Caress of a Witch, page 23
part #1 of Darkness Rising - Three Series
Kate sniffed, blinking back the tears that threatened behind her eyes. She would hang, she thought, as Tom had hanged, and the rope would snuff the breath from her body. She touched a hand to her neck, conscious of its fragility.
‘Prison for you now, my dear.’ He peered into her face and she turned her head away. ‘And we will talk again before your case goes to the Grand Jury. I’ll hear the truth before they hang you. You have my word.’
Circling the desk once again, he resumed his seat and drew a sheet of paper towards him. She heard the nib of his quill scratch out the words that held her fate, and risked a glance towards it as he finished, sprinkling the salt, shaking it dry. From the side of her eye she saw him fold it with meticulous care and affix his seal. Then he crossed to the door and summoned the constable back into the room.
‘Take her to the Marshalsea,’ he said. ‘Here is the warrant.’
The young guard slid his hand under her arm and nudged her forward. She resisted the urge to struggle, for what good would it do here, now? She had fought his grip all the way from the graveyard and it had availed her nothing. She must save her strength, she realised, and think of another way to save herself. So she let him lead her from the room, and walked beside him, obedient, all the way through the chill winter night till they reached the vast dark door of the prison.
Outside the Marshalsea the guard kept his hand on her arm as they waited. She turned to look at him. He was very young, she thought, younger than her, and too callow for such work – his innocence would not last long. Then the great door was wrenched open with a clunk of iron as the bolts were shot back. He bundled her through the opening, and when the door slammed shut again behind her she flinched, startled, drawing close to him out of instinct – clinging to warmth and life as she tasted the foetid air of the prison. He didn’t push her away as she expected and she was grateful. She wondered if he had been inside before, and if it frightened him too.
‘This way.’ The gaoler held up a candle, and before he turned away she saw the grime in the lines of his face, teeth black and rotting. Blinking back her tears as she was borne forward through a maze of corridors that rang with human misery, she shuttered her mind to the horrors she could imagine behind each door they passed. Now and then a wail sounded, like an animal in pain, and at one door she heard the pounding of a fist against the iron, slow and monotonous, hopeless. Her spirit shrank inside her, curling into a ball in her guts – this was the rest of her life, this place of misery and despair. Until she swung from a rope, this would be her world. She tightened her hold on the young guard’s arm until at last the gaoler stopped at a door ahead of them and began to search methodically through the bunch of keys that hung at his waist.
Finally, he opened the door with a squeal of wood on stone that cut through her mind, and then she was cast through the opening and thrown to her knees onto filthy straw. The stench almost made her heave, and by the time she recovered her senses the door had been locked behind her and the men’s footsteps had receded into silence.
The cell was almost black, lit only by the flickers of a torch in the passage beyond the small, barred opening in the door, and a missing brick in the wall high above them that led to the outside world. In the darkness she was aware of other bodies, other souls in fear and pain. Shadows lurked at the edges of her vision – the ghosts of those who had gone before, she supposed, doomed to haunt this place. Trembling, both with fear and the bitter cold, she waited for her eyes to adjust, picking out the living shapes as best she could. No one spoke. No one acknowledged her, and she shuffled towards a space by the wall, drew her knees up to her chest, and curled into herself.
Then she lifted her mind towards Tom once again and begged him silently for help.
25
The spirits of the dead may walk again
Mary woke in the bed she shared with Rosalind at the Cardinal’s Cap, sleepy-eyed and still drowsy. For a moment she floated in the in-between, savouring the laziness before the sudden recollection of the night startled her awake. She could hear the bells at St Saviour’s striking the hour, the chimes drifting in snatches on the breeze. Her mind followed their toll above the murmur of Bankside but she didn’t think to count them till it was too late. The laughter of a woman echoed closer at hand along the passage outside the door, and for a single breath she thought herself back as a girl again in the brothel, working. Then she remembered she was a different person now, and the memory of the night tumbled into clearer focus through her mind.
