The Secrets of Life and Death (31 page)

‘You do?’ Jack tried moving her limbs, some of the stiffness had melted away in the warmth. The events of the last days filtered into her brain. ‘How did you get here?’

‘My number was on your phone. He called me.’

Jack relaxed back into the pillow. ‘How’s Maggie?’

Charley’s smile faltered a little. ‘She’s staying in hospital. She wasn’t badly hurt in the crash. She’s still concussed, and she’s got spectacular bruises from her seat belt. It’s nothing too serious, but they are keeping an eye on her. She’s sixty-one, you know.’

Jack pushed herself up onto her elbows, one of which buckled. ‘Ow.’

Charley managed a small smile. ‘Maggie’s nosy about Felix, I can tell you.’

Jack looked around the room, realising she was in her underwear. ‘Where are my clothes?’

‘I think Felix put them in the wash. I brought you some clothes from the cottage – the place stinks of petrol. I left the windows open at the back. But I was upset at the state of it. I mean, it was my childhood home, too.’ She handed Jack some clothes from a bag on the floor. ‘So, tell me so I can tell Mum, because you know she’ll interrogate me. How did you end up in Felix’s bed. I mean, are you … ?’

‘No! I hardly know him.’ At Charley’s raised eyebrow, Jack winced. ‘Oh God. He put me to bed, didn’t he?’

‘I bet you wish you weren’t wearing your oldest underwear.’

It was strange, the thought had occurred to her, among fears that she had appeared pathetic. She could feel her face heat up, even as she dressed. ‘I only have old underwear,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Where is he anyway?’

‘Ah. That’s the other thing he thought you wouldn’t like.’ Charley held out a mug of the foul-smelling decoction.

‘What?’ She sipped it, grimacing. It was weaker than she was used to, but the proportions were about right. She could feel the energy creeping back.

‘He’s downstairs talking to the Inquisition.’

Jack brushed past Felix in the hallway, where he was waiting for her, and walked straight up to the inquisitor. ‘Where is Sadie?’

‘I don’t know.’ The man stared back with calm indifference. ‘But she is a captive of the woman I intend to destroy.’

‘Jack …’ Felix tried to get her attention, but she waved him away.

‘If we help you locate Sadie you’ll kill her.’

‘I swear I will not.’

She looked from one blue eye to the other, trying to read him. But he seemed icily sincere.

‘But you don’t care much, either way,’ she said.

His face softened a tiny bit, around the eyes. ‘I do not blame the child for what she was forced to become.’

‘Which is?’

His gaze on her face became more intense, as he studied her. ‘A revenant. A corpse that has clung to its soul, by sorcery.’ She stared back.
He has no idea I’m a ‘revenant’ too
.

‘Right. Great. Don’t tell him anything, Felix, just chuck him out.’

Felix walked up behind her. ‘Just listen to him. Then, if you want to send him packing, we will.’

She sat on the end of the leather sofa. ‘I want Charley to hear this.’

‘The less people we involve—’ the inquisitor started, but Charley sat next to Jack, leaning on her.

‘Well?’ Charley’s voice was as calm and cool as Maggie’s would have been. ‘Let’s hear it.’

McNamara walked to the fireplace, and stood staring into it for a moment. ‘You understand what Dee was trying to accomplish when he travelled to Hungary?’

Felix leaned against a sideboard, and answered. ‘I have been translating a journal that Edward Kelley kept in 1585. He was trying to assist King Istvan Báthory’s niece.’

‘And you understand that she was the person we know as Elizabeth Báthory, in the West?’

‘So?’ ventured Jack. A memory of some lurid old vampire legend trickled down the back wall of her memory. ‘Wasn’t she a myth?’

‘She was tried and convicted of the torture and killing of up to eighty girls.’ McNamara spoke the uncompromising facts as if they were a weather report. ‘She was then walled up in a tower in her own castle because they could not execute a member of the royal family.’

Jack risked a glance at Felix, who was standing with his head bowed. ‘What has this got to do with us?’

‘The sigils that Dee created did extend her natural life. But they affected her behaviour and she became aggressive. Dangerous.’

‘But she was … a borrowed timer?’ Charley’s voice was incredulous. She squeezed Jack’s hand.

