The Secrets of Life and Death (27 page)

‘“Speak, speak, shade!” said my master in a great voice.’ A few of the men laughed nervously, as I had intended them to do. I lowered my voice, and the men fell silent, the better to hear me. ‘At first I thought I heard the wind rising, then that an animal was caught somewhere, but then I realised it was a voice calling, wailing.’

At the time, I had almost fled, but the thought of traversing that foggy churchyard at midnight alone had kept me close to Dee, newly my master and mentor. He had held his ground, calling upon the spirit to show itself, even as I prayed it would not.

‘As Dee conjured the spirit of his friend, I anticipated we would see the spectre of the man in the circle we had drawn. But no, the strangest of lights, like the glimmer of marsh gas, lit up the room with a glow.’ As luck provided, a draught from the doorway made the candles flicker, and my eye was drawn to the figure behind the tapestry. The count’s black eyes looked around the room, but I fancied I had everyone else’s attention, even Dee’s.

‘To my horror, the corpse began to seethe and move. The spirit made it heave with unnatural breath that filled the crypt with a stench of death.’ I paused for effect. ‘And Doctor Dee spoke with it.’

Heads turned towards Dee, who leaned back in his chair. ‘Indeed,’ he said, then stood and joined me. ‘And my dear old friend answered. He spoke of the pain and grief of being an earthbound spirit. He had left tasks undone, left sins unshriven.’

‘What happened when you had finished speaking?’ The count leaned back in his chair, toying with the reddest of apples. Dee caught my eye, then proceeded with a version – not an entirely accurate one – of the story.

‘Upon being called to pray, he set up a wailing and crying. He submitted under coercion to kneel in his casket, and pray for the mercy of a Heavenly Father. Then, as he said the word “Amen”, he fell into his coffin, at peace.’

The count murmured something to his neighbour, the one I called Redbeard, Lord Mihály, whose lips twisted into a grim smile. He rose to his feet and pointed at me.

‘Thus speaks the wizard. But what of his assistant? What did you see?’

I looked at Dee, and back at the count, and shrugged.

‘I was too afraid to stop praying and look, my lords.’ I hung my head as if in shame, but the scars on my forearm itched to be revealed.

A shout of laughter deflected the attention of the nobles, and I sighed. I sneaked a glance under my lowered eyelids to the doorway, but it was empty.

‘So, what really happened?’ The voice came from a dark corner of my chamber, which was lit by the single candle I was carrying. I flinched, and I almost dropped the light, but I fumbled it over my head to illuminate the room. I knew it was Zsófia from her voice.

‘What?’ I said, in stern accents.

‘The dead man you raised, the revenant. I can’t believe it said its prayers like a child, then laid down.’

I put the candle on the table, and circled around the witch. My books and papers were, as far as I could tell, in order. I carried precious items in a secret pocket in my jacket, and my most important items in the sole of my specially adapted boots. ‘There was … some resistance.’

The memory, of the corpse throwing itself at Dee and knocking me to the ground, erupted into my mind. I rubbed the scar on my arm.

‘We subdued it. We called upon heaven to take the man’s spirit and it did.’ I tried to sound as assured as I could.

She walked to me, immodest in a dress with a low bodice, her hair loose upon her white shoulders as if she were a courtesan. She reached out one slender hand – not roughened by work, but fine – and took my arm, pulling back the sleeve of my shirt. The ugly marks were purple in the low light. If Dee had not staunched the blood that night, I fear I would have died.

‘It bit you?’ Her touch was gentle, yet burned me. She smelled of apples. Her eyes were uncertain, and she took her fingers away. ‘It bit you, yet you live?’

‘Of course. The angels keep us safe.’

It had been Dee that struck the thing, for it was no longer a man, with his staff. He drove it with abjurations into the magic enclosure. When he closed the circle with a single sweep of his chalk, the thing had succumbed to the natural course of putrefaction, and exploded in a shower of limbs and entrails. I couldn’t keep food down for weeks, every morsel brought back the horrible wet sound and the wall of foulness that swept over me as I lay bleeding upon the ground. My wound mortified, and only the most vigilant care from Lady Jane kept me anchored to this plane, God protect and bless her. Thus we passed from master and servant to teacher and student, and the experience bound Dee and I together.

