Witchfall (5 page)

‘
Donde esta la princesa?
’ he demanded hoarsely, peering about the empty apartment, then his watery eyes lighted on me and narrowed. An old memory seemed to click into place as the priest stared at me. His voice was slurred, yet still coherent enough to condemn me thrice over. ‘Wait,’ he continued in stilted English, ‘I remember you. You are the little witch from Woodstock.’

‘No, Father,’ Alejandro said hurriedly, ‘your illness has made you forget. The accusation of witchcraft was false, do you remember? This girl is innocent.’

Alejandro tried to lead him back to the door, but it was too late. The priest had my guilt locked into his head now.

‘No, I remember truly. This one is a witch.’ Father Vasco pointed a bony finger in my direction, his large emerald ring gleaming in the sunlight. ‘We burn witches in Spain.’

‘We burn priests in England,’ I countered, thinking of all the Protestants condemned to a hellish death since the arrival of the Spanish Inquisition.

But I was afraid. For the first time since a kitchen maid had accused me at Woodstock Palace, I knew how it felt to be exposed as a witch – only this time my accuser was no young girl, but an elderly priest revered by the Order of Santiago.

I lifted my own finger and pointed back at the old Catholic priest.

‘Forget,’ I commanded him, wiping the slate of the old priest’s mind. My voice shook, for I knew how vital it was to get this spell right. His word alone could see me brought before the Inquisition as a suspected witch. ‘Let no memory bind, let the past be blind, drive thought from your mind . . . and leave us!’

The priest had a weak mind, easily brought under enchantment. Caught up in my improvised spell, Father Vasco’s face emptied of all his cruelty and hatred. His hand dropped to his side. The old man turned and weaved unsteadily towards the door, leaving the princess’s apartments without another word or a backward glance.

‘You’d better go with him,’ I told Alejandro, ‘in case Father Vasco tumbles down the stairs without your guiding hand.’

But Alejandro did not move. He was looking at me. ‘Why did you do that?’

‘What did you expect me to do? Your master would have gone straight to the Inquisition. A witch in the princess’s service? What more reason would they need to confine the Lady Elizabeth to the Tower again, and drag me out to the gallows? I did what needed to be done, that is all.’

‘You had no “need” to use magick against Father Vasco. He is an old man, his memory is not what it was. You were never in any danger. I would only have had to explain to the Inquisition that the whole thing was a misunderstanding, and that would have been an end to the matter.’

I raised my eyebrows at the simplicity of his thinking. ‘And the Spanish would have believed you without question?’

‘You forget that I am Spanish too. Just because we are foreigners does not make us stupid.’

Too late, I saw how angry he was. He was still training to be a priest, after all, and to see me using magick on his own master must have hurt him deeply.

‘Forgive me,’ I stammered, catching at his arm as he turned to follow Father Vasco. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. I was only trying to protect the princess.’

‘You were trying to protect yourself, Meg,’ he corrected me, pulling away from my hand. He bowed as he left, but did not meet my eyes. ‘As you said, I must make sure Father Vasco reaches his room without accident, just as you had better tend your mistress in her sickness.’

I stared after him, my heart burning with grief.

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 as 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.’