Witchborn Page 14

  The clouds above them had turned dark and velvety, and it was difficult to see where they were going. The road followed the river, turning sharply south. The houses began to thin out, but up ahead Alyce could see a huge building looming over the water, its monumental towers more sensed than seen in the darkness. There was something threatening about it.

  The building grew larger, its elaborate, skeletal stonework emerging from the gloom in greater and greater detail, until they found themselves at the entrance of a broad promenade, with a great complex of halls and towers and arches on their left-hand side. From the other side of the road drifted the hot musk of straw and horse manure, which Alyce assumed was coming from a block of stables.

  Up ahead, the road met a gatehouse, guarded by two wardens with halberds. Solomon stopped.

  ‘Well, here we are.’ He grinned.

  Alyce looked at him blankly. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘The Palace of Whitehall.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because this is where I live.’

  She shook her head dumbly. ‘Solomon, I’m not in the mood . . .’

  Solomon laughed. ‘Wait here. You can hide in the stables. It’ll be warm and nobody will see you. I’ll return with some clothes for you in a moment.’

  Alyce watched, open-mouthed, as he disappeared through the gate and loped across the courtyard as confidently as if he owned the place.

  Suddenly she felt very exposed and very alone, standing in the deserted road, her dress still damp and clinging to her limbs. Strains of music and raucous laughter drifted over the palace walls, but they didn’t sound at all inviting to her ears. She crept into the shadows alongside the stable wall, and found an open doorway to the deeper blackness within.

  The snort and thud of the horses in their stalls was something Alyce found reassuring. Their long faces and sparkling black eyes regarded her calmly and without judgement as she crawled into the corner and curled up in the old, dirty straw, rubbing her feet.

  While she waited, she started to convince herself again that this was all part of an elaborate joke that Solomon had conceived. Or perhaps worse than a joke. A trap. Perhaps he had gone to fetch the palace guards. Or Doctor Dee. Or the Queen herself. Or at least one of the queens. She was soon feverish with worry.

  But return he did, and alone, after all. She heard him going from stable to stable whispering her name, and she quietly crept from her hiding place. He saw her and waved with the torch he was carrying, which made the horses a little skittish. Alyce came out into the light. Under the other arm he was holding a bundle of clothes.

  ‘Come around the back so you can see what you’re putting on,’ he said. ‘They should fit you.’ She saw him bite his lip.

  They went around the side of the stable block, out of sight, where a stony path led from the road to a broad expanse of parkland.

  ‘Whose clothes are these?’ asked Alyce.

  Solomon let them drop to the ground, and held up a pair of coarse woollen breeches. ‘Mine.’

  Alyce folded her arms. ‘I am not wearing those.’ She looked at the pile on the floor. ‘A leather jerkin?’

  ‘You’ll have to. If you’re going to stay in the palace, you’ll have to join our company. And our company, if you hadn’t noticed, is called Sussex’s Men.’

  ‘You want me to be a boy?’

  ‘And besides,’ he continued, ignoring her protests, ‘if there are people looking for you, a disguise is no bad thing.’

  Alyce puffed indignantly through her nose.

  ‘What do you say?’ said Solomon, trying to sound upbeat. ‘How would you like to be an Alex instead of an Alyce?’

  Alyce was doing her third lap of Solomon’s bedchamber, running her fingers over a silver candelabra in front of a crackling fireplace. She had thrown off his giant, buckled shoes, and her feet were finally beginning to thaw, but his breeches were impossibly itchy. Even the smock she had worn in Bedlam was more comfortable than these instruments of torture.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  Solomon frowned. ‘I did tell you.’ Now they were alone together with the door closed, he was starting to behave a little awkwardly. He stood in the centre of the room, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

  ‘You said you were performing at the palace, not living here.’

  ‘It’s the same thing. All of the company have their lodgings here. Our patron is the Earl of Sussex; he has to accommodate us as part of our deal. We have two more weeks here, and then we have to leave London to visit other towns. We’ll be playing at the Theatre on Bishopsgate Street next. The Queen wants us around here at least until February, though.’

