The Scar-Crow Men

‘You will never find your Jenny,’ Mephistophilis whispered again. ‘While you die in slow, suffocating agony, you will reflect that you have wasted your life chasing an illusion. Days go by, years go by, and you cling on to one tiny thing, a discarded locket, that is your only evidence that she may still live. Hope exceeds reason.’

As the life returned to Will, so did the pain from his beatings in Bedlam. His limbs trembling from the exertion, he paused. Thin air wheezed into his lungs. Loam lined his mouth and caked his tongue.

Digging deep for the last of his reserves, Will renewed his efforts. Dragging handfuls of soil down, forcing himself upwards with his feet, searching for what little air remained to ease his struggling lungs, he inched on.

The black world appeared to be endless. He was unsure if he was rising or sinking, or how near he was to the surface. But he could still feel the faint thud-thud-thud of soil falling from above. His exertions grew weaker again, the strength draining from his limbs. He could not go on.

All around him, the devil’s laughter drifted. ‘Beyond the sea your love lies, in the west, where the dead go. Under the full moon, in a golden city, she sleeps, and cries, and you will never feel her loving touch again.’

Breathing in the stink of the grave, and death, and hopelessness, Will pressed his face into the soil and closed his eyes.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

SWEATING AND SCOWLING, THE TWO LABOURERS LEANED ON THEIR shovels beside the sea of trampled earth now covering the plague pit. Nearby, at the fence, the five armed men smoked as they watched the sun sink past the chimneys of the surrounding houses. The job was done. Will Swyfte was dead and buried.

Clutching on to the brick wall in the small street across the way, Grace fought the urge to sob. She felt numb, as if a part of her had died with every shovelful of earth that fell into that black hole. She had wanted to run to the grave and attack the men with her bare hands, digging Will out herself if it was necessary. But she knew it was a foolish girl’s dream that would only lead to harm for Nat, who would undoubtedly have rushed to help her.

And now, a grown woman, she had been forced to watch the man she loved die.

‘You said they would break off from their digging. You said we would be able to help Will,’ Nathaniel raged. His hands shook as he fought to control himself. ‘Your plans have come to naught. You killed him.’

‘If he had not died here, he would have died in the Tower. I gambled on a slim chance that we might be able to save him,’ Red Meg replied quietly, her hands clasped in front of her, her face emotionless. ‘But it was not to be.’

‘And that is all you can say?’ Nat turned on her. ‘William Swyfte is more than my master – he is my friend. He saved the life of my father, and he helped me when I needed it most, even at cost to himself.’

A crack appeared in the Irish woman’s mask, and her green eyes flashed.

Grace confronted Nathaniel. ‘Do not risk your life when the situation is hopeless,’ she pleaded. ‘Will would not want you to die needlessly.’

‘Where there is life, there is hope. That is what the preachers say, is it not?’ He glanced over his shoulder at the men standing around the plague pit in the ruddy light of the setting sun. ‘I have Will’s sword that we were due to give him after we ...’ The words caught in his throat. ‘After we rescued him.’

‘Nat, you are not a fighting man!’ Grace said incredulously. ‘You are as likely to fall over your sword as to kill with it. I would not lose you too.’ She couldn’t hold back the tears any longer.

‘Nevertheless, I must do what I can.’ Without another word, Nathaniel strode out into the street, keeping his head down but allowing one hand to fall on the rapier that hung incongruously at his side.

‘Fool!’ Red Meg snarled. Hesitating for a moment, she looked back along Lombard Street, weighing her decision. But just as Grace became convinced she had given up on them, the Irish woman stepped out after Nat, a broad, seductive grin leaping to her lips.

A better player than Kit ever had on the stage, Grace thought.

As Nathaniel closed on the burial site, the five men threw aside their clay pipes and turned to face the new arrival.

‘Keep moving, stranger,’ the steely-eyed leader of the group said.

‘On whose authority?’ Nat called, vaguely recognizing the man. Was he in the employ of Lord Derby?

‘The Queen’s.’

‘You do not do the Queen’s work.’

As she neared, Grace could see Nathaniel’s hand shaking above the rapier hilt. The five armed men were sure to have spotted his inexperience and doubt.

‘The papers I have from the Privy Council say otherwise,’ the leader said with a faint sneer. He walked to the gate, his hand resting on his own rapier as a warning to Nathaniel.

‘Boys! How handsome you all are.’ Red Meg’s rich voice rang out across the street. ‘It makes my heart beat faster to see hard-working men sleeked in sweat.’ She drew the attention of the five men with the swing of her hips and a flourish of her crimson skirt as she danced across the cobbles. Her right eyebrow was arched, her eyes and her broad smile promising much.

Four of the men turned their attention to the Irish woman, unable to prevent the hint of a leer reaching their lips. Sensing trouble, the leader remained grim, his eyes darting between Red Meg and Nathaniel.

‘Step aside,’ the young man called. ‘I do not wish to find trouble here.’

‘You will find it if you do not move on.’ The leader’s fingers clenched around the hilt of his sword.

‘Let us have no fighting,’ Red Meg trilled. ‘We can put those passions to better use, I am sure. Come here and help a maid find her way about a strange city.’

‘Away with you, doxy,’ the steely-eyed man snapped.

Grace flinched at the slur, but the Irish woman appeared unmoved. Drawing her bodice a little lower, she continued to advance on the burial site.

Her actions unnerved the leader. He drew his rapier and pointed it from Red Meg to Nathaniel. ‘Away with you both, now,’ he growled.

With a fumbling action, Nat unsheathed his own sword. It wavered as he brandished it at the five men.

The leader gave a humourless laugh.

‘Stand aside!’ Nathaniel shouted, stepping towards the gate. Still smiling seductively, Red Meg advanced too.

The leader’s cheeks flushed with anger. Throwing open the gate, he levelled his blade.

By the plague pit, one of the labourers let out a fearful cry and pointed at the newly filled grave.

In the deepening twilight, Grace could not see what the labourer was indicating, but the two dirt-smeared men threw themselves backwards, shrieking. Stumbling and flailing, they scrambled out of the plot and away down the street.

Her breath catching in her throat, Grace hurried to the fence. The dying rays of the sun cast an infernal glow across the stinking waste. In the centre, the newly turned earth was churning like the gushing river water that flowed around the columns of London Bridge. Clods of soil shifted amid a wave of writhing brown fur as the rats rushed from the grave in all directions.

One filthy hand burst from the midst of the disturbed soil. It was followed by a second, and then a monstrous figure levered its way out of the plague pit, smeared black from head to toe, bright eyes ranging across the assembled group.

Hands flying to their gaping mouths, the five armed men stumbled backwards.

The resurrected figure grinned. ‘And now,’ it croaked, ‘let all hell break loose.’

Grace felt giddy with the rush of emotion and made to call her love’s name, but Nathaniel pushed by her. ‘Your sword,’ he called, tossing the rapier over the fence.

Though Grace could see he was close to exhaustion, Will snatched the glinting blade from the air and instantly found his balance. The steely-eyed man darted forward, thrusting his rapier towards the spy’s chest.

Will hooked his bare toes under one of the scurrying rats and, with a flick, hurled it through the air. Writhing, the hungry rodent hit the attacker full in the face. Needle-sharp teeth tore into flesh. Blood spattered and hands clawed, to no avail.

‘I made new friends,’ the fearsome apparition said, ‘and they are hungry.’ As the man shrieked in pain, the spy ran his opponent through.

Stunned by the attack on their leader, the other four men advanced slowly, rapiers drawn. With a cry, Nathaniel barrelled into the nearest man, knocking him to the dried mud of the burial site. The next man turned on him, but Red Meg was already there, still swaying her hips, still grinning. Up from nowhere she brought a gleaming dagger, drawing a thin red line across her foe’s neck. Blood spurted. Gurgling, the dying man fell to his knees and then pitched face down on the black earth.

The death caught the attention of the remaining two men. Lunging, Will drove his rapier through one. With a flamboyant twirl, Red Meg slammed her dagger into the eye of the last, pushing the blade deep into the man’s brain. The final attacker died under Will’s blade as he wrestled with a ferociously flailing Nathaniel.

Grace realized she wasn’t breathing. Sucking in a huge gulp of evening air, she struggled to understand how so many deaths could happen in what seemed the blink of an eye. The swarming brown rats were already feasting on the blood-spattered bodies.

Caked in the filth of the grave, Will staggered as he stepped forward. He looked as if he could barely stand. Nat rushed to help him through the gate with Red Meg a step behind, her smile now wry, her brow knitted thoughtfully.

Grace made to speak, but her voice broke and tears stung her eyes.

‘Hush,’ the spy said with an affectionate smile, his voice hoarse. ‘I survived. And I am stronger for it. It is remarkable the things you can learn when you are close to death, things that can turn your life in a different direction. And I have learned to embrace my devils.’

His smile, his bright eyes, his expression, were so enigmatic the young woman wanted to ask what he meant, but his legs buckled again and Nathaniel had to take his full weight.

As Will recovered, Grace recounted all that had transpired at Nonsuch while he rotted in Bedlam. When she had finished, he said, ‘London is no place to be right now. It is only a matter of time before the Enemy will come looking for me again. My destiny lies beyond this city.’

‘Where?’ Grace asked with a disbelieving shake of her head.

‘Our Enemy may think this war already won. It is not. A few good men can turn the tide. You and Nat have work to do at Nonsuch. John and Robert, should they have survived, have their own task. And there is one man who has always proved himself formidable in our struggle, and who is needed now more than ever: Dr John Dee.’

‘Even in Ireland, I have heard tell of that powerful court magician,’ Red Meg said. ‘Then I will accompany you. God help you, you will not walk ten paces on your own.’

‘No. You cannot trust her,’ Grace protested.

Will eyed the two men killed by the Irish woman. ‘You may be right, but our friend has shown herself an effective ally.’ He nodded. ‘Very well. But I will watch you very closely, Mistress O’Shee.’

A high-pitched cry like that of a gull at dawn echoed across the rooftops. Yet there was another quality to that unsettling sound, a deep rumble as if two opposing voices were calling at once, that made it unlike any bird they had heard before.

A shadow fell across Red Meg’s features. She looked around urgently until her attention lighted on a tall stone hall along the street to the west near where Lombard Street met Corn Hill. On one of the large chimney stacks, a figure was silhouetted against the darkening, star-sprinkled sky. It was unnaturally tall and thin with long slender limbs, but protruding from its head was what appeared to be a long, curved beak. As they watched, it put its head back and emitted that strange, troubling cry once more, and this time it was picked up by another, across the city to the south. More cries followed in quick succession.

‘Who is that, up there so high? And why does he wear a mask?’ Grace asked, disturbed, though not sure why.

‘The Corvata,’ the Irish woman said under her breath. She had grown pale, her features taut. ‘Your survival has already been noted. There will be no rest now.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

ON THE FAR HORIZON, A SPECTRAL GLOW LIT UP THE BLACK waves washing into the horseshoe-shaped bay. Amid that pearly luminescence, the outline of a ghostly galleon rocking gently on the swell could just be discerned. A smaller craft made its way steadily towards the shore.

In villages along the Kent coast, candles would be extinguished as storm-hardened sailors and their wives turned away from the windows, whispering prayers against the haunted vessel, or denying its very existence.

The night was warm, the salty breeze licking the surf into a gentle symphony where it met the sand. Beyond the whisper of the waves, owls hooted in the trees that ran down to the shore, and the marram grass on the edge of the dunes rustled as if small things moved among it.

On the beach, looking out to sea, Deortha stood with one hand high on a staff carved with black runes that resembled no human writing. Braided with trinkets and the skulls of field animals and birds, his hair glinted gold and silver in the moonlight. Despite the heat, he wore thick grey-green robes, faintly marked with a gold design of the same symbols that were on his staff.

The Unseelie Court’s magician fixed his attention on the approaching vessel, his contemplative nature set alight by satisfaction as a long-forming pattern fell into place.

An ending was coming.

Squatting, baleful and brooding like one of the gargoyles on the great cathedrals of Europe, Xanthus drew patterns in the sand with one long finger, occasionally laughing humourlessly to himself. On his shaved, pale head, the blue and black intersecting circles stood out starkly.

‘The seasons turn slowly, but a change was always coming,’ wise Deortha said, his gaze fixed ahead. ‘The king-in-waiting arrives this night and nothing will be the same again.’

The squatting thing grunted in reply.

Beside the magician, waiting like a statue of cold alabaster, was the one who passed for Lord Derby, a minor member of the Privy Council who rarely raised his voice in opposition to more outspoken characters such as Cecil and Essex, but who was always heeded when he did speak. Dressed in a black gown, a black velvet cap on his head, the Scar-Crow Man had a long, grey beard that glowed in the moonlight.

Deortha paid him no attention. Nor did the other grey shapes flitting around the fringes of the beach like moon shadows.

The small craft sped across the chopping waves in complete silence; not even the constant, rhythmic splashing of the six oarsmen could be heard. A lantern swung from a pole at the stern. And at the prow stood Lethe of the High Family, hands pressed flat against his belly, unmoved by the undulations of the craft on the waves. A long, grey cloak swathed him, the hood pulled back to reveal his silver hair, black-streaked along the centre, and a fierce expression that was tinged with both triumph and the flush of violent passion. Around his feet, a small creature gambolled. Sophisticated London folk would have thought it like the little apes that the foreign merchants sold in the market on Cheapside, but it was hairless, its ears pointed and its golden eyes held a disturbing intelligence.

When the boat reached the shore, the oarsmen jumped out into the white-licked surf and hauled it a way up the sand. Lethe stepped out into the backwash and strode up the beach to Deortha, his pet rolling and tumbling in front of him.

‘These mortals, this cattle swaying stupidly towards slaughter, have woken us.’ The faint sibilance in the new arrival’s voice echoed the sound of the sea. ‘They have gained our attention. And that is a good thing, Deortha, for we had grown complacent. The human beasts do not know what they have done.’

The wise one nodded in response. ‘We are close. England hangs by a thread. But there is one matter that demands our notice.’

Lethe’s eyes narrowed. Deortha explained about the English spy, Will Swyfte, who had seen glimpses of what was unfolding – but far from all – and who was now abroad in England and beyond control.

‘Beyond the watch of our Scar-Crows?’ Lethe asked with a note of irritation. He cast a supercilious eye at the emotionless man who stood nearby.

‘For now,’ the Lord Derby figure replied.

‘This spy is known to the High Family. But he is one man, as weak as the rest of them, and he cannot be expected to cause any interference with our work.’ Deortha chose his words carefully. He was not concerned, but in his divinations he had often seen how the smallest and seemingly most inconsequential matter could drastically change the greater pattern. ‘Still,’ he began, ‘he is resilient, and driven by demons that we would all understand. He will not rest until he has uncovered truths that he hopes will salve his secret dreads, and in so doing he may sow confusion or cause difficulties in the construction of our grand design. For all to be thrown awry at this late stage would be ...’ He tapped one finger on his lower lip in reflection. ‘Unfortunate.’

‘Then let us ensure this mortal is destroyed. I would see him struck down, his body torn open and his internal workings laid bare for the ravens to feast upon,’ Lethe said. He held his left arm out for his pet to scramble up his body and nestle in the crook of his elbow. Its golden eyes fell upon the Scar-Crow Man and it bared its needle-sharp teeth and hissed. ‘And it should be done in plain view, so all his own kind will see and learn.’

‘We have played him in times past,’ Deortha replied, looking beyond his master to the dark horizon, ‘thinking he might be suitable to advance our plans. Like all mortals, he is riven with weakness, his strengths made ragged by emotions. Love, yearning, dashed hopes, despair. There may still be a part for him to play.’

‘England falls before this summer turns. What need for him then?’

‘Very well.’ Deortha gave a faint bow of his head.

Lethe pressed the tips of his fingers together and turned his attention to Xanthus, who still squatted like a beast beside them. ‘This spy killed your brother, a Hunter like yourself,’ he said. ‘He has troubled you too, I understand.’

The shaven-headed thing gave a low, contemptuous growl deep in his throat. Looking up at his master with hollow eyes, he nodded. ‘I will find him.’

Lethe pursed his lips. ‘Of course you will, for no quarry ever escapes you. Your brother could never be driven off course, pursuing his prey with the cold, relentless force of a winter storm. But you are better. This spy is already as good as dead. But I would have more.’

Deortha gave another slight bow and turned to Lord Derby. ‘Let the word travel out to every corner of this land: William Swyfte is no longer England’s greatest spy and garlanded hero of all Albion. He has betrayed his Queen, his country and his fellow men. This traitor is now an outlaw, who must be hunted down and given up to the authorities. His name, his reputation, mean nothing. All England now stands against him. Do you understand?’

The Scar-Crow Man nodded, emotion springing to his face – at first concern, then righteous fury as he searched for the correct response. ‘I will return to Nonsuch this night and summon a meeting of the Privy Council for the morrow. The Queen will be advised forthwith. Will Swyfte will be shunned by all God-fearing Englishmen and brought to justice in no time at all. Traitor. Outlaw. His days are numbered.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

THE HOWL OF A HUNTING DOG DRIFTED ACROSS THE NIGHT-shrouded countryside, low and mournful in the stillness. It was joined by another, and then another, the baying of the hounds becoming one insistent, hungry voice.

Breathless from the chase, Will grabbed a leaning elm to halt his careering descent down the steep hillside. In the dark, exposed tree roots threatened to break his neck, tufting grass obscured sudden drops where the soil had slipped away in heavy rain, and rabbit holes peppering the slope promised to break ankles or tear ligaments.

The spy held out a helpful arm to the red-haired woman scrambling down the bank behind him. She clutched for branches to prevent a sudden fall and tore at her crimson skirts where they were caught on brambles. Dirt streaked her face and sweat glistened on her knitted brow.

‘I do not need your aid,’ Red Meg responded ferociously, as if he had offered to take her there and then.

‘This is not a time for pride, my lady. Proclaim your independent spirit now, but it will only result in a noose round both our necks by dawn.’

The Irish woman let forth a stream of cursing the like of which Will had heard only in the bustling shipyards along the Thames. ‘Do not think me some weak and bloodless woman,’ she snapped. ‘I have fought your marauding countrymen with a sword, a dagger and an axe across the bogs and mountains of my home. And I have survived, alone, in the cities of Europe and Africa, where women are traded like goats and treated worse.’

‘We have an entire village in pursuit and you would rather proclaim your independence? You will be the death of us.’ With a shake of his head, the spy set off down the slope once more, skidding among the great old oaks and tangled hawthorns. Occasionally, he stopped to look back and saw Meg keeping pace, determination etched on her face. Grudgingly, he had to accept that her boasts were all true; few other women could have survived the privations they had experienced since escaping the hot, plague-ridden capital.

His heart racing, Will cast his mind back across the two weeks since the escape from London under a mound of dirty sackcloth in the back of a cart. When he had scrubbed the plague-pit filth from him, he had bought cheap clothes, and then he and Meg became Samuel Maycott, a draper, visiting family in the north with his wife Mary. He stole a dagger from a blacksmith and allowed his beard to grow unkempt. As they continued north, they were passed by riders distributing pamphlets. Under an engraving of his face, so crude as to be barely recognizable, was the legend: England’s Greatest Spy – Traitor. And beneath it, William Swyfte, hero of the perfidious invasion by the Spanish fleet, wanted for treason. By order of the Privy Council. A reward has been offered.

The spy’s thoughts burst back into the present as he careered from the foot of the hillside into a meadow, the long grass swaying like silvery water in the moonlight. Behind him, torches and lamps glimmered like fireflies among the trees. The baying of the hounds rolled down the hillside, closer now.

The two fugitives had been running since sundown when a field worker drinking his beer by the hedge had chanced to talk to them, and had grown suspicious. But Will was tiring now, he could feel it. His leaden legs shook and fire seared his chest, and he guessed Meg was in a worse state, though she never complained.

The spy heard the pounding of the Irish woman’s feet in the undergrowth. Out of control, she burst from beneath an oak into the meadow straight into Will’s arms. Strands of auburn hair fell across her face, and when she blew them back, the spy found himself looking deep into her emerald eyes. For all her forthright playfulness, her cheeks still flushed, and she was the one who pulled away.

