The Witch (The Witch Trilogy Book 1)

by Cheryl Potter

  Marsden weighed the compact parcel in his hand then untied the silken wrappings. It was a belt; intricately punched leather studded with silver eyelets and a richly worked buckle of chased silver. Holding the buckle he let it uncoil and ran his fingers appreciatively along the leather. He looked up into Cecilia Aldrigge’s glittering eyes.

  ‘Bought on your husband’s account?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘All that I had is his,’ she said huskily.

  ‘On his account nevertheless,’ he insisted.

  She swallowed hard, aware of his dark potency and her own arousal. ‘Let us settle the account tonight, after it is done,’ she urged. But she knew her will could not match his, did not even want it to.

  ‘Now,’ he commanded, kicking the closet door shut behind him. He seized her shoulder and flung her round so that she sprawled across the dresser upsetting combs and perfumes. Snatching up one elegant bottle, he poured musk oil into his palm and rubbed it into her buttocks. Then he brought the beautiful thong hard down on her.

  Marsden lifted the curtain from the coach window and glanced up at the overhanging storeys of Bishopsgate. His gaze lingered for a moment on a pipe-smoking trollop who was peering over a balcony rail at him. Then a cloud of pipe-smoke wiped her from his sight and consciousness.

  The coach reeled around the corner, spraying filth as the wheels jolted through the street sewer. It swerved to avoid the drunken antics of torch-bearing apprentices, then took the road along the old city wall.

  Dropping the curtain, he leaned back into the velvet seat, and smiled. He had gulled them all – the physicists, the astrologers, the mathematicians, the physicians; the flower of English intellect seeking to harness magic with their science; searching with the naivety of children for bridges between the seen and the unseen, for the knowledge that would secure their worldly ascendancy. How simple it had been to gain acceptance and respect; how contemptibly simple to insinuate himself into the company of the rich and influential.

  Doctor John Pearson had been his key. He recalled with satisfaction their first encounter at the Crown tavern in St Paul’s churchyard. After weeks of patient waiting, he happened to be sitting by a window when the doctor and a half-dozen others of the fraternity came in to shelter from a rainshower.

  Thinking their conversation about levitation in the African tribes too rarified for the other patrons of the house, they had spoken freely on the subject until the listener by the window intruded upon their discussion with the suggestion that far from being the preserve of ascetics and far-flung tribes, the science of levitation could be mastered by any mind with a modicum of intelligence.

  The impudence of his claim had hooked them. They had challenged him to back his claim; had watched with melting scepticism as, with reluctance overcome, he had with soft words induced the potboy to lie precariously across the curved tops of two chairs – one under his ankles, the other under his head. Then with calculated nonchalance he had retired to his window seat, inviting the doctor to withdraw the supporting chairs.

  And as the last chair was eased out, leaving the lad suspended against a backdrop of flames from a well-stoked fire, there had been cries of disbelief from all round the tavern.

  Despite their clamours for more, he had been careful to leave them wanting. It would have been easy to cure the landlord’s tic, to fill their minds with conjured images. Easy too, to have blown the impression of himself as a mystic possessing coveted knowledge and be seen as no more than a fairground magician.

  He had left them with appetites whetted, assuming a reticence which was only overcome by Dr Pearson’s most ardent requests to meet him at a Cornhill coffee house the following morning. It had taken many such meetings and much encouragement on the doctor’s part, to persuade Matthew Marsden to put himself and the secret knowledge he had acquired during many years of travel, at the disposal of the Sons of Solomon. He had manipulated the doctor with the same subtle cunning he used in making love to a woman – making himself first desirable, then indispensable.

  The coach swung into Basinghall Street with a clatter of hooves, past the embers of a street fire. Marsden adjusted the hang of Cecilia’s silver-buckled belt and put on his plumed hat.

  He had made it his business to become acquainted with the history of the Sons of Solomon. Despite their claims of ancient lineage, of direct descent from the brethren of the Rosie Cross, they had shallow roots, being founded in the unsettled years before the Civil War by one Elias Ashmole and a band of likeminded idealists. They drew inspiration from the Rosicrucian quest for lost knowledge, and took their structure from French and Scottish Freemasonry. They dealt in speculative mysticism, revelling in the secrecy – and élitism – of their society. He knew that they were a conceited band, that their goals were hopelessly idealistic. He knew too that their funds were substantial and their influence great.