The cold, the dark, the Shadow.
The terror that had pressed around her heart.
The sense of sinking under water, and no light to show her which way to swim to save herself.
How had she returned home? What power had saved her?
She sat up abruptly in the cold room. Images played like a nightmare in her thoughts, making her wonder if she had merely dreamt it, the Shadow nothing more than the imaginings of a brain overwrought with too much grief and worry. She swallowed, clutching the quilts to her chest against the chill. The fire was almost out, and the pulsing embers threw out a weak orange light. In its glow, the room seemed to be the most wondrous place she had ever been – no watching eyes, no shifting shades of death.
Sighing with relief to be home, she forced herself out of the warmth of the bed and, taking up her clothes from where someone had laid them neatly on the chair, she stood before the dying fire to dress, shivering.
It had been no dream, she thought, as she drew the laces tight across her chest. She had been cast into a realm of death, and now she was free. But how? She took a deep breath to quell a rising sense of panic. Then another, but it made no difference. Something inside her was alive to some new danger she did not yet know.
Kate, she thought again. Where was Kate?
Finishing her dressing with fumbling fingers, she ran her hands across her knotted hair and stepped out into the passage to meet the roil of sound and warmth from the tavern. Rosalind saw her as soon she appeared, keen eyes missing nothing that passed within the tavern walls. Giving a coy curtsey to the young man she was flirting with, she crossed to the mouth of the passage in a few quick strides, face bright with a smile of relief and concern.
‘You’ve returned,’ she breathed, taking Mary’s hand in her own. ‘Kate did it. God be praised.’
‘Kate?’ Mary replied. ‘She is here?’
‘Aye. She came with her man to find you. They took the book.’ She gave a slight shrug, and Mary’s innards turned over with fear. Kate had saved her and put her own life in danger. But where was she now?
‘Oy!’ A man’s shout made Rosalind turn her head to scan the room. ‘Where’s my ale?’
‘Be patient, sir – I will bring it to you anon.’ She swung back to her friend, squeezing her hands in an urgent plea.
‘Be wary, walk with care. Alexander’s shadow stalks this place again.’
‘I must find Kate.’
‘Mistress!’ The man’s drunken voice roared again. ‘My ale, if you please!’
‘Go to him,’ Mary said. ‘I will return soon.’
Rosalind nodded and, replacing her best hostess smile, she took the jug from the boy who had brought it at last then sashayed between the tables to deliver it to the roaring man. For a moment Mary watched her. Then, remembering she had neither eaten nor drunk for she knew not how long, she turned back down the passage towards the kitchen in search of sustenance. When she had filled her shrunken belly with some wine and a little bread and cheese, she slipped her cloak across her shoulders and sidled through the tavern to the door, avoiding the reaching hands with a skill learned long ago.
Outside on the quay, the night was bitter-cold and dark with cloud. There were few people about although the river was still alive with traffic – lanterns bobbed through the gloom. Mary gathered her cloak closer to her throat. Then, with a quick glance back along the row of buildings, she lit a torch from the one at the door, and bent her steps along the quay towards the closed-up market, senses tingling and wary. Few lights flared at these doorways and it seemed a long way between them.
Hurrying through the dark-lit passages, she passed two beggars sitting huddled together for warmth in a doorway and wondered why they hadn’t found a more sheltered spot to spend the night. A drunkard was leaning against a wall, vomit splattering at his feet. The acid stench hung in the air, and though she held her breath as she passed it made no difference; she could smell it anyway and had to swallow down her own rising bile. These were not her streets any more and she no longer moved with the same confidence she used to; fear pricked at the back of her neck as she cast glances around her, vigilant for danger. Turning a corner close to the High Street, she had to pull up short to stop herself colliding with a man who had a whore against the wall. His bare arse was pale and round, quivering.
