Page 22 of The Queen’s Witch

There was no safe answer. Fortunately she did not seem to expect one. She called for Emma, who flung her usual dour glance at me, privileged among servants to speak alone with Mistress Anne. That privilege, Emma believed, should belong only to herself.

After the hunting party had clattered out of Greenwich, I slipped out a side gate. And gawked.

I had imagined London to lie just beyond the palace walls. It did not. Greenwich Palace sat downstream from the city, and spread before me was the Thames, full of boats. Barges, ferries, crafts I could not name. People on the wide stone walkway bustled past and hollered and pushed me out of their way. I could see the rest of the city, barely, around a curve of the great river. The river itself stank in the summer heat. Children in rags searched among the debris revealed by low tide. I began walking, but soon realized I had no chance of discovering cunning folk, the runes that identified their dwellings, nor anything else of use. Nor could I detect even the faintest presence of any spells. For all I knew of this sprawling city and its ways, a thrice-braided Sister could have walked or sailed or even hopped right past me and I might not know it.

I did not belong here.

Back inside the palace, which also bustled and often stank but at least felt slightly familiar, I went to the kitchen. I sat on a stool in a corner, my offers of help curtly refused, to spend the day listening in hope of learning something useful.

I did, but not as I expected. No one mentioned cunning folk, witches, or magick of any kind. But gossip, a constant at court among those both high and low, already knew of Cardinal Campeggio’s mission to London. “A fearful long journey,” a manservant said.

“And how would the likes of ye know that?” another jeered.

The manservant, with laughably false nonchalance, flicked an imaginary speck of dirt off his sleeve, a gesture I had seen noblemen make. “I had it from my lord’s body servant. My lord, Sir Thomas Wyatt, is cousin to Mistress Boleyn.”

“We all know that,” the cook said.

The manservant went on with the careless air of one accustomed to court knowledge. “A great house is being prepared for Mistress Boleyn. On the Strand. It is not ready yet, but ’tis said to be grander than the queen’s apartments.”

Just that utterance could be viewed as disloyal to the queen, and who knew which lady might triumph in the long run? People looked away, or frowned, and the manservant lost his audience.

He tried to recapture it. “Mistress Boleyn will be sent back to Hever while the Italian cardinal is here. It will be less . . . awkward for everyone—no, Simon, do not look so, you know ’tis true! I heard it from Sir Thomas himself!”

I cast my gaze to the floor. If Anne really was to be sent away while the Roman cardinal remained at Greenwich, she would be in a flaming temper. I hoped the information did not prove true.

It was true. But rather than furious, Anne was pleased.

“You shall come with me to Hever,” she said. She sat up in bed, an embroidered silk shawl over her night clothes, empty goblets on the table along with a jumble of bottles, gloves, papers, flowers, a book. Her brother George had just left. They had sat on her bed, giggling and drinking for at least an hour while I waited beyond the partially closed door, glared at by the also-banished Emma. The conversation within had been inaudible to Emma but not to me, who had set a guard ward solely to gain its enhancement of my hearing. I had learned little except that Anne’s flirtatious, sometimes bawdy wit extended even to her brother, and that she trusted him completely.

He winked at me as, slightly unsteady on his feet, he passed through the privy chamber. Anne called for both me and Emma. Emma was sent to the kitchen to fetch a dish of stewed peaches, which I was sure Anne did not want. She wanted to talk to me alone.

“Elyn, do you know what is happening now? Of course you do; servants always know everything. The papal legate is on his way here from Rome. He and Cardinal Wolsey will issue a decree that the king’s marriage to Katherine is invalid. I shall await that decree at Hever. It will look better if the king is not paying court to another lady; he must appear sorrowful at having gone through a sham marriage, however innocently, all these years. And, of course, he cannot long for my presence if I am right here.” She laughed, and I wondered how much wine she had drunk with her brother. “Thus, soon I shall not need you at all. But until then, you will accompany me as my taster. And when I dismiss you, Elyn, you will be compensated well. And”—she leaned toward me, her dark eyes suddenly hard as pebbles—“you will never ever utter a single word about your service to me. If you do, I will expose you as a witch, and you will be found and hanged. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Good. But now I wish you to use your talents on a small task. I have asked my brother about cunning folk; he knows more than I. You are indeed able to curse someone with an illness.”

My throat tightened. “My lady, my oath is to aid and solace—”

“I do not care about your oath. You have the ability to do this. George told me that cunning folk can cause only trivial illnesses. So that is what you will do.”

Panic rose in me like bad wine. I would not curse the queen. I would not. Already middle aged, worn out from, it was said, long hours on her knees at prayer, and cursed with an unfaithful husband.

Anne said, “Is it true that you must be close by a person to curse them?”

I nodded, unable to speak.

“Then I will arrange for that. The woman is my brother’s wife, Jane Boleyn. I wish her to develop an illness tomorrow, since we leave for Hever the day after. As severe an illness as you can manage.”

Not Queen Katherine. I already knew that George Boleyn did not like, let alone love, his wife. Most people did not. “Creeping Jenny,” they called her; she listened to private conversations and spread nasty rumors. My concern was not for her, since any illness I could give her would pass in a few days. My concern was for the choice that Anne had just put before me.

Honor my oath as a cunning woman, or take the first step, however tiny, toward malefic magick?

“Do not think of refusing me,” Anne said.

I shook my head, realized the gesture might look like a refusal, and choked out, “I do not refuse.”

“Good. And now you should be glad that I have refused you. If I had ‘thrice braided’ with you, think of how much worse I could ask you to do.” And then, in one of her lightning-quick shifts of mood: “I should not have said that, Elyn. It was unpleasant, and you have not deserved it. I am still considering what you ask. It is not a thing to undertake lightly, you know.”