Page 14 of The Queen’s Witch

The horses halted, stamping, tossing their manes, and I saw the woman. Slender and light in the saddle on a white palfrey, she was dressed in rich tawny brocade, heavily embroidered gloves, and a hat with a jewel on the high crown. Her dark eyes widened as they met mine.

I felt it too. She possessed natural ability, although completely untaught. She probably wondered at her own dreams and flashes of presentiment, none of which she could control. Perhaps she could even sense, dimly, the presence of spells. Clearly she sensed something about me.

She was my Third. I knew it upon first sight.

Mother Redcap: The Sisterhood can wear silk as well as fustian.

“Mistress?” said one of the men.

She wrenched her gaze from mine and scowled at him. “Ride on,” she said, then spurred her horse and led the way at a dangerous gallop toward the track that led to the castle.

I stood still for a long moment. Then I walked back to the Haddon cottage “to see to Mistress Haddon’s state of health.” I asked Alice who lived in the castle. She looked at me as if I were dim witted. “Why, my lord Thomas Boleyn, of course. When they choose to be there, anyway.” She leaned closer to me and whispered, as if we stood in a crowd instead of a cottage with windows closed and her mother asleep in the next room. “’Tis said that Mistress Anne be the favorite of the king and he wishes to put away the queen and marry her.”

At my expression, Alice laughed, delighted that she had shocked me. “He cannot, of course. If ye could put off a wife or husband by wishing, Mam would long ago put off my da. I did not know ye meant to return here. I set the stew to boil; what should I do now?”

“Pray,” I said, before I knew I was going to speak at all. And I could not have said who I meant should pray, or to what deity, or what good I hoped that prayerful offerings, usually fruitless, might do against jesting Fate.

5

Hever

In the tiny cottage of the Clitherow family, not as prosperous as Alice’s, two children had the Sweat. I nursed there next. Both children recovered. I nursed Master Scrope, the baker, who also recovered, although his affliction was so light there was little for me to do except keep his family away and spell away such pain as he had. Then I returned to Alice Haddon and her mother. The mother, old to have borne a girl of Alice’s age, remained weak and slept much of the time. Alice needed someone to tell her what to do and when to do it. Dim witted and talkative, she was the perfect source of information. As the village began to recover from the Sweat and tradesmen once again set to work, I sent her often on small errands. She always returned with gossip.

Thomas Boleyn, Viscount Rochford—“He be no more than an ordinary lord, but then the king give him a better rank”—and his wife had been in residence at the castle until their daughter arrived. Then they fled to another house, taking their servants with them. “Peter Gare, the cobbler’s boy, said that a guard at the castle heard from Mistress Anne’s cook that the king sent Mistress Anne home because one of her ladies come down with the Sweat. Mistress Anne be angry as fire about it. Do ye want this pigeon plucked?”

“Yes.” We could not eat it feathered. “I wonder how long Mistress Anne will stay at the castle?”

“No way to know,” Alice said, vigorously pulling at feathers.

“Now bring in some onions and parsnips.”

“From the garden?”

“Yes, Alice. From the garden.”

In late afternoon, when the cottage was in good order and Mistress Haddon again slept, I walked up the track to Hever Castle. It was three floors high, well-fortified with moat and drawbridge, and backed up to the river. Most of the area was boggy marshland, a miniature fen, but a raised area of dry dirt led to the drawbridge. The portcullis beside the stone gatehouse was raised, and there a guard idled. He scowled at me until I left.

I had no way to reach my Third, who did not even know she was that. Who most likely knew nothing of Thirds, or the thrice-braided cord, or her unawakened abilities. Who, even if she had known, would not have spoken to someone like me.

For the second time since coming to Hever, the black mood took me. I was becoming someone I did not know, as Anne Boleyn did not know me.

The next day, Alice returned breathless from the chandler, where I had sent her to purchase three more tallow candles. “Elyn! Ye will never guess what happened?”

I had had little sleep. “No, I never will, so best you tell me.”

“The Sweat be at the castle!”

Grogginess vanished. “How do you know?”

“Master Cobbe had it from Peter, who had it from a servant at the castle! They be leaving!”

“Who is leaving? Who?”

“Ye will never guess!”

I pushed down my impatience at Alice, who clearly was enjoying drawing out her news. In the voice I used when I wanted her to do something instantly, a voice learned from Mother Redcap, I said, “I will not guess. Tell me who is leaving.”

“So many people! Mistress Anne’s serving women, and her nurse, and more servants, ’cause they be afraid. Mistress Anne has the Sweat. There, be ye not surprised? I did not really believe gentry could get it. They be alike to us!”