‘Watch where you’re going, bitch,’ he snarled, leaning towards her. As she shrank back and away, startled, she caught the whore’s eye. The woman winked and Mary answered with a smile before she half ran, half walked to gain the comparative safety of the High Street. Here, at least, little had changed in her years away and the edge of her fear began to dull. The place still bustled with travellers who were biding their time till morning – drinking, eating, exploring, wheeling and dealing. She stepped carefully through the refuse that littered the cobbles and gave a ha’penny to a beggar child who tugged at her skirts as she passed.
By the side of one of the many taverns, she turned off the High Street and cut through the inn yard. A gentleman and his lady were dismounting from horses that were slick with sweat at the end of their journey, and the man’s eyes followed Mary as she slid past them, aiming for the lane at the back. It was darker here, and lonely, and she quickened her steps till she came out at last onto Red Cross Street, hurried across the road, and finally stopped at the gate to the Cross Bones.
As both a girl and a young woman she had hated this graveyard, sure she would spend eternity here amongst the thieves and the sinners, and for years it had haunted her, beckoning. She almost smiled at the recollection. She had thought her marriage to Toby had saved her from such an end but fate was strange that way: some destinies are meant to be fulfilled however far we think we have outrun them.
Placing a hand on the latch, she took a deep breath for courage. Beyond the gate the dark night deepened and the shade of the Shadow still flickered in her thoughts, half-remembered as a darkness in her blood.
Guide me, Hecate, she whispered. Keep me safe.
Then she lifted the latch, opened the gate with a shove, and stepped through.
Within a few yards, the path petered out and she lifted her skirts clear of the weeds as she trod across the grass. She wished Toby were with her – another living soul as a buttress against all the spirits of the dead she could feel in the air around her as a presence, a silent murmur. The one person who knew her heart. Somewhere here long ago, Toby had buried the child that slid from his first wife without ever drawing breath, and in all their years together he had never spoken of it once, a private grief that he carried locked tight inside of him. Tightening her shoulders, Mary lifted her chin and forced herself to bravery.
The graves were at the back wall as she remembered he once had told her, sheltered by the sacred yew that Sarah had planted to protect Tom’s grave. Its presence drew Mary now towards it and the headstones beneath glimmered in the light from the torch in her hand – Tom and Sarah, lying side by side in death as they had lain in life. Mary knelt between them, reached her fingers to the mounds on either side. Could they sense her presence? she wondered. Did they know she sought their help?
She spoke first to Sarah, calling on their friendship and affection, precious as a mother’s love. They had shared long hours in each other’s company, and though Sarah must have wished for someone better than a Bankside whore for her son, she had never once been unkind.
‘Can you hear me, Mistress Chyrche? Are you there?’
Silence.
‘Sarah. I call on you to help me now as you used to do in life. I cannot do this alone. Please, I beg of you, if you can hear me come to me. Help me.’
She waited, briefly hopeful, but no answer came and tears of frustration pricked behind her eyes. She had no one else to turn to, no other path to try. Toby was lost to her – she had long since exhausted herself in the effort to reach him. Perhaps he was with Sarah now, mother and son together at peace in their realm of death, and beyond the power of the living to disturb. A part of her hoped so – they had earned their rest. But the survivor in her, the mother of a daughter in jeopardy, needed aid, and so she turned instead towards Tom, a man she knew only by his reputation. Reckless and wild, eager for life in all its chaotic glory, and a capacity for love that knew no bounds. Would he help her now? For the sake of his grandchild? Would he even hear her call?
‘Tom? Tom Wynter? Do you hear me?’
She laid the palm of her hand on the grass that covered his grave. Did she have the power to speak to the dead, to summon a ghost? Or had desperation made her mad? She remembered Toby’s study, the book, the rituals, learnèd words of Latin. Alexander had made it his life’s work to master what she was hoping to do now, armed only with a desolate heart and a connection to the past.