  Alyce put down the candelabra and stared at Solomon.

  ‘The Queen?’ she said. ‘You mean Queen Elizabeth?’

  Solomon laughed. ‘That’s the one. Is there another Queen of England I should be aware of?’

  Sort of, Alyce thought to herself. She went back to looking at the tapestry that hung on the wall opposite Solomon’s bed, preoccupied now. Stupidly, she felt like she was some sort of traitor – just hours beforehand she had been talking face to face with the woman who was planning to remove Elizabeth from the throne, and with Doctor Dee, the man who had betrayed Elizabeth in the first place.

  ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘Elizabeth? I don’t know. I don’t really see her. I certainly don’t get to talk to her.’

  ‘Is she . . . nice?’

  He shrugged. ‘Think it depends on her mood. I don’t think she’s disposed towards being merciful at the moment, if that’s what you mean.’

  Alyce sighed. ‘Solly, I need to tell you about what happened today. I’m getting the feeling that . . . Ow!’ She stubbed her toe on his chamber pot – empty, she was relieved to see – and looked up at him and raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Don’t worry, I can use the servants’ latrines while you’re here. You’ll just have to tell me . . . when . . .’

  ‘Right.’

  There was an uncomfortable pause.

  ‘You were saying.’

  ‘I was saying: I’m getting the feeling that everything is more complicated than we first thought. That I’m part of something much bigger than me. Than us.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  Alyce went and sat on the bed, and looked at her fingers. ‘Remember back at The Swan, that time when you said Queen Elizabeth was in a bad mood all the time? Because of Mary Stuart?’

  ‘Yes . . .’ Solomon’s face had stiffened, as though he were preparing himself for some very bad news.

  ‘Well. I think she has every reason to be angry.’

  Solomon came and sat next to her, and she told him of Vitali, and The Hangman, and her run-in with Doctor Dee and Mary, Queen of Scots. She stopped short of speaking about the woman in the cage, but it was becoming impossible to avoid.

  While she spoke, Solomon’s brow became so knotted Alyce was worried it might never untie itself.

  ‘But why would your mother send you to Doctor Dee in the first place?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you think the letter said?’

  ‘I don’t know that either.’

  ‘Do you think Elizabeth has any idea that Mary is coming to London? Is plotting to overthrow her?’

  ‘I don’t know, Solomon.’

  He got up and paced around the room. ‘I mean . . . this is unbelievable. It’s treason. And Mary is . . .’

  ‘A witch.’

  ‘I heard she was charming to her gaolers, but I didn’t think she was literally casting spells on them.’

  ‘What I still don’t understand,’ said Alyce, ‘is why me, in particular? Why would she be so desperate to get my support? Surely there are plenty of others like me out there.’

  Solomon scratched his chin. ‘From where I’m standing, the why doesn’t seem so important right now. The most pressing thing, Alyce, is that you, for whatever reason, are now at the centre of a conspiracy that will
throw the whole country into chaos. The whole world, even.’

  ‘We,’ she corrected. ‘We are at the centre of it.’

  Solomon gulped.

  ‘Bet you wish you’d stayed well away now, don’t you?’ said Alyce. ‘You should have stuck with your plan of abandoning me.’ She laced the comment with a bitterness she didn’t really feel, or at least had stopped feeling on the walk to the palace.

  ‘I didn’t abandon you. I just needed time to think about things, after what happened at The Swan.’

  ‘Think? About what?’

  ‘About you. About my mother. I’ve done everything I can to put her out of my mind since she disappeared, but being around you, seeing what you did . . . I can’t just pretend she didn’t exist.’

  Now? Alyce thought. Shall I tell him now? The words had started leaving her lips before she’d actually made up her mind.

  ‘Solomon, there’s something else,’ she said. ‘I’m not sure you want to hear it. But I think you should.’

  His face went strangely blank as he waited for her to go on.

  ‘I saw her. I think it was her.’ She paused. ‘I know it was her.’

