool, but bent my head and repeated the Lord’s Prayer along with them, long-familiar words I had learned as a child from my horn book.

  I had to stop myself gaping like a fool. But it was the oddest magickal act I had ever witnessed. If my demure white cap had not been removed, and I had not been sitting eyeball to eye socket with a horned skull covered with symbols drawn in blood, I might almost have been at a Church Mass.

  The howl of the wind grew so loud, it began to drown out our words. The rain was lashing down, hammering at the roof, bubbling under the door, trying to get in. That was how it felt, anyway.

  ‘Amen,’ Dee finished triumphantly, bowing to the horned ram’s skull as though the table was an altar.

  ‘Amen,’ we echoed.

  Richard stood and also bowed to the skull. He looked sideways at me as he straightened, half mocking, half in deadly earnest.

  I’m not bowing to a skull, I thought defiantly, and stayed upright on the stool.

  Dee pitched another handful of incense on the platter and set fire to it, beginning another invocation in Latin, this time to the Moon. My eyes stung with the acrid smoke and I could feel my hunger now like a dizziness that threatened to overwhelm me. As Dee moved and swayed with the ritual, his tall hooded figure seemed to merge with the shadows behind him, until he was part of the darkness, himself one of the shadows.

  I began to feel a little sick.

  Uncomfortable, I shifted on my stool, an icy trickle running down my spine as though the roof above me was leaking. How much longer would this ludicrous ritual take?

  John Dee crossed himself, muttering, ‘Let it be done in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.’

  He dropped a thin, coiled cord in front of us on the table, and a neatly folded length of black silk. His voice was hard as flint.

  ‘Bind the witch’s hands behind her back, Richard, then blindfold her. It is time.’

  FOURTEEN

  Dead King

  I knew the place. I had seen it before in my dreams and in the scrying bowl, and once, in a prison cell with John Dee. John Dee. The name seemed to mean something to me. I struggled to retrieve the information but already it had gone, flitting away like a bat into the darkness.

  It was nearly dusk in my vision and I was standing on the edge of a high place. At my back I could hear the wind blowing. Was I on a cliff? A tower?

  Below me lay a kind of wilderness, stretching to the horizon. Stunted yellowing trees, straggling bushes, lichened boulders strewn here and there in the rough grasses, hills and valleys under the touch of autumn. On one of the hilltops opposite I could see markings and mounds in the grass where an ancient stone circle must once have stood, long since dismantled, its greatest stones carted away to build new monuments and temples – or left for the grasses to cover up.

  A bird screeched overhead and, instinctively, I glanced up at its wheeling shadow. A hawk. Just like every other time.

  Of course, he was there when I lowered my gaze. Marcus Dent. In his hand was the ribboned and gleaming axe I had seen before, its thick shaft wound with gleaming holly almost down to the grip.

  ‘You again,’ I said wearily. ‘I should have known.’

  My enemy looked back at me, unsmiling, unspeaking. This time there was something different about the dream.

  Then he turned his head slightly, as though to stare out into the wild air, and I realized what had changed. Marcus had an ugly scar running across his face now, and one of his eyes was coloured silver as though it was blind. So reality had caught up with my dreams.

  I crooked an eyebrow. ‘Lost for words, Marcus? This is where you say, “On your knees, witch, and die!” Or something like that.’

  Marcus Dent hefted the great axe in the air, grunting with the weight of it. “On your knees, witch, and die!’

  This was where my visions had always ended in the past. Sweet and safe, with me waking up and wondering what that strange dream of the high place and the axe was all about.

  But to my alarm, this time I did not wake up. This time, my legs buckled and I found myself kneeling before him on the hard ground.

  ‘No, no, this isn’t what’s supposed to happen,’ I muttered, trying to get up again.

  His hand forced me down. ‘Your neck,’ he growled hoarsely. His breath sounded like a blade being sharpened. ‘Bare your neck to my axe, witch.’

  ‘Wake!’ I exhorted myself in Latin.

