Witchstruck (6 page)

At last we reached the edge of the silent, tumbledown palace with its gaping black casements and leaning turrets. I turned to thank him, knowing it was too dangerous for him to come any closer. Bedingfield’s guards would be patrolling the old palace grounds every hour.

Nonetheless, Malcolm insisted on accompanying me to within sight of the lodge.

‘I will see you safe inside before I leave,’ Malcolm said stubbornly, waving aside my whispered protest.

In silence, we walked another quarter of a mile across the unkempt lawns and halted near the stables, in a cobbled, weed-infested yard overlooked by the back windows of the lodge. The kitchen door was near at hand, and although there was no key to secure it, I knew it was unguarded, for the hounds slept there at night and would soon bark if an intruder tried to gain entrance that way. Since I often fed them scraps when the cook wasn’t looking, I knew the dogs would not bark at me. Though my cousin was a different matter.

Malcolm asked which was Elizabeth’s bedchamber, and seemed disappointed when I told him it was on the other side of the building, where Bedingfield’s guards tended to patrol most frequently.

‘Promise you will try to get us into the lodge one day soon,’ he whispered in my ear, ‘and I will leave.’

‘That’s not fair.’

He lowered his head and kissed me lightly on the mouth. ‘Promise me.’

I was flustered, remembering how much I had enjoyed his company as a child, following him about in a daze, my handsome older cousin.

‘I promise to think about it,’ I managed.

His smile was wolfish. ‘Very well,’ he said softly, and kissed me again, this time more lingeringly. Then he pulled
back
and told me goodnight before melting back into the shadows, hood drawn cautiously over his head.

I waited until Malcolm was out of sight, then turned to make my way across the yard to the kitchen door.

Catching a sudden movement at a casement window high above, I glanced up and recognized the dark profile at the glass.

Alejandro de Castillo, still awake at this late hour, had been watching me cross the yard.

What else had he seen?

Flushed and breathless, angry that the young Spaniard seemed to be spying on me, I pulled open the door and slipped into the kitchens with only a quiet word for the wolfhounds there.

Let him watch jealously from the shadows and report my loose behaviour back to the old priest, or even to Queen Mary herself in London. I did not care what the disapproving Alejandro de Castillo thought of me, so long as he believed me a loyal Catholic and no witch.

FOUR

Casting the Circle

BEING KEPT BUSY
with our new regime of daily prayers and meditations on the Catholic faith, it was another five days before I was able to send a note to my aunt, warning her of the arrival of the Spanish priests at Woodstock. Along with a coin from my meagre hoard, I gave it to the servant who had brought me William’s message and asked him to ride over to Lytton Park with it as soon as he could find an excuse to leave the grounds.

Not entirely trusting the man, I worded the message with extreme caution in case it fell into the wrong hands, and hoped she would understand. Elizabeth had stubbornly refused to miss our next meeting with my aunt. But she had at least suggested we could hold the ritual somewhere safer, beyond the patrolled grounds of Woodstock. Now all that remained was for us to slip away for an hour or two at dusk, returning before the princess was missed at evening prayers.

On the appointed day, I took early morning Mass with the princess in the decaying palace chapel.

We kneeled on the flagstones under the steady gaze of Alejandro de Castillo, who seemed almost more interested in my faith than in that of my mistress. Just visible through the latticed rood screen, Father Vasco blessed the wine and
raised
the Host, his muttered Latin incomprehensible.

It was all I could do not to stick my tongue out at the dark-robed Alejandro when he turned solemnly to offer me the blood of Christ.

Instead, I restricted myself to a dutiful ‘Amen’ and saw his lips twitch.

Late that afternoon, Elizabeth took to her bed with one of her sick headaches. I was called away from mending some household linen to attend her, and found the princess at the barred window of her room, already wrapped in a dark cloak and itching to be off. Blanche Parry, though deeply disapproving of Elizabeth’s interest in magick, played her part by distracting the guard outside the bedchamber with some pretence of hurting herself on the stairs. As soon as he had gone to help, Elizabeth and I hurried out of the bedchamber and into the small room opposite, whose window opened over a low-roofed outbuilding. I helped the princess through the window, then followed her, both of us climbing down to the ground as silently as we could. Then it was only a matter of slipping round the back of the ruined palace and into the woods.

