Page 25 of The Queen’s Witch

So here it was. Looking at his face, brown with sun and set as rock, I knew he would not budge. Nor could I. I loved Grandmother too well, and owed her too much. She had delivered me from Joan’s evil, and I must deliver her from the same. I could not purchase my happiness at the cost of her eternal torture.

But there was more. Mark’s unease at sacred-day celebrations if any thrice-braided Sisters attended: “The Sisterhood who are full witches, they be too . . .”

“Too what?” I had said. He had shrugged, unable or unwilling to complete his thought, and I had not pressed him. I never had told him what had occurred at my failed thrice-braided ceremony, nor about Joan. Nor had I paid much heed to Mark’s quiet insistence—quiet no longer—that in a city he would have more listeners for his music. And his words while I nursed Mother Redcap rang clear as cathedral bells in my memory: Ye look peaked, sweetheart. I do not like to see ye less than blooming. How had I not heard that his voice held not compassion but displeasure? And how had I ignored other such comments, gently chiding me when I had not looked my prettiest?

I doubted that I looked pretty now. Leaner, harder, tense with juggling my aims against Anne’s, my “bloom” was long gone.

“Alysoun?”

I could barely choke out the words. “I cannot marry you, Mark.”

“‘Cannot’? Ye mean ‘will not’? Say it! Let me hear it!”

In the counties around London, Mother Redcap had once told me, witches who had been hanged were often buried at crossroads.

“Say it!”

“I will not marry you, Mark.”

So quickly did he leave me, striding around a bend in the track, that I had no time to take back my words. Could not take them back. Nor did I race after him. Instead, I glanced up at the castle, the top of the keep just visible above the trees. Was Anne still there, sobbing her fury at the man that circumstances withheld from her?

It did not move me to any sisterly bond with Mistress Boleyn. She would dispose of me like a spider if it suited her needs. Just as I must keep trying to bend her to mine.

None of that kept back my stupid, futile tears.

A few days later—days that I spent in numb disbelief that I would never marry Mark, never lie with him, never see him again—a messenger brought another letter for Anne. She called me to her. I expected dismissal, but instead she said, “We leave for London tomorrow. Be ready at dawn.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“I may have need of you after all.” She said it not with anger, nor even coldness, but with complete preoccupation. She was like Grandmother when intent on some difficult spell. But then she looked again at me and said, “I mean that I may have need of your full powers, if necessary. With whatever is needed to bring them into being.”

Did that mean—

“Perhaps, perhaps not. Now leave me.”

I went straight to the kitchen, pleaded hunger, and begged a piece of bread. As I nibbled at it, I listened. The messenger had departed and, as usual, left behind a swirl of rumor and speculation. The king missed my lady so much he had sent for her. No, the king sent for her because he was angry with her.

“And why angry? Yer a dalcop, Simon!”

“I know what I know.”

“Ye know nothing.”

“I know the Lady Mary be sick yet again, mayhap dying, and I know what the rumor be at court.”

The cook sneered. “And what might that be, ye great lubber-wort?”

“Poison.”

Everyone fell silent, then wordlessly set about their tasks. No one, not even Simon, would take this further. But all posed to themselves the same query—who would gain from poisoning the Lady Mary, only twelve years old? Who would risk the terrible death that would accompany detection of such a crime?

I may have need of your full powers, if necessary. With whatever is needed to bring them into being.

No. I did not believe it. Whatever else she was, whatever risks she might take to secure the crown, however frustrated and thwarted her desires, Anne had always shown tenderness toward children. And she was not a murderer.

But . . . was the king? Not murder, perhaps. But might he cause illness? If the price of permitting the queen to go to the ailing princess was Katherine’s agreement to annulment . . .

Surely Henry was not capable of such cold cruelty, not toward his own daughter, not even toward a wife he no longer loved.