‘Master Swyfte,’ she breathed with a hint of embarrassed laughter in her words, ‘you are my saviour.’

‘I will do my best to live up to that title, my lady. Though at the very least I can promise you an entertaining ride to the bitter end.’

‘I heard you were an accomplished rider, sir. I would see it at first hand.’ Her teasing smile faded as she glanced over her shoulder to the dark, wooded hillside.

An undulating cry rumbled behind the baying of the dogs and the increasingly loud shouts of the nearing villagers. Unnatural and unsettling, it throbbed into the very core of Will’s being.

‘Let us not tarry, Master Swyfte,’ Meg said, a flicker of unease in her eyes.

They ran.

Halfway across the meadow, with their twin trails snaking out through the long grass behind them, Will glanced back. The lights were now flickering along the tree-line, and he caught a whiff of pitch from the sizzling torches. The otherworldly cry was caught in the wind, setting his teeth on edge.

When they reached the far side of the meadow, Will realized their time had all but run out. Meg was slowing by the moment, and the pursuers and their dogs were gaining ground. Ahead lay only more meadows, a stream, no tree cover or anywhere they could hide.

‘Stop,’ he called, skidding to a halt.

The Irish woman whirled, her eyes blazing. ‘I never give up!’

‘Nor is that my plan.’ He dropped to his knees and pulled his flint from his doublet.

His companion saw instantly what he was doing, but looking towards the bobbing lights she insisted, ‘There is not enough time.’

‘Let us pray that there is. For it is our only hope of escaping that rabble.’ Will struck the flint once, twice, a third time. The crack of the stone was lost beneath the howl of the dogs and the jubilant cries of the villagers who saw their quarry had come to a halt.

His full attention focused on the flint, the spy struck it again. This time a spark caught on the yellowing grass along the hedgerow. It had not rained for nearly two weeks and under the hot summer sun the countryside had baked and the vegetation had grown tinder-dry. A cloud of fragrant white smoke swirled up. The grass crackled, the red spark licking into golden flames that spread along the foot of the hedgerow.

Will glanced back at the meadow. White faces now loomed out of the gloom beneath the lights of lantern and torch. The tone of the hounds’ howling became uncertain as they scented the smoke, and the spy watched the pursuers slow. Flames surged up the hedgerow with a sudden roar that carried far over the quiet landscape. Within moments, a wall of red, orange and gold rushed across the grassland. White smoke became grey, billowing in thick clouds that soon obscured the hesitant villagers.

Shielding his face against the heat, Will stepped away from the fire, coughing as the acrid fumes stung the back of his throat. ‘Come,’ he gasped. ‘This should provide us some cover, at least for a while.’

Impressed, Red Meg nodded as she lifted her skirts and hurried away from the blaze. ‘Your reputation is not unwarranted, Master Swyfte. But we are still in an ill pickle.’

Behind them, the dogs’ frightened barks were drowned out by the long howl of the thing they feared more. A note of jubilation edged the cry. Whatever was there sensed its prey at hand.

All humour now gone, the Irish woman cast a troubled glance at Will. Neither of them spoke as they clambered over a stile and ran across the next meadow.

When they reached the other side, Meg said in a hesitant voice, ‘What do you suggest?’

‘You know as well as I there is little to gain by running. If the Enemy is at our backs in open countryside, it will not relent until it has us.’

‘Stand and fight, then? But where? And do you have the strength to defeat one of those foul things?’

Will guessed his companion already knew the answer.

They reached a rutted lane, the edges lined with nettles. At the top of the stile, Will looked back to the thick fog drifting across the meadow. Dark smudges of villagers moved through it, more hesitant but refusing to give up. Yet the spy’s attention was caught by a wilder activity away to his left. Something bounded across the meadow, outpacing the men with the dogs. Will found it hard to discern its true nature; at times it moved on all fours, at others it rose to two feet, with a loping gait. It kept fast and low at all times.

Meg had seen it too. ‘It will be on us in moments,’ she said, drawing herself up. ‘Unsheath your sword. I will use my dagger. If we are to die this night, let it be with blood on our blades.’

Spinning round, Will surveyed the dark countryside. One glint of moonlight stirred a hope.

‘I am not ready to die yet.’ He leapt from the stile to run along the lane.

As they moved away from the roaring of the fire, they could hear the tinkling of water falling across stones.

A change in the wind brought dense clouds of smoke sweeping all around the two fugitives. The keening cry of their now-hidden pursuer became louder. Will wondered if the thing at their backs was circling them, choosing its moment to strike.

The shouts of the hunting party had grown angrier. The hounds were baying again, and they too were drawing nearer.

Out of the smoke, an old stone bridge emerged, the worn and crumbling parapets dappled with lichen. As Meg ran to cross it, the spy caught an arm around her waist, forcing her off the dusty lane and down the grassy bank to the stream he had heard earlier. Will didn’t slow their pace and they splashed into the cool, black water up to his calves.

Meg flashed a questioning look, but he only urged her into the dark beneath the bridge’s single arch. Amid the smell of wet vegetation, they came to a halt against the chill stone, drawing the dank air into their burning chests. Through the other arch of the bridge, they could see grey tendrils of smoke floating past and the hellish glare of the fire burning across the meadow.

‘Running water dulls the senses of the Enemy,’ Will whispered. So Dr Dee had told him, and he hoped the alchemist was right.

Meg nodded.

But would the stream dull those senses enough to mask the presence of the quarry hiding beneath the bridge? the spy wondered.

The night was punctured by the shouts of the hunting party trying to decide which way to go along the lane. Will heard someone give an order to split into two groups. But then the strange, reedy cry echoed nearby and he felt Meg’s body tense beside him.

They waited, listening to the distant crack of the fire and the splashing of the water. The cry came again, not far from the bridge, and then ended suddenly.

It knows we are here, Will thought.

Meg sensed it too. She held the spy’s gaze, offering a silent prayer. He felt her body grow taut once more, and he was sure their hearts were beating so hard they could be heard beyond their bodies.

A soft tread rustled above their heads. It paused, began again.

Searching.

Nails scraping on stone. Low, rasping breaths. A thump as the predator leapt on to the parapet of the bridge.

The Irish woman flinched, her mouth working against Will’s hand. Pulling her close, he held her tight to prevent her crying out by accident.

‘Can’t see nothing down here!’ a young man’s voice rang out from further up the lane.

A growl rumbled out from deep in the throat of the thing waiting above. The spy heard it leap from the parapet and scuttle down to the other side of the bridge. Hiding from the approaching men, he guessed.

Footsteps pounded along the dried mud of the lane to the edge of the bridge. Dogs snuffled in the undergrowth. Within a moment, however, the hounds began to whimper and then turned tail and ran back along the lane.

‘What’s wrong with ’em? They afeared a summat?’ Will heard one man say.

‘The fire. Beasts don’t like it,’ another replied.

‘’Ere. Let’s have a look over the bridge,’ a third said.

From the sound of the footsteps cresting the stone structure, the spy guessed that three was the total number of villagers in the group. The men tramped a little farther down the other side of the bridge and then stopped. Will imagined them looking out into the night.

‘Back home?’ the first began. His next word was drowned out by a terrible roaring. The three men shrieked as one.

Meg folded into the spy’s body, glancing fearfully through the arch where the hellish fires blazed. The men scrambled backwards, their yells unintelligible beneath the deafening rage of their attacker. Will heard the thing race up the bridge, and then there was a sound like ripping silk again and again and again. The screams of the three men pierced the night.

Something fell into the stream with a loud splash. When the water settled, Will saw the dead eyes of one of the villagers staring back at him, the mouth wide in terror.

The cries became whimpers and gradually died away, but the crunch and spatter continued a while.

Then silence fell.

The spy realized he had stopped breathing. Meg was rigid too. Will tried to imagine the predator standing above his head, caught in the lamp of the moon, stained red from head to toe. Was it licking its lips? Was it looking hungrily to where the rest of the hunting party searched? Or was it listening slyly, waiting for Will to emerge from hiding?

Now he could hear the frightened, questioning voices of the other villagers following the screams of the dying men. The thing must have decided it had no further appetite for slaughter, for Will heard it turn and lope from the bridge along the lane in the opposite direction.

‘We must be away from here before we are discovered,’ the spy whispered.

His companion was loath to move and pressed her back against the stone of the arch, but Will grabbed her cold hand and gently eased her away. Within a moment they were splashing along the stream, scrambling over slippery rocks down the channel between the meadows.

Horrified shouts echoed through the dark behind them as the villagers found their fallen friends. ‘God’s wounds,’ one man exclaimed. ‘The Devil is abroad this night.’

And Will could not deny it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

‘YOU CAN NEVER OUTRUN THE THING THAT THE UNSEELIE COURT has set on your trail,’ Meg warned, her mood dark as she wrung out the hem of her bedraggled skirts. A boiling July sun was beating down on the barleyfields edging the stream where the Irish woman and Will were resting. They had sought the shade of an ash tree five miles away from the bloody bridge.

‘Then I will stand and fight.’ His legs weary from the long run, the spy watched the lonely countryside for any sign of movement.

‘This is not just any foe,’ the woman pressed. ‘It is one of their hunters. I have seen them at their murderous work, pursuing my countrymen through the forests. They never stop until they have their prey.’

‘I have killed their kind before,’ Will said bluntly, ‘and I can do so again.’

Meg snorted, dragging her fingers through her damp, tangled auburn hair. ‘You are a stubborn man.’

‘What do you suggest? That I roll over and die?’

After a moment’s pause, the woman ventured, ‘Come away with me to Europe. I have seen your worth. There is good pay to be had for men and women of our skills. Spies are always in demand at the courts of great nations. We can change our names, our appearances, and with England fallen, the Unseelie Court will not care about two poor, bedraggled mortals.’ With studied, heavy-lidded eyes, she breathed into his ear, ‘We could become rich. More than that, we could experience many delights in each other’s company.’

‘Your offer is tempting, Mistress O’Shee, but I will not abandon England.’ Will could not tell his companion of the notion that truly set him afire: the one slip in his tormentor’s subtle assault when death seemed close in the plague pit, the hint that Jenny still survived in a hot land across the sea.

Thank you, Kit, the spy thought, still astonished how hope could arise from something so dark and despairing.

‘Ho! What have we here?’

Will leapt to his feet, on guard in an instant. He was looking straight into the barrel of a musket.

On top of the bank across the stream, four armed men and a woman in dirty, ragged clothes levelled their weapons. The men were old soldiers, morion helmets tied under their chins with red tape, their bodies encased in mud-splattered corselets with tassets to protect their thighs. Two carried matchlocks, the rest rapiers. Wearing filthy grey skirts and only a corset on top, the woman stood with one hand on her hip. From the knowing look in her eye and the brazen way she held herself, Will guessed she was a doxy.

‘Have ye not heard,’ the man at the front said with a sneering smile, ‘’tis not safe to travel along the byways of England. Rogues and ruffians wait at every turn. But for a small contribution, we can ensure safe passage for you through these dangerous fields.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Unless, of course, ye be Will Swyfte, in which case there is more than a pretty penny to be had.’

Will sized up the soldier, noting the easy stance and the confident gleam in his eye, and the cheeks flayed by the elements that suggested he had been living rough for a long time. Was he one of the disenchanted soldiers returned from Sir Francis Drake’s failed attack upon Portugal four years earlier? One of those who had caused such violent trouble in London during the Bartholomew Fair?

‘Oh, please, sir, do not harm us,’ Meg protested, instantly adopting a terrified expression. She skipped lightly across the stream to the side of the footpad.

‘Leave now,’ Will said in a calm voice, his eyes locked on his opponent’s, ‘and you will not be harmed.’

The man shook his head in incredulity while his companions fell about in mocking laughter. With a shrug, Will drew his rapier. The group fell silent, their faces darkening.

‘Fool,’ the outspoken footpad muttered. He went to strike his flint to ignite the fuse of his matchlock, but before a spark had flown Meg had knocked the musket from his hands, thrusting her dagger towards his neck. The doxy lunged for the Irish woman, but was brought down in a flash when a small fist rammed against her jaw.

Will bounded across the stream and drove the tip of his rapier into the wrist of the soldier fumbling with the other matchlock. As the footpad fell back, howling, the spy turned his blade on the remaining two men.

‘Drop your weapons or I will kill your leader,’ Meg spat, her face now hard, the edge of her dagger digging into the exposed throat of her opponent.

‘Kill him, then,’ one of the other men muttered, his eyes darting from Will’s sword to his mate.

‘Honour among thieves,’ the spy said in an acid tone. ‘Come on, then. Let us finish this now.’

Floating over the meadows came the rhythmic tinkling of bells and the sound of rich, deep voices singing in a strange language. ‘Moon-Men,’ one of the footpads whispered to his mate. ‘They will cut out our hearts and eat them if they catch us here.’

Sheathing their swords, the two men scrambled up the bank and were soon racing away through the ripening barley. The dazed doxy and the other old soldiers followed close behind.

‘What scared them so?’ Meg mused as she watched the robbers disappear into the sun.

‘Footpads are all cowards,’ Will replied, plucking up the dropped matchlock. He held out a hand to his companion, who took it with a playful curtsey and they made their way back across the stream and up the bank.

‘We make a good team, Master Swyfte. No enemy could stand against us,’ the woman said. ‘We would be rich in no time.’

‘Or dead. For we both throw caution to the wind.’

The sound of the bells and the singing drew nearer. Just beyond the hedgerow a large crowd of people processed along a lane. Poised in thought, Will listened to the music as he watched the bobbing heads pass slowly by. Brilliant scarlets, golds and azure blues blazed among the greenery of the countryside. He saw an opportunity.

‘Come,’ he said, ‘let us have some pleasant company and conversation.’

As they set off across the meadow, Will glanced back at the open countryside. He had the uncomfortable feeling of eyes upon him. Their pursuer had found them again, he was sure, and was biding its time until nightfall.

At the hedgerow, Meg slowed, growing contemptuous. ‘Egyptians,’ she hissed. ‘Would you have us killed in the night, or my virtue stolen before I am sold into slavery on the Barbary Coast?’

‘You have a colourful imagination, my lady,’ Will said. ‘Though now you mention it, perhaps I can get a good penny for you. At least enough to buy me a hot ordinary in a tavern on the way.’

The Irish woman cursed loudly, but the spy only laughed.

The brightly dressed band of gypsies numbered at least forty, men, women and children, some mounted, others leading laden horses, though the beasts were poor, scrawny things. Many of the travellers had their faces painted yellow or crimson, embroidered turbans on their heads and silk scarves draping their necks. Their clothes were little more than rags stitched together, but the patches had been chosen artfully so the colours swirled across their bodies. The tinkling sound came from bells on small chains they wore around the ankles, and their feet were bare.

Will understood Meg’s dislike, though he didn’t share it. The Moon-Men were feared as thieves, black magicians, coney-catchers who tricked the gullible, and violent rogues who left for dead anyone who crossed their path. Villagers drove them on whenever they settled for a night. The Privy Council saw them as a threat to the stability of England and had passed more than one Act to control them. And so they continued their wandering across the length and breadth of Europe, playing up to the suspicions and earning a meagre living through begging, fortune-telling or giving displays of ventriloquism and puppetry at the fairs and taverns. Yes, and robbery too. But the spy knew greater truths were hidden among the rumours and gossip.

‘What I have seen of the Enemy has made me slower to condemn my fellow men,’ Will said as he helped the Irish woman over a stile. ‘In London, the common man fears the blackamoors and lascars, yes, and the Spanish and Dutch too. The men of Kent loathe the men of Suffolk, for being strange in their ways, and in Bankside the men and women of one street eye with suspicion their neighbours on the next. The Unseelie Court see us all as barely more than beasts fighting anyone who dares stray on to our feeding ground, and sometimes I fear they are right.’

Meg cast a suspicious glance at him. ‘Siding with the Unseelie Court?’ she said. ‘Some would find treason in your words. I would learn to bite your tongue, for those in other circles may not be as amenable to you as I.’

‘Ah. You are amenable to me.’

Her cheeks flushed. ‘I simply meant—’

Will held up a hand as the procession of gypsies slowed and a man in an ochre turban embroidered with black crescents and stars turned towards them. His dark eyes gave nothing away, but his hand slipped surreptitiously inside his robes, no doubt to grasp a hidden dagger.

‘Tell me,’ Will said to his companion, sweeping one hand towards the colourful throng, ‘these Egyptians, as you call them, travel through the loneliest places in Europe, across the cold, dark moors and by lonely lakes, over mountaintops and by the sacred wells and pools and stones, all the places where the Unseelie Court are at their strongest. Yet they are here. They still live. Why have they not been slaughtered, or turned to straw, or lured underhill by haunting music to emerge old and broken years later?’

Meg’s brow furrowed in thought.

The gypsy came over and gave a deep bow, as practised in pretence as any spy. ‘We are but poor travellers, blown hither and yon in this world by the winds of need,’ he said in a deep voice flavoured with an unidentifiable accent. His right hand still hidden in his robes, he held the left out, palm up. ‘Spare a kindness to help us through this day and the dark night that follows.’

‘I will do more than that,’ the spy replied. He held out the matchlock. ‘Take this firearm. It will earn you a pretty penny if you sell it at market, or you might find it offers you better protection along the dangerous roads of England.’

With one suspicious eye on Will, the man brought his hand out of his robes and took the musket, turning it over to inspect it. He nodded. ‘A good piece. And in return ...?’

‘You allow us to travel with you for a while.’

The gypsy shook his head. ‘We do not allow strangers in our group.’

‘I am not a stranger.’ The spy placed a hand on his heart. ‘Te’sorthene.’

The man weighed the spy carefully. ‘You speak our secret language,’ he said with a hint of threat.

Will held the Moon-Man’s gaze. ‘In Krakow, three years gone, your people and I had a common enemy. The Fair Folk. We escaped by working together. I would hope we can do the same now.’

Nodding non-committally, the gypsy examined the musket again and returned to the caravan, where he engaged in whispered conversations with his fellows. After a few moments, he flashed a gap-toothed grin and said, ‘We thank you for your gift and offer our hospitality on our journeys across this land. My name is Silvanus, my wife is Sabina. We have two boys. You are welcome to travel with my family and share our food.’

‘Thank you. As we are among friends, my true name is Will Swyfte.’

‘We do not discuss the Good Neighbours around our fire, but as you raised the matter ...’ Silvanus whispered gravely, looking past the spy into the open countryside. ‘Though it is summer, I feel the cold breath of winter on my neck. There has been peace in England for many years now, but this is a devil-haunted land once more.’

CHAPTER FORTY

‘IF YOU WISH TO SAVE MY LIFE, WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL me?’ Edmund Shipwash sobbed. His heels scraped on the crumbling stone parapet surrounding the blue-tiled roof of St Paul’s Cathedral, the rest of his body hanging out over the void, buffeted by the hot morning breeze. The winding, filthy streets of London throbbed with the working day’s rhythms more than two hundred feet below.

‘I am a man of contradictions,’ the Earl of Launceston replied in his whispery voice, his fist caught in the front of Shipwash’s emerald doublet. ‘Answer the question.’

Shipwash whimpered as his body swayed from side to side. Swooping overhead, the gulls mocked him with their cries.

‘Robert,’ Carpenter cautioned, shielding his eyes from the glare of the snaking river to the south where the sails of the vast seagoing vessels billowed as they left the legal quays. The scarred spy could see his pale companion loosening his grip. The Earl was imagining what their captive would look like lying among the throng in the churchyard, his body broken and bleeding.

Launceston sighed and nodded.

‘I have not seen Frizer or Skeres or Poley since Kit Marlowe was killed,’ Shipwash burbled. ‘No one knows where they are. Not in London, no.’

As we had heard, Carpenter thought with irritation. The trail to the devil-masked killer was as cold as Launceston’s heart. When they had escaped by the skin of their teeth from the supernatural forces haunting the woods to the south of Nonsuch, the two spies had plunged straight into London’s underworld, beating and burning and cutting in search of the answers Will had demanded. But there was no sign of the man charged with the playwright’s murder, nor his two accomplices.