‘Revenants cling to life, and they die within a few years, a couple of decades at most,’ McNamara said. ‘But she found a way to extend her life through the ingestion of human blood. Over the years, it became like a drug to her. The Vatican followed the case through an inquisitor called Father Konrad von Schönborn. He hunted the abomination until his death.’

‘Why is blood like a drug?’ asked Jack.

McNamara’s gaze flicked over her for a second. ‘It fills these creatures with the energy of the living donor. Báthory employed sorcerers to do more research. She found that exsanguinating other revenants and consuming their enchanted blood would extend her existence even further.’

Felix looked at Jack. ‘That’s what Bachmeier did to McNamara’s sister. She consumed her blood. All of it. That’s why he’s here.’

The realisation trickled into Jack. ‘Oh my God, she’s going to kill Sadie, like Elizabeth Báthory.’

‘Not exactly,’ McNamara spoke quietly. ‘She’s going to kill Sadie because she
is
Elizabeth Báthory.’

‘One spell witches use to confound mortal men, is the charm of appearing more alluring and irresistible than any human woman. Her voice is that of a siren, her body of a courtesan, and she will seduce innocent men. She is to be feared, and I pray for freedom from such abominations and succubi.’

Edward Kelley
Handwritten epigraph in John Dee
Propaedeumata Aphoristica
(1558/1568)
Ashmolean Museum

Dee bent over his conjurations, written in fair Latin upon squares of vellum that the count had provided. The room was fugged with smoke and incense, and my master was experimenting with different combinations of rare gums and woods. I coughed a few times before he looked up.

‘I think I will get some air,’ I said, anxious to get away from the atmosphere the constant guards provided – a reminder that if we failed, our lives were forfeit. ‘If you can spare me.’

‘Go, go.’ He waved a hand towards me. ‘While you do so, think of the angelic exhortations, will you, Edward? We need to complete those …’ He bent back over his books.

I walked past the guards to the corridor and out into the great hall, already being set up for the evening meal. A shouting from without, a female voice, called my curious nature to the door.

A woman, heavyset but still young, was pleading with one of the captains of the guard. I couldn’t understand a word, but the way she cradled one arm in the other suggested a child. She pointed at the castle, tears running down her face, and shouted to men passing by.

Beside the main doors, I saw one of the men who had kidnapped us, a young noble. I approached him, keeping my head high.

‘You, sirrah.’ I called in Latin, perhaps a little arrogantly, for he turned and scowled at me. Then his face cleared as he saw who it was. I pointed at the door, where the wailing was still audible. ‘Why does the woman cry so?’

He shrugged, but his feet shuffled, giving away his disquiet. ‘She seeks her daughter, a girl working in the kitchens.’

I bethought myself of the child in the coffin. ‘Where is the maid?’

He half turned, his shoulders hunched away from me. ‘Who knows or cares? The vassals serve in any way they are commanded. Perhaps she is working.’ He shot another sly look around, maybe to see if we were overheard. ‘I ask no questions. It is safer.’

‘The children here seem so weak,’ I reported, and we listened to more shouted voices outside. Some were women but a few were angry men.

‘This is a cursed land,’ the young man whispered to me. ‘I come from the north, at Szatmár, and there we value our villeins, our vassals, as the source of our wealth and our armies. If they prosper, we prosper; if they starve, we starve.’

‘But here?’ I prompted.

‘Here hags are ennobled and we, who have the blood of kings in our veins, are reduced to the service of women.’ He spat the last word at me, and I saw his distaste for serving the countess.

‘Mayhap when the lady is healed …’

He regarded me, with a look of wisdom beyond his years. ‘Here, the common people speak of monsters who live beyond the grave, feasting on the flesh of children, banishing God and his angels to the north. Evil spirits that take the form of wolves and hares and succubi.’

I shuddered, having some experience of these demons in human – female – form. ‘Let God keep you and guide you,’ I said, ‘and grant that we both are able to go north.’

He smiled without mirth. ‘God may direct me there, and I pray that he does. But you, sir, are guided by Satan himself, if you create an undead queen for these lands.’

Sadie crouched on a tiled floor, gagging and choking. The woman had drawn a few sigils around her, but it wasn’t enough, and the taste of regurgitated cider and burger kept rising into her mouth.

Her kidnapper was bent over the centre of the building, which was lined with scaffolding draped in plastic sheeting.

