Witchfall

by Victoria Lamb

  ‘Best you do not know,’ I told her, then smiled when she stared at me. ‘Where is my brother?’

  She brightened. ‘Still a-bed in the stables, I should think. Should I fetch him?’

  I nodded. ‘I don’t think the Lady Elizabeth should be left unattended today. I know Blanche is with her, but in case Blanche leaves the room or falls asleep, William should keep watch outside her ladyship’s door at all times. Tell him to keep a candle lit, and not let it go out.’

  ‘And what should I do?’ Alice was pouting.

  The torn pieces of the note were almost burnt to ash now. I straightened and took my friend’s hand, squeezing it encouragingly. ‘Well, you could . . . you could keep William company. He will be hungry sometimes, and thirsty too, I should imagine. You could fetch him ale and sweetmeats, I am sure he would not turn you away.’

  We both laughed, then I looked up to see Alejandro in the entrance to the Great Hall. I fell silent, watching him. Part of me was glad that Alice had disturbed us, for while he was kissing me, I had felt the strongest urge to accept his offer of marriage and leave this life behind. Now that we had been separated though, even if it was only by a few feet of light and shadow, my desire to learn whatever could be learned from John Dee had returned. I loved Alejandro, but I was not yet ready to become a wife.

  Yet how to make him understand such a subtle thing without losing his heart?

  ‘I must risk the rain to speak with our guest,’ I told him, fetching my cloak from the settle. ‘Will you walk with me?’

  ‘Gladly,’ Alejandro replied, and held out his hand.

  The fire was burning in the centre of the goatherds’ hut again, no doubt keeping out the worst of the damp weather, though I could see that the roof leaked in several places. John Dee was at his table, pacing rather than sitting, and reading often from a great book that lay open there. His apprentice invited me in and closed the door on Alejandro, whom he told to ‘return at dusk’.

  So it was to be a long day, I thought, and unfastened my sodden cloak. I stopped to gaze without understanding but with much fascination at a chart that had been scratched upon the wall: strange figures drawn in concentric circles, some that I recognized from the zodiac, others unfamiliar to me, uneven triangles and circles dissected by lines or ending in moons or arrow shapes.

  The astrologer looked up and saw me. ‘Ah, Meg Lytton! You are come in a fortunate hour.’

  He took my hands, removing my wet gloves and handing them to Richard to be dried before the fire.

  ‘The Moon conjuncts Jupiter, and the planet Mercury is almost upon the Ascendant. Quick, quick. We must make a start.’ Briefly, he held up a scrap of paper, creased and torn, then crumpled it back into his belt pocket. ‘A note from your mistress, sent to me at first light. In it she tells of her dream last night, and your great act of conjuration in her chamber at Hampton Court. Why did you not speak of it before?’

  He meant my summoning of Anne Boleyn, of course. My heart sank for I had hoped John Dee would never find out about it. He seemed excited but agitated at what I had done, and a little disapproving too.

  ‘It must have been an astonishing act,’ he commented, not waiting for my reply, ‘To have brought forth not one royal spirit, but two – how did you summon Queen Anne, by the way? No, not yet. Tell me the incantation later. For when the dead Queen answered your summons, it seems her husband came through from the spirit world with her. And now he will not return to his proper place in the halls of the dead.’

  ‘But we cannot be sure it is her ladyship’s father, King Henry.’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘Marcus Dent,’ I suggested, and saw the astrologer’s face darken. ‘The Oxfordshire witchfinder. I cast a spell on him this spring, and he . . . vanished. He has been seen in the county since, but much changed, his face scarred and otherworldly. I cannot help wondering if what they have seen is no man, but an unquiet spirit, walking this earth in search of revenge.’

  ‘Unlikely,’ Dee said dismissively. ‘If you found no body, then there was no death. Except perhaps a magickal one. And a magickal death can often be reversed – if one possesses a talisman or dedicated token against death, and the knowledge of how it should be applied.’

  I frowned, remembering how I had watched Marcus Dent being sucked into the whirling black void that my spell had opened up in the village square at Woodstock.