‘And what of Thomas Walsingham, Marlowe’s patron?’ the Earl demanded.

A black stain spread across Shipwash’s breeches. ‘N-no. Not seen. Nowhere.’

The rich cousin of the old spymaster had something to do with this business, Carpenter could feel it in his bones. But like the other three men, Walsingham had vanished. His fine home in Chislehurst stood deserted.

‘Bring him in,’ Carpenter spat.

Reluctantly, Launceston hauled their captive on to the baking roof. Shipwash fell to his hands and knees and vomited. The Earl sighed once more. ‘Now what will the fine gentlemen and ladies think when they climb up here on Sunday morn for their weekly enjoyment of the view?’

Catching the scruff of the captive’s jerkin, the Earl dragged the man lazily to where Carpenter leaned on one of the tower’s buttresses. His sandy hair plastered to his head with sweat, Shipwash pressed his hands together as if he were praying to the bad-tempered man.

‘I am no angel,’ Carpenter said with a cruel wave of his hand. ‘If I were, you might have a chance of escaping the fate that awaits you.’

‘Please,’ the terrified man begged. ‘The Unseelie Court are hunting me? And I am to die, like Marlowe?’

‘And Gavell and Clement and Makepiece,’ Launceston sniffed, examining his nails. ‘Yes, you are on the list.’

‘I know nothing of any list!’

‘It is a list of all spies who worked with Kit Marlowe at the behest of our old master Sir Francis Walsingham. Tell us what matter you were engaged in and there may still be some thin hope,’ the scarred man growled.

‘But you know our business! Oft-times we have no idea who else works with us.’

Carpenter feigned boredom. He looked past the pall of smoke hanging over the clutter of poor plague-ridden houses near the Tower towards the tenter grounds on either side of Moor Fields. Long strips of crimson and popinjay blue fluttered in the wind where the cloth finishers were drying and stretching their recently dyed textiles.

Shipwash began to cry. ‘The Unseelie Court! I am a dead man.’

‘How fragrant it could be up here above the foul-smelling streets with the wind bringing the scents of the fields to the north,’ the Earl’s nostrils flared, ‘if not for the stink of piss and sick.’

The captive looked up. ‘I ... I kept records. I know that is grounds for treason. But I thought—’

‘You thought you might blackmail someone, somewhere, with some secret or other you had gleaned along the way.’ Carpenter shrugged. ‘Well, we have all considered it at some time or other. Life is hard and a little coin helps it pass easier.’

‘But why is this important?’ Shipwash asked, standing shakily.

‘If we find why the Unseelie Court wish those named in the list dead, we may be able to discover who wields the knife,’ Launceston muttered. ‘Or not.’

‘You could protect me,’ the frightened man said hopefully.

‘No point.’ The scar-faced spy turned up his nose at the man’s urine-stained breeches. ‘The Enemy will simply find another victim to help break down our hard-fought defences.’

‘But if our devil-masked killer still thinks you are handy for a little throat-slitting and flaying, we may yet draw him out into the open,’ the Earl said with a quiver of excitement.

Carpenter sighed and rolled his eyes.

‘What? You seek to use me like cheese in a mousetrap?’ Horrified, Shipwash looked from one spy to the other.

‘For the moment, we will keep you safe,’ Carpenter snapped, glaring at his companion. ‘Now fetch your records.’

The two spies accompanied their anxious colleague down the three hundred steps into the nave. Outside in the rumble of cartwheels and the reek of dung, Carpenter pulled his cap low and sidled up to where his love, Alice, waited with a pot of New World paprika for the palace kitchens. ‘Tell Swyfte’s assistant we have our man Shipwash,’ he whispered. ‘He may yet have the information we need.’

‘Can I kiss you?’ the kitchen maid teased, her eyes sparkling.

‘No!’ The scar-faced man’s cheeks flushed, though it was more with excitement than embarrassment. ‘Alice, I thank you for what you do. But take no risks. I could not bear it if—’

‘Hush,’ she said. ‘If I can help bring this terrible business to an end and we can be together once again, then that is worth any risk.’

Full of gratitude, Carpenter could only give a curt nod and hurry back to his companion.

‘You are a fool,’ Launceston said with surprising emotion. ‘You play games with her life.’

‘Alice is her own woman. I have no more power to drive her away than I have with ... you.’

The two spies held each other’s gaze for a long moment. Behind them, heels suddenly clattered on the worn flagstones surrounding St Paul’s. The men spun round to see Shipwash racing away through the crowds swarming into the nave in search of work.

‘Damn him,’ Carpenter cursed. The scarred man and the Earl plunged into the throng, hurling bodies out of their path. Past the bellowing preachers they ran, knocking over booksellers and upending servant girls, elbowing merchants and kicking out at children. But by the time they reached the cart-clogged street, their former captive was nowhere to be seen.

‘Ah,’ Launceston said, placing a finger to his lips in reflection. ‘That went well.’

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

IN A FRENZY OF GLEAMING BLACK WING, THE CROWS FEASTED ON the fine banquet of young Edward Tulse. Eyes gone, white bone shining through the tatters of his face, the kitchen boy was losing his identity one peck at a time. A day after his life had been taken, the lad still hung from the gallows at Nonsuch, and there he would remain until another victim was chosen to take his place.

And that will not be long, Grace thought.

Hurrying silently along the first-floor corridor, the lady-in-waiting tried to avert her eyes from the grisly sight, but the deteriorating corpse said too much about life in the palace. The boy, who struggled with some deformity of the mouth, had been as good-natured as anyone consigned to labour all day near the hot ovens during the summer. He could never have been a spy reporting back to his secret Catholic masters.

The young woman paused at the end of the corridor and listened. Outside the crows had been disturbed, taking wing as one, a shadow of black feather and bloody beak passing across the sun. So soon after dawn only the kitchen staff would be up preparing the morning meal, but she could not take any risks. Everywhere she went someone was watching her with beady, suspicious eyes. And not just her.

Accusations were coming thick and fast to the Privy Council: of treason, atheism, unnatural acts, and any other crime that could be imagined. Men and women looked at their friends and acquaintances and wondered who was reporting on whom, and which person could be trusted, and who had most to gain by bringing another down.

‘You are well?’

Grace stifled a cry of surprise. It was Nathaniel, who had crept up on her as stealthily as a cat.

‘You said to be light of foot,’ he muttered. He looked pale, with dark circles under his eyes.

‘I did not say scare me into an early grave.’

‘This creeping around takes its toll, ’tis true. I have not slept well since we parted company with Will. At every noise, I feel they are coming for me in my sleep.’

‘What have you uncovered?’

‘I whiled away an hour with Jane Northwood in the gardens yesterday evening,’ he winced, ‘and someone owes me a great debt for that. After listening to all the gossip of every dalliance and slight and rivalry in the entire court, I began to feel my life drain from me. But by the time the bats were flitting overhead, a lull in the conversation finally appeared and I could ask my question. She tells me Master Cockayne is away in London on some business.’

‘Come, then,’ Grace said, excited. ‘We must search his chamber.’

Her friend’s face grew grave. ‘And if we are caught we will be hanging out there with Edward Tulse.’

‘Now, Nat, before the palace awakes,’ the young woman urged softly.

With a sigh, Nathaniel nodded. He led the way through the still corridors to Cockayne’s chamber, three doors from the spymaster’s own room. Grace listened at the door. No sound came from within, and after a moment she steeled herself and stepped inside.

The chamber was barely bigger than a box, with a trestle, a chair, two stools and mounds of parchments and books. The woman felt her heart sink as she surveyed the piles of papers, but she gave a weary nod to Nathaniel and they began to sift through them. Grace tried to picture Cecil’s adviser at work in the room, a small man, ruddy-faced and grey-haired, hunched over these volumes deep in thought. Where would he hide the play?

The young man tossed parchments aside with seeming disregard. ‘At least we will have some distraction from all this misery,’ he muttered.

‘Oh, what?’

‘Jane Northwood told me there is to be a masque, to take the Queen’s mind off the plague drawing closer to her palace. Costumes and music and dancing, with the most lavish scenery and devices and machines ever to grace Nonsuch. All paid for by the Earl of Essex.’ Nathaniel flashed his friend a grin. ‘If he cannot fawn enough, he will buy his way into the Queen’s favour. They say he has even hired Sir Edmund Spenser to pen the words and verses. Perhaps not the best choice when his Faerie Queen antagonized Lord Burghley so.’

The sound of footsteps echoed outside the chamber.

Nathaniel quickly moved to a corner out of immediate sight from the entrance to the room, but Grace stood transfixed.

The door swung open to reveal a scowling Tobias Strangewayes, rapier drawn. ‘What are you doing here?’ he snarled in a low voice.

The woman flinched from the spy’s gaze. Her blood growing cold, she approached the man, holding her hands before her. ‘Please, Master Strangewayes, I beseech you. This is not how it appears.’

Every fibre of her being thrummed with awareness of Nat only feet away.

The spy began to look around the room. Grace snatched out a hand to touch his cheek. The shock of that contact almost threw them apart.

Keep your eyes upon me, the woman silently prayed.

She forced a flirtatious smile, like the ones she had seen Meg conjure so easily. Her fingers remained on the man’s cheek, hot and tingling and so brazen it might have been an embrace. Uncomfortable, Grace thought, I have never been so forward before.

‘It appears that you are one of the traitors at large within Nonsuch Palace.’ His tone was harsh, and he began to look around the room again.

Panic made the woman’s heart flutter. Forcing herself to overcome her resistance, she parted her lips and stepped so close to Strangewayes that her body brushed against his. She balanced on tiptoes, wavering, so that he knew she could easily fall forward and press her breasts against his chest. Her cheeks flushed with awkwardness, but she widened her smile to turn it into a colouring of passion.

Strangewayes swallowed, his brow furrowing. His gaze still wanted to dart.

Keep. Your. Eyes. On. Me.

‘You are a brave and honourable defender of our Queen and I am but a lowly servant of Her Majesty, but we wish the same thing: her safety and security,’ Grace breathed. ‘I followed a hooded man to this part of the palace, but lost sight of him. Then I saw this door was ajar—’

The red-headed spy made to step into the chamber. Her heart beating faster, Grace leaned forward so her lips were close enough to kiss him.

‘If I was seen ... why, I fear for my safety. I have no strong protector here at court.’ She held his wavering gaze until a faint smile leapt to his lips.

‘You have one now,’ he said gently. ‘My master sent me to ...’ He hesitated. ‘To request some information from Master Cockayne ...’ His voice tailed away.

At this time of day? Grace thought. It seemed that the Earl of Essex was taking advantage of Cockayne’s absence to look into the business of his rival, Sir Robert Cecil.

‘Would you walk with me awhile until I find peace?’ the woman whispered.

Strangewayes nodded, eager to be away from the chamber now he had been caught out.

Her blood throbbing at the close call, Grace flashed a glance at a rigid Nathaniel as she left the chamber.

She knew she had earned only a brief reprieve. Before she had been all but invisible; now that Strangewayes had discovered her among Cockayne’s things she had been noticed. One more false step would bring her immediately to the attention of the powers at Nonsuch, and then her life would truly hang by a thread.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

‘SOMETHING FOLLOWS US STILL. DO YOU SEE?’ SILVANUS POINTED down the rolling Staffordshire uplands to where the lush meadows fell against a dense strip of shadowy woodland. Will followed the line of the gypsy’s finger. Squinting, he could glimpse a grey shape flitting among the trees, though under the slate-grey skies at the end of the day he could not be sure it was not a trick of the light.

‘The same thing you have seen for the last three nights?’ the spy asked.

The man bobbed his ochre turban in a grave nod. His face was painted scarlet from the festivities in the village they had just left, where the gypsies had played their roles as fortune-tellers, magicians and performers. They had been given enough scraps of food to last them three days. ‘It draws closer with each day, sometimes appearing from the east, sometimes the west, searching for a break in our defences. It plans to attack if it can find a way in, or it would have left us alone long ago.’

The spy looked back at the children chasing each other alongside the laden horses of the caravan. What kind of man was he to show such callous disregard for the lives of the people who had protected him? Meg appeared to care little about the harsh decision they had taken for the greater good, but Will felt it weigh heavily on him every moment of the day.

The Moon-Man returned to his wife Sabina, who rode a horse with baskets hanging down its flanks. Their two boys, Goliath and Samuel, had taken a liking to Will, enjoying his tales of adventure. He felt another pang of self-loathing at their warm glances.

He looked back down the slope, but the shadow was gone. Whatever was out there would be back soon, though, he was sure of it.

He strode back to the slow-moving column where Red Meg played with the gypsy children. She had warmed to the Egyptians during the seven days the two spies had accompanied the caravan, sharing the travellers’ food round their fires under starry skies, and listening to the lilting poetry of their strange, secret language. On their journey across the flat Midlands plain, Will had seen his Irish companion peel away layers of deception to reveal what he believed were her genuine feelings. At times, he had almost grown to trust her.

The sun broke through the clouds as the caravan made its way steadily upwards. It was hot and muggy with the threat of rain. The dusty air of the track across the lowlands gave way to the scent of fern and cool, damp vegetation. As a dark band of forest loomed ahead of them, Silvanus made his way back. He wore a relieved smile.

‘We are nearing a safe place,’ he said, dabbing at the sweat on his brow with a red kerchief. ‘We have made camp here many times before. The tracks through these hills are always dangerous, with footpads and rogues roaming constantly. But there are many places nearby that the Good Neighbours call their own. When we move so close to their realm, we always take more care.’

Meg looked at the hillside and then down into the lowlands where the shadows of clouds scudded across the woods and meadows. ‘This reminds me of home,’ she said with a note of yearning. ‘Where are we?’

The Egyptian pointed from the shimmering line of the River Dane in the green valley towards the nearest heavily wooded mountain beyond the hillside. ‘That is the White Peak and this wood ahead is Back Forest. In there is our destination. Lud’s Church.’

‘A church?’ Meg asked. ‘You are God-fearing men, then?’

Silvanus grinned. ‘This church has been here much longer than the ones you know. It was old before the Bible was written.’

‘And who worships in that house of God?’ Will enquired.

The Moon-Man only smiled.

When the caravan wound its way under the cool canopy of Back Forest, the singing of the Egyptians grew quieter. The children kept closer to their mothers, wide, bright eyes searching the shadows among the trees. They could hear birdsong and the movement of small woodland creatures in the verdant undergrowth, but they all felt an odd weight upon them, as if the forest was holding its breath, watching the strange beings wandering into its midst. Will found the sensation unsettling, but not threatening.

The two boys, Goliath and Samuel, stepped in close to the spy, taking his hands. ‘Tell us a story, master,’ Samuel, the older boy, whispered, trying to be brave. ‘Tell us again how you fought the bear with your bare hands.’

Picking up Goliath, Will continued to hold the other boy’s hand as he spoke again about his exploits. Meg rolled her eyes at her companion’s heroic exaggerations and the weakness of his jokes, but she stayed by his side nonetheless, head down as she listened to his words. Glancing down at Samuel, Will had the strange feeling that he was looking at himself, on his way to hunt for birds’ eggs with his friends in the Forest of Arden. He was surprised by a brief but powerful pang of loss.

The caravan wound through the ancient greenwood, the track wide enough only for one person at a time. Their low, rhythmic singing rolled out among the gnarled trees. Although the Moon-Men were moving up into the highlands, Will noticed the front of the column had started to dip down. Eventually he came to a set of uneven steps cut into the grey bedrock, so old and worn by generations of feet they might have been formed by nature. The steps led into a chasm that had been created by a great landslip, as wide as the height of two men, the bottom lost to the dark. The singing stopped as each man, woman and child began their descent. Shafts of evening sunlight slashed through the jumble of overhanging trees, illuminating areas of moss-covered sandstone on the sheer walls.

The chasm was even cooler than the dense wood. As his eyes adjusted to the half-light, Will saw it was thickly overgrown with fern, bracken and long grass. When they reached the gulley’s stony foot, Meg looked up in awe at the patchwork of green leaf and blue sky as high overhead as the top of a steeple. ‘It is indeed a church,’ she whispered.

Silvanus turned back to Will and said, ‘Only on the day of midsummer does the sun reach to the very bottom of this sacred place. They say that, in the time before the church-people came to England, men and women ventured here to bow their heads to old gods.’

‘A good choice,’ Will replied with a nod. ‘It would not be difficult to defend this place against brigands.’

‘There is more to this sanctuary than that,’ the gypsy said, looking along the chasm to where his people were already pulling their bundles off the horses. ‘Some places even the Good Neighbours must walk with care.’

Silvanus went to help his wife erect their shelter. Along the soaring sandstone walls, the men unfurled brightly coloured squares of linen, draping them over arrangements of poles, while the women folded sheets for bedding. When they were done, fires were lit in the gathering gloom, the sparks swirling upwards towards the slash of cerulean sky. Huddled around the flames, the garishly painted women prepared the stolen poultry and trapped rabbits for the evening meal, their faces even more grotesque in the red light.

Meg called Will over and they sat under a shelter, watching the flickering light throw looming shadows across the wall of the chasm. ‘How does it feel – a tool of the English state, now on the run and allied with the very outsiders your government and people have hounded?’ the Irish woman teased.

‘Life surprises us with different roles when we least expect it.’

With a wistful expression, Meg watched the children at play.

‘I hear there is little love for Englishmen in your homeland,’ Will enquired from beneath the wide brim of his felt hat.

‘Would you expect any different after the massacres your Earl of Essex inflicted on my people?’ There was a crack of restrained anger in her voice. ‘Our lands sold off so that wealthy Englishmen can settle their plantations in Munster? Our women raped by your adventurers? The Irish have long memories, Master Swyfte.’

‘Yet here you are, helping the long-hated enemy. Apparently, life surprises us all with improbable roles.’ Will pushed his hat back, letting the flickering flames illuminate his features. ‘I wonder, do you truly help Henri of Navarre? Or do you aid Hugh O’Neill, with his ambitions to rule Ulster without interference? Or do you stand with the Gaels who just want blood for blood?’

Meg jumped to her feet. ‘You have been a spy so long that all you see is politics,’ she snapped. ‘There is more to life than that.’ She marched off among the flapping shelters and disappeared into the dark at the end of the chasm.

Will was baffled by the woman’s reaction. But when he made to follow her, he noticed an old gypsy staring at him. The man’s long white beard had been stained green at the tip, and there were bells in his snowy hair. He pointed a wavering finger. ‘There is a shadow with you,’ the Moon-Man said in faltering English. ‘It eats its way into your heart. If you do not rid yourself of it soon, you will die.’

‘We all die, sooner or later,’ Will retorted. But he was stung by the Egyptian’s words, for they echoed his own fears that his devil was drawing closer. As if Mephistophilis sensed his thoughts, the spy heard a faint laugh close to his ear.

His mood now dark, Will made his way through the camp to where the elders prepared the nightly defences. Chanting quietly, one of the gypsies sprinkled salt and herbs at the foot of the stone steps. Silvanus was looking up to where a patch of night sky was visible among the overhanging trees. He appeared to be unnerved by a rustling in the undergrowth near the lip of the chasm.

‘We will be safe?’ Will enquired.

‘As ever.’

‘But you are worried.’

‘I have never known the Good Neighbours to be so persistent. They like their mischief, but are easily bored and usually seek out other sport.’ Silvanus watched the trembling in the undergrowth subside, then shook his head and turned to the spy. ‘I fear something terrible is about to happen. It is in the cards that the women read every night. In the visions the old men have.’ He kneaded his hands together, glancing back up to the top of the chasm. ‘This devil-haunted land ... What is happening? Are any of us safe?’

Returning to the shelter, Will accepted chicken and a knob of stolen bread from Sabina, which he gnawed on deep in thought, his mood growing more unsettled by the moment. Silvanus could sense it; they all could. England was slipping back into the hands of the Unseelie Court.

After the food, amid the crackle of the fire and the contented chatter of those around him, his eyelids fluttered. In the centre of the camp someone was playing a fiddle. The women would be dancing, their coloured calico scarves flying around their bare shoulders, their black hair lashing the air, the bells at their ankles jangling in a frenzy.

