Witchfall (11 page)

Would it not be less painful to follow Alejandro’s suggestion, confess to having ‘dabbled’ once or twice
as a witch, then plead a contrite and heartfelt repentance?

But that would leave the princess open to accusations of harbouring a witch in her household, I reminded myself.

De Pero handed the torch to one of his men, then unfastened his cloak, watching me.

‘I trust the long wait has not been too tiring for you. I’m afraid it could not be helped. I had more questions to ask and rooms to search. But now, Meg Lytton,’ Señor de Pero said pleasantly, picking up a hooked metal tool from a side table, ‘I aim to discover what steel you are made of.’

I woke to darkness for the fourth or fifth time, my head hanging. There was something sticky on my chin: spittle perhaps, or it might have been blood. My mouth had been gagged again, no doubt to prevent me from casting a spell against my tormentors. Under my gown, my thighs were damp and sore, and I suddenly remembered the humiliation of wetting myself after a futile and nauseating battle to control myself. That embarrassment seemed the least of my troubles though. I knew there was more to come, and worse. Far worse.

I stirred painfully against my bonds. The sky outside the window grating seemed to be lightening. How long until dawn?

I had no idea what the hour was, nor even how long I had been asleep. The night seemed to have been one long round of torment, broken only by the marvellous absences and horrifying returns of the Inquisition.

There was something lying on the filthy straw at my feet. An unidentifiable blur of white. As my eyes struggled to make out what it was, the door opened and someone came in, a flaming torch in his hand.

I did not need to look up to know who it was.

‘Well, señorita?’ Señor de Pero demanded, dragging the soiled gag from my mouth. ‘It will be daybreak in another hour. Are you ready to speak to me yet?’

‘Go to Hell,’ I muttered.

He came closer, thrusting the smoking torch into the wall bracket so he could look into my face. ‘What was that you said?’

But I said nothing more, my bravado abruptly deserting me. Previous remarks like that had been rewarded with pain, and I was tired of hurting. So desperately tired I knew it could not be long before I weakened and began to give him, word by stumbling word, the confession he craved. It did not seem to matter what I confessed to having done, so long as it would incriminate the Lady Elizabeth and allow them to arrest her. That had been clear from his questions, which always seemed to return to my mistress in the end.

He had come at me gently enough the evening before, one of his men merely pricking the soles of my feet with a hot needle at each ‘wrong’ answer. ‘Are you a witch, Meg Lytton? You can tell me the truth, I shall see that your death is not a painful one.’

‘I am no witch, sir.’

‘What does the Queen’s sister know of your powers?’

‘I am no witch,’ I found myself repeating, wincing as the hot needle was pushed deeper into my bare sole.

‘Is the Lady Elizabeth a witch too? Have you heard her call upon dark spirits? What spells does she perform against the Queen?’

‘None, no spells.’ I cried out as the needle bit into me again. ‘The Lady Elizabeth is a devout, God-fearing Catholic. She is no witch.’

A resounding slap round the face sent my head lolling. Miguel came close, spitting in my face with venom as he spoke. ‘Don’t lie to me, witch. Everyone knows what the Lady Elizabeth is, she will burn in Hell for her sins.’ He changed his tack, stepping back. ‘Tell me, have you met the conjuror and astrologer known as John Dee? Have you ever seen him in company with the Queen’s sister?’

‘No!’

‘Letters, then. Have you brought your mistress secret communications from him or seen her reading any privately? Charts, perhaps, folded into a book to hide them? The Queen’s own horoscope?’

I would shake my head at all these questions, then groan as the chains that held my arms were inexorably shortened, drawing me higher and higher up the wall until I was perched on the far tips of my toes. My terrified mind grasped at spells I could work to prevent him hurting me again, but it was useless. I knew there would be no hiding from a charge
of witchcraft after that, for no one would believe me innocent if I showed my power so openly. And then the princess would suffer for my weakness.

‘Tell me everything you know, Meg Lytton, and I will spare you pain. Keep lying, and I will tear your fingernails off and leave you bleeding in the dark.’ He had turned away to the lit brazier while I hung shaking. A hot needle pricked under one of my nails, making me hiss with excruciating pain. I had struggled to drag my hand away, but was held grimly in position by one of his men. ‘Speak the truth now, girl, have you ever taught the Lady Elizabeth how to work magick?’

