Witchborn

by Nicholas Bowling

  ‘Please, Alyce,’ said Solomon, coming over and grasping her hands. ‘Just stay put. Until we figure out a plan.’

  Alyce sighed. ‘Fine. I’ll bide my time. I’ve things to do here, I suppose.’

  ‘Will you make a start on the books?’

  ‘I’ll try. First, though . . .’ She got up and went to the pile of damp, stinking clothes that she’d been wearing when she dragged herself out of the Thames. She rummaged in the pockets and produced the ruined mommet. ‘I need to repair this old thing.’

  She took it over to the writing desk, which was pushed up against the wall under the chamber’s single, narrow window. She held it in the shaft of white morning light and began to tidy and tighten the wet straw.

  Solomon watched her. ‘I’ll be rehearsing with the rest of the company for most of the day, but I can bring you something to eat from the Great Hall,’ he said. ‘It’ll be third-hand leftovers, I’m afraid – players and servants get whatever the gentlemen and ladies don’t want to eat.’

  ‘How disappointing. I thought I’d be sitting at High Table with Her Majesty.’

  Solomon laughed. ‘I’ll put in a good word for you.’ He preened himself in a very dull, cloudy mirror at the far end of the bedchamber. ‘Right, I need to go and show my face. I’ll be back soon. Don’t worry about being interrupted, we’re not good enough to have servants, and no respectable courtier would be seen dead in the company of an actor.’

  He waved and shut the chamber door behind him, leaving Alyce alone with the books.

  The mommet didn’t take long to fix, but adding her hair to the finished product was a painful business – there was no knife or pair of shears in Solomon’s room, so she was forced to pluck them from her head one by one until her eyes watered. When she had half a dozen strands she wove them tightly around the doll’s bulbous head, and set the whole thing down next to the embers of last night’s fire. As she did, her chest and fingers and toes all seemed to warm at once.

  Her tiredness melted away, and with it her inhibitions. She looked over the pile of books, inspecting and discarding them one by one until she had the big black one in front of her. She looked over her shoulder, feeling, for some reason, like someone was watching her through the keyhole.

  As she opened the book, the spine creaked in her hands, and the vellum of the pages let off a queer, poisonous smell. It reminded her of the dampness inside Doctor Dee’s laboratory. Plainly printed, with no illustration or decoration, the frontispiece read:

  NECRONOMICON

  The pages were so dirty they looked as black as the leather binding. In places the vellum was discoloured a dubious shade of red. The text itself seemed to be in several different languages, much of it in runes like the letter her mother had written. It was broken up with pictures of men and animals, and stranger things that seemed neither one nor the other; diagrams too, complex and anatomical, explorations of the flesh that made Alyce’s stomach churn.

  It was like no witchcraft she had ever seen – certainly nothing like the charms and spells her mother had taught her. She had listened to the dead, had spoken with them. ‘Kept them company,’ was how she had put it. ‘The Other Side is the loneliest place there is.’ But the spells here – some of them didn’t even look like spells, more like surgical operations – weren’t about keeping the dead company. Their aim seemed to be nothing less than bringing them back from the grave. And Alyce couldn’t look away.

  Solomon had barely been gone half an hour before he returned to the bedchamber, smuggling two bread rolls in his pockets. Alyce threw another book on top of the Necronomicon, and kept her face down to hide her guilty flush. He threw one of the rolls on to the desk at her elbow, the heavy thud suggesting it was well past being stale.

  ‘Rehearsal’s cancelled,’ he said. ‘Change of plan. We’ve got to go back into London. Sorry.’

  ‘We? Why we?’ she said, opening the Arcana to a page that seemed to be about constipation remedies.

  ‘Well, I’ve got to go and get some supplies from the butcher at Newgate. And I can’t exactly leave you here.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘What if somebody finds you?’

  ‘I thought you said I wouldn’t get any visitors.’

  ‘I’d just be happier . . .’ Solomon groped for words. ‘I’d be happier if you were with me.

  I don’t like the idea of you being alone in the palace.’

  ‘That’s very chivalrous of you.’

  ‘It’s just safer. Even being down there in the Great Hall didn’t feel right. I need to look out for you.’

