From the shadows edging the cobbled square outside Newgate Market, the two spies watched Jerome Pennebrygg with weary eyes.
‘How much longer must I sit here waiting for the plague to tug at my elbow?’ Carpenter balanced his throwing knife on the tip of his index finger.
‘Must I listen to your complaints all night, you mewling, idle-headed pumpion?’ the Earl protested. ‘Does the mouse throw itself upon the trap the moment the cheese has been set? These things demand patience.’
‘That’s easy for you to say, you yeasty puttock. You have nowhere better to be.’
‘The woman,’ the pale man said with a faint sneer.
‘Yes, the woman. Alice and I are to meet and walk and talk and act like normal people for once, just for an evening, so we can pretend the world is not about to fall around our ears. Is that too much to ask?’
‘Of course not,’ Launceston replied archly. ‘Take a wherry to Bankside. Watch a play. Dance at the Bull. Skip through the fields and pick wild flowers together.’
Carpenter cursed.
The Earl searched the dark around the market for any sign of movement. Though the stink of animal dung was still ripe in the warmth, the carts had long since departed, and the market-sellers had packed up the remnants of their corn and meal. In that busiest part of London, the few quiet hours were passing.
‘What if the devil-masked killer does not come tonight?’ Carpenter continued to grumble. ‘Do we nail Pennebrygg’s nose to the post tomorrow for a scuffle in Christ Church? And his other ear the day after, and so on until he looks like a pincushion?’
‘If need be.’
‘The killer may not come.’
‘All of London now knows Pennebrygg is suffering here. A religious man will certainly have heard of the outrage perpetrated in the cathedral.’
‘The murderer may have changed his plans. He might suspect a trap. He might not come for days, or weeks.’ Carpenter slipped his knife back into its sheath. ‘Meanwhile, we waste our time.’
Sighing, Launceston turned to his companion and levelled his unblinking gaze. ‘The killer understands the movements of the heavens, like Dee, and works by the waxing and waning of that silver light,’ he said, pointing at the moon peeking out from behind a solitary cloud. His tone had the weary patience of an elderly teacher addressing a child. ‘Consider: Clement and Makepiece disappeared, presumed murdered, before the end of May. Gavell was slaughtered on the cusp of June, Shipwash in July. We are not overrun by white-skinned night-gaunts so the last of our defences still hold. No other murder has been committed, and now we have passed Lammastide. The apples have been bobbed, the horses garlanded and the harvests of August begun. The killer will come, before the moon is full.’
Carpenter looked from the sky to the Earl, and then down to the cobbles, shrugging. ‘He might not,’ he mumbled.
For another hour, the two spies watched.
Carpenter saw the movement first. A shadow separated from the inky dark beneath the overhanging first floor of the grand house across the street, darting along the edge of the Great Conduit that supplied water to the city’s homes. Launceston drew his dagger. Pressing himself against the wall, the scarred man held his breath and watched the moonlit area around the post where Pennebrygg was slumped. No one could reach the spy without being seen.
The figure crept to the edge of the cobbled square, the stark interplay of light and shadow gradually revealing a grotesque form, horned and angel-winged, floating in the dark. He moved so silently that Pennebrygg was not aware of his arrival.
As Carpenter stared, he realized that he was looking at a masked man wearing voluminous black robes and a cloak. A knife glinted.
‘Ready?’ Launceston asked.
Carpenter grew rigid. He saw another movement, this time on the other side of the square. A swirl of a cloak, a flourish of ivory skirts.
Alice.
The spy felt the blood drain from him. She had come looking for him, he was sure, and she was troubled. Her face was etched with concern, her movements insistent as she looked around the square.
Ice-cold, Carpenter’s breath grew hard in his chest. He looked from his love to the devil-masked man, who had seen the new arrival and had come to a halt on the edge of the shadows. The knife caught the light as it turned. Was the murderer thinking to attack Alice, kill her and then continue with his sickening ritual? Was he waiting until she had departed?
Carpenter shuddered. What should he do?
‘The fool,’ Launceston spat. He turned from the woman to his companion and glared. ‘See what you have done.’
The Unseelie Court’s agent had stepped back into the dark. With his heart thundering, the scarred man tried to pierce the gloom around the circle of moonlight.
Casting half a glance at the muttering Pennebrygg, Alice stepped into the square and called softly, ‘John?’
Carpenter made to step forward. The Earl flashed out an arm to hold his companion back. ‘This may be our only chance,’ he hissed. ‘Would you sacrifice all England for your love?’
I would sacrifice all England and more, the scar-faced man thought.
Barely had the notion crossed his mind, when he glimpsed the flutter of angelic wings behind the woman’s left shoulder. The fearful spy began to move forward as the murderer stalked towards Alice, his cruel blade ready to plunge into her back. Thrusting Launceston aside, Carpenter hurled himself out into the open, his rapier drawn.
His love began to smile when she saw him.
‘Run!’ Carpenter bellowed. He saw the woman’s features grow taut, and feared he was too late.
Instinctively, Alice darted to one side. The knife skimmed her shoulder under her cloak. With a shriek, she half turned to see the monstrous devil-mask looming over her, then she pulled up her spreading skirts and ran.
The spy was flooded with relief, but only for a moment. Through the holes in the red mask, black eyes locked upon his. Carpenter saw understanding. Sickened, he knew exactly what was running through the cut-throat’s mind as the devilish figure spun round and set off after his disappearing love.