We walked briskly through the chill of the dusk. Soon we came to the small copse known as Lady’s Wood. There, I prepared the ground for our meeting while Elizabeth looked on, clearly fascinated by my gestures and muttered incantations. I set out the candles for the ritual, then burned a bundle of dried thyme and sage, using the smoke to clear
the
circle of evil influences. When the place was ready, I found a quiet spot for us to hide amongst the trees.

Shortly afterwards, I heard hooves approaching at a walk and waited impatiently for the rider to come into view.

It was my aunt, riding a broad-backed ass through a glowing patch of moonlight. Aunt Jane slowed to a halt in the middle of the wood and sat listening, no doubt fearful of pursuit.

I stepped out from my hiding place between the dark trees.

At the sight of me, she dismounted and hurriedly led the beast away from the track.

‘I thought you were a ghost, standing there in the moonlight. You are sure you were not followed?’ my aunt asked anxiously. Once I had reassured her that the three of us were alone in the woods, she dropped a curtsey to the Lady Elizabeth, then hugged me. ‘I have missed you, my little Meg. Have you been well? Indeed, you look well enough. There’s new colour in your cheeks and’ – she pinched my arm playfully – ‘more flesh on your bones.’

‘We are expected to sit around all day at Woodstock, sewing or reading from the scriptures,’ I complained, and led them both to the secret place I had prepared in the copse. ‘Begging the Lady Elizabeth’s pardon, but it is no wonder women grow so fat at court, with nothing to do but idle each day away at their samplers.’

Elizabeth, who was as slim as a willow wand, merely
smiled
. She had heard my complaints before and I knew she sympathized, for the princess was an active young woman who loved nothing better in summer than to be out hunting or walking in the fresh air. Yet Sir Henry Bedingfield would not even permit Elizabeth to keep a horse at Woodstock.

We sat on the woodland floor in dappled moonlight, forming a rough kind of circle that I had marked with the four candles, and listened to the trees whispering above us, the rustle of small creatures in the undergrowth.

Quietly, I told my aunt of the old Spanish priest and his attendant, and the reason for their arrival at Woodstock, though I skirted any further discussion of Alejandro de Castillo. I did not want the listening princess to know how Alejandro made me feel whenever he raised his eyes to mine. I focused on my aunt instead, asking for news of my father – who was well, it seemed, and missing me more every day – and of my home, Lytton Park, where one of the chimneys had fallen in and would not be repaired until my impoverished father could find the money to pay for it.

I listened with interest to this talk of home, though Lytton Park already seemed a distant memory. I missed my father, but I had grown fond of the Lady Elizabeth, and the arrival of the Spanish priests had certainly changed the mundane routine of our lives.

My aunt was thinner than when I had last seen her a month ago. Her long yellow hair was wilder than ever, and there were ominous shadows like bruises under her eyes.
I
had seen sick women look like that before they died, and wondered with a sudden fear if my aunt’s health was failing. She would never tell me, of course, being the kind to suffer in silence, searching for a cure herself among her herbal remedies and magick arts.

‘Did you say the three-fold charm before I arrived?’ she asked.

I nodded. ‘Though I only cast the circle on the air. I did not want to disturb the ground. Will it be enough?’

She did not answer but looked around at the trees, their gently moving branches in the dappled moonlight, her expression distracted.

‘Did you hear that?’ she asked in a whisper.

I glanced at the Lady Elizabeth across the circle, but the princess merely shook her head, her dark eyes wide.

I replied cautiously, ‘I hear only the trees rustling and the rabbits in the undergrowth.’

‘I thought I heard . . .’ My aunt hesitated. ‘Well, it does not matter. The candles have not gone out. The circle is good, it will hold.’

I sat uncertain, remembering how I had been unable to sway the Spaniard’s will. When my aunt saw my hesitancy, she asked what was wrong. Briefly, I told her of my failure, leaving out everything I did not wish the Lady Elizabeth to hear.

‘Sometimes it falls that a man or woman is beyond even the most skilled witch to influence,’ Aunt Jane told me, and
I
could see she was concerned by my story but trying to comfort me. ‘In Spain, they know many ancient ways to avert magick. Does this priest bear a charm or talisman around his neck, or hidden about his person, that might weaken your powers or turn your spells aside?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never . . .’ I found myself stammering, and avoided the princess’s curious gaze. ‘I’ve never looked.’

