The Devil

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Ice glittered around the stone pillars rising from the river. In the growing cold, the fog was thinning. The narrow arch of the bridge supporting its jumble of merchants’ houses and shops began to appear out of the grey. The night was filled with the thunderous rush of water between the supports as Launceston and Carpenter heaved on the oars to guide the wherry to the centre of the flow. Will watched their labours, shouting encouragement or guidance when they drifted too far to one side or the other. He had seen more than one vessel dashed to pieces on the bridge pillars. Most watermen would not risk the turbulent currents and dropped their passengers short of the bustling bridge to walk to where they could hail another boat on the other side. The spies did not have that luxury, and now the risk was even greater. The briefest dip in the water would see them torn to pieces by the creatures that swam there, just out of sight.

Despite the chill, sweat glistened on Carpenter’s forehead. His long hair flicked back with each jerk of his shoulders, revealing the pink scarring along the left side of his face.

‘Heave to the right!’ Will yelled as he watched the wherry swirl towards the nearest pillar.

His face impassive, Launceston pulled on his oar. The boat continued to swing in the violent current. As the vessel swept into the dark beneath the bridge, Will inhaled a blast of dank air. The lantern-light flared up the stone support, the high tide mark now glistening with hoar frost.

‘Tobias! To me!’ he called.

Throwing off his hood, Strangewayes lurched along the yawing wherry to Will’s side. As the boat skewed towards the bridge, the two men swung their legs out over the side of the boat and pushed them off the pillar. Carpenter jabbed his oar against the wall, and the three of them steadied the drift. Together they heaved the vessel away. Will and Strangewayes teetered over the churning river until Carpenter snatched two handfuls of damp cloak and yanked them to safety.

The current caught the wildly rocking wherry. When it hurled the vessel across the roiling water, Will crashed on to his back on the bottom. By the time he had managed to raise his head they had shot like an arrow out at the other side.

Here the mist hung in wisps. He could glimpse candlelight in the windows of the large merchant houses that lined the northern banks. A bitter blast of air struck him. Bony fingers of ice reached out from both edges of the river, clutching for the wherry.

‘’Sblood! How fast it freezes!’ Strangewayes exclaimed.

Glancing back, Will saw that a white sheet now covered most of the Thames. The ice appeared to be spreading from upstream where they had witnessed the frantic activity of the pale fish-creatures. He imagined their ritual dance through the dark depths, drawing up the cold power as they weaved together the final strands of their supernatural masters’ scheme.

Will began to grasp the true scale of the Unseelie Court’s plan. Dee’s tattered defences were still strung out invisibly across London, reinforced by the wards Cecil had put in place round the city’s boundaries and the quay at Greenwich. But the Thames — a silver lance piercing through to the heart of London — had always proved the most difficult to protect.

As they rounded the bend of the river along the narrowing black channel, Will’s worst fears were confirmed. The Charm Boat was locked in the ice not far from the north bank. The two watermen were futilely hammering their oars on the white glaze. It cracked like dry wood, but held firm. No longer able to maintain the ritual path, the frozen wherry had left the river route open to the Enemy.

Carpenter, Launceston and Strangewayes saw the ice-bound boat and looked back to Will with unease. He nodded. ‘They will soon be here.’

The other men’s heads fell, but only for a moment. Carpenter and Launceston threw themselves into their oar-strokes, driving the wherry forward.

‘The Gauntlet will be trapped at the quay,’ Strangewayes called. ‘What chance have we of freeing it from the ice before the attack comes?’

‘We will do what we must.’ Will’s voice was grim. He pulled his cloak around him against the cold and rested one foot on the side as he searched the sky for the ruddy glow from Greenwich’s beacons.

A band of orange sky flared behind the silhouettes of trees, houses and the great bulk of the Palace of Placentia. Wrinkling his nose at the ash caught on the breeze, Will finally saw the stark outline of masts and felt a surge of hope. But only a thin black strand of water stretched out ahead. Their hair and eyebrows white with frost, Carpenter and Launceston shuddered as they struggled to get good strokes with their oars. The wherry bumped against the encroaching ice on either side time and again. Finally the boat came to a juddering halt. The keel groaned from the pressure of the rime forming around it.

‘Abandon ship, lads,’ Will called.

The shivering spies hauled themselves out of the wherry, each one gingerly testing the ice before putting his full weight on it. The frozen river crunched underfoot. Will scrubbed the white glaze off the surface with the sole of his shoe. Through the near-transparent newly formed ice, he glimpsed movement. The fish-creatures glided just beneath their feet. As if it could read his thoughts, one came to a halt in the space Will had created and peered up at him with those unblinking eyes. It gnashed its needle-teeth once and then swam away.

On the river they could have been in Muscovy in winter. Putting his head down into the chill wind, Will headed towards the silhouetted masts. The crunch of his footsteps echoed across the still waste. The other men followed, their breath clouding. After a few moments, the golden lights of the quayside inn glittered through the stark trees and Will could make out the shape of the Gauntlet leaning askew under the force of the ice that had formed around it.

Before he could take another step, Strangewayes called out, ‘The fog returns.’

Will turned to see a low wall of mist reaching from bank to bank at their backs. But this fog was a pearly white and seemed to glow with an inner luminescence. It rolled towards them as if a tailor were unfurling a bolt of cloth. Faint stars twinkled in its midst.

‘Make for the quay as fast as your legs will carry you,’ he urged.

The spies raced towards the inn’s lights, slipping and sliding with each step so that Will feared they would fall and break their necks. When he could smell the acrid stink of the pitch on the Gauntlet’s hull, he paused and looked back. Tall, grey figures were emerging from the mist, cloaks billowing behind them. They stalked towards Greenwich, grasping swords, spears and axes.

Will felt a chill sweep through him even deeper than the one brought by the frozen river. A droplet of blood fell from his nose and froze before it hit the ice. The Unseelie Court were in opposition to nature, and every sense rebelled whenever they were near. Their clothes had a timeless feel, bucklers and leather belts, breeches and boots, all of them silvery grey as if they considered colour too much of a celebration of life for things that flirted with death. Long hair lashed in the wind. Their faces were the colour of frost, shadows pooling around their eyes. Scanning the steadily advancing group, he counted around thirty, small in number yet devastating in force.

‘We have a fight on our hands.’ The wind plucked his words away. ‘And if we fall this night, England is lost.’

He turned and raced up the icy stone steps that led up to the quay where a crowd of puzzled onlookers had gathered to see the frozen Thames. At his back, the winter storm swept in.