‘No, sir! I swear it!’

‘I know that you are lying just as I know dusk from dawn. You will weep blood before this night is out, Meg Lytton.’

I had screamed then as he prised one of my fingernails off, then plunged my hand into a bowl of steaming hot water so that my whole body shook violently in shock.

Then darkness had come but no rest from the interrogation. There had been visits by torchlight, repeated demands that I should tell the truth, and then more pain when I refused.

Now Miguel de Pero had come to examine me again in the pale early dawn, his fingers tilting my chin up to look into my face. ‘Did you sleep? No, I imagine not in that position. Few can.’

Carefully, he removed the gag which had held me silent
and unable to work magick – an important precaution when examining a witch, as I knew from my mock trial in Oxfordshire. I had survived that ordeal. But would I survive this?

My lips had begun to bleed where the rough cloth had rubbed against the corners of my mouth. I licked at them painfully.

‘It would go better with you if you were to speak to me, Meg Lytton. Do you fear to betray your mistress, is that it?’ When I said nothing but looked him in the eye, he smiled wearily. ‘Such loyalty is commendable. I am not an ogre, I would not wish to see the Queen’s sister in this cell. But it is my duty to uncover the hidden sources of evil in this court and destroy them. And it has come to my ears that your mistress not only knows Master Dee, but met him secretly when she was at Woodstock.’

My eyes widened but still I said nothing. Had someone betrayed us?

‘However,’ Miguel continued smoothly, ‘I have no evidence of this, no proof whatsoever. All I have is the word of a man who has some old score to settle, I would guess.’

He held up a letter. I stared, but in the flickering torchlight I could not make out the handwriting, let alone read what the letter contained.

Miguel noted my interest. ‘Yes, even the young and beautiful Lady Elizabeth has enemies. And not just at court. This letter comes from Oxfordshire.’

My heart was thumping now. Oxfordshire?

‘It is probably all true, what this fellow writes to me. Or enough of it to put your mistress in the Tower for treason. Except that another player has entered the game. The King heard testimony last night from one of the men who was with the Lady Elizabeth in Oxfordshire. He swears on his life that your mistress never left the palace of Woodstock and was never seen in the company of Master Dee, that this letter contains nothing but hearsay and lies.’ He smiled unpleasantly. ‘One man’s word against another. The simplest contest, and yet often the hardest.’

I waited to see what else he might reveal, though my tired mind could not fully comprehend what he was saying to me. Some enemy from Oxfordshire had written to the Inquisition about us. But who?

It was far easier to work out who had spoken to the King on her behalf. It had to be Alejandro de Castillo. Who else in this palace of hatred and suspicion would have risked his reputation and his own neck to stand up to such an accusation?

I felt unaccountably angry at the thought. What could have possessed Alejandro to risk his chance to become a priest by defending the princess? He must know such a connection would mark him out for ever as a traitor to his own countrymen, for this was a court where all Spaniards followed the Catholic King and Queen, not the little half-sister whom many still believed to be secretly Protestant.

Miguel came closer, looking down into my face. ‘You have nothing to say?’

I shook my head, and watched in a kind of exhausted stupor as he nodded to the Spanish guard on the door to unfasten the manacles about my wrists and ankles.

‘In the absence of further evidence, His Majesty the King has sent orders for you to be returned to the Lady Elizabeth’s service.’ His voice crackled with frustration. ‘But I still have my suspicions about you, Meg Lytton. Do not think this means we will not be watching you and your mistress.’

Released at last, I fell forwards onto the filthy straw with a cry, for my legs were too weak to support me, my arms prickling with pins and needles from having been raised so long above my head. The white blur that I had seen was my cap, trampled into the straw and spattered with blood. I lay beside it like a corpse, incapable of movement despite the appalling stench, and hardly daring to believe that I was being set free just at the point when I had thought the end had come.

Was this a trick? I wondered feebly. Was it still part of my ordeal, to be allowed a tantalizing moment of freedom before being jerked back to my iron bonds?

