Witchborn
Page 20
‘You mean Alex Greenliefe. And yes, he was in our company until he lost us our patronage.’
Hopkins laughed to himself. ‘Of course. Alex Greenliefe. Do you know where I might find him?’
‘Ha!’ One of the other actors barked. ‘If we knew where he was, we’d be throttling him right now. Everyone’s looking for him. Even Her Majesty.’
Hopkins listened to him without turning. He was looking at the slender boy in the centre of the group, with his tufted black hair, purple rings around his eyes, and an odd red smear around his lips. He knew who this was. He’d even seen him before, in the flesh, in the gatehouse at Bedlam.
Hopkins smiled at him.
The boy jerked and ducked behind one of the other men, then leapt over one of the boxes of costumes, down from the stage, and began sprinting to the entrance of the Great Hall.
‘Solomon!’ cried the company leader, and the rest of the actors spat in disgust.
‘He’s the one you want!’ said another. ‘He brought the Devil among us!’
Hopkins didn’t have to speak, didn’t even have to move. Caxton somehow managed to catch the boy without even breaking into a run. The length of his strides was enormous, unnaturally so. He snatched the back of his ruff and hauled him to the floor.
‘Would you mind,’ said Hopkins, addressing the company leader, ‘if we asked your fellow actor a few questions?’
‘You would be most welcome,’ said the older man, the fear plain to read in his watery eyes.
‘My thanks,’ said Hopkins. ‘We shall do our best to return him in one piece.’
Doctor Dee’s carriage was waiting outside. His horses snorted and pawed at the dirt, looking just as impatient as the man himself. When Hopkins approached the carriage door, the Doctor was peering into his black scrying mirror, anxiety etched across his old face. He looked up.
‘Where is the girl, Hopkins?’
‘We don’t have the girl,’ he said, stepping up into the opposite seat while Caxton took the reins, ‘because she’s been taken to the Tower.’
Dee seemed to look at him from every angle, searching his face for some sign that this was a joke. Then he laughed, long and loudly.
‘The Tower?’ he said. ‘Well. There is a happy coincidence.’
They heard the clink of the horses’ bridles, then the carriage shuddered, and rattled into the night.
Raleigh paddled them slowly past the floating hulks, past the spot where Alyce had been washed ashore and robbed a few days earlier, past the sounds of revellers drinking themselves into oblivion in the dockside taverns.
Then she saw it. It wasn’t just one tower, as the name suggested, but countless towers, squat and immovable, connected by walls and walkways on which the guards’ torches bobbed and flickered. At its centre, she could just make out the crenellations of the great White Tower, standing ghostly sentinel over the whole fortress.
She heard it too. From somewhere within, a bell tolled the hour. Ten? Eleven? The wind snatched some of the peals from her and carried them downstream.
Their boat drifted along the Tower’s wharf. Some of the guards had spotted them, and yellow torchlit faces peered over the edge with their halberds hovering next to them. Raleigh manoeuvred them out of the current and under the wharf itself, until they were stationary in front of a large, semi-circular gate in the fortress’s wall. Here the river water swept through a closed portcullis into the moat within.
Pecke had briefly rejoined them, but now flew high over the battlements and disappeared inside.
‘Who goes there?’ called one of the warders from above.
‘Ho there, warder!’ Walter shouted back. ‘It is Walter Raleigh. With an enemy of the Queen. Open the traitors’ gate.’
‘Raleigh?’ The guard did not pronounce the name with any fondness. The face disappeared, there was the sound of footsteps from above, and then it reappeared from a lower window. ‘It is you. Why can’t you just use the front gate like everybody else, you dog? Have to make your entrance as dramatic as possible, don’t you? Well, no one important’s going to see it, because they’re all in bed.’
He spat something, which plopped into the water next to Alyce’s elbow.
‘An old friend,’ Raleigh said to her, as the waves nudged the boat backwards and forwards. He fetched a loop of sodden rope from underneath his bench. ‘Here, put this round your wrists. You’re going to have to be my prisoner for a while.’