‘I have no skills to summon you, Tom Wynter, nothing but my love for my daughter, and a wish to bring her home. She is your grandchild, the daughter of the son you gave to Sarah. The sorcerer’s power lives on in his daughter, and Kate is in danger. Please, I will give you anything I have, all of me, if you will come to me now and help us.’
Her whispered words seemed to hover in the silence. She wondered if the spirits were mocking her. Feeling foolish, driven by need, she tried again.
‘Damn you, Tom Wynter – this is your doing. Toby, Kate, the book. All of it. All of it comes back to you.’
Another silence.
Beyond the peace of the graveyard, she was aware of the hum of the city at the edges of her perception. Men’s voices raised in laughter drifted from the road and, further off, a dog was barking in unending monotonous repetition. She sighed. She had failed, she thought, and her daughter was still lost to her. What more could she do? Then, on a sudden impulse that came from she knew not where, she heard herself say, ‘I will let the book go when this is done, and the river can take it where it will. Then perhaps you will be free of it and you can go to your rest at last. But before then I need your help. Please.’
She began to weep with desperation, and she could do nothing to stop her tears. All that had gone before, all that she and Toby had survived, meant nothing now in the face of Kate’s danger. She wiped at her eyes with a gloved hand but other tears fell quickly to replace them, hot against her chilled skin.
‘Please, Tom,’ she whispered. ‘I beg of you. Please.’
‘Don’t cry.’
The voice sounded close and she spun to look behind her, sure she was no longer alone. But the darkness all around was still and unmoving, and no living person disturbed the quiet.
‘I am here. What is it I can do to help?’
Mary scrubbed at the tears, blinking her eyes into focus, searching the dark for a sight of him. She wanted to see him, this father of the man she loved, and though she could feel his presence as if he was standing right before her, she saw nothing but the darkness.
‘Speak.’
The words tumbled from her lips as though she were afraid he would leave before she had told him all. She recounted all of it, right from the beginning. Her first sight of Alexander all those years ago when he addled Rosalind’s wits. Toby’s study with the sorcerer and his first wife’s death, the rituals, the book, Sarah, Alexander’s death, and now Kate and Isabella. It was a long tale to tell, but she did not falter.
Tom listened, so silently she doubted more than once that he had come to her at all. When she finished at last, she waited for his answer, peering into the night, still hoping for a sight of him.
‘I will do what I can,’ he said at last.
Then, briefly, he shimmered into form before her, and he was so like Toby in all his pale, lean beauty, it took her breath away. One more heartbeat and he was gone, and the dark seemed to draw closer around her. She waited for a moment, just to be sure, then stumbled to her feet, legs numbed by the cold. Drawing her cloak closer around her, one hand holding up her skirts, she turned away from Tom’s grave and set her footsteps towards the road, barely breathing in her hurry to be gone. Only when she had latched the gate behind her and was once more on the road, did she dare to breathe again.
26
Thou shalt have justice, more than thou desir’st
Kate had been in the prison cell some hours and perhaps it was morning, for the door opened with a gleam of light from the passage that fell across the straw, and a woman set down a tray with a jug of water and some bread before backing hurriedly away. The door shut with a clang and a scrape of the key behind her. As the other women in the cell moved towards it, Kate hesitated until a voice said, ‘Have your share, girl. There’s little enough and the others will take it if you do not.’
Kate shuffled forward and took a piece of the bread, though her stomach recoiled at the thought of it. The water was brackish and she felt her gorge rise in protest, but she kept it down by force of will – she had no wish to starve to death, for as long as she was alive some hope remained, however small. Then she returned to her place against the wall, and the woman who had spoken came to sit beside her. They sat in silence a while but it was comfortable and instinctively she felt the woman was a friend.
‘What were you taken for?’ the woman asked at last.
Kate smiled. It was good to hear a human voice, a reminder of the world of life beyond the prison walls where people passed the time of day in idle conversation.