  He was fumbling with my hair, drawing it back to expose my neck. I had a sudden memory of Richard gently combing my hair. Richard, the astrologer’s apprentice, preparing me to speak to the spirits. The smoky little hut where I had been sitting on a stool when suddenly a spell had been cast upon me. A spell of candles and incantations, then the ringing of a bell, once, twice, three times, and then I was here, kneeling before Marcus Dent, my old enemy, my executioner.

  ‘This is just another vision,’ I told myself frantically, but kept struggling just in case I was wrong.

  Marcus was strong. Far stronger than I was. I could not seem to get up. His voice was in my ear. ‘What is your name?’

  ‘You know my name!’ I spat bitterly.

  ‘Rise up and answer me. What is your name? What planet rules you? Are you of air or water?’

  My face was in the dirt. I could not breathe, I was choking on the foul earth of this place. I remembered how Marcus had tried to drown me, my body succumbing to the murky cold depths of the water, and wondered if he had actually succeeded that day in Woodstock village, if everything since then had been a dream after death, an imagined life from beyond the grave, and I was in truth dead. Dead and cold, my heart stopped, my body lost to breath, my love for Alejandro buried with me, and the Spanish novice grieving over my tombstone.

  Not for long though. Soon Alejandro will take ship for Spain and meet another woman there, a beautiful dark-skinned Spanish bride, and marry her instead.

  I struck out with my whole being and cried, ‘Banish!’

  My face was still in the dirt, but suddenly I could smell flowers. Roses, thyme, fragrant jasmine, the tall spikes of purple-headed lavender, a sweet knot of herbs in a formal garden to my left, camomile springing soft under my cheek.

  ‘Look up,’ a voice whispered, close to my ear.

  I lifted my head. I was standing in a garden, a beautiful garden, with red brick walls and high towers above me. The sky was blue and the air was warm.

  A man was standing beside me. He was tall and muscular, and stood on the grass barefoot. His body was wrapped in a yellow glittering cloth, like starfire, and as I turned to see him properly, I realized he was holding a small child in his arms.

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked. ‘What is your name?’

  ‘My name is Raphael,’ he replied.

  I looked into his face and found that I could not see him properly, for all about his head was a glowing fire, emitting golden beams in all directions like a beaten image of the sun.

  ‘Why am I here, Raphael?’

  ‘You came to seek the name of the spirit who troubles you.’

  With a shock, I remembered John Dee making the sign of the cross with his candle flame, then my hands being bound, my eyes covered with black silk, and the sound of a bell ringing.

  ‘Yes,’ I managed. My mouth was dry. ‘What is that spirit’s name?’

  Raphael put the small child into my arms, saying, ‘Seek not that which is not thine to seek, but look to the one star still shining. There is thine own salvation and the salvation of Albion. Repeat these words.’

  I repeated them, stumbling a little as I spoke. Then I looked down into the face of the small child in my arms. It was a girl with reddish-gold hair and small solemn dark eyes.

  When I raised my head, the angel had disappeared.

  ‘What do you see?’

  It was John Dee’s voice in my head. I star
ed about myself. There were shouts from the far end of the garden. Men in armour running towards me. The child was wriggling in my arms.

  I lifted her up and called, staring up at the open casement above me, ‘Your daughter! Look on your daughter, my lord King!’

  There was a man staring down at us. He was broad-chested and large-bellied, his face reddened with wine. There were jewels on his cap and on his large hands that clutched at the wooden frame of the casement. Then I looked into his eyes, so unexpectedly familiar, narrowed in hatred as he stared at me, and I knew in that instant who he was.

  It was King Henry, father to Queen Mary and the Lady Elizabeth; he who had ordered the arrest and execution of Elizabeth’s mother, Queen Anne Boleyn.

  As I watched, the King seemed to grow in the window, his body blackening, his face blurring, becoming darker and more grotesque until he was nothing but a terrible vast shadow with hooded eyes that looked down into me and knew my true self.

  ‘Take her away!’ he roared, and slammed the casement shut.

  Someone lifted the child from my arms, wrapped her in a cloak and carried her away. I missed her scent as soon as she was gone, my heart wrenched away with her little body.

  ‘Be gentle with her!’ I exclaimed. ‘Do not be afraid, Bess. I will come back to you.’

