Witchborn

by Nicholas Bowling

  At last, without saying a word, Doctor Dee raised himself out of his chair, dropped the black mirror into a pocket inside his cloak, and laid his hands on Alyce’s shoulders. His stern features suddenly broke into a grin.

  ‘My dear girl,’ he said. ‘I’m so glad we’ve found you. Please, be seated. We have an awful lot to discuss.’

  Alyce thought her heart would burst. She wondered who the man under the beard was. A friend of her mother’s? A godparent? A relative? In the dimness of the tavern’s light, his smile had suddenly transformed him into the kindly grandfather she’d never had.

  She took her seat at his table, while John Dee went and spoke to the serving maid again. She turned her mommet over and over in her fingers while she waited, and when he returned she found yet another drink placed in front of her. She laughed.

  ‘You are very kind, Doctor, but this will be my third cup of wine in as many hours. I don’t think I have the constitution.’

  ‘Oh, enough of that, child!’ he said, dismissing the suggestion with a wave of his hand. ‘Drink up. We must toast to your safe arrival.’

  She relented and took a sip. The wine was very sour, and had a metallic aftertaste.

  ‘So . . . Did you know my mother?’

  ‘That is rather an understatement,’ he said, and laughed.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You shall see.’ He stared at her expectantly. ‘Please, drink.’

  Again she raised the cup to her lips. His eyes sparkled.

  ‘Wait . . .’ she either said, or thought, she couldn’t be sure. Her thoughts became thick and sluggish.

  Doctor Dee’s face grew dark and distorted, although she could still see his expression was something like delight. She tried to speak again, but her lips and tongue were like lead. The room spun, and she thought she was going to be sick.

  The wine . . .

  The last thing she felt was her forehead hitting the hard table top.

  The cage in Doctor Dee’s lodgings was a lot smaller than Alyce’s cell in Bedlam, and even more cramped because of her fellow prisoner. It also smelt worse – it was an unsettling odour, not strong or sewagey, but sinister somehow. She at least knew the source of Bedlam’s stench, or could guess at it. This was a smell that didn’t belong in the world.

  Alyce watched the woman – she assumed it was a woman – in the opposite corner. She’d been sitting perfectly still for at least an hour, cross-legged, hands folded in her lap, her grey weed-like hair occasionally trembling in the draught. Runes and symbols and half-formed pictures had been scratched into the floorboards around her in an uneven hand. Alyce knew what she was, even if she didn’t know her identity.

  Dee’s beard emerged from the gloom, followed by the rest of him.

  ‘Not long now, child,’ he said, and smiled. There was still something grandfatherly about him, until he licked his lips. ‘I hope you will be on better behaviour when your Queen gets here.’

  Alyce spat at him, and crawled away from the bars before he could strike her. He wiped the saliva from the hem of his cloak and disappeared among his piles of books, muttering.

  She had spent the whole day in captivity, and her rage had nearly spent itself. Now she just felt empty, and desperately cold. Doctor Dee was answering none of her questions, perhaps understandably after she’d bitten him for a second time, and the letter had disappeared into the black folds of his robes. More confusing still was that the Queen was supposedly coming to speak with her. None of it made any sense. Half of her anger was pointed at her mother’s ghost.

  Why did you send me to this monster? What were you thinking?

  Dee’s muttering had become more persistent, and more rhythmic. He was now bustling around his workshop lighting a circle of squat, misshapen candles, and as each flame sputtered into life another dark corner of the laboratory was illuminated. Candlelight danced off the polished brass of scientific instruments, and pooled in strange colours around the racks of jars and bottles. A human skull cast grotesque shadows across the floor, almost reaching the bars of Alyce’s cage. Different parts of the room shifted in and out of focus, and at no point was it bright enough to see everything at once.

  Alyce glanced at the other woman. Still as stone.

  Another light appeared, a cold, pale sun that hovered in mid-air and seemed to make the candle flames wilt. Doctor Dee withdrew, whispering, into the darkness. It was witchcraft, Alyce knew, but not like any that she had ever seen when she had lived with her mother. There was no roaring fire here. No scent of earth and foliage. No song. Just silence, and that sharp, vinegary tang in the air.

