Page 67 of The Queen’s Witch

“Then begin. I am ready.”

I lit candles and closed the cottage door and shutters. The hearth fire flitted over the two faces, Anne’s drawn with tension, Agnes’s still incredulous. I did not know what she thought of my Third. I did not care.

“Familiar mine, come to me.” Pipkin scurried from under the bed, and I picked him up.

Agnes summoned her toad—where was her Third? I had always supposed her Third to be that owl, but the shutters were closed tight. If the owl were close enough, would it count as present? I did not know. During my first ceremony, both Mother Redcap’s familiar and her Third had been with her in our cottage.

Agnes began to chant in the old language. They were not the words from my Tydd Saint Stephen ceremony but those from our last Samhain together, when she had toppled the bell tower. She was summoning the Dark One.

As on that night, a red glow formed on the floor, deep as flame, and the cloud of small dark shapes like gnats appeared. That had not happened when Mother Redcap summoned the Dark One. All at once I understood—Agnes’s Third was not an owl. Her Third was a demon, one or perhaps all of the swarming black shapes.

The stone floor smoked. Anne cried out and tried to run, but her body would not move. “Ye cannot leave until this is done,” Agnes gasped. The ceremony was draining her power. I groaned softly: What if Agnes died before we finished?

It was, and was not, like that night in the forest. There was no thinning of the boundary between this and the Otherworld; it was not Samhain. There was no misty, indistinct form of Grandmother. But now, as then, the Dark One appeared. I could see Him only in wavering snatches, but what I could see was again beautiful, male to a degree no human man could be, naked beauty that no mortal could begin to match.

He smiled at Anne.

Her face was a mask of frozen fear. She could not run, could not speak, held by the spell of binding.

Agnes said to her, “Ye feel it, do ye not? But have no fright, Yer Grace, He be not here for ye. Ye be safe. Alysoun, repeat my words. I, Alysoun, daughter of Joan, the daughter of Frances, daughter of Camma, the descendant in blood of Ælfwynn of olde . . .”

“I, Alysoun, daughter of Joan, the daughter of Frances, daughter of Camma, the descendant in blood of Ælfwynn of olde . . .”

“. . . rise from cunning woman to thrice-braided Sister, from night to dawn, servant of the gods who rule us, that I may do the great magicks both benevolent and malefic.”

“. . . rise from cunning woman to thrice-braided Sister, from night to dawn, servant of the gods who rule us, that I may do the great magicks both benevolent and malefic.”

“The blood sacrifice.”

I opened my bodice and held Pipkin to my breast. The mouse bit deeply, far more painfully than at my cunning-woman ceremony. I winced.

Holding my familiar tightly in my right hand, I picked up Agnes’s toad, the symbol of her power now releasing mine, and held it to my breast. When the toad was slimed with my blood, I dropped it and it hopped to Agnes, leaving a bloody track on the floor.

“Now drink.”

With a shaky hand smelling of the noxious toad, I picked up the crude wooden goblet holding the potion Agnes had prepared. As I drank, she chanted. Power surged through me, so strong that my vision wavered. Into my head came a thousand confused pictures, some so terrible that bile rose in my throat, then a brief image of the Goddess beside the naked Dark One before the image vanished, and I stood gripping the table to keep from falling over.

A monstrous laugh from the wavering red glow, before it, too, vanished. We three mortals stood in an ordinary, decrepit cottage lit only by a flickering hearth; the candles had gone out. Anne slumped to the floor.

“’Tis only . . . fear,” Agnes choked out. “She be . . . fine.”

It was Agnes who did not look fine. Her arms and legs hung limply over her chair; her head lolled back on its scrawny neck. She looked as if my ceremony might kill her. But she said, “Done . . . go. Go.”

I knelt by Anne as she revived. Her gaze could have slain demons. “How dare you not tell me it would be so? I will have you drawn and quartered! I am the queen of England!”

“Yes. And I am now a thrice-braided witch.”

No fear could dampen her quick mind for very long. She said, “Are you threatening me? Me?”

“No, Your Grace. I would never do that. I am at your service.”

She struggled to sit up, her eyes not leaving mine. “I heard tell of a witch who turned a woman into a toad. Have you now the power . . . Can you do that?”

I could lie. But I had a better notion, one that would reassure her. “Yes, I have that power. But not over you, of course, who bear the protection of the holy oil that anointed you at your coronation.”

Relief on that drawn face. But I did not want her too sure of me. Before I could say more, she spoke with all the venom of which I knew her capable.

“If you ever seek to harm me, or my daughter, I will denounce you as a witch. You will hang, or worse. A witch can be killed, no matter how many ‘braids’ she fancies herself to have.”