Free The Secrets of Life and Death by Rebecca Alexander

until Heinrich came along, he would have said they were just as happy. Just more … separate as their careers took them to different places. When she left she said her love had just faded away, which was fine for her, but he didn’t feel any different. He shook off the melancholy and put some music on in the study. He checked his university email account. Two excuses why assignments would be late, one reminder about a budget meeting, and an email from Mackenzie at the British Museum. He opened it.
    Hi Felix,
    I’ve done a detailed pic for you of each side of the medals. The curator of the collection said someone else was looking at them a few weeks ago. She wanted to know the vendor too; I’m not sure if they gave the information to her. Then, last week, a man from some police task force asked who sold them and they gave the info out. Let me know when you solve the murder and catch the bad guy.
    All the best,
MM
    He looked at the images Mackenzie had attached to the email. They were much better quality than the quick scans Rose had done. Mackenzie had also included files of every one of the sixty or so sheets of paper and vellum that had been auctioned. The folded and damaged paper, hatched with Kelley’s illegible script, was much clearer in the museum’s scans. He opened them, one at a time, on the screen. Kelley’s spellings were inconsistent as well as archaic, and he switched into Latin frequently. Felix started to see whole phrases. Far from being notes of experiments or alchemical formulae, the pages seemed to be in journal form. A sentence unravelled itself from loops and blotches.
    Her mother gave byrthe to a chyld – when she had been ded fulle five yeares …

Chapter 12
    ‘It is said in Poland that nowhere is the line between alive and dead finer, than in Transylvania. Only when a corpse is bloated and festering, or entirely beheaded, is it believed dead.’
    Edward Kelley
17 November 1585
Niepolomice
    Her mother gave birth to a child – when she had been dead fully five years? It filled my mind with horrid possibilities.
    I looked at Dee, whose hair was already standing on end from being asleep, and back to the long face of the king.
    ‘You do not believe me. What rational being could? I was just a small child when my parents were ambushed on the road to Buda.’ Istvan looked troubled, his face reddened by the glow from the fire as it brightened. A tendril of smoke stretched out and caught in my throat.
    ‘We have seen many things that have defied belief, your Majesty,’ Dee conceded. ‘Yet they were found to be true.’
    The king stretched back in his chair, looking first at me, then at Dee, as if looking for signs of disbelief or deception. I gathered myself in my cloak, which I had hung upon the end of the bed to dry. I shall tell you the story in his words, for to relate it makes me shiver.
    ‘My father, the Voivode of Transylvania, was attacked by rebels. He managed to get my mother, Katalin, safely to the citadel at Poenari before he died of his wounds. But she had been gored in the side by a pike, and her women could not staunch the bleeding. They feared, not just for her life but that of her unborn child. They called upon a woman, known to the local peasants as Zsuzsanna, who was reputed to be skilled in herbs and midwifery, to save their mistress.
    ‘She sent my mother’s servants away, then demanded faggots of firewood, as many as the castle held. She barricaded the door to the tower where my mother lay, close to death. All night the people of the castle heard the terrible screams and moans of my mother, as if she was being tortured by the Turks, and smoke hung over the stronghold.
    ‘My mother’s servants tried to break into the tower, but the soldiers were afraid and stopped them. The castle guards confessed that Zsuzsanna was a notorious sorceress. After a night of terrible suffering, the door was unlocked and my mother’s retainers rushed to her aid.
    ‘Their lady, though