The Devil

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Blood puddled on the stone flags. Five bodies lay scattered across Queen Elizabeth’s antechamber in the Palace of Whitehall, all good men and true, all despatched in an instant by the thing that had swooped through the open window on leathery wings. Cecil hauled himself on to shaking legs from the corner where he had cowered like a frightened child. His white ruff was now stained, and more blood speckled his right cheek, but he had survived, by little more than the grace of God.

As he wiped his face clean with his kerchief, he looked around the scene of slaughter and tried to compose himself. How close they had come to disaster this time. The door to Her Majesty’s bedchamber flew open and a rush of bodies swept out: the Queen herself, wrapped in a cloak of midnight blue, her frail body hunched over, her face hidden in the depths of a cowl; Essex at her elbow, aglow in his white doublet and hose as he guided her towards safety; and three pikemen with faces like Kentish ragstone.

Essex flashed an anxious glance at the spymaster as he went. What passed between them moved from desperation to dread. How much longer could they carry on this way was the question they asked each morn when the sun finally rose. The threat crept ever closer to Her Majesty’s door. Soon they would not be able to repel it.

Once Essex had led the Queen out of the antechamber, silence settled, but only for a moment. Raleigh slipped in, the pink lining of his half-compass cloak looking unnecessarily flamboyant in that butcher’s shop. ‘Gone, like the wind,’ he said, going over to the open window and looking out across London. ‘Our Enemy never fail to find inventive ways to make us suffer.’

‘You speak as if you envy them their skill in murder,’ Cecil snarled.

‘I respect a dedicated foe. That is the only way to find a means to defeat them.’ The adventurer inhaled a deep draught of the cool air, scented with the coal-smoke from the first home fires of the day.

‘One day the Queen will find you skulking around the palace, and then your only view will be of the rats in your cell in the Tower,’ the spymaster muttered. He joined the other man at the window, relieved to see the first silver streaks of dawn. ‘Food is short and people starve. Fresh water is fouled and cows deliver young with two heads. We are assailed on all sides.’

‘But spring is here. The winter cold is gone,’ Raleigh replied wryly.

‘At least the damnable plague has finally departed. The order has been given to open the playhouses and inn yards so the Queen’s subjects have something to take their minds off their miseries.’

Raleigh closed his eyes, enjoying the breeze. ‘This play would have long since ended if not for the School of Night, you know.’

Cecil gritted his teeth. Loath as he was to give any credit to the secret society, he knew the other man was right. ‘But still no news of Dee from Swyfte and his band. Even the great resources of the School of Night cannot keep us alive for much longer.’

‘You plot and scheme from the shadows, as Walsingham did before you, seeing only the ends, but not the road that takes you there. How has that served you?’ The adventurer pulled the casement window shut and turned to inspect the bodies, his expression grave. ‘You and all your kind have lived a life of compromise,’ he continued, moving to each corpse in turn. ‘You said, not long ago, that the Unseelie Court whittled us down by degrees. But you and Walsingham have done that to yourselves.’

‘Watch your tongue, sirrah.’ Cecil glanced at the kerchief in his hand and, disgusted, threw it away as if it had burned him.

‘I know the agreement Walsingham made, which you perpetuated,’ Raleigh said in a cold voice. The spymaster flinched. ‘You think one life here or there makes no difference when weighed against the security of the Queen and all England?’

‘All is a balance-’

‘Look here,’ Raleigh said with passion, sweeping his arm across the fallen guards. ‘Where is your balance? Where is your security? Those poor souls you sacrificed suffered for naught. And the ones who were stolen, they suffered too.’

Cecil cast his eyes down.

‘As for Swyfte, why, no better man has served you,’ the adventurer continued. ‘Yet neither you nor Walsingham could find it in you to tell him what happened to the woman he loved? No, because then you would have had to explain why you allowed her to be taken, and for what reason. And the others too.’

‘It was a gamble,’ Cecil snapped, rage born of guilt rising inside him. ‘If it kept us safe, it was worthwhile.’

‘It did not.’ The adventurer took a deep breath to calm himself and walked to the door. He paused on the threshold and looked back. ‘Your compromises have failed to deliver what you hoped. You have failed. This world is changing fast, Sir Robert, and you are yesterday’s man. This new age demands better principles. Sooner or later it will be time to step aside and let those who measure themselves by a higher standard guide this nation to glory.’

Raleigh fixed his penetrating gaze upon the spymaster for a long moment, and then, with a flamboyant sweep of his cloak, he strode out. Cecil watched the space he had left behind as the shadows in the room slowly melted in the thin light. After a long moment, he strode to the door and called out. Two pikemen came running.

‘Find Sir Walter Raleigh,’ he ordered. ‘Tell him the Queen says he is no longer welcome here and escort him from the palace grounds. Should he resist, take him to the Tower.’