Page 73 of The Queen’s Witch

The Dark One gave His monstrous laugh and it echoed against the stone walls, each repetition more horrific than the last. Beside Him appeared the faint, shifting form of Grandmother.

“I, Alysoun, daughter of Joan, the daughter of Frances, daughter of Camma, the descendant in blood of Ælfwynn of olde, summon my Third, Anne Boleyn, queen of England!”

The Dark One smiled, and His silent expression was even more terrible than His laugh. It promised pain, torment, despair, and His joy in mortals’ despair.

Grandmother’s form disappeared.

“Bring her back! What have you done with her! Why can I not summon my Third?”

Then the most monstrous occurrence of all: another wavering form, whom I knew to be Joan. Not beautiful, she was a rotting corpse, worms crawling in her eyes, her naked flesh covered with maggots. But she seemed unhurt, and strong, with a toothless smile as she spoke in a voice so hollow the words seemed to come from deep in the earth:

“Third . . . issss . . . living persssson.”

And I understood.

Sudden pain pierced my chest. I cried out and fell to the floor. When I could breathe again, the Dark One and Joan were gone. The fire crackled on the hearth, and Pipkin scurried away into the darkness of the abbey.

All that remained was a scorch mark on the stone floor.

No, that was not all—my fury remained, doubled, trebled, infusing me with strength and bloodred rage. I grabbed a burning stick of firewood for a torch and ran through the forest. Heedless of dry timber, heedless of cold, heedless of the thinned boundary between this realm and the Otherworld, I ran to Agnes Snayth’s cottage, burst through her spells and barred door with my own spells, stronger now, and grabbed the old woman around the throat.

“You did not tell me! You did not tell me that even thrice braided I cannot summon my living-person Third! You did not tell me!”

“Ye . . . did not . . . ask.”

“Our pact was that you teach me!”

“Not . . . all . . .” Her eyes bulged as I cut off her breath. Her spells flew furiously at me, but now mine countered. I was younger, stronger, gifted with more natural ability. She could not match me. I would kill her. My fingers tightened.

“Ye must . . . be . . . with her and . . .”

“And what?”

“She . . . must choose.”

I loosened my hands. “Choose what? My Third must choose what?”

“To be . . .”

“Be what? Part of a summoning?”

“Aye . . .”

Anne must choose. As she had chosen to be part of my thrice-braided ceremony. Whenever I summoned the Dark One for great magick, Anne, a living person, must agree to take part.

Rage blinded me, and my hand tightened again on Agnes’s neck.

Then loosened. I could not do it. I could not kill.

But Agnes’s pain and fear sent an unholy joy coursing through my rage. I dropped her on the floor, where she lay gasping as I sent spell after spell through the cottage. The shutters flew off the windows. The furniture burst into flame. The fire spread to her bed. I grabbed her by the shoulders and dragged her outside before the fire could reach the walls, and then I aided the flames to collapse the roof and burn, burn, burn.

Finally, I left her there on the cold dirt path. She could spell herself some aid, or die there, as she chose. Let the moon, that high and cold and silent badge of the Goddess who had not helped me, witness Agnes’s fate. I walked back to the abbey and lay in Abbess Cecily’s closet. All joy in destruction spent, all power expended, I wept at my failure.

And thus Samhain ended.

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Eltham Palace