I am his enemy, the one thing that may stop his plot.
He knows I love Alice.
He is going to kill her to punish me.
To destroy me.
Carpenter felt terror turn his thoughts to mulch. There was only the thunder of blood in his head and the sight of that billowing black cloak fading into the night as the killer closed on his woman. Distantly, he was aware of Launceston at his shoulder as he raced across the cobbles.
‘Run, John. I am with you,’ he heard as if through a veil.
As the two spies sped into the ankle-deep dung of Newgate Street, the moon slipped behind a cloud and the only light came from candles gleaming through bedchamber windows. Carpenter glimpsed the shadowy outline of three rogues lurking in an alley and then alighted on a doxy sitting on the step of a timber-framed house.
Before the man could question her, the woman gave a gap-toothed grin and pointed along the street. ‘That way, lovey,’ she laughed. Following her filthy finger, the scarred man saw a flurry of white disappear into an alley beside the Three Tuns inn, with the fluttering wings close behind.
Carpenter plunged into the pitch-black alley, dimly aware of fiddle music, laughter and raucous voices leaking from the tavern. In the yard at the back of the three-storey building, golden candlelight flooded out of an open door. Bursting into the sweaty, crowded back room of the inn, the scar-faced man noted men arguing over spilled ale, others shaking their fist or shouting, and two scowling women helping another to her feet.
Launceston pointed to a narrow set of wooden stairs. ‘Up there.’
Frightened by the drawn rapiers, the angry customers threw themselves out of the way as the two spies barged through to the foot of the stairs. Carpenter took the steps two at a time, trying not to think what he would find.
Candlelight revealed a wooden landing with doxies framed in the doorways of three bedchambers. A cursing, red-faced man lurched out of one room, pulling up his breeches.
‘Where are they?’ Carpenter roared, waving his blade for good measure. One of the doxies pointed to the fourth door, which hung ajar. The red-faced man threw himself against the wall as Carpenter crashed by. The spy kicked open the door and dashed inside.
By the flame of a single candle, the desperate man saw that the sparsely furnished room was empty. The window hung open, the sticky scent of the hot night drifting inside. He felt a void within him. Fearing he would see Alice broken in the alley below, or worse, fearing he would not see her at all, he pushed his head out into the night.
‘John?’
At the sound of the hesitant voice, the spy felt a heady rush that exceeded his most drunken night. He spun round to see Alice crawling out from beneath the bed, and within a moment he had her tight in his arms. ‘Clever girl,’ he whispered. ‘You saved yourself.’
‘Clever girl?’ Launceston stood in the doorway, his pale face a cold mask. ‘This foolish mare may well have damned us all.’
‘Do not speak to her that way!’ Carpenter thrust his blade towards his companion.
‘I only came to warn you, John. The Privy Council have branded you ... and Robert ... traitors, as they did your friend Will. There is a price on your head. The whole of London will be looking for you soon.’
‘It is too late now.’ The Earl’s unblinking stare lay heavy upon his companion.
‘Say one more word about her and I will run you through,’ Carpenter replied, his voice trembling. Turning to Alice, he exchanged a few quiet words of comfort and once he was sure she could return safely to Nonsuch, he saw her on her way.
Carpenter found Launceston waiting for him in the cobbled square next to the market. Pennebrygg was gone. The ragged remains of his ear was still nailed to the post.
His fists bunching, Carpenter stormed towards his companion. ‘Do not criticize me. I did what I did out of love. You would never understand that.’ He saw the familiar flare of blood lust in the Earl’s eyes, but he could not hold back. ‘Nothing matters to you apart from your own all-consuming urges.’
Somehow Launceston restrained himself.
Carpenter’s shoulders sagged. ‘You will never change – there will only be blood until they finally catch up with you and mount your head above Tower Bridge. I have ruined my life keeping your hunger contained, Robert, and it was all for nothing. It means nothing to you. I only wish to be free.’
The Earl looked towards the empty post as if he had not heard a word his companion had said. ‘This play is almost over,’ he whispered. ‘The players are about to leave the stage. And when they are gone, there will be no applause. Only silence.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
HIDING IN THE ALCOVE MIDWAY ALONG THE GRAND GALLERY, TOM Barclay watched the door to the throne room suspiciously. He was a bear of a lad, with muscles built from carrying sides of beef in the kitchens and shouldering barrels of ale in the cellars, but he had enough grace to creep along empty corridors without drawing attention to himself. Like everyone in Nonsuch, he had been caught up in the potent stew of mistrust and doubt that filled the palace from morning to night, and so when he glimpsed Elinor, the Queen’s maid of honour, leading a hooded figure through the silent passages at first light, he had feared the worst.
A plot. Intrigue. Murder!
The kitchen ovens could do without him for a while, the young man decided. If he discovered something of import, he might be rewarded by the Privy Council, perhaps Her Majesty herself.
The throne-room door creaked open and Elinor slipped out alone. Tom thought there was something almost rat-like about her in the way she scurried, shoulders slightly hunched, casting sly glances all around. He imagined her with whiskers and tiny paws, two sharp front teeth protruding over her bottom lip. He had never liked her.
Once the woman had disappeared at the far end of the gallery, the kitchen lad eased out of the alcove and crept along the panelled wall to the door. It stood ajar. No sound came from within.
