Witchstruck (15 page)

‘Indeed, my lady. But you may not always be a prisoner. Nor poor.’

Elizabeth’s eyes widened at the astrologer’s bold assertions. Yet still she hesitated, a habitual caution in her face. ‘You have proof of this?’

‘Astrology is a slippery art,’ he admitted, and smiled at us wanly. ‘The charts are not always easy to decipher. But follow me, my lady, and I shall be glad to show you what I have discovered.’

John Dee went to the desk and unrolled a sheet of parchment covered in dense marks and symbols. A quartered square had been drawn across it in a spidery hand. Carefully, with great delicacy, the astrologer placed paperweights at its four corners to prevent the parchment from curling up, and set out two chairs beside the table.

He held his hand out to Elizabeth in courteous invitation. ‘Shall we sit, my lady?’

The two sat together at the desk, heads bent over the parchment, and I stood awkwardly behind the princess, unsure of my place in this secret meeting. Was I here as
chaperone
to the princess or as apprentice to the astrologer? A little of both, perhaps.

Over the princess’s shoulder, I examined the diagram spread out on the desk. So this was a horoscope. My heart leaped with excitement, for I had never seen one before. I had told Elizabeth I knew how to read the future from the movements of the stars, but my knowledge was scanty and only extended to what my aunt had told me of the night sky. These tiny markings and endless rows of mathematical calculations meant little to me. It was a skill of which I had no understanding.

Quietly, John Dee began to describe what he had seen in Mary’s horoscope, pointing to each crowded sector of the square as he spoke.

I listened with fascination to the ancient names of the planets and their rulers, where they stood in Exaltation or were at their Fall. I quickly grasped Dee’s explanations, and felt almost disappointed when he drew his comments to an end. I knew there was much to learn about this ancient art. Yet I dared not ask any questions, for I had seen Dee’s gaze rise to my face several times as he spoke and feared drawing any further attention to myself.

‘So you see,’ he concluded, ‘this chart for the Queen’s wedding contradicts itself. It tells me your sister is to have a child, who would be heir to the throne of England, and yet that child’s fate is crossed by these malevolent stars. I cannot be sure if that means an early death for the babe, or whether
the
birth itself will be hard and the child ultimately healthy. In which case, of course, you would lose your claim to the throne.’

Elizabeth stared down at the horoscope for a long while, her face very pale. ‘No, Master Dee,’ she said in the end, and shook her head vehemently. ‘I feel it deep down here,’ she whispered, laying a hand on her belly, ‘in my gut. I shall be Queen of England one day.’

John Dee sighed but did not contradict the princess. Instead, his gaze moved curiously to my face. ‘What say you, Mistress Goldenlocks?’ he asked me. ‘Where does your skill lie? Can you read this horoscope?’

‘No, sir.’

I shook my head but already I was looking at the chart again, trying to decipher its strange symbols.

‘Here,’ John Dee murmured, standing so I could take his seat. ‘Sit at the table, girl. Take a closer look at the chart and tell me what you see. What draws your eye?’

I sat down at his urging and looked at the chart. Slowly, I traced a finger across the figures. To the right of the lower quadrant, I paused on an odd symbol. ‘What is this, sir?’

‘The planet Saturn.’

‘And these?’ I ran my finger halfway up the chart and paused on two other symbols which had been drawn very close together, almost on top of each other. There was a key to the side of the chart, but it was all in Latin, and I did not
feel
confident enough to tease out the crabbed black lettering.

‘That is Jupiter conjunct the Moon,’ he told me.

My fingers began to tingle and I felt a sudden headache nagging behind my temples. ‘And are they not clashing? Saturn, I mean, with these other two?’

John Dee smiled. ‘You are right, Meg Lytton. They are ninety degrees apart, and form a square to each other.’

‘A square?’ Elizabeth sounded impatient. ‘Don’t speak in riddles, Master Dee. Tell me plain what this means.’

‘Saturn is ninety degrees from Jupiter, which on this chart conjoins the Moon,’ John Dee explained, showing her the symbols on the chart. ‘Jupiter paired with the Moon suggests a child, for the Moon is the planet of motherhood and Jupiter the planet of fertility and increase. As I told you, this pairing led me to believe that your sister must be with child. But with the maleficent Saturn forming a square to their conjunction, I cannot be sure of that child’s fate.’

Elizabeth’s eyes flashed. ‘Sir, is my sister to have a child or not?’

