Witchstruck (22 page)

‘Aunt Jane,’ I whispered, and fainted.

FIFTEEN

Invisible

I OPENED MY
eyes to a gently darkening sky and could not for a moment recall where I was or what had happened to bring me here. I was half sitting, half lying, with my back against a hawthorn hedge in a quiet grassy lane. Birds were singing unseen all around me, and the green verge was lush with daisies, bluebells, darkly budding strands of honeysuckle. For a few dizzying seconds, it seemed a perfect spring day. Then I remembered.

The stench of my aunt’s poor tortured flesh was still thick in my nose and throat. My eyes stung with fresh tears. I turned my face into the grassy soil, retching weakly.

Slowly, Alejandro came back towards me. He had been standing at the end of the narrow lane, staring into the smoky, crowded marketplace.

I looked up at him groggily as he approached. His face was tense, his hand clamped over the hilt of his sword.

‘Is it . . . is it over?’

Alejandro nodded curtly, not bothering to ask what I meant. ‘You fainted. It was all I could do to keep you on the saddle until we were clear of the square. As soon as you feel able to ride, I’ll fetch the horse and we can move on. I’ve tied him out of sight among the trees back there, for he
was
half maddened by the smoke and noise, then by having your dead weight about his neck.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I muttered, wiping my dirty face with my sleeve.

‘We must get back to Woodstock before dusk falls. There is nothing we can do here now. We’ll take this lane’ – he peered into the distance – ‘and hope to meet up with Juan in a mile or so. I don’t like the look of the crowd that’s gathered in the marketplace.’

‘Where is Juan?’

‘I’m not sure. His horse was scared by the flames too and must have bolted with the cart. He’s been gone a while though, so either the cart has been overturned or he has his hands full trying to stop the horse kicking it to pieces.’ He stared broodingly back down the road we had taken into the village. ‘Unless Dent’s men have taken him.’

Marcus Dent.

At the sound of that hated name, I knew that I wanted to kill Marcus Dent. Now that the sickness had cleared, my head steadied and sharpened to a single purpose: revenge. My aunt might be dead but I was still alive, the last of the Canley witches, and I knew what I had to do. The power filled me like the wind filling out the sail on a barge. I struggled to my feet without waiting for Alejandro’s help.

‘Where is Marcus Dent?’ I asked hoarsely. ‘Still in the marketplace?’

He caught me hard by the shoulders, turning me to face
him
. ‘Don’t be a fool. In this mood, they’ll take you too.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘You don’t care if you burn too?’

I lifted my chin. ‘Do you?’

His eyes studied me grimly but he did not answer. He was angry. I had seen Alejandro angry before, but this was something new. He was holding himself in check, his body taut as whipcord, his gaze restless. I sensed there were words in his head which he had forbidden himself to speak. Not that I would have listened anyway, not with the rage and hatred burning through my veins, the desire to strike Marcus Dent down and crush him under my heel.

My aunt’s face came into my mind, and I tried to block it out. I did not want to remember her bound to the stake in the marketplace, her robe on fire, her mouth twisting in an agonized scream. Nor did I wish to imagine how the heat must have felt, her skin blistering and peeling off in the white-hot inferno all around her, her tortured flesh melting down to the bone. Yet I could not seem to shake off those horrific imaginings.

I jerked free of his hands. There was venom in my voice. ‘I have to kill him. Even if it means dying too.’

‘You’re not thinking clearly,’ he told me, his voice still low, carefully restrained.

‘My aunt is dead and Marcus Dent killed her . . . in the most hellish, barbarous way. What is there to think about?’ I whirled on my heel and stared back at him
furiously
. ‘If you were in my position, what would you do?’

‘If he had killed someone I loved?’ he asked tersely. His hand dropped back to the hilt of his sword, his knuckles whitening. ‘I would spit him on my sword like a rabid dog and watch him bleed out his heart’s blood. Though just killing him would not be enough. I would want to make such a man suffer before I rid this earth of him.’

I drew a shuddering breath, fighting to control my grief and rage before it overwhelmed me. ‘Yes . . .’

An odd rustling noise in the hedgerow made us turn like deer at the sound of the hounds’ furious baying, poised to flee. Further down the lane, peering through a thorny gap in the hawthorn hedge, someone was watching us.