‘Where are we?’ Sadie asked, straining her head up. She tugged at plastic cable ties on her wrists, which were locked to more ties restraining her ankles. She had spoken before, but the woman paid no attention to her, just carried on working. It was a painful position to be hunched in for hours, and Sadie tried to keep her voice level. ‘I said, where are we?’

‘St Francis’s hospital.’ She sounded foreign, and uninterested in Sadie. ‘They are developing it into apartments.’

‘Oh.’ Sadie pulled her head up to see over the back of a wooden seat, a pew, she realised. There were stained-glass windows at the far end of the building, but it was too dark to see the design. ‘But this looks like a church.’

‘Yes, the hospital chapel. It is hallowed ground.’

Sadie hunched back down, shaking with cold. She could see under the few rows of pews that remained, that the centre of the building had been cleared, and the woman was drawing on the floor.

‘I could help draw the sigils,’ she offered. Anything to get out of this position, she thought. ‘I’ve got a steady hand.’

For many seconds, she thought the woman wasn’t going to answer, but then she replied, ‘These are different symbols.’

‘Really?’ She tried to keep her voice level, even as she tugged at her bonds. The skin gave way at the back of her wrist and started to bleed.

The click of heels on the terracotta tiles meant the woman was moving – and getting closer.

‘Don’t struggle. I will make you more comfortable.’ The woman brought out a small blade, cutting the connection between the ties. She released all but the ones tying her wrists together. She half carried Sadie from behind the pews, while the blood throbbed its way back into her ankles. ‘Here. Sit down.’

In the middle of an area that had been swept clear was a small office chair, in a circle of familiar sigils. Sadie sat in it, the nausea and weakness fading, and sneaked a glance around the walls. The woman’s face twitched into a smile.

‘You would die outside the building,’ she said. ‘Here. Drink.’ She twisted the top off a plastic bottle of water, and placed it in the teenager’s linked hands. Sadie gulped at the cool water, realising she hadn’t drunk anything since breakfast, and the light was waning outside. She looked around at the floor. The chair sat within a bigger circle, made up of unfamiliar symbols. Outside that were four more circles, each about five or six feet across, filled with shapes and letters. The woman was sorting through a bag, pulling out what looked like sticks. She was pushing them into round bases before Sadie realised what they were.

‘Black candles?’

‘The dried roots make them look black.’ The woman started twisting bunches of dried twigs together. ‘The candles will summon. They are all different.’

Sadie looked down at the tickle on the side of her hand. Blood was seeping from under the cable tie. She raised her wrist to lick it off, but the woman snapped at her.

‘Don’t!’ She stood up, and walked towards Sadie. It was difficult to work out how old she was. One part of Sadie’s brain put her at around Felix’s age and aspects of her kept shifting in appearance, but another part was registering something grotesque and deformed about her. Her shoulders were at unequal heights, her neck projected forwards from a hump on her back, her hair was so wispy Sadie could see – or imagine – brown spots on her scalp. Yet the moment she spoke, Sadie could only see a kind of beauty. Her eyes were the one thing that remained the same, so light blue they were almost white orbs.

The woman reached out long hands – twisted, bulbous claws one second, then manicured, pianist’s fingers the next – and took Sadie’s wrist. Her skin was as cold as the ground had been. She inspected Sadie with care, lifting her arms with cold fingertips to look all around the restraints. She took the small blade from her pocket again, snipping the last of the cable ties. Then she licked her top lip, smiled slightly, and bent her head. She fastened her mouth over the oozing skin, and bit deep into the bleeding wound.

‘As the countess grows weaker, so the witch works harder to keep her alive. Zsófia spoke nothing to me after her wicked enchantment, but secretly smiles in a mocking way when she sees me. She did come to us to identify a herb, that soldiers had brought from Araby, hoping it will sustain her mistress, but it was common red root, and of no assistance. I thought her love for the countess was that of a sister, or even mother, but when I saw them together by the fire, awaiting his lordship’s return from hunting, I saw such caresses and kisses that a man might give a maid. I long for the simplicity of home, and civilization.’

Edward Kelley
16 December 1585
Csejte

That evening, Dee and I had drawn the last of the sigils on the ceiling and floor of the solar, and Dee was writing the ritual. A great banging on the locked main doors brought torches and soldiers to the outer wall. There was a party of men on horses, travelling south.