The Secrets of Life and Death (12 page)

‘Maggie is a healer.’ Jack watched the tension drain from the girl’s body. ‘But she couldn’t save her own baby.’

‘I was told of the spell,’ Maggie said. ‘A ritual my grandmother knew about. I needed to try it. I would have tried anything.’

Sadie snorted as if in disbelief, but her face looked uncertain. ‘Magic spells.’

Maggie peeled the backing off a dressing. ‘It needed blood from someone who had died, but not died.’ She carefully applied the dressing to Jack’s hairline. ‘I knew John Dee had written a book about necromancy, my grandmother left me some old papers of his. She studied his books; my family have a long tradition of folk medicine and healing. I started researching her diaries, and the papers and medals, and found these symbols.’ She rounded up the detritus of the first aid. ‘I knew a seer; Roisin was the midwife who had delivered Charley. I asked her to find someone destined to die that we could try to save. Jack was the third one we found.’

‘Third?’ Sadie looked at Jack. ‘What happened to the other two?’

Jack winced at the gentle pulling on her scalp. ‘Ask Maggie.’

Maggie drew a deep breath beside Jack. ‘They died, despite my efforts. They couldn’t be saved. It was awful.’

Jack closed her eyes for a moment. ‘But I survived and then, because of me, Charley made it. Not just Charley … my blood has saved a dozen people.’ She glanced at Sadie.

Sadie pressed one hand to her chest, over her heart. She looked back, eyes wide.

Jack dabbed at her forehead with a cloth as disinfectant trickled into an eyebrow. ‘You can feel your heart wavering, can’t you? You can feel the cold coming. That’s death, actual death.’ Jack let the words flow over Sadie, watched their meaning sink in. ‘That’s what Dee’s symbols do, keep death at bay.’

‘Who is this … Dee?’

Jack pulled her sleeves over her cold fingers. ‘Dee was an Elizabethan magician, looking for the secrets of life and death. He’s supposed to have raised the dead several times. He wrote his research down, and people have been using it to keep borrowed timers like you and me alive ever since.’

Sadie huddled into her blanket. ‘So this is it, I’m stuck like this?’

Jack nodded. ‘For the moment. As time goes on, you will get better, be able to manage away from the circle for longer.’

‘So I’ll be stronger?’ The appeal was in the voice of a child. ‘Then you’ll let me go home?’

Jack shook her head. ‘You will always be dependent on the magic.’ She sighed, and let her head fall back on the cushions. ‘You can never go home.’

Jack woke up, finding aches the moment she moved. She dressed slowly, and followed the smell of food downstairs. Maggie must have gone before breakfast, but had left a casserole in the range. Sadie was still asleep in the priest hole, but Jack unlocked the chain anyway and replaced the bucket.

She went back to the kitchen, stirred the stew and put it back in the top oven. The radio in the kitchen played something classical, it suited the old house. She hardly noticed the break for the news as she turned baked potatoes over on the bottom shelf.

‘… and local news. The mother of missing teenager Sadie Williams has appealed on national television for local police forces to consider all missing children abducted rather than runaways. Fourteen-year-old Sadie disappeared one week ago—’

Jack switched the radio off.
Shit. No one even noticed Carla; they just wrote her off as a runaway
. Jack looked through the open door in the panelling to find Sadie sitting up in bed, her face tense.

‘I heard that. The police are looking for me.’ Sadie climbed out of bed and clung to the wall.

‘I know.’

Sadie climbed the steps, wobbling at the top between the sigilled stones in the priest hole and the edge of the living-room circle. Before she could throw up, Jack half pulled, half lifted her into the room, and onto the sofa.

‘If they do find me, they’ll arrest you. For kidnapping.’ Sadie pushed Jack away, and pulled the folded throw over herself. The dog greeted her with a wag.

Jack shrugged. ‘Then they would try to take you to hospital. You would die before you reached the ambulance.’ Jack took a deep breath, and locked the chain onto the ring in the floor. ‘I didn’t take it as well as you. I cried and screamed a lot.’

Sadie shifted her weight and turned her bright blue eyes on Jack. Her thin fingers clutched the edge of the blanket. ‘I miss my mum.’

‘I know.’ Silence built up in unseen layers in the room. The clock on the mantelpiece, left from the days when the cottage belonged to Maggie’s mother, ticked off the seconds.
I still miss my mum.
‘What about your dad?’

Sadie shrugged one shoulder. ‘It’s just me and Mum.’ She ran her hands over Ches’s head. ‘So, you really believe in this … this magic stuff?’

