Alchemy (45 page)

‘Did you not often give her potions of your own making? Were these not love potions?’

‘No sir. Only such remedies as physicians use for melancholy or sleeplessness, many of which she assisted in preparing with her own hands.’

‘Have you not made a pact with the devil? I have been told by a witness that you were called by many “the young wizard”.’

‘They called me that when I prescribed for their sickness and they were healed but out of their ignorance not understanding that medicines work upon evil humours to drive them out or calm their effects and that every evil has its counterpart herb as Master Gerard has set out in his
Herball.
This being published some seven or eight years ago is in common use in many houses throughout the land as Dr Gilbert knows.’

‘Can you confirm this?’

I saw that Dr Gilbert hesitated but knew he could not deny it or if he did must appear very foolish when the truth was out.

‘Even so this does not preclude the practice of witchcraft but may go hand in hand with it like the rogue and necromancer Simon Forman.’

‘Sir, I will swear upon the countess her own book of psalms that I intended no mischief for her or her friends but only to find a little corner where I might be protected from the harshness and wickedness of the world.’

‘Dr Gilbert,’ Justice Ludlow said then, ‘I cannot find great
evidence of what you allege. Can you not bring the testimony of the countess herself or her daughter to support the case?’

‘The countess has already taken her daughter to London with a view to their removal to Cambridge and in any case the Lady Anne is not fit to appear. You must make the best you can sir, with what I have given you, as her counterfeiting and administering physick, and going as a man, and the opinion of her as a wizard among the countess her servants and tenants.’

‘Well I will do my best but you must give me your own written testimony to put with what I shall depose. Let her be taken back to the gaol.’

‘Sir, let it please be also set down that I have amended my attire as you commanded and endeavour to show myself obedient in all things and heartily sorry for any distress I have caused. But as for the charge of witchcraft I utterly deny it.’

‘Enough mistress. You are too saucy with your betters. You should stand in the pillory or be sent to a bridewell as a suspected vagrant, there to be whipped.’

Once again the gaoler took me down to my cell and left me to think upon my fate. Dr Gilbert was determined to pursue me, even though I was no longer a threat to him in my lady’s favour. Now I could only wait for the Grand Jury to rule upon whether I should be tried. My mind was inclined first this way then that. Sometimes I thought that they would find there was no case to answer, at others that I must prepare to defend myself before judge and jury.

Now I took the little piece of glass in my hand and studied my own face. If I should appear before them would they think it the face of a confirmed witch? Already I hardly knew myself in my woman’s attire with a cap and kerchief. I was becoming estranged from that self I had inhabited since my father’s death and did not know if I could ever return. And yet I did not see an Amaryllis in my reflection but rather as a face appears in a pool when the wind ruffles and dissolves it, two images side by side slipping in and out of each other.

I confess that I feared for myself. I knew that I must keep the gaoler as my friend if I could and so I set about a remedy for his ill. The next day his wife presented herself as I had asked.

‘My husband tells me the Grand Jury will decide your case whether you shall be tried or not tomorrow. What can you do to help us in that little time?’

‘You must carefully mark all I say. Tonight you shall make him drink this instead of ale. Then in the morning when he wakes you must take his prick in your hands and rub it gently with this powder, mixed tonight with a little grease to make an ointment and set by the bedside ready. This will cause him to tingle and as you work on him you say: ‘Rise little man and stand. Make the cock crow.’ When he begins to swell, as I have no doubt he will, you must slip this ring over his member and tie it firm but not so as to strangle him, and guide him to you, still speaking those words and encouraging him with the ointment.’

‘What are these marks on the ring?’

‘They are symbols of heat and power.’

‘Not marks of the devil? And where did a young girl get such knowledge that married women themselves do not have?’

‘From my father’s receipts with which he cured many men in this city.’

‘And do you have that book with you?’

‘I carry it in my head where it is safest. Let me know how you do if I should still be here. And if it does not suffice that first time then go to again, strictly as I have told you, and your belly will swell within the half year. But in everything be gentle as if you stroked a cat and your voice soft so that he shall cry out for more, not push you away.’

