Chapter 12
Lina
The candles were guttering by the time Marguerite had finished laying out her proposal, and Lina’s head ached from the long hours of conversation. (And from the wine. She’d forgotten how much better Spanish wine was than what she’d suffered drinking in England.)
In theory, Marguerite’s goal to offer safe harbor to Europe’s witches was a lovely one, but in practice, Lina couldn’t see how they could accomplish saving more than just one or two women they happened to stumble upon.
Yes, they could follow rumors from village to village across the Continent, but that was hardly a strategy for success.
Marguerite did have a plan, but it was one of her most unconventional yet.
“You’re familiar with Jeanne d’Arc?” Marguerite asked. They had moved from the dining table to a set of chairs in her quarters, and it took rather a lot of Lina’s energy to remain sitting upright when all she wanted to do was curl up and fall asleep after this longest of days.
Lina and Anne nodded. Everyone knew of the peasant girl who had led the French armies against the English a hundred years ago.
She was one of the last great female warriors of the age, and her haunting end at the hands of the English Church had made her into a martyr of sorts for the French.
Whether or not her visions or holy guidance had been real, she had by all accounts known battle strategy better than most generals Lina had met.
“Well, Jeanne had a sister, and her line has continued unbroken. The family has lived quietly in Orléans all this time, and I would never have heard of their existence until the youngest daughter began styling herself as Gisa d’Arc and working as a mystic[*1] in Orléans.”
“You’re certain she’s not a charlatan borrowing the name?” Anne asked.
“As certain as I can be without meeting her myself. Jeanne’s blood flows in her veins, and so Gisa is where we begin.
From what I have read—and it took some laborious and dusty research in the archives of the royal library at Chateau de Blois—a powerful seer could help us find witches and even communicate with other mystics.
I’ve long been thinking that the greatest impediment to the Sisterhood’s growth was the exchange of ideas.
Salons only worked for those in close proximity, and letters could too easily fall into the wrong hands—never mind that it could take months for notes to pass between cities and countries.
A network of women able to speak mind to mind… now that would change the tide.”
“Is that how their power works?” Lina wondered, turning to Anne.
She hadn’t forgotten the blithe disregard Marguerite had shown Anne earlier that night.
She hadn’t expected to come to Anne’s defense, but she couldn’t let the slight go by.
Lina knew that the leader of the Sisterhood was herself brilliant and well-informed by her network of ladies and spies, but she was occasionally prone to thinking herself omniscient, the mother who knew all and knew best. If Lina had learned anything as a queen, it was that there was always someone cleverer than she was in the room, and the best thing to do was to engage their expertise.
And when it came to magick, Anne was the expert.
The witch made a face, tipping her head back and forth.
“After a fashion. Mysticism is a type of magick, though rather than blood, mystics sacrifice their minds, their sanity. Similar power, different application, and steeper cost. I don’t know how many visions or prophecies it takes to reach the tipping point, but Jeanne d’Arc is told among my people as a cautionary tale, someone who stretched her power too far and drove herself mad. ”
“And now mysticism has been twisted by the church,” Marguerite cut in. “They encourage women to starve themselves into a hallucinatory state to be closer to God, which more often than not leads to their deaths.”
Anne nodded. “Real prophecy does not require such efforts—this Gisa should be able to foretell future events through dreams alone. Some seers have waking dreams as well, where they can disappear inside their minds even while otherwise conscious. As far as I understand it, you’re correct that mystics are also able to visit one another in their dreams. But again, all of it comes with a price. ”
Lina’s next question was for Marguerite. “Why have you not recruited Gisa or others sooner?”
Marguerite sighed, pushing a lock of hair back behind her ear.
“I have tried. But many mystics are commonfolk—or if they are among the nobility, they keep it quiet—leaving me little opportunity to contact them directly. It’s not as though the princess of France can go knocking on doors in Orléans without inviting attention.
