The Secrets of Life and Death (16 page)

‘What is it?’

‘An anti-witchcraft charm.’ He laughed awkwardly, picking up the unprepossessing carving and staring at it. ‘The things I saw out there – real power in ancient rituals, people dying from curses, people defying nature by
not
dying. I hardly believe it myself, but when she was looking at me, I felt this warm feeling.’ He shrugged. ‘It was familiar from working with
izinyanga
, local healers, sorcerers. One particular
inyanga
, called Amusaa, gave me this charm, after he persuaded me to give him practically everything I owned.’ He half smiled, turning the carving over in his hand. ‘It’s embarrassing to admit it, but I can’t explain everything I’ve seen.’

She sat, watching expressions move over his face. ‘So, you’re open-minded about this witchcraft thing. Magic, sorcery.’

He hesitated, shaking his head even as he spoke.

‘I have to be, through experience. I have seen … things that are hard to explain, in a strictly scientific way, anyway. And, to answer your question, revenants or
morturi masticantes
were believed to be created by witches throughout Eastern Europe right down to Venice and the Mediterranean islands. They were described as dead people who were somehow animated by magic. Many places still have those beliefs. In Chinese traditions of sorcery, they are
jiang shi
, in Angola, they are called
nzumbe
. That’s where I came up against the tradition.’

Jack tried to keep her expression neutral. ‘The living dead.’

‘Right. Revenants were taken seriously by cardinals right up to the level of the Pope. They believed certain people were turned into revenants by sorcery, and survived by killing others.’

She felt uncomfortable but interested at the same time. Maggie hadn’t been able to answer many questions about the nature of borrowed time. ‘So, these revenants are … ?’

‘The Church defined them as souls held back from heaven by sorcery. The Vatican created a branch of the Inquisition in the fifteen hundreds, to send them on to the afterlife, and punish those sorcerers who created them.’ He swivelled his chair around to face her, leaning back, his attention intense, raising the hairs on the back of her neck. ‘Take Adeliza de Borgomanero, born in the thirteen-fifties in Italy, for example. She was believed to have been saved from a fever by some magic potion, but afterwards she murdered the young men she seduced and dropped their bodies into a lake. She was defined as a revenant and the Inquisition hunted her down in the fifteen-nineties. I found out about her because the inquisitor at the time, Konrad von Schönborn, also mentioned Dee in an earlier report to the Vatican.’

‘So, they got her.’

‘After more than two hundred years, yes. What I don’t understand is, why would this woman, whether we saw the same one or not, mention a revenant …
morturi masticantes
… to you?’

Jack turned away. ‘Because Maggie and I sold the medals?’

‘Maybe.’ He sighed, and she felt a soft, slow thudding in her chest. She felt an urge to confide in him, and wondered at it.

She glanced back at him. ‘So, what’s the connection between these revenants and Dee?’

He paused for a moment, dropping his gaze from her to the text. ‘I think Dee worked out how to create one.’

‘There is much muttering among the Poles about their new king. It is said that his soldiers use dark forces to keep the Sultan’s armies at bay, though they are outnumbered many times. Istvan’s generals are said to belong to a cadre of blood brothers, who hunted wolves and bears, and some say Jews and outlaws, and the rumour is that they have sold their souls to the devil in exchange for supremacy in the field of battle.’

Edward Kelley
26 November 1585
Niepolomice

Our new prison was a chamber close to the king’s quarters, perhaps because it was easier to secure. We were escorted by a group of men with red uniforms, Swiss guards from the Vatican, each with a cross emblazoned on their tunics. I was cowed. Not one stood under two yards tall, and their hair was cropped short so it was hard to tell one from another, their chins bare. They were supplemented by men with the blue uniforms of the Polish guard, their steel breastplates covered with short cloaks.

‘It seems we are dangerous, dear Edward.’ Dee looked tired but still managed a smile. ‘There must be a dozen sentries just for us.’

Twenty, more like
, I thought. ‘Master Dee, this is the Inquisition. We are lost.’ The words choked me.

The quarters were larger than we had been given before, a good fire crackling in the hearth, our belongings carefully unpacked. Dee spent some minutes looking through them. I took my prayer book and journal.

‘Better burn the psalter my wife gave you.’ It was softly spoken, but Dee had authority in his deep voice. ‘It will be tangible proof of heresy in Rome.’

‘I cannot believe you are so calm! We are destined for the auto-da-fé and all you say is burn a holy book.’ Tears rose to my eyes, as much from anger as fear. Tales of torture, dismemberment and burning came unbidden into my head.

