The Daylight Gate by Jeanette Winterson Read Free Book Online

there, slumped at the table, blood streaming down her arm. There was a smell of burning.
    I ran to her – my loved one, my lover, my love – and saw a parchment and paper on the desk. She was still and quiet. I did not know if she was faint or dead. I took some water and roused her.
    ‘I have sold my Soul,’ she said. ‘I have signed in blood.’
    The following day she left the house on Bankside and took a splendid lodging in Vauxhall by the Pleasure Gardens. She had a number of young men and women living there with her. Every night there were parties and revels. Every day the house was closed and silent.
    I called on her many times but her servants had been instructed not to admit me. I had no idea where her money had come from and I assumed she had become the mistress of a lord or a duke.
    I never believed what she had said about her Soul.
    And then John Dee came briefly back to London.
    By this time the laboratory had been left empty. We had both abandoned the Great Work. John Dee came to see me and it is true I felt ashamed because all of this was through him – my chance at life had been through him.
    ‘Do you suppose,’ he said, ‘that the work was about gold, that it was about fancy stuffs such as magenta dyes? Do you not suppose it was about the Soul?’
    ‘I do not know about the Soul,’ I said. ‘We are required to live as we must while we can.’
    ‘Do you believe in God?’
    ‘I don’t think I do.’
    John Dee nodded. ‘Do you believe in the life to come?’
    ‘I don’t think I do.’
    ‘Yet you have seen many strange things with me, have you not? Apparitions, spectres, unaccountable sights not of human form?’
    ‘I think these things are the magick of our own minds, not visitations from elsewhere.’
    ‘Then our minds must be multitudes indeed.’
    ‘I think we are worlds compressed into human form.’
    John Dee looked at me and smiled. ‘Worlds compressed into human form. I like it that you say that . Whatever you are you are not the pragmatist I feared. And I believe that you will guard the secrets that you know – our secrets of alchemy and great intent?’
    I told him I was trustworthy and he said he had always thought it so. Then his face clouded. ‘Elizabeth. I cannot save her. She has taken the Left-Hand Path.’
    ‘Do you say that there is a Devil – pitchfork, hooves, Hell – who has taken her Soul? Do you say that?’
    ‘The Dark Gentleman has neither pitchfork nor hooves but he is Lord of Hell.’
    That night I wrote a letter to Elizabeth begging her to see me.

The Net
     
    CHRISTOPHER SOUTHWORTH WAS on his feet. There was a commotion in the courtyard outside the window. Alice looked out. She could see Harry Hargreaves talking angrily to her groom. His men had caught someone.
    Christopher was pulling on his boots and fastening his dagger. She gave him a key. ‘My study is locked. Stay out of sight until I come for you.’
    Alice tied up her hair, put on a dressing gown, took up a candle.
    As she was about to go, Christopher caught her arm. ‘You said that time was 1582. That was thirty years ago, Alice. How old are you?’
    She said nothing. She opened the door and went downstairs. Her servants were in the hall. There was Constable Hargreaves and James Device.
    ‘James! Have they caught you for poaching on my land?’
    ‘He escaped armed guard at Malkin Tower,’ said Hargreaves.
    ‘I dreamed I was a hare and as a hare I ran away.’
    ‘And what are you doing here, Jem?’ said Alice.
    Jem looked at Alice and said nothing. Hargreaves punched him in the stomach, He doubled up, winded. ‘Looking for a place to hide.’
    ‘And so you came to the Rough Lee?’ said Hargreaves.
    ‘Mistress Nutter will protect me.’
    ‘And why would she protect the likes of you, you ditch-scum?’
    Alice said, ‘Constable Hargreaves, it is late at night. I am not responsible for your drunken guards who let this man escape, nor for his decision to come here. I have barns and stables