Witchfall (16 page)

‘So you came straight to court?’ Alice asked.

‘Not quite,’ my brother admitted. He looked at me warily. ‘I wanted to see our father first, so I went home to Lytton Park.’

I was shocked at first, then found myself ridiculously eager to hear news of home. I had always felt out of place at Lytton Park, a misfit who did not deserve such a delightful ancestral home, even if the house itself had become a dilapidated heap under my father’s care, its roof forever needing to be repaired, its lawns and formal gardens overgrown. But now, even more of a misfit as a witch at the court of Queen Mary, I had to admit to a little homesickness. It would cheer my heart to see the twisted red chimneys of my childhood home rising above the leafy trees in the park. Yet I was far from home at Hampton Court, and could not indulge such childish fancies for fear they might weaken me.

Besides, my father would be at Lytton Park, unless he was on one of his lengthy trips abroad. The last time I had seen my father had been in a smoky upper room at the tavern in Woodstock, where he had drunkenly confessed to being part of a secret rebellion against Queen Mary and having left my aunt to the witchfinder rather than betray his cause.

‘Was our father at home?’ I asked awkwardly. ‘How is he?’

‘Father is well enough, though he drinks more than he should. His conscience troubles him sorely, I think.’

‘So it should,’ I said sharply, thinking how he might have spared my aunt that hideous death.

‘But there is worse.’

I frowned. ‘What is it?’

‘Dearest Meg, I hardly know how to tell you this . . .’ William laid a hand on my shoulder, his voice dropping to a hoarse whisper. ‘It’s Marcus Dent. He’s back.’

I stared, feeling the blood drain from my face. Marcus Dent, the witchfinder, was back from whatever violent hellhole I had flung him into when last we tangled. I had known this day would come, for powerful though my banishing spell had been, it had not dealt the man a killing blow. Anger alone had seemed to fuel that moment of power, channelling everything I knew into one purpose. But my anger had not been great enough to kill a man. Instead, I had hurled Marcus Dent into some other dimension, some hellish void
I could not begin to imagine, and ever since I had thought myself safe from his malignant influence.

Now Marcus was back from the void, and that meant only one thing. He would soon be looking for me – and vengeance.

My skin crawled with horror as I tried to imagine where Marcus might have been all this time. I had spoken the words of the spell which banished him from this world, yet I had no inkling of where he had gone, nor how he had managed to return. It must have been hard for him to explain his long absence when he finally returned. No doubt when he caught up with me, I would discover the truth. Because I knew for sure Marcus Dent would find me one day, whatever spells I used to conceal and protect myself from him.

Suddenly, Alejandro was there at William’s shoulder. His urgent glance barely acknowledged my brother’s presence before searching my face. ‘Meg, there you are! What are you doing out here? You are needed at once in the Great Hall. The Lady Elizabeth has returned from her prayers.’

‘She will not miss me,’ I muttered defensively.

Alejandro looked at me grimly. ‘She needs you, Meg. You had better hurry too. The King and Queen have argued in the Great Hall. His Majesty has overturned a table and sworn that he will leave England.’

Alice’s eyes bulged. ‘
What?
’

‘The whole court is in uproar.’ Alejandro took my hand in a firm grasp and refused to let go. ‘Come, all of you.
The Lady Elizabeth will need friends about her after this.’

Hurrying back into the Great Hall with the others, the atmosphere hit me like a dark wave of evil and I recoiled from it instinctively. It felt like a poison slowly creeping through my veins.

I stopped dead in the ornate doorway and stared up through the excited, whispering crowd at the dais. The Lady Elizabeth was motionless against the far wall, her face very pale but with red burning in her cheeks as though she had been struck. Queen Mary sat stiff and upright on her throne in her black gown finely threaded with silver, skirts spread wide to conceal a still-swollen belly. Her husband stood in the midst of his Spanish courtiers, arms crossed and with his back turned to his wife as though he had been raging against her. No one dared look either monarch in the face but all there gazed at the floor or studied the brightly embroidered tapestries on the walls. I dared to look at them though, staring from King to Queen in a horrified daze, and wondering why I felt so sick.

