At the House of the Magician

by Mary Hooper

  ‘Whether it is or not is no business of yours,’ said Mr Kelly curtly.

  ‘You must understand that the grieving father will be much comforted by seeing his daughter again,’ said Dr Dee.

  ‘I see. So I am to pretend to be her.’ I allowed a moment’s silence, as if taking all this in, and then asked what words I’d need to play my part.

  ‘You’ll need to learn very little,’ said Dr Dee. ‘You’ll appear, Lord Vaizey will speak and ask for your forgiveness, and then you’ll say, “I forgive you, Father.”’

  ‘Just that?’

  They both nodded. ‘Try it, child,’ Dr Dee said.

  ‘I forgive you, Father,’ I intoned.

  ‘With more feeling!’ urged Mr Kelly.

  ‘And softer, more cultured.’

  I tried again. ‘I forgive you, Father.’

  Dr Dee shook his head. ‘You have an ugly country twang to your voice.’

  ‘Remember, the young woman – Alice – was maid of honour to the queen,’ said Mr Kelly. ‘Your voice should be well-modulated, sweet and low.’

  ‘I forgive you, Father,’ I said breathily.

  ‘Again and yet again,’ Mr Kelly said curtly, ‘until we’re satisfied.’

  ‘You must work hard at it, for two gold coins are not as easily earned as all that,’ put in Dr Dee.

  Thirty gold coins certainly seemed to be, I thought, but of course could not say this. Instead I asked, ‘But what if the man, her father, seeks to question me more?’

  Mr Kelly said very sternly that I was to say nothing more than the words they were tutoring me in. ‘You will appear, say what you’ve been taught and then vanish. Do you understand?’

  ‘Try again,’ Dr Dee said, ‘for there is much depends on this.’

  ‘I forgive you, Father’.

  ‘That’s a little better.’

  ‘Again – and then once again.’

  And so the evening passed.

  Going into the library the following night, I was told I’d have to wear a winding sheet for the masquerade, so that it would appear I’d just stepped out of my coffin.

  ‘This won’t be of rough wool as the common people have,’ Mr Kelly assured me, ‘but a cloth of fine white linen. And you may keep it after.’

  I shuddered, picturing the scene and wondering if any real ghosts and ghouls abroad that night would be angry at this deception, and was only slightly appeased by the thought of the good white linen sheet which would be mine to keep.

  I asked them how I’d be able to walk properly; how I’d appear and disappear with a sheet wound tightly around my person, and the two gentlemen, after some discussion, decided that the sheet could be loose around me, creating a flowing effect. Underneath I’d wear a nightdress of high quality.

  ‘But we must find out what sort of a nightdress,’ Dr Dee said worriedly to Mr Kelly. ‘If the girl was put into the grave wearing spotted muslin, then she mustn’t appear wearing tucked lawn.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Mr Kelly.

  ‘And how would she have had her hair?’ Dr Dee suddenly asked. ‘What colour was it?’

  They looked at each other, and then at me.

  ‘We must find out and, if necessary, obtain a wig,’ said Dr Dee.

  ‘Or perhaps tie her hair back, put it up out of sight. She was a married woman, after all. She would have worn it up.’

  It was then, just at that moment, that I heard a voice close to me say, quite clearly, ‘Alas, poor Alice. I was a married woman, yet died a maid.’

  I looked round in surprise, for it seemed to me that someone must have come into the room. And then, there being no one there, and the two gentlemen not appearing to have noticed anything amiss, I realised that the voice had been in my head. And with it was the image of a girl wearing a white gown, with long fair hair about her shoulders and a wreath of myrtle on her head.

  This all struck me as very strange. And strangest of all was that the image of the girl was not before me, like a looking-glass reflection, but that when I looked down at myself, I seemed to be the one wearing the white gown and wreath. What was more, the silk of the nightdress was clinging to my skin, soaking wet, and a strand of waterweed was trailing from my shoulder.

  ‘She was a maid,’ I heard myself saying.

  Both gentlemen looked at me in astonishment.

  ‘And wore her hair hanging loose …’

  ‘What … what do you mean?’ asked Dr Dee.

  ‘How can you possibly know anything about her?’ said the other. ‘Besides, she was not a maid, for she was married.’

