Witchrise (8 page)

Yet I knew that I had not moved, that I was still kneeling in the abandoned hayloft with Richard watching me.

Abruptly the world tilted.

My eyes opened, and that was when I realized they had been screwed tight shut, for the flying sensation had left me a little sick. I gazed about myself, breathing shallow, my eyes slowly adjusting to darkness. I was standing on the upper landing in my father’s house, looking down the stairs into the hall. Or rather my mind was there, my body still a good two miles away in the hayloft.

The detail shook me. I could see knots and cracks in the wall beams, a beetle crawling in the dust at the top of the stairs, and down in the hall I watched as one of the serving women came hurrying out of the scullery, three or four brown eggs cradled in her apron.

There was a sound behind me. I turned in my dream, and saw my brother’s door open.

Without moving, I found that I was inside his bed chamber, as though my thought alone had taken me there.

William was lying on his bed, his arm over his eyes, a small book open on his chest. As I watched, he sighed deeply as though distressed by some memory or imagining.

‘Alice,’ he whispered. ‘Alice . . .’

After a moment, his arm fell away from his eyes and I realized that he had been crying.

William rolled onto his side and continued to read from his book. In my head, I heard him reciting a poem softly to himself. A love poem. The words fell away into shadow, but my brother’s red-rimmed eyes were clear enough.

‘Meg.’

I started violently, thinking William knew I was there in his chamber and was saying my name. My eyes blurred, there was a hideous rushing in my ears, then I was back in the hayloft, staring at nothing like a mad thing, my whole body aching, with Richard on his knees before me, his face pale and drawn.

‘Come back to me, Meg,’ Richard said urgently, and snapped his fingers in front of my face.

A shudder ran through me, everything turned misty, and I felt horribly sick.

Richard nodded unsympathetically. ‘Good, you’re awake.’

‘What . . . what did . . .’ I tried to stand up but Richard pushed me back.

I did not argue, for I was dizzy, my head spinning unpleasantly.

‘Stay where you are. God’s blood, Meg, you turned cold and seemed to lose your senses there. I could not rouse you for several minutes. I told you not to be too free with these spells from your mother’s book, that they were dangerous.’ He sounded furious. ‘When will you listen to me?’

‘Never,’ I muttered.

Richard crouched down, looking at me, his head on one side. ‘I’m not made of stone, Meg. I have no taste to see you die again under my care. I have not forgotten that night at Hatfield. Having to carry your dead body back to the house nearly finished me. Not a night I wish to live through again.’

‘But it worked,’ I said eagerly, and struggled to my knees, blenching when my stomach rebelled at the too abrupt change in position. I put a hand to my mouth and waited, eyes closed. ‘Oh God.’ I slowly dropped my hand as the sickness abated. ‘Richard, I have to tell you,’ I whispered. ‘I was there.’

‘Where?’

‘I thought of my father’s house. Built it in my mind’s eye as the book says to do, then said the spell. And straight away I was flying. At least, it felt like I was flying, and I could see the ground flashing past me. Then I was there,
in the house
.’

He was staring. ‘Go on.’

‘I saw my brother—’ I began, then stopped myself. I had been going to say ‘crying’ but it seemed unjust to betray William’s privacy, for if he had known anyone was watching, he would never have wept. And over Alice too, the Lady Elizabeth’s maid. I had not realized his feelings for the girl ran so deep, though I remembered now they had grown close during the autumn we passed at Hatfield.

‘Reading a book,’ I finished lamely.

Richard’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Reading a book? How very exciting.’ He clearly did not believe me.

‘Listen, I was there,’ I insisted, ‘in my father’s house. I saw my brother reading a book, and stood as near to him as you are to me, and he never saw me. It was no dream, nor was it a memory. It was a true seeing.’

For a long moment Richard looked at me without speaking, seeming to consider that possibility. Then he took up the grimoire and studied it, running his finger across my mother’s spell.

‘If what you say is true, this spell could . . .’ Richard hesitated. ‘It would be a powerful work of magick indeed.’

I held out my hand. ‘Help me up, please.’

He did not argue this time, but stood and took my hand. His grip was strong, reassuring. ‘Lean on me.’

