‘Pull back the rug.’ Natalie was standing to one side of it, between the choir stalls.
Reluctantly Joss did as she was bid. Before them on the floor the brass glinted in the lights which were tucked out of sight behind the roof beams. An eerie cold seemed to radiate up from the ornate figure depicted before them. ‘See.’ Natalie pointed with her toe. She was speaking very softly. ‘The symbols of her art are there. The cross is upside down. You don’t notice it until you realise which way up she is. And are those cabalistic signs? We’d have to look them up.’
‘She really was a magician – a real witch, then, not just a poor old woman playing at magic,’ Joss murmured.
‘Oh yes. She was a real witch all right. And I guess she was a very clever one. She may have been under suspicion, but she was never caught at it. How else would she have been buried here?’
‘The king trusted her – ’
‘I don’t think so.’ Natalie was unwrapping the blue silk scarf. Her hands, Joss noticed, were trembling violently. ‘He was wearing armour, remember?’
Not always. Sometimes he wore velvet.
The cold was growing more intense.
‘Do you know what to do?’ Joss said softly. Her eyes were riveted to the wax figures as the silk fell to the floor.
‘I’m going to bless them, then I’m going to separate them, then I’m going to melt them – ’
‘No!’ Joss clutched at Natalie’s arm. ‘No, you mustn’t do that.’
‘Why?’ Natalie’s grey eyes were fixed on hers.
‘Help them. You’ve got to help them, not destroy them. They’ve suffered enough already.’
‘He has killed, Joss.’
‘I know. I know he has. But only because he’s trapped here. Please – the evil is Margaret’s, you said. Don’t destroy them. We have to find a way of helping them.’
They were both looking down at the dolls in Natalie’s hands. ‘Supposing he kills again?’
‘We can stop him. There must be a way. He wasn’t evil.’
Eyes. Blue. Desperate eyes, staring into hers. Arms around her. Ice cold lips on hers –
‘Joss! Joss are you all right?’
Katherine
The wall in her head was crumbling.
He thought she was Katherine! He hadn’t even seen her. It was Katherine he had held, Katherine he had kissed; to Katherine he brought the roses. Her mother, her grandmother – how many other women in the house had he pursued, believing they were his Katherine? She was shivering violently too now. ‘Don’t separate them.’ She held out her hand. ‘Leave them together.’
Natalie put the figures in her palm.
Silently Joss bent and picked up the scarf. Carefully she wrapped the two dolls up once again.
‘They don’t belong in here,’ she said quietly.
‘No.’
‘Can we remove the hold she has over them?’ Joss nodded down at the floor.
‘We can try.’ Natalie stood for a moment deep in thought. ‘The rituals of the church can’t reach her. We need to speak to her in a language she understands. Play her at her own game.’
‘Witchcraft?’ Joss shook her head.
‘I prefer to call it sympathetic magic. We have to cut the ties that bind her to them and to this place. We need something to tie and something to cut.’
‘In the vestry.’ Joss hesitated, looking down at the blue silk package in her hands then she put it down on a pew. ‘I’ll have to look.’
The door was unlocked. Switching on the light she stared round. The flower arranging materials were stacked more or less to one side near a small sink, the church paraphernalia to the other near the locked cupboards where James Wood kept books and vessels and the unconsecrated wine and bread. Her hands still stiff with cold she fumbled across the flower shelves, moving vases and blocks of oasis, jugs and flower wire. Picking up a coil of the fine wire she considered it, then she looked round for the snips. They were there, amongst the scrabble of old dusters and dried fir cones, part of a long-gone Christmas display.
‘Here.’ She handed the wire to Natalie. ‘Will this do?’
Natalie groped for the end of the wire. ‘My hands are so cold – ’
‘I know. It’s only here, near the grave. The rest of the church is bearable.’
Natalie glanced at her. ‘There’s an energy drain. She’s using the heat in some way. Here,’ she nipped off a couple of yards of wire, ‘wind this end round the dolls. I’m going to try and hook this end into the brass somehow.’ She knelt down, the end of the fine wire between her fingers. ‘It’s worn so flat. For five hundred years people have been walking over her.’
‘It doesn’t seem to have done her any harm!’ Joss commented tartly. The wire was fiddly, hard to twist. ‘There, I think that will hold.’
‘Good. Put them down here, on the step, while I try to fix this.’
‘Natalie!’ Turning from putting the dolls down Joss had glanced at the back of the church. ‘Look!’
The strange mist was there again, level with the back pews; it was thinner this time, less distinct, but the shape was clear.
‘She’s going to manifest!’ Natalie breathed. ‘Oh Jesus Christ!’
‘What do we do?’ Joss groped at her throat for the little crucifix and realised with a lurch of terror that it was still where she herself had put it, around Luke’s neck.
‘Stand firm. Visualise a solid wall of light between us and her. Remember she can’t hurt you,’ Natalie went on urgently under her breath. She dropped to her knees again, frantically jabbing at the brass with the fine end of the wire, trying to hook it into the figure.
She could hear Joss’s breath rasping harshly in the back of her throat. ‘Shall I pick them up?’
‘Yes. Carefully. Don’t pull the wire.’ Natalie’s voice was hoarse.