The Secrets of Life and Death (11 page)

‘Countess, may I ask what ails you?’ he said.

‘You know my mother’s story?’ She waved away the servant. ‘Lady Anna was a good and devout woman who deserved a longer life. But she suffered from a weakness, a sickness that can only be treated by certain herbs and remedies. Feel the pulse in my wrist.’ She reached out one hand, the fingers skeletal, the knuckles prominent. Her skin was very white and soft, her nails long and oval. A ring, loose on her emaciated thumb, had a dragon coiled about a ruby the size of a robin’s egg. It was so red it was almost black.

Dee hesitated for a second, and then took her hand. I could see the shock on his face in the candlelight.

‘My lady … you are very cold.’ He pressed two fingers to the pulse in her arm, searching for it gently, failing to find it for a long moment. No one moved nor spoke, and when he breathed out it was a shocking sigh in the silent room, as if we had all been holding our breath.

‘I am no doctor,’ he said, releasing her hand, ‘but your heart beats very slow.’

‘Since my marriage, the treatments my healing woman gives me have become less effective. I am not normally as weak as you see me now.’

Dee spread out his hands. ‘My lady, I am a scholar and, I hope, a good Christian. If I can help—’

The king leaned back in his chair and rested one hand on his spreading belly. ‘We have heard about the speech you have had with angels.’

‘Indeed.’ Dee bowed his head for a moment.

‘How can you be certain that any such communication is with angels, and not demons or evil spirits?’

‘The messages have been for the benefit of mankind. Of that I am sure. There is a … an odour, an atmosphere, when they reveal their wisdoms to me, their servant.’

King Istvan crossed himself and murmured a blessing. I noticed the woman did not.

‘And you saw these beings,’ the countess pressed, like a child.

‘They spoke to me when they inhabited my colleague, Master Kelley. He has seen them.’

All turned to me, and I felt unpleasantly hot.

The king rested his hands on the table and leaned forward. ‘What did you see?’

I could not lie to either and mumbled the truth. ‘I have seen a great radiance, and a sword, and great giants made of blinding light that burned my eyes.’

‘And these beings … possessed you?’ The young woman’s eyes, blue as a summer sky, stared at me. I found myself speaking directly to her.

‘When he appears to me it is like a dream, in which my mouth speaks and Doctor Dee listens.’ I took a deep draught of the strong wine. ‘He – Saraquel – fills me with such hope, but such fear.’

The king put a hand on his niece’s shoulder, as if to prevent her touching me as she leaned forward. ‘I must consult my priests,’ he said in his gruff Latin.

‘We welcome it,’ said Dee, as calm as ever. ‘We have discussed our findings with many bishops and clerics, as well as scholars and philosophers.’

‘Father Konrad will also wish to examine your story.’ The king beckoned to the servitor, who took the goblet from my hand, and when I did not move, twitched his fingers to make me stand. ‘And your piety.’

Jack shuddered back into consciousness. As she looked around the inside of the car and the crazed windscreen, the noise of the engine intruded, and the memories re-formed in her head. She turned the key, and silence flooded back in. Pushing on the door didn’t even budge it, so she fumbled with the seat belt and dragged herself to the passenger side. That door creaked and groaned open, and she reeled onto the gravel. The memory of the car hitting the graveyard wall crept back.

A few blocks were knocked askew, but the car had come off worse. The bonnet was crumpled, and steam rose. As she watched, the motion-activated floodlight went out.

The woman. Damn it, where was she? Jack pulled at the passenger door, and it opened, the interior light glowing yellow. The woman was silent, crumpled half on the seat and half in the footwell. Apparently, she hadn’t used her seat belt. For a moment, Jack thought she was dead, but then the woman raised her head and stared back at her.

Jack’s instincts hauled her backwards over the loose gravel, out of reach of the woman’s strange gaze. The car park light snapped back on, and Jack jogged to the wall, her feet slipping in painful slow motion in the shingle.

When they had built the church, they had used any available stone to build the graveyard wall. At the site of a stone horseshoe, the locals had cut up what was lying around. Jack pressed her hands to an ancient block of limestone, and felt her will asserting itself in the dark energy. Behind her, the woman stepped – or fell – onto the stones. Jack took a breath, and turned to face her.