  Then the guards were upon me. They seized me roughly by the arms and dragged me away through the gardens. The gold and red skirts of my gown brushed the heady clumps of lavender, snagging on the rose bushes.

  I heard a woman crying fiercely, ‘I am the Queen! I am the Queen!’ until the sky seemed to darken and my eyes closed.

  As soon as Richard removed the blindfold, I looked up at him, shaking with anger. ‘How dare you? Untie my hands!’

  ‘Welcome back,’ he said drily, and bent to wrestle with the thin cords with which he had bound my wrists together at my back.

  At that moment, the door was flung open. Standing there, rain and wind howling about him, was Alejandro with a drawn sword in his hand.

  His face wet with rain, he stared into the smoke-filled hut. His swift gaze took in my bound hands, Richard crouched over me, then John Dee himself, a hooded figure holding a candle aloft behind a table that boasted a horned ram’s skull decorated with strange symbols drawn in what was clearly blood.

  ‘Stand away from her!’ he said harshly, and took two hasty steps towards Richard.

  Before I could warn him of the apprentice’s gift, I saw Richard raise his hand and then Alejandro staggered back, like a man in a high wind.

  The Spanish novice groped for the silver crucifix which always hung at his neck. Finding it, he muttered, ‘In te spero, Domine. Salva me.’

  Richard sighed. ‘How very tiresome he is.’ He spread his fingers and pointed at Alejandro, who dropped to his knees, his whole body struggling against the enchantment, the veins standing out on his throat.

  ‘Leave him alone,’ I told Richard furiously. ‘Untie my hands.’

  ‘What, so you can try and throw me against the wall with your witch’s magick? No, thank you.’

  His master intervened, throwing back his hood and snapping his fingers at Richard. ‘Don’t be such a fool. Our work is finished here anyway. Untie the Lytton girl and release the Spaniard from your hold.’ He drew a sharp breath when his apprentice did not move. ‘Now, Richard! The Lady Elizabeth is fond of her young priest.’

  ‘Oh, very well.’ With a muttered oath, Richard released Alejandro from whatever spell he had used against him.

  Alejandro leaped to his feet at once, his sword levelled at the apprentice. His face was flushed with anger. ‘What have you done to her, sirrah? What gives you the right to treat a lady in this way?’ Reaching me, he slit the cords binding my wrists with one stroke and put his arm about my waist, lifting me as though I weighed nothing.

  ‘Put your arms about my neck,’ he ordered me, and I obeyed, my head dizzy from the smoke.

  His chest was sodden with rain, but I lay my head against it gratefully.

  John Dee held out his hands in a conciliatory gesture. ‘It was part of the ritual. We could not risk her using magick and disturbing the angelic powers. She was not harmed.’

  ‘You could just have asked me not to use magick,’ I muttered.

  ‘You are a woman,’ Dee said apologetically. ‘Sometimes the visions can be very intense and frightening. Even Richard has sometimes defended himself without thinking and angered the spirits. We could not trust you to remember, not on your first attempt.’

  ‘Her last attempt,’ Alejandro told them bitterly, and turned as though to carry me back to the house.

  ‘No, no, I want to do it again,’ I insisted, struggling free of his grip. Alejandro released me, staring in amazement as I stepped away from him. ‘I have to choose my own path.’

  ‘Meg, you were screaming,’ Alejandro reminded me. ‘These men had you tied up and blindfolded.’

  ‘I know, I know. And I’m truly grateful you came for me. I was scared, at that moment, and I do feel safer, knowing you are there if I need you. But that doesn’t mean I never want to try it again. It was astonishing.’ I struggled to find the right words to describe how it had felt to live and breathe a vision like that. ‘Miraculous.’

  Alejandro recoiled at my use of that word, then crossed himself against the taint of blasphemy. His dark eyes sought mine through the smoky air.

  ‘Tell me truthfully, are you under a spell?’

  I shook my head, though I was still a little dazed from what I had seen and felt in my vision. ‘I thank you with all my heart for coming to my aid, Alejandro,’ I murmured, not wanting to hurt him, ‘but it would be best if you returned to the house. This is no place for you.’