‘If she is,’ John Dee said hesitantly, staring at the chart, ‘the child may be stillborn. Or else the Queen herself may die during the birth.’

The princess stared at John Dee, her mouth slightly open, clearly taken aback by such a shocking suggestion. I
suspected
we were all thinking the same thing – that if the Queen were to die in childbirth, there would be no one to stand between Elizabeth and the throne.

She shuddered, then glanced at me as though for confirmation of what the astrologer had said.

‘What do you say, Meg?’

I laid my palm flat on the horoscope with its spidery symbols and numbers. It seemed to throb and pulse under my fingers as though alive. I closed my eyes and let my mind wander through what I had seen: the planets calling to each other across the chart, the tiny rows of numbers and Latin names, John Dee’s delicate handwriting.

I gasped as the answer burned itself into my brain, too incredible to speak aloud.

‘Well?’ Elizabeth prompted me impatiently.

‘The Queen will not die. The Queen is not even with child,’ I whispered, barely able to believe my own words.

‘But all the rumours at court—’ John Dee began.

‘It is a false pregnancy,’ I hissed, cutting off his voice. ‘Yes, the Queen will begin to bloat. Her monthly courses will stop and her breasts will swell. Then her doctors will tell the world Queen Mary is to be a mother and all the church bells will ring in celebration. But there is nothing in her womb, and there will be no birth when the time comes for her lying-in.’

Elizabeth’s hand gripped my shoulder painfully. ‘You are sure?’

John Dee shook his head, staring at me. ‘There is no way for her to be sure. Not from this chart alone.’

‘Let the girl speak for herself.’

Shakily, I lifted my hand from the horoscope and the room seemed suddenly darker. The candles flickered in the draught, casting long thin-fingered shadows across the chart.

My hand had stopped tingling. The power was gone. Yet Elizabeth was still waiting for my reply.

I hesitated, frowning at the incomprehensible tangle of symbols, no longer certain what I had seen. Yes, the future of England had revealed itself to me in a sudden dazzling flash of insight. But now the vision had faded, I was left blinded and unsure of myself, unwilling to pretend a knowledge I did not possess.

‘I . . . I am not sure,’ I admitted, avoiding John Dee’s sharp gaze. ‘Master Dee is right. He is more skilled in these matters, perhaps we should listen to him. I am sorry, my lady.’

Elizabeth made an angry noise under her breath, then snapped her fingers at me to rise. ‘Come, we must get back to the lodge before I am missed. This meeting has been a waste of my time.’ She looked coldly at the astrologer. ‘I shall not require your services again, Master Dee. You might as well return to London. I only pray the Queen does not learn that you have visited me.’

‘She will not even suspect, my lady. The stars are most propitious tonight for matters of great secrecy.’

John Dee bowed very low, and opened the door for the princess to leave. As I trailed out in her wake, his gaze did not leave my face. The great court astrologer ought to have been annoyed by my interference in his fortune-telling, yet he seemed more fascinated than angry.

‘Another time,’ Dee murmured, and I suspected he was addressing me, not the Lady Elizabeth.

TEN

A New Year Kiss

I WAS DREAMING
.

I knew that in my heart. Yet somehow the dream felt so real, I was still afraid. I could not quite shake off the illusion that the astrologer John Dee was in the room, that he was standing at the foot of my bed, watching me through the darkness.

Tell me, child, have you ever conjured the spirits of the dead and spoken with them?

I wanted to cry out ‘No!’ but my face had been stopped. With sand, or perhaps earth.

That was it: I was lying deep in a pit under the earth, my arms folded across my chest, a thin, coarse shroud barely covering my white body. I had been buried alive and John Dee was standing above me, staring down at my freshly dug, unmarked grave.

My hands scrabbled desperately at the soft, crumbling darkness around me. But it was no use. Dirt covered my face with its black whispering death. It choked my eyes, my ears, my mouth. I had not been buried alive. Dee had killed me, had come in the night and strangled me, and now he was trying to conjure my spirit, to speak with me and learn the secrets of the other world that lay beyond the gates of life.

A hand was shaking my shoulder. Dee had brought a spade. He had dug down to my poor strangled body and was attempting to resurrect me.

‘Meg!’ he was saying insistently. ‘Meg!’

My eyes flew open.

It was daylight and I was lying on my back, tangled up in my bedclothes, one arm flung out of the narrow cot as though reaching for something. I must have been lying on it, for as I moved, my whole arm tingled with pins and needles.

