Page 98 of The Queen’s Witch

I spoke, and my words were loud enough to shatter crystal. This world was not mine, but it was the source of my thrice-braided power.

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

And she arose from the black slab, bewildered and lost but clear and solid and sharp edged as everything else in this transformed chapel. She did not speak, but I saw the question in her eyes, and the fear. I reached out to take her hand, but could not reach it: an unseen barrier, hard as marble, separated the living from the dead. Even here.

Before she could be taken from me, I called out again. “I, Alysoun, daughter of Joan, the daughter of Frances, daughter of Camma, descendant in blood of Ælfwynn of olde, summon my grandmother, Frances Rowe.”

She did not appear. I could summon Anne because she was my Third, but Mother Redcap had warned me that a mortal might not be able to wake the dead. The Dark One could have summoned Grandmother, but He would not. He enjoyed my defeat.

Anne was no longer mortal. I turned to her—silent but so solid, so beautiful in the black gown she had worn to her execution, that it was hard to remember she would not walk out of this chapel, throw a flirtatious smile at whichever courtier she met, call imperiously for Mark to play for her.

Mother Redcap, so long ago, had told me, Only the dead can haunt the dead. So I said to Anne, “If you will wake Frances Rowe and her daughter Joan Rowe, I will go to London and protect the Princess Elizabeth with the powers that you know I possess. Your daughter will need protection if Henry’s new queen, Jane Seymour, produces children. She will want only her own issue to hold prominence. If she has no children, Princess Elizabeth and the Lady Mary will be in contention for the throne, and Mary is the elder. Jane might even persuade Henry to exile them both, or worse. I can protect Elizabeth from poison, assassination, abduction. I can fight for her when, as will surely happen, she becomes the innocent seed around which grow plots to seize power. I will do all that if you will consent to wake my grandmother and my . . . my mother. A thrice-braided cord is not easily broken.”

Anne’s face took on the calculating look I had seen in so many privy chambers, at so many feasts in so many great halls, in so many gardens of so many palaces. My breath, despite the cold of the chapel, burned in my chest. Please, Mistress Anne . . . I have come so far . . .

She nodded.

I repeated the summons: “I, Alysoun, daughter of Joan, the daughter of Frances, daughter of Camma, descendant in blood of Ælfwynn of olde, summon through Anne Boleyn, queen of England, both Frances Rowe and her daughter Joan!”

Grandmother appeared, not in wavering form but as solid as the stone floor beneath my feet. Wide eyed, bound in chains so heavy they dragged down her frail arms. Before I could speak, another voice came from behind. I spun around.

“Alysoun,” Joan said. “Little Alysoun, come to visit Mama.”

She, too, was no wavering shade, no rotting corpse as I had visioned her once before, but a body of substance, beautiful and young. Hatred surged through me, and brought, perversely, a deep pleasure.

I said, “Unchain her.”

“Why? Because my daughter, a thrice-braided Sister, demands it? You can no more match me than can those two pathetic mortals you have summoned. No, do not move . . . you cannot move!”

She had hurled a binding spell at me. I countered it easily and tried to spell her in turn. I could not; her powers equaled mine. And she had the Dark One, her master, with her in this chapel, His enjoyment of the scene roiling the cold air like sick-making waves.

My mother and I stared at each other.

I said again, “Unchain my grandmother.”

Joan laughed. “Her chains are not what hurt her, you stupid girl. Watch.”

A pool opened at my feet, close enough that I must jump back to avoid becoming wet. Anne ran to a corner and cowered as the pool spread. It covered most of the chapel floor, and then the water froze to the clearest, whitest ice. So had Mother Redcap, eight years ago, conjured solid images of the past. Joan’s face creased with concentration.

Images arose from the ice and became as vivid, as real, as everything else in the chapel. And, as once before, I did not watch these images—I lived them. Each occasion was occurring again. Was occurring still. Would occur over and over, eternally. Even as I remembered them, I felt in my bones each reality as if for the first time.

And Grandmother, too, witnessed, and felt what I had done.

Greenwich Palace. I used malefic magick to spell George Boleyn’s wife into sickness, and pleasure had flowed through my blood as she vomited and purged from both ends. Grandmother felt my pleasure and grimaced.

Then Greenwich vanished, and I stood in our cottage at Tydd Saint Stephen, watching—feeling—myself as an innocent child, laughing on the stone floor as I grasped at a beam of sunlight from the open door.

Another jolt as the cottage became Suffolk House, and an even greater pleasure flowed through me as I sickened Elinor Sedlow. I glowed, then and now, and Grandmother closed her eyes in misery.

A winter’s night at Tydd Saint Stephen, wind rattling the cottage shutters as Grandmother and I sat side by side by the fire. She instructed me in a simple guard spell. “For use after your ceremony, dear heart, and you become the great and kind cunning woman I know you will be.”

Agnes’s cottage at Bredham.

I wished to look away but could not. The visions had no sounds, but I remembered well every word spoken that day.

Agnes told me to open the door, then summoned her familiar, a toad that hopped in from the weedy garden. As she began a spell in the old tongue, an owl hooted beyond the window. Mist formed, and I knelt on the floor and recited my pledge. “I, Alysoun, daughter of Joan, the daughter of Frances, daughter of Camma, descendant in blood of Ælfwynn of olde, make this vow: From now until Samhain, I will do whatever is asked by this thrice-braided Sister, save for causing grave bodily harm to others, in fair exchange for her teaching me and, should the time come, bestowing on me the grand ceremony to tie the thrice-braided cord.” I added the sacred words Grandmother had taught me.

“I, Agnes Snayth, daughter of Clemence, the daughter of Matilda, daughter of Sywe, descendant in blood of Bodhmall of olde, make this vow: I will teach this cunning woman and tie her thrice-braided cord at any time she asks, in fair exchange that she do whatever I ask of her from now until midnight of Samhain, save only causing grave bodily harm to others. A thrice-braided cord holds strong.” She spoke the sacred words, and the mist before us thickened.