Heart of the Charms
29th October 1577
William and Katherine were about to discover that time would forever be relative to their unwavering accord in true love.
The twins were facing each other, eyes-closed, sitting cross-legged in the centre of an elaborately designed chalk circle etched onto the blue slate poor of the rooftop of the southeast corner tower of the Fountain Courtyard of their home.
William held a silver ring with an emerald gemstone in his upturned right palm. Katherine was holding a silver necklace with an opal gemstone pendant in her right palm and a small scroll of parchment in her left hand.
They were three floors up and surrounded by a stone capped, waist-height parapet and four ornate red brick and stone turrets that marked the corners of the southeast tower. If one were paying attention and considered that there were three other corner towers about eighty yards apart, each with four turrets, that constituted the corners of the huge open courtyard they framed, one might be able to consider that William and Katherine’s home was not your average run of the mill, one room, one door, two windows, one chimney, two dogs, three cats and a goat type of home. Indeed, and it perhaps doesn’t bear a mention, but William and Katherine’s home had a fuck-ton of corners, stone capped turrets and towers, multiple scores of rooms, multitudinous doors and windows, chimneys up the wazoodle, several packs of dogs, innumerable cats, rats, mice, chickens, horses, cows, sheep, pigs, badgers, squirrels, pheasants, deer, foxes and copious numbers of whatever other fauna decided to reproduce every spring.
And William and Katherine’s home was still being built. Construction had been in progress in earnest for ten years or more.
The kids couldn't remember a time when there were no holes in the ground for new foundations, or scaffolding for new towers, bastions, loggias, walls, and roofs.
It was their thirteenth birthday.
Their mother, Mildred, was dashing around below, organising some sort of celebratory affair to be held in the North Parlour later that evening.
Boring…
They were thirteen now, and, for all intents and purposes, grown-ups whom, as such, should finally be able to present or not present at their parents’ parties for reasons of their own. Should be able to realise such decisions and choices. Not quite how their father, William Cecil, saw it though, which did place a damper on spontaneous play occasionally.
There were times when Katherine had pressed their father on the conditions of her independence directly - such moments increasing in frequency, almost in parallel with the development of Katherine’s newly forming bosom William had noticed - but after several defeating counter arguments, Katherine was lately employing a subtle round about approach to sequester her wishes. She would engage in discussions of architecture to soften the old boy up somewhat, prior to any given want on her Fart.
Lord Burghley, as he was known to many, which had always been funny to William and Katherine, estimated future expansion and development of the house and grounds would probably take eight further years or so. Then, as he sometimes insisted, Theobalds House would Finally be an estate worthy of Queen and of England. Katherine suspected that her father’s formative answer was, at best, political side-stepping and, at worst, complete and utter bullshit, and that the house would never be finished. William didn’t give a burst-goat’s-bollock how long it took for construction to be completed. He and Katherine could run free and explore every new passageway, cellar, tunnel, staircase, and turret, that was being installed in the roaming house and grounds, for none would ever remain ‘secret’ to them, and William simply loved that.
He also loved Katherine, but that, or rather she, was complicated. Further complicated now that her breasts were beginning to show.
He would have to talk to his father about his feelings soon, for as little as he knew about girls, he was dead set fucking certain he shouldn’t be having at least some of his private thoughts regarding his own bloody sister.
“I don’t believe the magic is working,” said Katherine.
William’s eyes snapped open and landed directly on Katherine’s tits. Shit.
The bodice of the dress she was wearing was squeezing the makings of a cleavage. William had never seen this on Katherine, largely because she never wore dresses, or at least rarely, and she hadn't for some time. She was always content running around in her dungarees. That was normal. This wasn’t.
William quickly raised his gaze to find Katherine staring straight through him, “Errm… I don’t know. Maybe I wasn’t concentrating on the budding elements.”
“What are you talking about?” questioned Katherine.
“The… the… you know… the heart of the charms,” said William.
The vibrations of William’s bashful attempt at deflection were a cacophony of fragmented, confusing chords with imperfect intervals in a vaguely minor triad of complete horseshit. Katherine was improving her abilities to listen to the musicality of the world around her day by day. In changing winds. In people’s moods. Strains in animals. Refrains in plants. None of that was scary. It was all a fascinating study, really. Her ear was keener with each passing month and season. Recently she thought she could even discern some elementary notes and arrangements in pieces of her parent’s antique furniture, but, on the flip side, it was sometimes easier and less tiring to believe that her pubescence was just an essence of her growing to become a bat-shit-crazy adult, much like the rest of them.