‘Ouch!’ I sat up, rubbing my numb arm as it came painfully back to life.

Blanche straightened above me with a sigh, shaking her head. ‘Time to get up, slack-a-bed. It’s Christmas Eve, and there’s much to be done.’

I stared at her stupidly. How had I overslept?

Blanche watched me struggle out of the tangled covers and begin hunting for my white cap. She shook her head, a tight little smile on her lips, clearly enjoying this heaven-sent opportunity to reprimand me for laziness.

‘You’ve missed Mass,’ she pointed out. ‘Our mistress has been up this past hour, and done her prayers. Though I can tell you, having to pray for the Queen and her unborn child stuck in both our throats today. By next Christmas that babe will be the new heir to the throne, and my dear mistress will be all but forgotten at court.’

The Queen’s pregnancy seemed to be all we ever talked about these days. I licked my fingers and tried to straighten
my
wayward hair. ‘I do not believe there will be a babe. The Queen is too old to bear a child.’

‘Well, we shall see what we shall see,’ Blanche muttered dismissively. ‘Now hurry. Just comb your hair, put on your oldest gown and come down to the kitchen. There’s a goose to be plucked, and dried herbs for the sauces to be cut and prepared. You cannot expect young Joan to help the cook on her own.’

When she had gone, I wearily splashed my face from the bowl, then dampened my unruly hair and combed it into some kind of submission.

Why had I dreamed of John Dee again?

For months now, ever since meeting him that night at the Bull Inn, the young astrologer had been creeping into my dreams. Sometimes I dreamed of conjuring the dead with him by the light of a single, tall candle. Other times the crabbed black symbols of his star charts would float weirdly before my eyes as I drifted into sleep.

There is power here. Fear too, but power
.

I was afraid of Dee, certainly. But not of the knowledge he possessed of astrology and the secret world beyond death. Of such hidden things I would be willing to learn more, if the opportunity was ever granted me. I still did not know how I had been able to read the meanings in the Queen’s horoscope, but if no baby came of this pregnancy, I would know for sure then that my power was true.

Alejandro knew of my yearning to learn more about astrology and he clearly disapproved of it. I had caught anger in his face that night at the Bull Inn, and a strong dislike for what we were doing there.

But Alejandro was a creature of the midday sun, of broad Spanish plains under the scorching heat of summer. He was a follower of the sword of Christ, the lightbearer. Such a man would have no time for the secrets of the night, for astrology and witchcraft and the spirits of the dead, or my childish nightmares of being buried alive.

I ran down to the kitchen. The oven was already smoking strongly, the rushes on the floor filthy with a good week’s grease and spilled food. Everywhere was a stench of burned oil and herbs, and all the doors and windows were standing open in the chill wintry air. Joan did not look up as I entered; she was hard at work scrubbing the burners clean. Besides, the simple-minded girl had barely a word to say to me these days, still suspicious of my witchery.

The cook was not much friendlier. With just a few terse words, he laid a limp, heavy goose across my arms and told me to pluck it.

I took it outside, sitting on a three-legged stool in the feeble winter sunshine, and wedged the dead bird between my skirted thighs, a bowl on the floor beside me to receive its feathers. One dull eye stared up at me accusingly as I dragged on its glossy white feathers, their quills fixed so
firmly
in the pale, pimpled skin beneath that my fingers were soon sore and aching.

‘Good morning.’

I shivered and glanced up as a shadow fell across me. It was Alejandro, still in his robes from this morning’s Mass, his silver cross hanging about his neck.

He looked down quizzically at the dead goose between my thighs. ‘Is this what you missed Mass for?’

‘I overslept,’ I told him, and threw another fistful of sharp-tipped white feathers into the bowl, not bothering to look up at him again.

Let him think me rude, I told myself crossly. I knew Alejandro disapproved of my magick, and it irked me. I was also aware of a secret frustration eating away at me, for we had spent many hours together without Alejandro ever once declaring his interest in me. Yet I knew he felt something, that there was an intimacy of a kind between us. Part of me almost hated the young Spaniard for his iron self-control, yet part of me wanted to discover what it would feel like to have him lose that control and kiss me. Not that Alejandro de Castillo would ever dare to kiss a girl, whatever provocation was offered. No, he was too fixed on becoming a priest and dedicating himself to the Catholic Church.