  ‘Her?’

  ‘She was in Bedlam all along, Solly. I didn’t know who she was at the time. But then I saw her again, properly, at Doctor Dee’s house. They’d captured her. Imprisoned her. She was the one who helped me escape.’

  Only the flicker of one eyelid showed Alyce that Solomon had understood the truth of what she was saying.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘You two look very alike.’

  ‘People always said that. They said I had none of my father in me at all. Did she say anything? Did she mention me?’

  ‘Nothing about you. She spoke against Mary. Said she could foresee what would happen if she became Queen.’

  ‘Imprisoned,’ he said flatly. ‘How was she?’

  ‘Honestly?’

  He nodded.

  Alyce groped for the words. They all seemed so callous, however she put it. ‘She was . . . a ruin. Wild. Distracted. I’m not sure . . . I don’t think she would even know you if she saw you.’

  ‘And you left her there?’

  The flush of guilt spread from her navel to her face. ‘I couldn’t have helped her. There was no breath left in her when she finished speaking.’

  ‘She was dead.’ It was a statement rather than a question.

  ‘I’m sorry, Solomon.’

  ‘No need to be. This doesn’t change anything, does it? At least I know what happened to her.’ He sat up unnaturally straight. Alyce could see he was hurting, and trying very hard to pretend he wasn’t.

  ‘Maybe,’ she suggested, ‘we could go back for her . . .’

  ‘What good would that do?’ he said. ‘I wonder why they took her from Bedlam. She must have done something wrong.’

  ‘I don’t know. They had little love for each other, she and Mary. Perhaps she’d done something to anger her.’

  They both stared into the fireplace in silence for a minute or two. When Alyce tried to put a reassuring hand on Solomon’s arm, he suddenly stood up and went to the foot of his bed, where there was a large, iron-bound chest, and began fiddling with the clasps.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Alyce asked. Fatigue was starting to claim every inch of her now.

  The lid of the chest groaned as he opened it. He threw a couple of armfuls of clothes on to the floor, and then, one by one, began to produce a collection of books, their leather bindings cracked and ancient. He piled them into a wobbling tower at Alyce’s feet.

  ‘They’re hers,’ he said. ‘I found them locked in one of her cupboards, and I took them with me when I left home.’

  She picked up three tomes from the top of the pile and read their spines:De Operatione Daemonum, De Potestate Hieroglyphica, and one simply called Arcana.

  ‘Maybe you can understand them better than I can? We could read them together, I thought. Teach each other. Or something like that.’ Again, he unstraightened and straightened his ruff. ‘That’s why I came back to see you at The Swan. Eventually. She never taught me very much, my mother. Kept things to herself a bit more than yours, sounds like. Maybe because I’m a boy, I don’t know. But I want to learn. I feel like I owe it to her, more than ever now.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Witchcraft wasn’t something she did. It was who she was. So if I can learn from these, it’ll be like I’m keeping her alive in some way.’

  Looking over the covers, all Alyce could think of were the hundreds and hundreds of books in Doctor Dee’s study. Conversely, her mother had owned very few – a handful of storybooks and compendiums of flora and fauna, which she had used to teach Alyce everything she knew.

  These books looked severe, forbidding.

  ‘You say your mother kept these locked away?’

  ‘Yes. To stop my father finding them.’

  Alyce wasn’t sure that was the whole story. She felt like she was fumbling towards some sort of conclusion, but she was too tired to get there. Everything had taken on a fuzzy, detached quality. Even the business with Queen Mary now seemed distant and unimportant.

  ‘Can we read them tomorrow?’ she said. ‘I can barely keep my eyes open.’

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry. You must be tired after the day you’ve had.’

  ‘Well, yours hasn’t been much better. I’m sorry too. About your mother. I wish I wasn’t the one to tell you.’

  ‘Look at us,’ said Solomon, smiling sadly. ‘What a wretched pair of orphans we are. I’ve performed plays about people like me and you. If this were a comedy, our story would only last for five acts, and we’d endure all sorts of hardship and confusion, but then at the end of it we would discover that our parents were still alive all along, that we were separated from them at birth, and everything would work out happily. But this isn’t a story, is it?’

