Page 54 of The Queen’s Witch

“Water . . .”

She went to fetch it herself. While she was out of the chamber, I called for my familiar, and he scurried from a hole in the wall; he must have found a way into the abbey as I lay senseless. Pipkin jumped onto my bed and ducked under the blanket as Cecily returned. She held a cup to my lips, and I took a few sips of water. “E . . . liz . . . beth?”

“Elizabeth is alive. But she will never walk again.”

Then I witnessed something I had never thought to see: Abbess Cecily’s hands over her lovely, careworn face, tears flowing between the long fingers as she sobbed. Protect the child, protect the child. She had failed.

I said, “I . . . can help. Stay . . . to help.”

Cecily lowered her hands. “Oh, please do. You are a blessing from God, Sarah. If your cousin can spare you, stay here at the abbey. I know that God has sent you. I know it.

“You are His gift to me.”

17

Bredham Abbey

1532

I had remained at Bredham Abbey. Where else could I go? Agnes’s cottage still stood, and so did Agnes, but I would rather have died than return there. When Cecily sent Sister Philippa to tell Agnes of my injury, I charged Philippa with an additional message: I wish you well without me unless we meet again. Agnes would understand that I would say nothing of what had occurred on Samhain—indeed, I could not denounce her as a witch without risking my own freedom. She would understand, too, both that I might take that risk if she attempted any further ill to the abbey, and that I held her still to our pact.

Philippa had looked confused at the message, but I had made her repeat it several times. Faithful and trusting as she was, she would deliver it exact.

Elizabeth’s legs could not be restored. I had eased her pain with tisanes, with soothing rubs on the skin, and at really bad times, with spells. I could not ease her confusion and distress, but in April, Roger visited his mother. Shocked at Elizabeth’s condition, he listened gravely to Cecily’s account of All Souls’ Eve and then sought me.

“Sarah, I owe you a great debt. You saved Elizabeth’s life and, I suspect, my mother’s as well—would she have rushed in to save Elizabeth if you had not gotten there first?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I did not . . . I could not see . . .” I could not find my voice. We stood in the herb garden, among the fragrant rosemary, mint, thyme. The soft spring air was warm, and through a window I heard the lay sisters singing as they went about their work. Mating birds twittered in the trees. I could hear, feel, smell, but all I could see was Roger. He stood with his back to the sun, and sunlight tangled in his brown hair, showing unsuspected glints of red. His wide shoulders, in that moment, filled my vision.

What would it be like to be held close to those shoulders, circled by those arms? To be cared about by this man? To allow myself to care for him? I had been alone so long.

He reached out to touch my cheek, and a shuddering thrill ran through me. Roger’s eyes were in shadow, and I could not read their expression, but I heard longing in his voice as he stepped toward me and said what he thought was my name. “Sarah . . .”

And my answer, because now, as in October, it was the only possible answer: “No.”

Grandmother. Joan. Anne. I carried them, all three, on my back, and could not put them down. Roger would not have understood my need to become thrice braided—how could he? He thought the Church needed reform, but he still worshipped his own gods, not mine. He did not even know my true name. Or my true needs, any more than Mark had.

He said, “I wanted only to—”

“No.”

He didn’t answer, and a moment later he nodded, turned, and strode away.

I could have gone after him. I could have made a gesture, a sign, during the fortnight he remained at the abbey. I did not. We avoided each other whenever possible. At meals we uttered only banalities and did not meet each other’s eyes. Cecily, absorbed in Elizabeth’s pain, did not notice.

When not with his mother, Roger devoted himself to cheering Elizabeth. He sat with her for hours, reading or playing simple card games. She brightened and even laughed. When the day was fine, he carried her outside to sit in the spring sunshine.

It was Roger who dealt with Elizabeth’s kin, the one person who finally arrived in response to Cecily’s repeated letters. A cousin, Lord Something, came to sneer at the abbey, stare with revulsion at Elizabeth and reluctantly agreed to increase her pension “now that more care is needed.” I learned from Sister Ursula, increasingly indiscreet as her old mind began to wander, that the increased pension was accompanied by papers related to the northern estate to which Elizabeth, despite her feeble mind, was still legal heiress.

In April, too, I saw Agnes for the first time since Samhain. We came upon each other gathering forest roots. Staring across a sunlit glade, we spoke only eight words, she first.

“Leave me be.”

“Unless to fulfill our pact.”

She snorted, the old Agnes, and hobbled away, leaning on a crooked stick of mud-crusted oak.

Cecily still received letters from her friend at court, and she told me news of London. She treated me now as a companion, a confidant, having no other between Roger’s visits. King Henry had declared himself supreme head of the Church of England. Katherine was banished from court. Henry made Anne a marquess in her own right, an unprecedented honor for a woman. He took her to France to meet the French king—and on his annual Progress around England.