  Power and wealth. It was a fruit asking to be picked.

  He had haunted taverns and brothels, gathering information about key figures in the society, especially the master-general, Sir Jeremiah Palmer. And the fruits of his labour were a gratifying picture of personal weakness.

  The coach hugged a wall round into Masons Alley, then eased through the Temple gateway and moved slowly across the cobbled forecourt to the outer doors of the great building.

  Marsden waited for the coachman to lower the carriage step, then brushed past the obsequious man on to the shadowed cobbles.

  As the coach veered back towards the alley, a torch-bearer and liveried herald ushered him up the steps, through an entrance hall and into the cool darkness of an anteroom.

  ‘The appointed hour is near at hand, initiate,’ scolded the herald, tugging off Marsden’s square-toed shoes and relieving him of cloak and jacket and hat. ‘We may not suffer the master to wait, on pain of‒’ The reverberating chimes of a clock silenced him.

  On the twelfth strike Marsden, led by the bearer of light, moved towards the great doors of the inner temple and deliberately struck the carved wood three times. No sooner had the torchbearer quenched his flame, than the doors began to arc inwards and apart. He waited for them to complete their course, then stepped into the unnaturally quiet temple.

  Out of the hush came the tinkling chime of bells and all at once the covers were whipped off a dozen lamps, filling the temple with a phosphorescent glow. Behind him, the great doors ground shut unaided. Ahead, on a raised throne behind an altar, sat the master Sir Jeremiah Palmer, wearing rich blue robes and flanked on each side by a burning candle. The air was heavy with incense and a star, hanging above the throne, twirled on its thread, flashing with reflected light.

  Marsden passed under an arch bearing the Greek inscription:

  γυώθι σεαυνόυ

  and wryly wondered how many Sons of Solomon Knew Themselves, as well as he had come to know them.

  ‘Who is the stranger in our midst?’ demanded the master. ‘Come forth and show thyself.’

  As Marsden walked barefoot across the mosaic floor, the master descended the steps of the throne to stand between him and the altar.

  ‘Who enters the Temple of Solomon?’ intoned the master.

  ‘A man with many secrets,’ answered a voice from out of the shadows, ‘a man worthy of adoption by the Brotherhood.’ It was Pearson.

  ‘Your name, stranger?’ asked the master, dully.

  ‘Matthew Marsden, your worship,’ he declared, prostrating himself and kissing the master’s bared foot.

  ‘Are you, Matthew, the son of Marsden, willing to accept the ways of the brethren, to stint nothing in the furtherance of our aims and maintain our secrets?’ asked the master.

  ‘I am willing,’ he answered, bracing himself as a cold foot pressed down on his neck.

  ‘Then know that the reward for indiscretion is death,’ said the master. ‘Know too that from the moment you entered the great doors, your bared neck was in mortal danger. Now know that the road to initiation is not for the faint-hearted, it is a testin
g one and dangerous. Are you willing to take that road?’

  Face pressed against the cold floor, Marsden loudly assented. And at once the force on his neck was removed. Hands lifted him to his knees and dragged him to the altar, while a lone contralto voice sang, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy: Lord God of Sabaoth; Heaven and earth are full of the Majesty: of Thy Glory ...’

  For the benefit of the neophyte, the master lifted each of the items on the altar, revealing the meaning of each. An open Bible – the Volume of the Sacred Law – the symbol of light above; the Square for duty and moral conduct, the light within; the Compasses for fraternity and services to mankind, the light around.

  ‘Come to know thyself,’ boomed the master, ‘control thyself, and make thyself noble; for by wisdom and strength and beauty will the temple of mankind be created‒’

  Marsden looked but did not listen. He saw the crabbed features of Sir Jeremiah Palmer impassioned with noble sentiment and imagined the pained cries of sodomized boys – there were few secrets too closed for the seedy underworld of the city. There was always someone, somewhere, who knew something at a price.