  Alyce frowned. ‘You’re making me out to be some helpless maiden. You can stop that right away.’

  He glanced down at what she was reading. ‘Bowel remedies? I was hoping you’d teach me something a bit more advanced.’ He tugged at the corner of the book, revealing the open Necronomicon underneath. ‘What’s this one?’

  His mouth twisted into a grimace.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘The black one. I don’t think you should start with that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’ve looked through a few pages.

  It’s . . . strange.’

  ‘It’s necromancy, I think.’

  ‘It’s not right, that’s what it is.’

  ‘You did say your mother locked them away. Maybe we weren’t supposed to have them.’ She paused. ‘Maybe she wasn’t supposed to have them.’

  ‘Why don’t you read one of these instead . . .’ said Solomon, perusing the covers of the other books. ‘Alchemy . . . Sympathy . . . Demonology? Maybe not the last one.’

  ‘You know,’ said Alyce, ignoring him, ‘Mary Stuart tried to make a deal with me. She claimed she could bring my mother back from the dead. She said she’d do it if I joined her.’

  Solomon looked up and made a pained face, but didn’t reply.

  ‘Do you think she could?’ Alyce pressed.

  ‘It’s not a question of could, it’s a question of should.’

  ‘Tempting though, isn’t it . . .?’ she said, tracing her finger over one of the dry, dusty pages.

  ‘No!’ He whipped the book out from under her nose. ‘It’s not right, Alyce. It’s not natural.’

  Ah yes, she thought, but we are nature.

  Solomon threw the Necronomicon in the chest at the foot of the bed and closed the lid. ‘Let’s at least be practical about it: whatever is in that book is advanced stuff. We should start from first principles, shouldn’t we? You are meant to be teaching me, after all.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Good,’ said Solomon, smiling for the first time that morning and obviously feeling like he’d won. ‘Come on, you need to get your shoes on and pack all that hair into a hat. We need to get to the market early, before things start to smell.’

  Alyce got out of the chair and went to the fireplace, checking, on the way, that the chest wasn’t locked.

  ‘To smell? What are we buying?’

  ‘Offal. Liver, kidneys, intestines. Special effects for tonight’s performance.’

  ‘Delightful,’ said Alyce, standing up and rearranging her tights. ‘Well, you’re carrying them, not me.’

  Together, they slipped out of the chamber and down the passageway. The guards, with their eyelids hanging heavy from the night shift, seemed unconcerned as Solomon and his fellow actor trotted across the courtyard to the palace gate.

  ‘Going to Newgate Market,’ said Solomon cheerily to one of them. ‘Can’t have a good revenge tragedy without some blood and guts!’

  The guard just looked at him, and grunted. He might as well have been asleep.

  ‘Good to know Her Majesty is in safe hands,’ Solomon muttered to Alyce, as they emerged on to the road to Ludgate.

  Just as they were leaving, Alyce heard the tramp of feet in the courtyard behind them. A detachment of palace guards were making their way past the Great Hall towards the walled garden, accompanied by a riotously colourful train of cloaks and breeches and fe
athered hats. And at the front of them all was a woman in a silver and white gown that almost doubled her width – and she was already as tall as the guards and the courtiers – her red hair bound in pearls.

  ‘Ah,’ said Solomon. ‘There she is. You still want to tell her all about the plot? You go ahead and stroll right up to her.’

  ‘Queen Elizabeth,’ said Alyce, staring open-mouthed.

  ‘Good old Bess. That’s her.’

  ‘She looks so . . . familiar.’ She couldn’t make out the Queen’s face properly from this distance, but even so . . . Why did it feel like this wasn’t the first time she’d seen her?

  ‘Of course she’s familiar, she’s the Queen. You’ve probably seen her on coins, or posters, or pamphlets or something. Her picture gets everywhere.’

  But it wasn’t just the way she looked. It was the way she moved too.

  ‘You were right,’ she said to Solomon. ‘She does look like she’s in a bad mood.’

  ‘More so than usual, seems like. She’s really storming across that courtyard!’

  It was true – the guards and her attendants periodically had to break into a run to keep up with her. It was quite funny to watch.

