Witchfall Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PART ONE Hampton Court

  ONE Scrying

  TWO The Inquisition

  THREE The Conjuror’s Cell

  FOUR Dead Queen

  FIVE Summons

  SIX Instruments of Torture

  SEVEN Release

  EIGHT Into the Woods

  NINE A Vile Thing

  PART TWO Hatfield House

  TEN Rain, Lutes and Pigs

  ELEVEN The Conjuror’s Apprentice

  TWELVE Dark of the Moon

  THIRTEEN Caput Draconis

  FOURTEEN Dead King

  FIFTEEN Burning

  SIXTEEN Genius Loci

  SEVENTEEN Dead Witch

  EIGHTEEN Dismissed

  NINETEEN Prisoner

  TWENTY The Tower

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Victoria Lamb

  Copyright

  About the Book

  London, 1555. The court of Mary Tudor is terrorized by the Spanish Inquisition, and life is safe for no one. But Meg Lytton has more reason to fear than most – for Meg is a witch, and the discovery of her craft would mean certain death. Even more perilous, Meg is secretly betrothed to the young priest Alejandro de Castillo; a relationship which they must hide at all costs.

  In service to the Queen’s sister, Princess Elizabeth, Meg attempts to foretell her mistress’s future. But when terrible dreams begin to haunt her, Meg fears she has released a dark spirit into the world, intent on harming everyone around her.

  The darkly magical and passionate sequel to Witchstruck

  Winner of the Romantic Novelist Association YA Novel of the Year

  For my father, Richard Holland

  Howl, howl, howl, howl! O, you are men of stones.

  Had I your tongues and eyes, I’d use them so

  That heaven’s vault should crack. She’s gone for ever.

  I know when one is dead, and when one lives.

  She’s dead as earth.

  William Shakespeare: King Lear, Act V, Scene iii

  Who owns the whole rainy, stony earth? Death.

  Ted Hughes: Examination at the Womb-Door

  PART ONE

  Hampton Court

  Spring 1555

  ONE

  Scrying

  I had been here before in a dream. I was standing in a high place, buffeted by winds and wrapped in a reddish mist that stretched into cloud a few yards ahead. My loose hair whipped about my face, longer than it was now. The wide skirt of my gown billowed around my ankles, flapping like a ship’s sail. Power prickled at my fingertips, tingling with familiar heat. Yet I was not permitted to use magick. Not in this place. My senses strained for clues as to my whereabouts, catching strange sounds, a rushing noise like wings.

  Sensing movement above my head, I glanced up. A hawk came soaring out of the sunset. It screamed impatiently, tilting its barred body as though hunting for a place to land.

  When I looked down again, Marcus Dent was standing in front of me, clothed all in black.

  ‘You always knew it would come to this, Meg Lytton.’ His words echoed in my mind. ‘Didn’t you?’

  I stared at him, too horrified to speak.

  I had to get away from him, yet seemed unable to move. My arms hung stiffly by my side, my feet rooted as though tied to a stake.

  ‘You bested me with your girl’s magick last time we met. But now you will find I have the advantage.’

  The witchfinder showed me what was in his hands: a broad-headed axe, shiny and cruel, its thick shaft wrapped thrice about with holly.

  ‘No,’ I managed hoarsely.

  Marcus Dent watched as I struggled to break free from whatever supernatural hold he had asserted over me. His blue eyes gleamed with malicious amusement.

  ‘Why waste your last moments on this tiresome show of resistance? Accept your fate and kneel for the axe. You have tried before to escape me – and might have succeeded with a little more talent. But you are a mere girl. It is your destiny to die at my hands. You have neither the strength nor the knowledge to fight me. I will always be stronger than you, and your blood spilt in this place today will prove it.’ With the axe, he pointed to the stone between us. ‘Now, down on your knees!’

  Sweat broke out on my forehead as I battled to break free of Marcus Dent’s hold over me. How had the witchfinder managed this feat, binding me so tight to this time and place that I could not escape?

  ‘I will not kneel to you, Dent. I refuse!’

