Lilian's Spell Book

by Toby Litt

  ‘Discoveries,’ he said. ‘Amazing discoveries. I think we know quite a few more of Lilian’s secrets.’

  ‘Were they in her book?’ I asked.

  ‘Her book!’ he said, almost dancing he was so excited. ‘I think the whole world is in her book, somewhere or other. And other worlds, too. Heaven and hell.’

  I thought for a moment about going to fetch Peter, but I had questions I couldn’t ask Mr. Gatward if Peter was there.

  ‘Tell me,’ I said.

  Chapter 37.

  Mr. Gatward came and sat down.

  ‘It all ties together – money, power, religion, magic. It’s a story with everything. I’m sure you know quite a bit about Lilian’s time already – Protestants and Catholics. Nowadays we tend to think about detailed theological questions as things that concern other people.’

  ‘Not in this house,’ I said. ‘Not any more.’

  ‘Another visit from Father Trovato?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Mrs. Willows told me. He always stops in there to buy mints. Anyway, when Elizabeth the First came to the throne, she wanted to end all that religious strife – or at least calm it down, so it wasn’t all that people thought about. But, as time passed, and there were more and more Catholic plots against her – remember, she’d come to power after the death of her sister, Mary – as time passed, she got tougher and tougher on the Catholics. There was a whole background to this in Europe. Who we were friendly with, as a nation, and who Elizabeth the Virgin Queen might end up marrying. One of the reasons for the Armada was to get this Protestant off the throne, but that comes later. As Elizabeth started to realize that she couldn’t appease the Catholics, she began to punish them for not obeying the religious laws she’d set up. This was the Act of Uniformity, 1559. I know dates can be a little abstract, but imagine that William Jonson, Lilian’s father is twenty-nine. He’s been married to the very young Margerye for a couple of years. Up until now, he’s been at court. Mary’s deeply Catholic court. But with the new queen thinking completely the opposite to Mary on every important subject, most important how you get into heaven and avoid going to hell – with a court full of possible enemies, William moves to the country and builds the Old House. He starts to have children, or he tries. In 1561, there’s a stillborn boy. Then, the next year, Lilian is born. Great rejoicing, I’m sure. But life is getting harder for Catholics. The Anglican Church is established. A few years later, it becomes treason to call the Queen a heretic – which is what Catholics think. How can you not think someone’s a heretic when they think the Pope’s the Antichrist? Margerye gives Lilian two brothers, Emanuell, good Catholic name, and Peter. But Emanuell dies aged fifteen. We can only guess what impression that makes on Lilian. Remember, they hardly ever left the house and grounds. We have no records they went anywhere at all, apart from William going into London on business. Most of the life Lilian can remember, they’ve been in a kind of religious quarantine. They wouldn’t go to the local church, of course. They have a priest, and the priest says mass for them in the house. The Old House – but that burns down in 1580. We never knew why before. Maybe now, though, we have the answer.’

  ‘You have the answer,’ I said. I’d meant it as a bit of praise, but Mr. Gatward thought I was telling him to hurry up.

  ‘One of the things about not going to church, not being Protestant, was that you had to pay large fines – month after month – and if you didn’t, they would take away a whole chunk of your property. And, of course, the Catholic Church was sending Jesuits into the country on secret missions, to convert people. Priests were being hunted. So, that’s why when he built the New House, William had them make a Priests’ Hole. It’s also probably around this time, perhaps under cover of constructing the house, that he has the underground chapel built. This wasn’t an architectural folly. This was a matter of life and death. They were living in fear of spies, hiding in their woods, reporting on them for observing Mass. Can you imagine them, crawling through the tunnel into the Chapel one or twice a day? I’m not sure if it even had an outside entrance, back then. It was probably completely underground. And they dug out a crypt, too. But I’ll come back to that. The main point is, by the time Lilian is an adult, all those fines have been adding up for years. The Jonsons are supporting a huge house, a large household of loyal servants. They bring in some money from rents on their lands, but they are about to hit the wall. If they don’t find money somehow, a large amount, they will be destitute. Having examined the library, I can now say with some certainty that William had been pursuing alchemical studies from the time of Lilian’s birth. I’m not sure what prompted it. Perhaps the death of his first son. Many of the books upstairs have annotations in a hand I recognize as William’s. I’ve seen it so many times before, on boring documents about land boundaries. But now it’s something electrifying. He’s in pursuit of the secret of all matter. The house burns down in 1580. Why weren’t all the books burned with it? Surely the library is in the house. The answer is here,’ he said.