Jack could almost see the thoughts racing in Sadie’s mind, as expressions chased across her features. Jack knelt in front of the wood burner that sat, surrounded by logs, in the inglenook fireplace. She opened the door and threw on more fuel. Sparks shot towards the flue before yellow flames started curling around the bark.

‘I don’t know what I believe. I tested it, I challenged it – and fought Maggie. But I understand now, the symbols keep me well and alive. I just don’t know how they work.’

Jack jumped when someone rapped on the kitchen door. The dog started whining and trotted to the frosted glass panel. Jack turned back to Sadie.

‘It’s Maggie’s daughter, you’ll like her. Charley! Come in, don’t mind the dog.’

Charley shouted through the glass. ‘I would come in, if he wasn’t leaning on the bloody door!’

Jack walked into the kitchen and pulled Ches away.

Charley dropped her coat onto the rocking chair, and set a box on the table.

‘Shit, it’s cold out. Sunny, but freezing. Oh … ouch, your head’s a mess. Mum said you’ve been in the wars.’ Jack tolerated a quick hug, then Charley leaned back to look at the dressing on Jack’s hairline. ‘The police are doing house-to-house enquiries in the village.’ She bent, threw her arms around the dog, and hugged him. ‘Stupid beast!’

Jack glanced over her shoulder and lowered her voice. ‘It’s all over the radio. They are calling it an abduction.’ The girl was huddled on the sofa, apparently oblivious.

‘I know. It’s Sadie’s mother, she’s on the telly every night,’ Charley whispered.

Jack put the kettle on as Charley walked away, and heard the exchange of voices. Maybe Sadie would talk to someone nearer her own age. Charley was twenty-two, red hair straggling down her back, and clad in her own eclectic, charity-shop style. Today she was wearing a pair of leggings, a leather jacket and a tulle skirt. And was the picture of health.

Charley put her head around the door. ‘Can we have some of that hot chocolate you make? You know, with the real chocolate and the whippy cream on top?’

Jack smiled at her. ‘What are you, twelve?’

Charley laughed. ‘Thanks, Grandma.’

‘I’m nine years older than you. Do you want it, or not?’ Jack’s pretended outrage made Charley laugh, and Jack thought she could hear a weak snort of laughter from Sadie as well.

She made three mugs of frothy hot chocolate, topped with a Flake as well as cream. The girl could use the calories, assuming she kept it down. She carried them in on a tray.

‘… and she’s got this amazing tattoo. So she can go out, away from the house. The car’s got all these charms as well.’ Charley’s voice was animated. ‘When you get better you’ll have a lot more freedom.’

Sadie sat up when Jack came in, refolded her arms, and scowled.

‘Hot chocolate.’ Jack offered it, and for a moment she wondered whether Sadie would take it. Then one thin hand reached out, and retreated with the cup. She watched Charley slurp hers before she bent her head for a small sip.

‘She won’t help me escape,’ Sadie said, while Charley was drinking.

‘Charley understands borrowed time,’ Jack replied. ‘She knows what would happen to you if she did.’

The dog padded over to Jack, who was perched on the arm of the other sofa, and leaned against her, resting his head on her knee. Jack couldn’t resist his pleading eyes. She dipped her finger in the cream, and smeared it on his nose. ‘It’s bad for you, you silly animal.’

Sadie waved a hand. ‘She – Charley – says you have a tattoo. So you can go outside.’

Jack put the mug on the bookcase and rolled up her sweater and T-shirt a few inches, turning her back on the girl. She assumed from the silence that they were both impressed by the circle of sigils, inscribed in four colours.

‘There’s more up here.’ Holding her hair aside, she showed them the symbols tracing up her neck onto her scalp. ‘They shaved part of my head to do it.’

‘And that means you can go out of the circle?’ said Sadie. ‘Did it hurt?’

Jack straightened her clothes and turned back to Sadie.

‘It was painful, and they had to go over it several times. But it does mean I can go anywhere I want, for a few hours anyway.’ She pulled down the neck of her shirt to show the beginning of the tattoo on her chest. ‘The one on the front is smaller.’

Sadie leaned forward, cupping the hot drink as if she was still cold. ‘My mum would kill me if I got a tattoo.’

‘Well, now it might kill you if you don’t. You can just draw them on all the time, that works as well. The sigils we drew on your back seemed to help when you were … at your worst.’

Jack remembered the box on the kitchen table and brought it into the front room. It seemed very light. ‘This is the hedgehog?’