The gaoler’s wife crossed herself: ‘This is indeed magic for I feel the heat rising already in my own privities. It is a pity we women cannot conceive as and when we please, with or without
men. Then the world could be better ordered.’ She gathered up the things into her apron pocket and went away laughing.

All next day I waited for news of the Grand Jury, sometimes able to write in my memorials, sometimes only to walk about the cell or stare up at the changing square of light. Even the mouse seemed to have left me. At length as the day was fading and I was in need of a light for my candle, I heard the door being unbolted. I stood up in spite of the trembling in my legs. It was the gaoler.

‘Your fate is decided mistress, the Grand Jury finds not enough case for a trial in the allegation of witchcraft since there is no evidence from others than the doctor, and the lady lives. Yet your confession of being a counterfeit will keep you here, for they say that you showed no real penitence. Therefore you are remanded to the gaol for a twelvemonth. But for your help to my wife you shall have no harshness from me. Only I could say something if I would that could yet have you tried as a witch. But you are safe with me. Here is the light for your candle and a cake of my wife’s baking.’

When he was gone I was torn again between relief and despair: relief that my trial was not to be but despair that I should languish here at the mercy of the doctor. And no matter how grateful the gaoler and his wife were now, if he should fail again and my remedy cease to be efficacious, then he would turn against me, and I knew no more that I could prescribe to his help. Then he might accept a bribe and let in the men who had brought me here. It would be easy for them to smother me and put it about that I had died of gaol fever as indeed I might. So I turned this way and that, seeking a way out and wishing I were indeed what they had alleged and had the power to shrink myself to the size of the mouse that came and went as it pleased or fly away out of that place.

The ambulance man insisted that all three of us, me, Charlie and Omi, should be checked out for smoke inhalation or burns and whisked us off to the nearest A & E department. There we sat about, falling asleep while the real wounded were attended to, getting cups of vile coffee and bars of chocolate from a machine until called, examined and discharged.

‘You’re not fit enough to drive, however. Where do you live?’ the tired young doctor said as I sat on the examination couch with its dried-blood plastic skin.

‘London.’

‘Take a train.’ So we abandoned our bikes which anyway were five miles behind us in the shed at Wessex if they hadn’t gone up in flames with the rest of the building. I was too tired to ask or even to care. I slept most of the way to Waterloo, said goodbye to the boys and staggered through the streets where the shapeless, headless bundles of the drunks and the homeless huddled in doorways. I had just enough energy left to shower off the soot and sweat, knock back a glass of wine and fall into bed.

When I woke in the morning I switched on the news while I drank the mug of tea I had taken back to bed. Four people had died in a fire at a private college in Hampshire. The cause of the fire was unknown but an electrical fault was suspected.

I get out of bed and go over to the computer, log into my server and key in the Temple website. There’s nothing. It’s gone. Pulled. As if it had never been. I’m totally zonked, bone weary and wander about like a zombie making toast and coffee and having a long slow bath. I know I have to go back and find out what’s happened and if the Crusader survived. And there are the four dead, one of whom is almost certainly Daniel Davidson. Then the phone rings. It’s the police.

‘Ms Green? We understand you were involved in last night’s events at Wessex University. The officer in charge took your details.’

Just in case I might try to pretend I hadn’t been there. Honest,
guv, it wasn’t me. I’d had just enough sense left to give my own name. Lucy Cowell is dead.

‘We’d like you to come in and make a statement as soon as possible. If you’re up to it. We understand you were among those taken to hospital. When might you be able to come?’

We fix a time. ‘There were three of you, weren’t there? We only have contact numbers for the other two, mobiles and an address for Mr Gao. I understand Mr Omi was resident at the college.’

When he’s gone I ring Charlie. He hasn’t been contacted yet. Perhaps they’re going to hear what I have to say first. We agree a story that’s a part of the truth. We were curious. We wanted to watch the ceremony. I’m still so tired I fall asleep on the train and then take a taxi to the police station. Eventually I’m shown into an interview room. The man behind the desk stands up and offers a hand.