  With this, quite dramatically, Mr. Gatward pulled Lilian’s book from his coat pocket. He clutched it in his hands, staring down at it as if it were glowing with light.

  ‘The date 1580 occurs again and again in her notes. And she refers to it as a failed experiment. William had turned his house into a laboratory. He must have been using a pretty impressive furnace, hoping to distill or reduce the gold from whatever material he started with. Alchemists used all sorts of stuff. The furnace would heat up this mixture of everything under the sun, and then in a device called a retort, it would be cooled down. A retort was like a little dome on a stand with a long pipe coming out of the top that the liquid would run down into something else. It looked a bit like an upside-down comma, with the pointy tail bit stretched out. They would examine what they’d produced, among all the smoke and smells, and again and again they would be disappointed. No one ever made gold. Or that’s what we thought. But after the failed experiment, and the burning down of the house, William starts up again. If the need for money was urgent before, it’s now become all consuming. This time, though, he has something new – he has his brilliant daughter working alongside him. He has brought her up perhaps solely for this purpose. Alchemists believed that the female principle was very important. Only with a harmonious balance of male and female could transmutation, dross into gold, stand a chance. Down in the cellar of the New House, William and Lilian go to work. They analyze the failed experiment of 1580. They plan for the future. Lilian makes notes of everything in her book – I’ve been up all night reading it. Pretty soon, they realize they don’t have enough chemical knowledge. So, Lilian is sent off around Europe. Do you remember that detail from my book? There was no explanation for it at the time – why a daughter should go, rather than a son. But the sons weren’t up to it. Only Lilian knew which books to seek out, which authorities to consult. In 1584, Lilian returns. How excited they must have been. William marks his pride, I believe, by commissioning the fine portrait of Lilian behind you. This is Lilian as a woman of wisdom and science. They are on the verge of the greatest breakthrough, and of securing their family’s future forever. In her hand, Lilian holds the key to all of this – her spell book. And then, quite suddenly, William himself dies. Lilian records it here, devastated, but then she goes on. We must assume she goes on, because after 1590 there is no record of her. She just disappears. But…’ said Mr. Gatward. He was so excited, he was weeping. ‘But the house is saved. The fines are paid. Lilian’s family is able to continue their secret faith. They are able to expand their holdings of land. All that rubbish that I’ve spent my life fussing about. This field bought in 1597, this one in 1600. And I’d always assumed it was because Lilian’s brother Peter was doing quite well for himself, managing the estate. Instead, it’s a miracle. A small West Sussex family discovers the greatest secret of the universe, the mystery of the ages, and they don’t tell anyone.’

  Mr. Gatward took Lilian’s book and hugged it to
his chest.

  I gave Mr. Gatward a few minutes to gather himself together. He seemed quite exhausted, his eyes twinkling with tears.

  ‘But they told someone,’ I said gently. ‘They told their Priest.’

  ‘I’m not so sure,’ Mr. Gatward said. ‘The church tended to disapprove of alchemy.’

  ‘It still does,’ I said, and began explaining to Mr. Gatward a little of what Father Trovato had told me.

  ‘All this time?’ he said.

  I heard some crunching footfalls on the gravel, then there was a knock at the door.

  When I answered, Mary on my shoulder, it was Gracie Dearie. This time she was dressed in a bright orange tracksuit with white trim and bright orange trainers. She was quite out of breath and her forehead was dripping with sweat. It was another hot sunny day.

  ‘Brought you this,’ she said. It was a copy of Hidden Histories. ‘We marked some bits.’ I could see that pink Post-Its were sticking out from pages here and there.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘Thank you,’ Gracie replied. ‘For last night. Sorry if we were a bit – ’ She took another breath. ‘Forward.’