  Elizabeth disappeared through the arch in the garden’s high wall, and Solomon turned to go. Alyce lingered for a little longer, though, and she was glad she did. Just as the last of the guards followed her out of the courtyard, a winged shape descended from one of the palace’s towers.

  The raven. She knew it was the same one from its size and shabby silhouette. Only this time it wasn’t watching Alyce. It was watching the Queen.

  The market was immediately on the other side of Newgate. Even at this early hour, it was a riot compared to the tranquillity of the palace and its grounds – butchers for the most part, but also fishmongers, grocers and flower-sellers, all hawking their produce in voices to split the ears. Now they were inside the city walls the air was warm and close, and everything smelt of meat and vegetables just on the cusp of rotting.

  They had barely gone as far as the first row of stalls when somebody grabbed Alyce’s arm and spun her around. She didn’t even have time to look at her assailant’s face before she was being smothered in plush velvet. Pearls or jewels of some kind pressed into her gums and her cheekbones.

  For a moment she thought it was Doctor Dee, but the doublet her face was crushed against didn’t seem the sort of thing he wore. Then she thought it was the men from Bedlam. But she heard laughter. And she smelt perfume so strong and sickly sweet she wanted to throw up.

  ‘Alyce!’ said a voice, the pronunciation and stress on each syllable completely wrong. ‘You are here! You are alive!’

  She extricated herself from the embrace, and looked up to see Signor Vitali’s painted face beaming back at her.

  ‘You came back!’ he exclaimed in a voice that was far too loud. ‘To help your friend!’

  Alyce felt her heart race. ‘Um. No, that’s not actually why—’

  ‘You kept your promise!’

  ‘I didn’t—’

  ‘My child, you are as faithful as you are beautiful.’

  ‘Thank you . . .’

  Vitali looked at her askance.

  ‘Although, today, you are not as comely as I remember. What is this apparel you wear? You dress so strangely!’

  Solomon, who had been standing a little to one side watching the whole bizarre exchange unfold, snorted. The mountebank himself was wearing a gold doublet, gold hose, gold shoes (smeared with dung), and a delicate ruff so broad that it almost covered his shoulders completely. His fingers and wrists were covered with jewelled rings and bracelets, and he clinked whenever he moved.

  Alyce saw Vitali register Solomon’s laugh, without actually acknowledging his presence.

  ‘I am afraid today I cannot be Alyce,’ she said. ‘Today I must be somebody else. That’s why I’m dressed like this. Please don’t ask why, it’s . . .’

  ‘A secret?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Very well. I shall ask no more. I fear we already know too many of each other’s secrets. Wouldn’t you say?’ He gave her a knowing smile, and then suddenly affected an expression of comically exaggerated disappointment. ‘But I am sad! You did not say farewell to your Vitali yesterday. I was so worried. I thought maybe I would never see you again – that this Doctor Dee had snatched you away from me!’

  Alyce didn’t reply.

  ‘Was he able to help you with the meaning of your letter?’

  ‘Not as such,’ she said, glancing at Solomon, who looked away.

  Vitali tutted. ‘I confess, I looked for you all day yesterday, after you disappeared. I paid a visit to Mrs Thomson in the evening, she did not know where you were either.’ His face softened, as much as it could under the layers of make-up. ‘She looked very worried. Very worried indeed. She even looked thin, and I never thought I could say such a thing.’

  Alyce wondered whether she would ever go back to The Swan again. She had assumed that Mrs Thomson was glad to see the back of her, but apparently not.

  ‘You need not tell me your secrets,’ the mountebank continued, ‘but maybe you should tell her? She is nearly ill with worry.’

  ‘I shall, signor. But not yet.’

  He nodded. ‘And who is this?’ he said, turning at last to Solomon. ‘A friend? A rival for my affections?’ He obviously meant this as a joke, but there was a coldness in his voice.

  ‘Just that,’ said Solomon. ‘A friend. Alyce is staying with me and the company while she is out from under Mrs Thomson’s roof.’

  Vitali eyed him suspiciously. ‘The company?’

  ‘Sussex’s Men. Are you a player yourself? That’s quite a spectacle you’re constructing.’ He pointed over Vitali’s shoulder. ‘I’ve never seen such a marvel of stagecraft.’

