The next thing I see is a street scene. But I don’t mean cars and taxis and lamp posts; the ground beneath me is cobbled, and the houses are thatched. A horse passes just a few centimetres from my nose, pulling a cart full of barrels.
I blink, and stare around, trying to work out what’s happening. Half-timbered buildings with dark little windows loom over me. This doesn’t look like anywhere I’ve ever been before, and yet I know this is London because I suddenly recognise the towers of Westminster Abbey rising into the sky above the roof tops. But that’s just about all I recognise.
Mary is standing next to me, but she’s no longer a tower of electrical fury. In fact, she looks like a living girl now: all smudge-faced defiance and cropped blonde hair. Something tells me I’m seeing her the way she was the day she died.
‘What is this?’ I say. ‘Where are we?’
‘You said you wanted to see,’ Mary replies. ‘So, boy, let me take you on a guided tour of my memories. Welcome to Christmas Day, 1595.’
I admit, I’m pretty much goggling now. I’m seeing the past?! Even if it is just some illusion, right now it looks and feels exactly as if I’m standing right in it, horse droppings and all. I can even smell the clogged drainage ditch in the middle of the cobbled street (though I wish I couldn’t).
As I watch, a man dressed in sumptuous clothing, with an immense white collar and blue velvet hat, emerges from the door of a tall town house opposite us. He steps over a puddle of something unspeakable as if he doesn’t even see it, and strides out into the street. Behind him comes a little blond boy, wearing a miniature version of the man’s costume, complete with the hat.
‘Who do you think these people are?’ says Mary, pointing.
I look again at the man and the small boy hurrying behind him, and shrug.
‘Something tells me that isn’t Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim.’
‘I know of no Bob Cratchit,’ Mary says. ‘That is my father, hurrying to church. The boy dressed like a prince is my brother.’
Then behind the boy, a line of girls with covered heads and simple white dresses and cloaks emerge from the house and hurry after man. Each one is shorter than the last. The very last one, who is tiny, trips over her cloak, and has to be helped up by one of her sisters.
‘I am barely six years old,’ says Mary, pointing to the little one. ‘No more than a scrap.’
‘Why are you showing me this?’ I say, as we watch the little version of Mary trot after her family and vanish into the crowd.
‘My father is a merchant in the city of London. Not the richest, perhaps, but a man of substance nevertheless. He is desperately proud of my brother. After all, it took him five attempts to have a son.’
‘Oh. You mean…?’
‘Yes, I was the last attempt.’ Mary glowers at me. ‘Even at that age, I already knew I wasn’t wanted. Nothing but a failed boy.’
‘Where’s your mother?’ I ask, hoping to move things on to happier territory.
‘Dead.’ Mary looks down. ‘She died giving birth to my brother.’
Ah, crapsticks.
‘Okay, Mary – this is really terrible,’ I say, and I mean it. ‘But it still doesn’t give you the right to have Stacey.’
‘I haven’t finished yet.’ Mary waves her hand, causing the image of the world to reel around us. ‘Now we will jump forward to a later memory.’
The picture whirls crazily before it re-settles into the view of another place entirely: the interior of a large room, with a fire roaring in the grate of an immense carved fireplace. Mary’s father is sitting at a table, lit by candles. He is talking to Mary’s brother.
‘He looks older,’ I say, whispering though I know they can’t possibly hear us. ‘Your brother. What’s the date now?’
‘We are now in the year 1600. I have only three years left to live.’
‘But where are you? Where are your sisters?’
Mary gives an angry snort.
‘The two eldest are married off, as cheaply as possible. The next oldest is in her room, awaiting the same fate.’
‘And you?’
‘Little me?’ Mary says, bitterly. ‘I’ve already been sold.’
‘Sold?’
‘Well, as good as. They called it an apprenticeship, but I was a slave in all but name. My father just wanted me gone. He had his son and heir. I should be many miles from this place, wearing my fingers to the bone in a tailor’s workshop, sewing undergarments for rich ladies.’
There’s suddenly a note of mischief in her voice.
I turn to her. ‘Should be? Why do you say “should be”?’
Mary flashes her eyes again.
‘Watch and see.’
I turn back to the scene before us.
Mary’s father seems to be explaining some paperwork to her brother. The boy looks bored. Then there’s a knock at the door. The father calls ‘Come!’, and the door opens to allow in a second boy. He’s slight of build and quick, this newcomer. He stops neatly before the great desk, his hands behind his back.