  ‘You knew Master Dent, I believe.’

  ‘A long time ago, yes.’ John Dee made a complex sign in the air, as though to clear away evil influences, then sat down on his stool. He clasped his hands together, then raised them to his chin, thinking aloud. ‘We met at Oxford while I was still unsure what direction I wished my studies to take. Dent was several years older than me, with a powerful grasp of mathematics and philosophy. He was greatly admired in the school of divinity too and could have become a doctor – or even a priest. But he knew little of astronomy until I shared my learning with him.’ Dee mused for a moment. ‘Marcus became obsessed with the stars. Not just their mathematical patterns, but the implications of their uses here on Earth.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘To properly comprehend the zodiac, the movements of the planets and stars, and their influence upon us, is to learn how to control and transmute the matter of life itself.’ He stared blindly ahead, his voice husky. ‘To change that which cannot be changed by any other means.’

  Richard was standing behind him. He looked at me over the astrologer’s head and mouthed the word, ‘Alchemy.’

  ‘Are you saying Master Dent became interested in how to change base metals into gold?’

  ‘That is indeed what I mean. Marcus went off to Germany in search of the philosopher’s stone, the secret elixir which turns lead into gold. I did not follow him. We had argued and my interests lay elsewhere at that time, though since those days . . .’ He smiled drily, and looked up at me as though he had suddenly remembered why I was there. ‘Well, some of us come to it early and some late. But for Dent, as for so many others, the search for the philosopher’s stone was fruitless. Through the study of alchemy, he came to research magickal properties, and thence to witchcraft. In Germany, he fell in with some fellows whose chief joy in life was the burning of witches and Devil-worshippers. One of these women foretold his death at the hands of one of her kind here in England, and so Marcus came home with no elixir, but with hatred in his heart for all witchkind.’

  ‘So he is not a witch himself?’

  John Dee raised his eyebrows. ‘Define witch.’

  ‘One who works magick.’

  ‘We all work magick to a greater or lesser extent every day of our lives,’ Dee commented. ‘Magick is but the achievement of marvels, whether they be true marvels or merely seem so to those who are ignorant of the workings of God’s universe. Does that make us all witches?’

  ‘I think it may be Master Dent that the Lady Elizabeth saw in her chamber last night,’ I blurted out. ‘I have seen him too, a vile shadow creature crawling across the ceiling of the Great Hall at Hampton Court, though only I was able to see him there.’ They were both staring at me now and I tailed off, feeling more than a little foolish. ‘Marcus Dent may also have appeared to me in the guise of a giant rat.’

  It was Richard’s turn to raise his eyebrows at me now. His lips twitched with amusement. ‘A giant rat?’

  But John Dee was not smiling. He turned to his book and leafed urgently through it. ‘You saw a “shadow creature” on the ceiling of the Great Hall, you say?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said stubbornly.

  ‘What day was this?’ He glanced at me when I did not speak. ‘Speak, girl. What was the date? The time?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Late morning. Maybe mid-July?’

  The astrologer slammed his book shut with a violent bang. ‘Maybe? How can I draw a conclusion from this supernatural event if you cannot give me the exact date and time that it occurred?’

  I looked at Richard and he smiled, making a s
oothing gesture. ‘Master, the summoning . . .’

  John Dee put down the book with a heavy sigh. ‘Yes, of course. Let us move on and establish what can be established. Tell me instead about the act of summoning. You called forth the spirit of Queen Anne, she who was sent to the block by her own husband, King Henry, for committing the sin of adultery?’

  I nodded, relieved that neither of them had called me mad for suggesting the shadow creature was Marcus Dent.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what made you attempt such a dangerous and foolhardy act on your own, untrained and ignorant of true magickal procedure as you are?’

  I felt my face grow hot as I looked from Dee’s cool disapproval to Richard’s mocking smile. ‘I am not untrained,’ I objected, my temper rising as I realized the low opinion they held of my skills as a conjuror. ‘Nor am I ignorant of true magickal . . . whatever you called it. My aunt was a witch and taught me most of what she knew before she died. The rest I have learned from magickal books.’