  Propped up against Newgate itself, Vitali had erected a complex timber scaffold that looked more suited to siege warfare than to the selling of potions and lotions. It had three separate stages on different levels, all as rickety as each other, the highest tottering eight or nine feet above the ground. The whole structure was draped with heavy sailcloth, dyed purple and blue, and hung above it was a backdrop of the same colour, decorated with stars and crescent moons.

  Vitali kept smiling, but spoke through slightly gritted teeth. ‘I am not a player, no. I am a doctor. A physician.’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Solomon in a mock-apologetic tone. ‘I’ve just never seen a physician dressed like this.’

  ‘I am not any normal physician.’

  ‘Yes. I can see that.’

  ‘Ah, a cynic. Perhaps I can prove the efficacy of my wares when the spectacle is over?’

  His words had taken on a hard edge. Alyce remembered Vitali’s sideline in poisons, and quickly tried to change the subject.

  ‘Forgive us, signor – I’m afraid we won’t be able to stay and watch the show. We have errands to run.’

  He looked at her for a moment, like she was speaking a different language. ‘I do not understand. My dear, you are the spectacle. That is why you are here, is it not?’

  Alyce was disconcerted by the fact that his usual fixed smile had not returned to his face. She started to feel hot and agitated under her borrowed clothes.

  ‘I am sorry –’ she lightly touched his arm – ‘but this is coincidence. We’re here for the market.’

  ‘We had a deal, child. You swore an oath. I took you to the tavern, I introduced you to a very important man. The kind of man you never would have found without my help.’

  She turned to Solomon for reassurance, but he looked as guilty as she did. As much as she wanted to get away from Vitali, he had a point. She did have her end of the bargain to uphold.

  ‘I am sorry, signor – but I would rather nobody saw me. Not like this.’ She waved her hands around. ‘Not in public.’

  ‘You promised, Alyce,’ he said, not moving an inch.

  ‘But—’

  ‘It would mean very much to me, if
you kept your promise.’

  ‘I—’

  ‘It would mean very much to you, if you kept your promise.’

  Was that a threat? Alyce thought. Then Vitali’s broad smile returned, unannounced.

  ‘Besides, why do you worry about being seen?’ he said. ‘You do not even look like Alyce. This is a perfect disguise.’

  That was true too. Her nerve failed her, just as she’d known it would from the moment she had seen him. She nodded.

  ‘Very well,’ she said, sick with anxiety the moment the words left her lips. ‘Only, I don’t know what it is you would like me to do.’

  ‘Ottimo!’ Vitali exclaimed, and clapped his hands. ‘It is nothing. You are a talented girl. You learn quickly. Come!’

  Alyce followed, but spoke to the baffled Solomon before she did. ‘Just wait here,’ she said. ‘Keep your eyes open for anything unusual.’

  The crowds were beginning to swell now. Passers-by were already stopping to stare at the construction, at Vitali, at Alyce.

  Around the back of the stage, Vitali beckoned Alyce over to an enormous strongbox resting on the ground. The inside was mostly piled with the glass bottles, bowls and phials that Alyce had seen in Vitali’s lodgings, but it also contained other, stranger things: a ram’s skull; a sword in an ornate scabbard; a dead, stuffed dove in a cage; several coloured leather bags of something that looked suspiciously like gunpowder; and a lute. Alyce looked warily at this last item and hoped that she was not expected to give some form of musical accompaniment.

  ‘All of these, they must go up there.’ He pointed to the stage. ‘Then we begin.’

  She watched him arranging the items across the stages of the scaffold, and followed his lead. The last things to be unpacked were the coloured bags of powder.

  ‘What are these?’ said Alyce, poking her finger into one of them.

  ‘Careful, child!’ said Vitali, gently pulling her away and sealing the bag. ‘This is a little sorcery of my own. You shall see. Perhaps, with a real witch here, we will not need it in future?’

  He winked, and Alyce felt her blood boil beneath her cheeks. How could he mention it so openly? She turned her head away, pretending she had seen something in the crowd, and she hadn’t heard what he’d said.