  ‘That the deepest secrets of nature may shine through the darkness and uncertainty,’ ejaculated the master, closing his eyes in ecstasy. ‘The Great Alcahest, by some known as the Philosopher’s Stone; the Elixir, the fount of immortality; and the Sight by which all things are known....’

  ‘Oh Lord, save Thy people; and bless Thine heritage‒’ urged the precentor.

  ‘Govern us; and lift us up forever‒’ answered the brethren.

  And Marsden made obeisance to the master, received the rules of fellowship and swore upon the Sacred Volume to maintain faith with the society or gladly forfeit his life.

  They gave him the Secret Word, and the name ascribed to the left pillar of the porch of the Temple of Solomon, the whispered word, Boaz. And in return, he drew the palm of his left hand along the ceremonial blade and let three times three drops of blood fall into the Precious Flask.

  He watched the rich darkness of his blood wind around the neck of the translucent bottle; watched it coat the inner walls, then drain into the murky pool beneath and was fascinated by the thought that by that simple act he had become blood-brother to so many high-minded, respected and wealthy men; to intellectuals and sophisticates ... to fraudsters, sexual deviants and at least one whose hands were stained by murder.

  ‘But the true secret,’ droned the master, linking his bony forefinger around the first joint of Marsden’s, and breathing rank breath at him, ‘is that which eternally surrounds you, yet is seen by none although it is there for all eyes to see.’

  The precentor cried fervently, ‘Oh Lord, let Thy mercy lighten upon us.’

  And as the brethren answered with the final verse of the Te Deum, Marsden mouthed with them the ingrained words: ‘Oh Lord, in Thee have I trusted; let me never be confounded.’ But the lord he addressed was not theirs. And he knew that one day that would surely give him mastery over them all. But for now he was content to play the humble apprentice, to abide by their childish rules. It pleased him to imagine how he would taunt them with glimpses of his art; how he would deceive them and extract full purchase from every last crumb of the knowledge he had gleaned from simple women like Mother Sutton and Kate.

  Unable even to feign humility, he watched the master repair to the steps of the throne, then proclaim, ‘In virtue of the power which I have received from the founder of our order, and by particular grace of God, I hereby confer upon you Matthew, son of Marsden, the honour of being received as a Son of Solomon.’ He sealed the ceremony with three strikes of his gavel, then sitting down, smiled grotesquely and said, ‘Your trials have been many, my son. Take your ease now, reclothe yourself in mind and body, for the Temple ball awaits.’

  Marsden lay in a richly furnished retiring-room, his boots propped carelessly on embroidered pillowcases. He drifted on the warmth of a fire perfumed with sandalwood, idly counting the ticks of the mantel clock.

  Cecilia would be at the ball; hungry glances beneath her easy elegance and savoir-faire – chastened glances. His fingers found the lacy garters presented to him by the deputy masters after the initiation; garters for the mistress of an accepted one. He twirled them around his fingers and his languid features twisted wryly. Cecilia would expect him to choose her, then her ladyship was wont to expect ... she still had much to learn.

  A sudden creak from a book-lined wall, jarred him from his torpor. He snatched the blade from his boot and watched as the middle section of bookcase swung into the room. In the opening stood a woman carrying a flickering candle. Through the folds of a diaphanous robe he could plainly see the ample outline, the darkness of nipples and pubes. Only the face was concealed beneath the enigmatic smile of a mask and a tousle of flame-red hair.

  Marsden folded his fist around the blade and slid warily from the bed. The woman set her candle on a polished dresser and turned to close the panel behind her. ‘I am sent to serve,’ she whispered, standing with her back to the fire. ‘They call me Comfort.’

  ‘By the brethren?’ he snapped. When the masked face inclined towards him, he snorted derisively and beckoned her towards the bed. ‘Then comfort me, madam.’

  She nodded again, but moved away from the bed towards a drum table set with decanter and glasses. He watched as she poured a generous measure of brandy, and offered it to him, then he clamped his hand around her wrist and jerked her on to the bed causing the dark spirit to slop over the coverlet. She gave a surprised choke but with a deft turn of her head managed to elude the hand which snatched at her mask.