  ‘Meg,’ he said deeply, leaning closer. The axe blade flashed in my eyes, dazzling me. His voice grew urgent. ‘Meg! Meg!’

  Then a hand came down on my shoulder and I turned, looking up into Alejandro de Castillo’s concerned face.

  The young Spanish novice was balancing a tallow stump on his palm, its flickering flame reflected in his eyes. As though I had never seen him before, I drank in the sight of my secret betrothed: strong cheekbones, dark hair swept back from his forehead, a burning intensity about him – and yet a steadiness too, like a rock set in the midst of a wild torrent.

  ‘Meg, it is time to go.’

  I closed my eyes, dazed and confused as reality flooded back. I was no longer standing in that high place, about to have my head chopped off by the witchfinder Marcus Dent. Instead, I was kneeling on the dirt floor in a tiny disused storage room adjacent to the kitchens of Hampton Court Palace.

  My heart was juddering, my palms clammy. It was hard not to let my frustration show as I stumbled over my words. ‘I must keep scrying . . . just another few minutes.’

  ‘The kitchen servants are assembling to carry the dishes into the Great Hall. Your absence will be noted if you are not at the princess’s side when the banquet begins.’

  ‘But I must finish the vision! I must see how it ends.’

  Alejandro pointed to the ground. The copper scrying bowl had been tipped over, the wine almost drained away into the dirt. ‘Forgive me, I had no choice. It was the only way to wake you.’

  ‘You had no right to interfere, Alejandro. What I see in these visions is important.’

  Alejandro helped me to my feet, brushing the dirt from my skirts. ‘Mi querida,’ he murmured, his Spanish accent pronounced, ‘your fury is quite charming. As is the flash in your eyes when you say “Alejandro” in your very English voice. Have I ever told you that?’

  ‘The Lady Elizabeth has ordered me to keep scrying and consulting my books of magick, looking for any threat that may lie ahead for her,’ I countered, ignoring his question as deliberately provocative. He put his arms about me, and it was hard to push him away. ‘Be serious, please, just for a moment.’

  ‘I am always serious with you. I know you serve la princesa well, but might I suggest you find somewhere less dangerous to practise your scrying?’ His slow, warm smile made my heart flip over. ‘Now that I have found the woman of my dreams, I would hate to lose her to the Inquisition.’

  The woman of his dreams? I was hardly that. Not only was I that most forbidden of creatures, a witch, but I was also in the pay of the Lady Elizabeth, whose dislike for the Catholic faith was widely whispered at court. Yet there was no denying the heat between myself and Alejandro. That passion was what had led him to offer me marriage, and although I felt the same about him, I had not yet been able to give him a final answer. Life would not be easy for such an ill-matched pair, after all.

  I turned away, tucking the copper scrying bowl away out of sight under a dusty shelf, and stoppering the wine bottle I had used to fill it before carefully hiding that too. They would be needed next time I came here to scry in silence and solitud
e.

  ‘I am safe enough from the Inquisition,’ I insisted, though the black-robed priests who prowled the court looking for heretics made me very nervous indeed. I halted before him and smiled up into his eyes. ‘They do not even know of my existence. Give me your patience a little while longer.’

  Frustration flickered in his face, though he did not refuse. Instead, he put out a hand and tucked a loose strand of hair back under my courtly hood. ‘You are beautiful, Meg, but vulnerable too. Do you have any idea of the horrors in store for you if these activities should be discovered?’

  How could he ask that? Alejandro had been present at the horrible execution of my aunt, burned at the stake as a witch and a heretic. He must know that my last glimpse of Aunt Jane, screaming in agony as she was consumed by smoke and flame, had been scorched into my mind’s eye for ever.

  ‘I shall be more careful in future,’ I promised him.

  ‘But you will not stop.’ It was a statement, not a question.

  ‘I cannot,’ I whispered.

  ‘Not even for my sake?’ He held up the candle to see my face better. ‘Not even though I am your betrothed and ask it of you?’