As he slipped towards sleep, an odd thought struck him. The Egyptians had the same word for life and death: merripen. What did it mean?

Through the dark of his head, Mephistophilis drew closer, whispering truths that he didn’t want to hear.

Will was roughly shaken from his deep slumber. The fires had died down to red ashes and a strong wind blustered with a hint of rain upon it.

‘You must help us.’ Silvanus’ frightened face filled the whole of Will’s vision. When the gypsy pulled back, the spy saw many others standing nearby, watching him uneasily. ‘Samuel is missing, his bed empty. We have searched all of Lud’s Church, but he is not here.’ The Moon-Man glanced fearfully in the direction of the stone steps.

Clambering to his feet, Will shook the last of the wool from his head. Meg was away to one side, comforting the boy’s mother. ‘He is a clever lad. He knows better than to wander off, especially at night, and in this place.’

Silvanus bowed his head, his voice falling to a whisper. ‘Yet my son is not here.’

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

LIGHTING A LANTERN, WILL STRODE TOWARDS THE UNEVEN STONE steps, Silvanus beside him. The other Egyptians clustered back near the ruddy glow of the embers. Holding the lamp high, the spy glanced up into the impenetrable dark. Fat droplets of rain fell on his face, and he could hear nothing under the roar of the wind in the trees.

‘There are two defences, yes?’ he asked.

‘One here at the foot, and one at the top,’ the Moon-Man replied. ‘We will be safe as long as we do not cross the final boundary.’

‘Come, then.’

Emerging from the chasm first, Will searched his rain-lashed surroundings in the dancing lantern light. He held a firm hand out behind him to halt the gypsy’s progress. ‘There is no need for both of us here. Return to the bottom and I will shout down if I find Samuel.’

‘I must help,’ the Moon-Man protested, his dagger shaking in his hand.

‘You would only hamper my search. I move quicker and faster alone, and too much noise would only draw the attention of what we both fear is out here.’ Will held Silvanus’ gaze until the gypsy nodded. As he descended, the man cast reluctant glances over his shoulder until he disappeared into the dark.

Once he was sure his friend was gone, the spy set the lantern on the woodland floor just beyond the top step. ‘Let the boy go,’ he said, just loud enough to be heard over the gale.

Beyond the circle of light, he thought he glimpsed a dark figure in the trees. He could feel its menacing presence acutely. Blood began to trickle from his nose.

With slow steps, the lurker emerged into the light.

‘I know you,’ Will said. Recalling vividly the horrific events of that snow-blanketed night in Cambridge when he first met Marlowe, he felt anger at the torment this thing must have caused Kit over the years.

‘And I know you.’ Will could see an equally deep loathing in the Hunter’s eyes. In the crook of his arm, the Fay dragged Samuel, one sharp talon curled at the neck. The boy’s eyes were dazed, his lips working silently.

‘Name yourself,’ Will demanded.

‘Xanthus.’ His lizard tongue flickered over his lips. ‘Thricefold will your punishment be. For the shame you inflicted on me at our first meeting. For my brother, slain by your hand. And for Cavillex of the High Family, executed at your order. Thricefold the suffering for the misery you have caused.’

‘And your despised breed have torn from my life the woman I love and my closest friend. All your misery does not even come close to a balance for those crimes. Not if I killed another hundred of your people. A thousand.’ The spy drew his rapier and waved the point back and forth. ‘Draw nearer, and I will do to you what I did to your brother.’

As the rain began to torrent, Xanthus dug his talon a shade deeper into the boy’s neck. Samuel mewled weakly. ‘You cannot hide behind that protective line. Give yourself up. For the boy’s life. Or stay there and have his death upon your conscience for ever. Either way, you will be destroyed.’

Will watched the dazed look fade from Samuel’s eyes. As the lad glanced up at the bone-white face next to him, he was gripped with terror. Trembling, his gaze fell on Will and he cried, ‘Master. Help me.’

‘You will kill him anyway,’ the spy laughed dismissively. The warm summer rain pelted his face, soaking him to the skin.

Xanthus shook the boy like a rag doll, eliciting howls of terror that stabbed into Will’s heart. ‘Your blind arrogance reaches new heights,’ the Hunter raged. ‘We are always honourable. Your kind are the kings of deceit and trickery and betrayal.’ His eyes fixed firmly on Will, the Fay lunged for Samuel’s throat.

‘Stop!’ the spy called. ‘Let him go.’

Lightning flashed overhead, and the roar of the wind in the trees sounded like a great beast circling the three figures.

The pale thing shook the wailing boy again.

‘Very well. You bleed like any man,’ Will called. ‘Come turn my sword red.’ Defiant, he stepped across the invisible line.

Xanthus dangled Samuel at arm’s length, then let the lad drop to the wet turf. In a burst of white lightning, the young gypsy scrambled past the spy and threw himself down the rain-slick sandstone steps into Lud’s Church. Will watched a victorious, yellow-toothed smile creep across the Fay’s face. Dipping one hand into a pouch at his side, the Hunter tossed a handful of sparkling golden dust into the air, and as the wind swirled the glittering cloud around him, he disappeared.

The spy darted forward to where his enemy had stood, but his blade cut only thin air. Whirling, he saw only swaying trees and driving rain and the black slash of the yawning chasm.

‘Damn you,’ Will cursed under his breath.

Continuing to turn, he glimpsed a flash of Xanthus crouched near the foot of a twisted oak. A moment later his opponent was moving closer from the opposite direction, once again vanishing in the blink of an eye.

The spy continually slashed his rapier in the hope that chance would aid him so he could carve a chunk out of his enemy. The thunder rumbled. Rain poured down his face and turned the ground beneath his feet to mud.

‘Farewell,’ the quiet voice rustled just behind his ear.

Jerking round, Will was caught in the lamps of loveless eyes, warm, meaty breath washing into his face. Silver glinted, a dagger, the hilt curved into the shape of a dragon’s head, black symbols inscribed on the blade.

Instinctively, Will rolled away from Xanthus; too late. The dagger sprayed his blood into the driving rain. Throwing himself backwards, he skidded along the muddy turf, pain searing his chest. Yet, although the blade had ripped his flesh through his doublet, the wound was shallow.

As Will searched for his invisible attacker, a thought came to him. At the instant the Hunter struck, the spy had glimpsed blood trickling from the corners of his foe’s eyes. Had the glittering dust taken a toll?

He breathed deeply and allowed the storm’s fury to fade into the background. Locked in concentration, he turned slowly on the balls of his feet, each moment stretching, every detail magnified. Rain drifted down, flickering drops of white caught in the lantern light. Branches swayed, grass trembled.

And then he saw it: a splash in a puddle with no obvious cause; the kind of splash a foot would have made. His enemy was unseen, but still there, still corporeal, a fitting target for cold steel.

Will knew Xanthus would already have moved on. He had to be quicker. In a sheet of lightning, he glimpsed a shadow cast on the wet turf, and thrust his rapier into what seemed to be thin air.

A cry rang out.

The Hunter flashed into view, clutching a wound in his side. Snatching a small pouch from the folds of his cloak, Will flung a handful of the gypsy concoction of salt and herbs into the face of the writhing figure. There was a sound like lamb fat sizzling in a fire. Howls of agony spiralled up into the storm. Xanthus was on his feet in a moment, his face scarred and smoking, but he was lurching, off balance. Weakening, Will thought.

In his fury, the fading Hunter flung himself at the spy, stabbing wildly with the silver dagger. Each frenzied blow drove closer until the blade nicked Will’s cheek. Recoiling, he stumbled, and in a flash Xanthus was upon him, pinning his arms to the ground.

The Fay raised his dagger over his head. ‘For my brother. For Cavillex. For all the crimes committed against my people—’

Her sodden hair plastered against her brow, Meg loomed over the Hunter’s shoulder. She plunged her own dagger down. The pale creature must have sensed her, the spy guessed, for at the last it twisted aside, the blade tearing into its shoulder. With all his strength, Will thrust Xanthus off him.

Scrambling to his feet, he caught the woman’s hand. ‘Get behind the line of defence,’ he shouted over the storm. ‘You should not have come to me.’

Before she could argue, he thrust Meg back towards the chasm. Determined to seize his chance to end the Hunter’s life, Will turned to see Xanthus hunched over a small silver casket with a death’s-head carved on the front. As the box began to open of its own accord, Will was struck by a blast of icy air. In the shadows beneath the lid, he thought he glimpsed movement.

The Irish woman grabbed Will’s shoulder. ‘It is the Wish-Crux, containing the Hunter’s daemon,’ the Irish woman said. Afraid, she stared past Will’s shoulder to the yawning dark inside the casket. ‘All Hunters have their familiars.’

Swarming shapes were emerging from the box. Hunched over the Wish-Crux, Xanthus glowered at the two spies.

Tearing herself from the sight, Meg dragged Will towards the chasm and together they tumbled over the now-invisible line of defence left by the Egyptians on to the sandstone steps. Looking back, Will saw the Hunter had retreated beyond the circle of lamplight.

‘I will never turn away, never stop.’ Xanthus’ growling voice rolled out of the dark. ‘It would have been better for you if you had died here.’

In the next flash of lightning, Will saw his enemy had gone.

Turning back to Meg, puzzled, he said, ‘You risked your life for me.’

‘You risked your life for the boy.’ Her eyes were pools of shadows, her face unreadable.

‘I am in your debt.’

‘I do not want your gratitude,’ she said with a dismissive turn of her head. ‘Do you think I would stand by and watch you die if I could help?’

Will couldn’t answer without offending her. Courage of that kind was the last thing he had expected from someone so duplicitous, and he felt troubled that his ability to appraise her coolly was now in question. Was all that she said about helping him honest? Did she truly hold the affections at which she hinted? He bowed. ‘I thank you, nonetheless.’

As they approached the foot of the steps, the lantern light revealed the gypsies waiting silently. In their faces, Will saw awe, and hope. He felt humbled.

When Samuel ran up and hugged his legs tightly, Will handed the lantern to Meg and lifted the lad on to his shoulders. ‘I thank you,’ Silvanus said, stepping forward. ‘My wife thanks you. And all of my people are grateful to you. You owed us nothing, yet still you risked your life to save my son.’

‘Any man would have done the same.’

‘You know as well as I that is not true. My son now lives because of you and you alone. None of us here will forget that. In our travels across this world, we will always speak kindly of William Swyfte, and your name will pass rapidly among my kind. In future, when you need aid, the Moon-Men will answer the call.’

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

‘I SHOULD WARN YOU,’ WILL WHISPERED TO MEG AT THE DOOR OF the Warden’s chamber at Christ’s College, ‘Dr Dee is quite mad.’

The caravan had reached Manchester in the hot, muggy early evening of 15 July. As they crested the hills ringing the town, the brassy sun punched shafts of light through the grey cloud cover to illuminate brown-tiled roofs, workshops spouting plumes of white smoke, and the grey stone bulk of the churches and great halls amid the jumble of tiny streets. The St Swithin’s Day celebrations were still under way, and Will and Meg had left the gypsies juggling and dancing as their women moved among the crowds, begging for food. A gap-toothed man had directed the couple to what he called ‘t’owd church’, the college buildings to the north, quiet now that Evensong was done.

The spy hammered on the door with the hilt of his dagger. From within came the sound of loud, unholy curses, and the door was thrown open with such force Meg stepped back in shock, her hand at her mouth.

Though approaching seventy, the alchemist crackled with the vitality of a man half his age. Will saw Meg was entranced by the magical symbols etched on his pale arms, disappearing into the depths of his ruby-coloured gown, and the small animal bones hanging from silver chains strung across his chest so that he rattled whenever he moved.

Dee’s fierce grey eyes immediately peeled back the layers of the new arrivals. ‘Swyfte!’ he barked, scowling. ‘My misery is complete. The one saving grace of my banishment to this dismal place was that I would never have to see your impertinent, conceited face, you grinning jackanapes.’

The spy gave a deep bow. ‘Dr Dee. My life has been darker without you in it. May I introduce my companion, Mistress O’Shee?’

The Irish woman gave a seductive smile. ‘I am honoured to be in the presence of such an exalted personage,’ she breathed. ‘You may call me Meg.’

Without a hint of embarrassment, the alchemist’s eyes slid slowly over her frame and then a serpent tongue flicked out between his lips. Thrusting Will out of the way, Dee offered a hand to the red-headed woman and led her into his chamber. ‘Your beauty brightens this dark, northern town,’ he said with a lustful laugh.

Despite the summer heat, a fire blazed in the hearth. Dry rushes were scattered on the stone flags and there was an acidic reek of sweat in the air. The room was cluttered. A high-backed chair stood near the fire, alongside a pair of stools, a bench and a stained, chipped table, but almost every available space was taken up with stacks of books, charts and rolls of parchment. A faded tapestry marked with magical symbols hung on one wall. Circles of polished glass lay on the table, glinting in the candlelight.

‘I apologize for the heat in my rooms,’ the alchemist said as he guided Meg towards the bench. ‘I find it impossible to get warm these days.’

As Dee hung over Meg, whispering comments at which she giggled in an uncharacteristic but practised manner, Will’s attention was drawn to a circular mirror made of highly polished obsidian.

‘What is this?’ he asked, reaching for the object.

The magician leapt across the room to slap Will’s hand away. ‘Leave that!’ Dee yelled, his eyes blazing.

The spy took a step back, concerned at the passion he saw in the elderly man’s face.

The alchemist appeared to recognize he had overreacted and adopted a nonchalant manner. Waving a hand towards the mirror, he said, ‘It comes from the New World, part of a haul of Spanish loot. An ancient magical item, it is said to have been treasured by the age-old race which inhabits that region, and was considered sacred to their god Tezcatlipoca, who protected rulers, warriors and sorcerers. Does that answer your question?’ he added with a snap.

‘And you use its undoubtedly great magical powers for communing with angels?’ the spy asked, feigning innocence.

With a snort, Dee turned back to Red Meg. ‘I fear I am a poor host,’ he said, pressing his hands together. ‘We should have sustenance. Wine, perhaps, and beef. These aged legs of mine are feeble, however, and can barely carry me across my chamber. Could you help an old man? Pray hurry to the chaplains and ask them to order the servants to deliver food and drink to my study.’

With a polite smile, the Irish woman rose from the bench. ‘Of course,’ she replied, and left.

‘Old man?’ Will snorted. ‘You could strangle a blacksmith and still have the strength to torture a lawyer or two.’

Dee jabbed a finger angrily. ‘Do not speak to me about games of deceit, England’s greatest spy. Now, she will be gone for some time – the chaplains are away tending to the poor. Tell me – can she be trusted? Does she work for the Irish? I presume you have investigated her motives.’

Picking up a book, Will flicked through the creamy pages with a wry smile. ‘I thought you had been enchanted by her smile and dazzled by her generous form.’

‘I am no fool, Master Swyfte. You know that.’ With irritation, the alchemist took the book and replaced it on the stack.

‘I would not trust her entirely, though I have found no reason to doubt her.’ The spy’s tone darkened and he beckoned for the older man to take his chair near the fire. ‘But that is neither here nor there. We have grave matters to address.’

Easing himself into the high-backed chair, the alchemist listened intently as Will related all he knew: of the Scar-Crow Men, and the plot to murder spies by the devil-masked man, of Marlowe’s death, and his play with its hidden code, of Kit’s secret spying work, and of Griffin Devereux. ‘I would understand how all these questions connect, but more, I would know who killed my friend, Kit Marlowe, and for what reason. Then I will seek revenge.’

The candles in the room appeared to dim, as if even talk of the Unseelie Court had drawn a cold darkness to them. Dee stared into the depths of the fire for a long moment. Will had never seen him so grim. ‘You require my help?’ he asked in a quiet voice.

‘I need you, Dr Dee. England and the Queen need you before the last of our defences fall. Yes, we are few. Yes, the forces ranged against us are overwhelming. But we are fearless, and bloody-minded, and a resistance group this small can be fleet of foot. It may already be too late, but if there is one chance we can strike back, we must take it.’

‘The defences could fall at any time.’ The alchemist’s voice was almost lost beneath the crackle of the fire. ‘The Enemy already has its puppets in place. Once they are secure, they will come for us first, you know, and our suffering will be worse than a thousand hells. You are mad to fight this. Run. Hide.’

One foot upon a stool, Will reached out his hands, imploring. ‘There is hope, doctor. The Enemy has expended great effort in hiding whatever Kit Marlowe discovered. Why would they send a Hunter at my heels unless they feared I might discover one chink in their plot that could bring it all crashing down?’

Dee nodded thoughtfully, but was still unconvinced.

The spy saw his opportunity. ‘I have travelled the length of England in the most perilous circumstances for one reason: to call upon the great and powerful Dr Dee. You are the terror of the Fay, the man who locked those foul creatures out of the land they had tormented for generations. I have risked all because with you on our side anything is possible. The Unseelie Court fear you, sir.’

Dee’s eyes blazed. ‘Those popinjays should never have dismissed me from the court. That grand betrayal after all I did for the Queen and England. This would never have happened if I had been there.’

Will smiled to himself.

‘But where would we begin?’ the alchemist mused, tugging at his beard. ‘The defences will need to be repaired. But that takes weeks, perhaps months.’

The spy paced the room, feigning deep thought, although he had planned his strategy long ago. ‘Who would be privy to Kit’s secrets?’ he muttered. ‘Someone must have knowledge of that mysterious business of his.’ He paused theatrically and raised one finger. ‘Wait. Griffin Devereux spoke of a clandestine group ... the school that meets at night, he called it. Have you heard of any such thing?’

In the gleam in the alchemist’s eye, Will saw all he needed to know.

Dee weighed how much he should say, and then came to a conclusion, waving a cautionary finger at the spy. ‘There is much you do not know about your friend, Master Swyfte. He lived another life far removed from the one he shared with you.’

‘Kit did not want to endanger my life or taint my reputation, such as it is.’

The alchemist rose from his chair and cracked his knuckles. From a hook in one corner, he fetched his cloak of animal pelts, a grotesque assemblage that still retained the heads of the beasts. ‘What would you say if I told you Master Marlowe was part of a conspiracy that threatened the very stability of England?’

‘Kit was no traitor.’

‘Oh, he was, Master Swyfte. As am I.’ As Dee pulled on his cloak, he came to resemble some country poacher rather than one of the most feared men in all England.

‘Do not play games with me,’ the younger man cautioned, more sharply than he intended.

The magician spun round, his eyes narrowing at the implied threat. ‘I speak the truth, you rump-fed pignut. Within England there is a group of men who oppose the government, yes, and the Queen herself.’

‘You are Papists?’

Dee gave a mocking laugh.

‘Those accusations were levelled at Kit.’

‘Come now, Swyfte. You have played this game for a long time now. You know as well as I that when power speaks, it never says what it means.’

‘The accusations of atheism the Privy Council made against Kit?’ Will prowled the chamber, keeping one eye on the older man.

‘You are closer to the truth with that, but only a little. Atheism covers many sins, and it is a suitable tool for the government to use to frame Master Marlowe as, shall we say, a certain kind of offender who carries no weight in the eyes of God-fearing folk.’

‘A slur, then. The Privy Council tried to demean him. Make him appear worthless. And Kit was never worthless!’ The spy grew angry.

‘I know this: the Privy Council feared young Marlowe’s ideas more than the Catholic plotters, more than the Spanish. Yes, more than the Unseelie Court.’

Will turned to Dee and glared. ‘Are you suggesting it was not the Enemy who killed Kit? That his murder was at the bidding of the Queen, or Cecil, or one of those other bastards?’

The alchemist hesitated.

‘If they did, I will have their blood.’

Dee eyed the younger man. ‘Even the Queen’s?’ he asked in a quiet voice.

‘We both gave our all to the powers that govern England, doctor, and we have not been repaid with kindness. In the end, you must ask who you really trust. Who matters most. Who decides what is right or wrong.’

‘Why, Master Swyfte, I fear you are finally leaving callow youth behind,’ the older man mocked. ‘You are now entering a twilit world where there are no longer any easy choices. Are you up to the challenge?’

‘We shall see. So, Dr Dee, can I count on your support in this suicidal endeavour?’