‘My lord King, my good Philip,’ the Queen was entreating him, her voice shaking with anger and fear, ‘you cannot leave England. I . . . I am with child again. I feel it.’

The King shot her a contemptuous look that sent half the courtiers bowing swiftly from the room, sensing a battle ahead which might end in disaster for anyone too close to the throne. ‘You are not with child, nor is it likely you will ever be now.’

The Queen blanched, clearly distraught at such a cruel statement delivered in front of the court. ‘Your Majesty!’

‘I had already made arrangements to leave by the end of this year. Our quarrel merely brings my plans forward a few months. Don’t pretend you thought I would remain here for ever. I cannot stomach this English climate, nor the blandness of your food and the rank acidity of your wines.’ The King made a disgusted face, turning as though to leave immediately. A few strides took him to where we stood shocked in the doorway, but a wild cry from the Queen made him turn. He sounded furious. ‘What was that you said?’

‘I only brought my sister back to court for your sake, because you said that . . . that you
desired
her . . . her presence. Now you would leave me with her?’

The Queen seemed to choke over her words, her cheeks flushed and her eyes swollen with tears.

I shook off Alejandro’s hand. For I had finally seen what I had somehow missed before, this horror hanging over the court, all of them as blind as I had been . . .

Behind the Queen’s head was the vile misshapen creature I had seen clinging to the roof of the Great Hall. Now it was perched on the canopy above the throne like some kind of monstrous insect, glossy-backed and swollen, its ringed body convulsing and contracting. As I watched, it turned as though satisfied with its work, and leaped for the wall. The noise it made as it scaled the panelling was disgusting, like
something squelching through mud. Yet no one else seemed able either to see or hear it.

I stared up at the creature, half out of my mind with terror. I could not think of a single word of power that might destroy it. Part of me feared that I had summoned this monster myself. When I had first re-entered the hall, I had seen the creature as a mere shadow above the throne, shadow and light naturally rising and falling as the sun shifted behind a cloud and the Great Hall darkened. But now I saw it for what it truly was, evil incarnate in a hideous nightmarish body, shining like a vast black maggot. And I recognized its wickedness and greed, its darkness . . .

I recalled the summoning of the Lady Elizabeth’s mother, her ethereal silver spirit – and the furious black cloud that had accompanied her back to life, not retreating into oblivion as the dead Queen had done afterwards, but roaring up the chimney and out into the world.

Was this creature my doing?

King Philip looked at his wife with pity in his handsome face. ‘It did not seem right that your sister Elizabeth should be kept away from court once her innocence was no longer in doubt. However, you are Queen here. You must do as you see fit.’

Turning to leave the Great Hall, King Philip stopped and hung on his heel as he passed us. The King looked briefly at me, then reached out and gripped Alejandro’s shoulder. He made no attempt to lower his voice, as though the Queen
was already far from his thoughts. ‘Take care of
la princesa
, de Castillo. I leave her in your charge as a fellow Spaniard and a nobleman, and would have no harm befall her. The welfare of the Lady Elizabeth is of great concern to me – and to Spain.’

For a moment after the King had left, there was a terrible silence in the hall. The shiny black maggot on the ceiling writhed and gloated over its prizes in the stifling heat, a broken marriage and a divided court. I looked at Alejandro, sensing his stillness, and saw the strain on his face as the King’s command sank in. The princess’s safety lay in his hands now, and her enemies were many.

Realizing she had failed, that nothing would stop her husband from leaving, the Queen looked wildly about the Great Hall in search of supporters. But most of her English courtiers had slunk away during the shouting, and the Spanish had departed with their King, their faces haughty and disdainful. Even her closest advisers seemed to have left the chamber, perhaps fearing the consequences of this latest blow to England’s stability.

Humiliated and alone on the dais, Queen Mary’s voice broke as she pointed an accusing finger at the Lady Elizabeth.

‘As soon as the Spanish fleet sets sail, you can take yourself and your entourage back to your precious house at Hatfield. Yes, go . . . I will not hold you any longer against
your will. Though if you value your immortal soul, Bess, you will listen to young de Castillo’s teachings and embrace the true faith before it is too late.’