  ‘Not until I know your true identity, sir,’ she chided.

  ‘If you are sent,’ he said, winding a finger in her fiery hair, ‘you will know who I am.’

  ‘Humour me, sir,’ she breathed, ‘it is the way‒’

  The bed bounced as he went to the decanter and refilled the fluted glass. ‘Comfort.’ He smelt the liquor pensively. ‘A rare name for a whore.’

  The mask jolted round to face him. ‘You are privy to the name of many, sir?’ she asked demurely. He gave a short laugh of appreciation, then drained the glass.

  ‘Permit me to propose a game,’ he said, watching her provocative gyrations against the spiral bed-post. ‘We each invent an identity for the other, the winner to be the one whose portrait is most like.’

  ‘And the prize?’ she asked with interest.

  ‘To the victor, the terms of engagement.’ Smiling grimly, he moved to a shuttered window, opened it and looked out across Basinghall Street to the leaded lights of the Guildhall.

  ‘Your accent,’ ventured a soft voice behind him, ‘makes me doubt that you are a full-blooded Englishman.’

  He shrugged. ‘Whence would you have me come?’

  ‘Oh,’ she replied carefully, ‘you, sir, have adventured the world over, but I would say you have the blood ... of the Romans in your veins.’

  He glanced distractedly at her, disturbed by her accuracy, but even more disturbed by a solitary figure standing in the street below. ‘Then why do I have an English name?’ he asked coldly. He heard the masked woman’s rippling laugh; saw the other woman in the street throw back her hood then turn her moon-silvered face up towards him. And suffered a stabbing pain in his head – a hurt so intense that he clutched his temples in dread.

  ‘Who am I?’ he burst savagely.

  ‘Ask the shepherdess,’ murmured the woman. ‘Ask her – she’s down there, she knows....’

  Stifling a scream of fury, he hurled himself at the bed. But the masked woman had slipped away to the bookcase, was already pulling the false panel to behind herself. His fingers caught the edge of the closing door – his nails tore and splintered as he wrenched. But the fleeing woman had the better leverage and as the panel clicked into position, his fingers were trapped. Growling with pain, he prised the crushed tips out and began throwing books aside in a frenzied bid to force the door open. But it had been built to open into the room only. It
was fast in a perfect recess – without a hinge in sight. The redhead’s escape was secured.

  He tore across to the window, searching the street for signs of Kate. Finding that she too had vanished, he drew back his clenched fist and with manic force, punched his arm through a small pane. As his bloodied wrist flopped down against the frame outside, he pressed his face against the glass, and howled with frustration.

  And from the corridor outside his door, a small voice urged, ‘Brother Marsden, rouse yourself sir! The festivities await!’

  Part 4: Ignis

  Le sang du juste a Londres sera faute,

  Bruslez par fondres de vingt trois le six

  The blood of the just shall be dry in London,

  Burnt by the fire of three times twenty and six

  Nostradamus

  Fire ...

  Three weeks of furtive searching, of underworld enquiry and coining of palms, had yielded nothing but a string of goose-chases. And the more shadows he tried to grasp, the more her moonlit face haunted him: ‘Ask the shepherdess, she knows‒’

  She knows.

  He, who had made himself master of fates other than his own, could not abide the thought that she had it in her power to destroy him. He had no appetite for food, or sleep, or even the musky Cecilia. He desired only to destroy his tormentor. And the longer she eluded him, the more consuming was his hatred.

  Night after night he started awake in Cecilia’s bed, choked with the old dream of her, naked on Blackwood Top, arms upstretched towards the dawning sun, the cowered form crouched beneath her, drenched in her blood.

  The fire alone cut across his obsession. Cecilia’s prim maid Agnes broke the news as she combed her mistress’s hair, stealing glances in the mirror at him, as he lay sprawled over the uncurtained bed. ‘Never seen the like!’ she gushed, hair-pins trapped between her lips. ‘Fish Street no more than a heap of cinders, Thames Street and the Steelyard ablaze, the very church stones catching, they’re so parched with drought!’