The alchemist returned to the obsidian mirror on the table and stared thoughtfully into its depths. ‘How could I possibly resist?’ he replied sourly. Becoming animated, he clapped his hands once, loudly, and then stabbed a finger into Will’s face. ‘If we are to halt the terrible events that are in motion, we must act quickly. The one who is killing the spies will follow a prescribed pattern. Time, place, the stars in the heavens – all part of the ritual. When he failed to slay you, he was forced to wait for the right moment for his next victim. I cannot know what path he follows. It is in the hands of the gods now, and all we do may already be futile. But we must try, eh, Swyfte, for that is who we are?’

‘Throw caution to the wind, doctor, and let us strike fast and hard.’ The spy’s grin faded when he realized the alchemist was staring at him in a curious manner. ‘What is wrong?’ he asked.

‘You have two shadows.’

The spy glanced back and saw that Dee was right. Stretching behind him was his own shadow, and, beside it, another, over-lapping, but twisted, monstrous.

‘What have you done?’ the elderly man asked in a small, troubled voice.

‘It appears I can never be afflicted with loneliness,’ Will said, attempting to make light. When he saw Dee’s expression remained unmoved, he added with a flamboyant sweep of his arm, ‘Hell strives with grace for conquest in my breast. What shall I do to shun the snares of death?’

‘Well you may ask.’ The alchemist circled the spy, examining him this way and that. ‘You have been cursed.’

‘My devilish companion was conjured during the performance of Marlowe’s new play, a warning from Kit.’ Will gave a shrug to show he was unmoved by the threat.

‘Then in his aid your friend has damned you.’ Will was surprised, and troubled, by the hint of pity in Dee’s voice.

‘This curse can be lifted?’

‘By the one who set it. And he is dead. I wish it was within my power to provide a solution, but for all my subtle skills there is nothing I can do when such a thing has been raised by another.’ For a long moment, the magician plucked at the sleeves of his gown in reflection, unable to meet the younger man’s eye. ‘The devil will burrow deeper into the heart of you until he destroys you from within, and there is nothing you can do about it. There is no way for me to sweeten this bitter pill, Swyfte, and I know you would not want me to. You are a strong man, and you have shouldered much suffering in your life, and I have no doubt you will face this with the valour I see in you. I would not have it this way, but there it is. You are doomed, and the end will not be pleasant.’

‘Enough, doctor,’ the spy interrupted. ‘I have carried burdens before, and I am more concerned with surviving tomorrow, and the day after, than with what miseries may or may not await me in the future.’ He gave a grim smile. ‘Live for today, and let the devil take what may be.’

The alchemist appeared oddly touched by the young man’s words. He moved rapidly to the clutter at the rear of the chamber, knocking over piles of books until he found a large wooden chest. ‘A little help in the battle to come would not go amiss, eh?’ From the depths of the chest, he pulled a wooden tube and a velvet pouch and offered them to the spy.

Will examined the object: the tube was hollow and the pouch contained small, sharp arrows.

‘Our adventurers treat the New World men as savages, but their knowledge is quite profound. That is a blowpipe. Tip those darts in poison, slip one in the end ...’ Dee mimed a blowing action. ‘They travel far ... farther now that I have improved the design.’

‘Poison, you say?’

The alchemist drew several small cloth bags out of the chest. ‘I have refined the potions over the years. The blue paste ...’ He grinned. ‘Even those white-skinned bastards will recoil from that one.’

Will slipped the gifts into the secret pockets in his cloak.

‘One final thing.’ Dee held up another tube which appeared to be made of iron, but which the spy could see was much lighter. The elderly man pressed a hidden knob and four hooked arms snapped out.

‘A grapnel,’ Will exclaimed, taking the device. Attached to the bottom was a coil of rope that was thinner and lighter than any he had encountered before. ‘This is no weight at all.’

‘What wonders I could have provided for England’s spies if only I had not been exiled to this cold, wet town,’ the alchemist grumbled. ‘But there you have it. Use the tools wisely and well. Now, let us find your friend. After staring at you, my eyes need some relief.’

Dee snuffed out the first of the three candles lighting the room.

‘We must travel to meet our fellow conspirators, great men all, names that will surprise you, and they will have some of the answers you seek,’ the alchemist said. ‘If what you say is true and the old defences are falling, the journey will be dangerous. I can protect us a little, but even my vaunted abilities may not enable us to survive.’

‘So be it.’ Will snuffed out another candle. The shadows closed in around them, with only the flickering light of the final candle and the dull red glow of the dying fire illuminating the room. Dee pulled his cloak around him and stepped towards the door.

‘Where do we travel?’ the spy asked.

The alchemist turned back to the younger man, his eyes sparkling. ‘We go to see the Wizard Earl.’

Will snuffed out the final candle and the dark swept in.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND’S FACE RESEMBLED A DEATH-MASK BENEATH its frosting of white make-up. At Elizabeth’s side, Elinor, her ever-present maid of honour, whispered words that no one else heard as she guided Her Majesty through the clutch of carpenters and artists at work on the scenery for the forthcoming masque. Cecil lurched in her wake, looking like a frightened dog, with the big mercenary Sinclair glowering over his shoulder, and trailing at the rear was Rowland, the record-keeper, distracted by the rolls of parchment tumbling from his arms.

Standing in a sunbeam where sawdust danced, Grace watched her mistress pass by with growing concern. New faces had appeared at the court over the last few days, men and women who answered to no one, but who seemed to have the Queen’s ear. Who were they? What was their business?

When Nathaniel entered, Grace joined him out of sight behind a still-wet canvas painted to resemble the greenwood. ‘It is becoming harder to meet,’ the young woman whispered. ‘Her Majesty has appointed another lady-in-waiting, a young girl by the name of Mary Wentworth. It appears her sole task is to follow me wherever I go.’

‘The Privy Council has this morning agreed the execution of two more traitors. A stablehand and a butcher from Leadenhall who delivered pork for the kitchens,’ the young man replied bitterly. ‘The case against them was flimsy. Their deaths are solely to cause fear at court. If everyone is suspected, attention does not fall easily on the true culprits.’

‘And Master Cockayne?’

‘Since his return from London, he never seems to leave his chamber. I fear we have lost our best chance to recover Kit Marlowe’s play,’ Nat sighed.

‘Among the women who sew together, there has been talk of mysterious lights at night in the fields around the palace, a ghost seen on the Grand Gallery, and voices heard in empty rooms,’ Grace whispered, peering around the edge of the scenery. ‘The portents are growing. And still no word from Will.’

‘Why speak of Will? You have a suitor now.’ The young man’s tone was acidic as he nodded towards the door. Strangewayes was looking around the hall.

‘Nat, you know my heart is for Will only,’ Grace said unconvincingly. ‘I spend time with Tobias’ – she caught herself – ‘Master Strangewayes for the information he can provide. He has eyes and ears all over Nonsuch.’

‘And what if he is part of this plot, and he keeps an eye upon you while you are using him?’ Nat leaned in and whispered, ‘You are playing with fire, Grace. But both of us will be burned if you are wrong.’

When he walked away, Grace allowed the colour to fade from her cheeks. She was annoyed that her friend treated her like some little girl. At first Tobias Strangewayes had appeared no more than a braggart, swaggering around her and making no attempt to hide his lustful thoughts. She had found it surprisingly easy to manipulate him.

But on a hot early morn when she had been sent to collect flowers from the garden, she had found him standing among the yew trees, his head bowed in grief. ‘I have received news that my brother, Stephen, is dead,’ he had said in a hoarse voice. ‘In Venice, though the circumstances remain to be explained.’ He had tried to speak further, but the words would not come.

Grace had seen a man in the grip of loneliness and confusion. Her heart had gone out to him, and for the next hour they had spoken deeply and personally. She still did not know how she truly felt about the red-headed man, but she accepted that she no longer had contempt or scorn for him.

Beaming when he saw her, Strangewayes stepped over. ‘Will you walk with me a while?’ he asked. ‘In the gardens?’ His eyes darted around and his smile faded. ‘There is something I must tell you.’

Puzzled, Grace followed him into the warm, lilac-scented garden.

‘I feel in my heart I can trust you. Is that true?’ he asked.

‘Of course. What troubles you?’

Tobias ran a hand through his red hair. ‘Sometimes I feel I am bound to be one of Bedlam’s Abraham Men. My master employs a keeper of records, one Barnaby Goodrington, a clever fellow with a sharp wit. Whenever we discussed business, we got on well. But in recent days, he ...’ His words dried up.

‘Has seemed like another man?’ Grace continued. ‘Acted oddly, perhaps?’

‘Yes! Yesterday he began to cry when I told him a joke. And he is not the only one. Fulke Best, Christopher Norwood, Agnes Swetenham in the kitchens. They all seem like ... echoes of the people I knew. Always distracted, sometimes addled even.’ He paused, fighting against himself, and then said, ‘I am loath to say it, but I wonder if Swyfte was right.’

‘Help me,’ Grace urged.

‘Help you?’

‘There is a plot here, I know it.’ She steeled herself and decided to speak out. ‘And I have been charged to uncover it. Before he was murdered, Kit Marlowe hid a cipher in one of his plays. It tells of the conspiracy. I need your help, Tobias. Master Cockayne is a part of this conspiracy and he has hidden the play in his chamber. If we are to stop the tragedy that will ensue, we must steal it back.’

Grace saw her companion look at her in a new, unsettled light. ‘You are a woman. These are not matters for you.’

Grace flushed with anger. ‘We have a queen who has proved herself the equal of any man—’

Strangewayes shook his head furiously. ‘What you are talking about would be considered treason. Steal from an adviser to Sir Robert Cecil? How do I know you are not one of these plotters, trying to entice me into your web?’

The young woman watched the red-headed man’s face harden and she knew she had lost him. ‘Forget what I said, Tobias. I spoke out of turn.’ As she stepped to the garden door, she could feel the spy’s eyes heavy upon her back.

Had she made a terrible mistake?

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

THE CRIMSON CROSS ETCHED ON THE DOOR SEEMED TO GLOW IN the suffocating dark of the mud-baked street. Carpenter shuddered. It spoke to him of the transience of life, of those now mouldering in the earth and of the cold and bloody deaths yet to come. As he approached the cramped, timber-framed house in the shadow of the Tower, he wished he had a God who would offer him respite from the horrors of that life.

‘Hrrm,’ Launceston muttered as he glanced along the row of silent homes, ‘the plague has taken its toll here.’

‘And it will take another two victims if we do not hurry, you beef-witted foot-licker.’ Carpenter tied the cloth tighter across his mouth and nose, but the apple-sweet stink of bodily rot still choked him.

Every door along the street had been marked with the sign of the plague. No candles glowed in any of the windows. No voices drifted out into the night, no husbands and wives arguing, or mothers singing their babies to sleep, or drunken apprentices winding their way home. There was only the warm July wind moaning under the eaves.

Now, Carpenter paused, resting his fingertips on the rough wood but not finding the courage to push it open. Each passing day, he wanted to be out of this morbid business a little more, to start afresh with Alice. He refused to accept that he was ruined for the mundane world, as the Earl insisted. He could still escape the shadows and the lies and the insidious threat of the things that came at midnight.

What you fight holds you in an embrace, Launceston had once said.

‘Let us be done with this so we can all move on with our lives,’ the scar-faced man growled, thrusting open the door.

Inside, the reek of rot was even stronger. Carpenter pressed his hand to his mouth to stop himself gagging. ‘When we find Shipwash I will gut him myself for putting us through this,’ he muttered.

‘What better place to hide?’ the Earl whispered, adding without a hint of irony, ‘No one in their right mind would dare venture into a plague-house.’

‘We left our own wits behind the moment we agreed to spy.’ But Launceston was right. If one of the doxies from the Cross Keys had not seen Shipwash entering the house with bread, they would never have found him.

In the faint moonlight breaking through the dusty windows, Carpenter looked around the small room. It was a meagre place with a hard-packed mud floor and three stools before the empty grate. A bunch of dried lavender hung from the beams.

With a twirl of his finger, the scarred spy directed Launceston towards the stairs. As they crept across the room, a door at the rear of the house banged. Carpenter jumped, half drawing his rapier. The door banged again, and again.

Just the wind.

Careful not to wake the sleeping Shipwash, Launceston tested each step for creaks as he climbed the stairs. The scarred spy could only think how terrified of the Unseelie Court their fellow spy must be that he would risk a gruesome death among the victims of the sickness.

Crossing the room, Carpenter felt moisture fall on to the back of his hand. A droplet gleamed darkly in the moonlight on his pale flesh. Following its trail upwards, he saw a black stain spreading across the plaster between two beams, and more drips waiting to fall.

‘God’s wounds!’ the spy cursed. ‘Get up there, quickly.’

The Earl bounded up the wooden steps with the scarred man clattering at his heels. In the bedroom, they found a hellish scene. Shipwash, flayed to the waist, his eyes missing, lay in a pool of spreading crimson. Runic symbols had been drawn on the walls in some of the poor soul’s blood.

Carpenter slumped against the door jamb. ‘Damn him. If only he had stayed with us.’ His heart sinking, he bowed his head.

Only two more victims.

And then the Unseelie Court would rule over all. England would burn, and the deaths from the plague would seem like nothing compared to the carnage that would follow.

Only two more victims.

And his dreams of a new life with Alice would be destroyed. Somehow, he felt that more acutely.

‘We have to find Pennebrygg, whatever it takes,’ he urged his companion. ‘This must end here.’

Launceston appeared not to be listening. ‘This is a fresh kill.’ His whispery voice was tinged with a queasy glee.

After a moment’s dislocation, the meaning of the Earl’s words became clear. Of course it was fresh. The blood, still dripping.

Carpenter threw himself down the stairs and out through the back of the house into the hot night. The door banging. It had been the devil-masked killer, fleeing the scene of slaughter. He silently cursed himself at the thought of how close they had come to apprehending their prey.

An alley ran along the rear of the houses, filled with piles of rotting debris. The scar-faced man peered into the gloom one way, then the other, but as he had feared, nothing moved.

Returning to the bedroom, a morose Carpenter found the Earl kneeling in the blood next to the flayed corpse, hands dripping. His eyes gleamed with an inner light. ‘There is a mark ’pon his back, as we saw with Gavell in the deadhouse.’

‘Is that not what we expected?’

‘It is. But consider: Marlowe was not slain in this manner. No skin removed, no eyes taken. He died from a simple stab wound to the brain.’ Launceston gave a faint smile of satisfaction. ‘’Twas not the same killer.’

‘You say the playwright’s death was meaningless, as the inquest decided? But his name was upon the list in his lodgings.’

The Earl shook his head slowly. ‘Marlowe is tied too closely to these matters for his passing to be an unhappy accident. But he was not a sacrifice to break down Dee’s magical defences. He died for another reason.’

Carpenter waved a dismissive hand. ‘Why should that trouble us now? We are sipping from the cup of failure, and all is turning dark around us.’

‘Not so.’ Launceston stood, casting one last loving glance at the sticky corpse. ‘In Bedlam, Griffin Devereux told Will that through the nature of the killer we could divine the identity of the man. What is his nature?’ His shoes made a sucking sound as he stepped out of the congealing pool. ‘This night is not wasted, for we have learned something of the man we hunt which may help us in the future. See here.’ He indicated black smudges on the glistening muscle. ‘These same marks lay upon Gavell. They are important in some way I have not yet discovered. But that ... that is the killer’s nature.’

The Earl pointed to a bloody cross etched on the cracked plaster of one wall.

‘At the Rose Theatre, he wore the mask of a devil but he took angel’s wings to wear,’ the Earl continued. ‘He is a religious man at heart, perhaps a Catholic hiding among enemies, who feels he has been driven to do the devil’s work for the sake of a greater good. A conflicted man, who does not want to lose sight of his God amid all the slaughter.’

‘How do you know these things?’ Carpenter looked at his companion suspiciously, as if, perhaps, Shipwash had spoken from beyond the vale.

Launceston raised a pale finger to his temple. ‘I understand his mind,’ he whispered, casting another warm look at the bloody remains. ‘This is not the work of a butcher. He treats each victim with love and attention, as a man who understands that he deals with God’s plan.’ Waving one supple arm towards the dripping runic symbols, he added, ‘From those artfully crafted signs we know that he is no yeoman, but a gentleman. One of us.’

‘One of you,’ Carpenter snapped, horrified at the assertion that there was anything linking himself with his tainted colleague. He stared at the symbols for a moment and decided that he could find no argument with what the Earl was saying. ‘When the mask slipped at the Rose, Will said he thought he recognized the face he glimpsed behind it. Could ... could our killer be a member of the court?’

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

‘RIDE! RIDE AS IF THE DEVIL WAS AT YOUR BACK!’ DEE YELLED above the raging storm.

‘He is,’ Will called through gritted teeth. As he leaned low along the neck of his mount, the wind tore at the spy’s hair and rain whipped his face. His black cloak thrashed the air behind him. Amid the inky darkness of the narrow track winding through the storm-torn forest, he feared his steed would slip in the churning mud or trip on the snaking roots, that it would all be over for him, for England, and all the days and nights of fleeing south, the constant threat from the resurgent Unseelie Court, the hiding, the creeping along byways and splashing across rivers, all would be for naught.

Gripping the reins tighter, he glanced back to where Meg was riding just behind. In a lightning flash that turned the night-world pure white, he saw her pale face was grimly determined, her red hair flying behind her like flames.

But then Will glimpsed the terrors that lay at their backs.

Fires burned in the preternatural dark, high up in the swaying branches, close to the ground, moving faster than the horses, flickering and insubstantial, dream-like. Keeping pace, a white cloud billowed with a life of its own, stars sparkling in the folds as if something was forming within it. And glowing as though with an inner light, pale forms bounded among the sodden fern, as lithe and sinuous as foxes, but larger.

Xanthus the Hunter was no longer alone. His fury exacerbated by his failure in the encounter at Lud’s Church, he had drawn to him the Unseelie Court’s dark forces at loose in the wild countryside, the numbers growing the further south they progressed, until now it appeared there was an army of night at their backs.

‘A plan would be good, doctor,’ the spy yelled. But the thunder of hooves and the roar of the storm took his words away, and there was no response.

Wiping the stinging rain from his eyes, Will saw ahead a faint lightening of the forest’s gloom. Within a moment the three riders burst out of the trees into the full force of the storm. Immediately they were galloping over rolling grassland with nowhere to hide and nothing to slow the relentless pursuit of the wild horde.

Dee waved frantically, slowing his horse to ride at the spy’s side. ‘Call upon it,’ the alchemist yelled. ‘Call upon your devil.’

Will was baffled.

‘Your mortal soul is already lost. Your life is near over – but not this night! The devil torments you, but it is yours. It must bend to your will. That is why Marlowe sent it to you – protection and damnation in equal measure, but for now, in this world, protection.’ The magician’s voice cracked and broke from the strain of shouting. ‘But take care – it will try to resist you at every turn. It wants misery and suffering and despair to sweeten your final agonies. Do it now!’ Another lightning flash made the magician’s eyes glow with white fire.

Will knew he had no choice. Whatever the price demanded of him, it would be worth paying.

The spy gave himself to the rhythm of the hooves and the bluster of the gale, his thoughts settling within him. ‘Come to me now,’ he whispered, ‘come to me, my Mephistophilis, and let us see what sport we can have.’

Thunder cracked over the dark countryside, and another thunder echoed within him.

Will felt a weight pressing at his back and invisible talons digging into his shoulders. He smelled damp loam, reminding him of the plague pit, and of Marlowe’s newly dug grave, and then a face slid next to his cheek, the smooth flesh as cold as snow. From the corner of his eye, he could just discern Jenny, the other Jenny, the lost, dead, soul-destroyed Jenny. The lank-haired, black-eyed thing kept its cheek pressed tight against Will’s and threw its mottled arms around his chest in a mockery of an embrace.

‘My love,’ it sneered in his ear.

‘Dee tells me you are my pet, to order as I please.’

The devil’s arms grew tighter around him.

‘But you do not deny it,’ Will said. ‘You speak just enough truth to flavour the greatest lie, you spin me round in circles so I cannot tell which is up or down, you do all you can to keep me from thinking clearly. Now you must obey me.’

