Witchstruck (31 page)

When the doll was finished, I scratched the slanting initials M.D. on its belly, just to make sure the spell found its rightful target.

I laid the Marcus doll carefully on the hearth and passed the charm-stone over it three times. Then I broke the burned stick into splinters to represent his men and those villagers who had been present at the pond, and held out my hands above the magickal heap.

‘Let Marcus Dent’s tongue be silenced against me, and his men’s tongues too. Let the villagers believe their memories a dream not to be trusted. Let forgetfulness fill their minds if they should ever speak of me, and the drowsiness of sleep overtake them like death. Bind up the skin of their fingertips and dry all the ink in their wells. Make my name a bird’s cry on the wind. From this night, Meg Lytton shall be nothing to them but the sound of ice cracking underfoot in the forest. Blessed be.’

The spell must have drained the last of my waning strength. I woke on my back in the chill dawn light, lying stiff and uncomfortable on the stones of the hearth. Hearing the household beginning to stir downstairs, I stood and
stretched
, then peered in through the threadbare curtains that hung around the bed. But the Lady Elizabeth was still asleep on her pillows, her sleeping cap askew, her narrow face flushed.

I kneeled and searched in vain for the tallow doll amongst the ashes in the hearth. I found nothing but shreds of softened sticky tallow. The doll had melted while I lay exhausted, unable to keep vigil over it as I should have done. But had my spell worked first? Had I managed to silence Marcus Dent and his men?

I rubbed my charm-stone clean and hid it in the pocket hanging from my belt. There was no way to know for sure that the spell had worked. All I could do now was wait and see if we were taken to the Tower on reaching London.

The weather had changed overnight, bringing a spring tempest from the east, and although the sunshine soon returned, the journey south was violently windy. We had to keep stopping for fear that the litter in which Elizabeth was travelling would be blown completely away. The curtains of the litter flapped open and shut like vast wings, affording little glimpses of her cross red cheeks to those country folk who came out from their cottages to see her pass. Every now and then, an angry exclamation would be heard from within, and a white, jewelled hand would appear, struggling to hold the curtains together.

It was exactly like the vision I had seen in the scrying
mirror
: the horses and carts, Elizabeth in her litter, the strong winds gusting about our procession, and me struggling to hide my short hair under a cap which kept threatening to blow away.

Yet what of the terrible dark shadow that my vision had shown creeping behind me?

I glanced nervously over my shoulder a few times on the road to London, but only ever saw a cloudy blue sky and green fields behind us.

At last we reached Hampton Court, which was where the Queen had chosen to reside for the birth of her child, expected within the next few months. The vast red-brick towers and twisting, fluted chimneys could be seen from quite a distance along the bank of the River Thames, whose waters lapped just below the walls. I could see now why Elizabeth had been so downcast by the decaying ruins of Woodstock Palace. It must have seemed like a prison indeed to a princess more accustomed to such stately magnificence as this.

Commoners who had heard we were on the road came out to cheer their princess as we approached Hampton Court. Several even kneeled in the road as Elizabeth’s litter passed, a gesture of defiance which made Sir Henry Bedingfield curse and order the outriders to move more quickly. When we finally reached Hampton Court itself, he ushered Elizabeth and her entourage through the massive arched gateway with a look of relief on his face.

Even before we arrived, we’d heard reports that Queen Mary was quite swollen up with this pregnancy, and rarely stirred beyond the royal chambers. We were told her ladies were hard at work preparing a comfortable room for her lying-in, shut off from the outside world. Even the windows would be kept permanently closed and shuttered, so Queen Mary could await the birth of her child in darkness and tranquillity.

Elizabeth heard this news with a sympathetic smile, always expressing in public her heartfelt wish that the Queen would be delivered safely of a son. In private though, she would chew her lip after these conversations, or stare furiously at nothing, as though imagining a rather more violent outcome to her sister’s pregnancy.

Shocking though this anger seemed, I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for Elizabeth. If her sister produced a healthy child, Elizabeth’s hopes of becoming Queen herself would be dashed for ever. Indeed, she might then find herself spending the rest of her life in a series of dank and miserable prisons like Woodstock, or simply executed on some fresh trumped-up charge of treason or witchcraft, to safeguard against any threat to the new heir’s life. Nor was it hard to see why those who wished for an end to Catholic rule in England awaited this birth with as much trepidation as Elizabeth herself.

