Witchrise (23 page)

‘Whatever you say, sir,’ Richard replied under his breath, glaring at the closed door.

I laughed to myself. They were like two cockerels, each trying to outstrut the other to attract the attention of a hen. While the hen, I thought grimly, knew that there was a fox at the door . . .

Taking a deep and calming breath, I took up my position on the sunny floor of the bright, east-facing room and closed my eyes.

‘
Aspicio!
’

Almost at once it was broad daylight and I was flying so low I could almost have brushed the tops of the trees. Water flashed by below me, catching my eye. The River Thames, broadening with lush meadows on either side, dotted with skiffs and sculls, tiny boats insignificant against its deep rolling current.

Houses sprawled below me then, thatched roofs gathered tightly together in clearings and beside bright streams. Suddenly a high wall blocked the way, looming darkly ahead, and when I cleared it, my stomach lurching with a sickening flutter, I knew this to be the city of London. Narrow lanes, overhanging buildings, filth in the gutters, and people everywhere, ants filling the city, light and shadow following one another every few yards as the sun streamed down between buildings.

The air lifted my hair, and my body turned, shifting lower as my destination drew nearer. The world creaked and swung, bringing me gently to earth.

I was standing on the corner of a busy city street, facing a row of market stalls clustered about a high wooden cross, most ornately and beautifully carved. Beyond the stalls the way sloped down towards the river, where a great building stood on the bank, tall pennants fluttering in the warm breeze.

That must be Whitehall, a palace I had never visited but where the court often resided in the winter. To my left, an alley cut between cramped buildings, dropping into deep shadow, with coarse linen shirts and petticoats strung out of the casements to dry. People passed me like water flowing round a rock in the stream, blank-faced as though they could not see me – which was indeed the case, I reminded myself – going about their business in the sunshine.

At that moment two men turned into the alley, talking quietly together, and I caught the name, ‘Master Dent.’

I fell in behind the two men. Soon they led me to a narrow building propped precariously against its neighbours, its painted exterior peeling, foul-smelling mud shored up against the entrance.

Stepping over the mud, they pushed the door open, and I followed them inside the house, drifting silent as a ghost through the dark, high-ceilinged rooms.

Through another doorway, I found myself in a crowd of evil-looking men, sitting about playing dice or drinking from cracked tankards while two skinny boys entertained them on a pipe and tabor.

The men I had followed paused, looking about the smoky chamber. ‘Where is Master Dent?’ one of them asked, a tall man with thick red hair.

‘Downstairs. With the gentlemen.’

The red-haired man looked at his friend. ‘Shall we go down?’

‘I’m not going into that rats’ nest.’ He spat on the floor. ‘Not with that Scottish heathen he keeps down there.’

‘She can’t do you no harm. Not gagged like that.’

But the man shook his head. ‘Freeze a man to death with her eyeballs, she could. And what about the other women?’

‘Come on, damn you. This message won’t keep.’

Scottish heathen.

The red-haired man looked uncomfortable as he pushed between the tables and peered through a doorway. Floating behind him, I could see dark narrow stairs leading down into candlelight.

So that was where he was holding Cecilie. There was a large cellar space below the house, murky and damp this close to the river, and thick with cobwebs.

‘Master Dent?’

A door creaked open and a man looked out. It was the handsome Marcus, not the grim-faced man with the dead white eye and the terrible scars. The shock of seeing him again almost stopped my heart. I had tried to prepare myself for it, but I still felt sick. Even though I knew none of them could see me, it was still terrifying to be standing face to face with my enemy in that confined space.

Dent’s eyes narrowed. ‘You have news?’

Nervously the man dragged a folded paper from his pouch. ‘One of the boys intercepted this on its way into Hatfield a few days ago, sir. The messenger got clean away.’

Dent took the paper and straightened it out. His lips drew back in a snarl. ‘From Master John Dee. You see his mark there, the triangle?’ He shook his head. ‘The rest is in code, like the others. Damn him.’

‘Aye, master, we could not make head nor tail of it.’

‘The games these traitors play . . . Well, I’ll look at it later. I have not yet given up hope of deciphering their absurd codes.’ He stuffed the letter into his own pouch, then looked at the man. ‘You may go.’