  ‘Women’s magick,’ Dee said dismissively.

  My teeth ground together. ‘I still managed to summon Queen Anne though, didn’t I?’

  ‘And brought a terrible darkness into the land with her.’

  ‘No, that is Marcus Dent’s doing, I swear it. It is not King Henry. It cannot be. I did not summon him by name or thought or deed. I called on his Queen, Anne Boleyn, and she came. She came to us and spoke with her daughter.’

  Dee leaned forward on his stool. He was staring now, suddenly rapt and attentive. ‘You saw the Queen’s spirit?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She took on a physical form?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And she spoke to the Lady Elizabeth? You heard her voice too? It did not sound in your mind, but aloud on the air, as I am speaking to you now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He glanced round swiftly at Richard, who was also intent on my description. ‘A true manifestation.’

  His apprentice nodded. ‘So it would appear.’

  ‘Are you a sensitive? What the Chaldeans used to call a “prophet”?’ Dee demanded, leaping up and knocking the stool over.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He seized my hands and examined them again, then stared into my eyes. ‘To be able to conjure a spirit in physical form and with an audible voice is almost unheard of, except in ancient texts. We have long since lost the art . . . Would you sit with me at an appointed hour and call on the spirits for me? It can be tiring work – Richard will tell you – but your mind would be utterly opened to the true universe, far beyond this dull earth that we see every day.’

  I hesitated, seeing a flash of anger in Richard’s face. ‘I am in the Lady Elizabeth’s service, Master Dee, and can only work with you further if her ladyship commands it. She requires me to learn what I can from you about this shadow from her dream, and nothing else.’

  Dee sat back down, drawing me with him. ‘Yes,’ the astrologer agreed reluctantly, still holding my hands. ‘I shall ask her ladyship. But first, this shadow creature. You think it is Marcus Dent, but why?’

  Briefly, I explained my previous encounters with Dent and the spell I had worked that had finally sent him into the void. The astrologer listened without expression but Richard folded his arms, his cold eyes never leaving my face. I wondered if he suspected I was there to take his place as Dee’s apprentice. ‘It is just a feeling, of course, that the shadow is Marcus Dent. But it is my best explanation for why this is happening. Master Dent wants revenge, both on me and on the princess.’

  Richard did not believe me. ‘And Queen Mary? What does he want with her?’

  I thought for a moment, painfully aware that Dee’s apprentice had pinpointed the only part of my explanation which made little sense even to me. ‘I’m not sure. Perhaps he just wanted to fill me with horror. To show me what he could do.’

  ‘No one else saw this event?’

  ‘He seems able to make himself invisible at will. Or visible only to a certain person. Like me – or the Lady Elizabeth last night.’

  Dee released my hands and turned back to his book. Dragging it onto his knee, he ran his finger erratically down the columns of numbers, pausing now and then to whisper some calculation under his breath. I realized then that it was an ephemeris, a book listing the positions of the planets and fixed stars on any day at any given moment.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he muttered. ‘Mercury rising. And here, Caput Draconis.’ He stood and looked up at me, his light-coloured eyes narrowed to bright slits. ‘The Head of the Dragon, auspiciously placed for divination. No infortunes applying, and although it is the dark of the Moon, yet this may work in our favour for such dark and secret matters. Tell me, girl, when did you last eat?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Did you break your fast this morning? Answer truthfully, for it is important. To avoid evil influence, the stomach must be empty and the body cleaned for conjuration.’

  I had to think. ‘I took a little ale, but no food. I was not hungry after last night’s excitement.’

  He nodded to Richard. ‘Prepare her,’ he muttered, and turned to a saddlebag on the floor behind the table, bending to retrieve various wrapped objects which he began to place on the table.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I whispered to Richard.

  Dee’s apprentice did not smile. I had been right. He was angry that I was taking his place as seer.

  ‘My master wishes to test your visions,’ he said coolly, and poured water from a flask into a bowl. Into this he stirred what smelled like a mixture of ground herbs and spices – I caught a hint of pine, nutmeg, sage, and something exotic I could not place – then carried the bowl to me. When I merely raised my eyebrows, he gestured to the stool. ‘Sit, I need to wash you.’