I wonder why I’m being shown this other boy. Then a realisation hits me. I dash forward, so I can see the boy’s face again. It takes me a moment to be sure, but then I cry out to Mary, ‘But that’s you! I thought it was a boy, but…’
‘Of course you did,’ Mary declares. ‘Everyone thinks he’s a boy, that’s the point. But it is me, with my hair cut short and my legs in breeches. My father is so uncaring and my brother so witless that they have no idea they have employed me as their messenger boy. I ran away from that tailor and his terrible workshop, and through my own cleverness and trickery I became a trusted member of my father’s own household. And he has no idea.’
I look again at the messenger boy, who is really Mary in disguise. Mary’s father folds a letter and passes it to him. I see the boy – Mary – take it, bow, and then dash out of the room.
‘But why did you do all this?’
‘Only a boy could ask such a stupid question!’ Mary snaps. ‘As an unwanted girl, I was nothing. But as a boy, even a boy servant…’
Mary waves her hand, and the view changes once more, slipping by so that we can follow her disguised self as she runs through the streets, still clutching the letter. We watch her leap up steps, weave between bustling carriages, even jump between low boats on the Thames. At one point she steals a ripe pear from a silver bowl on the lap of a fat man who is being carried in a chair. The man shouts, but Mary is already gone, eating the pear in delight as she runs.
‘Freedom!’ Mary cries. ‘This is why I did it. No petticoats or needlework. No limits. Of all my father’s children, I was surely the brightest! But he could see no further than the cap on my dim brother’s head. At least I had the chance to take their money and make fools of them both.’
‘Mary, what happened?’ I ask, though part of me doesn’t want to know. I mean, let’s face it, we all know this is a story with a really bad ending. For Mary, that is.
‘Keep watching,’ Mary says in a small voice. She waves her hand, making the picture swirl again. ‘We will jump forward to the day it all went wrong.’
The world resolves once more, and now we are in a corridor with a black and white tiled floor. We see Mary’s brother in his silk clothes burst through a door, and run down the corridor yelling. Then Mary runs out after him, calling him back. She looks like she’s only just pulled on her shirt.
‘In the end it was my own stupid body that gave me away. I was fourteen when they found me out. Even my brother wasn’t thick-headed enough to miss the obvious signs that I was becoming a woman.’
‘But did he recognise you?’
‘I honestly don’t think he did,’ Mary says. ‘Maybe if he had he wouldn’t have shouted about it so much. But as it was, by the time he’d calmed down, he’d given away my secret to every servant and guest in the house. I was exposed as an imposter – a girl who had so successfully disguised herself as a boy that some said only magic could explain it.’
‘That’s why you were called a witch?’ I can hardly believe my ears. ‘But that’s ridiculous.’
‘Of course it is! But no one wanted to admit they had been taken in by a simple disguise. My father, least of all. So I was branded a subtle and dangerous witch, even before I was led from the house by the constable.’
The image jumps forward again, to show Mary being thrust into the belly of a greasy black carriage with barred windows.
‘But how can people be so stupid?’ I say.
‘It was a plague year.’ Mary gives a four-hundred-year-old sigh. ‘People were frightened. And people wanted to believe it. A witch is a nice thing to blame all your ills on, after all. The charges against me stacked up quickly. I was guilty of everything from cursing our neighbour with pimples to causing the river to flood through dark enchantments.’
The view changes again, as Mary speaks, moving fast now from one scene to another. First we’re in a cell, with Mary alone on a bench. Then we’re in a courtroom of some kind, with austere men in tall black hats and starched white collars, spitting as they shout accusations at her. Then Mary is taken away, then her hands are bound. Then we see a pile of wood and branches piled in a tall cone around a wooden post…
‘Okay, okay!’ I shout. My heart is pounding, and I’m sick with the dizzying changes in the images from Mary’s memory. And I really don’t want to witness how this ends. ‘I’ve seen enough.’
‘What’s wrong, boy?’ Mary purrs in my ear. ‘I thought you said you wanted to understand.’
‘Yeah, but you’ve made your point,’ I say. ‘I don’t want to… I just don’t want to see…’
‘What?’ Mary stares straight into my face. ‘You don’t want to see me burn? Burn alive?’ And she makes an angry gesture with her hand.
The wooden post and the pile of bonfire are in a small square surrounded by houses. People are crowding around, jeering. Mary is already tied to the post. A man in a black hood is holding a burning torch. The air smells of oil and sweaty people and death.
‘Mary!’ I shout. ‘No!’
The hooded man puts the torch to the wood at Mary’s feet.
I close my eyes, as tight as I can.
But I can still see. The branches crackle as the fire takes hold. Soon the flames climb higher, wreathing around the girl with the cropped blonde hair and the simple white dress. The blood is roaring in my ears. There’s a scream, but by now I don’t know if it’s Mary or me.
I feel like I’m falling.
I feel like I’m burning.
‘Stop!’