‘Yes, Master Dent.’

The man vanished the way he had come. I remained there, looking directly into Marcus’s false face and loathing him with all my being.

‘Who is it, Dent?’ a man’s voice called from within the room, deep and impatient.

Marcus, who had hesitated on the threshold, frowning into the shadows, almost as though he could sense my presence as John Dee had done, swung back into the room. ‘Nothing important, my lord.’ His cheerfulness sounded forced. ‘Come, drink up. Then I shall show you the witch as I promised.’

Then he closed the door in my face. I smiled grimly. Plain wood could not keep me out, however thick.

In my ghostly form, I pressed against the closed door and was instantly inside the room. A candlelit table greeted me, with three men about it. Marcus was seating himself at the table again, reaching for his wine cup. I recognized Bishop Bonner at once, though he was out of place in such humble surroundings. The other man, I realized with a thudding heart, was none other than Miguel de Pero, head of the Spanish Inquisition here on English soil, priests notorious for their cruelty and merciless hunting down of heretics, sinners and those who dabbled in the black arts.

I averted my eyes from that dark face with its hooded beak of a nose, unable to forget how he had tortured me for hours at Hampton Court. I had hoped never to see him again. Yet here he was, in the company of my greatest enemy, Marcus Dent. Though there was a rightness about their association, for both men were steeped up to their necks in foulness.

The cellar room was dank, but some effort had been made to make it homelier. The walls had been covered with a dark patterned fabric, a small fire burned steadily in the grate, and a pewter dish of nuts had been set on the table. Alongside it I saw papers and maps they had been studying, and what looked like a list of names.

My back to the door, I tried to approach the table, but something held me back.

Had Dent enchanted the room so this meeting could not be spied upon? I struggled against the protective barrier in vain. No doubt he could not set an effective spell elsewhere in the house, for too many men were freely coming and going upstairs. But here, in his private chamber below the house, it seemed he was intent on keeping spies at bay.

But I was able to listen, even if their voices were muffled, as though coming from a great distance away.

Bonner turned to Marcus Dent, fingering the creased list of names. ‘How long before these men and women can be accused of witchcraft?’

‘Allow me free rein, my lord, and I can have them marked for death within a few days of their arrests.’

‘I deal in heresy myself. Though I have known a few cases of witchcraft. But some of these heretics are very hard to pin down. They conceal their prayer books. They lie to my men when they are brought in for questioning. They go to Mass like everyone else.’

‘As do witches.’

Bonner shrugged, his double chin quivering. ‘It is hard, sometimes, to find a reason to arrest these scoundrels more than once. English law is too lax, I find. Though when a heretic has been rooted out and condemned, I make every effort to bring him back into the church before he burns – there is always time to save a man’s soul.’ He cracked a nut and scooped it out with his fingers. ‘Do you not feel the same about your witches, Dent?’

Dent was smiling thinly, his cold eyes flicking from de Pero to Bonner, assessing each man in turn. ‘My lord, I can assure you that a condemned witch never truly repents of her sins, whatever cries and prayers she may utter when she stands upon the gallows. Never. Such protestations of innocence are entirely false. It is not in a woman’s nature to seek absolution.’

De Pero shook his head at this. ‘A witch is a tool of the Devil. She should burn, not hang.’

‘I must agree with you there,
señor
,’ Marcus said swiftly, turning to the Spaniard. ‘But it is not easy to change English law. Perhaps if his lordship were to approach the Queen on this matter . . .?’ A witch in England had to be hanged, under the law. But Marcus always preferred to see his victims burn rather than hang, and if heresy could be asserted as well as witchcraft, then the sentence was death by burning.

Bishop Bonner looked doubtful. ‘The Queen would shrink from such a painful duty, ordering the burning of her own sex.’

‘Yet you have condemned women heretics to the bonfire before now, and the Queen has not refused
their
executions.’

‘Her Majesty quite rightly views heresy as the most grievous sin of all. The fire purifies the heretic and is a just punishment for those who deny the Catholic faith, both male and female. Nonetheless, you make a good point, Master Dent. I shall put it to the Queen next time I am at court. Witches to burn rather than hang!’ Bonner laughed, reaching for another nut, and the other two joined in. ‘Yes, that has a righteous ring to it.’