He smiled sadly. ‘You are so young. I have faced an Inquisition before, and lived. You must have faith, Edward.’

‘You have?’

‘It was in the reign of her Grace, Queen Mary.’ He bit his lip, perhaps recalling that time of terror for English Protestants. ‘I was younger than you, and indiscreet with my beliefs. I had cast horoscopes for both the royal princesses and was called to account for it.’ He stretched out his arms, cracking knuckles on his long fingers. ‘This was thirty years ago. I was quite as afraid as you are now. Queen Mary and her papal advisers from Rome sent Bishop Bonner to investigate and prosecute me for treason and heresy.’

‘The Burning Bishop?’ I was amazed. History had demonised all of Bloody Mary’s henchmen, and Bonner had died in the tower at the command of my queen.

‘Indeed.’ Dee dropped onto a stool, rubbing his knees. ‘I am getting too old for these adventures. Perhaps I should retire to dote on my children back in Mortlake.’

‘What happened at your Inquisition?’ I was fascinated, the tale gave me a little hope.

‘I was called to account for my actions in the Star Chamber. I was exonerated of treason, naturally, as my intention was entirely benign. But my religious proclivities were seen as heretical and I was turned over for further religious examination to Edmund Bonner.’

I had grown up with tales of torture and imprisonment of the hundreds of Protestant martyrs who had suffered under Queen Mary’s piety. It seemed impossible that this urbane old man could have survived unscarred by it. My disquiet must have shown on my face.

‘I wasn’t tortured. I was placed under house arrest, but my friends could come and go as they pleased. Then I was taken to see the bishop at his palace. I was vindicated.’ He shrugged, holding a hand out for the psalter. ‘Our intentions are pure, Edward, we are doing God’s work. You must have faith.’

He cast the treasured book, a gift from Jane Dee, into the fire, along with a handful of his own notes. ‘The rest, I think, we shall be able to explain. Do you have any of those pamphlets we picked up in Bohemia?’

I rummaged through my pack, and found them, dropping them into the yellow blaze as the psalms burst into flame. ‘I would find it easier to have my faith being questioned in England than in the heart of Rome.’

He looked at me, his dark eyes filled with compassion. ‘And, of course, Edward, you can always tell them you are, at heart, a Catholic. If you agree to attend mass and confession …’

‘Master Dee, I have never—’ I was shocked.

‘I know. I think of you as a fine Christian, Edward, but I suspected you had Catholic sympathies when I met you, and the last journey through Europe has confirmed my suspicions. It is nothing to be ashamed of, surely?’

‘I have worshipped as a Protestant in good faith,’ I said. ‘I speak to the one God.’

In my early years I had wanted to become a priest but my base nature betrayed me with some slattern who worked for my father. I had still found comfort in the Mass, but Elizabeth’s coronation made celebrating it difficult, and my parents converted away from Rome.

‘Indeed. The angels have blessed you, Edward, and me. They, at least, know our hearts are honest and true. They will protect us.’

I turned away, shaking with the fear again. The angels, their bright faces and bell-like voices, half imagined, half heard. I shut my eyes as my doubts crowded me like the Swiss guards outside. It had seemed so harmless back in London, becoming Dee’s scryer, allowing the images to spill into words. I prayed as never before.

I must have fallen asleep in the chair, still clothed in Dee’s finery, because I was woken by a hand clamped onto my face, almost suffocating me.

‘
Silens
.’ The harsh whisper was hissed into my ear. I struggled like a madman, the image of the squad of Swiss guards still in the forefront of my mind. Another man swung around, bearing a lamp, and I saw maybe five or six shapes in black, muffled in cloaks up to their eyes, all with naked swords. Dee was being gagged in rough fashion, and two men restrained him.

‘
Exsisto silens. Vel nex
.’ Silence or death. I stopped struggling, and shut my eyes, holding on to the last of my dignity with my bladder.

My arms were pinned to my side by a rope, another binding my hands before me. A cloth gag was forced into my mouth and tied cruelly tight. It reeked of sweat and smoke. One man lifted me by the rope and set me on my feet, before pulling me to the door. I was grateful I was still in my boots. Dee’s bare legs and feet were dragged into the corridor ahead of me. I stumbled over something, and realised it was one of the Polish guards. The remains of the food in my stomach rose, as I saw his head had been split by a single sword blow. I swallowed it back down, not wanting to suffocate in the gag. More bodies, some in the red of the Swiss, were slumped in doorways. As we passed into the inner curtain, the muffled thud of a crossbow sounded close to my left ear, and one of Istvan’s Hungarian guards fell, gurgling, a bolt in his throat. I watched the life leave his eyes, as I staggered over his twitching body under the light of a torch set in the wall.