Charley drained her chocolate with vigorous slurping. She looked across at Sadie. ‘Jack’s really good with sick animals. We’ve got two other hedgehogs, eating their heads off in the corner of our kitchen. But this one’s bad.’

Jack knelt by the fire and opened the box. The hedgehog was on its side, curved loosely, panting. It looked very thin. Jack grimaced. ‘It doesn’t look hopeful.’

‘Can I see?’ Sadie was standing, swaying but upright, the empty mug hanging from one hand.

Jack moved the box and showed Sadie. ‘Sometimes they are too small to hibernate, and too cold to find anything to eat. I’ll put him on the floor by the fire, while we get him some warm food. You can help, if you like.’ The girl sank to her knees beside it.

She watched Sadie put her fingers in, brush the spines. They tightened a little as her hand passed over the skin.

‘It’s still alive. Can you save it?’ asked Sadie.

‘We’ll do our best.’

Jack filled a hot-water bottle from the kettle in the kitchen, and mixed some dog food into a sloppy paste. Returning to Sadie, she lifted the hedgehog with both hands, feeling its cold belly, the hard prickles slack against her fingers.

‘Slide that bottle in the box. That’s it, put a bit of that hay over the top.’

The girl hesitated for a second. ‘Are those fleas?’

‘They won’t bite you.’ Jack watched the girl pad the box. ‘Now, get that teaspoon and dip the handle into the food. When I open his mouth, just put a tiny bit in, on his tongue. We don’t want to choke him.’

Jack stroked the dished snout, pulling back the skin towards its half-closed eyes. The upper lip slid back, showing four sharp yellow teeth and a small pink tongue. Sadie slid the meaty spoon just inside. It slowly shut its mouth.

The creature felt limp in Jack’s hands. ‘He’s very cold.’

As if in slow motion, the pink tongue swept around the paste on its lips.

‘Try again,’ Jack said.

Sadie loaded up another spoon handle and dabbed it on the creature’s teeth and tongue.

Jack laid the creature on its stomach in the warm hay. ‘On the other hand … young animals are resilient, like teenagers, apparently. You have a go, every mouthful helps.’

She beckoned to Charley to join her in the kitchen.

‘If the police are in the village, they’ll come here,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I cleaned the car, but I’m worried they’ll want to come into the house to look around. How do I keep Sadie quiet?’

‘I wouldn’t be surprised if she cooperates. She seems bright and I think she’s coming round. Now, tell me about this woman in your car.’

Jack wrapped her arms around herself. ‘A witch, I think, much more powerful than anyone I’ve met. She wants Sadie.’ She sighed, reached for her coat. ‘Everyone wants Sadie. Pierce offered me big bucks for a new borrowed timer.’

‘That’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? Does he know anything?’

Jack considered the question for a moment. ‘I think it might be worth finding out. I’ll arrange to meet him, somewhere neutral. In the meantime, I need to go and talk to the vicar, and get the garage to tow the car. Can you keep an eye on Sadie and the hedgehog for me?’

‘Sure.’ Charley reached up for the biscuit tin, rattled it. ‘I like her. She reminds me of you.’ She bit into a digestive, spilling crumbs down her top. ‘Grumpy, difficult, opinionated.’

‘Thanks.’ Jack wound a scarf around her neck and shrugged a warm jacket on. ‘I won’t be long.’ She opened the door, looking out into the yard, grey under a blanket of cloud, and pressed her hand to the protective charm carved into the plaster. ‘Keep her safe.’

‘Everyone knows that women are filled with original sin, yet I have known virtuous ones. Doctor Dee’s wife, Jane, for example, is a pattern of purity and womanly goodness. But there are other women, who spread great wickedness in the world. Who are witches, and demons in human form.’

Edward Kelley
22 November 1585
Niepolomice

Late in the afternoon, I heard the rumble of horses’ hooves pounding over the drawbridge, then clattering over the cobbles in the yard. Shouts, in the dialect I now recognised as Magyar, were answered with what sounded like abuse in Polish. Then the name Báthory, over and over, like a battle cry.

As Dee was in consultation elsewhere, with the king’s advisers, our guards were absent. I walked down the corridors, through the small door at the end, which led to the minstrels’ gallery I had observed over the main feasting hall. The door at the other end, I had discovered with smiles and a few Polish pennies, led directly to the outside stairs, to the vast stableyard. Here men were dismounting, dressed in bearskin jackets over split riding cloaks, the dark fur silvered with dew. Officers in jaunty hats and the ubiquitous red boots strutted around, calling out jibes, which were met with laughter from the men. Many faces and hands were scarred, some men limped.