Witchfall (30 page)

‘Forgive me, Alice.’ He tried to smile, but could not. ‘I thank you, but I must be alone with her tonight. There are things that should be said, even though it may be too late for Meg to hear them. They will weigh on my conscience for the rest of my life if I do not . . .’

Abruptly, Alejandro bent and scooped me up in his arms as lightly as though I weighed nothing, carrying me towards the dark staircase. Blanche fell back, staring at my limp body as he passed, the burning torch shaking in her hand.

Like a hound on a leash, I floated up the stairs after him, beginning to feel more and more distant from the cold shell that had once been my body. It seemed cruel to keep me here so long, watching my beloved in pain and knowing I could not reassure him that I had felt nothing at the end, that my death was no one’s fault but my own.

I had arrogantly assumed I could defeat the shadow-king, and that my vision of Marcus Dent with the axe was not something to be feared. I had been wrong on both counts, and although I was not entirely sure how it had happened, my death was the result. It seemed fitting that I should spend my last hours alone with Alejandro before being committed to the grave.

Kicking his door open, Alejandro carried me into his
bedchamber. A small fire smouldered in the grate, but otherwise it was in darkness.

With the gentlest of hands, he lowered my dead body to the bed, then stood a while in silence, staring down at me. I could hear him breathing, and thought oddly,
I shall never breathe again
. Already I was forgetting how to breathe, watching incorporeal, part of the darkness, a shadow myself now – just as the shadow-king had been, watching us from the ceiling. At last Alejandro turned away and painfully set out four candles, one at each corner of the bed, like guardians against evil spirits. He lit a spill from the grate and touched its flame to each candle, murmuring, ‘
In te, Domino, speravi, non confundar in aeternum
,’ reciting the psalm in Latin for me, ‘I have put my trust in you, O Lord, may I never be cast into confusion.’

This done, Alejandro made the sign of the cross above my body, and bent his head to pray.

Suddenly, his calm demeanour broke, and he took three swift strides across the narrow chamber. Gasping in agony, he beat his head and fists against the stone mantel above the hearth.

‘Meg, Meg, my little love . . .’ His shoulders heaved, and I realized he was weeping. He groaned, ‘Not you. Not you. Not you. Anyone but you.’ A flame of anger singed his voice, his pain catching light. ‘Lord, why did you have to do this? How could you take her so soon?’

Moments passed while I watched his bent head. Then he came back to the bed, his eyes dark with agony.

‘Since there is no help for it . . . May the Good Lord guide your steps in Heaven, my beloved.’

He placed the silver crucifix about my neck, rearranging my damp hair on the pillows with a tender hand.

Now it looked as though I were asleep on his bed, my pale eyelids closed, lips slightly parted, the silver crucifix resting on my chest.

‘You will be buried with the cross about your neck. That at least I can do for you.’ Alejandro leaned forward, touching his lips to mine, then whispered, ‘I was a fool,
mi alma
, and never fully opened my heart to you. But I love you to the edge of madness, to the gates of death itself. If it were possible, I would take your place in the afterlife. I pray to God you are in Heaven soon, whatever your offences may have been on earth. For there can be no place in the torments of Hell for such a soul as yours. You are the truest, the most courageous woman I have ever known.’

He knelt beside the bed, clasped one of my hands between his, and began to pray over me in Latin.

I felt an odd tugging deep in my belly. I was suddenly too threadbare a spirit, too scarcely there to remain. Without a sound, my ghost began to scrape through an invisible hole in the air like a thread being pulled from one side of a tapestry to another.

Was this the end of my haunting? Was I now to be taken up to Heaven – or down into Hell?

As soon as the crucifix had been placed about my neck
again, I had felt a change stealing over me, as though remembering something I had forgotten. Something in me resisted the call though, reluctant to leave this wonderful effortless floating, my new world of half-light and shadows. I did not wish to leave Alejandro. I wanted to be with him for ever.

But as Alejandro prayed for my soul, his voice ragged in the darkness, I gradually realized that I was no longer watching from above, but was inside my dead body again. My limbs were too heavy and stiff to move, and I could not lift my eyelids to look at him. But I was struggling to breathe, wanting to breathe, though it seemed I had a wet leather sack in my chest. It hurt so badly, it was like trying to breathe grit, sand, broken glass.