Zsófia walked around me, as if looking over a horse, inspecting my face and limbs. Then she stood before me, and sniffed the air as if trying to detect my nature. I stared back, looking at her eyes, the darkest of greens in the low light.

‘You have power. Dee has much knowledge, true, but you have power. You must help my mistress.’

‘You have much affection for her.’

‘I love her.’ She spoke as if she were talking about a sister or a daughter. ‘She is my life.’ She approached, now so close, I could feel her breath upon my cheek when she sighed. I looked at her eyes, and my hands reached around her waist as if under their own power. All objections that a God-fearing man might raise were dissolved in the touch of her lips on mine, and I found my fingers pulling at her laces, which fell away. As she stood before me in a fine shift that barely covered her breasts, that sense of danger that has kept me alive screamed at me to retreat. I stepped back, shaking with lust and shame, and tried to summon my wife’s face to my mind. Jane Dee’s sweet face drifted up, instead, insubstantial as a cloud, but I held onto it as I pushed the witch away. I dropped my voice, lest Dee hear me in the adjoining room.

‘I thought … I thought you would not lie with a sorcerer’s assistant, when you could have royalty.’

‘I take anyone I want,’ she boasted.

‘Not me.’ I was shaking with emotion, which was in truth a mixture of fear and desire. ‘I do not lie with witches. I am a married man.’

I closed my eyes and spoke the words of warding against succubi and other demons.

When I opened them, she was there, the only woman I have loved, her pale oval face in the flicker of the single candle. Flaxen hair, not wound tight around her head as was her custom, but loose over her shoulders. Her cornflower eyes picked up glints from the single flame. My mind should have said ‘How, why?’ but instead, I was enchanted completely as she let her shift fall to her feet. Her skin was flat and supple, as if she had not borne Dee several children but was somehow a girl again.

‘Edward,’ she breathed. ‘My dearest Edward.’

I opened my lips to whisper her name. ‘Jane, Jane.’ Then she covered my mouth with her own.

Thus was I conquered by the witch.

Early next morning, Felix stood in the city’s main police station, smiling at the sergeant, hoping to soften her up.

‘I was just doing some research into the symbols found in the Carla Marshall case.’

‘The coroner ruled that as natural causes. There’s no case.’ She wasn’t uncooperative, just uninterested.

‘Ah, but I may be able to link those specific symbols to another suspicious death.’

There was a flicker of interest in the eyes of the sergeant for a moment. ‘And is that an open case?’

‘Well, no, the coroner found it to be misadventure. But it would be an unusual coincidence, two cases with sixteenth-century symbolism.’

The glimmer of interest had died. ‘Coincidences are not a police matter. We don’t have the resources.’

‘I just need a copy of the investigations made into their deaths, one from Leicester in 1996, and one from Norwich, 1978, for my official report.’ He pushed a sheet of paper with all the details across the desk. ‘I don’t get paid until the investigation is complete, and I can’t finish it until I have all the details. The more time it takes, the more it costs … I was hoping to wrap it all up by the weekend.’

She sighed, turned to a passing officer and spoke to him. She handed him the note. ‘PC Travers here will get you the details. Just wait over there, please.’

He sat in a row of chairs provided for visitors, and could just see Soames’s office if he leaned back. The door was shut, but he could see through the glass panel that Soames was talking to someone. By leaning back further, he could just see it was Stephen McNamara.

His heart beating uncomfortably loud in his ears as he approached the desk.

‘Look, I have an urgent appointment somewhere else. I’ll come back for the files, if you don’t mind. Thanks.’

Even as he stepped back, he heard a door open, and Soames’s voice drifted down the corridor. He left the police station with as much dignity as he could while semi-jogging, and realised his car was parked in plain view across the street. He ducked down the side of the building and watched as the man walked out of the double doors. McNamara checked as he did so, and looked up and down the road. Felix ducked behind an industrial bin that, from the stink of it, needed emptying. When he looked out, McNamara was standing a few feet away, staring straight at him.

‘Professor Guichard?’

Feeling foolish, Felix emerged from the corner of the building. ‘Mr McNamara, I presume. Posing as a police officer.’