William was a frigging nightmare for her to understand. He was light, kind, funny and thoughtful, sometimes to a fault. Placing everyone’s and anyone’s needs ahead of his own. No matter who they were. But there was a darkness and volume of silence in her brother that Katherine could never hear to see him clearly as one. It was sometimes as though he were made up of two different orchestral movements, battling for predominance in the hall of his heart and being.
“You’d better get used to them. Female anatomy regarding mammary glands dictates that they will one day serve a greater purpose than your silly fascinations of late,” said Katherine.
“I don’t have fascinations,” said William.
“It’s fine dear brother,” said Katherine, smiling, “at least we know you’re not fashioning your nature after Francis.”
Katherine was referring to their gentle sixteen-year-old cousin, Francis Bacon, whom some of the family suspected was embarking on a period of… confusion… in his development.
“My bum is numb,” said William, totally and utterly deflecting by jumping up from the blue slate poor and taking a pace southward.
“No! Wait! You can’t cross the circle yet,” said Katherine, bouncing up to her feet and grabbing William’s arm.
She was referring to the elaborate three ringed chalk circle in which they had been sitting. The outer ring was nine feet in diameter, the inner ring approximately eight feet. In between rings, Katherine had drawn in celestial symbols that she had discovered in some of their father’s old books on magic and mysteries, elements, forces of nature and all sorts of good stuff that neither she nor William believed in or understood in the slightest. But it was fun. Tonight’s incantation was intended to install a charm linking the emerald on Katherine’s ring with the opal pendant on William’s necklace. Aunty Liz had been the inspiration for the idea. The Monarch had suggested that a charm existed - if they were pure of heart and could study enough to learn how to form it - that would bind the ring to the pendant, thus if either William or Katherine ever got lost, the bejewelled trinkets would guide them back to one another when help was needed most. Brilliant.
Tonight, the night sky would see a Hunter’s moon. Perfect.
And it wasn’t raining. Even better. The chalk circle would remain intact.
Unless of course William got embarrassed about involuntarily perving over his sister’s squished up bubbies in her stupid party dress and tried to walk out of it before the spell had fully been installed and sanctified.
“You said it’s not working,” snapped William, “I believe you.”
William pulled away from Katherine and stepped away to the southern parapet of the tower. He rested his hands on the stone capping and looked out. Directly below him a large formal garden was in the early stages of development. Stone pathways separated nine squares, each seventy feet to a side, that would ultimately all be planted and maintained. Sculptures would be added Fer their father’s whims. Possibly fountains or some such. Hedges, flowers. Whatever.
Katherine stepped up beside William and placed her hands on the parapet. The twins stood in silence for a long moment.
“What do you make of that” asked William, pointing out in the distance, south along the main road from London to Ware. The unmistakable shape of the White Tower could be seen some thirteen miles away on the north bank of the Thames River. It wasn’t what William was focused on.
“Make of what” questioned Katherine.
“There,” said William, moving closer to Katherine and encouraging her to aim her sights as though his arm was the barrel of a musket, “on the old road, moving this way.”
Katherine strained to capture William’s intended target. The descending sun was casting long shadows flickering through the trees of her father’s extensive hunting grounds. Staff had begun the rounds of lighting torches lining the paths of the unfinished gardens. Lanterns were popping up in the windows of one of the newest complete extensions to their home, which was an eighty yard long, three-storey loggia arrangement that would connect the new buildings of the grand Middle Court to the Still House Chamber, which was the furthest building to the southeast. After several beats of considered patience, she clocked what had to be the movement of two or three carriages in a closed line formation, flanked by several horseback riders. It was hard to define the exact number as they were two miles away at least.
“Hard to say, except who gives a shit?” dismissed Katherine. Come on, we must try again. Mother will be summoning us any time now.”
“Alright, fine, but last crack at it for tonight,” said William, “if I promise not to look at your tits in that stupid dress, deal?”
“Easy deal,” said Katherine.