She fumbled in her pockets for a talisman, anything that might boost her flagging energies. She realised pain was grinding into her shoulder, and burning across the centre of her chest. She focused on the ache, anchoring herself in her body.

She carried a handful of Maggie’s charms. Talismans to ward off illness, robbery, bad luck, but she couldn’t think of one that would ward off mind control. She looked up at the woman who leaned against the car, dabbing away blood from her forehead with a tissue.

‘How resourceful of you.’ She grimaced, and brushed her coat down. She was wearing high heels, which should impede a chase, at least. Jack wasn’t sure she could keep her own will.

‘I suppose that answers the question of what you are. Some sort of witch.’ Jack tried to keep her voice steady, but her breath was coming in little sobs, and her voice stumbled through the words.

‘No more than you. You created a
morturi masticantes.
So few can raise the dead.’ The woman took a step, then caught herself against the car and lifted her foot to inspect the heel, which looked like it was loose. ‘I have to admire your skills. The sigils came from Dee’s notes, I assume, or the medals?’ The light flickered off, and a second later, snapped back on. The woman had somehow narrowed the gap between them by half the distance. ‘But you lost that girl, yes? Now you will take me to your new one.’

One of the carved stones in Jack’s hand was heating up, and she dropped the others back in her pocket.

‘No.’ In her own ears, the denial sounded weak. ‘No, I won’t,’ came out stronger. She traced a line in the gravel with her foot and stepped away, pressing her back against the fractured wall. She began to chant the protection spell Maggie had taught her from childhood.

When the light flickered off again she braced herself for an assault, and waved her arm to set off the sensor. Nothing happened.
Must be out of range.
But the faint grind of stone on stone suggested the woman was moving. When the light came back on it caught her face, frozen in a grotesque game of “statues”. Stalled at the line in the gravel, her mouth was distorted into a grimace, her lips drawn back from her teeth. She hissed like water hitting a hot iron. She shrank back, her features composing themselves. Jack realised her first impression had been of a woman her own age, with fair hair, and a slim figure. The momentary flash had revealed a different woman, gaunt rather than slim, with wispy hair tinted an unlikely shade. Her neck was creped with loose skin, teeth lengthened by time shrinking her gums.

‘I will find her.’ The woman spat the words at her in a shrill voice. ‘And then I will brush you aside like an insect.’

The sensation of standing in rushing water pulled at Jack’s thighs and back, and she found herself fighting to keep her feet. The air around her seemed to have thickened and was moving along the wall, sweeping Jack with it. The talisman was burning her palm with the energy of resisting the woman, but clutching it gave Jack strength to battle the force dragging her towards the churchyard gate. The car-park light flickered out, and with it the sweep of air vanished, and Jack staggered, and fell to her knees. The motion set off the sensor, and a pool of fluorescent white saturated the front of the church and the gravel drive. The woman had gone.

Jack wrote a note to the effect that her brakes had failed, propped it in the shattered windscreen of her car, retrieved her bag and started walking along the road. She could see no sign of the woman, and took the footpath across the fields away from the house to make sure she wasn’t being followed. Working her way through the copse at the edge of the village, with years of experience stalking deer to creep over the paths, she surprised a fox and a number of rabbits before climbing the last stile onto the main road. Slipping through a garden, she clambered over the fence onto the footpath that came out on the lane opposite the cottage. She still waited in the shadow, observing the hedges and trees, the thatch and tall chimneys just outlined against the starlit sky. She paused, her head thumping and her stomach contracting.

She tried the handle of the back door, the dog rushing over and pawing at the paintwork, but she was locked out. Maggie walked into the kitchen, turned the key and opened the door.

‘What happened? You look terrible. Oh … you’re hurt, sit down.’

It was all Jack could do to fend off Ches, who was frantic, whining and butting her thighs for attention.

‘Ches, get down. I’m OK, but I crashed the car.’ As she looked into the living room, Sadie’s white face was leaning forward from one of the settees. When Jack lifted her arms to take her jacket off, the muscles ached with the effort, and she staggered.

Maggie maintained a flow of motherly comments as she ushered her to the other sofa. Jack had to clench her teeth to stop them chattering. She slumped, shivering, onto the empty couch, and leaned against the worn cushions.

‘Now, tell me what happened.’ Maggie moved as if to touch Jack’s head, then grimaced and pulled away.