  ‘But … I think … the marriage was not a complete one,’ I said in a rush, for the image and the voice had vanished, leaving me wondering how I could possibly have known any of these things, especially the latter, most intimate notion.

  ‘The marriage was unconsummated?’ Dr Dee asked.

  I blushed red. ‘If you’ll pardon me, Sir, ’twas my fancy that it was.’

  ‘Tush!’ said Mr Kelly. ‘A girl like you can know nothing at all about such things.’

  Two days later I was summoned to the library during the day and found both gentlemen sitting there waiting. They told me to hide myself behind a tapestry and to listen to what was being said by a third party who was arriving shortly, for it would be advantageous to me.

  Intrigued, I did as I was bid and a short while after a woman was ushered into the room. I peered around one side of the tapestry but could not see her face, for she was wearing a long cloak with its hood up. She seemed a middling sort of person, however, for the material of her cloak was of some quality and she had good leather shoes.

  ‘You are Mistress … well, we shall call you Mistress X,’ said Dr Dee.

  The woman didn’t reply and I wondered if she was looking all around her in wonder, as I had when I’d first come to the library.

  ‘You were a maidservant at the house of Lord Vaizey?’

  ‘I was, Sir,’ said the woman nervously.

  ‘You needn’t fear us. We shall tell no one of your visit here,’ Dr Dee said. ‘Besides, ’tis all for Lord Vaizey’s benefit, for we are seeking to help cure his melancholy at his daughter’s demise.’

  ‘I believe you attended on Mistress Alice sometimes?’ Mr Kelly asked.

  ‘I did, Sir,’ said the woman. ‘When her personal maid was indisposed I would attend her at home, or at Richmond Palace, and I would dress her hair or lay out her clothes.’ Her voice began to shake, ‘And a lovelier young lady you never saw in all your life.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Mr Kelly. ‘And we want to know a little more about her …’

  ‘So that we may be of help to her poor father in his hour of need,’ Dr Dee put in. He coughed, ‘Her appearance, for instance. You said you used to dress her hair?’

  ‘Lovely hair, she had! Thick and golden. Like corn in the sunshine, I used to say.’

  ‘And she wore it … plaited up?’

  ‘She wore it down, Sir! It curled right down below her shoulders.’

  ‘Interesting, interesting,’ said Dr Dee. ‘And how did she walk? Small steps or long strides?’

  ‘Little steps – she was light and graceful on her feet and almost seemed to glide along.’

  ‘And her voice?’ asked Mr Kelly.

  ‘Very light and clear. She spoke six languages!’ came the reply. ‘And she could paint, play the lute, dance, embroider and sew quilts. Oh, she had every womanly virtue!’

  ‘She sounds a delightful young lady,’ said Dr Dee. ‘Such a sad loss for Lord Vaizey.’

  ‘Such a loss for us all,’ said the woman. ‘Why, Lord Vaizey should never have insisted on that marriage!’ As she said this she seemed to check herself. ‘Begging your pardon, Sirs, but she was a bonny girl and we all loved her.’

  ‘For certain,’ said Dr Dee.

  ‘She loved us, too – and she was completely devoted to the queen. Why, she would have walked through fire for Her Grace.’

  Mr Kelly pulled a coin from his pocket and be
gan flicking it into the air and catching it again. ‘And there’s nothing more about her appearance we should know? Her complexion, for instance. Perhaps she had freckles, or marks from the smallpox?’

  ‘Oh, no, Sir! Her skin was as smooth as silk. Pale, too. Like a lady’s should be.’

  ‘And her eyes – dark?’

  ‘Blue, sir. Blue as speedwell.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mr Kelly, and he was probably thinking of my eyes, which were not.

  ‘And is there anything else at all? For instance, did she like nice fabrics?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Silks and satins?’ Mr Kelly flicked the coin further into the air, where it was deftly caught by the woman. ‘Or did she prefer the more homely feel of cotton and linen?’

  ‘Well, as I said, she was a real lady,’ the woman said, pocketing the coin. ‘She would wear nothing but pure silk next to her skin. Why, her mother had a dozen silken nightgowns made for her marriage chest!’