Peeking through the gap, Tom saw the hooded figure standing in front of the large, silver-framed mirror on the far wall. He could see now it was a woman, her head slightly bowed as if in deep thought. The rest of the chamber was empty apart from the low dais on which the Queen’s throne sat. Determined to discover the identity of the mysterious woman, he dropped low and crept around the edge of the door.
After a moment, the woman let out a deep sigh which appeared to echo loudly in the stillness of the chamber. She raised her head and removed her hood.
The young lad was shocked to see it was the Queen. She wore her fiery red wig and had applied her white make-up, which he always found gave her an unsettling corpse-like appearance. She looked as tired as he had seen her on every occasion recently, her shoulders slightly hunched, her arms hanging limply at her side and her eyes containing a faraway look as if she were drifting in a daze.
Afraid that he would be seen, Tom began to creep out. But then he glimpsed something troubling.
The mirror.
At first, the young lad couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing. The Queen’s reflection stared back at her, but this Elizabeth held her head proudly, her eyes flashing, and a darkly knowing smile played on her lips. And she was not alone. In the looking glass, elegantly tall, pale-skinned figures stood around the monarch. Tom saw they wore doublets and bucklers and robes that harked back to a different time, and their eyes blazed with an unnatural light. The man who stood next to the Queen was slender, with long silver hair streaked black down the centre. The lad was terrified by the unaccountable cruelty he saw in that face. The figure clutched what Tom at first took to be an ape, but it was hairless and its eyes glowed golden in the early light.
Ghosts.
Tom felt a rush of dread as he recalled every terrifying story he had heard on dark nights by the hearth. But he was caught fast by that eerie sight.
The silver-haired man gave a small, victorious smile to the true Elizabeth, and mouthed the word, ‘Soon.’
And then young Tom could bear it no more. He bolted from the room, only to run straight into a small crowd waiting just outside the door. Stuttering, he began to recount the terrifying thing he had seen, only for the words to die in his throat. Elinor was there, and Lord Derby of the Privy Council, and Roger Cockayne, the adviser to Sir Robert Cecil, and others he didn’t recognize, but they were all as still as statues, their unblinking gazes fixed upon him.
‘Please help me,’ Tom whispered.
As one, the faces were torn by savagery. The waiting figures became snapping and snarling wild beasts, and they set upon the kitchen lad.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
‘THE DEVIL!’
Fearful whispers clashed with cries of terror and then resolved into a tumult that tolled relentlessly throughout the echoing corridors of the English College.
‘The Devil!’
‘The Devil!’
‘The Devil has come to Reims!’
Will threw himself from his hard bed and hammered upon the locked door of his chamber, calling to be set free. His shouts were picked up by the other young priests who had yet to be released from their night-prisons, and after a moment a key turned in the lock and the bolt was drawn. When the door was thrown open, an ashen-faced older priest held Will’s gaze with a look of abject despair before he lurched on to the next chamber.
Turning in the direction of the loudest cries, the spy felt a hand on his arm. It was Hugh, his expression etched with concern. ‘Perhaps it would be wise to remain in your chamber,’ the young man suggested. ‘You have not yet allowed God’s great spirit inside you and so you may be vulnerable—’
‘I am strong,’ Will replied. ‘Come.’
Following the throb of conversation, he raced ahead of Hugh past several praying priests to a small crowd gathered around the entrance to the Mary Chapel. Shouldering his way through the unsettled men, Will was greeted by a scene of devastation, pews upended, the altar shattered, candles smashed into shards of wax, iron candlesticks twisted in ways that would require an inhuman show of strength.
And at the end of the chapel the great gold cross had been turned on its head and rammed into the shattered flagstones.
In one corner squatted a young man wearing a priest’s black robes, his arms gripping his knees. Will saw madness in the roaming eyes and the tight grin. The priest’s scalp was bloody where he had clearly torn out handfuls of hair. One bleeding lock still hung from his fingers.
Hugh appeared at the spy’s shoulder. ‘Charles,’ he whispered, crossing himself.
The priest in the corner began to claw at his cheeks with jagged fingernails. ‘Caelitus mihi vires,’ he called, but the resonant voice was that of an old man. The other priests recoiled from the doorway with cries of horror.
My strength is from heaven, Will translated. The devil played his part well.
Stifling a pang of guilt that he was responsible for the priest’s suffering, Will allowed Hugh to lead him back along the corridor where a clutch of grim-faced older priests were approaching from the opposite direction. At the front of the group lumbered the gout-ridden bulk of Father Mathias.
‘Leave this place immediately,’ the limping priest boomed. ‘We shall cast the Devil out of our brother in this house of God and send the thing back to hell with his arse afire.’
As he pushed his way through the younger men to begin the exorcism, Father Mathias’ suspicious eyes fell briefly on Will. Soon it would be a time for accusations and interrogation to determine who had brought the Devil into the seminary. The spy guessed he had the better part of a day before they came for him.
‘Come, Francis, pray with me for the soul of our brother Charles,’ Hugh gently advised.
‘You were right, my friend, and I should have heeded you. This business lies heavily on me. Allow me a while to reflect in solitude in my chamber. I must decide if I am capable of waging this war against the powers of evil.’
When the priest gave a sad, understanding nod and joined the flow of serious young men heading towards the cathedral for mass, Will moved quickly away from the hubbub.
‘Damn you, Mephistophilis,’ the spy muttered. ‘When the time comes for you to drag me down to hell, I will fight you every step of the way.’