I saw Alejandro glance at me inadvertently, his eyes very dark. Since both the King and Queen had made it clear he was now part of the princess’s household, that must mean Alejandro would be accompanying us to Hatfield as Elizabeth’s spiritual advisor. My heart leaped with joy at the thought, even while I shuddered at the horrors I had seen here today; we would not be separated after all.

Hiding her triumphant expression, Elizabeth curtseyed and began to back out of the Great Hall. The Queen called after her bitterly, ‘And when it is your turn to marry, may your husband make your life as wretched as mine is now!’

It began to rain the day we left Hampton Court and did not show any signs of stopping even after we had arrived at the modest country house the Lady Elizabeth had called home as a child. For the first few miles, riddled with guilt, I tried to shake off the image of the hideous black creature I had seen on the ceiling at Hampton Court. Was I going mad, or had my summoning of Anne Boleyn somehow brought the monster into being?

Looking back, it seemed too incredible to be true. Yet my instincts told me I had not imagined the creature – nor its evil purpose. It seemed to hate the Queen and wished her ill, even to the point of destroying her. Perhaps it was because Mary had not been intended to inherit the throne; both she and Elizabeth had been termed ‘illegitimate’ by their father, King Henry, and disinherited in favour of a male heir. Now that their younger brother – Edward, a mere nine years old when he had succeeded to the throne for his short reign – had died, however, it seemed likely that a female Tudor would reign for years to come.

Was it the thought of a woman on the throne that the hideous creature could not stomach?

But the trials of our journey soon distracted me, for in
such terrible weather the roads were not easy, and even our covered wagon was damp and uncomfortable. The horses struggled the last few miles to Hatfield, sometimes halting exhausted on the road, sometimes lurching with their carts into marshland and standing there, trembling and knee-high in muddy water, waiting to be rescued. Several times Alejandro jumped down from the saddle to help the driver guide her ladyship’s wagon back onto the road, the two horses pulling her covered litter being nervous of heavy rain and shying at every unfamiliar object along the road. Yet the only time I heard the princess complain about these constant stops and starts was when a crack of lightning split the grey sky and the horses reared frantically, whinnying and almost throwing the old wagon onto its side.

At last we arrived and found the place in darkness, not a single candle in the windows. It was nearly dusk, the rain still pouring down relentlessly, a strong wind flapping the litter curtains. The Lady Elizabeth waited impatiently in her covered wagon while Blanche and I ran through the rain and mud ruts to hammer at the great studded door.

An ancient old man peered out at us suspiciously, holding up a lantern that swung and shook in his hand. ‘Who is it?’

‘Do you not recognize me, John? It’s Mistress Parry.’ Blanche leaned into the doorway so he could see her face by the light of his lantern. ‘Bless us, we are hardly strangers, will you not let us in? I’m getting soaked to the skin standing
here. The Lady Elizabeth has come back home at last and needs a clean dry bed, a good fire and a hot posset.’

‘The Lady Elizabeth? Well, why did you not say so at once?’ John, the elderly retainer, opened the door wide enough to let us stagger in one by one, Alejandro trying to shield the princess with his cloak from the worst of the weather. He bowed low to the Lady Elizabeth, but looked flustered when Blanche asked again about her ladyship’s bedchamber. ‘Alas, we are not ready to receive you, my lady. I had no word of your arrival. There are no sheets on her ladyship’s bed and the fire’s not been lit in her chamber these three months.’

At our arrival, a thin-ribbed, mangy-looking hound had uncoiled itself from the great hearth and now came loping towards us, barking as though under the impression that we were intruders.

Elizabeth gave a cry and bent to embrace the grey-haired old hound, who stopped barking at the sight of her and began to wag its tail enthusiastically.

‘Rufus, my dear old friend!’ She grinned up at Alice, who had shrieked at the sight of the barking hound. ‘Don’t be afraid, Rufus doesn’t bite. Well, not since he was a puppy. I helped to rear him myself when his mother died. Dear sweet Rufus, I can hardly believe you are still alive. But what a loving welcome! We shall take him out across the meadow once the weather is better, see if we can find him some rabbits to chase. Rufus always loved a good walk.’