Page 69 of The Queen’s Witch

Just for me and thee.”

I watched Henry turn to Anne and say something. She smiled and nodded. For just a moment they were young again, touched by music on a woodsmoke-scented night.

So I was not surprised by Emma’s news when I encountered her in the kitchen. She could not resist saying, “The king will be with Her Grace this night.”

I said, “So you are not needed.”

“And you are never needed,” she retorted, elbowing past me for her belated dinner.

The larger question was, Why? If the king still chose to lie with his wife, amatory magick was not needed. Either Anne had not expected this bedding, or Henry still hoped to conceive a child with her but perhaps could not summon enough skill or power to complete the act. He was much fatter now, his leg pained him from a fall from his horse, and he was no longer young.

But Anne and I had made plans. Tomorrow night Henry would go to her a second time, and then he would perform as if he were again eighteen.

Amatory magick, although simple to enact, was not simple to concoct. Most of what I needed I already had among my roots and herbs, but the crucial element must be fresh. I went to the forest in search of a natterjack toad, which took a few hours to find. Rarer and smaller than the common toad, the ugly, innocent creature crawled rather than hopped. It earned its name from its rasping mating call in the spring. I knew one by the yellow stripe down its back and put it in a cloth bag. This one would never rasp for a mate again.

Beside a small forest stream, I built a fire and set over it a pot filled with new milk, both obtained from the Wolvesey dairy for the exorbitant fee of tuppence paid to a dairy maid. When the milk was boiling, I placed the toad in, holding it there with a stick until it ceased struggling. I chanted the spell, and a troubling rush of pleasure filled my veins, a deeper pleasure than ever before.

From the success of my first spell as a thrice-braided witch? Or from something darker? Mother Redcap: the joy of malefic magick. I shuddered, but did not stop chanting. This was justified by necessity, and after Grandmother was freed, I would leave malefic magick behind forever.

I boiled the toad long after it was dead, adding water from the stream as the liquid boiled away. When most of the flesh had fallen off the animal, I poured out the pot and dumped the bones on the ground, carefully picking through them until I found the one I sought, from the left shoulder. The rest I buried.

After washing the bone and drying it in the sun, I ground it with mortar and pestle. When it was mixed with the powders of mandragora and blue periwinkle, both poison if used in the wrong proportions, I sweetened the powders into a sticky paste with honey as I chanted the amatory spell. Then I spilled drops of my own blood, the necessary sacrifice, on a scrap of brown cloth. The blood dried in the sun, invisible. On top of it I smeared the potion. The charm was now complete.

Exhausted, I fell into a sleep I could not forestall, so great had been my expenditure. I barely had time to set a guard ward. A dream came quickly.

I lay asleep, the charm tasting bittersweet on my lips. I woke as a man knelt above me, and desire surged through my breasts and loins. I reached for Mark, but when I opened my eyes, the man was not Mark but Roger Ainley. My desire grew as he kissed me, until I was on fire for him. Then all at once, the man atop me was not Roger but King Henry. I could feel his heavy bulk, smell the pomade in his beard. I woke with a shriek.

No one was near. No one had heard me cry out. The sun slanted so low that it turned the stream water to gold. Shaky, I nonetheless ran back to Wolvesey, only moments before the queen emerged on her brother’s arm to walk in the garden. We met as planned, and I slipped her the folded cloth.

A quick whispered reminder: “It will work only this one night, Your Grace.”

She did not reply. Lord Rochford, most likely schooled by Anne, did not frown at me, nor even look at me, but the vein above his velvet collar pulsed furiously.

A moment only, and I had given the queen of England an aid to help her conceive, for the charm could, if the time of month was right, increase male potency as well as desire.

What it could not do was guarantee pregnancy, nor a male child.

I lingered in a servants’ doorway of the great hall. When the evening’s music and dancing finished, I watched as the king left for his own chambers, trailed by his attendants. Anne and her ladies remained. She turned in a window embrasure, and I saw the quick furtive moment when she wiped her lips with the cloth of amatory magick.

The king must be awaiting her in her rooms. But that was not like Henry. He waited for no one. And then I remembered that old palaces like this often had secret passageways in the walls. Was she going to descend from her lodgings to his, directly below? But why? And she had not kissed him since smearing the charm on her lips.

Anne walked to the five musicians and held up her hand. They stopped playing. “You all played uncommonly well tonight. I would reward you all.”

She handed a coin to each of the first four men. They thanked her, bowing deeply. Mark was last. Anne said, “Oh, I have no more coin.”

“It matters not, Your Grace. Think not of it.”

She looked displeased. “You must not speak to me as if you are a nobleman. You are an inferior person.”

“No, no, a look suffices.”

Suddenly Anne smiled. “But such sweet songs must have their reward.” She leaned forward and laid her lips briefly on his. “Make more sweet songs, sweet singer.” At his startled look, she gave a mocking laugh, whirled, and called for her ladies.

Mark? I did not understand. So much feeling swamped me that I could not think. Then my wits returned. Of course. Anne needed a son. Henry had given her a daughter and two miscarriages. He was aging badly; his seed might not be strong. But Mark was young and handsome, and Norfolk peasant stock was sturdy. And as an inferior person, he would be disbelieved if he boasted. If necessary, he could be killed.

But Anne’s ladies slept in the room beside hers, and Emma usually slept in Anne’s chamber, though not always. Royal guards stood all night beyond the privy chamber door. If there were secret passageways, how would Mark know of them?

But servants know everything. All it would take was one talkative serving maid, hoping to impress the queen’s handsome musician with her knowledge of the palace. Or a Winchester musician who had played earlier with Mark, as they drank ale and conversed. Or even . . .