Alchemy (43 page)

‘I will think upon what you say and see if I can find a way to help you. But first you must carry my letter and report on your success or that of anyone you may appoint to do it if you cannot leave your post.’

‘My wife shall take it herself. As midwife she has entry to many places closed to others.’

‘Now tell me how you came by this spell if spell it is.’

‘There was an old woman, ill formed and bent like a hoop, that my wife had helped once, but would not again when she came begging, that cursed me through her and said she should have no child of her own out of my body.’

‘And why did you not accuse her as a witch?’

‘I would not have the world mock me.’

‘If you succeed in bringing me help from the countess then I will set about a cure. But I must have the means to practise my art or I can do nothing. But what I do will be with the help of nature not the devil. Your humour is moist and black and therein lies your problem. You are too under the influence of Sagittarius and inclined to melancholy.’

‘My wife says I often have the black dog it is true. I will take her your letter and she will go with it immediately.’

After he was gone I grieved that I had had to speak in those terms used by physicians who hold that the stars influenced our fate from our birth and that our humours came from their ascendancy for I believe that a man may suffer melancholy or choler of his own nature without help from the heavenly bodies. And that our fate is in ourselves from our mother’s womb. Yet I do observe that a certain humour as cold and moist may seem to be master over the others in each of us and that we suffer in body and mind according to our composition and that the physician is most likely to bring about a cure by fitting his remedy to the prevailing humour, either by its opposite to drive it out or by its companion to soothe and calm it as sometimes we prescribe heat for those in a fever and at other times an opiate to bring sleep in which the body may heal itself. Yet I knew that if I did not use the language and the tricks of those physicians that pretended to knowledge of the stars that the gaoler would not believe me, would not follow my instructions and would therefore not be cured and be turned against me.

To compose myself I began to write my memorials on the paper that he had brought me. I had begged him for a knife to sharpen the quill when it became blunted.

‘If I should give you a knife you might use it to harm yourself and cheat justice.’

‘I have no wish to die but only to write those matters that might enable me to live.’ So he brought me a little knife with the pen and ink and a stool to sit on which I set as close under the window as I could to catch the feeble light as long as it lasted. And as long as I held myself to my tale the hours passed quickly enough.

Sometimes I wondered if I should pray that God would make plain my innocence to the world and deliver me from this place but no words would come and no priest visited me to help me in my devotions. I tried to remember some words from my lady’s psalms but only those the household had sung on our first visit to Wilton would come to me. Then I asked myself whether the devil had indeed taken hold of me that my thoughts were unable to turn to prayer when I stood so in need of any help.

At last when my eyes were beginning to weep from writing so long in the little light I heard a sound at the door as of the bolt being drawn back. The door was pulled open and my lady stood there with the duenna behind her and the gaoler holding up a lantern. I fell on my knees before her.

‘Leave us,’ I heard her say. ‘My woman shall attend me outside the door. Leave me the lantern.’

‘Suppose the witch should escape…’ he began but she cut him off.

‘How dare you! Leave us.’ And then when he had gone she said to the duenna, ‘Wait at the door and warn me if any approach. Stand up Amyntas.’ But I could not for shame. ‘What have they done to you? What is this filthy gown?’

I raised my eyes then and saw her looking down on me.

‘My lady should not have come to this place.’

‘You wrote to me.’

‘I asked only for your help, not that you should come to see me like this. Let me take off this gown madam, for I find it hard to speak to you as I would in this attire.’ I stood up then and pulled its dark folds over my head. When I was revealed in my own clothes again I went on one knee.

‘Now tell me what has become of you, for I thought you still in London although when I sent to your lodgings they said you had not returned. The woman feared you had come to some harm for you had spoken of going into Alsatia.’

‘I was taken by two men madam who brought me here in a cart and carried me before the justice to be examined since the magistrate in London found no fault in me. But the men who snatched me discovered my true sex when they laid hands upon me, and set me up for a witch.’

