The Devil

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Flames roared up into the night. Dancing orange light flared across the frozen river as the listing galleon was consumed in the jaws of the conflagration. Blackened wood cracked and spat. Black snow fell across the icy waste, flakes of charred canvas swirling in the breeze. In the trees on the far bank of the Thames, Sir Robert Cecil watched from under lowered brows and thought of the midwinter fire festivals in the far north. No celebration here; it was a bonfire of all their hopes. After so long holding the Unseelie Court at bay, England was lost.

Sickened, he reined in his skittish horse, no longer able to see a path ahead. What would he tell the Queen? That Dee was lost to them? That they should free the Faerie Queen immediately and plead for mercy from the Fay when they came like a storm in the night?

His bodyguard shifted uncomfortably in his saddle. He was a big man, his face a map of scars, but he sensed his master’s dismay and had grown scared. ‘Swyfte and his men?’ he asked.

‘Dead and gone. They failed us all.’

The galleon’s powder store exploded, the deafening blast a bitter punctuation to his comment. A plume of fire soared high above the treetops. Shards of smouldering timber and burning sailcloth rained down. The spymaster’s horse whinnied in terror and reared up, almost throwing him from its back. With a curse, he fought to bring it under control. When the fog of smoke cleared, nothing of the Gauntlet remained save a few burning staves slipping below the black water.

Cecil covered his eyes, hoping the soughing of the wind in the branches would soothe him after the din. Yet when he raised his head to survey the dismal scene, he felt as if despair would be lodged in his heart for ever. Damn Swyfte for raising his spirits! After such hope, this failure tasted even more bitter.

‘Back to the Palace of Whitehall,’ he snarled to his bodyguard. ‘I must give the Queen my counsel.’ He urged his mount back on to the lonely road to London.

As he rode, his gaze flickered towards the white ribbon of the Thames glimpsed through the trees. He could no longer see any sign of the misty figures he had witnessed sweeping towards the galleon. From a distance, they had looked like moon-shadows, but he knew their true nature. Even if he had raised the militia, they would have stood little chance of repelling the invader. The tales of the days when the Unseelie Court roamed across England without hindrance haunted him, and always would. The ruined lives, the lost souls. Jane, poor Jane. Still visiting him every night without fail.

As the two riders thundered towards London’s walls, the bodyguard bellowed to the sentries to open the gates. Inside the city, their hoofbeats rattled off wattle walls. Candlelight gleamed in windows here and there, but the cold streets were empty. Cecil had thought the explosion at Greenwich would have brought the curious and fearful out into the night, and he wondered if somehow they all sensed that grim atmosphere. Stay with your families and pray for all our souls, he silently implored.

And on they rode, out of the West Gate and up to the Palace of Whitehall, ablaze with lanterns to hold the night at bay. Within the walls, Cecil felt the tightness in his chest ease a little. An illusion, he knew. He took in the pikemen marching in their ranks and the sentries lining the walls in preparation for what was undoubtedly to come, and then he hurried towards the Black Gallery. He dreaded giving the Queen the news that he had failed her — Elizabeth’s temper burned hot — and he had resolved to lay the blame squarely at Swyfte’s feet, when a woman darted out of the shadows to confront him. It was the spy’s mare, Grace Seldon, the one Swyfte had sworn to protect and who mooned over him like a girl who had yet to bleed. She was wrapped in a cloak the colour of forget-me-nots, but her eyes were pink from lack of sleep. Her hair had been pulled back with little care and tied with an old ribbon.

‘Sir, pray tell me news of William Swyfte.’ She lifted her fine-boned face up to him, as pale as the moon. ‘He came to me in a manner that suggested he feared he would not be returning-’

‘Then you should have listened to him,’ the spymaster barked, trying to push by the lady-in-waiting. ‘Master Swyfte has passed from this world, God save his meagre soul.’