Miguel de Pero said something in Spanish and the guard came forward to help me to my feet, his hands rough and unfriendly, his face dark with contempt.

I picked up my soiled cap, wiped my freshly bleeding mouth on my sleeve, and staggered to the door before my
captor could change his mind. My first thought was that I had to get back to the princess, to satisfy myself that she had not been harmed. I was still concerned over how exactly my freedom had been achieved, but at least this question of her involvement with Master Dee might now be dropped.

It occurred to me that my hands were free again now, and my mouth no longer gagged. I could use my magick to hurt them as they had hurt me, or to make them run mad and dash themselves down the brutal stone steps of the tower.

But no, it would still be too clear to everyone who could have worked such a spell upon them, and I would soon find myself back in this cell with another zealous torturer – only this time there would be no reprieve.

Glancing back at Señor de Pero, I saw the same contempt in his eyes. Like master, like servant. It was clear they both believed me to be a witch, bound for the everlasting bonfires of Hell, and they were right to do so. Yet neither of them could do a thing about it.

Nursing my swollen and bleeding hand against my chest, I limped back to the Lady Elizabeth’s apartments in the thin dawn light, accompanied by two disapproving Spanish guards. Passing through hallways and richly decorated, high-ceilinged chambers, I found a new excitement in the air of Hampton Court. The palace was alive with servants already awake and bustling about their duties, courtiers staggering bleary-eyed from their beds, doors slamming and shouts in the distance. I watched as several serving women bent over a dark wooden chest, arguing about what to put in; they seemed to be packing the chest with jewel-encrusted clothes and shoes.

Along one of the long corridors in the east wing, I caught the faint din of hammering, its echoes muffled by the lavishly-embroidered tapestries hanging on the wall. Curious, I hobbled to the window. Looking down into the stable yard below, I saw groomsmen at their work, leading out horses to be reshod by the leather-aproned farrier. Beyond the farrier’s glowing brazier lay a covered wagon on its side with two men crouched over it, replacing one of its thick-spoked wheels.

I glanced at my two Spanish guards as we turned down
towards the princess’s apartments, but their faces revealed nothing. It seemed the court would soon be on the move again, leaving Hampton Court to be swept and purified. A good thing too, for the palace rooms and grounds were now unpleasantly pungent, the enclosed privies buzzing with flies and everyone choking on the stench of the gong farm where many months’ sewage lay waiting to be shovelled out.

But how could the court be allowed to leave the royal residence while the Queen was still locked away in her birthing room? Unless Queen Mary had given birth while I was hanging by my wrists in that dark little cell? Perhaps I had been kept there longer than I realized.

‘Meg!’

For once Blanche Parry seemed genuinely delighted to see me. She had been sewing with Alice as I came into the room, but jumped up from her seat when she saw me, abandoning her stitchwork to clasp my hands.

Blanche did not seem to notice my wince as she squeezed my abused hand. ‘The Lady Elizabeth will be so pleased that you are back,’ she exclaimed. ‘She has been awake since dawn, awaiting your return. Come, her ladyship will want to see you at once.’

Blanche dismissed the guards with a sharp-eyed look and ordered a relieved Alice to finish the stitchwork on her own. Then she led me into the sunlit princess’s bedchamber, whispering conspiratorially in my ear, ‘You look pale. And you are limping. Did those vile men hurt you? Forgive me
for having given them your name. I could not help it, truly I could not. They tortured me until I no longer knew what I was saying.’

‘I forgive you,’ I managed hoarsely, though it was said with an effort.

The Lady Elizabeth was sitting up in bed with her head bent, studying some leather-bound tome with great intensity. She laid her book aside as soon as she saw me, staring rigidly at my face as though she hoped to read all my secrets there.

‘Blanche, shut the door,’ she said shortly, then gestured me closer. ‘Well? What did you tell them?’

‘Nothing, my lady,’ I reassured her.

She did not believe me, that was clear. Her eyebrows were raised as she gazed coldly across at me, no doubt examining my dirty face for the telltale signs of torture. I could hardly blame the princess for distrusting me. Few survived a day and a night in a cell with the Inquisition and came forth with their consciences clear. And the Lady Elizabeth’s secrets were enough to condemn her thrice over.