Despite his guilt, Will saw that his plan had worked perfectly. Fear lay heavy across the seminary. The priests saw the Devil in every shadow, and the day’s lessons were soon abandoned as the men bustled in confusion, seeking solace from the older priests or rushing to prayer time and again. The spy used the chaos to his advantage, ranging back and forth across the length and breadth of the school in his search for anything that might have raised Marlowe’s suspicions during his stay.
By late afternoon Will had cast a dispassionate eye on teaching chambers filled with stools, the deserted studies of the older priests, the silent library, gloomy chapels, the kitchens, the stores and every other space he could find.
Frustrated, he returned to the cloisters where he watched the lengthening shadows. Chanting floated across the square of grass, punctuated every now and then by curses and screams from poor Charles.
Kit would have followed a trail with the same meticulous attention to detail that he had used to plot his intricate stories. But what had been his first hint?
Will let his attention drift from the shadows plunging across the grassy centre of the sunlit cloister to the aged, carved columns along the walkway. He saw the light and the shade, the natural stone and its hand-worked state. He thought of angels and devils and where he stood ’twixt heaven and hell. And then he considered the two faces he – and all men – presented to the world.
Within a moment his footsteps were echoing off the walls like shots from a matchlock. He found Hugh kneeling at the rear of the cathedral. Barely able to contain his urgency, the spy waited for the younger man to finish his contemplation. When the priest stood, Will said in a tone of hazy confusion, ‘Brother Hugh, I seek your help in my reflections.’
‘I am your servant, Francis. I will do whatever I can to shine a light along the path to God.’
Urging the priest to walk with him, the spy said with one hand to his furrowed brow, ‘Forgive my questions. They may make little sense to you, but my thoughts often lead me on a merry dance. I have been reflecting on this great seminary in which I find myself – this breeding ground of thought. It is very old, no?’
Hugh gave a shrug. ‘Old? Is fifty years old? The Cardinal de Lorraine founded the school through Papal Bull—’
‘Not the school, my friend,’ Will interrupted with a regrettable snap of irritation. ‘The stone and mortar and very fabric of this place. This part of Reims has been a centre of religious thought for many centuries.’
Hugh held open the door for the spy to pass through. ‘Ah,’ the priest said. ‘Then hundreds of years. The cathedral, the basilica, the glorious buildings you see around ... outside of Rome you will find no greater monument to Christianity.’
Leading the way back to the seminary, Will continued to feign bafflement. ‘I have heard tell that the old masons who built these glorious structures often made hidden places below the ground, secret chambers to hide treasures in times of strife, or to keep safe the great teachings of God above.’
‘I know why you ask these things.’ The priest’s voice dropped to a lower register as he spoke.
‘You do?’
‘I have heard the same stories. And more besides. They say it is the reason we are locked in our chambers by night ... that there is a secret place beneath the cathedral and the seminary where the Devil lives, with a gate to hell itself. Our brothers fight a daily battle to keep the Adversary locked below ground, but there is always the danger he will break through. And so it has proved.’ He rested a hand on Will’s shoulder. ‘I am sorry, Francis. I thought these tales had no more substance than the ones the old wives tell around their hearths. Nor did I wish to frighten you needlessly. Now we should all speak of them so that we remain on our guard.’
Nodding, Will’s thoughts skipped several paces ahead. To lurk beneath the feet of godly men in one of the holiest places in Europe would suit the Unseelie Court’s perverse outlook, the spy decided. The sacred and the profane, joined as one. ‘And of course, no one knows the entrance to these hidden places, should they exist.’
‘No,’ Hugh said in a grim tone that suggested he did not want to discover such a thing.
‘There are records here of the priests who studied?’
‘Of course,’ the younger man replied, curious at this strange question. ‘And copies are sent to Rome.’
So that the Pope knows where his best spies are, Will thought. ‘Take me to them, brother. I have questions about a former priest.’
Puzzled, Hugh led the way to a large chamber at the rear of the seminary, lined with shelves creaking under the weight of parchments and volumes. It was deserted, as Will had expected in the atmosphere of terror that Mephistophilis had brought to the place. The air was filled with the sweet smell of the ink the scribes used to keep their records. Dust motes floated in a shaft of sunlight falling through the small window high on the west wall, but the rest of the chamber was gloomy.
Lighting a candle with his flint, Will searched along the shelves while the young priest waited uneasily at the door. ‘When Brother Cuthbert returns, I am sure he will tell you all you wish to know.’
‘I am sure Brother Cuthbert has more important matters to concern him than my meanderings,’ the spy muttered.
The candle flame illuminated a volume with the date 1587 inscribed on the spine. Removing it from the shelf, Will carried it to a cluttered trestle and flicked through the pages, each one headed by a name, followed by an account of their residence and studies at the seminary. He paused when he came to the name Christofer Marley. Tracing a finger along the flourishing script, he found the location of the playwright’s former chamber and then turned to the priest.
‘I need your help once more, my friend.’ The spy cast a concerned eye at the slant of the sunbeam. The hour was drawing late.
From the silence that had fallen across the seminary, Will knew the rite of exorcism had ended and Father Mathias and his fellow priests would be resting. But not for long.
Like all the other chambers of the young priests, Marlowe’s old room contained a single small window, a bed and a stool. Will’s eyes fell upon the item that held all his hopes, a Bible, well thumbed, the leather spine splitting. Placing the heavy volume on the bed, he turned the pages, scanning each one with a studied eye. The black print fell into a background blur. It was the white space between the lines that drew his attention. And there, in Genesis, he found what he had hoped for, and expected, from a spy as clever and diligent as Kit Marlowe: a single dot above the letter B of beginning.