‘There was a woman on the back seat, I don’t know how she got in. She cast a hell of a mesmer spell. I had to crash the car to break it, before I drove her right here.’ She winced as Maggie’s fingers brushed her hairline. ‘She’s looking for Sadie.’

‘What?’ Alarm creased Sadie’s sharp features, making her blue eyes look even bigger.

Maggie ignored her. ‘Does she know about
you
? You said Pierce was very interested in another borrowed timer.’

Jack shook her head. ‘She thinks
I’m
the witch.’

Maggie took a blanket from the end of Sadie’s sofa and draped it around Jack’s shoulders. She touched her cheek with the back of one hand.

‘You’re freezing. And that’s a terrible bump on your forehead. Let me clean up some of the blood.’

‘Blood?’ Jack stood, her legs shaky under her, and looked in the mirror over the fireplace. It had poured down one side of her face from a split in her scalp along her hairline, and had dried. As she grimaced, she could feel it crack. ‘I must have banged my head on the steering wheel.’

‘You may need stitches. Let me do a healing spell …’

‘Just put strips on it.’ Jack sat back on the settee with a sigh.

‘Lie down and let me look after you, for a change.’ While Maggie helped get her boots off, Jack let herself relax.

‘Why would someone want me?’ Sadie pulled at a loose thread on the sleeve of her jumper. ‘You said before, I’m valuable, you could sell me. But what would they want me
for
?’

Jack rolled her head on the cushion, looking at Sadie, who was curled up on the end of the sofa, hugging her legs.

‘Borrowed timers have some kind of special magic in their blood, I don’t understand it myself. But healers use it to treat terminally ill people.’

Sadie recoiled, hunching herself up tight. ‘So that’s the real reason you rescued me?’ She glared at Jack, her hair sweeping across one eye in a flat curtain. ‘You’re going to keep me like … a blood bank?’

‘No, it’s not why – well, it’s not the only reason.’ Jack sighed, her head throbbing.

Maggie came back in, carrying a tray. ‘What happened?’

‘A man was watching the professor in the pub.’

Maggie set the tray on the box in the middle of the room, and Jack noticed a large bottle of antiseptic and a bag of cotton wool with some reservations.

Maggie parted Jack’s hair with gentle fingers. ‘Ouch. That looks deep.’

Jack looked across at Sadie. ‘I know how hard this is. I asked all the same questions, and I was a lot younger than you.’

Maggie spoke with an edge in her voice. ‘I think Sadie would be safer downstairs, in the priest hole.’

Jack looked over at the girl, whose mouth was set in a hard line, her eyes glaring but filled with tears. ‘I think this concerns Sadie as much as any of us.’

‘Jack—’

‘No, Maggie. I hated it when you kept me in the dark, and you had to tell me eventually, right? If we had told Carla more, explained—’ She choked up for a moment. ‘Sadie, I’m going to tell you things and you won’t believe them. But at least hear me out.’ Jack looked at the thin arms folded over the blankets.

‘Listen to my kidnappers.’ Sadie’s voice was thin. ‘Right.’

‘If I meant to hurt you, I could just have left you to die, couldn’t I?’

Sadie opened her mouth, then seemed to think better of it. The girl’s eyes seemed huge in the dim light. ‘So you claim.’

‘Twenty-one years ago, I was supposed to die of a broken neck, a riding accident. I was ten years old, competing in a local gymkhana.’ Jack spoke distantly, shivering under the blankets. ‘I had just competed, and my pony threw me at a jump.’ She could remember the fall, it wasn’t even a bad one, she had landed on her feet. ‘My arm hurt, so my parents sent me to the trailer to sit down. I started to feel dizzy and breathless, and my neck hurt. Maggie grabbed me, put me in a hard collar and locked me in her van. My neck was broken … I would have died, no matter what doctors would have done. She saved my life, became my family.’ She watched Sadie open her eyes, look at her. ‘It takes a long time to come back from the moment you were destined to die. It took a year for my neck to heal – nothing works as fast when you’re half dead.’

Sadie’s gaze flickered over Maggie, who was frozen, one hand holding a bloodstained swab. ‘Why? Why would you do that to someone you don’t even know?’

‘Charley.’ Maggie choked on the word. ‘My daughter, Charley. She was only two, she was dying. Acute myeloblastic leukaemia.’ She started dabbing at dried blood on Jack’s forehead. ‘It was her last chance.’