The man’s face changed from impassive to wary. ‘I have been forced into certain subterfuges. I have to find Sadie Williams.’

‘You almost had her yesterday.’ Felix’s animosity bubbled over. ‘She’s a child, for God’s sake! Whatever was done to her, she is innocent in this.’

‘I know. But she is a danger to others in ways you cannot imagine.’ He looked up at the sky, and Felix realised the first drops were already spotting his coat. ‘I don’t want to hurt her. Please, hear me out.’

Felix hesitated, then looked down the road. ‘I have a season ticket to the cathedral. Would you object to talking there?’

The two men walked in silence across the road and down the narrow alley that led to the cathedral green. A few students were sitting on benches and the broad white steps. One recognised Felix and raised a hand in greeting. He managed a half smile in response, but his palms were sweating at the thought that, even now, he was putting Sadie in more danger. He already regretted speaking to McNamara.

The limestone arches soared from pillars all around them, dwarfing the two men under the ornate vaulted ceiling. Felix looked around, distrusting the man. The Lady Chapel, seven hundred years old, was quiet but in plain view of the guides and visitors. McNamara followed, his face as blank as the carvings of saints all around. He sat on a bench, a few feet away from Felix.

He closed his eyes and bent his head a little, and Felix realised he was praying. It gave him time to study the man. He was nondescript, dark suit, speckled hair, cut very short, lighter plain tie. His blue eyes gleamed in the low light, the only colour against the greys of his suit and hair.

‘Are you surprised that I pray in an Anglican cathedral?’

‘I’m surprised that you pray at all.’ Speculation ran through his mind.

McNamara’s face was grim, his mouth thin-lipped and downturned. ‘I am an inquisitor. I work for His Holiness.’

Felix’s withdrawal must have shown on his face, because McNamara managed the smallest lift of one corner of his mouth.

‘The Inquisition is a legitimate office of the Holy See. We come under the department of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. I am a lay investigator of a special project within that department.’

‘Oh, I know all about the CDF. It’s the special project I haven’t heard about.’

‘It is necessarily secret.’ McNamara sighed, stretching his feet out in front of him and looking down at them. ‘I am breaking my oath just speaking with you.’

Despite himself, Felix was impressed by the man’s quiet sincerity. ‘So, why are you talking to me?’

‘Because I find I have a conflict of interests.’

Felix waited for him to explain, as a small party of visitors passed by with a guide. Words drifted over him.
The Lady Chapel was built between 1272 and 1298, and was the first part of the new gothic cathedral to be completed …

Felix ran through all the crazy ideas Jack had fed him, each one building upon another like a house of cards. Here was a chance to either confirm or deny Jack and Sadie’s world, and he couldn’t think of a single question.

McNamara explained. ‘My duties include identifying revenants, and helping to eliminate them. They are unnatural, and contrary to God’s will.’

‘By revenants, you mean people like Sadie. And by eliminate, you mean kill them.’

‘My colleagues, after time to reconcile her to her fate with prayer and confession, intended to release her to heaven by stopping the sorcery. But an opportunity has arisen to right a greater wrong. I am here as a free agent.’

‘Did they kill your sister?’

That straightened McNamara’s back. ‘No!’ He bit his lip for a moment. ‘I was just a student when she was killed. I didn’t understand what she was until after her death. The Inquisition recruited me years later.’

‘But someone made her, extended her life.’

McNamara grimaced. ‘My mother knew how to. She was part of an occult circle.’ He studied his long hands. ‘My sister was born with a fatal genetic disorder, and my mother knew she would die in childhood. The circle came up with an old ritual and found her death was not inevitable, not certain.’

‘You mean, she was treatable?’

‘No, no.’ He chopped the air with one hand. ‘You don’t understand. For most of us, our moment of death is set, it is God’s will. But in a few cases, that moment can be extended by unnatural magics.’

‘But surely, that would also be God’s will?’ Despite himself, Felix warmed to the man, whose face was twisted in anguish.

‘I cannot believe that God wishes the soul of a child to be harnessed to a body that is trapped for ever in the moment of dying.’

‘So, brought up in a household that used magic, you ended up persecuting similar families. How can you reconcile that?’