My aunt thought for a moment, seeming not to have noticed my embarrassment. ‘A gift, from one witch to another, is the strongest kind of magick. I shall give you something before you go that may help strengthen your magick.’

‘Could Alejandro be the dangerous traveller you saw in your vision?’ I pressed her.

‘It is possible.’ Aunt Jane drew her hair down about her face, hiding her expression. ‘For now, cast the bones and let us see the future.’

Carefully, I took the bones out of their pouch. I rattled them in my cupped palms as I had often seen my aunt do, breathed my spirit over them and muttered a few words of power.

I had gathered the bones myself from the woods over the past few months – the spines, thighs and knuckle-bones of long-dead creatures – and hidden them under my bed at Woodstock. Cleaned and polished, the bones felt smooth in my hands, full of the creature-memories of their previous owners, the tiny scratchings and foragings among bracken, the constant fear of death.

‘Hurry,’ the Lady Elizabeth said impatiently. ‘We cannot be gone long or they will send the guards out after us.’

I threw the bones down between us with a rattling clatter. We all huddled forward, looking for the omens in the moonlight.

‘The arrow,’ I whispered, pointing to the thigh-bone of a bird tipped with another, set cross-wise.

My aunt nodded, staring. Her finger trembled as she touched the nearest knuckle-bone. ‘The singleton.’

‘The eyes that watch,’ I added.

‘And the folded arms of death,’ she interpreted the last placement, tracing the rabbit bones that had landed across each other.

I raised my head and stared at her. My breathing was rapid and shallow. This was my first time of reading the bones within a charmed circle, and it was hard to remain composed.

‘Whose . . .’ I felt the Lady Elizabeth’s gaze on my face and struggled to sound calm. ‘Whose death?’

‘The singleton’s,’ my aunt replied, looking over to the princess, her voice matter-of-fact, and began to show us how the signs worked.

‘The eyes that watch, over here, will send the arrow of Inquisition’ – she indicated the first sign I had seen – ‘to the heart of the singleton, and death will follow swiftly. See how close they lie? That means we do not have much time.’

‘But who is the singleton?’

‘One who walks alone.’ She met my gaze, and I could see no fear in her eyes. ‘The knuckle-bone points north. An unmarried woman.’

The Lady Elizabeth stiffened. She could not disguise the squeak in her voice. ‘Me?’

‘Or me,’ my aunt told her drily, and gathered up the bones, handing them back to me. I noticed that her hands did not tremble. ‘Or even young Meg.’

‘What does it all mean?’ the princess asked hoarsely. There was a fine sweat on her forehead.

Aunt Jane gave Elizabeth a half-smile, her thin lips just turning up at the corners. ‘This young Spanish priest at Woodstock, his may be the eyes that watch. Or they could be those of our neighbour, Marcus Dent.’

‘Marcus Dent?’ I frowned, and a cold shudder ran down my spine at the suggestion that a man as cruel as Master Dent might be aware of our moon rituals. I slipped the bones back into their pouch and tucked it inside my gown. ‘Why would he be watching us?’

My aunt gave a fierce bark of laughter without humour. ‘Marcus Dent is a dedicated Catholic and a ruthless witch-hunter. He is dangerous, believe me. We work our magick under his nose, and so far he has not suspected us. His interest in you, Meg, is what keeps him distracted from the truth. But Master Dent is no fool and one day—’

I looked at her in surprise. My aunt had stopped, her face suddenly shuttered, her lips closed tight.

‘One day, what?’

Aunt Jane shrugged, making a hurried gesture with her left hand to avert the sin of a heart-lie, and I knew she would never tell me what she had been going to say.

‘One day you will either have to marry Marcus Dent or face the consequences of refusing him,’ she finished flatly. ‘That is all.’

I did not understand what she meant by ‘face the consequences’, and did not like to press the matter any further, for my aunt had a bitter temper when crossed. Besides, if the bones spoke truth and we were under suspicion, it would be wise to discontinue our full moon sabats for a while. Which meant that this might be our only meeting for months. It would be horrible to end it on an argument.