My body fought the agonizing sensation, hating it. Yet it could not help but keep trying, made to draw breath and let it out again, to be human. Then my fingers tingled, warmed by the blood in his living hand; the cold skin was coming back to life, beginning to feel again.

I drew breath and spluttered, my chest jerking as I gasped for air, my body suddenly and brutally alive again.

‘
Dios!
’ His eyes wide with shock, Alejandro shot back from the bed, dropping my hand and crossing himself. He stared at me in disbelief, then tried my name. ‘Meg?’

I drew another rasping breath, unable to speak.

He addressed me rapidly in Spanish, his voice hoarse and urgent. Then – perhaps remembering that I could not
understand a word he was saying – he seized a wooden crucifix from his table and held it out in front of him. ‘Are you the Devil? Speak, what are you?’

‘I’m thirsty,’ I managed croakily.

He was barely breathing himself. Slowly, he lowered the crucifix. Raw incredulity was in his voice. ‘Meg, you are truly alive?
De verdad?
’ He stumbled over the words. ‘How has this happened? You . . . you were dead. I held you in my arms.’

I looked helplessly at the cup I could see on his table.

‘It’s wine,’ he said blankly, following my gaze, then seemed to shake himself awake. He fetched the cup and tilted it to my lips. I took a sip, wetting my dry throat, then another. He watched me drink, then set the cup down on the floor.

‘Not a ghost, then,’ Alejandro commented, still dazed by the sight of me alive. ‘As I understand it, spirits neither eat nor drink.’

‘You can see well I am no spirit,’ I muttered, then lay back against the pillows, exhausted even by the small effort of drinking. Being dead seemed to have sapped my strength. I only hoped remaining alive would be easier than dying had been. Already my feet were tingling and itching, the blackened skin tortured by its burning.

‘Yet you
were
dead.’ Warily, he touched a finger to the crucifix about my neck. ‘Was it this that brought you back?’

I hated the look in his eyes, how careful he was not to
brush my skin accidentally, to make any physical contact. Did he think me so very dangerous?

I shrugged, too weary and in pain to struggle for an explanation. ‘Perhaps.’

At that moment, I cared little how it was possible for me to have been dead one minute, then alive the next. All that mattered, surely, was that I was alive again. Time enough to examine this strange miracle for flaws later, when I had grown more accustomed to being back in my body. For now, it was not merely my feet that were hurt. My heart too was feeling a little bruised by the coolness of his welcome back.

‘You don’t seem very happy that I have survived this ordeal,’ I remarked, watching from under lowered lashes as he rose and paced the room. ‘Would you rather I was still dead? So you could love me “to the gates of Hell”, yet never have to pass through them at my side?’

‘You heard that?’ He stopped pacing and turned as though stunned by my revelation. A dark red crept into his face. ‘I thought—’

‘That you were talking to a dead woman?’

‘Well, I was, if you recall,’ he countered. His dark eyes met mine then, with an impact that rocked me. ‘Nonetheless, if you need to hear me say it all again, trust me that I meant every word. Never think me false, Meg. I spoke the truth, I do love you to the very edge of madness – and beyond. Nor am I unhappy to see you breathe and speak
again. Indeed, I have never known such joy in my life. Only . . .’

I raised my eyebrows. He had still not touched me.

Alejandro groaned, then came to sit beside me on the bed. His gaze devoured my hair, my face, my throat. ‘You are so beautiful, Meg. Beautiful and intelligent, with a tongue sharp as a knife at my throat. I do not know how it is possible, but tonight God has spared his most desirable creature from death.’

Truth be told, I did not know myself what to think of my unexpected escape from death. I had slipped that dark leash without any stirring on my part, as though someone else had chosen life for me over death. I only knew that I lived. How and why I had no inkling nor understanding.

He leaned forward and traced a fingertip across the line of my mouth, not quite touching my skin. ‘Your body is growing warmer,’ he murmured wonderingly, then watched the rise and fall of my chest. ‘Dear Lord, I never thought to see you breathe again.’

Perhaps the Devil himself had possessed my soul in the otherworld, then sent me back into this body to destroy Alejandro. For I could not conceive that the Almighty would ever have chosen to spare me – a witch, a sinner and blasphemer, and the possible ruination of his would-be priest.

