Free Witchfall by Victoria Lamb Page B

again, a terrible force crushing me to the floor so that I could neither move nor speak, and I knew that we were in danger.
    ‘Elizabeth,’ the spirit of Anne Boleyn said mournfully, and held out her hand to the princess. Her voice was like the rustle of dead leaves in the winter. ‘Come to me, my daughter. You must come to me.’
    Staring back at her mother’s ghost in a kind of trance, the Lady Elizabeth stirred, gathering her skirts as though to rise.
    Frantically, I sought her gaze, struggling to say the word ‘No!’, but all I could manage was a muffled groan from behind enchantment-sealed lips. I knew Elizabeth must not leave the circle I had marked out with hot tallow or she would no longer be protected. Yet she seemed oblivious to my warning.
    Elizabeth stood up, swaying, and walked to the edge of the circle. As though in a trance, she took one step towards the conjured spirit, then another, and stood at last outside the circle.
    The candle blew out as though a window had beenthrown open in a wind, plunging the chamber into darkness. The fire was little more than glowing embers by which I could still see the floating silver ghost of Anne Boleyn, hands outstretched, waiting for her daughter.
    Elizabeth gasped and missed her footing, stumbling in the dark. As she righted herself, the shadowy room began to break apart in waves, the white-washed plaster disintegrating and flying away. The four walls of her chamber peeled away to reveal a high, desolate place and a storm howling about our ears. A violent wind tore at Elizabeth’s hair as she stood outside the circle, her face hidden from me, her thin body buffeted by forces I could not control.
    ‘My Lady Elizabeth!’ I cried, the weight on my back immense now, my head bowed almost to the floor by its burden. ‘Hurry, step back inside the circle!’
    But my words were whipped away by the wind, nothing but a cry in the darkness. Desperate to save my mistress, I staggered to the edge of the circle and reached out an arm, groping for the hem of her gown in the whirling maelstrom.
    ‘Come . . . back . . . my lady!’
    For a second, my fingers brushed some silken fabric, and I gripped hard, knowing I had her. But before I could drag the princess back inside the safe territory of the circle, the calamity I had dreaded finally happened. The seething darkness above us, the weight I had been carrying on my back ever since we began the ritual, suddenly came crashing down and split the darkness asunder. For a few momentsthere was chaos. Light on the one side battled dark on the other, jagged lightning bolts and storm clouds raging above our heads. At last there was a terrifying crack, and the place of desolation juddered beneath our feet, as though the earth itself had broken in two.
    Then up out of the centre of the circle, the very spot where I had set the candle and told Elizabeth to call forth the spirit, came a roaring black wind like a tornado. This wind swept up and round with immense power, scattering everything in its path and spinning me backwards like a top. I fell into what remained of the tallow-marked circle, still holding onto the hem of the princess’s gown and dragging her on top of me.
    As soon as Elizabeth’s body crashed back into the circle, there was an incoherent cry of rage from the darkness. The black wind funnelled itself into a body and soared upwards – up, up, up, until it was almost out of sight. Then the air steadied and I realized that I was lying on my back on a hard wooden floor, staring up at the hearth in Elizabeth’s bedchamber, where a dark cloud had just vanished up the chimney.
    What on earth had just happened?
    The silver ghost of Anne Boleyn put her face in her hands and wept, her outline growing thinner and less distinct until she too was gone, her spirit fading into nothingness like the last shreds of a mist.
    Elizabeth, kneeling beside me in the darkness, alsowept and called on Anne Boleyn in vain. Nobody answered.
    I