Alchemy (44 page)

What can we do? The lower door was locked too and there’s nothing to break it down, no convenient scaffolding pole or plank forgotten by workmen. Then I remember the rope ladders. Will they reach to the floor of the chapel? We’ll have to find out the hard way. ‘Come on. We’ll try the ladders I brought for us to use.’

We go back in again. The smoke and fumes are denser now. I can hear the roar and crackle of the fires below. Flame is licking up the walls. The chairs are burning like bundles of kindling. I take the ladders out of the bag and give one to Omi. With half my mind I hear Charlie talking on his mobile. Omi and I go out on to the balcony and drop the ladders over the rail. ‘I’ll go down, Jade, and show them the way up. Some of them know me. They might trust me more than a stranger. Hold the ladder at the top in case it slips off the rail.’

I can’t see the bottom of the ladder or what exactly he might be going down into like some lower circle of hell. ‘Be careful,’ I say uselessly. As if he had any choice.

He goes nimbly over the side. Charlie moves to the other ladder, waves to me through the smoke and follows him down like a couple of acrobats on parallel trapezes. I dash through the room, take a few quick breaths of clean air and go back to the railing. The first ladder is stretched tight. I hold on to its hooks. Someone is coming up.

It’s one of the students. I help her over the rail and push her towards the door hoping she’s got enough of a clear head left to see the daylight coming in from the outside. Because another head is appearing on the first ladder and another now on the second, I have to position myself between the two, shoving them towards the door before the next arrives. It’s a human conveyor belt. I’m not sure how strong the gallery is, how many it can support before it breaks away from the wall and falls into the furnace below that’s now climbing up to where I’m standing and threatening the escape route. How can I signal to Omi and Charlie that they must come up before the ladders catch fire and they’re cut off? I’ve lost count of how many students have come over the rail. But then I didn’t know how many there were anyway.

I’m trying to peer down through the smoke. No more heads are appearing. I look across to the big screen and see it beginning to melt into a toxic gel that folds and crumples even as the face of the Apostle Joachim is snuffed out.

Charlie appears at the top of his ladder. ‘Charlie, where’s Omi? Have you seen him?’

‘He’s coming up. We agreed there was nothing more we could do. There are still one or two students down there passed out. But we can’t carry them.’

‘Davidson.’

‘He won’t come. He says we’re frustrating God’s will. He wants to die. He thinks he’ll go straight to heaven.’

‘Molders and the dean?’

‘No sign of them. They must have had a way out of their own.’

‘So must we now. We’ll leave the ladders in case Davidson changes his mind. ‘The reverse of the road to Damascus, I think in my almost hallucinogenic state that’s taking on all the sensations of a bad trip. ‘The whole building will be gone if the fire brigade doesn’t get here soon.’

One of the lower windows suddenly bursts into a shower of deadly coloured shards. ‘Let’s go. Now!’ We scramble through the door, and on to the stairs and down. Some of the students have collapsed on the grass, others sit and sob. I hear sirens and then a crash. We run round to the front door of the chapel but the heat coming through the walls and the stench of burning drive us out of the corridor and through the campus to the courtyard entrance.

A fireman has just smashed the lock with his axe and the gates are being folded back. We wave them on. I run up to one of the control cars. ‘It’s the chapel at the back. There were still people in there we think. You’ll have to break the door down. There are some other people round the back too who may need treatment for smoke and burns.’

‘You don’t look too good yourself.’

After my lady had left me I wept again. Then it was first that a little mouse crept out looking for the crumbs from the bread I had eaten and I, believing that I was now quite alone in the world and at the worst facing death by hanging, took off a little piece of what remained, in gratitude that a living creature should visit me. Watching it nibble upon that bread and seeing its will to survive even in this dismal place and that it had the wit to seek out one that might help it do so, my spirits became a little lighter. I began to turn my mind to my own survival.