William peeled away from the parapet and entered the chalk circle once again. He sat down cross-legged on the floor facing east. His face was in shadow from the west side parapet of the tower. Katherine sat down opposite him with the last rays of the sun across her eyes.
“Now, we should start…” began Katherine.
“Can I make a suggestion?” asked William.
“Alright.”
“I’ll hold the ring and the amulet. You do the chanting thing,” said William.
“Elizabeth said it would be better…” said Katherine.
“Bessy isn’t here, is she? And her way isn’t worth a shit. We’ve tried it three times.”
“Yes, and all the while you were looking at my boobs.”
“I’m not looking at them now. And I’m sorry I did. Give me the ring,” said William.
“You don’t like my boobs anymore?” said Katherine.
“Katherine,” admonished William, “ring.”
Katherine smiled and pulled her ring from the third finger of her right hand. She tossed it across the circled space to William who caught it. He placed it in the upturned palm of his left hand alongside the necklace with the opal amulet and cupped his right hand over the gems.
“Ready,” said William.
“Ready, ready?” questioned Katherine.
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” said William.
“You must believe,” said Katherine.
“Uh, huh.”
Katherine understood the vibrations of the composed descending scale of William’s resigned efforts in their attempted bewitchery. Her brother had been very patient. And she’d taken all the piss out of his innocent lechery that was modestly acceptable. It was time. Then they could run downstairs and eat cake. Maybe even cocoa cake if they were lucky.
Katherine positioned her scroll of parchment on the poor. She unravelled it and weighed it down top and bottom with two polished stones, one white at the top, and one black at the bottom of the hand-written charm. She placed her hands on her knees and drew a long deep breath. She exhaled and began to read:
“In absence of evil spirits,
In presence of light spirit.
In absence of man and politics,
Or in presence of man and politics.
In friendship and truth,
We commit to binding these jewels.
In absence of time…”
Katherine slapped her hand down on the parchment, and stared straight at William, “That’s why it’s not working!”
William opened his eyes from his pretend concentration. He purposely avoided direct eye contact with any part of Katherine’s dress.
“Is it? What is that exactly, pray?” asked William.
“Well, why should it be we reference only man and politics? Why not man, woman, and politics? Men are crap at politics. Just look at father. He gets all worked up all the time about politics. Mother doesn’t.”
“Ergo, women are better at politics, is that it? It’s getting late, Katherine,” said William.
“I know but it’s got to be important, doesn’t it? If we don’t include women in the spell. I mean I’m a woman. I’m half of this spell, aren’t I?”
William stared at Katherine for a beat, then burst out laughing and shaking his head.
“Don’t you laugh at me like that. ’I hate it when you do that. Idiot,” said Katherine.
“I’m not. I’m not laughing at you. I think you’re right. That’s what’s funny.”
“It’s not funny at all,” said Katherine.
“Alright, what do you want to do about it?” asked William.
“I don’t know. Change the spell,” said Katherine.
“So, change it. Here,” said William, pulling a small, thin stick of charcoal wood from the hip pocket of his doublet and offering it across the circle to Katherine.
“What shall I change it to?”
“Errm… well, shit. Umm… say man, woman and politics,” suggested William.
Katherine began to scribble corrections on the parchment.
“Politics is bullshit also. Can we leave that out?”
“Sure. I agree. Then how does it read?” asked William.
“Well, if we remove politics as a social baseline and replace it with woman, it reads, In absence of man and woman. In presence of man and woman, and on… In friendship and truth works. The next lines are fine. The end is still good.”
“Great. But if it’s in absence of man and woman, then what are we hoping to charm these gemstones about?” questioned William.
“But it’s… in presence too, of man and woman. And it’s about all things. Isn’t it? Everything is linked. That’s how we can find each other. Not even in things, it is life, all around us. And the spirits. But we only want the light ones,” said Katherine.
“Give me the thing,” said William.
Katherine handed the scroll and the charcoal stick to William. He slapped it on the ground and struck a heavy line through two lines of supposed enchanted verse.
“There,” said William, “Man, woman, politics, all gone, the same way. Vanquished.”
William handed the scroll back to Katherine, who perused her writing as now presented.
“Alright, let’s try it,” said Katherine, sliding backwards on her bottom and repositioning herself cross-legged with the parchment scroll on the ground.
“Can we cut straight to the Latin? I’m getting hungry,” said William.