  Beyond the closed door, I could hear clattering and shouts from the vast roaring kitchens as hundreds of servants bustled about, preparing a feast fit for the royal court.

  I placed a hand on his chest, feeling the thud of his heart beneath my fingers. ‘I was born into this path. I cannot be other than a witch, any more than you could turn away from your training in the priesthood. Please do not ask me to change who I am, Alejandro.’

  He looked deep into my eyes, then nodded slowly. ‘So be it.’

  For a long moment we gazed at each other without speaking. It was the first time in weeks we had managed to be alone together, and heat bloomed in my face at the sheer intensity of his look. Was this how love always felt, this exquisite tenderness, as though my emotions had been scraped raw and could not bear to be touched? I wanted so badly to speak, to admit that my love for him was as strong as ever, despite the obstacles that fate had thrown between us. Yet I did not wish to break this love-spell with the clumsiness of speech. And what if he did not feel the same way?

  Alejandro bent his head and touched his lips to mine.

  My arms clasped about his neck, and I kissed him back, temporarily pushing all my fears to one side as I let my heart rule my head.

  We swayed together, tangled up in each other like strands of wild honeysuckle, then his arm came round my waist, pulling me even closer. Still I did not resist, lost to reason, wanting the moment to last for ever.

  He made a strangled noise under his breath, and the heat of his kiss increased. Then suddenly he took an abrupt step backwards, holding the candle in a less than steady hand. ‘Meg, we cannot . . .’

  My cheeks were on fire. I knew he was right. But that did not make the trembling ache inside me any less of a torment.

  ‘Yes . . . I mean, no. We should . . . go,’ I managed unevenly, but could not resist brushing his cheek with my fingertips.

  ‘That would be wise,’ Alejandro agreed with a crooked smile, ‘before I lose my head.’

  It was only a joke. But I remembered Marcus Dent with his axe, and shuddered.

  After the witchfinder had put me through a sickening trial by water – bound and thrown into a pool, to drown if innocent, to be hanged if I survived – my banishing spell had tossed him into the void. I had thought him gone for ever. Yet now Marcus Dent was appearing in my visions, seemingly unharmed by his ordeal. What could it mean?

  Alejandro opened the door and bowed, allowing me to go through before him.

  ‘Meg, the Lady Elizabeth awaits you,’ he reminded me softly when I hesitated.

  I nodded and squeezed past him in the dark narrow space. These were dangerous times at court, and I needed to focus on survival, not on the prickling heat I felt whenever I looked at Alejandro.

  I had heard nothing of Marcus Dent since the Lady Elizabeth had been summoned back to court earlier that spring. Now summer was approaching fast, and every day I feared Dent’s arrival. I did not know where he had vanished to after Woodstock, nor how long my spell to silence him might last.

  It was not a comfortable thought that my vision could be a premonition of my death. If Marcus Dent had indeed returned from some otherworldly void, and was perhaps free to accuse me of witchcraft once more, I would have no chance against him. The word of a witchfinder must outweigh the word of a suspected witch every time.

  I rejoined the Lady Elizabeth in the Great Hall, sidling in behind her chair on the high dais and hoping that no one had noticed my absence. I had only slipped away for half an hour during the dancing, after all, and with the Queen still keeping stubbornly to her apartments, these royal banquets never dragged on much beyond nightfall anyway.

  Blanche Parry shot me an accusing look but said nothing, pursing her lips and folding both arms across her ample chest as I begged a passing servant for a cup of ale. The princess’s lady-in-waiting knew better than to draw attention to my absence when the King might overhear and punish our mistress for it instead.

  ‘Forgive me,’ I whispered to Blanche. ‘I forgot the time.’

  Mistress Parry’s gaze flicked across the Great Hall to where Alejandro had joined the black-robed priests at the back wall, his cowl drawn forward to hide his face.

  ‘Indeed,’ she said drily. ‘At your prayers again, were you? They’ll make you a nun soon, you are so keen on your devotions.’