‘Take care,’ the Jenny-thing breathed in his ear, ‘for it would be best not to anger me. I can inflict much pain before the time comes when I take that smallest but most valuable part of you.’

‘Do what I say!’ the spy snapped.

‘Of course, my love.’ The mocking words were punctuated by a quiet laugh. ‘But I would ask something of you. In return for my aid, you will give me something, and only for five minutes, no more, then I shall return it.’

‘We have agreement,’ Will shouted, his needs and those of his companions too pressing for argument. ‘Do what you can to prevent those things reaching us.’

Another tinkling laugh was caught in the gale, and then the Jenny-thing unfurled her arms and slipped back, her cheek sliding past him, and back farther until she was gone. The spy had a vision of her laughing in the face of the storm as she flew backwards like a leaf in the wind, twisting and turning until she faced the Enemy. And what then? Would her face light up with the brightness of the moon, and her hair roil around her head like snakes, and would she raise her hands high, her expression filling with dark glee at the mischief she was about to unleash?

The storm whipped into a frenzy, screaming in Will’s ears, the wind tearing him like knives, the rain blasting horizontally. His struggling horse half stumbled. The barrage of thunder ended with lightning striking so close behind them that the ground shook, and the horses reared up in terror, and the whole world turned white. One strike, then another, and another, blasting the earth and filling the air with the stink of scorched vegetation.

The three companions struggled on until it felt as if they had burst through the skin of a bubble. The wind fell, the rain stopped, and an unsettling peace lay across the countryside.

Will looked back to see the entire meadow was obscured in a fog of smoke and driving rain, and rhythmic blinding flashes. His devil had bought them a little time, no more.

‘Ride on,’ he shouted, ‘and stop for no man.’

When the sun came up, the three companions dismounted and led their horses along the puddled, muddy tracks. Will deflected all Meg’s questions; she didn’t need to know about his devil. It was 24 July. The spy knew from the villages they had passed through that they must be somewhere in Sussex, with London away to the east. They were close to their destination.

He could not criticize Dee. The alchemist had done everything in his power to hide them from the Unseelie Court on their long journey south from Manchester: charms carefully constructed from bones and pelts of animals that the magician had killed with his own hands, potions brewed from plants, herbs plucked from the wayside and mingled with salt stolen from inns along the way, were scattered around them every night to protect them while they slept, in rituals of chanting and gestures and processional paths that sometimes lasted for an hour.

To a degree, it had worked. One night Will had woken to glimpse the moonlit silhouette of something large with steaming breath roaming around them in the undergrowth. But despite its proximity, they had not been discovered. And on other occasions, he had seen figures in the distance picking over their trail, but roaming far and wide as if unable to identify the true direction.

But the Corvata, the things that Meg had named that evening by the Lombard Street plague pit, had been everywhere, silhouetted high on church steeples with the bats flapping all around them, or in the upper branches of towering beech trees, or on barn roofs. Their heads were always turning slowly, scanning the woods and meadows. Even Dee’s magic could not hide the three fugitives completely from those endlessly searching eyes.

As they trudged onward wearily in the first light of a new day, the spy whispered to the alchemist, ‘If there is more you know about my devil, I would appreciate no more surprises in the midst of a fight. Speak up now, and save my poor constitution any future shocks.’

‘I was protecting you, you fool,’ Dee growled. ‘The more you make use of that thing, the more you speed your end. Leave it alone and let your life run its course.’

‘But if I can use it—’

The magician rounded on Will, eyes blazing. ‘You told me about Marlowe’s new play. Did his words pass through your eyes and out of your arse? Men are consumed by arrogance – myself included. We always think we can bind these powers to our will. But the truth is, they corrupt by degrees. Their black disease infects the heart and the mind and soon you find yourself becoming the thing you fight. What then? A William Swyfte with a devil at his beck and call causing more suffering than the Enemy? A black-hearted rogue who sets himself above queens and kings? And God, too? Leave well alone, or you will bring about what you seek to prevent.’

Keeping away from the much-travelled tracks, they pushed through the centres of barleyfields and fought their way through dense woods. When night fell, distant thunder encouraged them to pick up their leaden legs and they were soon hurrying down a grassy slope to a grand stone house with two wings where candles burned in many windows.

‘Who lives in this place,’ Meg enquired, ‘and why should we trust them?’

‘It is Petworth House, currently the residence of Henry, Earl of Northumberland,’ Dee said, striding ahead with the vitality of a man half his age, ‘and you trust him because I say so.’

As they neared the house, they were confronted by a line of sticks on which were mounted the skulls of cows, sheep, badgers and deer. In front of each one, stones had been carefully placed in what appeared to be the letters of an unknown language. The grisly display disappeared into the dark on either side, but the spy had the impression that it continued around the entire house.

Pausing in front of the nearest skull, the alchemist bowed his head and muttered a few words. With a deep sigh of relief, he beckoned Will and Meg across the threshold.

‘Henry Percy, the Wizard Earl, has strange tastes,’ Will said, eyeing the alchemist. ‘Most prefer quaint hedges of box and lines of perfumed lavender.’

Dee chuckled to himself.

At the door, the alchemist was greeted by a servant who appeared aware of the elderly man’s identity. The three travelling companions were admitted into the stone-flagged hall while the servant hurried away to find his master.

‘You will find surprises aplenty here,’ Dee muttered, ‘but whether it is all to your liking is another matter.’

The servant returned and ushered them into a chamber on the west side of the house. In the ruddy glow from the dying flames in the wide stone hearth, Will discerned the outline of chairs placed around the fire. Tapestries hung on the walls, the design lost to the dark, and a trestle stood near the window.

‘Dee!’ A black-gowned figure rose from his chair. ‘This is a great surprise and I’ll wager not a pleasant one.’

The man strode forward. He had not yet turned thirty, and was tall with brown hair and beard and dark, intense eyes. Will recognized Henry Percy, the eighth Earl of Northumberland, known at court as an elegant, studious man. They had spoken on a few occasions, but the peer kept a small circle of friends and was not known for making merry.

‘And Master Swyfte,’ Henry continued with a note of surprise. ‘You are much in demand, sir, though for once not for your adventurous exploits.’ He appeared unmoved by the treasonous allegations made against the spy.

‘My lord.’ Will gave a deep bow. ‘And may I introduce my companion, Mistress O’Shee.’

Northumberland bowed deeply too, extending his left arm behind him and taking the Irish woman’s hand and brushing it with his lips. ‘I am honoured.’

‘These are dangerous times, and they call for extreme measures,’ the alchemist said, roaming the room in a burst of wild activity. He peered into the corners, shaking his fist at things no one else could see. ‘I am asking for your forgiveness, for I have broken the bonds of secrecy we agreed should surround our cabal. But Master Swyfte here needs the urgent help only we can give.’

‘Not just I, my lord, but all of England,’ Will said, taking up Dee’s plea. ‘A plot moves close to the Queen herself. Indeed, it may already be too late. Agents of our enemies now exert an influence within the Privy Council and may soon have full control of the government.’

Northumberland looked to the alchemist, who strode to the fire, running his hands frantically through his white hair. ‘He speaks truly, Henry. The things we have long feared have come to pass and we can no longer afford to stand idly in the shadows.’

Tugging his beard, the Earl thought deeply for a moment and then said, ‘Your wisdom has always been much in demand in our circle, Dr Dee, and if you vouch for Master Swyfte then I can do no more than trust him implicitly. Besides, Kit Marlowe always spoke highly of him.’

Will flinched at the mention of his friend. Henry beckoned, and as the spy stepped close to the fire he was surprised to see the chairs were all occupied, their owners silent and thoughtful. Looking round, he was shocked to recognize many of the faces he saw there.

‘Welcome,’ Northumberland said with a sweep of his arm, ‘to the School of Night.’

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

AT NORTHUMBERLAND’S COMMAND, THE SERVANT BROUGHT WILL a goblet of good sack. Meg flashed him an irritated glance as she was ushered out to a bedchamber the Earl was having prepared for her.

The spy feigned a sympathetic nod, but he took some pleasure from the Irish woman’s fury at her exclusion from a source of vital information. Once she had departed, he flopped into a chair next to the fire and for the first time was acutely aware of his exhaustion.

He eyed the great men sitting around him. There was George Chapman, the playwright and scholar, his bald pate glinting in the light of the candle that Northumberland now carried over to set beside the fire. He had just turned thirty and was an acquaintance of Marlowe through his patron, Sir Thomas Walsingham. Beside him sat Thomas Harriot, almost the same age as Chapman and a student of the stars and numbers. Dressed in a black gown with a white ruff, his hair receding, Harriot had a sensitive cast to his features. There were two other men Will did not know, but the spy was struck most by the final guest.

In his jewelled doublet of green and red, Sir Walter Raleigh cut a dashing figure, strong of jaw, dark-eyed, with a well-tended brown beard and moustache and curly hair. He studied Will with a wry smile, the heel of one Spanish leather boot resting on his knee.

‘Master Swyfte, it has been a while since we met. But despite the threats currently emanating from London, I remember only the great things you have achieved ... and, of course, those drunken nights in Liz Longshanks’. I would have you on one of my expeditions to the New World and soon,’ he said in a strong, rich voice.

‘Perhaps that can be arranged, if we survive the coming weeks.’

The spy knew Raleigh would not succumb to the lies issued by the Privy Council, for the soldier and explorer had been on the receiving end of them himself. Only a year ago, the Queen had appointed him Captain of the Yeomen of the Guard and rewarded him with houses and estates after the success of his expeditions to the New World. He had been Elizabeth’s favourite. But then he fell from grace when the Queen discovered his secret marriage to one of her ladies-in-waiting, young Bess Throckmorton. Her Majesty’s temper had been incandescent, Will recalled. Raleigh had been imprisoned and Bess dismissed from court. Though the adventurer was now a free man, he had still not been pardoned by the monarch.

‘You will forgive me, but this is a strange and surprising collection of fellows,’ the spy said, sipping his sack.

‘Come now, Master Swyfte,’ Northumberland laughed. ‘As a spy you should know of many hidden connections that exist in modern life.’

‘Still,’ Will said, ‘I would be hard-pressed to define what you all had in common.’ He eyed Dee, who still ranged around the room, whispering to invisible companions. The alchemist had nothing in common with anyone.

‘The School of Night,’ Raleigh began, taking a goblet of sack from the Earl, ‘is a name we use to hide our identity, though Marlowe always threatened to insert it into one of his plays.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘That will not now come to pass.’

‘A secret society, then.’ Will laughed. ‘I sometimes wonder if there is a man in London who is not a member of some hidden clique or other. Perhaps we are all members of many and in the end we are working against ourselves unbeknown.’ He shrugged and sipped his sack. ‘Or perhaps this business of spying has made me a cynic.’

Dee prowled over to the fire and roared, ‘You are a fool, Swyfte, but a wise one. Indeed we plot because everyone else plots. There are secret wars raging all the time in this world. Nothing is as simple as it seems at first glance.’

Raleigh leaned forward and said, ‘In a world of lies it is easy to dismiss everyone, but I would say this to you: Kit Marlowe sided with us. Indeed, he was there at the very beginning.’ He held the spy’s gaze until he was sure his meaning had been understood. And it was: if Kit believed in this School of Night then it surely had value.

Will called for more sack, and then looked to the alchemist. ‘Dr Dee suggested you plotted against the Queen and England itself. Can this be true?’

A chill had grown in the room despite the season and Northumberland tossed another log on the fire. A shower of gold sparks shot up the chimney. ‘Not England. Never that,’ he said. ‘We do what we do for England.’ Glancing around at his fellows for support, he added, ‘But England is more than the Queen, more than the Privy Council. It is an idea.’

‘That sounds very much like treason,’ the spy said quietly.

‘Which is why,’ Dee snarled from the far corner of the room where he had cloaked himself in shadows, ‘once Marlowe was suspected of being a member of our little group the charge of atheism was levelled at him.’

‘The charge of atheism,’ Raleigh continued, his voice dripping with contempt, ‘that great scythe which cuts down all who stand before it. For who would speak out in favour of a man who sets himself in opposition to God? Who makes a jest of the scripture and calls Mary a whore and Jesus Christ a bastard justly persecuted by the Jews for his own foolishness? Who practises black magic and conjures devils? Atheism – easy to prove with fabricated letters and the statements of criminals, and hard to argue against. The Privy Council had finally decided to move against us, and Marlowe was to be the first. They thought they could get him in the Tower and then torture him to give up our names. But he was murdered before their plan could be put into effect.’

The spy looked to the dark where Dee stood. ‘Then Kit’s murder was the work of the Enemy. The Privy Council had other plans for him.’ When he got no reply, he realized the corner of the room was empty. Unseen, the alchemist had sneaked out.

‘We know of whom you speak – the Unseelie Court, the Fair Folk, the Good Neighbours,’ Harriot said with a nod when he saw Will’s surprise. ‘We have known of them for a good many years.’

‘We are aware only that Kit was slain,’ Chapman added, steepling his fingers in front of him, ‘but not by whose hand. There are plots upon plots here, and as we sit and look out, we feel no one can be trusted.’

‘True enough,’ Will said. Sick in his stomach at the thought of his friend’s death, he rose from his chair and sauntered to the window, looking out across the dark deer park. ‘What is your purpose, then? Why are you opposed to the Queen and the Privy Council?’

‘We are opposed to the Unseelie Court too,’ Raleigh called gently across the room. ‘Indeed they are the reason for our existence.’

Northumberland whispered to the two men Will didn’t recognize and they nodded and quickly left. ‘Our friends would prefer their identities to remain a secret,’ he explained. ‘Even from you. They have much to lose, and they are the closest to being uncovered.’ He strode over to Will’s side and continued, ‘We are, if you will, a third way, between the Unseelie Court and the Crown. And we have found ourselves caught in the middle of this damnable world, hated by both sides, hunted, threatened, our lives at risk. But we seek only peace.’

‘Peace?’ Will snorted. ‘There can be no peace with the Enemy.’ He thought of Jenny and his devil gave him a painful tweak.

‘That is an understandable first reaction,’ the Earl replied. ‘But hear what we know and your views may change.’

A glittering corona of light shimmered through the diamond-pane glass. It disappeared so quickly that the spy thought it must have been a reflection of the candle standing on the stool near the hearth. But then another came, and another, earth-bound stars twinkling among the dense, black row of trees running along the slope of the high ground beyond the deer park. The chilling familiarity of the sight drove Will’s hand instinctively to his rapier.

‘The Unseelie Court are here,’ he said in a low, determined voice.

The other men rose from their seats and gathered behind him, peering out into the night. ‘Do not concern yourself for now,’ Raleigh declared. ‘Our defences will suffice until dawn.’

‘The skulls on the poles?’ Will enquired, his eyes following the sweep of fires along the tree-line. An army waited. The house was under siege.

Chapman folded his hands behind his back and raised his chin in an attempt to show defiance, though the spy sensed uneasiness behind his movements. ‘We draw from the growing knowledge of the natural sciences, and from studies of the occult. We have designed our defences with the help of the greatest minds and the most arcane knowledge. They are secure.’

‘You stand between the light and the dark, between man and the Devil, and you expect to win?’ Will said with barely hidden scorn. ‘What conjured this madness in your heads?’

Raleigh rested a heavy hand on Will’s shoulder. ‘Let me tell you a tale of madness and horror. Of the part good Kit Marlowe played in the formation of our group. Then you will understand.’

While the fires blazed in the night, and cries rose up that sounded like no animal the spy knew, a hush fell across the room as Raleigh began to speak.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

15 June 1587

The carriage thundered across the cobbles of the wharf at such a speed it almost turned on its side. The horse was sweat-slick and foaming at the mouth, the driver, Edmund Shipwash, thrashing his whip as if he were demented. When the coach careered to a halt beside the barrels of pitch and coils of oiled rope, Kit Marlowe hurled the door open and leapt out, followed closely by Jerome Pennebrygg, both of them wearing the tricorn hats and black gowns of the English College, the Catholic seminary at Reims.

From his rowboat, skimming the waves towards the quay, Sir Walter Raleigh could see the terror etched on the two men’s faces in the lamplight.

What could have transpired to elicit such a reaction?

Four men on horseback galloped on to the wharf in a similar state of panic. Raleigh recognized Clement, Makepiece, Gavell and the slippery Robert Poley. Just as he wondered where the final spy was, a hunched, wild-eyed figure crawled out of the carriage and sat next to the wheel, looking around fearfully as if he expected God to strike him dead at any moment.

Good Lord, the adventurer thought. Could that really be Griffin Devereux, the cousin of the Earl of Essex?

Running to the edge of the quay, Marlowe peered out across the dusk-shrouded waves. When he saw the rowboat, he all but screamed, ‘Hurry! For God’s sake, man, hurry!’

Raleigh knew all the spies from their work in London and he could not imagine any of them so filled with dread. As his rowers steered his vessel into the quay at Saint-Pol-de-Léon, he eyed the gloom that cloaked the small town on the north-west coast of France, but could see no sign of what had frightened the men.

When the rowboat bobbed in against the wharf, Shipwash almost leapt from the stone steps into the vessel. ‘Steady on,’ the adventurer barked, but within a moment the other spies were all throwing themselves on to the wet boards among the unsettled crew.

‘Wait!’ Marlowe shouted, his voice cracking. ‘We cannot abandon the thing we have brought, if England is to survive.’

Hesitating on the brink of the quay, Poley cursed and then ran back to the young playwright. They delved into the carriage and emerged, sweating and blowing, with a large wooden chest bound with chains which they dragged across the cobbles to the water’s edge.

‘What is in there?’ Raleigh demanded. ‘The body of one of your poor victims?’

Marlowe gave the adventurer such a haunted look that Raleigh dared not ask again. He ordered his men to haul the box on to the boat, and then watched as Marlowe helped Devereux on board. The crazed man sat in the prow, his arms hugged around his knees, his eyes darting.

Before he joined the others, Poley paused to set fire to the barrels of pitch with his flint and some scraps of sailcloth. Rearing up, the horses voiced their fear as the flames roared up into the night.

‘Row, damn you to hell!’ Shipwash shrieked once Poley was on board. ‘Get us away from this devil-haunted country.’

As the vessel pulled away from the quay, Raleigh noticed a curious sight: the rowers nearest to the chest lost grip of their oars and reeled on their benches, each one glancing back towards the box as if whatever was within called to them in a voice only they could hear.

The rowboat ploughed through the waves towards the galleon at anchor in the deep water. As the smaller vessel neared the creaking ship, Raleigh glanced back to the wharf and in the red and gold glare of the flames thought he glimpsed figures lurching with an awkward gait to the water’s edge.

The spies scrambled up the ropes as if consumed by madness. Once the rowboat and its strange cargo was hauled aboard, the adventurer strode the still-warm deck, his gaze continually and uneasily drawn to the quay, although it was impossible to see anything in the dark but the blazing barrels.

‘Raise the anchor,’ Gavell yelled.

‘I am the captain here,’ Raleigh bellowed. ‘Get below deck or I will have you clapped in irons.’

As the crew slowly drew the anchor, the spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham emerged from the captain’s cabin, his hands folded behind his back. Black-gowned, he stood erect, his dark gaze moving steadily across the men until it alighted on Marlowe, who sat by the rail with his head in his hands, staring at the chest. All the crew gave it a wide berth.

‘It went well?’ the saturnine spymaster enquired.

‘No,’ the young playwright responded, a sob bubbling under the word. ‘We have looked upon hell and we are all changed. Especially ... especially poor Devereux.’

‘What did you see?’ Raleigh asked, feeling a chill despite the warm night breeze.

Marlowe shook his head. ‘I cannot speak of it. But it will haunt me for ever.’

‘And the chest?’ Walsingham said.

‘Not here.’ Marlowe nodded to the crew. ‘Spare them.’

When the box had been dragged into the captain’s cabin, the adventurer helped Marlowe unlock the padlocks that held the chains tight. Raleigh dabbed at a dribble of blood at his nose. Closing his eyes, the playwright steadied himself before he hauled open the lid for the spymaster to peer inside.