  Mr. Gatward came into the hall.

  ‘Hello, Gracie,’ he said.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, quite shocked. ‘You’re here.’

  ‘I’ve been helping Mrs. Jonson with some papers,’ he said.

  Gracie looked down, and I saw she was looking at Lilian’s book which Mr. Gatward was still clutching.

  ‘How beautiful,’ she said. ‘Can I have a little look?’

  ‘No,’ said Mr. Gatward, quite sharply.

  ‘I’m afraid now isn’t a very good time,’ I said. ‘Perhaps when you come round with Matthew to look at the ceiling.’

  ‘Oh, can’t I even have just a little peak?’ Gracie said, flirtatiously.

  ‘We’re in the middle of something,’ Mr. Gatward said. He sounded quite waspish. ‘You’ve always been too impatient. Both of you.’

  ‘Another time,’ I said.

  ‘Fine,’ said Gracie, though I could tell she was desperate to get her hands on the book. ‘See you soon. Thanks again for dinner.’

  She ran off. I watched her tight bottom bob off round the corner.

  She was just out of sight when a voice from above said, ‘Well done.’

  ‘Haven’t you finished yet?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ Peter said. ‘I think I’ve found somewhere else I can put it, a bit further back and lower down.’

  ‘Where’s Jack?’ I asked.

  ‘He’s up here, too,’ said Peter. ‘But he’s perfectly fine. He’s just got his head stuck out through the roof. I’ve told him if he comes an inch further, he’ll be banished downstairs forever.’

  ‘Be careful,’ I said.

  ‘Found anything interesting, Mr. Gatward?’ Peter asked.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Mr. Gatward replied. ‘You could say that.’

  We went back into the house, into the kitchen, and I made Mr. Gatward a cup of tea.

  ‘They are a strange couple,’ he said. ‘Matthew and Gracie. We had high hopes for them, in the village.’

  ‘They said last night that they were your greatest fans,’ I said.

  ‘Really?’ said Mr. Gatward. ‘How odd! They’ve hardly even spoken to me. Not after the first couple of weeks. I think that’s the first word I’ve said to Gracie in, oh, two years.’

  ‘Didn’t they want to ask you about your books?’

  ‘I think they came round for tea. They wanted me to sign their books. The first time that’s ever happened, I can tell you – because the books are all signed anyway. All the ones Mrs. Willows sells, and no one else sells any. So they wanted me to sign books that were already signed.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I signed them, but in a different colour pen. And then I answered their questions. They were a little disappointed to find out I didn’t know anything more than I’d put in the book. They were particularly interested in this place.’

  ‘They still are,’ I said. ‘Very.’

  For quite a few minutes, neither of us said anything. Then he spoke, and as he did so he picked up the copy of his book.

  ‘Hidden Histories? I didn’t know a tenth of it! No local historian has ever discovered anything like this,’ he said.

  It was time for my questions.

  ‘What do you think happened to Lilian?’ I asked. ‘How could she just disappear?’

  ‘The last entry suggests she was making experiments all the time. I suspect she may have died in one of them, and that the family kept it quiet to avoid drawing attention to themselves. Her body was probably secretly interred in the crypt. Have you ever been in the crypt?’

  ‘No,’ I said. I remembered the tunnel continuing beyond the upwards entrance through the grille to the chapel. If I’d know there were dead bodies in there, I would have fled back to the house even faster.

  ‘Now might be a good time to check,’ Mr. Gatward said. ‘That would solve the mystery once and for all.’

  ‘But the real mystery is what she did, isn’t it? How she made gold?’

  ‘There’s no chemical formula, I’m afraid. The crucial words in the book are “harmonious conjunction”. It was a coming together of different elements – earth, water, air, fire – in ascending order of energy. But also male and female, sun and moon, young and old. Alchemy took everything for power and was able to transmute anything.’