The few mystics in the clutches of the church I have spoken to suspect the Hellebore Sisterhood to be some kind of trap, a way to test the veracity of their faith or loyalty to whichever crown they live under.
Between the Inquisition, the witch hunts, and the regular torture of suspected heretics, there is little reason for them to trust someone in my position, no matter what safety I promise them. ”
“So you are asking us to lead the charge in a battle you’ve already lost,” Lina concluded.
Marguerite winked. “Just like Jeanne d’Arc.”
Marguerite granted them a few weeks in Spain to rest, plan, and enjoy the Christmas holidays. The Sisterhood leader returned to Paris in December, and while she was gone, Lina demanded Anne teach her everything she could about magick.
“If I am going to be a witch finder, I have to understand how your power works,” Lina told Anne one morning.
They were walking back from breakfast, one of the meals all the inhabitants of Santa Cruz, some two hundred of them, shared.
Lina’s belly was filled with warm bread and honey-soaked figs, and she was ready to put that fuel to use.
Anne paused in the hallway, her expression conflicted. “We don’t normally share our secrets with outsiders.”
Lina was surprised to find that the word outsiders smarted. “You don’t trust me?”
The other woman seemed to think about it for a moment, and every second that ticked by did something strange to Lina’s heart. Why did she care if Anne Boleyn of all people trusted her? When had the witch stopped feeling like an adversary and started to feel like a friend?
At last, Anne flashed a grin. “I trust you,” she said, and Lina bit back a sigh of relief. “Come with me.”
Anne’s room was the mirror of Lina’s with the exception of the two dozen or so spell books Marguerite had provided ahead of their arrival.
A “clandestine” purchase, the Sisterhood leader had said of those books, noting they’d cost her quite the sum.
Anne went to one of the shelves, traced her fingers along the spines, and selected a small, paperbound book.
“Little girls—those who have learned their letters, that is—are given books like these,” she said, leafing through the pages before handing it to Lina. “Easy to throw in the fire and burn to ash if you’re caught.”
There were no words on the cover—Lina was starting to recognize this as one of the cautious, protective hallmarks of witchcraft—but inside were fifty or so pages written for young readers with inked drawings of hands and knives.
“These aren’t spells,” Lina observed. Everything was written in Spanish, not the unfamiliar language she’d heard Anne use from time to time.
Anne shook her head. “We start by learning about the blood. How to cut, how to heal. How to avoid the dangers of deep wounds in the wrong places. How to pace yourself so you don’t use up too much blood or magick too quickly.
You have to understand the cost of the sacrifice before you can agree to make it. ”
“Why blood?” Lina mused as she scanned the text.
“Who would want to exchange pain for power?” She thought about the words for a second, then shook her head.
“That’s a ridiculous question. Everyone in the world wants power, and I am sure many of them would do more than prick their fingers to get it. ”
At that, Anne gave a faint smile. “I think my sister asked our grandmother the same thing. I’ll give you the answer Grandmam had: ‘Because blood is the most precious thing you own.’ That coming from a woman with nearly as many jewels as a queen.”
She looked down at her hands, and Lina caught sight of the ridged scar that ran across her palm from last May. “I won’t lie to you and say it doesn’t hurt, because it does.”
“And yet you do it anyway.”
Anne shrugged. “A witch doesn’t have to use her power. It can be dormant; it can be ignored. Some women never know they have it or are never taught to use it at all. Though once you know it’s there and you don’t use it, it gets…tickly. Like a feather against your skin.”
“So that’s how you’ve felt since the Tower?” Lina didn’t mean to ask the question so bluntly, but she’d noticed that Anne had hardly touched her bloodletting knife in the last six months. “I know you went through quite the ordeal. I understand why you would be hesitant.”
“I—” Anne’s voice was suddenly thick, and she seemed to be hunting for the right words. “I have never used curses like that before. It took more from me than I expected and now…now I am not sure how much more I want to give.”
Politely, to give the witch a moment to collect herself, Lina turned her attention back to the primer she held. “Well, then perhaps we can both start from the beginning.”