Jennifer Lee Carrell - Haunt Me Still

Table of Contents

JENNIFER LEE CARRELL holds a PhD in English and American literature from Harvard University, as well as degrees in English literature from Oxford and Stanford universities. She has directed Shakespeare for Harvards Hyperion Theatre Company, and currently lives in Tucson, Arizona.

This debut mystery kicks off with quite a bangLondons reconstructed Globe Theatre burns, a woman is murdered, a manuscript goes missingand the author never lets her pace sag as the storys roots reach back to Shakespeares time. High-class fun.

Jennifer Lee Carrell... really kicks up her heels in her first novel, Interred with Their Bones, a weighty piece of scholarship packed into a feverishly paced action adventure.

Interred with Their Bones is an exciting, entertaining, and surprisingly educational read just itching to make its big-screen debut.

The Associated Press

From Shakespeare conferences to desert mines, from the present to the past, this spirited and action-packed novel delivers constant excitement.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Interred with Their Bones is a fast-paced mystery thriller with an engaging combination of suspense and humor that would make William Shakespearethe novels inspirationproud.

An exciting debut literary thriller... will appeal to Da Vinci Code fans, the fast-paced, globe-trotting action to Robert Ludlum readers, and the exploration of the Shakespeare mysteries to English majors everywhere. Highly recommended.

[A] smart... notable debut literary thriller.

William Shakespeare

The Wiccan Rede (or Witches Counsel)

WRAPPED IN A gown of blue-green velvet trimmed with gold, a queens crown on his head, the boy sat drowsing on the throne near the center of the Great Hall, just at the edge of the light. Tomorrow, it would be the king who sat there. Not a player king, but the real one, His Majesty King James I of England and VI of Scotland. Tonight, however, someone among the players had been needed to sit there and see just what the king on his throne would see as Mr. Shakespeares new Scottish play, blood-spattered and witch-haunted, conjured up a rite of nameless evil.

The boy, who was not in this scene, had volunteered. But the rehearsal had been unaccountably delayed, stretching deep into the frigid November night, until it was almost as cold inside the unheated hall as it was in the frost-rimed courtyards below. The heavy gown, though, was warm, and as the hours crawled on, the boy found it hard to keep his eyes open.

Well out of the torchlight illuminating the playing area, a grizzled man-at-arms in a worn leather jerkin, gaunt as a figure of famine, leaned against the wall at the edge of a tapestry, seeming to drowse as well.

At last, movement stirred in the haze of light. Three figures, cloaked head to toe in black, skimmed in a circle about the cauldron set in the center of the hall, their voices melding into a single chant somewhere between a moan and a hiss.

What is it you do? rasped the player king as he entered, eyes wide with horror.

The answer whined through the echoing hall like the nearly human sound of the wind, or maybe the restless dead, seeking entry at the eaves: A deed without a name.

Not long afterward, a phalanx of children, eerily beautiful, drifted into the light, gliding one by one past the throne. In the rear, the smallest held up a mirror.

On the throne, the boy-queen sat bolt upright.

Against the wall, barely visible in the outer darkness, the old soldiers eyes flickered open.

A few moments later, the boy slid from the throne and melted into the darkness at the back of the hall. Behind him, the man followed like an ill-fitting shadow.

Robert Cecil, earl of Salisbury, was wakened by his manservant in the small hours of the morning. Behind him in the darkness, two more faces floated in a double halo of candlelight, one slipping from black hair toward gray age, and the other just rising into the fullness of his prime, but both Howards and both smug. The earl of Northampton and his nephew the earl of Suffolk.

Salisbury was instantly awake. He did not know what the Howards had to look smug about at such an hour of the morning, but anything that happened in the palace without his knowledge disturbed him. When it involved the Howards, it invariably meant danger.

Its the boy, my lord, said his manservant, coughing discreetly.

The players boy, Suffolk specified.

He is missing, purred Northampton. Along with the mirror.

Wherever that boy is, Salisbury thought with an inward sigh, the Howards know about it. Aloud, he said, Rouse Dr. Dee, and painfully sat up, aware of Northamptons stare aimed at the hump on his back. And send for the captain on duty.

To the captain, he simply said, Find him.

Half an hour later, Salisbury led the way, splay-footed and limping, toward the waiting chamber off the Great Hall, aware at every step of the proud, straight stalking of the tall Howard earls flanking him. He did not like working with either of them, especially Northampton. Generally speaking, Salisbury was fastidious about his person and his apparel, small and misshapen though he was, but not about people, whose talents he assessed with a cold, accurate eye and then used as necessary. But the Howards curdled something within his soul, making him long to step out into the nearest rose garden, whatever the weather, to rid himself of some not-quite-detectable stench. The king, however, had fallen under Northamptons spell and had made the occasional partnership unavoidable. Witness this unsavory business of the boy. When it came to the kingdoms safety, Salisbury was not above using anybody, but he did not enjoy baiting traps with children.

Dr. Dee was waiting for them, his dark robe and long white beard fairly shaking with indignation. You told me you were keeping them here for their safety, he charged. The boy and the mirror both.

Salisbury sighed. Not for their safety. For the kings. For the kingdoms. Why couldnt men as undoubtedly brilliant as Dr. Dee make that distinction?

The earl did not give much credence to such things as magic mirrors and conjuring spirits. But just in case, he kept his finger on the pulse of what was happening among the kingdoms conjurors, John Dee foremost among them. His brilliance as a mathematician and navigator was, after all, unmatched, and he had done Salisburys father and the old queen good service in the field of cryptology. If even a fraction of Dees claims about conjuring angels or transmuting base metal into gold turned out to be true, Salisbury wanted a handle on the old man.