‘Detective Inspector Bradley, and this is Detective Sergeant Beavan.’

The sergeant is an attractive, confident thirty-something, hoping to be the next female commander à la Helen Mirren. Could I fall for a member of the fuzz? Concentrate, Jade.

He switches on the recording machine and goes through the identification ritual. ‘Now, Ms Green, could you tell us in your own words what happened? Why were you three there and indeed where were you?’

‘Before I go into all that, inspector, could you tell me what happened after we were taken to hospital? The BBC wasn’t very informative.’

‘The fire brigade managed to break down the door but they were beaten back by the heat and smoke. They did stop the fire spreading to the rest of the building and eventually they got it under control in the part where it started, unfortunately they were unable to save anyone. Four bodies have been recovered but it will need DNA or dental records to identify them. A pity
they didn’t know about the trapdoor. They could have all got out.’

‘Trapdoor?’

‘You didn’t know about it either? It was in the floor behind some kind of wooden structure. We’re still trying to get a picture of the inside of the building. It was completely gutted.’

I see the chapel rising in a great Pentecostal flame, taking Davidson up into his imagined heaven like an image of a burning ship in a sea story by Conrad we did for GCE. ‘An immense and lonely flame from whose summit black smoke poured continuously at the sky.’ Something like that.

‘The building was a chapel. The trapdoor must have been behind the pulpit.’

‘So what were you doing there, Ms Green, and where were you? We haven’t of course ruled anything out yet. We don’t know if we’re looking at an accident or arson. But four people are dead and that makes it very serious.’

‘We were up in the first gallery. There’s an outside staircase at the back that leads to the two galleries.’

‘It doesn’t any more. The roof seems to have fallen first and then the windows.’

‘The roof would have brought down the galleries?’ He nods. I see a John Piper stump of a building, silhouetted against flame.

‘I understand from some of the students who have recovered enough to be interviewed that someone let down rope ladders from the galleries and helped them escape. Was that you?’

‘Yes.’

‘So what were you doing there with rope ladders?’

‘They, the authorities, didn’t like anyone to watch their religious ceremonies, anyone who wasn’t a member, that is. We knew this was going to be a big one and we were curious to see it.’

‘But why the ladders?’

‘We thought we might get locked in and have to climb out of the building somehow. It was a precaution.’

‘In fact the doors must have locked automatically when all the electrics shorted out so you would have found yourself down there with everyone else all shut inside a burning building.’

‘Well, lucky for us, inspector, the doors leading to the galleries were the old-fashioned kind and weren’t on the automatic circuit.’

‘Lucky for the rest I’d say or we’d be looking at nearer thirty deaths. There are a lot of things that still aren’t clear to me. We may well need to talk to you again so stay where we can reach you. Most of the students we’ve talked to seem to be foreign.’

‘It wasn’t a regular English college. More of a private one.’

‘The whole building has been sealed off while we and the fire brigade make a more thorough investigation. Nobody seems to be responsible for the place and it’s legally owned by some company abroad. Do you have any thoughts on that, Ms Green?’

‘I only met the dean and his secretary and a couple of the staff.’

‘Names?’

I give them and wait while Sergeant Beavan writes them down. ‘Could you give me some sort of authorisation to get into the college? My bike is still in the shed there and I’d rather like it back.’

‘Bike?’

‘Motorcycle. Cheap, quick way of getting to classes.’

‘If I may say so you look a bit older than the average student. I’ve a daughter in her first year at uni – Leeds.’

‘These days you have to keep topping up your skills and qualifications. They call it lifetime learning but it’s really just a way of not being left behind in the rat race.’

‘Don’t we know it. Even in our job.’ He smiles conspiratori-ally at the sergeant. ‘I can’t see why you shouldn’t be allowed to collect your cycle. Just let them have the number and other details at the desk. They’ll give you a chit.’ I’m being dismissed. He presses a bell and a young constable appears to take me to reception where I sit on a worn pale-blue plastic and tube chair until
summoned. Then at last I’m let out with the paper in my hand authorising me to take my own bike.