‘Brother Hugh, I would thank you for the kindness you have shown me since I entered this place. You are a credit to your faith. I apologize now for any misery I may have brought into your house, but needs must when the devil drives.’ A wry smile flickered on to the spy’s lips.
‘You speak as if we will never meet again?’
‘This world is filled with mysteries, my friend, and I would not dare to predict what may happen even one hour hence. But for now I must be left alone with the word of God, to mull over the meaning hidden within.’
‘The meaning is plain, Francis,’ the priest said with a bow.
‘Indeed it is, if one has eyes to see.’ Will stood beside the door, waiting for the other man to leave.
‘I will pray for you, my friend.’
‘Pray for yourself, brother. I already have friends in low places.’
When a confused Hugh departed, the spy returned to the Bible. He doubted Marlowe would have used an obscure keyword for his favourite cipher. The message had been left for any spy who followed in his tracks, and who would need to uncover his secrets.
And there, on the very first page, on the very first line, was the sign: In the beginning God created heaven and earth. The word earth had been underlined.
Good Kit, shunning heaven as always, Will thought.
Once he had located a quill and some ink, the spy knew he could decipher the message in no time. He felt a bittersweet sensation of loss and warmth. His old friend continued to speak to him from beyond the grave, and sometimes, if he allowed himself, Will could almost imagine that Kit had never left.
The thought was quickly drowned by his sense of urgency. Soon Father Mathias would come for him. Soon night would be falling and whatever walked the halls of the seminary after dark would be abroad.
The sands of time were running rapidly through the glass, and he still needed to find the gateway to the underworld so he could begin his descent into hell.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
ONCE THE SHOUTS OF THE SEARCHING PRIESTS DIED DOWN, SILENCE fell across the seminary. In the shadows, high up in the vaulted roof of the hall where the priests ate their meals, Will lounged on a broad oak beam with his hands behind his head. The collapsible grapnel Dee had given him in Manchester lay farther along the beam, ready for his descent.
With feline grace, the spy eased himself to his feet and strode along the rafter. In the atmosphere of candle smoke and the fading aroma of the hurried evening meal – a vegetable stew, he surmised – he listened to the distant music of locks turning and bolts being secured as the students were sealed in their chambers. He imagined them all praying desperately by their beds for God to keep them safe through the night, their hearts beating fast at the thought of the Devil loose in their home.
Steadying himself with one hand against the rough ceiling plaster, he gazed down the dizzying drop to the stone floor far below where he had earlier watched the students searching for him in the candlelight. Father Mathias’ barked orders had reverberated throughout the entire building – ‘Find Francis! Bring him to me! He must answer questions about the Devil!’ – and they had grown angrier as his charges failed in the search. Eventually, in a conversation conducted directly beneath him, they had concluded he must have fled the school.
Squatting, he waited for the last footsteps to fade away and the final business of the day to still, and then he hooked the grapnel on the edge of the beam and prepared to lower the rope.
Away in the depths of the seminary, the spy caught the sound of a door opening. Cursing, Will hesitated. A straggler on the way to bed, or perhaps a watchman doing his rounds? The spy grew tense as he heard the soft tread of several people coming his way.
Even though it would take a sharp pair of eyes to see him in the dark ceiling vault, the spy lay along the beam and peered over the edge. The tread grew louder as it neared, and now Will could hear it was not the shuffle of the priests but a step that was purposeful, strong.
Through the door into the hall, ten figures passed, looking around as they entered. With the confidence of masters in their own territory, the Unseelie Court’s representatives in Reims prowled beneath the spy, their eyes glimmering with an inner fire as the candlelight caught them. Their features, though pale, appeared to glow with a faint golden light. Moving with grace and strength, like the most proficient swordsmen, they all wore their hair to their shoulders and their cheekbones were high and sharp, their eyes almond-shaped. Their colour-leached clothes had that familiar ageless quality, and although they harked back to ancient times in their material and cut – leather bucklers, silk sleeves, tight, hard-wearing breeches – they seemed in some way thoroughly modern. But all the garments appeared to glisten with silvery mildew, as if they had been stored in dank cellars. The fragrance of sandalwood and lime and some nameless spice wafted upwards. Each member of the group was armed, their swords rattling to the rhythm of their strides.
Will’s attention fell on one at the centre of the knot, who was distinguished by a gentler, almost doleful face. His hair was black, and his eyes too, as were his doublet and breeches which shimmered like a pool of ink among those of his fellows. The way the group gathered round him suggested he was important, perhaps the leader. The spy wondered if this was Fabian of the High Family, whom Raleigh had described at Petworth House. Had the Fay survived his dunking in the ocean?
As they passed beneath him, the spy felt their presence as if they burned with an intense but cold fire. A deep foreboding descended upon him.
Once the pale figures had left the hall, Will attached the grapnel to the beam and lowered the rope. Swinging out over the edge of his roost, he threw his legs around the strong line, sliding down silently to the stone floor. A flick of the wrist brought the grapnel down, and he collapsed it, wrapped the rope tightly around it and hid it in one of the pockets in his cloak.