‘I thank you.’ My legs were still trembling from the power of the spell, and the heavy folds of my gown were always a hindrance, so I did not consider it a weakness to ask for his help. ‘Now you can kneel where I was, and try my mother’s spell for yourself.’

‘What?’

I almost smiled at his stunned expression. ‘Why so surprised? You will not need to “believe” if you can see for yourself that the spell works.’

Richard shook his head. He handed me back the manuscript, this time taking more care not to damage the fragile binding. ‘Forgive me, but I cannot. I do not have your skill as a witch.’

‘I have seen you use magick.’

‘Nothing akin to this.’

‘Oh, come!’

He folded his arms, looking at me grimly. ‘I am serious, Meg. Catherine Canley’s book is not for me. It is women’s magick. To be permitted to observe but not to speak. To see great works, but not influence them yourself. My art lies in quite another direction.’ He paused. ‘Besides, her spells may only work for you because you are her daughter.’

That had not occurred to me. But it was possible.

‘Women’s magick,’ I muttered, and tucked the book under my arm, for I felt too tired to continue that day. It seemed that ‘far seeing’ was a physically exhausting spell, even though no actual movement was required on the part of the one travelling. ‘And what is a man’s magick, pray?’

Richard grinned, knowing how much such jibes infuriated me. ‘Everything that is not for a woman to perform. Which is most things.’

I resisted the urge to hit him with my mother’s book, for I knew he only spoke thus to tease me. ‘Come on, I’m eager to get back to the house and see William. If he tells me he was in his chamber all morning, reading a book, we will know it was a true vision.’

‘Which it was.’ Richard believed me
now
. ‘Wait, you’ll need this.’ He threw my cloak about my shoulders and took a long moment to fasten it against the cold.

I studied him, amused by the look of concentration on his face. He must have cut his hair in recent days, for the dark unkempt curls that used to brush his shoulders had been shorn, his hair razored short up his neck. The forelock which always hung over his forehead like a pony’s was still in place though, giving him a vaguely dishevelled look, as though he had only just risen from his bed.

Richard was an attractive young man, I mused. Then I could not believe I had just thought such a thing. But it was hard not to at least acknowledge it when he was standing so close.

‘Through if your brother was out on his horse this morning,’ Richard added cheerfully, unaware of my thoughts, ‘or helping your father catalogue his book collection, then it was a deception of the mind and we must beware your mother’s spell book. Agreed?’

Climbing the stairs of my father’s house, I hesitated, then turned towards my brother’s chamber. The door stood open.

I pushed it slightly, just as I had done in my dream, and peered inside. My brother’s bed was empty and in disarray, his bolsters askew, the blankets tossed higgledy-piggledy onto the floor.

‘Looking for me?’

I jumped, turning to find William directly behind me on the narrow landing. He looked at my face, grinning. ‘Did I startle you? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.’

A ghost, I thought faintly. I had seen one or two in my time, thinking back to the dark spirit I had inadvertently summoned at court, to poor Anne Boleyn’s silvery outline floating above the Lady Elizabeth’s bed. And to my own mother . . .

I would almost have welcomed a ghost at that moment if it meant my mother’s spell book could be trusted. It would kill me to think that her spells and secret musings on magick – written in her own hand and set down purposely for me to study – should be considered suspect.

‘What have you been doing this morning?’ I asked.

‘Nothing much. I was just reading, that’s all.’ William pushed past me into his chamber, his look defensive.

I followed him, noting the shutters thrown open to admit the chilly daylight, and the general untidiness of his room, soiled clothes strewn on the floor, last night’s candle a puddled stump on the table beside his bed. ‘Reading what?’

My brother was frowning, a slight colour in his face. ‘And how is it your business what I was reading?’

‘Will, please tell me.’

‘Very well,’ he said gruffly. ‘I was reading poetry. There, now you know the truth. Will you tell me what all this is about?’

So it had been a true seeing.

I shook my head. I was not ready to tell Will about the far-seeing spell, nor admit that I had spied upon him in the privacy of his own chamber.

‘I have never known you read poetry before.’ I smiled, teasing him. ‘You must be in love.’