My stomach churned at their callous laughter. But I had learned something useful: Marcus was hoping to work secretly for Bonner and de Pero, drumming up victims for the hangman when they had escaped the bonfire.

I shuddered, recalling how Alejandro had accidentally caused the death of a Spanish woman in his father’s employ, being a young child and unaware what an idle comment could do. Then the woman had cursed him as she died, swearing his wife would die in childbirth. It was hard, at that moment, not to sympathize with the poor woman.

‘Well, I must say, Master Dent, I am glad you approached us.’ Bonner flicked the paper before him. ‘This is an impressive list of credentials. You claim to have hunted down every witch in Warwickshire, is that not so?’

‘All but one, my lord,’ Dent said bitterly.

The bishop looked at him sharply. ‘You must give us the witch’s name. De Pero here will order her arrest, I promise you.’

‘I . . .’ Dent ran a finger under his collar as though it sat too tight about his neck. ‘I fear I cannot give you her name, my lord.’

‘Cannot?’

‘It is on the tip of my tongue. Wait . . . No, no, it’s gone. I cannot . . . In truth, I do not know it. Her name, that is.’ Dent downed his cup of wine, then sat drumming his fingers violently on the table, staring at nothing. His voice was clipped. ‘You must forgive these fits and starts, my lord. I will catch her one day . . . you can be certain of that.’

I grinned in amazement as I realized that my silencing-spell on Marcus Dent – my hastily wrought, homespun spell last spring after our confrontation in Woodstock village – was still in place, providing an effective gag on the witchfinder’s mouth and that of his men. He could not name me publicly as a witch. Nor denounce Elizabeth as my protector.

But my burst of triumph did not last long.

‘You must come and meet my man Dee,’ Bonner exclaimed, clapping him on the back. ‘He is an astrologer. Knows things. He will get the name out of you soon as winking.’

‘John Dee?’ Marcus repeated, a sly look on his face.

‘That’s the fellow.’ Bonner’s eyes narrowed on his face. ‘You know him?’

‘We were at university together.’

‘Oxford? Later than me, I expect. What college?’

‘Trinity.’

‘Ah. . . you would know young Christopherson then, I’ll be bound.’

‘Not well, though he and John Dee were very close in their first year.’

Bonner glanced briefly at de Pero. ‘Christopherson went into the Church like me. Very pious man. He’ll go far under Queen Mary.’ He looked back at Marcus. ‘But you see, I already have a man in my employ who knows how to get at the truth – John Dee can crack a man open like one of these nuts, and all with words. Words and mathematics! I don’t know how he does it.’

Marcus seethed. ‘You do not suspect your tame conjuror of using the dark arts himself?’

‘What, Dee?’ Bonner shrugged, as if this was old news. ‘Well, even if he is, and I’ve seen no evidence of that, it was the Queen herself who placed him in my household. I would be a fool to question an appointment of Her Majesty’s making.’

Marcus looked thunderstruck. ‘
The Queen?
’

‘She did it to keep the astrologer out of her sister’s path, if you ask me. And why not? A dangerous association, that. John Dee is out of favour officially. Caught meddling where he should not. But privately, the Queen still sees him. Grants him funds for books, that kind of thing. He has some strange idea about setting up a library of scientific study.’ Bonner glanced about for a napkin, then wiped his mouth on his sleeve. ‘But John Dee is not my concern at the moment. No, I am determined to sweep this country clean of those who will not bow the knee to Rome, particularly recalcitrant priests of Cranmer’s persuasion. If you can help me with my mission, Master Dent, we shall deal well enough together.’

Marcus rolled up the list and slipped it inside his doublet. ‘I will help you and Señor de Pero condemn these heretics, my lord. That I swear.’

The three men stood and drank a toast to their success.

Bonner shook Marcus’s hand. ‘Well, I shall leave the rest to our Spanish friend here. I have much to do and must take my leave.’

Marcus frowned. ‘But my lord, will you not stay to admire my greatest prize? A true seer, not some mud-witted witch but a creature of Satan, with powers of divination that make your John Dee look like a child. And no danger to any of us, for she is kept chained and gagged day and night.’