Offering silent thanks to Dr Dee, the spy raced soundlessly across the hall, pausing briefly at the door to listen before slipping out into the corridor. Most of the candles had been snuffed out for the night, but a few still remained lit here and there. In the faint golden illumination, he followed the ten Fay through the seminary to the point where Kit’s secret message had told him they would finally arrive: a silky white alabaster statue of the Virgin and Child in an alcove on the corridor leading to the Mary Chapel.
Peering round a corner, the spy watched the black-clad being stand before the statue and bow his head slightly. His actions were hidden by the clutch of figures around him, but a moment later the statue pivoted and the ten Unseelie Court representatives filed into a space behind it. Once the last had passed through, the statue spun silently back into place.
Without Marlowe’s guidance Will knew he would have been at a loss. He followed his friend’s instructions to the letter, pulling forward on the Virgin’s left arm, and out to the right at the same time. There was a barely audible click and the statue pivoted freely. Drawing his rapier, the spy stepped into the chill dark. On the air currents, he smelled dank, deep earth, and heard distant, muffled sounds as though of a blacksmith’s hammer at the anvil. Behind the steady beat he caught occasional high-pitched notes that could have been screams cut off mid-cry.
In the tunnel, Will sensed the oppressive atmosphere that always seemed to surround the Unseelie Court; it was as though a storm was about to break on a baking hot day. As the statue swung back, closing the way behind him, his eyes adjusted to a thin light reaching him from far along the tunnel.
Keep low for ten paces, then step to your left. Listen for the whisper, then step right. Marlowe’s instructions had been precise.
Crouching, Will stepped forward, counting his paces. On the fifth step, he heard a metallic ringing from the wall and he felt motion above his head. Whatever had passed clanged back into the stone again. The Unseelie Court liked their traps and their alarms to catch unwary mortals trespassing on their territory.
At the tenth pace, Will stepped left. From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed glinting metal swinging down from above, passing through the place where he had been standing. When it returned to its fitting he caught a whisper of escaping air. The spy leapt to his right, just as another blade fell from above. He sensed it miss him by a hand’s-breadth.
‘Thank you, my friend,’ he whispered.
With the muffled booming drowning out any potential warning sounds, Will crept cautiously towards a hissing torch affixed to the wall at the end of the passage. Another tunnel branched to the right. Crouching, the spy peered around the corner. A grey-cloaked sentry waited with his back turned. Sheathing his sword, the spy pulled out his dagger and darted forward. Though he made no sound, the sentry appeared to sense him, for the pale figure began to turn, his hand going to his own blade. Will was on the Fay in an instant, grasping his long hair with his left hand and whisking the dagger along the guard’s throat with his right. He continued to drag the head back as the lifeblood pumped out. And then, dropping his dagger, he clamped his free hand over the dying foe’s mouth to stifle the gargles.
‘For Kit,’ the spy whispered, but he felt no sense of elation, no triumph, only a flat bitterness, for he knew every kill destroyed another part of him.
Once the sentry was still, Will laid the body down and reclaimed his dagger. The steady beat of metal upon metal growing louder by the moment, he ran along the passage until he came to a flight of steep stone steps.
As the spy descended, he felt it grow colder, the worked-stone walls eventually giving way to a rough hewing into the natural bedrock. Acrid wisps of smoke wafted up, followed by more unpleasant smells: burned meat, excrement, the sweet-apple stink of rot.
Unable to hear himself think above the thunderous metallic beat, Will drew his sword once more and slowed his step. He allowed a calm to settle upon him. He felt no emotion, no fear. Ready to react in an instant, his eyes continually probed the dark between the intermittent torches.
The steps ended at a long, low-ceilinged stone chamber lit by a brazier at the far end. In the dim red light, he discerned dark squares on the walls marking other rooms opening out on either side. Chains ending in lethal-looking hooks hung from the ceiling. Swinging gently, a human-shaped cage was suspended to his left. Filthy, matted iron tools of unknown use leaned in a line against the opposite wall. Channels had been set into the floor so that the chamber could be sluiced clean.
Will felt a dismal mood press down upon him, a feeling that he recalled experiencing in only one other place: the torture chamber beneath the Tower of London, where all of England’s traitors eventually ended their days.
‘Hell, indeed,’ the spy whispered. His devil would have enjoyed that oppressive place, but Mephistophilis was undoubtedly still finding sport among the priests in the seminary.
Stepping close to the wall, Will edged forward, eyes darting right and left.
Thoom. Thoom. The beat echoed through the very stone.
Where was the Enemy?
Reaching a broad stone arch, the spy peered round the edge. In the far distance, more braziers glowed like summer fireflies. The shifting air currents told him what he already suspected: the place was vast, chamber after chamber reaching out for unknown distances in the shadows. How long would it take him to conduct a search?
A woman’s anguished cry tore through the dark space.
Will’s heart thundered in response. The cry was human, he was sure, and infused with fear; one of the Unseelie Court’s many victims.
Rushing forward, the spy accepted that helping the mysterious woman was his immediate priority. His head rang from the hammer-and-anvil beat, so loud he could no longer tell if his running feet made any sound on the flags.
As he neared one of the smoky braziers, Will saw the silhouette of the woman in the ruddy glare. Running wildly from another chamber, she glanced back in what must have been terror. She tripped and fell, crying out once again in shock.
Before Will could react, figures separated from the dark ahead of him, unseen till now and unheard in the ringing din. Hoping they had not seen him, he attempted to step back into the shadows, but two pairs of strong hands caught him from behind, wrestling his rapier free and pinning his arms to his side. He was thrust forward and thrown on to the flags in front of the woman.