  ‘White, I daresay …’

  ‘Cream, sir. A rich clotted cream to suit her pale complexion. She was buried in one such a gown, Sir.’

  ‘Aah,’ said Dr Dee and Mr Kelly together.

  ‘And she died on her wedding day?’ Dr Dee asked after a moment.

  I saw the woman dab her nose with a kerchief. ‘She did,’ she sniffed. ‘That very afternoon, after the ceremony, while folks were still making merry.’

  ‘So she … died still a maid?’

  ‘That’s right, Sir. She was buried with her lovely hair loose down her back, and eighteen maids from the poorhouse accompanied the corpse – one for every year of her age – all in black gowns and carrying leather gloves,’ said the woman, whose tongue had been somewhat loosened since pocketing the coin. ‘’Twas all done very fine: the hearse cloth was of purple velvet bordered with blue, which Her Grace herself sent, and there was a big funeral feast after with venison, capons and rabbits.’

  My heart was beating very fast. How had I known that she’d died a maid?

  ‘Sad. Extremely sad,’ said Mr Kelly. ‘And how did the poor girl die?’

  ‘She drowned, sir,’ came the reply. ‘There’s a fast brook runs through the grounds of her father’s house, and she laid herself down in this and floated away. Her body was found trapped in the rushes some time later that evening and though they tried to restore her to life, she was quite, quite dead.’

  She began to sob then, which fortunately hid the little cry of surprise I’d given. So that was why I’d seen her so in my vision: Alice, poor Alice, with her clothes clinging to her, wet and draped in waterweed …

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘On the thirty-first of October a carriage arrived in the dead of night to take me, Dr Dee and Mr Kelly to what I later found out was the churchyard beside the royal chapel at the palace of Richmond, where Alice Vaizey was buried. Dressed in nothing but a cream silk nightdress and cloak, and wearing a long, fair wig, I was hustled into the carriage without ceremony, Mr Kelly heaving me up like a bundle of old clothes and lifting me in, then insisting that I lay flat on the floor so that I could neither see nor be seen.

  These precautions seemed unnecessary to me, for the bellman had already called that it was past eleven o’clock and, the night being the dread date that it was, I was sure no one would be abroad. Only the undead; only wraiths and spectres, I thought, and felt for the rowan twigs I’d concealed in the pocket of my cloak. Isabelle had given me these and told me that if I saw anything supernatural I should hold them out and make the sign of the cross. I’d reminded her, of course, that we weren’t supposed to make that sign now, for ’twas a Papist practice, and she’d replied, laughing nervously, saying that the ghosts wouldn’t tell on me.

  It was the first time I’d ridden in a carriage and it was not at all how I’d imagined such a journey, for it proved to be both beastly and uncomfortable. Being unable to see where I was going made me feel sick in the head and I was so close to the road that I felt every jolt and shake as the carriage lurched from one side to the other, bruising and grazing me as it did so. The hooves of the horses were muffled so that they made hardly a sound going over the cobbled streets, and the driver – whom I didn’t see – spoke not a word. I thought that it might be Old Jake, who was a family retainer and who sometimes did odd jobs for Dr Dee, but I never found out.

  When the carriage eventually stopped I had to wait while a wooden box was taken off, then told to go hide myself somewhere on the far side of the churchyard. I could see my way, for the moon was almost full, and shivered as I stepped between white tombstones and low-branched yew trees which seemed to have formed themselves into strange and forbidding shapes: one a gargoyle, one a frog, the next a crouching beast.

  Going out of the gate on the far side of the churchyard, I marvelled at how everything I looked at seemed, through my overwrought imagination, to have taken on another, more ghastly aspect: the red petals on a drooping flower looked like drops of blood; some twisted, fallen branches on the ground seemed more like bones; and the sound of the light wind coming through the leaves on the trees could have been a coven of witches whispering spells. The moon glimmered, appearing and disappearing between heavy clouds, and I pressed myself against the churchyard wall, saying a prayer to myself, a childish thing I used to chant with my sisters on nights like these:

  Each ghoul and ghostie, faery, sprite,

  Stay away from me this night

  No beaste or goblin, wicked gnome

  Is ever welcome in our home.

  As I chanted, I wished for a more powerful amulet than the crossed rowan twigs I had in my cloak, wished that I’d managed to procure all the other charms that Isabelle had recommended, for what good would childish rhymes be against true evil?