The woman’s eyes widened for a moment as she clutched her fluttering hands to her lips before falling back in a swoon. Cecil regretted his cruel response for the inconvenience it had caused him. Turning, he beckoned to his bodyguard. ‘Take her to the physician so she does not clutter up this place, and do not allow her near me again.’ Women were a mystery to him, and a weakness to all men. Swyfte had been proof enough of that.

He hurried into the Black Gallery, hoping for a moment to order his thoughts before he faced the Queen. Instead, he found the Earl of Essex pacing the chamber. In the candlelight, the Earl was all aglow in a white doublet and half-compass cloak and breeches the colour of snow. A fine show, Cecil inwardly sneered. So wealthy and gallant and charming, no smuts would ever dare taint his attire.

‘At last,’ the Earl snapped, stabbing a finger towards the spymaster. ‘Hiding yourself away to avoid all blame while England burns?’

‘Someone has to keep the wheels of government turning in this time of trouble.’

‘I suspected you were arranging a ship to flee to Flanders, or France.’ Essex narrowed his eyes.

‘You think we can run from them?’ Cecil snorted.

The Earl slumped on to a bench, head in hands. The spymaster glanced at the other man askance, surprised to see the usual swagger stripped away.

‘We have lived fat for so many years, we have forgotten what it was like. The bodies in the ditches leaking pus and shit. The children stolen from their cribs. Women turned to stone, and men left blind or mad.’ Essex ran his fingers through his lustrous hair. ‘Perhaps we should run, whatever you say. They will come for us first, the ones who kept them at bay and colluded in the imprisonment of their Queen. Not the ignorant common man who goes about his life with eyes only on the next meal. If we earned ourselves even a day more of life, that would be of some value.’

Cecil lumbered to the hearth and tossed another log on the fire. It had grown chill in the room. ‘I would hold your tongue, sir,’ he replied with unconcealed disgust. ‘We do not run like rats. We have sworn an oath to stand by the Queen, and England.’

Essex stared into the corner of the chamber, unable to meet the other man’s eye.

‘The Privy Council?’ Cecil asked.

‘Has gathered, as you requested. What will be your advice to the Queen?’

Before the spymaster could answer, pounding feet drew nearer and the door crashed open. A pikeman lurched in, his helmet askew and his cheeks flushed. The spymaster could see the flames of fear licking in the man’s eyes. ‘I plead indulgence for this rude entry, sirs,’ the man stuttered, ‘but your. . your attendance has been requested.’

‘By whom?’ Cecil snapped.

The pikeman moistened his dry mouth. ‘Men wait upon the frozen river. Men. .’ His voice trailed away and his blank gaze roamed the room as he recalled what he had witnessed.

‘The Spanish,’ the spymaster said. ‘The ones who plot against the Crown?’ It was a small kindness, he knew, but it allowed the pikeman an opportunity to pretend.

The man nodded. ‘They would meet, upon the river, to discuss the terms of England’s surrender.’

Cecil threw a hard look at Essex. ‘Fetch the Privy Council. We should face this rabble shoulder to shoulder and show what Englishmen are made of.’

Essex bowed briefly and left. The pikeman followed. Once he was alone, the spymaster threw his head back and sucked in a gulp of air, trying to stop the shaking of his hands.

He found the Privy Council gathered near the River Gate, beady-eyed and grey-bearded, like a murder of crows in their black gowns, shivering in the chill coming off the river. Cecil flapped a hand to urge the sentries to drag open the gates. He stared at the widening crack with mounting dread, feeling his heart beat in rhythm to the creaks and groans of the protesting hinges. Finally the gates crashed wide with a resounding thoom. Cecil’s breath caught in his throat.

At first the expanse of white river appeared empty. A cold wind moaned over the icy wastes. The stark branches of the trees across the Thames on Bankside whisked. But just as he began to hope that the Enemy had departed, he glimpsed movement, as if a hunting party were emerging from a thick fog. Grey figures appeared in the centre of the frozen river, silent sentinels watching him with hate-filled eyes. Long hair and bone-white faces. Doublets and bucklers and breeches silvery with mildew as if they had been stored in dank cellars. On either side and behind the tight knot of the main group of ten or so, warriors waited. They appeared misty, their features hidden, as if glimpsed through a haze.