  Alejandro looked at me, disbelieving. ‘You expect me to walk away and leave you here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘With this conjuror and his boy?’

  Richard had come silently to my side. Now he gave an angry laugh. ‘One more word, novice, and I swear—’

  A fight was stirring here, their faces taut with aggression. I put up a hand between them, looking from one to the other. ‘I don’t want any more disputes. Alejandro, please do as I ask and leave me. I am not in any danger, as you can plainly see. My mistress asked me to be here, to see this business through to the end, and that is what I intend to do.’

  Alejandro stood there a moment longer, his face a cold mask, his sword in his hand, still pointing lethally at Richard. When I raised my eyebrows, he reluctantly sheathed his sword and bowed to me with customary politeness. But I could see the fury in his face.

  Then he stalked out without another word, dragging the door shut behind him.

  I closed my eyes in silent apprehension after his departure. Perhaps I had done the wrong thing. Perhaps I had driven him away for ever. Yet if Alejandro truly desired us to become man and wife, he must accept this side of my nature.

  ‘Meg?’ the astrologer asked gently.

  I turned back to Master Dee and nodded, putting my grief behind me. There was still much to be done this night if we were to make sense of my outlandish visions.

  ‘So I was in a high place, and then somehow in the body of Queen Anne. But what does any of it mean?’

  When my throat was dry from talking, and every inch of the astrologer’s paper was covered in his fine black scrawl, Richard rose and threw me my cloak. It stank of wood smoke, but I wrapped myself in it gratefully, too exhausted to care. Everything I could remember from my visions had been noted down meticulously, yet I suspected we were no nearer solving the problem of what was haunting Elizabeth. Master Dee seemed more puzzled than enlightened by the words of the angel, and if he could not understand what I had seen, it struck me that nobody could.

  ‘Time for you to sleep,’ Richard said shrewdly, looking into my face. ‘It will be dawn in a few hours. There is little more we can learn tonight.’

  ‘But was it enough?’ I asked, glancing at Master Dee.

  ‘There is much here
to ponder. And one of my books may yet reveal what we do not understand.’ Dee stood up from his seat wearily, stretching. He gestured to Richard to clear the table. ‘I must return to London, but I shall leave Richard and the more arcane books at Hatfield. He can search through them in my absence, and perhaps discover an answer to these most perplexing visions.’

  I shuddered. ‘I wish you did not have to leave.’

  ‘I have no choice.’ John Dee closed his eyes, pain twitching the thin brows together above his sensitive face. ‘Bishop Bonner demands my presence in his house, and I have no power to say him nay. To refuse would be to draw down the same terrible fate on my head as the heretics he burns daily. But I have seen in the stars, his time is nearly at an end. Another year or two, and I shall be free again.’ He opened his eyes and gazed at me intently. ‘Meanwhile, you must serve the princess and help to keep her safe from those who would harm her. Marcus Dent is such a man. If you ever have the chance again to destroy him, take it. And this time do not hesitate.’

  Annoyance pricked at me. ‘I already tried to destroy him. I thought he was gone for good.’

  ‘Then try harder, Meg Lytton. This is not a game. More than your own life and that of your mistress may be at stake here. If he can, Marcus will take great pleasure in condemning your mistress to the Tower, and you to everlasting torment, and England will not be far behind.’ John Dee turned away, staring into the dying embers of the fire. ‘Marcus was always cruel as a young man, taking pleasure in the suffering of others. Now I fear his cruelty has grown to monstrous proportions. He may not even fully be a man any more, but a creature of darkness. In a way, your banishing spell may have made him stronger, perhaps even given him the power he needed to trick death.’

  My voice was high with incredulity. ‘You mean he cannot die?’

  The astrologer shrugged. ‘The only way to tell if you can still kill Marcus Dent is to face the man – and defeat him.’

  There was a long and terrible silence during which I struggled not to weep at this news. Even though I had long suspected he might not be properly alive, I had still hoped Master Dee, with all his knowledge and experience, might have some simple answer that would solve everything. Perhaps a magickal instrument to keep the witchfinder away from me, or a darker spell than those in even my aunt’s most secret books which would allow me to banish Marcus for good.