The face was filthy, pale under the dirt, cut and bruised. But I recognized it immediately.

‘Will?’

My brother staggered out into the lane and across to us, collapsing on his knees beside me. His right hand was cut, his knuckles bleeding. There was dried blood smeared across his forehead. He grabbed at the skirts of my gown like a child, his face contorted. ‘I’m sorry,’ he croaked. ‘You must believe me. I tried to stop them but there were too many.’

‘Where is the Lady Elizabeth’s letter?’ I demanded.

He stared. ‘She wrote a letter for you?’

‘Don’t play games with me, Will,’ I said furiously. ‘Alejandro saw our father take the letter. He was heading south, not here to save Aunt Jane.’

‘On my life,’ my brother stammered, ‘that was not what I wanted. My plan was to take the letter to the magistrate first and get Aunt Jane released from those butchers. Then we would steal the letter back afterwards and take it to the Low Countries, as proof of the Lady Elizabeth’s support. But Malcolm did not want to take the chance it might be destroyed. He persuaded our father not to wait. They planned to intercept the letter on its way to the magistrate and ride with it straight to the coast.’

I did not know what to say. This was my brother. How could I not forgive him?

Yet my heart seethed with anger as I remembered my aunt’s horrific death, the fear and agony she must have suffered in the last moments of her life. Will and Malcolm – even my father too, it seemed – had manipulated me into getting Elizabeth to write that letter.

Had they arranged for my aunt’s arrest too, forcing my hand when I refused to help them get to Elizabeth?

Alejandro looked down at him with dislike. ‘Why did they burn her? Are not witches hanged in this country?’

My brother nodded, a dull anger in his face. ‘That was Marcus Dent’s doing. It seems he is a friend of the magistrate and pushed for her to be burned. They brought her in on a charge of devil-worship, which Dent argued made her a heretic. And heretics
can
be burned.’

‘Foul, worthless monster,’ I muttered, more than ever
determined
to kill Marcus Dent for what he had done here today.

But Alejandro had not yet finished with my brother. Frowning, he gestured to his cut and bruised face, the sorry state of his hands. ‘How did you come by those hurts?’

‘I fell,’ he muttered obliquely.

‘I want to hear the whole story,’ I insisted, and knew my voice must sound wild and uncontrolled. But my brother could not be allowed to lie. Not about this. ‘From the beginning, Will.’

There was a shout from the marketplace. The smoke and the stench had abated a little, and from the sounds of thwacking and beating I guessed they were putting out the fire that had consumed my aunt’s pain-racked body. I shuddered at the thought of what must be left of her, and tried not to dwell on that.

In trepidation, Will stared up the narrow lane towards the marketplace. No doubt he feared being caught, as did I. He wiped a hand across his forehead, and I saw that he was trembling.

‘Let’s get out of sight,’ he muttered, and we followed him silently through the gap in the hawthorn and into the freshly ploughed field behind the hedge. We were standing in deep and dry mud ruts, but at least the air was cleaner there, less smoky and horrifying.

‘Tell us what happened,’ I prompted him.

‘I woke just before dawn to find that they had already
gone
. Malcolm must have persuaded our father to leave me behind in case I made trouble over Aunt Jane,’ he told us bitterly. ‘I decided to come on my own, try to talk Dent into letting her go. I had some suspicion he was only doing it to hurt you, and I thought . . . Well, I thought if I offered to talk you round into marrying him, he might drop the accusation of witchcraft against Aunt Jane.’

‘Talk me into marrying him?’

He spread his hands, his expression miserable. ‘I know, I know, but I couldn’t stand by and do nothing. Anyway, they’d taken the horses, so I headed for the village on foot across the fields. It wasn’t hard to listen in on our aunt’s hearing, for they held it outside in the square.

‘Though it wasn’t a proper trial,’ he added resentfully, his voice dropping to a hoarse whisper as shouts rang out above us in the village. It sounded as though more horsemen had arrived at the busy inn. ‘The whole thing was fixed from the start. Dent’s pride was involved, and I could tell he wouldn’t settle for anything but her death. And the bloodier, the better. He persuaded them that she was a heretic, not merely a witch. Aunt Jane never had a chance. They were already setting brushwood round the stake when the magistrate sentenced her to burn.’