  Dr Dee and Mr Kelly went to and fro, unpacking things from the wooden chest and appearing, by the flickering light of candle-lanterns and in their billowing cloaks, as strange, shadowy creatures. Under these cloaks they wore dark gowns, and, on their heads, velvet skullcaps bearing symbols – the correct attire, I supposed, for the necromancers they purported to be. I heard some of what they said to each other, for they mentioned giving Lord Vaizey ‘what he expected’ and ‘putting on a show’, and I thought to myself that they must consider me very simple indeed if they imagined that I didn’t know what they were doing.

  Dr Dee drew a large chalk circle on the paved ground with the aid of a strange steel object which bent in the middle. This circle was ruled off by him into very precise lines, and I later saw that these lines formed a five-pointed star, identical to the one I’d seen chalked on the tomb in Mortlake. (Beth told me some days later that this mathematical shape was called a pentacle and was used by magicians as protection, for it was believed that the dark forces couldn’t harm anyone who was standing inside such a one.)

  When this circle shape was finished, Mr Kelly came across to where I was waiting. He asked me to take off my cloak, then wrapped the winding sheet around me loosely and arranged my false hair over it.

  ‘Your grave-clothes must trail behind you at the back as if you’ve just risen from the coffin,’ he said. ‘But be careful not to let the sheet trip you up, and do remember that Mistress Vaizey walked gracefully and had good carriage.’

  I nodded. ‘When must I appear, Sir?’

  ‘After the ceremony,’ he replied.

  I looked at him, puzzled.

  ‘There will be a … a preliminary when Dr Dee and I will act out a small play,’ he explained. ‘Following this, you’ll hear Dr Dee say the words, “Arise, sweet spirit!”’

  ‘And it’s then that I am to come into view?’

  He nodded. ‘You enter by this gate, walk towards us – around this large yew tree – and stand in the chalked symbol in an attitude of prayer, as we’ve discussed previously. And then Lord Vaizey will speak and ask you to forgive him, and you will say … ?’

  ‘I forgive you, Father.’

  He nodded. ‘Then you may look at him beseechingly for just a mome
nt – but do not venture any closer for fear he should notice the colour of your eyes! – and turn and go back behind the yew tree, where Alice’s grave lies.’

  I nodded. ‘Alas, poor Alice,’ said the voice in my head.

  I didn’t know what time it was, but they say that midnight is the hour when graves give up their dead, so I suppose that it must have been about that time when I heard the muffled thud of a horse’s hooves at the front of the church and the light jingle of a bridle.

  I began to shake with fright. ‘Each ghoul or ghostie, faery, sprite …’ I said to myself, but it wasn’t just these I was worried about. Suppose Lord Vaizey didn’t believe I was his daughter’s ghost? Suppose he reached for me and discovered I was real, substantial, not a spirit at all? It wouldn’t help me to say that I was working under Dr Dee’s instructions; I could still be burnt at the stake as a witch.

  A horse and rider came into view and I shrank back against the churchyard wall and watched as the man slipped off his horse. The moon reappeared, allowing me to see that Lord Vaizey – for it must be he – wore a heavy cloak, high boots and a black felt hat with a sable mourning feather. He walked towards Dr Dee and Mr Kelly, and they all exchanged low bows.

  Lord Vaizey seemed very anxious, for he was continually wringing his hands and shifting his weight from leg to leg. ‘I beg you, gentlemen, tell me straightaway,’ he asked hoarsely, ‘do we ask too much of my daughter?’

  ‘How so, Sir?’ Dr Dee replied.

  ‘Will she mind being called from her eternal sleep? We beg our dead to rest in peace … should we leave her to do just that?’

  I froze, listening intently.

  Mr Kelly spoke up very quickly, no doubt thinking of the thirty gold angels to be gained or lost. ‘Not at all, my Lord,’ he said. ‘Your daughter knows your suffering.’

  ‘And if she can ease that suffering, then I believe she would be willing to do so,’ Dr Dee added.

  ‘But suppose she has not forgiven me?’

  There was a moment’s silence, then Dr Dee spoke again. ‘I am convinced that she will have, Sir.’