Cecil swallowed. Then he pushed up his chin and marched out. He prayed the Privy Council were following him. Resisting the urge to look back, he walked out along the jetty and climbed the short wooden ladder down to the ice. Through clear patches around his feet, he could see pale shapes swimming near the surface of the river beneath. He shivered, feeling himself moving into a world he no longer understood.

The spymaster came to a halt four sword-lengths from the Unseelie Court’s representatives. He turned a cold face towards them, but would not — could not — meet their gaze. At the centre of the group was a tall figure with long black hair, a sallow complexion and a beard and moustache waxed into points. Beneath a felt cap, shadows pooled in the eyes, but Cecil noted a cruel turn to the pursed lips. This one is the leader, the spymaster decided.

‘I am Lansing of the High Family,’ the Fay said in a whispery voice that somehow carried over the sighing of the wind. ‘All you hoped for has turned to ashes. These are the final days. Have you made your peace with your God?’

‘We are not afraid of you.’ Cecil hoped the defiance in his voice rang true.

‘Your last hope has died with the burning of your ship,’ the Fay continued as if he had not heard the spymaster’s comment. ‘This moment was inevitable, from the instant you betrayed us and stole our Queen. I find it laughable that you ever thought otherwise.’

‘We held you at bay for many years.’

‘The blink of an eye in the way we see time. We are eternal. We watch and we wait and we make our plans and when the time comes we strike, be it years or decades.’

‘How you must hate us,’ Cecil sneered.

Lansing knitted his brow. ‘Hate? Do you hate the beasts of the field? They are to be herded, and punished when disobedient, and slaughtered should we see fit. Is that not how it is in your fields?’ He looked across the troubled faces and then raised his gaze to the lights of the palace. ‘You lived in caves once. You hunted with stones and sticks. You whispered oaths to the moon and the trees and the wind. We watched you as you sat around your fires, praying the night would end. When you sowed your seeds, we were there. When you raised the stones and built your homes of timber and turf. When you tamed the horses and made weapons of iron. Always a whisper away.’ One corner of his mouth crinkled in a puzzled smile. ‘And then you challenged us.’ He looked directly in Cecil’s face. ‘I have peeled back your skin, and your flesh, and broken your bones and delved into the smallest part of you, and I have found you wanting. This judgement has been made. And now the time for talk is done, and silence must fall. Bring me our Queen and prepare for the harrowing.’

The spymaster sifted through Lansing’s words, seeing meaning hidden in the shadows behind them as only a spymaster could. He smiled, quick and fast. ‘No,’ he said. The Fay’s eyes narrowed. ‘If you want her, take her.’

In a single fluid movement the Earl of Essex drew his sword in readiness for a fight, as did a number of the younger Privy Councillors. Yet the Unseelie Court remained as still as the ice beneath their feet. The cold wind tugged at their hair, its whispers the only sounds across the desolate river.

As he searched those unreadable faces with their unblinking eyes, Cecil felt a moment of satisfaction. He spun on his heel, turning up his nose at the aged members of the Privy Council who had been cowering behind him. ‘Follow me,’ he said to them with only a hint of contempt, and strode back towards the jetty. Even at such a moment, he found himself smiling inwardly at the notion of the deformed little man he knew himself to be piping on the rats who had always secretly mocked him.

He felt the Fay leader’s cold gaze upon him, but he did not look back. Once he had passed the River Gate, he leaned against the stone wall, shaking, yet proud of himself.

Gathering himself, he turned to the other men. ‘We die with dignity, not as cowards. Let us to the Queen and see if we can find a sliver of hope in this time I have bought us.’ With that, he marched away, head high.