  ‘No,’ said Alyce. ‘I’m starting to realize that too. In my mother’s books, the clever witch always got the better of her enemies. Overcame the mischievous spirit, banished the evil demon, returned order to the world. But it’s more complicated than that.’

  Solomon started gathering the books up again and stacking them on the writing desk. Alyce yawned with her whole body, stretched and curled up on the bed. Already the sounds of Solomon talking and pattering around the chamber seemed distant and muffled. Her leaden eyelids closed once, twice. On the third time, just as she was about to fall asleep, she saw something in Solomon’s hands that made her suddenly rigid and alert. Two vague memories, one from Bedlam, one from Doctor Dee’s house, connected with each other, and as she stared at the volume he was carrying, all she could hear was the voice of his doomed mother:

  Black book. Black book. Black book.

  When she woke the following morning, Alyce was certain that the previous day had been one long, vivid, exhausting dream. As the grey light of dawn crept over her face, she knew that when she opened her eyes she would see the interior of her tiny garret in The Swan, Solomon would still be an estranged memory, and in a few moments Mrs Thomson would come thundering in and shout at her for spending too long in bed.

  There was a snuffle from behind her. She rolled over, squinted, and saw Solomon curled up around the hearth like a dog, breathing heavily. So he hadn’t thought to share the bed with her. Quite the gentleman. She smiled and rolled back to the wall again.

  Suddenly her legs prickled, and she remembered she was still wearing the breeches and hose Solomon had given her. The more she scratched and wriggled under the blanket, the more her skin felt like it was on fire, until she leapt out of bed, cursing.

  ‘How do you wear these things?’

  Solomon woke up with a jolt and looked around, confused.

  ‘Hmmm?’ He rubbed his eyes and propped himself up on his elbows. ‘Oh, sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘They’re not very comfortable, are they. But they’re smaller than my other clothes, so they’re a better fit.’

  Alyce stuck a thumb down her waistband and pulled it away f
rom her hips. There was at least two inches of room for her to fill.

  ‘A better fit?’

  Solomon made a strange grunting noise that sounded vaguely sympathetic, and then closed his eyes again, trying to snatch the last vestiges of his night’s sleep.

  ‘Can’t I be Alyce while I’m in here,’ she said, ‘and Alex when I’m walking around the palace?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Solomon, rocking slowly forward on to his haunches, and then getting to his feet. ‘Although, I think, for the time being, you shouldn’t just go wandering around Whitehall. Remember, the guards we met last night might think you’re a member of Sussex’s Men, but Sussex’s Men themselves don’t know anything about you. I’m going to talk to them today, see if you can join the company. Although the Earl is Lord Chamberlain now, I don’t know how easy it will be to get his consent . . .’

  So I’m a prisoner again. Wonderful.

  ‘Very well,’ she said, trying hard to sound bright about it.

  ‘It’s not for long,’ Solomon tried to reassure her. ‘And like I said, it’s probably not a bad thing for Alyce to stay out of sight. You don’t want to bump into Doctor Dee.’

  She hadn’t thought of that. ‘Does he come to the palace?’

  ‘All the time. I told you, he’s the person Elizabeth trusts most in the world.’

  Alyce gave a hollow laugh. ‘Well, she made a bad choice there. Do you think—’

  ‘No. Don’t say it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I knew it. I knew you’d suggest this. We are not going to go to Queen Elizabeth and tell her about the plot. You’re already in way over your head.’

  ‘But maybe she’ll reward us! And she’ll put Doctor Dee in prison, and then we can get the letter back and make him answer all our questions.’

  ‘The very fact that Mary tried to convince you to join her shows that you have something in common with her. I don’t think Elizabeth is a huge fan of any witches. She’ll probably put you in prison too. Or worse.’

  ‘But she employed Doctor Dee. He’s sort of a witch.’