‘Your true sex?’

She glanced towards the door where the duenna waited. I saw then the game we were to play which was our old game and that however it fell out with me I must protect her from any shame or insult.

‘That what I had pretended to all this while was false, a dream merely that I might serve you in disguise.’

‘But how should this set you up for a witch? Do not the players assume such disguises commonly on the public stage and even at court by royal command?’

‘There are those that would destroy me madam out of envy because they believed you favoured me.’

‘Who has brought the charge of witchcraft?’

‘Dr Gilbert madam, it is who still pursues me. That I was your servant protected me before when they did not know my true nature. The magistrate held that as I did not practise publicly as a physician there was no charge to answer. Then I was snatched and brought here because it was believed a country justice would see matters differently but now with this new knowledge they can bring the greater charge that since I went about in male dress pretending to heal I was as much a witch as French Joan.’

‘What would you have from me? I cannot speak on oath against the truth. I could not defend you from that charge.’

‘How does the Lady Anne?’

‘She lives.’

‘Then none can say I have brought about her death and this will save my life.’

‘She lives but only just. I intend to take her to Cambridge to a notable physician there, Dr Mathew Lister, to see what he can do. He is young but well spoken of. Certainly she grows worse in the smoke and stink of London. When will they bring you to your trial?’

‘No one has told me.’

‘What is the worst they can do?’

‘If I am convicted they may stand me in the pillory, fine me, keep me in gaol.’

‘You will need money if you are not to die in such a place.’

‘I never needed before since your service provided all my wants but what small sum I had was left behind when I was taken, except for a few shillings in my pocket and most of them are gone.’

‘There is little I can do for you Amyntas, as I still must think of you, but this I can.’

She called to the duenna to bring her purse. ‘There, this will keep you for a little.’

‘Madam I am ashamed to take it and do so only out of my great need. To be thrown among the common felons would be my death.’

‘I paid you nothing while you were in my service except my love. I do not believe you went about to kill my child. My fault was to trust too much to your skill and to let her have too much her own way. Therefore I must share some of the blame.’

Her speaking of her love to me and taking blame upon
herself brought the tears into my eyes. ‘Do not weep child. Tears will not help you. Use some of the money to buy a new gown for your trial that you may put the best face on matters. You are young and supposed witches are usually old. The justice may acquit you or at least make your imprisonment short. Do not fall into despair. Lift up your eyes to the hills. God does not let the innocent suffer and I believe you are innocent of any malice. I shall return to the house I have taken in London when I have finished here and then for Cambridge. If my daughter grows well enough to be married I mean to travel as soon as she is settled. There is nothing to keep me here. Even those poets who once wrote me their fawning dedications have lines only for my sons. ‘They flee from me that sometime did me seek!’ I must learn to be an old woman and powerless. I have commanded fair copies of my psalms from John Davies, the master calligrapher, and will send you one for your comfort in this place.’

She gave me her hand to kiss, still fine and white. I could not keep a tear from falling on it for I understood that I might never see her again. ‘The Tears of Amyntas. The poet Fraunce dedicated that to me so long ago in the third part of his poem on my mansion of Ivychurch, gone from me now with the rest. It is strange that I have never thought of it before.’

There’s been nothing new to start with about the dean’s opening speech. Nothing I mean that I haven’t heard before on their propaganda website and in the-Molders printed material. My mind switches off until I realise that he’s coming to some kind of climax when he turns towards the screen holding out his hands as if ushering in a real presence but it’s the virtual Apostle Joachim who comes on next. Bishop was only the warm-up act. The students, some of them anyway, greet his appearance with little cries and moans. Obviously he’s the big cheese served
up on special occasions. At first he too says nothing more revealing than on the Temple website. We live on the fringes of eternity, soon to stand in the presence of God if we have made our hearts open for Him only. The time has been long promised. Now it is here.