  I repressed a giggle, and he grew even more stern. ‘Forgive me,’ I managed. Trying to look serious, I held out my hands and watched in fascination as Richard dipped each finger in the odd-smelling concoction one by one, then dried them afterwards on a red cloth. As each finger was dipped into the water, he muttered in Latin, ‘Sanus,’ and then ‘Gratius ago,’ as he dried it.

  When Richard came to the finger with the missing nail, its skin still red and puckered, he glanced at me but said nothing, drying it more carefully than the others.

  Master Dee stooped to burn a handful of incense on a platter. The small hut filled with a strange, sweet-smelling smoke that left me a little light-headed. The astrologer then lit four candles and placed one ceremoniously at each corner of the table, in a way that was very reminiscent of my own casting of the circle.

  ‘Thou shalt honour the North, the South, the East and the West,’ I muttered. This I could understand.

  Richard’s hard gaze lifted to my face. ‘Head back,’ he said softly, then dipped his finger in the bowl and drew a wet line down from my forehead to my chin, then across from one cheek to the other. He’s making the sign of the cross, I realized, and was surprised by it.

  Master Dee was now chanting in Latin. The chanting went on for some time. He swung a black hooded cloak about his shoulders and pinned it with a gold and red brooch which glinted in the firelight. The centre of the table he draped with a black silk cloth, on which he placed a greying ram’s skull with curved horns, a quill and an inkpot containing red ink.

  At least, I hoped it was red ink.

  Raising his hands to the ceiling like some priest about to say Mass, John Dee cried out, ‘Hear us, O Mars, great lord of battle and feverish visions, in whose name all blood is spilt. Grant that our seer Meg Lytton may call on you for strength through this talisman of your power, the Ram.’

  As I watched, he dipped the quill in the red ink and drew on the ram’s skull the spidery shape of a conjoined circle and cross on the skull, then topped this symbol with a crescent curving upwards.

  ‘O Mercury, swift and cunning ruler of petitions and messengers, may your bright wings guide us in this endeavour, you whom the Romans called the god Mercurius and the Per
sians the lord Tyr.’ He touched his forehead to the table three times, then pointed at me. ‘I conjure you, O Mercury, to bring this girl to a place where she may speak with that spirit which troubles us, and learn its will.’

  ‘You know,’ I whispered to Richard, ‘I managed to summon Anne Boleyn without any of this nonsense.’

  Richard’s mouth twitched, but he did not reply. He merely took away the bowl of scented water he had used to wash my hands and face, and returned with a comb. Carefully, he unpinned my white cap and set it aside, then began to comb out my hair.

  He paused, frowning down at me. ‘Why is your hair so short?’

  ‘I fell asleep in a field and a goat ate it,’ I replied.

  ‘You are a very strange girl, Meg,’ he commented, then went back to combing my hair with short, careful strokes.

  He was not to know that my hair had been chopped off by Marcus Dent at our last encounter, and had not yet fully regrown. But the brutal memory stung and I stiffened under his touch. I found it disturbing that John Dee and Marcus Dent had known each other at university, and shared an interest in astronomy and mathematics.

  What else had Marcus shared? Dee’s fascination with magick, perhaps, and not merely as a witch-hunter?

  There was a threatening rumble of thunder overhead. Rain began to fall more violently, drumming on the weak roof and smashing against the shuttered window. Water leaked through the cracks and ran down the walls. The broken door banged in its frame as the wind started to rise, as though at any moment it might suddenly fly open. I hoped that Alejandro had sensibly taken Richard at his word and gone back to the house until dusk fell. But I knew he would not have left me here alone and might be sheltering nearby, probably in a thorn bush. If so, he’d be drenched by now.

  Master Dee lifted one of the candles and sketched the sign of the cross in flame. Long shadows bobbed uneasily with the flame, then settled again into wavering darkness.

  ‘Let us pray to the Lord,’ Dee announced, much to my amazement. He bent his head and began to mutter, ‘Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name . . .’