Page 47 of The Queen’s Witch

“Ye think to spell me, girl? This be a spell!”

I could not move. My entire body had gone rigid with Agnes’s binding spell. The next moment, such cramps seized me that I purged from both ends, the same malefic magick I had used to sicken Beatrice.

For that, at least, I knew the counterspell. Still held rigid, my fluids reeking over and beneath me, I banished the cramps. In the reddish glow, Agnes’s eyes widened. Unlike Grandmother or Mother Redcap, Agnes did not know how much natural power I could summon, beyond my simple cunning-woman magick.

Still, it could not match hers.

Excruciating pain ripped through my head. My body toppled into my stink on the stone floor, and I knew no more.

Recovery came slowly. Daylight flooded through open shutters. My head pounded and surged, a sea in storm.

Agnes said, “Ye stupid lubber-wort, did ye think ye could spell a thrice-braided Sister? Ye have the brains of a slug. Now clean yerself and my floor and go to the abbey. Or else ye will see what magick I can truly summon.”

The ache in my head nearly blinded me, but not enough to miss Agnes’s glow as she sat upright in her chair, her fury replaced by a smile of pure, malicious joy. I staggered to my feet and did as she ordered. It was well past noon when I finally set out for the abbey, my head still lanced with intermittent pain like arrows shooting into my skull.

A monk approached on the forest path. We knew each other immediately.

I was a servant on an errand for my mistress.

He was one of the hundreds of friars who wandered England, selling worthless indulgences and even more worthless “holy relics,” pocketing the few coins that gullible peasants could ill afford, then begging from them food and bed.

We were both cunning folk.

“Well met, mistress,” he said. “Where are you bound? To the abbey?”

I pushed past him. The smell of his greasy hair and filthy robe made bile rise from my still unsteady stomach.

The monk caught my arm. “Tarry a moment. Do they know at the abbey what you are? No. They do not. I can tell them. They will believe me, a holy man.”

He was right. I yanked my arm free. “Let me pass, or I will turn you into a toad.”

A moment of fear on that sly face before he smiled. “No, you have not that power. You are not thrice braided. Give me a shilling and I leave here. Do not say you do not have the coin; I know better.”

I had a few shillings left of the New Year’s Day gift that Anne had given me over two years ago. The coins were sewn securely into my kirtle. I raised my skirt, bit open the stitching at the hem, and threw a coin at his feet. He picked it up, smiled again, and walked away. I turned to curse him and saw Roger Ainley half hidden in the trees, watching, close enough to have heard everything.

We stared at each other. I could not think, nor speak.

He said, “I can retrieve your shilling for you.”

Dumbly, I shook my head.

“I was sent to fetch you. My mother became worried when you did not arrive.”

I choked out, “Please do not tell her.”

“Do you intend her, or anyone at the abbey, any harm?”

“No!” I said without thought, but it was the truth. I did not intend anyone at the abbey any harm. Agnes did. But, like so many truths, this was half lie.

Roger weighed my words. Was it my blurted, unconsidered sincerity that convinced him? Or his own next words?

“You are not the first of the cunning folk that I have met. They do no harm, and I have known them to do much good. It is not as if you are a full witch. I do not share much of my mother’s trust in the Church, not as it is being perverted now. Look no further than that monk there.”

I blinked. Did Roger, then, incline toward the new religion like Anne, or reject it like his mother?

He continued, “My mother is intelligent and well educated, but she does not see that the Church needs judicious reform to return to its true path. She is blind to some realities.”

I said, “Are not we all?”