Just how she was meant to tie up her own hands, Alyce wasn’t sure. She made a loose loop and slipped it over her fingers, but it didn’t look very convincing.
After a moment, there was the creak of a wheel being turned somewhere behind the wall and the portcullis began to rise, dredging up all kinds of filth from the riverbed with it. It dripped on to Alyce’s head as Raleigh rowed them under the arch and into the Tower’s outer ward.
At the top of the steps leading out of the moat, two guards fell about laughing.
‘Quite a catch, Walter!’
‘Thank God you caught her, she looks dangerous that one!’
‘You’ll get your knighthood for this, no doubt!’
They slapped each other on the back, and Alyce started to get hot with anger, more for her own sake than for Walter’s. But as soon as the boat was tied up, the joke had passed and they’d returned to their duties.
‘They can laugh all they like,’ muttered Walter, helping Alyce out of her seat. There was at least an inch of water in the hull now. ‘Chances are I will get a knighthood after all this.’
Once they were on dry land, he led her through a gate in another, inner wall, where two more warders regarded her suspiciously, and across the lawn to the gigantic White Tower. In the grass, she saw half a dozen ravens, among them Pecke, conspicuous for his size and odd-coloured eyes.
Some wooden steps led them into a room not unlike the Great Hall at Whitehall, although it seemed sparser and more functional. More guards, more nods, more tipped hats, and then they were climbing a spiral staircase that wound up inside the far corner of the tower. At the top, they emerged into a gallery that ran along one side of the keep, and in front of them was a large oak door studded with iron. Raleigh fumbled under his cloak, and again Alyce saw the blinding white of the man’s expensive clothes beneath. He produced a ring of keys, and tried a few before the lock clicked and he was able to heave the door open. Then he lit a taper from one of the torches on the stairs, and led her inside.
The room beyond was like nothing Alyce had seen before. There was so much gilding it hurt the eyes, brighter and more garish as Raleigh went around lighting the candles. At the centre was a four-poster bed, a vast sea of blue velvet, and opposite that a dressing table that looked as complex and impenetrable as the Tower of London itself. Intricately detailed and richly coloured tapestries hung from every wall. It made Solomon’s room look like a stable.
‘Is this where I’ll be staying?’ In all honesty, she wasn’t sure she would be able to sleep, the room glittered so much.
‘No, no,’ said Raleigh. ‘This isn’t Bess’s private chamber.’ He went and checked outside in the passageway, and then closed the door. ‘Follow me,’ he said.
Behind one of the tapestries was a gap in the wall, only wide enough for one person to fit into at once, and a slender person at that.
‘Breathe in,’ he said, and disappeared into the passage. She followed him, shoulders grazing the damp stone on either side. ‘This is actually the safest way to make sure nobody finds it,’ he said as they shuffled along. ‘You should see the size of the breeches that courtiers wear these days. And the ruffs. And the peasecod bellies. They wouldn’t stand a chance of fitting through here.’
An incredibly tight set of stairs went up further still, this time seemingly within the thick walls of the White Tower, until they reached a small, unimpressive wooden door. Raleigh retrieved another key from under his cloak – enormous, this one, its head an intricate labyrinth of wrought iron the size of her palm.
I’m home.
Something about the low orange light mixed with the musty smell of earth and roots and the spice of incense, put her right back in her mother’s cellar. And the more she saw, the more comforted she felt. Here were all the things she had grown up with, so normal, so familiar: bowls of dried herbs and fungi, skulls and bones of animals, countless figures of men and beasts woven from straw and hair. Candles the size of her thigh, some even larger. A great iron brazier smoking steadily in the corner.
‘Queen Elizabeth is a witch,’ said Alyce.
Raleigh didn’t reply. There was no need.
How on earth had she concealed it so completely, and for so long? Did other people know, besides Raleigh? What if her subjects were to find out? It was too much to take in: Her Majesty, Good Queen Bess, a sorceress, a crone, a handmaiden to the Devil Himself. She couldn’t help smiling at the thought of it; but then, at the same time, her heart broke a little to think that even the Queen of England was forced to hide herself away in her own palace.