The organ, but it may be just piped sound, begins to play the
Veni creator
as Joachim speaks the words and the text appears on the screen. ‘Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire, And lighten with celestial fire…’ One of the students calls out. ‘Yes, Lord, yes. Come.’ I risk a look further into the chapel through the railing. A girl seems to have sunk down crying as Hester Ado did but this time no one’s hurrying to pick her up. All eyes are on the screen, except for those shut tight.

‘Yes, the spirit is coming to you the elect, as he came to the apostles, to catch you up into the heavenly arms,’Joachim thunders out, spreading his own arms.

‘This is the fullness of time my children. You have waited too long crying in the wilderness. How long, O Lord? How long? He descends to each of you in tongues of cleansing flame and on the wings of the wind. ‘There’s a rushing sound as if the domed roof has blown off or been snatched away and a gale is howling round inside the chapel. There are more cries from the students. Some are standing with their arms outstretched, others kneeling.

Suddenly what seem like points of flame appear to dance about the building, settling on the students’ heads. Lighting by Pentecost, Son et Lumière plc. Plc? Per Latent Christ, I think. Concentrate, Jade. My mind seems to be wandering off. I look at Charlie and Omi. They’re transfixed staring down at the show below. There’s a smell of incense. Perhaps it’s from the strange canisters on the railing of the gallery above.

But there’s another smell too that it’s only partly masking. I wonder if I’m feeling a bit sick. I look at Charlie again. He shakes his head and begins to cough. On the big screen Joachim
is exhorting us all to come to him, to leave our sinful flesh and rise through death. Death?

Watching him seems to have cleared my head a bit. The smell behind the incense I suddenly realise is that of burning. Something is on fire. Now I see real flames springing up here and there. ‘Charlie, open the door. We need some fresh air. I can’t think properly.’

We all stumble through the little room towards the door. Charlie wrenches it open and we step quickly outside to hang on to the iron staircase, gasping and retching. It’s such a relief to be out of that sickly atmosphere in the real world again. But I know I have to go back in there to see what’s going on. Something is horribly wrong but I still don’t get what’s happening. I have to find out.

‘Right,’ I say. ‘I’m going back in. Stay here and if I don’t come out in a few minutes come in and get me because I’ll have passed out, or fallen over the rail. At least one or two of us has to stay fit to do something.’

‘OK, Jade. We’ll wait here for you. But not for long. I’ll also do some deep breathing and teach Omi how to do it. It gives you more oxygen like swimming under water. You can stay down longer.’

Charlie’s clearly in much better shape than I am with his martial arts practice, but it’s my job to go back in. I’m supposed to be the professional after all and I’m being paid to risk my life, even though I didn’t know that’d be called for when I signed up for the job. I take a couple of deep but, I fear, inefficient breaths and propel myself through the room on to the gallery. This time with the boys holding the fort behind I go right up to the rail and, still standing up, take a good look down into the chapel.

It’s like
Towering Inferno
or a scene from Dante down there. Fires are burning fiercely in several parts of the building. Some students seem to have been overcome by the fumes. Some are
struggling at the door with Daniel Davidson trying to pull them away. He’s shouting but I can’t make out the words or those of Joachim still pontificating from the screen. There’s no sign of the Molders or Dean Bishop. Some of the students get to the door past Davidson and are trying to open it. They seem to be locked in. I feel the fumes starting to get to me again. Time to go. Before I duck back through the little door I glance up towards the dome. The saints in their window niches seem to glimmer and waver through the smoke as if they’re bending forward to watch the scene of poor struggling humanity below.

‘Charlie, dial 999 on your mobile. We need fire, police, ambulance, the lot. Omi, you’ll be quicker than me. Go down the stairs through that little door, turn left round the corner of the corridor. The entrance to the chapel is just there. See if you can open it. If you can’t, come back.’

His slim figure is running down the iron treads and whisking through the door while Charlie is still trying to raise the emergency services. In a couple of minutes Omi reappears, he shakes his head and runs up the stairs. ‘No good, Jade. It won’t move.’