On arrival at Hampton Court, Elizabeth was escorted under guard to one of the private apartments at the rear of
the
palace. Blanche Parry and I followed respectfully in her wake, while the men of the household were led away to separate quarters.

‘Am I still Her Majesty’s prisoner?’ Elizabeth demanded of the Lord Chamberlain, her face very pale. She studied the gorgeous antechamber in which we stood, as though expecting to find chains on the wall and instruments of torture. ‘No new charges have yet been brought against me. Am I to expect that?’

The Lord Chamberlain looked uneasy. ‘The Queen asks that you should remain here for your own safety, madam, until such time as she may send for you. She is at present closeted with her ladies for her lying-in, and so is not able to receive you. I heartily suggest you do not attempt to leave these rooms, nor talk to any courtier without the Queen’s permission.’

Elizabeth curtseyed, her eyes lowered, and said nothing in response. But as soon as the Lord Chamberlain had left the apartments, Elizabeth tore off her neat white cap and cast it to the floor.

‘I am still a prisoner!’

Blanche Parry, who had been exploring the lavish and expensively furnished suite of rooms, smiled at her placatingly. ‘But a more comfortable one than at Woodstock, my lady.’

Elizabeth went to the window and stared out gloomily over the broad expanse of the River Thames below. Bars had
been
newly set across the window as if the princess might be tempted to climb out, even though the apartment was several storeys high. She glanced at me over her shoulder, her small eyes brooding.

‘Meg, what do you say? You have some talent to know what the future holds, or so John Dee said.’ She pulled on one of the iron bars across the window. ‘Will I ever be more than a prisoner in my own father’s palaces?’

‘Hush!’ Blanche warned her, and went to check the door was properly shut. ‘We are no longer in the country, my lady, but at court. Walls have ears here.’

I did not know how to reply. ‘If I have any such talent, my lady,’ I began cautiously, ‘then it has not yet been made clear to me. But I agree with Mistress Parry. This is a far better place than Woodstock to be held under guard. Perhaps the Queen will be ready to receive you once . . .’

I hesitated, seeing Elizabeth’s delicate brows knit together. I had been going to say ‘once the child is born’ but suddenly I did not dare to.

‘Once Her Majesty is feeling stronger,’ I finished, and knew I had not convinced her.

Elizabeth threw herself onto a heap of velvet cushions that had been scattered on the floor. She lay there on her back, arms outstretched, staring up at the ornate golden ceiling.

‘The Queen has brought me here to humiliate me in front of the whole court.’ Her eyes flashed and her small
lips
pursed tightly. ‘Well, I am back at court as she desired. But if my sister thinks to send me to the Tower on yet another false charge of treason, she will find me more my father’s daughter than she has bargained for!’

TWENTY-TWO

Queen of Shadows

DAYS PASSED IN
our gilded prison at Hampton Court, and slowly turned into weeks. Still there was no summons from Queen Mary, nor was she any nearer to giving birth – or so the gossip went. But Elizabeth must have been allowed some money from the royal coffers, for all of us received costly new gowns, more suited to court life. And, on Elizabeth’s orders, Blanche Parry found me a selection of hoods with veils to conceal my shorn hair, so I no longer had to put up with whispers when I accompanied the princess into the privy garden below.

Elizabeth’s apartments were forbidden territory for the courtiers, her door guarded at all times. Yet they came to see her, nonetheless. Noblemen with pearl earrings and jewelled doublets would slip past the guards in the sultry afternoons, always claiming they had the Queen’s permission to pay their respects to the Lady Elizabeth. One evening, King Philip himself came to speak privately with Elizabeth, though I had gone to bed early with a stomach pain that night and missed seeing him. Even Blanche Parry enjoyed a few visits from her cheerful husband Thomas, who had come to Hampton Court in our wake, along with a number of other gentlemen and yeomen who had
been
part of Elizabeth’s household before her arrest.

Yet neither my brother nor Alejandro de Castillo came to visit us. Nor was I able to discover any news of them from the lofty, tight-lipped servants who brought us our meals.