The light from the brazier lit her tousled hair red, though her face fell into shadow still.
‘Be strong,’ the spy whispered to her, ‘all is not yet lost.’
Will realized the woman was staring at him in what he guessed was shock. No, he thought, recognition.
She turned her head slightly so that the glow illuminated her face for the first time, and then it was Will’s turn to gape.
‘Grace?’ he gasped.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
IN THE RUDDY LIGHT OF THE SETTING SUN, GRACE HURRIED ALONG the Grand Gallery from the Queen’s chambers at the end of her day’s labours. With his black cloak wrapped around him and his red hair hidden beneath a felt cap, Strangewayes waited in the shadows to intercept her. He thought how beautiful she looked with her chestnut hair tied back with a blue ribbon, and a bodice the colour of forget-me-nots emphasizing her slim waist. From the moment the Earl of Essex’s spy had first laid eyes upon her, he had not been short of lascivious thoughts, imagining the body beneath the skirts, the young breasts, the pleasure of throwing her breathless with passion upon his bed.
But from that day in the garden when she had offered him only sympathy and care after he had heard the news of his brother’s death, Strangewayes had been shocked by deeper feelings, each slow emergence changing how he felt about himself and how he saw the world.
‘Grace.’ He stepped out into the gallery.
‘Hello, Tobias.’ The young woman showed no surprise.
Strangewayes was stung by the lack of warmth in Grace’s face, but it had been that way for days. ‘I do not want it to be this cold between us. You have ignored me for too long—’
‘I have work to do, Tobias. The Queen needs my full attention.’
‘I spoke harshly that day we stood outside the garden door. You had concerns. I was wrong to brush them aside as if they ... as if you did not matter.’
The woman gave the spy a practised smile and made to push by him.
‘Grace, you are the only person to have shown me any warmth in many a year,’ Strangewayes said, the desperation forming a hard weight in his chest. ‘I want us to be friends again.’
In a moment of madness, the young man grabbed Grace’s shoulders and pulled her to him. He expected her to resist in her usual high-spirited way, but she folded compliantly into his arms and he pressed his mouth upon her. The spy was disturbed to find her unresponsive lips had a texture like fish-skin, and when he opened his eyes, she was staring at him, unblinking and emotionless, as if he had merely enquired about her health. Ruffled, the red-headed man broke the embrace.
‘What will it take to win you back?’ Tobias stuttered.
Ignoring the question, the young lady-in-waiting gave another chill smile and walked away. The spy felt crushed.
‘I will do what you asked of me,’ Strangewayes called. ‘I will prove to you that I am deserving of your affection.’
Grace continued on her way without looking back.
The spy wanted to hate the young woman for making him feel such a fool. He had always mocked the lovelorn, and yet there he was, in the midst of great danger, facing a plot that could sweep away the Queen and important affairs of state, and all he could think of were his own petty feelings.
Clenching his fists, Tobias swept through the deserted palace corridors. The Privy Council was meeting late and all of the advisers and record-keepers and snivelling hangers-on would be gathered in the Banqueting House, waiting for their masters to emerge from their discussions with Her Majesty. He had a brief opportunity.
The sun had set by the time he reached the quiet rooms of the Secretary of State. None of the candles had yet been lit and he realized he would have to complete his business in the dark. Kneeling in front of Cockayne’s door, he took out his velvet pouch of tools and set to work.
While probing the brass tumblers, he wondered if his loathing of Swyfte had been fired by the gossip that Grace mooned over his rival like a little girl, or if it had been because England’s greatest spy received all the adulation that he so deserved. When Essex had recruited him into his nascent spy network, the red-headed man had dreamed of fortune, adventure and acclaim. He had learned to loathe the less flamboyant spies of Cecil’s network – the killers, the thieves, the liars and torturers – and all the choices, and his future, had appeared clearly delineated. When had it all changed?
The tumblers turned with a dull clunk. Strangewayes slipped into the chamber. Through the single window, the moon cast a silvery light over the jumbled piles of parchments, charts and books.
After a few moments, the spy realized it would take him all night to sift through every paper in that cluttered chamber. He had to think clearly. Stepping back to the door, he looked around the sparse furniture and the towers of dusty volumes. There was nowhere to hide something of importance.
Moving around the chamber walls, Tobias gently rapped each wooden panel. When none sounded false, he turned back to the room in frustration. In that moment, his gaze alighted on the honey-coloured Kentish ragstone of the hearth.
Grinning, Strangewayes bounded across the chamber. During the hot summer, there had been no need to light the fires in the palace and the grey ashes in the rusty iron grate were long undisturbed. Reaching one hand up the chimney, he felt around, wrinkling his nose at the shower of sticky black soot. His fingers closed on rough sackcloth blocking the flue.
In jubilation, the spy tore down the sack, coughing at the black cloud he raised. Inside was a sheaf of papers with Marlowe’s scrawled signature clear on the front.
‘Who are you? What are you doing in my chamber?’
Strangewayes started at the harsh voice. Spinning round, he saw that Cockayne had entered silently. In his black robe, the adviser was a pool of shadow by the door with only his ruddy face and shock of grey hair visible.
Tobias reeled from the terrible consequences of being discovered in the chamber of an adviser to the Secretary of State. ‘I ... I was just—’ he stuttered.
‘Thief!’ Cockayne called, turning to the door. ‘I am robbed!’