  The light became a face, its hair pulled tightly back, its features icy and smooth and quite terrifying in their beauty. The face was followed by the tall figure of a woman, a phantom dressed in pearls and rich fabrics.

  The candles were snuffed out.

  ‘You are not much of a host, Doctor,’ said the woman, in a voice that seemed to be summoned from hundreds of miles away. ‘Why do you have the poor girl cooped up like a dog?’

  Dee cleared his throat from the corner of the room. ‘Forgive me, Your Majesty – I thought it safer to—’

  ‘She is our guest, Doctor, not our prisoner.’ The woman drifted forwards until she was in front of the cage. ‘And even if she were a prisoner, lock and key are not necessarily going to keep a witch from running away, are they? They tried that with me.’

  ‘Your Majesty,’ said Doctor Dee, something like awe crossing his face. ‘You are . . . at liberty?’

  Her smile was like a sliver of broken glass. ‘And sailing to London as we speak, Doctor.’

  ‘But your gaoler, Shrewsbury . . . Does he not know?’

  ‘Shrewsbury is still dutifully hosting a woman whom he believes to be Mary, Queen of Scots. In fact, she is one of my ladies-in-waiting, an apprentice who has served me well and deserves the luxuries of Shrewsbury’s hospitality. The swap was made when I went to take the waters at Buxton. A simple enchantment was all that was required.’

  The Doctor clapped his hands and fawned: ‘Oh, marvellous cunning, Your Majesty!’

  Alyce put all the pieces together. ‘You’re her,’ she said, crawling forward and clasping the cold metal. ‘You’re Mary Stuart.’

  The phantom inclined her head a fraction.

  Then Alyce turned to Doctor Dee. ‘You work for Queen Elizabeth, though.’

  ‘The Doctor had a change of heart,’ said Mary. ‘Elizabeth proved something of an obstacle to his research.’

  ‘So that’s two women you’ve betrayed,’ said Alyce, feeling some of the old heat return to her belly. ‘Elizabeth and my mother.’

  Mary Stuart laughed. ‘Please, Doctor, unlock the cage. She’ll break the bars if we don’t let her out soon.’

  The old man picked up a key on a chain from his workbench. He rattled it in the door of the tiny prison, and then stepped back quickly as though releasing a starved wild animal.

  Alyce came out on cold hands and bruised knees, leaving her cellmate behind her. When she got to her feet she was still a head shorter than the phantom woman in front of her. She found herself staring through the transparent sinews of Mary Stuart’s neck to the scientific apparatus behind. She shivered, all ideas of escape draining out of her.

  ‘She’s right about you, Doctor Dee. You’re a born turncoat. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were plotting to betray me too.’ The Doctor spluttered something through his beard. ‘Yes. She’s quite astute, this one. Quite canny. Considering how and where she was brought up.’

  ‘You don’t know anything about me.’

  ‘On the contrary Alyce, I know more about you than you do. Your mother and I were firm friends,’ she said. ‘Once upon a time.’

  The spectral face smiled again, and turned to look at Doctor Dee, as though there were some joke that Alyce was not party to. For a nauseating moment, Alyce considered the possibility that her mother really was in league with this witch queen, with Dee, that this was what sh
e had intended all along.

  ‘She’s dead,’ said Alyce.

  ‘I know,’ said Mary. ‘Poor Ellen. It was not my intention, believe me, but these witchfinders do get carried away. They do a lot more than finding, don’t they? Yes, poor woman. I would have them apologize to you in person, Alyce, but I’m told that even now they are out on the streets of London trying to hunt you down and make up for their previous failings.’

  So the witchfinders, Doctor Dee, and now Mary were all part of the same merry band. She would have thrown herself at the Queen of Scots and Dee, clawed out their eyes, were she not so paralysed with rage and sorrow for her foolish, deceived mother. Ellen had sent her daughter straight to her murderers.

  ‘Is it your intention to kill me?’ she said at last, forcing the words through a cold, tight throat.

  ‘Goodness, no, child,’ said Mary, extending a translucent hand to smooth her hair, and bringing out Alyce’s scalp in goose pimples. ‘We are not barbarians. I just want to talk.’

  ‘Talk?’