A scuffle ahead of us was resolved swiftly by our kidnappers, who went among the fallen and slit throats as if slaughtering pigs. We were taken to the outer courtyard and I was boosted into a saddle. I was trussed tight, but at least they placed my feet in the stirrups and tied my hands to the pommel. A tall man ahead, swathed in a cloak that covered his face, grabbed my reins, jerking the horse forward.

As the creature bounded ahead I was knocked sideways, this way and that, riding faster than I would have attempted in daylight. After a few minutes, my bonds tightened cruelly by my being tied to the pommel, I managed to catch the thing in my hands, and get a sense of the rhythm of the horse. The saddle pounded under me painfully, bruising me as we traversed half a league or more, past the remains of my slaughtered nag. Her scarlet wounds and thrusting bones suggested a corpse half-eaten in the glimpse afforded by our captors’ torches. They streamed behind them as they galloped, the burnt tallow stench in their wake. My teeth rattled in my head, until I clenched them, and finally managed to look about me. The world was dark and confusing as it jerked along. Dee, there, his bare head lighter in the orange glow of his leader’s torch, as tossed about as I. My ears strained for the sound of a pursuit, but the hooves upon the hard-packed road deafened me. I did not know whether to pray for pursuit, for surely to return us to Niepolomice would be a certain deliverance to the Inquisition. Yet these bandits terrified me, occasionally whooping like a yelping animal, or crying out some command in their fluid, hissing tongue. Hungarian, I guessed, not German, nor any language I could understand.

A slash in the face from a branch of pine needles slapped me back in the saddle, and I tasted blood where my lip had been split. I cried out in terror, blinded for a moment, then leaned forward, low over the horse’s neck against a more solid collision.

As I clung to the saddle, my thighs shaking with tiredness as they kept my body anchored to the horse, I started to think about the events of the night. If this was – God save us – Konrad, then the examination was going to be a private one, in some torture chamber. Then the Pope would not have to explain the killing of English gentlemen to our allies. If this was one of Báthory’s allies … I could only speculate what they wanted, or what they would do if we did not provide it.

My childhood prayers rose, unbidden, into my mind, in snatches between stumbles and turns.

‘O Lord,’ I sounded in my head, ‘from ill deliver us, the days and times … times are dangerous: from everlasting death deliver us. And in our last end,’ I prayed that it was not so, ‘comfort us.’ I misremembered the rest, so melancholy was the thought of my end, that I was filled with misery and instead, my mind turned to the smile, the kind words and friendship of Mistress Jane Dee.

My nose was barely a foot from the neck of the horse, so low that the pommel brushed my chest upon its exertions. I prayed in snatches, clinging with fingers numbed as much by cold as by my cruel bonds. As the pain in my hams and arms grew, the rain started, needling into my face and down my neck, until I could do no more than hang on and wait for death.

The police had gone from the village, so Jack left Sadie chained up in the living room. She had arranged to meet Pierce in a public place, safely in daylight, and the girl had pleaded and begged to stay upstairs. Jack didn’t have the heart to drag her down to the priest hole again. She left her with a few magazines and a tray of food and drink. She made extra, knowing Sadie would ignore her instruction not to feed the dog. She smiled to herself as she sat down, remembering the tricks Sadie was somehow persuading the half-wolf to perform.

She looked around, her back against one of the benches in the cathedral green. Lichens, in shades of yellow, stained the silvered oak against a bronze plaque: ‘I
N MEMORY OF
P
EGGY, FROM HER LOVING HUSBAND
L
ARRY
C
LARKE
. 1987.’ The late sunshine had little warmth in it, but it had taken the chill off the damp wood. A few dozen people wandered around the walls of the great church in the late afternoon. It gave her time to think about the man with the lazy smile who was uncomfortably creeping into her thoughts. She hardly knew him and yet … somehow she trusted him. He was here somewhere in the town, at the university, perhaps teaching. She checked her phone for texts yet again, then shook herself mentally. Focus. What relationship could she have with him? She had maybe five years left of her continued, unnatural existence. What had he said the Vatican called it? Souls held back from heaven by sorcery.