I shuddered, trying not to think of my aunt’s blackened corpse still smouldering in the village square, and fixed my gaze on my brother instead.

‘I tried to get to the front so I could speak on her behalf,’
he
went on, ‘but Dent’s men were everywhere. I fought them off with my dagger – a few went down, I don’t know if I killed any. But in the end there was nothing I could do to save her from the stake, and I . . . I ran away before they could kill me too,’ he finished, shame-faced.

It was hard not to blame him for my aunt’s death, but it would do no good to confront my brother over what had been done. Aunt Jane was dead and beyond anyone’s help. But the Lady Elizabeth was still in mortal danger. ‘So you don’t know where our father is, with the letter?’

Will shook his head. ‘Father intended to head straight for the south coast as soon as they had the letter. That was why we argued, because he would not wait to see if Aunt Jane could be freed first. But I know Malcolm planned to make one final stop before leaving Oxfordshire. I’m not sure where though.’

‘We need to move,’ Alejandro prompted us, standing at my shoulder. ‘The crowd is beginning to break up and go home. The longer we stay here, the more likely it is we will be seen and arrested.’

My brother glanced up at him resentfully, a look which told me he did not trust the young priest-to-be. But he gave a shrug. ‘We can’t go back to Lytton Park. Dent’s men recognized me, so for all I know I’m to be hauled up in front of the magistrate for fighting. And it’s too dangerous to travel during daylight hours in case we are seen. I suggest we lay low here until nightfall, then head north.
We
have cousins in Staffordshire who might take us in.’

I shook my head and stood up, dusting off my gown. ‘No, I have to find that letter and return it to the princess at Woodstock.’

‘Meg, are you mad?’

‘If that letter is altered and falls into the hands of the Queen’s spies, the Lady Elizabeth could face arrest and execution as a traitor. Don’t you care?’

Will looked away, sullen. ‘Every prince faces danger on the road to their throne. These things are beyond a woman’s understanding.’

‘That’s my father talking, not you,’ I told him. ‘You don’t truly believe any of that. Or you would never have risked your life by coming here today in the hope that they might pardon our aunt. Besides, Elizabeth is a woman. Is this beyond her understanding too?’

I turned to Alejandro, realizing with a start that he was the only man I could trust in all this.

‘I don’t know where to begin looking for them.’

Alejandro looked at me thoughtfully. ‘It seems to me that all roads lead back to the Bull Inn at Woodstock.’

‘You think they could be at the Bull?’

‘Sir Henry Bedingfield has more than once called the Bull Inn the Lady Elizabeth’s “court”. Where better to find those who would put her on the throne in place of her sister?’

‘Yes, the Bull’s a good place to start looking,’ Will agreed,
and
looked at Alejandro with a grudging new respect. ‘Our father has often visited the Bull these past few months, listening for news of the princess, and knows many of the fellows who lodge there permanently. Even if he is not still there, the landlord may have seen him and be able to set you on the right road.’

‘Then it’s decided; we’ll ride back to the Bull Inn before it gets too dark,’ I told Alejandro firmly, then turned to my brother. ‘We only have one horse, but you’re welcome to travel with us.’

‘Back to Woodstock?’ Will shook his head, and I could see fear in his eyes. ‘I’d rather take my chances on the road north, thanks.’

‘Then this is farewell.’

We kissed and parted, my brother slipping through the gap in the hedgerow first. I watched his shadowy form move past us in the gathering dusk, following the narrow lane away from the village and towards open countryside where he planned to head north.

He had not been gone a minute when a shout was raised from the marketplace end of the lane. ‘You there! Hold up!’ Then came the sound of booted feet.

I had moved instinctively to shout after Will through the darkening gap in the hedgerow. I don’t know what I meant to say. I probably meant to urge him to run, to escape as fast as he could from those pursuing him.

But Alejandro clamped a hand over my mouth and
dragged
me hard against him, silencing me. He said nothing, and did not need to. I realized my folly at once, even though the urge to cry out after my brother was still strong. What would be the point in all three of us being taken? We might have done nothing wrong in coming here today, but Marcus Dent would soon find some excuse to detain us – and probably put me on trial as a witch too. I had intended to offer myself to Dent today in exchange for my aunt’s life. But her callous murder had changed everything; I would rather suffer the same horrible death at the stake than agree to be such a monster’s wife.