Alyce wandered from one end of the chamber to the other, examining the kinds of charms and trinkets and artefacts she hadn’t seen for months. Elizabeth and her mother: they must have known each other. Not only were they fellow witches, but their tastes seemed completely identical, at least as far as their lodgings were concerned.
‘Make yourself comfortable,’ Raleigh said at last, dropping the bag containing her book on the floor. ‘I need to return to Whitehall to find Elizabeth. And to find Doctor Dee.’ If there had been anywhere to spit, he would have done. ‘I’ll return tomorrow, with Bess, I hope. Until then, lock this door, and don’t open it to anyone.’ He handed her the gigantic key, and turned to go. The last thing she saw was the flash of his scabbard as he slipped back through the door.
Alyce looked around the chamber, alone but not lonely. Under the room’s single arched window was a table covered with candles. She picked up her bag from the floor and carried it over with her, and opened the Necronomicon in the pool of their light. She sat and gazed at the symbols and pictures, and thought nothing of the key’s weight in her pocket.
It was still dark outside when Alyce woke, and she had no idea what time it was. She had a vague memory of a bell sounding, a single, clear ring, which would mean it was well after one o’clock in the morning. If the bell had been at all real. Chances were, she wouldn’t have heard it, sealed into this warm, comfortable tomb.
She had fallen asleep at the book, and she had to peel her face off the damp pages before she could sit upright. She rubbed her eyes and looked around. Still alone. The embers in the brazier were almost dead. Something was bothering her – a feeling that someone had been speaking to her in her dreams, trying to tell her something important, something she had to remember, and Alyce had promptly forgotten it as soon as she had opened her eyes.
On the shelves that lined the room’s curved walls there were various bottles and jars, but she was fairly certain none of them contained anything that would quench her thirst. She got up and peered at the dark glass, seeing only her reflection. It was intolerably hot, and she hadn’t had anything to drink since before the play, which seemed years ago now.
Alyce. Open the door.
She nearly dropped the flask she was examining. The voice sounded no louder than a draught from outside. Maybe she was still dreaming after all.
Alyce. Please.
Her blood rushed to her head so ferociously she thought she was going to faint. She knew the voice, but wouldn’t admit it to herself. This had to be a dream.
There followed a scratching noise on the other side of the door, as if someone were trying to knock, but were too weak to do so.
Alyce.
She rushed over and pulled on the circular iron handle, its weight and coldness proving that she was awake. She suddenly remembered she hadn’t locked the door as Raleigh had instructed her.
It opened on to nothingness.
Below her, on the narrow staircase, she heard the patter of bare feet on stone.
Alyce ran down after the sound, leaving the door to Elizabeth’s private chamber wide open. She slipped on the damp steps a couple of times, feeling her way along the walls while her eyes got accustomed to the darkness. At the bottom, already out of breath, her heart surging through her ribs, she emerged from behind the tapestry to find the great bedchamber door also open. The candles had long since burnt out, or perhaps Raleigh had extinguished them when he had left, but in the gloom she saw a white heel and a flutter of fabric disappear out of the room.
This was stupid, she decided. She should stay put. Lock herself up in the attic, as she had been told.
Don’t stop. Follow me.We can escape, together.
That voice again. Sometimes it sounded as though it were drifting to her from outside in the passageway, sometimes it echoed behind her. Sometimes it seemed to come from within her own head.
Alyce? Don’t you want to see me again? Don’t you want to go back?
It brought tears to her eyes. Of course she wanted to go back. It was all she had ever wanted, since she had heard that voice last. Since it had been brutally silenced.
Quickly now.
She ran into the gallery outside. The footsteps were echoing down the spiral staircase that she and Raleigh had used when they had arrived. Round and down she went, two floors, then three, lower even than the entrance to the Tower, following the warm, familiar scent that was always just ahead of her.