First I remembered my lady’s words and that I should present myself as cleanly and decently as possible. Then I thought that I should prepare something in my own defence. And all this must be done soon for at any moment I might be called to appear and give account of myself. My lady’s generosity meant that I could at least take steps to follow that advice.

After an hour or so, for I had no means of knowing how time passed except as the little light came and went in the high window, the gaoler returned with the prison ration of bread and water.

‘I see that you indeed have friends in high places. Remember that you must pay me for your lodging here.’

‘I shall not forget master constable and now that I am better provided for I shall ask you of your kindness to get me certain necessaries more. First, for your wife’s loan of her gown there shall be payment if she will buy me another to appear decently before those who will examine me further, and she shall be paid for her trouble as you for your pains in providing food, drink and candles. Then I must ask you what next is to happen to me or how long I am to be in your charge.’

‘They do not tell me such things, only when I am to bring you somewhere. Nevertheless there is a servant in Justice Ludlow’s employ who may be persuaded to listen for news, for a price.’

‘Then ask him and he shall be paid when you bring me news but make sure it is the truth at least as he understands it. I am not to be cozened. As for the gown let your wife set about it. Say to her that it must be neat and as becomes my rank and age but not gaudy. She knows from her searching of me the bigness of it.’

When he was gone I fell to my writing again, first of some arguments I might use and then of my memorials to make the time pass, for when I thought to set out my case I rested much on the knowledge of my innocence in every matter I might be charged with, except of going in man’s attire and that was not
a hanging offence as Moll Cutpurse her continuing survival after several prosecutions testifies.

I considered how I should plead and wished that I might not answer at all but then I could be taken back to prison, a board and heavy weights laid upon me until either I agreed to speak or was pressed to death which I did not believe I could endure. Then I thought that the nature of the charge would determine my answer. If Dr Gilbert was determined to press witchcraft upon me I must answer ‘not guilty’. Yet for a lesser thing if I judged I might escape with a fine I might plead the contrary. I was helped in these considerations by thinking how the countess might advise me in her wisdom and knowledge of the world and its ways.

When next the gaoler opened the door his wife stood behind him.

‘Now mistress, no tricks.’ And to his wife he said: ‘Knock when you are ready to come out. But beware the witch’s cunning.’ Then he locked us in together.

‘I have brought you a gown that I trust will suit your purpose better than my old one, which was all that I could spare.’

‘And indeed I am grateful for your kindness and will pay you for the loan of it,’ I said while she was opening the bag she carried. This gown too was grey of a stuff that was good but not fine as satin would be and with points of lace at the throat and wrists.

‘In this you should appear like an honest wench even if you bain’t. And for that end I have also brought you a cap for your head and a kerchief for your neck. My husband believes you may be a witch and you can give us a remedy to work on him. Yet we found no marks on you and it may be you deceive him to gain his favour. I clearly long for a child of our own. They blame me that I do not conceive yet if the man cannot stand then the woman is not to blame. But I must hold my tongue for I would not shame him.’

‘He believes he is bewitched which is easier for him than a failure in nature. I will do what I can but you must follow my instructions exactly and even if his state is no better he must swear to tell no one that I tried to help him. I will need some things that you must bring me. But soon, for I may be taken from here any day. I will set them down on a paper which you must show to the apothecary in Eastgate.’

‘You will not ask our souls for the devil or fill my belly with a changeling?’

‘I have no power to do such things. What I can do is only to assist nature and try to take off that impediment in the mind that hinders him.’

I told her then what I should need to set about his cure and paid her for the gown. She had brought a piece of glass so that I could see a little of myself and promised an old comb on her next visit. Then she knocked upon the door and was let out.

It was beginning to grow dark before the gaoler came again and although I had candles I had no tinder box for lighting them so I was forced to sit in the twilight, hearing sometimes the scamper and rustle of my little friend the mouse, but otherwise no sound from outside and only my own breathing and heartbeat from within. I had heard that in watching for witches to betray themselves when they were imprisoned their keepers had sometimes a spyhole through which to see when their familiars might visit them to suck their blood before doing their bidding. And such even a spider, fly or creeping thing might be thought, so I was wary of the mouse and had searched the door and the wall it stood in carefully for any crack that might serve such a purpose but found none. Yet I was glad that the mouse had whisked away at the first sound of the bolt being drawn.