None of which helped my fervent wish to feel his lips on mine.

‘Kiss me,’ I said huskily, daring him with my eyes.

If Alejandro thought me some kind of unnatural fiend returned from death’s wilderness, come perhaps to bait him into sin and despair, he would not touch me.

He hesitated, frowning. ‘But what if this miracle is undone by my kiss,
mi alma
? Like brushing the dust from a butterfly’s wings, I may kill you with a touch.’

‘So will you never kiss me again?’ I demanded, staring up at him. ‘Never touch me? Never love me again?’

His eyes burnt on my face. ‘You know that to be impossible.’

‘Then kiss me.’

Alejandro looked at me intently, as though involved in some inward battle, then bent his dark head at last and put his lips to mine.

I did not mean to tempt him further. But I could not help myself. Instinctively, my arms curled up and linked behind his warm neck, pulling him down into the kiss. He groaned my name against my mouth, then pressed me deeper into the pillows.

I was suddenly, almost violently, delighted that I was still alive. If I had died, this would be a distant memory. This love I felt for him.

‘Meg,’ he managed, then disengaged himself, his hands on my shoulders. I had the feeling he was holding me at a distance, as though he did not trust me to stop. Or did not trust himself. ‘You aren’t strong enough for this. I don’t want to hurt you.’

‘You won’t hurt me,’ I whispered, and traced my hand along his cheek.

He turned his head and kissed my hand, his eyes half closed. ‘We can both hurt each other. More than you know,
mi querida
.’

I thrilled, hearing the loving words on his breath in Spanish, feeling his breath warm on my skin. Only a few minutes ago I had been cold, an empty shell lying on his bed, nothing but a body without breath or a soul. But now my spirit had returned. I was filled with restless love, this devouring flame that left me unable to turn my gaze away from his face. I did not ever want this moment to end.

Too soon he pulled away, sitting up and then coming to his feet. ‘It’s not right,’ he murmured, though I could see from his tense expression that he had been sorely tempted to continue. ‘I should tell the others. The Lady Elizabeth will need to be informed straight away. And your brother is deeply grieved . . .’

‘I know,’ I told him quietly. ‘I was there when Richard brought back my body. I saw and heard it all.’

Alejandro stared, coming back to the bed. As he looked down at me, I could see the shock and disbelief echoing inside him. ‘All?’

I nodded. ‘Every word.’

He went to the table, opening a book that lay there. With slow and careful deliberation, he ran a finger along some of the print, turned the page, then shook his head. ‘It makes no
sense,’ he muttered, speaking almost to himself. ‘I do not think you were dead, Meg. I do not know what happened to you, nor where your spirit went for the time when your body was cold. But it cannot have been death.’

I wrinkled my brow, unsure what he meant. It had felt like death to me, and indeed everyone else had thought so too. I had seen their faces, the horror and pity in their eyes, and Richard had carried me all the way from the circle to the house – he, of all of them, would have known if I was not dead. Yet he had told the Lady Elizabeth that a lightning strike had killed me, and here – I pulled up my bare feet and examined the painful scorch marks critically – was the evidence.

‘Why not?’

He had seen me looking at the blackened soles of my feet, and shook his head. ‘Oh, I do not doubt that you were struck by lightning – or some magickal spell that seemed like a bolt of lightning. But I do not agree that your death was not magickal. I believe it was very magickal indeed. Which is why your soul was not released after death, but lingered, staying close to your body.’ He turned another page, staring down at the book. ‘Yes, we were blind, thinking you gone for ever. But your soul knew it had not been meant to leave your body, but had been forced out by some vile magickal trick. When I replaced the crucifix about your neck, your soul was able to return to its rightful place.’

I sat up, shivering as I swung my legs out of bed and
touched the cold floor for the first time. The soles of my feet stung horribly. But I gritted my teeth and tried to ignore them.

‘What is that book?’ I demanded. ‘What have you been reading?’

‘Nothing,’ he said defensively.

‘If it’s nothing, then you won’t mind me seeing the title,’ I said, and almost smiled, remembering something similar he had said to me on the stairs at Woodstock once. That had been a secret note from William which I had been trying to hide from him. But this book was rather more serious – and not hidden well enough, to my mind. From what he had just said, it sounded to me like one of the books Master Dee had left with Richard.