  ‘Yes. That is all. A conversation between two like minds.’

  ‘We aren’t like-minded.’

  ‘Not yet, perhaps, no. But I am hoping we will be when you have heard what I have to say. I am very much hoping you will choose to work with us, rather than against us.’

  Alyce suddenly remembered the snatch of conversation she’d heard in The Hangman. They love her. Her supporters are everywhere. Was this Queen Mary’s attempt at winning her allegiance? She had a strange way of going about it. Alyce laughed out loud: a sad, empty laugh.

  ‘You killed my mother. And you hounded me out of Bedlam. You’ve kidnapped me and kept me in a cage all day. And now you would like us to be friends?’

  ‘If that is possible, I would like it very much.’ The black gaze of the woman’s gaping eyes seemed to strip Alyce’s flesh away from her.

  ‘No,’ was all she managed to say.

  ‘No?’ said Mary calmly. ‘I see. Perhaps you already have enough friends? Or perhaps you are perfectly able to survive on your own?’

  Alyce didn’t reply.

  ‘Witches have few allies, Alyce, and fewer friends. We should be wise enough to support each other.’

  ‘You killed my mother. How was that supporting her?’

  ‘A terrible mistake, and one that will not go unpunished.’ She paused. ‘And one which might yet be undone.’

  ‘Undone?’

  ‘How much did Ellen teach you of the Craft, Alyce?’

  ‘The Craft?’

  ‘Witchcraft. Sympathy. Prophecy.’ She paused. ‘Necromancy.’

  ‘A little,’ said Alyce slowly, sensing a trap, but not knowing where it lay. ‘Some herblore. Some sympathetic magic. And I know about necromancy… about the Other Side.’

  ‘Ah.’ Mary’s sigh ruffled some of the parchment behind her. ‘The Other Side. And what did she say about that?’

  ‘It’s where the dead go. The other side of what we can see. She talked a lot about balance, keeping the balance between this world and the other. I never really understood what she meant.’

  Mary nodded. ‘No, you wouldn’t have. You have only just come of age. A terrible shame to lose her at such a crucial time – you must have so many questions.’

  Alyce thought of her fainting fit in The Swan. There was a great deal she didn’t understand.

  ‘Not just a shame,’ Queen Mary continued. ‘An irony too. If she had lived a little longer, she might have taught you how to bring her back from that place.’

  Something lurched behind Alyce’s ribs. ‘You don’t mean that.’

  ‘I do, my dear child. It’s all very well Ellen talking about balance, but the world doesn’t feel very balanced, does it? Feels like the odds are stacked rather heavily in Death’s favour, does it not? All our loved ones passing over to the Other Side, and not one of them coming back. Ellen might have been happy to accept that state of affairs, as are many others. But some of us are less content. A true witch can not only commune with the dead, but also take control of Death itself. And if we wish someone to return to the land of the living, we can make it so.’

  ‘But that’s not . . . natural.’ Alyce remembered the briefest glance that she had given the stake as she had escaped Fordham, the charred figure still tied to it, barely recognizable as a person. What on earth would it look like to revive her?

  Mary’s face darkened a little. ‘Natural? According to whom? It is we who define what is natural. We are nature, Alyce.’

  Something about those words resonated. Despite the whispers in the village, from her and her mother’s point of view it was the villagers themselves who were the outsiders, the odd ones, the unnatural ones.

  ‘Why are you telling me all this? What do you want with me?’

  ‘Because, like I said, we need to be of one mind. I would like us to be friends. And I would like to count upon your support.’

  Mary’s phantom seemed to grow brighter as she spoke. Alyce could see the pale blue light reflecting in Doctor Dee’s eyes.

  ‘Go on,’ said Alyce.

  ‘The time is coming when I will replace Elizabeth as Queen of England,’ she said. ‘I will be restored to the Scottish throne. I will be Queen of Spain or France, or both, once I am free of my halfwit husband and able to marry again. Think upon what it means, Alyce. The greatest union in Europe, with a witch queen at its head. A queen who will conquer not just the nation’s living enemies, but who will conquer Death for her subjects. My claim to the throne is not a matter of petty, personal ambition, as the pamphlets and the gossip-mongers would have you believe. It is for the good of all mankind.’