The explorer recoiled before he had even seen the contents, a convulsive reaction felt at some level he didn’t understand.

Chained in the box, knees against his stomach, was one of the Unseelie Court. His eyes burned into the three men who looked down upon him, and they all thought they would never forget what they saw in that glare until their dying day. He looked like a pool of ink in the bottom of the chest, dressed in black doublet and breeches, his hair black too. A piece of filthy cloth had been tied across his mouth.

‘He is Fabian of the High Family,’ Marlowe choked. ‘The things he does ...’ He chewed the back of his hand, unable to complete his sentence.

Raleigh felt the atmosphere in the room grow more intense, as if a storm was about to break. None of them could bear the eyes upon them any longer, and the spymaster gave the order to close the chest.

‘How did you capture him?’ the explorer asked in disbelief. He was trembling, despite himself.

‘It may well have cost me my soul,’ the playwright replied in a small voice. ‘But I had to! I had to!’ He ranged about the cabin like a cornered beast, unable to draw his gaze away from the box. ‘We must question him, at the Tower, and find out the truth of the monstrosities he performs. What do they mean? What terrible thing does the Unseelie Court plan for them? Why, it could be the end of all England! And then we have to return and seize the Corpus-Scythe—’

‘No.’ The voice boomed from the door. The three men turned to see one of the crew, a short man with grey whiskers and a ring in his ear.

‘You dare speak to your betters?’ the spymaster said with a cold fury.

‘Hold your tongue,’ Raleigh cautioned. ‘Return to your post—’

‘I was placed on board this ship by my master, Lord Burghley.’ The sailor looked from one man to the other.

Walsingham glared with such intensity that the explorer thought he would take a dagger to the outspoken sailor. ‘We spy on each other now?’

‘Lord Burghley has greater plans that he cannot see disrupted,’ the sailor said, offering a scroll sealed with red wax. ‘He bid me give you this should such a situation arise.’

Walsingham tore open the scroll and scanned it. ‘Leave now and do not speak to me again upon this voyage,’ he said to the new arrival without once looking at him. When the sailor had gone, the spymaster crushed the parchment in his fist in anger. ‘The fool,’ he muttered, forcing a wan smile when he remembered Raleigh. ‘It appears Lord Burghley does not want the presence of the Unseelie Court diminished in France. While the Enemy maintains a vital presence among our rivals, it weakens those who compete against us for gold and trade, and thereby strengthens England’s position.’

‘Politics? No, not here,’ Marlowe hissed, tears of anger stinging his eyes. ‘This matter is about more than our petty earthly rivalries. We must deliver this one to London for questioning about the Enemy’s plans. The atrocities they undertake at Reims will have terrible repercussions for our countrymen. Do you not understand?’

‘Silence,’ the spymaster snapped. ‘Do not question business that is beyond your understanding.’

‘And this is beyond your understanding,’ the playwright raged. ‘You did not witness the horrors we experienced in the English College or you would never agree to this. Our only chance of survival is to act now, not play games.’

In his desperation, Marlowe was on the brink of damaging himself irreparably, Raleigh saw. As it was, Walsingham would not easily forgive such open questioning of his orders. ‘England is in a struggle for survival on many levels,’ the explorer said calmly, trying to soothe the spy’s temper. ‘There is no easy choice between right and wrong, and it is the role of the statesman to balance the many competing interests of a great nation attempting to survive in a harsh world.’ Even as he spoke the words, Raleigh did not wholly agree with them. From the terrified state of the spies, he suspected this matter truly was greater than mere politics.

Marlowe looked broken. ‘I do not agree,’ he said in a small voice filled with power. ‘It should be about right and wrong. That is all that matters.’

‘You are naive,’ the spymaster said.

‘Leave now,’ the explorer urged quietly. ‘Spend some time in reflection, and then ask for your master’s forgiveness.’

His head bowed in frustration, Marlowe trudged from the cabin. But as he opened the door, terrified cries resounded from the deck. When the playwright’s face drained of blood, Raleigh realized the spy’s worst fears had been confirmed. Drawing their rapiers, the two men raced towards the disturbance.

On deck, in the dying heat of the evening, the crew fought furiously along the starboard rail against a stream of shadowy figures attempting to board the galleon. Swords glinted in the light of the swinging lanterns. The explorer ran to join his men in the fight, only to come to a juddering halt when he saw their faces ragged with fear and incomprehension.

Raleigh’s gaze was drawn inexorably to the nearest assailant and his breath caught in his throat.

Beneath a wide-brimmed felt hat, a face of straw.

Ivy eyes, hands of yew, teeth of blackthorn, a tattered jerkin and breeches stuffed with dried vegetation.

A constructed man. Yet with all the animation of a living being. It snarled and snapped, its human-like eyes glowing with a sickening intelligence.

With horror, the explorer watched the straw man lunge for the nearest sailor, gripping him with an unnatural strength and tearing out his throat. The man’s scream turned to a wet gurgle. Blood splashed on to the deck.

‘Do not yield! Do not treat them like barleyfield scarecrows,’ Marlowe yelled as he ran along the line of struggling crewmen. ‘They are bred for slaughter. Run them through. They can die like any man.’

As if to prove his point, the young playwright darted into the melee and thrust his rapier through the heart of a straw man. The lurching thing squealed with the voice of a baby, clutching at its chest.

Raleigh recoiled, pressing his hands to his ears to block out the hideous sound. It soared up to the rigging, growing ever louder, until not a man could bear it.

Blood seeped through scarecrow fingers. Sickened, the adventurer could not tell from where that life-essence came.

More straw men clambered over the rail, dripping wet with seawater, and attacked with a greater frenzy, as if the thing’s dying shriek had driven them to greater extremes. Wildwood arms wrapped around a sailor and shattered his spine. Another man fell with a face torn in two. Across the deck, the scarecrows lurched towards anything living, silent until wounded when they joined in with the howling symphony of agony.

Marlowe, too, renewed his attack. His face fixed with determination, he slashed his rapier across straw throats and plunged it into overstuffed bodies. Raleigh flung himself into the fight alongside the playwright.

‘These are just the start,’ the younger man gasped with tear-stung eyes. ‘There is worse to come.’

‘Clear room at the rail!’

The explorer recognized Walsingham’s booming voice. Glancing back, he saw the spymaster standing alongside two white-faced sailors who had dragged the chained chest from the captain’s cabin.

The straw men come for the one in the chest, Raleigh realized.

‘Send him over the side,’ Walsingham said coldly.

While the battle raged, the two gasping crewmen hauled the chest to the rail, lifted it with a grunt and a curse, and then rolled it over the edge.

The resounding splash was like a bell signalling the end of the battle. The scarecrows let men drop to the blood-soaked deck, unfurled wooden fingers from pulsing necks, and turned away from killing blows. One by one, they stumbled towards the rail and climbed over the side, following the siren song of their master.

The grim-faced crew staggered back, hands pressed to mouths, to a man trying to make sense of the horrors they had witnessed.

Raleigh ran to the rail and peered into the black water. ‘What were they?’ he asked.

Marlowe shook his head and turned away, a man on the edge of despair.

The adventurer caught the playwright’s arm and asked, ‘The one you brought here ... Fabian. Will the Unseelie Court let us escape now he is dead?’

‘They are hard to kill,’ Marlowe said in a flat voice. ‘I would not worry yourself unduly.’

Walsingham strode over, his expression unreadable. ‘Set sail for Kent, Sir Walter,’ he said. ‘Master Swyfte waits for us, expecting news of a great victory. He will be disappointed.’

Marlowe rounded on his master. ‘We will rue this day,’ he raged. ‘We had here a chance to stop the horrors that are moving steadily towards England. Playing games with politics has doomed us all.’

The spymaster’s graven expression was a warning of the punishment that awaited the young playwright. ‘When we return to the Palace of Whitehall, you will tell me all you know. But you will speak to no one else of what you discovered in Reims, do you understand?’

Dismally, Marlowe nodded. ‘And what of poor Devereux? This last day has destroyed him.’

‘Set him free,’ Walsingham said, turning on his heels and striding towards the cabin. ‘He has lost his wits. What harm can he do?’

CHAPTER FIFTY

‘WHAT HORRORS DID KIT WITNESS AT THE SEMINARY IN REIMS?’ Will stared into the glowing embers in the hearth with visions of bleeding straw men playing out across his mind.

Raleigh took a draught of sack to steady himself. ‘Whatever he told Walsingham, the old spymaster took it to the grave with him. Marlowe certainly never discussed it with me, though we talked long and hard on the journey home to Kent.’

Where I welcomed Kit, without realizing the monstrous things he had experienced in France, nor the nature of that work or the others involved, Will thought bleakly. So much suffering could have been prevented if secrets had not been kept. All the strands of recent events were drawn together in the story the explorer had just related: Gavell, Shipwash, and the other names on the list from Kit’s boarding house were there, as was Poley, that sly character who was in the small room where the playwright was murdered. And what connection was there betwixt those straw men who terrorized Raleigh’s ship and the Scar-Crows who could not be distinguished from living, breathing men?

‘In that conversation between Sir Walter and Marlowe, the seeds of the School of Night were sown,’ the Wizard Earl stated solemnly. Pacing to the window, he observed the distant lights burning in the trees. ‘A conspiracy, by any other name, that would no longer accept the brutal politics of empires, where risks are taken with the lives of good men and women for the sake of power and gain.’

‘We agreed to set ourselves to a higher standard.’ Raleigh drained his goblet and called for more. ‘Artists, writers, philosophers, thinkers, men of physics, aye, and men of magic too, who could understand the ways of the Unseelie Court and the strange realm from where they originated. Men like our good Dr Dee and those in his occult circle. Indeed, Kit already dabbled in these things. While at Cambridge, shortly before you two first met, he attended a lecture by that High Priest of the Sun, the Italian Giordano Bruno, and borrowed a book of magics from him.’

‘And that damnable volume brought to him the Fay that has haunted him these long years and made his life a misery at every turn,’ Northumberland muttered from the window.

Will paused, his cup halfway to his lips. ‘Xanthus the Hunter? That thing with rings of blue and black marked upon his head, which I fought during my first meeting with Kit, and which now pursues me through hell and high water?’

‘The very same.’

In that moment, Will understood so much about the sad life of his long-suffering friend and the events that had transpired in recent weeks. ‘I see patterns where I thought there were none,’ the spy whispered to himself. Like his protagonist, Faustus, Kit had summoned his own devil through a search for secret knowledge and it had destroyed him by degrees. He was the architect of his own end. How that must have tormented him.

‘Kit struggled hard to ensure you were not drawn into his circle of misery,’ the explorer said with a sad smile. ‘He was adamant in that. “Will is a good man and he should not suffer for my sins,” he said to me on that journey back from France. Indeed, the School of Night has helped you many times over the years, though you have never seen it. Information reaching your ears at just the right moment. Aid arriving as if by magic in times of danger.’

‘And the plotting of those bastards in the Privy Council, and of your new master, Cecil, diverted from your door,’ the Wizard Earl said, turning to face the chamber.

‘We are everywhere,’ Raleigh added with a nod.

Will rose on weary legs. ‘So now all is made clear. If I am to know what Kit discovered and what the Unseelie Court wish to keep hidden, I must retrace my friend’s footsteps, to Reims and the English College. But one thing escapes me. You say Kit was keen to return to France to find this Corpus-Scythe. And Griffin Devereux spoke of it too. What is it?’

The adventurer shook his head. ‘It was of the greatest importance to Kit, I can say that. He felt it was key in preventing whatever plot he feared was about to unfold.’

‘Then I thank you for taking me into your confidence,’ the spy said, ‘but there is no time to lose. I must make arrangements to leave within the hour.’

‘And the School of Night will do whatever it can to aid you,’ Northumberland responded, ‘as your good friend would have wished.’

Leaving the men to their discussions, Will made his way back to the entrance hall. The gale buffeted the door, but beyond it he thought he could hear the same shrieking, insane laughter that rang off the walls of Bedlam.

When the spy reached the first-floor gallery, he called Dee’s name, but the only response was the rattling of the panes and the wind in the eaves. A corridor branched off ahead of him, panelled with wood and lit by a single candle at the far end. Bedchamber doors lay along the wall to his right. When he had investigated the first two rooms, he heard dim moans behind the third door.

The old man has injured himself, the spy thought with concern. Only when he reached towards the handle did he realize he was mistaken.

Those are moans of passion.

Will could hear the rhythmic thump of a bed and the sighs of lovemaking. The door was ajar. Unable to avert his eyes, he glimpsed Dee lying on the bed, his naked body pale and wrinkled and covered with faded blue symbols. Astride him was Meg, riding hard. Her head was thrown back, her mouth open in an O of ardour, her red hair flying. She ground her hips into Dee and drew her nails across his flesh.

Will was stunned. Stepping away from the door, he couldn’t begin to understand what he had witnessed. The Irish woman had flirted with the alchemist ever since they had met in Manchester, but he could not believe this was pure attraction. Why was she taking him between her thighs on this very night, when threats lay all around?

But what troubled him most was the surprising twinge of jealousy he felt underneath it all. He told himself he felt nothing for Meg. He could see right through her manipulations and he didn’t trust her one bit. But still the green emotion stung him.

Making his way downstairs, the spy found the kitchens, where he collected together some cold meat, cheese and bread for the coming journey, but he continued to ponder on the meaning of what he had seen.

When he had found a sack for the provisions, a loud crash reverberated through the house. He raced out to the entrance hall, where the door banged in the teeth of the gale. The other men had gathered to investigate.

‘Do not concern yourself,’ Raleigh shouted above the storm, ‘none of our enemies can have traversed the line of defence. It is just the wind.’

As the explorer ran to close the door, Will caught his arm. ‘When I ventured upstairs, it was shut tight. Wind cannot blow open a latch.’ Pushing past Raleigh, he squinted against the hard rain driving into his face. He thought he heard a voice somewhere out in the tumultuous weather, but it was impossible to see anything beyond the small circle of light cast by the lantern above the door.

Pushing his way past the other men, the spy raced upstairs. The room where he had seen the alchemist and Meg in congress was now empty, the musky smell of lovemaking still hanging in the air.

Will searched the house and then plunged through the group of puzzled men into the rain-swept night. Along the tree-line the fires flared. He began to fear the worst. Thrown around by the howling wind, he ran up the grassy slope, his leather shoes slipping on the slick sward.

In the fading glare of a lightning flash, he glimpsed two dark shapes stumbling towards the line of skull-topped poles.

Red hair plastered to her head, Meg struggled up the slope with both arms wrapped about a limp, lolling Dee. Her pale, rain-slick face was set with determination. Twisting round, the Irish woman dumped the magician to the ground and drew her dagger from her skirts in one fluid movement. ‘Stay away,’ she hissed. ‘Our business together is done.’

‘Betrayal truly is in your nature.’

‘You do not know me,’ the woman snarled. ‘You have no right to judge me.’

Pointing at the prone alchemist, the spy demanded, ‘What have you done to him?’

‘A minor potion administered while his blood was up—’

Will laughed without humour. ‘During your seduction.’

‘I do what I have to do.’ Tears of anger flecked her eyes. ‘Though I am sure you doubt every word I say, this life of mine is not an easy one. A woman in this business is forced to make hard choices. And you shall not judge me!’

‘I have had enough of your deceit. Speak plain. Now.’

‘The magician comes with me.’ In another flash of lightning, Red Meg’s eyes sparked. ‘You cannot begin to understand what it is like in my homeland. You have been safe here behind Dee’s defences. But in Ireland, entire villages are destroyed by the Unseelie Court as they hunt my countrymen for sport. Misery inflicted on families down the generations. Children torn from their parents and taken to that foul place the Fair Folk call home, and replaced in their cribs with mewling, spitting things that drink only blood. You cannot begin to know our heartbreak. You cannot plumb the lakes of tears my people have cried. You will never understand the suffocating blanket of terror that swathes every village, every home. Dee can save us! He knows the secret ways to enable us to defend ourselves.’ The dagger wavered in her trembling hand. ‘He could bring us back to the light. But you would never pass on his knowledge willingly. You have always treated Ireland as a larder to be raided whenever your bellies were empty, and our people as slaves to tend to your every whim.’

‘And so you plotted to steal him from under my nose. You accepted Henry of Navarre’s request to aid me so you could get close to me, and thereby close to Dee.’

The spy took a slow step around the Irish woman, waiting for her to lower her guard.

‘Is it right that your country is protected and mine suffers so badly?’ she cried above the desolate wind. ‘You talk of the Brotherhood of Man, how we should all stand together against the Unseelie Court, ignoring our religious differences and our trivial human concerns. Yet you ensure England is safe and my home suffers. Is this fair? Is it right? Does it meet the moral standards you have set for yourself?’

The pounding rain stung the spy’s face, but the woman’s words struck just as hard.

‘Let me take Dee.’ Her voice softened. ‘Show compassion. Do a great deed that will transform the lives of an entire people.’

Will wavered. He glanced down at the rain-soaked alchemist. The elderly man was beginning to stir.

‘If you do not, then you and you alone condemn my people to suffering,’ Meg pressed.

‘And when you proposed that we should flee this business and live a high life in each other’s arms across Europe – was it all lies, Mistress Meg? Trying to find a weakness in my heart just as the Unseelie Court seek to exploit the weaknesses in men for their own ends?’

A devastating look of painful, heartfelt emotion flared in her eyes. Like a cat, she sprang at him with the dagger. Shocked by the ferocity of her attack, the spy watched the blade drive towards his heart, only flinging up his left arm to knock her wrist away at the last.

‘There is too much at stake to consider the emotions of two people. We are nothing here,’ Meg hissed.

‘Agreed.’

Under the lightning-torn sky, Meg twisted again, so that she appeared to be a part of the storm. Swooping under his outstretched arm, she thrust her blade through the spy’s doublet and nicked the flesh over his ribs. Ignoring the burst of hot pain, Will dropped to his haunches, balancing on the tip of his left hand and swinging his right leg around in an arc. He hit Meg at the back of her knees, and her feet slipped from under her.

He pinned the Irish woman’s wrists with his hands and squeezed until the dagger fell from her grasp. ‘This is over,’ he urged. ‘Leave now and you can keep your life.’

Before Meg could respond, Will noticed the alchemist was lurching up the slope in a daze, unaware that just ahead lay the long, arcing row of skull-topped poles. Will propelled himself off the Irish woman and began to race towards the elderly man.

Dee stumbled into one of the poles, knocking it flat. The yellowing skull of a badger rolled across the turf.

Instantly, the wind dropped.

Along the tree-line, the fires winked out as one. A sound like a low exhalation rolled across the grassland.

Will dragged Dee back. His robes flying, the elderly man tumbled down the slope and slid on to his hands and knees.

The rain grew stronger. A crack of thunder rolled out and on in an unending drumroll, and sheets of white light flashed one after another. In between the strikes, the spy glimpsed ghostly grey shapes leaping like foxes, almost invisible in the downpour.

Grasping the rain-slick pole, Will rammed it back into the hole in the ground without disturbing the pattern of stones in front of it. Before he could replace the skull, Meg’s shrill cry rang out through the booming thunder. He turned just quickly enough to avoid a grey figure bounding out of the pounding rain.

Unsheathing his rapier, Will glimpsed a corpse-like face that transformed before his eyes into vibrant, strong features. His attacker was a warrior, dressed in a leather buckler stained silver and marked on the front with a black pattern that resembled a tree in winter. Like a poacher’s trap, his own blade flashed towards the spy’s heart.

Will parried, deflecting the blade to his left. Without pausing for breath, the grey man renewed his attack with a sudden spin and a forceful upper slice of his steel. Will parried again, but he was driven a step back.

In an unorthodox, unpredictable fighting style that reminded Will of the wild dances he had witnessed in Muscovy, the Enemy swordsman whirled around, changing direction in the blink of an eye. Blinded by the rain, Will parried high, then low and to his right, barely blocking each strike.

Green fire burned in the eyes of the grey foe. His face was emotionless.

As he half slipped on the wet grass, the spy felt his foe’s rapier tear through his cloak. Clamping his arm tight against the steel in the folds of the wet cloth, Will held it fast long enough to lunge with his own blade. The sharp tip stabbed the Enemy’s shoulder. The pale face darkened.