‘My wife sends you these.’ The gaoler set down a rush basket. ‘And I have news from my friend in Justice Ludlow’s service. He is to examine you again with the intent to put your case
before the Grand Jury which will meet on Friday to consider what should be tried at the assizes.’

‘And when will Justice Ludlow examine me?’

‘Tomorrow forenoon.’

‘And after what will happen to me?’

‘You will be brought back here until the Grand Jury decides, which will be on Friday, as I say.’

And what is today?’ For I had lost all account of time and understood now why prisoners scratched marks on their prison walls to signify the passing of the days.

‘Today is the first of the week. You are fortunate mistress to have friends for the friendless are often kept without meat, drink or sleep to force them to confess. I am glad that not many such come my way. For all my employment hardens me to suffering I do not like to be the instrument of it. But if it is my orders I must do it or lose my place. I see my wife has chosen you a fine gown to appear in so perhaps they will have pity on you if none comes forward to speak against you.’

‘I am indeed pleased with your wife’s choice of attire. Tell her that she should attend on me after tomorrow. What I have to say is for her ears.’

‘Yet it is my body that ails.’

‘Nevertheless you must do and suffer her to do what I will tell you but above all be secret or I cannot help you.’

When he was gone for the night I took off the gown to keep it clean and neat and set to work on the things she had brought me in the rush basket.

The next morning I ate some bread and drank some small beer and when the gaoler returned to empty the pisspot I begged him for a basin to wash my hands and face in and said that the water must be heated for I needed some to dissolve the powdered herbs his wife had brought me of satyrion and nasturtium, both of a hot moist temper to provoke lust and increase men’s seed.

When he came again it was to take me out of the gaol to the justice his house nearby. Once more we passed the dungeon where the common felons waited out their imprisonment, cursing and weeping surrounded by the stench of the pail which served them all as a jakes and must surely breed gaol fever. I was determined to die rather than suffer a similar fate and to this end I had included certain herbs cousin to hemlock in my shopping list for the gaoler’s wife as also opiates to dull the senses while they did their work.

Once again I mounted the stairs to where the justice waited with Dr Gilbert.

‘You understand that I am to make my deposition for the Grand Jury,’ he said when I had given my name and the house where I had lodged in London. ‘How do you plead to the charge of witchcraft which has been made against you?’

‘Not guilty sir.’

‘If you were to plead guilty and save me and the gentlemen of the Grand Jury, the judge and jurors at the assizes, much trouble then it might go easier with you. Come now, confess your sin and make your peace with God and man.’

‘Sir, I cannot confess to an untruth, even to escape hanging.’

‘If the Lady Anne dies the charge becomes capital murder by witchcraft.’

‘But by your leave sir she has not died. She is grievously sick and has been these several years. Her mother takes her to a notable physician in Cambridge yet he is not to be charged with witchcraft if she dies while under his care.’

‘What do you say to your going in male attire to the confusion of those around you?’

‘Sir when I was left alone and friendless after my father’s death it seemed to me best for the preserving of my virtue and earning my bread by honest means.’

‘By this counterfeiting sir,’ Dr Gilbert said, ‘she has procured a noble lady to unlawful love which is one of the ways by which we may know a witch.’

‘Sir,’ I cried out, ‘my lady loved me in all truth as she saw me which was as her page and helper in her laboratory and with the numbers of sick people who flock to her. And if she loved me as noble minds may love those who serve them faithfully who can point the finger and say this is unlawful?’

‘A thing may be unlawful even so. Ignorance is no defence in the law. Did you go about to procure her to unlawful love?’

‘I do not understand you sir. What could I do to bring this about?’