The sedate glory of Hampton Court seemed a very long way from the green valleys and ramshackle villages of Oxfordshire. Soon, it was hard to believe that I had recently been tied up and nearly drowned there, accused of witchcraft and heresy, and had watched my poor aunt burn for the same crimes.

Elizabeth and Blanche discreetly never mentioned my brush with death, and with no sign of Alejandro to remind me of that other life, my ordeal at Marcus Dent’s hands became like a dream to me. Still frightening, living on in shadowy nightmares, but no longer quite real.

When three long weeks of silence had passed, I decided that Alejandro must have gone home to Spain to take holy orders, and that this was entirely the best thing for both of us. I could not spend my life pretending to be something I was not. The longer I sat sewing my sampler or dressing the princess’s hair instead of following the witch’s path as my aunt had done before me, the sooner I would run mad with frustration.

I gave a simpler version of this explanation to Blanche Parry when she asked what had happened to ‘the young Spaniard’, and then made her stare by bursting into violent, scalding tears.

‘There, there,’ Blanche murmured in surprise, and drew me against her comforting chest. ‘That young man will come back for you one day, you’ll see. And if he doesn’t, there are plenty more fish in the sea.’

‘Don’t . . . want . . . a . . . fish,’ I choked.

‘Of course you don’t,’ she agreed soothingly. ‘Nasty smelly things. Now, don’t cry too hard. You’ll only make your nose red, and then if he does come to see you, he’ll think you as ugly as can be.’

I laughed through my tears at this, though Blanche was clearly being serious. ‘Very well.’ I fumbled for my handkerchief and blew my nose. ‘Better?’

‘Much better.’ She pointed to my embroidery sampler, which I had tried to hide earlier behind a beautiful room screen decorated with elaborate carvings of mermaids and mermen. ‘Head down now. A little hard work will soon cheer you up.’

Late that same afternoon, there was a discreet knock at the door to the apartments and I looked up idly from my needlework to see Alejandro de Castillo standing there. I had been sitting alone, waiting for Blanche and the princess to return from their daily walk about the privy garden below, which was the only outing Elizabeth was allowed. The words of apology at the princess’s absence died on my lips as I realized who it was in the doorway, and I stood, dropping my sampler.

At first I had not recognized him. I was used to seeing
Alejandro
in the plain robes of a novice, or in his workaday clothes when we had walked out at Woodstock to gather berries or accompany Elizabeth around the old palace grounds. But here at Hampton Court, Alejandro de Castillo looked very much the Spanish noble in an expensive black doublet, sleeves fashionably slashed to reveal crimson silk beneath, his shoes of the finest red leather.

He stared at me for a moment, then swept off his velvet cap with its jaunty feather and bowed very low, meeting my gaze as he rose.

‘Mistress Lytton.’ He addressed me formally, as though we were barely acquainted. ‘I had not thought to find you alone.’

‘Señor de Castillo,’ I replied in a murmur, sinking into a curtsey low enough for the King of Spain himself.

At first sight of him in the doorway, I had felt faint and almost sick with pleasure. But then my head rebelled. Where had Alejandro been all this time? Why had he sent no word to us of his safety or whereabouts? My teeth ground together, and suddenly I wanted to punish him for staying away so long.

Alejandro glanced about the empty apartment. ‘The Lady Elizabeth is not here?’

‘As you see, sir,’ I agreed coolly, and took up my hated sampler again. ‘Though she may return shortly . . . if you care to wait.’

I sat and put an odd lopsided stitch into the sampler
without
really looking, then another, pretending to be utterly absorbed while secretly watching him through my lashes.

Alejandro walked to the window and looked down at the river for a long while. When he eventually spoke, his voice sounded strained. ‘I am sorry I didn’t come before to visit you,’ he muttered. ‘First I was intent on finding your brother some clerical employment in London. Then Father Vasco was taken seriously ill, and I have barely left his side since then.’

‘I’m glad my brother is settled in London, though I’m very sorry to hear that Father Vasco has not been well,’ I said, rather too quickly. ‘I trust he may return to full health soon, for I know he intends to return to Spain by the end of this summer. I suppose you will be going back with your master, won’t you?’