Aware that other Fay warriors could overwhelm him at any moment, Will renewed his attack. But with elegance and strength, the pale-faced swordsman spun to the left, struck, spun back, struck again. The spy felt every bone in his body jarred each time the blades clashed.

In his opponent’s icy, ebony eyes, the spy saw no hope of defeating this foe in an honest swordfight. The Enemy was too skilled with the rapier, too strong, too fast, and Will was worn down by the long, desperate pursuit across the country.

Avoiding another thrust, Will hurled his blade. Wrong-footed, the supernatural Enemy dropped his guard. Pulling out one of the pouches Dee had given him in Manchester, the spy unfurled it with a flick of his wrist.

When the blue paste splattered across the ghastly face, the Fay warrior lurched backwards, tearing at his cheeks in a frenzy. Black foam bubbled from between swollen lips, and blood dribbled from the corners of staring eyes. Gasps became unsettling, fractured cries, like the call of rooks on a winter’s day, and then the poisoned thing turned and wound a wild path across the grassland until it disappeared into the driving rain. The keening cry continued for a moment longer and then ended suddenly.

Snatching up his rapier, Will turned towards the gap in the defences. His mind filled with a vision of a wave of ferocious bone-white things washing him away. Yet the skull was now back in place, an exhausted Dee clinging on to the pole. The alchemist’s eyes were still hazy with the remnants of whatever potion Meg had used to steal his wits. ‘’Twill suffice, for now,’ he muttered.

The spy helped Dee to his feet and supported him back down the slope to where the other men waited, rigid with apprehension, under the lamp by the door. Meg was long gone. Though Will knew it would not be long before she was spreading blood and mayhem in her trail once more, he was surprised by a dull ache of regret and a feeling of mounting loneliness.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

HOLDING THE CANDLESTICK ALOFT, SIR WALTER RALEIGH LED THE way down the dank stone steps into the dark cellars of Petworth House. ‘Great danger waits ahead, Master Swyfte,’ he warned, the green and red jewels of his doublet glimmering in the wavering light of the flame. ‘By all the evidence we have, the Unseelie Court are near to the fulfilment of their plot. They will do anything to prevent victory slipping from their grasp. If you think you can pass beneath their gaze unnoticed, you are mistaken.’

‘I am well aware of the threat that surrounds me at every turn, but do not underestimate my cunning,’ Will’s voice echoed in the chill, mildew-smelling air. ‘All is not done here.’

‘The Enemy certainly agrees,’ Northumberland muttered as he took up the rear, ‘or they would not have the house under siege.’

At the foot of the steps, the candlelight revealed vaulted cellars festooned with silvery cobwebs and pools of stagnant water glistening across worn flags. The Earl pointed into the shadows to their left and they continued on their way amid the echoes of their footsteps.

‘Dr Dee appears to have suffered no lasting harm from the potion the Irish witch used to seduce him,’ Northumberland added. ‘In no time at all, I foresee him once again contributing his wisdom and his magical skills to the fight we now have ahead. We may yet break this siege quickly.’

‘Once they discover I am gone, as they will in no time, I am sure, they will leave you alone,’ Will said. ‘At least until their plot is complete. And then I would imagine the School of Night would be high on their list of problems to be excised with alacrity.’ He gave a low laugh. ‘I am impressed by your achievement, gentlemen. To be despised by both the Privy Council and the Unseelie Court is a remarkable thing.’

‘We cannot be trapped in this war for all time, Master Swyfte.’ As they came to the far wall of the cellar, Raleigh let the candlelight play along the slick stone. ‘We have all been imprisoned in the dark for too long, caught between opposing forces that have only their own interests and survival at heart. It is time for a new age of enlightenment, when we can throw off this benighted existence and continue our journey upwards.’

‘To walk with the gods themselves?’ the spy asked wryly.

‘Aye. Why not? There is godhood in all of us,’ the explorer replied.

‘I fear your stomach for blasphemy and treason will be the death of you.’ Will pressed one hand on the wall. It felt solid enough.

‘You are part of our conspiracy now, whether you like it or not.’ The Earl smiled.

‘You are not afraid that I will betray you, given the opportunity?’

‘Kit Marlowe trusted you, and so do we. He held you to the highest standard, Master Swyfte, and you were not found wanting. He refused our entreaties to admit you to our circle only because he wished to protect you from the sword that hangs over all our heads.’ Henry Percy turned back to the wall and began to feel along the edge of a column.

When he found the stone he was searching for, he put two hands on it and pressed. With a grinding noise, the stone slid into the column. A section of the wall shifted. The spy felt a blast of cold, stale air.

Raleigh raised a finger and one wry eyebrow. ‘The fine thing about a secret society is that its members can hide in plain sight. Here in England, and across Europe. You will never be short of friends, Master Swyfte. And in your darkest hour you may find allies that you never knew existed.’

‘That is reassuring, and I thank you both.’ Will bowed.

‘Take this.’ Raleigh proffered the candlestick. ‘This tunnel was built long ago, as a route for escape in times of trouble. Parts of it may not be safe. At the far end there is another secret door that leads into All Hallows church in Tillington, far beyond the forces of the Unseelie Court. It will buy you a little time.’

Taking the candlestick, Will stepped into the gap in the wall. Ahead of him lay a stone-lined passage with a roof so low he would have to stoop. An inch of dirty water covered the floor.

Northumberland leaned in. ‘There is a cottage overlooking the churchyard, the home of Jerome Marsham, a good, hard-working man,’ he said quietly, his voice still carrying deep into the dark. ‘Tell him Henry Percy has asked for the loan of his horse, and that he will be well recompensed. Ride south to Portsmouth where you will find Captain Argentein and his ship and give him this.’ He handed the spy a rolled-up parchment with a still-soft crimson wax seal. ‘It will buy you free passage to France and the secrecy you need to hide your identity.’

Will slipped the parchment into a hidden pocket in his cloak. ‘Then I leave England behind me. This country teeters on the brink of an abyss and I know not if it is within my power to prevent it,’ he reflected darkly. ‘It seems with each day this world turns further from the light. But I will not be swayed, whatever horrors lie ahead.’

The spy nodded to both men and made his way along the passage. Raleigh and Northumberland watched the golden light receding like a firefly disappearing into the dusk.

Soon only the dark remained.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

IN THE BLACK, LONELY FORESTS, SPECTRAL LIGHTS FLOATED. Unfamiliar reflections stared back from streams and rivers, the flesh slowly melting from the skull beneath. At crossroads, crows sometimes appeared to speak in a shrieking, unrecognizable language. And in the silvery meadows underneath the full moon, dark figures danced with carnal abandon, while in nearby villages parents with tear-stained faces searched for their missing children.

From the moment he set foot on French soil, Will had sensed the haunted atmosphere that lay across the land. England had been slowly waking to the evil of ancient days as the defences fell. Here it was as if the land had long since passed into the hands of the Enemy. He had never felt the like before, even in places where the Unseelie Court walked freely.

It was 9 August. The spy’s horse trotted towards Reims, where the great bulk of the three-hundred-year-old cathedral was silhouetted against the ruddy sunset. Beyond the walls of the small town, the jumble of narrow, winding streets was thrown into near-permanent shadow. It was, Will felt, a place that held its past close to its heart.

The glassy surface of the Vesle river burned with reds and oranges as it wound past the town, the air heavy with the acrid smell of smoke from the workshops producing cloth for trade across Europe. It was a busy town. Even in such a time, Will could hear the competing cries of merchants and apprentices ringing out from the streets, the clatter of tools and the hiss of bellows. The face shown to the world was that of the honest artisan toiling fruitfully every day. But it was religion that truly ruled in Reims.

The spy’s throat was dry from the dusty tracks he had followed through the vineyards scattered across the landscape. The sea journey from Portsmouth aboard Captain Argentein’s carrack had allowed him to put aside thoughts of Meg’s betrayal so he could concentrate on plans that required the greatest subterfuge. An Englishman abroad in France was no unusual sight with so many Catholic refugees fleeing Elizabeth’s resolutely Protestant rule, but he knew it was only a matter of time before Xanthus would pick up his trail once more. Will knew his only hope was to find answers with the utmost speed and move on.

And if the spy had any doubt about the growing power of the Unseelie Court, he found confirmation in the lights far beneath the blue-green waves on the sea crossing, and in the booming noises, like thunder, that rose from the deeps.

Arriving in Cherbourg on a bright, windswept morning filled with the salty scent of the sea and the spices brought in by the Portuguese great ships, Will had bartered with the merchants overseeing the unloading of barrels along the quay. Among the harbour workers there were signs of the tension between Catholics and Protestants but no mention of a supernatural threat, though Will saw hints of fear in eyes darting towards the roads leading into the countryside. Surrounded by the constant slap of sailcloth and crack of rigging, he secured employment guarding three carts transporting barrels of sack to a warehouse to the north of Paris.

Once they had reached their destination, and with a pouch of Dee’s trinkets for protection, he purchased a horse and travelled north-east by day, at night sleeping in taverns where there was at least some chance of safety from the powers that controlled the lonely countryside.

His beard and hair now unruly, his clothes travel-stained and worn so that few would identify him as a gentleman, he kept his head low as he rode into the darkening streets of Reims. The cathedral’s twin towers loomed over the town, its creamy-yellow stone and ranks of weather-worn sculptures blackened by smoke. The dying sun turned the rose window on the west front into a glittering, multi-coloured eye, unflinching and unforgiving.

It was a Papist fortress, Will knew, and under the guidance of Rome had become one of the most dangerous places in Europe in the eyes of Queen Elizabeth and the Privy Council. He recalled the old spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham losing his normally impassive demeanour to fly into a rage when speaking of the threat originating from the town. Its source lay behind the walls of the Catholic seminary attached to the university that crouched in the cathedral’s shadow. The elderly puritan had railed at God’s spies, as the Papist bastards called them, the seminary’s graduates, who were trained as much in insurrection as scripture and then delivered to England’s towns to seek the overthrow of the Queen’s rule.

Dismounting, Will led the horse over the cobbles on the last leg of his journey. Black-robed students walked in pairs, their tricorn hats lowered as the young men engaged in earnest conversation. Even in the street, the sweet smell of incense hung in the air.

From the shadows of an alley, the spy watched the comings and goings at the door to the English College. He knew it would not be difficult to infiltrate the seminary. In London, Marlowe had used to joke that there were more English spies studying the catechism in Reims than honest Catholics. Escaping with his life would be a different matter.

What terrible secrets had his old friend discovered here?

Tying up his horse, Will adopted an exhausted shuffle for the benefit of watchful eyes and made his way to the seminary.

The door was opened by a young priest, perhaps around twenty, with jet-black hair, a sallow complexion and a pointed nose that gave his features an unsettlingly avian cast.

‘Forgive me for disturbing you at this hour when you are undoubtedly preparing for your evening meal,’ the spy said with a bow. ‘But I am just arrived in Reims after a long journey from my home.’

‘From England?’ the priest enquired, his English heavily accented with French.

Will nodded. ‘My name is Francis Clavell. Like many of my countrymen, I am a victim of the bastard heretic Queen. Her persecution has driven my family from their home. My brother was slaughtered in a ditch, my sister forced to endure the most terrible depravities.’ The spy lowered his head and covered his eyes, eliciting a comforting hand upon his shoulder.

‘We have all heard tales of the atrocities inflicted on the Christian men and women of England,’ the young man said gently. ‘This will change, and soon. It is God’s will.’

‘In the depths of his grief, my father dispatched me here to enter the priesthood so I can return and do whatever is in my power to right these terrible wrongs.’

The priest hesitated. ‘My friend, we are already hard-pressed with the flood of poor souls arriving at our door with stories similar to your own. We have to turn many away, and the ones who are admitted are young and open to the teachings we deliver within these walls.’

From his cloak, Will pulled the pouch that Northumberland had given him before he set off for France. He held it up and jangled it. ‘My father is a wealthy man, a merchant who provides timber for England’s great and growing fleet. His heart is set upon my entering the priesthood. And he will pay well to wipe away the stain of misery that now lies upon my family.’

With a sweep of his arm, the young man stepped aside to admit Will into the well-lit hall. ‘Father Mathias will be able to make a judgement upon your request,’ he said warmly. ‘Wait here and I will see if he is available.’

The scent of candle smoke mingled with the earthy aroma of the broth being prepared in the kitchens. Everywhere was silent. Will knew the offer of gold would buy his way into the seminary. He would have a few days’ grace to conduct his business before the authorities began to ask questions about the non-arrival of more funds. He hoped it would be enough.

Within moments, the young priest returned to guide the spy into the chamber of Father Mathias, a portly man with a red face and currant eyes. The small room was panelled with aged oak that made it appear dark despite the two candles positioned on either side of the hearth. A gold cross gleamed on one wall.

Will explained his predicament again, but it was clear the older priest was barely listening. Only when the money pouch was deposited on the trestle did his features suggest interest. The man restrained a smile and in faltering English gave an offer of a few days’ accommodation and an opportunity to observe the teachings in the seminary before any final decision was made.

Father Mathias ordered the young priest, who was introduced as Hugh, to look after Will and make sure the rules of the seminary were made clear. A small chamber, barely large enough for a bed, was made ready for the spy next to Hugh’s room.

As they made their way to the evening meal, the young priest appeared excited at the prospect of fresh conversation, and gabbled brightly about his brothers and sisters who worked on the family farm not far from the border with Navarre. The spy said little, listening with one ear while observing the other priests as they waited to enter the great vaulted hall where trestles were set end to end in two long rows with benches on each side. Separate trestles were arranged at the upper end of the hall for the senior priests.

Heads bowed, the students stood for the blessing in the lush golden light of the candles burning in the two iron chandeliers overhead. They ate in silence, simple fare of root vegetables in broth, and water to drink. Will estimated there were about a hundred priests, some of them in their twenties, a handful older, but most in their teens. The spy imagined Kit sitting at this very table, thinking the same thoughts as he used his guile to gain the acceptance of his peers. The playwright had had the luxury of time in which to earn the trust that would make lips loose and bring secrets to the surface. As Will chewed on a knob of bread, the weight of his responsibilities pressed down upon him.

After the meal, Hugh helped the spy settle in his room. The young priest was likeable, with a quick wit and a pleasant humour. ‘You will enjoy your time here, Francis,’ he said as he lit a candle and placed it upon the ledge beneath the small, arched window, ‘but the teachings you receive will change your life and the lives of all those you encounter.’

‘That is my hope,’ Will replied.

‘But you will be worked hard. There is no time for rest. Our studies consist of two parts. Firstly, the trivium – grammar, in which you will learn to read, write and speak Latin, then rhetoric, where you will discover the powerful voice God gave you for drawing the masses into the heart of the Church. And then logic, by which you will understand how to deliver strong arguments. The other half of our studies consists of the quadrivium – music, arithmetic, astronomy and geometry. Through this you will understand the world God has created, and his plan for it.’

‘I have spent my life attempting to understand God’s plan for the world,’ the spy responded truthfully, though he hid the irony.

‘And there are, of course, prayers, and our study of the catechism, and reverent song and reflection. You will find meaning here, in a world that yearns for it.’ Hugh gave a shy smile.

Stretching, Will said, ‘I would take a walk through my new home before I lay my head down. It will help me sleep, and it would be good to get to know the school before my studies begin.’

Hugh’s face fell. ‘That is not possible. Very shortly the doors will be locked until first light. Under the orders of the old Cardinal, Louis de Guise, no priest is allowed to wander the halls of the seminary until first light.’

‘I am to be a prisoner, then?’ Will saw his plan failing before his eyes. He had imagined the night would be his best opportunity to explore the college and discover whatever Marlowe had found there. Any chances during daylight hours would be few and far between.

Hugh crossed himself. ‘As God’s agents upon this earth, we are a prime target of the Adversary. Every day we must fight off subtle attacks upon our purity. Licentious thoughts. Uncharitable notions. But the night ... that is the Devil’s time. He is at his strongest. For long years, there have been rumours that our greatest enemy walks the quiet halls at dark, seeking lone priests to seduce or destroy.’

The spy pretended to examine the reflections of the candle flame in the window panes. The Church was riddled with devils from top to bottom, men consumed by desires for power or wealth who saw no wrong in manipulating believers to achieve worldly ends, he thought with bitter humour. Beside churchmen, even spies seemed honourable.

‘And so we must stay in our chambers, and hold on to our purity, and stay safe until light returns to the world,’ Hugh continued.

Will wondered if there was indeed a devil stepping silently through the seminary at night, but he doubted it was the one the younger man imagined. How clever, then, to keep prying eyes shut away. ‘Then I will sleep soundly,’ he said.

Once the young priest had left, the spy did lie on his hard bed, but he knew he would not sleep soundly, if at all. ‘Time doth run with calm and silent foot, Shortening my days and thread of vital life,’ he muttered, once again recalling words from his friend’s play. The echoes hung eerily in the air. It was almost as if Marlowe had foreseen everything that lay ahead.

Will struggled long and hard to find a solution to his new conundrum, but when his eyelids began to droop for a moment he was shocked alert by a weight pressing down upon him.

Jenny’s pale, dead face lay cold and hard against his cheek, her arms around his chest, nails digging into his flesh. She felt like a bag of bones and smelled of the deep, dark earth. His limbs leaden, the spy did not have the strength to throw her off. Half turning his head, he saw her all-black eyes glinting in the light of the guttering candle flame.

‘Let me out,’ Mephistophilis whispered. Though the face of Will’s love remained impassive, the devil’s voice was filled with a hunger that Will had not heard before. ‘Set me free and I will help.’

‘And have the deaths of good if misguided men upon my conscience? Never.’

The devil’s nails dug deeper. ‘Set me free. I can cause such mayhem here in this house of goodly men. I can bring their deepest fears up hard against them, and perhaps, when they see the darkness that dwells just beyond their doors, it will reaffirm their faith in the light.’

The spy laughed at his tormentor’s attempts at manipulation. ‘Or perhaps it will destroy them. And then you will take joy in a blow struck against all that you oppose, and I will be the cause of it and it will haunt me to the end. Two birds, one stone.’

The not-Jenny licked Will’s cheek slowly, a mockery of the creature’s seductive pose. The tongue felt rough and chill. ‘You do not know what I oppose, nor anything of my true nature. You hear the ruminations of small men and think them fact, when in truth you know nothing of the mysteries of life, of devils, of the Unseelie Court, of what you think magic, of anything that spins around your mundane existence. How could you – you are man, and men are like cattle locked up in the dark of a barn. When you try to make sense of the sounds from beyond the walls, you can only guess.’

‘Fair guesses, though.’ The spy tried to will strength into his arms, but he could not move them an inch. ‘I know your nature is to cause harm. Whether you are one of the devils the preachers warn us about, or something else entirely, I recognize evil.’

Mephistophilis gave a scornful laugh. ‘There is no good nor evil in this world. There is only what you want and what you will do to achieve it. I want to be set free. You want to save the people of your homeland from the terrible harm that is about to be unleashed upon their heads. And you still say no?’

Will was struck hard by the dilemma the devil presented to him. He felt lost, cut adrift from the moral certainties he had once enjoyed, and now he found it a trial to see right from wrong. There was only what he wanted, and how far he would go to achieve it.

‘You will disrupt the workings of the seminary, and allow me space to go about my business?’ the spy asked.

‘Yes.’

‘But you must not kill.’

Silence.

‘That is my only condition.’

The laughter began low in the devil’s throat and rolled out to fill the chamber. ‘There are worse things than death, indeed.’

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

IN THE SUFFOCATING HEAT OF THE NIGHT, THE SWEAT-SLICK MAN kneeled against the splintered post, whimpering. A large iron nail had been rammed through his left ear into the wood. Held fast, he was splattered with mud and dung from the crowd that had pelted him intermittently throughout the day for causing an affray in the nave of St Paul’s. His tears had long since dried along with the blood that encrusted his swollen lobe, but he could still muster a curse through his dry, split lips: ‘Damn you, Launceston. Carpenter, thou pig-swiver.’