  ‘And what about our kind? Is it for the good of witches too? So far I haven’t felt the benefits of your mission. My mother certainly didn’t.’

  Mary smiled.

  ‘I shall lead our kind out of the shadows. Out of the dirt and the shame we have lived in for millennia. Listen: when I was Queen of Scotland, I spent years concealing my true nature. I hid myself. Denied myself. For fear of a backlash, not just against me, but against witchfolk. A lot of good that did. And now my ingrate of a son has supplanted me. My father, my father-in-law, my uncle, two husbands: they all died around me, while I was forbidden to practise the arts that would have saved them.’ She gazed through Alyce. ‘En ma fin est mon commencement. Do you know what that means?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘In my end is my beginning. A family motto. I have just decided to take it more seriously than most. I am offering people hope, Alyce. When I take the throne, I will banish Death from the world of men, and they will worship me for it. Worship us.’

  Alyce considered this before she replied. The woman’s arrogance was staggering. But to live in a world where she wasn’t under constant suspicion, where she was exalted even – that would be something.

  ‘You may have a job convincing your subjects of that, Your Majesty,’ she said in the end. ‘You’ve yet to convince me.’

  ‘You will be persuaded, Alyce, I assure you. If you’ll allow me a demonstration.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘A demonstration of what I can perform. What we can perform, together. Join us, and I will bring your mother back for you.’

  In that moment’s pause, the crooked timbers of Doctor Dee’s house sighed as the wind passed through them. Somewhere in the back of the laboratory, a pile of papers stirred and fell to the floor. Alyce could hear Dee’s breathing too, strained and nasal.

  It was nonsense, surely. You couldn’t bring people back from the dead. The world didn’t work like that. She was fairly sure. But then . . . what if it were true? She’d give anything, absolutely anything, to see her mother again.

  There was something else bothering her too.

  ‘You still haven’t explained why,’ she said.

  ‘Because when I am Queen I shall need allies.’

  ‘No. Stop talking about yourself. I don’t mean that. I mean, why me? Why go to so much trouble t
o get my support? Why am I so special?’

  ‘I simply care for your well-being Alyce—’

  She stopped. The face of infinite sympathy that Queen Mary was wearing suddenly drifted and changed, like ink clouding water. Then it hardened, and her frown was a terrible thing to behold.

  There was a groan. The wind was not whistling outside the laboratory, but inside. From behind Alyce, the woman in the cage was drawing one long, rattling breath.

  ‘She lies she lies she lies she lies she lies . . .’ came the chant, broken and manic, and only then did Alyce realize this was the same inmate of Bedlam who had spoken to her when she was looking for the letter. How on earth had she ended up here?

  ‘Shut her mouth, Doctor,’ Mary commanded. Dee leapt from his stool and fumbled with the key.

  ‘Vile thing. I have seen what you are. Seen what you would do.’ The madwoman’s fingernails scratched the floor-boards as she crawled out of the cage. ‘Be gone, Alyce. This one is an outcast. She brings only pestilence. She would see the world devoured.’

  The instruments and vessels on the Doctor’s workbench began to totter and roll and smash, and the man himself froze, torn between stopping the woman and saving his work.

  ‘Silence her!’ screamed Mary, and her luminous skin seemed to evaporate and reveal the lines of her bones underneath.

  ‘She would have us all as her slaves,’ said the woman. ‘The living and the dead. The Other Side, bent to her will. To the will of the black book.’ A storm issued from her mouth. The great curtains of her hair were suddenly blown back, and Alyce was able to see her face clearly for the first time. It looked so young, so gentle. Tired too – purple rings around her eyes, like Solomon’s.

  Just like Solomon’s.

  ‘But the dead see you, false witch. Just as I see you.’ There was a moment of almost perfect stillness, of held breath. And then, in a small, human voice: ‘They’re here.’

  Her words cleaved the air. The spectre of Mary, Queen of Scots seemed to be rent into shreds in the gale, and Doctor Dee was thrown backwards into a bookcase, whose leather tomes tumbled heavily on to his head. Beams were wrenched from the ceiling and crashed into the workbench; sections of the roof collapsed, revealing the purple light of dusk overhead.