“Alright. So am I. Latin it is. Pencil,” said Katherine.
William tossed over the charcoal stick. Katherine traced her index finger down the lines on the parchment and crossed out two lines, just as William had done with the English language version at the top of the scroll. She positioned the white and black stones to hold the parchment down on the poor once again, before relaxing back with her hands on her knees. William cupped the ring and the necklace in between his palms once again and closed his eyes.
Katherine began reading in Latin, in a three/four-time chant with an even tempo. She used no punctuation between lines"
“In absentia malorum spirituum
In conspectu lucis spiritus
In amicitia et veritate
Haec monilia ligare committimus
In absentia temporis
In conspectu temporis
In omni tempore
Ut nos his signis latores
Invenies se semper…”
William was listening to Katherine’s voice, but her words fell away into the background of his mind. His thoughts were concentrated on the two gemstones cupped tightly in his hands.
“…In absentia malorum spirituum
In conspectu lucis spiritus…”
William thought about losing Katherine. Not being able to find her. What would he do? How would he change such a circumstance? He would absolutely have to. He knew that. He would die for her. He knew that. But how would he find her?
“…In amicitia et veritate
Haec monilia ligare committimus…”
If Katherine had glanced up from her reading and chanting, she would have seen William’s eyes closed and his brow began to furrow in confusion.
“In absentia temporis
In conspectu temporis
In omni tempore…”
William quelled a weird sort of fear that was beginning to constrict his lungs and he focused harder on the task at hand; it was very strange, as though the jewels were heating up intensely, but the stones weren’t burning the skin on his palms. He could still feel the ring, the amulet, and the necklace attached to it, but they were enveloped in a weightless ball of fever.
“Ut nos his signis latores
Invenies se semper…”
The slamming of footsteps behind him and over his left shoulder prompted William to open his eyes. The First thing he noticed was a weird-arse scarlet and emerald light leaking from his tightly cupped hands. He jolted backwards, throwing his arms behind him, dropping the ring and the necklace on the floor in between his legs.
The second thing William noticed was the first thing Katherine noticed when she looked up from the parchment and desisted in the reading of her spell, which was Francis Bacon tripping over the top step of the tower’s circular stone staircase and flying out of the small doorway onto the roof top holding a lantern. The second thing Katherine noticed was the third thing William noticed which was Bacon’s arse crashing straight into his face.
The two boys tumbled over under Bacon’s momentum and sprawled out on the blue slate poor. Katherine took a moment to fully process what she was seeing before her. Much of her concentration was still framed in Latin three/four timing.
Bacon sat up. He did so, proudly holding up the wrought iron handle of the lantern, which curiously enough, had survived the tumble.
“What on earth are you doing, Francis?” cried Katherine.
Bacon made a serious and contemplative effort at answering her, but words didn’t escape his opening and closing lips. Intakes of breath came next. Staggered intakes, intermittent with spluttering exhales.
William sat up, “What the fuck, Francis?”
“I… wheeewwww, I… whooooww, we must…” attempted Bacon.
“Francis, head between your knees!” exclaimed Katherine, jumping up, crossing to her breathless cousin, and lifting the weight of the lantern. She pushed the crown of Bacon’s head towards his splayed legs.
“They… have,” cough, splutter, “The guards,” sputter, cough, cough, “We must hide,” gasped Francis.
William and Katherine couldn’t make head nor tails of what the hell their delicate cousin was talking about, and, in fairness to them, it wasn’t unusual for Bacon to become overexcited in any given moment of observation in his life. The trick to deciphering the meaning of his considered scrutiny on any given topic was to calm him down, encourage him to breathe and then, and only then, cut directly to the chase of whatever matter Francis considered paramount to his panic. This was not yet a practised craft for William and Katherine, for they were young and on the cusp of learning the full meaning of Bacon’s being, but one thing was certain; Katherine was better at handling all things pertaining to states of fluster.
“Breathe Francis. I’ll count. You breathe,” said Katherine, “and a one, two, three and four, breathe in.”
Bacon inhaled as instructed.
“And a one, two, three and four, let it go. Two, three and four,” instructed Katherine, calmly and methodically, as if Bacon’s shaking condition was a perfectly normal state of behaviour.
Two more rounds of the same exercise saw Bacon’s heart rate lower, his lungs oxygenate, and his pupils centre from cross-eyed mania to a frightened central focus.