  I ignored her jibe, turning to watch the princess. Since Queen Mary had summoned her to court from imprisonment at Woodstock Palace, the Lady Elizabeth had become a favourite with the courtiers. Some said too much of a favourite, and that the Queen would send her sister away again once the royal baby had been born.

  Deep in conversation with His Majesty, the Lady Elizabeth was seated on the left hand of the King, simply dressed in a plain black gown with a net of tiny pearls in her hair. Elizabeth laughed at all King Philip’s jests and smiled in a flattering way, her face flushed and animated.

  I spoke little Spanish, so could not follow what the princess and King Philip were saying to each other. But courtiers throughout the Great Hall were openly staring at the couple, their heads so close together – the Queen’s dark-haired Spanish husband and her slim-waisted sister. Indeed, it could not be denied that the princess’s youth and shining reddish-gold hair were in contrast to Queen Mary’s dour looks.

  Not that the court had seen much of Queen Mary in recent months. She still kept to her state apartments, insisting that her baby was late. But King Philip showed so little interest that few still believed their Queen to be with child. Instead, the whispers spoke of a sickly Queen and a young princess who might well be married to the grieving Philip before the year was out.

  The dishes were brought out in a long procession that passed in front of the high dais for the King’s approval. He applauded them politely, then the cloth-covered board was crowded with platters and wine cups, with honey-glazed pork flesh and a vast roast swan cut open at table that released half a dozen tiny wrens flapping their wings in panic as they flew upwards, seeking the rafters. The whole court exclaimed in delight and clapped vigorously when the spit-cook was brought forward, red-faced and still in his leather apron, to receive the King’s compliments.

  At one point between courses, the Lady Elizabeth turned to me with greasy fingers. ‘Meg?’

  Hurriedly, I passed her ladyship a bowl of lemon-scented water and a clean white napkin, freshly starched and folded.

  Still listening to His Majesty, Elizabeth dipped her long white fingers in the lemon-scented water without even glancing at me. She dried each finger meticulously, draped the napkin over her shoulder to protect her costly gown, then turned back to the King with an apologetic smile.

  A sudden shout at the back of the hall stilled the revellers. A courtier, his face pale with terror, was being dragged from the hall by two of the black-robed priests of the In
quisition. His voice could be heard even after he had been removed, raised in high-pitched protest of his innocence. The Spanish priests paid no heed, however, their cowls hiding their faces as they took him away. Those priests who had remained walked among the courtiers with watchful eyes, as though hoping to catch another ‘heretic’ by his guilty expression.

  Blanche shivered and crossed herself. ‘Poor soul,’ she muttered, but was careful not to speak too loudly, in case she was next.

  I saw Alejandro frown at me from across the room, and lowered my gaze with difficulty. He was right. Even to stare could be deemed a sign of guilt or complicity. I wondered how long the Spanish Inquisition would stay at court, their black-robed presence more sinister and alarming with every day that passed. Such arrests had become a common occurrence in recent weeks, as the King and Queen ordered a purge of anti-Catholic feeling at court. Yet none of us dared ask why some courtiers were taken for questioning and not others, nor why a few never came back from the terrifying cells of the Inquisitors.

  After the banquet had finished, we were allowed to grab a few mouthfuls of manchet bread and roast meat from the sideboard while the top tables were being pushed back for more dancing. Torches were trimmed and brought forward, for the summer evening was already darkening to dusk in the high windows. The musicians struck up to the swift beat of the tabor, the hautboys carrying the lively tune, and soon my foot was tapping. The Lady Elizabeth began the dancing with a swift-moving galliard, supported in her leaps by the handsome Spanish King, whose hold on her waist seemed rather too intimate for a married man.

  ‘Do you see that?’ Blanche nudged me as she watched the royal couple dancing and leaping together. She whispered in my ear, ‘They’re saying King Philip married the wrong sister.’

  With so many courtiers crowded about us this was dangerous talk, even if it was no more than the truth. I silenced Blanche Parry with a warning frown. ‘He married our Queen,’ I replied warily, ‘and will soon be father to a Tudor heir, God willing.’