  ‘Alchemy is also about eternal life,’ I said. ‘And that’s a power of the house – at least, that’s what Father Trovato said. So, if Lilian succeeded, why didn’t she live forever?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Mr. Gatward. ‘Maybe she did. Maybe that’s what her disappearance meant. There’s a lot of very mystical writing in her book which I can’t pretend to understand. “I am become earth,” she writes. “I am become water, aire and fire also.”’

  And snow, I thought.

  ‘Do you think Lilian might have become a ghost?’

  ‘What? Local Ghost Makes Really Good? That seems a bit simple, after all she’d learnt. I think perhaps she became a power.’

  I nodded. That was an explanation.

  Mary didn’t seem to be hungry, but I tried to feed her. Mr. Gatward leafed through Hidden Histories, chuckling to himself occasionally.

  ‘Here,’ he said, ‘I ask the question as to why good Catholics such as William, Emmanuel and Margerye were buried in the Protestant graveyard in the village? And today, right now this minute, we can find out if they really were. After almost five hundred years.’

  ‘Mary looks like she could do with a sleep,’ I said. ‘If you can wait.’

  ‘Of course I can wait.’

  In truth, Mary wasn’t all that tired. But with the curtains drawn, and after about half a dozen lullabies, I got her to doze. I felt a little wary about leaving her alone again – I’d been doing that too much. Lilian would watch over her, though. The house was the safest place in the world for her, I was convinced of that.

  Even so, I went into the attic to tell Peter. Jack was there, just as he’d said, right at the top of the ladder. I whispered up to him, so as not to give him a big shock.

  ‘Tell Dad I’ve put Mary down for a nap. I’m going with Mr. Gatward to the chapel.’

  ‘Can I come?’ asked Jack.

  ‘Not this time,’ I said. ‘Aren’t you having fun here?”

  ‘It’s a bit boring, after the first bit,’ said Jack.

  ‘I’d like you to check on Mary. Can you do that?’

  ‘Yes, mum.’

  ‘Be careful on the ladder.’

  ‘Yes, mum. I promise.’

  Chapter 38.

  The keys were hanging up on the brass hook in the kitchen. I took all three bunches – Mrs. Forster’s, Robert Mew’s and Father Trovato’s – just in case we came across any more locks. At the last minute, I remembered to grab a torch.

  Mr. Gatward seemed particularly light on his feet, as we walked under the trees. P
erhaps it was the excitement, or perhaps it was all the time he’d been spending in our healing house.

  The trapdoor to the chapel wasn’t that heavy, and I was able to pull it back by myself. I clicked on the torch and we carefully made our way down the wooden steps..

  ‘I don’t like dead bodies,’ I said.

  ‘If there’s anything there, it’ll be a skeleton by now.’ said Mr. Gatward. ‘In any case, the Elizabethans – particularly the Catholics – preferred to inter their dead. We may find some fine funerary art.’

  I wasn’t sure that skeletons sounded all that much less scary than dead bodies.

  The chapel smelled of the incense Father Trovato swung around during the mass.

  Together, Mr. Gatward and me managed to inch the lectern off metal the grille. He needed a couple of minutes to recover after this.

  ‘They knew how to make things, back then,’ he said. ‘Built to last. Not like now.’

  I cast the beam of the torch over the wooden panels on either side of the pews. None of them had any carvings on – there wasn’t a phoenix in sight.

  ‘I’m ready,’ said Mr. Gatward.

  I led the way. I knew the first part would be fine, just down into the rough tunnel again.

  ‘There’s no room to turn round,’ I said. ‘So make sure you’re facing in the right direction.’

  ‘Which direction?’ Mr. Gatward asked. ‘Sorry, I’m not very good on things like that.’

  ‘Copy me,’ I said.

  At the bottom of the ladder, I went down onto hands and knees, then crawled forwards – away from where I’d been before.

  The torch almost immediately picked out a circular wooden door. It looked bizarre, like something out of the Lord of the Rings. There was a lock, of course.

  I waited until Mr. Gatward was right behind me. This was reassuring – another person – but it meant I couldn’t make a quick exit if there was a rat or something worse.

  When I tried to put the first likely key into the lock, I found that the circular door just swung open.