“Good. Relay information. We shall then conclude a course of action,” said Katherine.
“Guards. Queen’s guards are coming here to arrest William,” said Bacon.
“What are… what?” said Katherine.
“William, you have committed Treason, apparently, according to Sir James of Bon,” said Bacon.
“Treason?” questioned William, “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Sir James knows you haven’t. I stated the facts incorrectly. He commissioned me to present here to you ahead of a group of guards that Elizabeth has sent to arrest you tonight and take you to the Tower. The charge is Treason,” said Bacon. “Am I now making complete sense?”
William recoiled a fraction in abject what-the-fuckness? Katherine, though similarly stunned with Bacon’s utterance of events ongoing, had the presence of mind to take an objective view that more discovery was to be hastened before panic took to blinding solution. She could tell that her cousin was relaying the truth as he had been informed. His vibrations, though dissonant in confusion and in a minor key, were perfectly pitched in genuine concern.
“Sir James sent you to give us the heads up,” stated Katherine.
“Yes,” replied Bacon.
“Good. Stand up. You too, William,” said Katherine, as she crossed from the chalk circle to the southern parapet and looked out over the gardens and hunting grounds. A cursory glance told her there was nothing but shadows and the odd flambeau lining pathways, so she rounded the southeast corner turret and propped her hands down on the centre of the stone capping of the eastern parapet walling. The Middle Court of their home was massive. The central courtyard was approximately one-hundred yards to a side, framed with three-storey brick-built chambers constructed in her father’s favoured loggia arrangement, lending itself to the sprawling prodigy architecture. The main entrance was now on the eastern most face of the courtyard, sited between two generous Porter’s lodges, with a huge stone archway between them. Beyond that were sidings of servant’s quarters and simple pathways bisecting grassed areas to be developed into yet more future gardens, vegetable patches, mazes, and whatever else ‘Lord Burghley’ could fashion in the imaginations of his sleeping hours.
William and Bacon shuffled up to their feet and placed themselves either side of Katherine, overlooking the eastern parapet. Sure enough, roughly a quarter mile or so away, a line of three carriages, each towed by tandems of six horses, with some twenty or more single riders flanking, were fast approaching. The riders all bore the uniforms and arms of the Queen’s Body Guards or Yeomen warders. The same uniforms one might see on show on some State occasion or holiday at some bullshit parade commemorating something worth commemorating in as a Regal propaganda measure for the people. More importantly, they were the same uniforms sanctioned as attire for the guards of the White Tower. As in, that tower. First established as a timber framed structure, with a crude ditch and palisade, early motte-and-bailey design type thing as described by modern day scholars, but facts being facts it was designed by Guillaume le Batard five-hundred bloody years ago. And it worked. Didn’t solve his hair loss and paranoia, but it did fortify his position in conquering London as a stronghold. On the night of Bacon’s revelation that William was soon to visit the Tower it had become a notorious and inexplicable, labyrinth of stone laden chambers, ensconced with centuries of dark twisted energies born of the guilty, tortured, and condemned, alongside the protestations of the innocent, yet accused, not to mention the scores of souls belonging to long since beheaded political and religious martyrs. The Tower of London on the northern bank of the Thames River.
“What do they want with William?” asked Katherine.
“I swear, I cannot say,” said Bacon.
“What did Sir James say?” asked William.
“Hide. Until he and your father get here. They’re on their way,” answered Bacon.
“Hide? That’s it?” questioned Katherine.
“Hide,” confirmed Bacon, “oh, and try not to harm anyone in a uniform.”
“Sir James said that?” asked William.
“Oh, God no,” said Bacon, “that was your father’s addendum to my instructions. I understood his use of the word try as a verb in a political context, as in; he didn’t say definitively do not harm anyone in uniform. Just that we would be better placed to try."
“Francis,” said Katherine.
“Yes.”
“Shut up. What has William done?”
“Nothing,” answered Bacon.
“Then what the fuck?” asked William.
“I’m afraid I lack sufficient information to answer that at present,” said Bacon, “but the better part of valour dictates that we hide. And swiftly.”
Katherine looked to her right and more specifically directly into William’s eyes. They shared a timeless accord, the undertones of which were compounded in a simple, yet magically childlike, mischievous; so be it.
