Page 32 of The Queen’s Witch

I did know, of course, but said nothing.

“They blame me for the rains in winter, the Sweat in summer, the poor harvest in autumn. The rains—they blame me for rain! And they murmur in corners that I have bewitched the king with amatory magick.”

What to say to that? But I need not speak; she had not finished. “To have you near will only worsen evil rumors.”

“I can protect you if—”

“You cannot. You are only a cunning woman, as you have so often told me.”

“But that is my argument, my lady. I am a cunning woman now, but with your help I can become so much more. I can then provide powerful aid in gaining what you wish to have!”

A mistake—the moment the words left my lips, I knew. Anne thought that she had already gained what she wished, without my aid, and could go on doing so. And I could not, in all truth, say she was mistaken.

She said coldly, “The princess dowager is being sent back to Richmond, and I am to stay here in Greenwich with His Majesty. You will leave the palace tomorrow. If you attempt, at any time and in any way, to plot with those who oppose me, or if you are stupid enough to oppose me yourself, I promise that I will crush you. Do you understand me, Elyn?”

“Yes.”

“Then go.” She even opened the door to her outer rooms, ushering me out.

I went to my alcove for a few hours of rest until dawn, but sleep would not come. At first light, before any but servants stirred, I dressed again in the boy’s clothing I had put off when I came to Hever. I gathered my few things into a bundle, called Pipkin to me, and pocketed him. A sleepy guard let me out of the palace gate.

I had no place to go. Tydd Saint Stephen held nothing for me but two graves and a broken hope of marriage. London was dangerous, dirty, ridden with pestilence. I stood in a light, cold rain, until I began walking south. It would offer the most open country, and I could at least move toward the sound and taste of the sea.

12

Bredham

1531

I found menial work at Brighton, at Worthing, at Southampton. At those ports, the sea was not as I’d known it in Tydd Saint Stephen. It did not smell of salty freshness but of ships’ bilge, dead fish, and all manner of city waste. Ships thronged the harbors, bringing trade goods from Spain, wine from France, coal and iron and timber from along the coast. Poor people drifted into towns, looking for work, I among them.

I stayed longest in Southampton, because the smaller villages along the coast offered no work. The two pounds from Anne, all but a few coins, lay snugly sewn into my kirtle. I found service as a scullery maid in a merchant’s house. I spoke as little as possible, painted myself dour and unfriendly. There was no place I preferred to go, and so no reason to leave the scullery, with its endless rough scrubbing of pots and plate and floors. There I upheld my reputation as one too stupid for conversation. Food, although plentiful enough, had no taste. Colors faded to dull grays. It was not life, merely existence punctuated by black moods of failure.

Two years drained away like filthy water at a long, slow ebb.

Despair was not a good traveling companion. Sacred days came and went, and each Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh, I prepared for myself a tisane to bring sleep so deep a canon could not awaken me. If there were dreams, I did not remember them. Only on Samhain, when the veil between the Otherworld and ours thinned, did I stay awake, but there was never any sign from Grandmother, Joan, the Dark One, or the Goddess. Only the terrible dream about Grandmother’s skin blackening and burning, the stench of fire, and the Dark One’s mocking laugh. Each Samhain the same dream, with never any way to know if it was fashioned from monstrous truth in the Otherworld, or from my own equally monstrous dread.

A third April, another spring. Softer air and gentler winds. A nightingale nested in the garden, and one night its song drew me outside. I listened, taking no pleasure in the sweet music but unwilling to return to my pallet. That night I realized that if I stayed longer in this life, I may as well be dead. This was not life. Movement could not advance aims I did not have, nor bring consolation for what I had lost, but it might at least keep me from self-murder. And not only from self-murder—if I were among the dead, what would stop Joan from torturing me as well as Grandmother?

The next day I collected my paltry wages and headed inland, Pipkin scampering alongside.

It proved the right choice. Walking northwest on April roads, once more dressed as a boy, some of my despair lifted. Day by day, the air regained its sweetness, smelling of primrose and gillyflowers, columbine and violets. I could once more sleep under the stars, beneath a hedgerow or behind a thicket, a guard ward set for protection. I even encountered a few cunning folk in villages or farm cottages. They gave me shelter for a night and a meal, and all at once I could taste the fresh strawberries, the ham carefully preserved through the winter. I listened to their talk but told them nothing, including how much more grateful I was for their simple kindnesses than they could ever suspect. In the dragging, dreary years, I had met with little kindness, and no understanding. But then, I had sought neither. I had sought nothing, hoped for nothing.

There was no reason to keep walking north—or east or west—but something drew me on. And on Beltane, I came to Bredham Abbey.

There would be no sacred fires tonight, not here. Cunning folk had warned me of the Church’s growing hatred toward all magick. The Sisterhood was thought to be in league with the devil. Authorities were arresting Sisters no matter what kinds of magick they performed. Not yet widespread, not consistently enforced, but “worse will come, mark my words, Kit.”

On my travels as a boy, I was Kit Lond.

The abbey rose before me, a mile from the village of Bredham. It was small compared to many religious houses and made of weathered gray stone, but beautiful in its tall, slender bell tower, rose window of colored glass, budding vines climbing the walls. The tower rang Terce, and I realized it possessed but a single bell. I gave the abbey wide berth and walked a path into the surrounding forest.

Ahhhhawwwh!

A scream unlike any I had ever heard, like an animal at first and ending like a woman. It shivered me to my guts. I darted through trees toward the monstrous sound.

And knew at once what I was looking at.

A very old woman lay with her knee caught in an iron trap of a sort I had never seen. Cruel spikes cut deeply into her leg, which lay cocked at an unnatural angle. Bone protruded from flesh, both bloody. But she had not been in that form when she bounded into the hidden trap, or it would have caught her ankle, not her knee. Spells radiated from her writhing body. She was thrice braided; she had taken the form of a hare, and the trap had closed on her.