The basement was poorly lit, and cruel angular shapes lurked in the shadows. Imagined or not, Alyce smelt old blood. And at the far end, among the racks and cages and other pieces of machinery, she finally saw her. Her face was obscured, but there was no doubting the figure and the way it moved. It was her mother.
Alyce’s tears were scalding. It made no sense. It was madness. Agonizing, blinding, joyful madness.
The figure was crouching down to open a trapdoor in the corner of the room. Even that movement reminded Alyce of being at home, despite her current grisly surroundings. Her mother pulled on the handle just like she used to before entering the cellar in their old cottage, the same cellar where Alyce had hidden herself.
Down here, Alyce!
Again, the voice didn’t seem to come from the right direction.
The figure dropped herself into the square black hole in the ground. Alyce wiped her eyes to clear her vision, snatched a torch from a sconce, and hurried to catch up.
Yet more spiralling stairs, but now slimy and moss-covered, burrowing deep into the earth. Pale, maggot-coloured fungus forced its way between the stones and brushed her cheeks and hands as she tiptoed past. It was much colder down here, a profound cold that reached the marrow of her bones.
Her hands and feet were numb by the time she reached the bottom. There she found herself in a maze of low-ceilinged chambers and passages that had not so much been built as hollowed out of the ground. The walls themselves had spaces roughly hewn into them – long, shallow, body-sized spaces. Catacombs of some kind. The air was foul with decay, overlaid with a sharp smell of pickling that reminded her of Doctor Dee’s house.
The walls of the passage glowed with something too steady, too eerie to be firelight. Her mother was waiting for her at the end, facing her now.
So close Alyce. Follow me.
She spoke the words without moving her lips. The cold now clutched at Alyce’s heart.
Alyce came forward very slowly. Each step seemed to take hours to complete. In the alcoves on either side of her, she saw the source of the weird half-light: alchemical globes. In their glow, she glimpsed things far more horrifying than any of the instruments of torture in the Tower. They seemed, in fact, to be the end products of those instruments. People. And parts of people.
The nearer she got to her mother, the more it felt like her blood was draining out of her, as though she were physically shrivelling in the darkness. The apparition grew taller,
broader around the shoulders. Its face became longer, too, its features stern and imperious. Her mother’s wild curls disappeared, bound tight and straight behind the figure’s high forehead. Instead of her mother’s plain, loose smock, this woman wore an elaborate and voluminous dress that clutched stiffly at her neck and waist.
Mary Stuart stood before her, but not as a phantom this time. The woman herself. In the light of the globes she cast a blunt, definite shadow on the floor of the catacombs. Her breathing was loud and a little strained, emerging in hot, irregular clouds. She looked old.
Before Alyce could take a backward step, two leather-clad hands pinned her arms to her sides, and when she tried to pull herself free she saw that long, awful beak over her shoulder and the glassy, lifeless eyes at the other end. Her torch fell to the ground. The other witchfinder melted out of the darkness at her side, and then, completing the party, she saw Doctor Dee hovering at Mary’s shoulder.
She was trapped. All of her bile surged out of her at once.
‘You heartless coward,’ she spat.
Mary Stuart laughed. ‘Yes, a cheap trick. Forgive me. But you will see your real mother soon enough. I will uphold my end of the deal.’
‘There was no deal.’
‘Yes, I am aware of that. A great shame, because we will have to kill you as a result. But even so, I will keep my promise: I will bring your mother to you.’
‘No! I don’t want . . .’ Alyce strained against the crowman’s grasp, grinding dirt into the soles of her feet. She looked wildly from one alcove to the next, at what she assumed were the remains of Doctor Dee’s experiments. Each one looked like a butcher’s stall. Collected around the benches were same kinds of tools and instruments and books that she’d seen at his house in Mortlake.
The thought of her mother being brought back like this – a creature, a monster like the man in the mask – terrified her more than anything.
‘Hush, Alyce,’ said Mary. ‘It’s not what you think.’ As the Queen of Scots came closer, Alyce saw more of the lines and fissures in her greying skin. She looked more than just old. She looked half dead.