‘
In love?
’ Now my brother was scarlet, stumbling over his words. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. If you were a man, Meg, and not my sister, I’d . . . I’d . . .’ Then William saw my knowing smile, and his confusion grew even worse. ‘Oh, forget it!’

The weeks advanced with infuriating quietness towards spring at Lytton Park. The snow stopped falling and a wintry sunshine melted the last of its icy whiteness from the verges. New flower stalks broke the hard earth, the trees in the park came into bud at last, and my father’s vast sow gave birth to a litter of eight wriggling piglets. A robin red-breast came to sing and beg for crumbs on my windowsill every morning, its nest hidden amidst the tangle of foliage below. The world felt very fresh and new, though the air was still chilly in the early hours when I would wake from some confused dream and stare up at the stars.

Meanwhile, I walked or rode out with William and Richard during fine weather, helped to run the household for my father, and spent my evenings by the fire in my chamber, reading my mother’s grimoire and occasionally heading outdoors to attempt a few of her minor charms when neither Richard nor my father was on hand to catch me.

Then one afternoon in late February, supervising the beating of some filthy old tapestries hung over a wall in the spring sunshine, I heard a shout and turned to see the outline of a horseman riding steadily down the track from the main road, the sun at his back.

I blinked and coughed in the wealth of spinning dust from the tapestries, unable to see clearly. Above me, William was hanging out of one of the casement windows, no doubt to get a better view. He shouted again and began waving his hand violently. I could not hear him, so turned, asking the servant to stop beating the tapestry for a moment.

I shielded my eyes against the sun, frowning up at William. ‘Who is it? Can you see?’

‘It is Alejandro de Castillo,’ he called back excitedly. ‘Your Spaniard has come back!’

I went hot and cold at the same time, and my belly clenched like a fist within me.

‘Oh,’ I said faintly, and looked down at myself. My apron was soiled with dust, my hair too no doubt, for my cap was askew, and I was wearing my worst workaday gown, with rips at the hem and a torn sleeve.

Richard came limping round from the stables, his gaze also fixed on the approaching horseman.

‘Oh, the Spaniard again.’ He turned to study me, noting my flushed cheeks. ‘Come back to claim your hand in marriage, has he? Better make yourself look presentable then, or he might ride on.’

I met his eyes, and a shiver ran down my back at the bitter intensity of that look. ‘Don’t,’ I muttered, then dragged off my apron and thrust it into the servant’s hand. I tidied my dusty cap and hair, but had no time to do much else but pinch my cheeks and hope I did not look like a complete scarecrow.

Alejandro spurred on his mount, seeing me ahead, and swung out of the saddle while the horse was still moving.

I stood watching as he strode towards me. I was suddenly unable to move, light-headed, my breathing shallow. I had forgotten how his presence alone was enough to make my heart beat faster. What did that mean, if not that I was in love with him?

He looked tired, yet his gaze was as dark and intense as ever, meeting mine with a shock that left me speechless.

‘Meg,’ he said deeply, and dropped to both knees before me, raising my hand to his lips as though I was a princess. ‘Meg,
mi alma
, how I have missed you.’ He rested his forehead against the back of my hand, muttered something in Spanish that sounded like a brief prayer, then stood and bowed more formally. ‘I bear an urgent letter from
la princesa
and am instructed to return to Hatfield with you at once.’

Richard, standing just behind me, expressed my own feelings of shock when he swore lengthily under his breath. ‘What did you say, priest?’

Shooting him a look of acute dislike, Alejandro did not repeat his message but turned instead towards my father, who had appeared in the doorway with William, both of them looking perplexed.

‘Sir,’ Alejandro greeted my father, bowing rather stiffly, feathered cap in hand.

‘Señor de Castillo?’ My father was his usual unfriendly self, frowning at our visitor from within the shade of the doorway. Even the ancient gargoyle peering over the stone lintel above his head looked more welcoming with its crude squat face and protruding tongue. ‘What brings you back to Lytton Park?’

‘Forgive my intrusion, sir. I have returned on the orders of the Lady Elizabeth.’ He unfastened his leather pouch, drew out a crumpled-looking scroll of paper and handed it to me. ‘Read it.’

He stepped back into sunlight, seemed to stumble over a deep rut in the path, and almost fell.