The younger man threw himself across the room. Clamping one hand across Cockayne’s mouth, the spy wrestled his opponent into the door with a crash.
‘Hush, I mean you no harm,’ Strangewayes hissed. But suddenly he could see no way out of his predicament. His reputation, and Grace, had been lost.
The struggling adviser clamped his teeth on the spy’s fingers. When the younger man snatched his hand away with a cry of pain, Cockayne called out, ‘Traitor!’ and in that instant Strangewayes realized he had lost his life too.
‘No!’ the spy barked, tears of desperation stinging his eyes. Furiously, he flung the older man across the room. Books and papers flew everywhere. The chair was upended, and Cockayne crashed into the wood panelling next to the fireplace. Strangewayes was on him in an instant.
‘Traitor!’ the adviser barked.
Tobias was consumed with fear. He drove his fist into the older man’s face. The nose burst underneath his knuckles. ‘Be quiet,’ the spy hissed. ‘I have no wish to harm you. Be quiet.’
Yet Cockayne continued to struggle. ‘Essex’s man,’ he muttered through split lips.
Half sobbing, Strangewayes made a decision. He pulled out his dagger and thrust it into the adviser’s chest. Recoiling, he snorted through hot tears of angry frustration, ‘I never meant for this.’
Sucking in a juddering gasp of air to calm himself, the red-headed man tried to think clearly. There was still a chance the adviser might have returned early and no one had overheard the struggle. Forcing aside the thought that he might have killed an innocent man, he plucked up the sooty sack and leapt to the door.
The spy allowed himself one glance back at the body of his victim – and was rooted in horror.
It was no longer Cockayne.
In disbelief, Strangewayes stepped forward to see more clearly. His eyes widened, his wits whirled and he thought he would go mad.
Gripping the dirty sack to his chest, the spy bolted from the chamber.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
‘WHERE IS GRACE?’ WILL ROARED.
His throat was raw. He felt blood dripping from a gash on his forehead and a searing ache in his ribs from the beating dealt out by his Unseelie Court captors. Pulling himself up the damp stone wall, he stood in the corner of the low-ceilinged chamber and faced the pale figures who watched him dispassionately. Choking on the fumes from the brazier in the far corner, Will tried to see by the dull red glow of the coals. He sensed the brooding presence of more Enemies in the shadows.
‘Your friend is safe. For now.’ Dressed all in black, Fabian appeared to be floating in the greater darkness, his sad face bloodless.
‘Why is she here?’
‘Answering questions, providing information that will help us in the days to come. You are the spy, yes? Swyfte?’
‘And you are Fabian.’
With a touch of surprise, the Fay nodded. ‘I am one of the High Family. In this place, I carry out my great and terrible responsibilities to my brothers and sisters, and thereby to my people.’ Stepping forward, he looked Will up and down.
Will suppressed the concern for Grace that was gnawing in his chest. He had expected to see only contempt in his foe’s face. Instead, the looming, black-clad figure showed only a deep concern and, perhaps, pity. Unsettled by the revelation, Will reassessed his approach. ‘What is your business here?’ he asked.
‘Here I learn what it means to be human,’ Fabian replied in a quiet voice.
From somewhere deep in that cavernous place, a man’s cry echoed and was cut short. The pale figure’s breath caught in his throat. Snapping his head around, he listened to the silence that followed the scream with a note of dismay. ‘You are an intriguing race. Inspiring in many ways. Your lives are so short, your suffering so great, and yet you find joy in the smallest things. You create beauty. You love. You care. Your bodies are tiny vessels, so fragile, seemingly too small to contain the vast oceans of emotion that shift within you. You are, all of you, miracles.’ He shook his head in awe.
Will ignored the gentle words. With mounting revulsion, he was beginning to sense what truly transpired in the dark beneath the seminary. ‘What do you do here?’ he asked, each word a thrown stone.
‘I break wondrous things.’
The bald statement was so at odds with the poetry of what his captor had been saying that Will at first thought he had misheard. But then he pieced together all the sounds, smells and sights he had experienced since his descent into the Unseelie Court’s realm and he recognized the truth. ‘Torture.’
Fabian started as if he had been stung. ‘Nothing so crude. We know a myriad ways to extract information from your kind. Torture requires no skill. No, there is an artistry to what I achieve here. I have a unique ability, a talent perhaps, that also destroys me by degrees. But that is my curse. We must all live with the things that destroy us.’ Tapping one slender index finger on his lips, he prowled the dark in reflection. ‘We must know our enemy if we are truly to defeat them,’ he continued. ‘We must know the inner workings of your mind, and your body. What makes you, you. The very essence of what it is to be human. You are like us in many ways, and so different in others.’
Will was sickened by the visions flashing through his mind. ‘You butcher us, then. Like cattle being prepared for table.’
‘No,’ the supernatural being cried. He bounded back to the spy and reached out a hand tenderly to frame Will’s face. ‘In my work, as I search for the secrets buried deep within you, I treat all of your kind with respect and tenderness.’
‘You dress it up in pretty words but you bring death, like all of your ilk,’ Will spat.
‘Death is not the end.’ Stepping back, Fabian looked askance, a curious gleam in his eye. ‘There are many secrets you have yet to discover.’ He turned away as if he had said too much and strode towards his fellows. ‘Over the years, I have worked tirelessly here. The mysteries always appeared elusive. But in recent years we have made a discovery.’ His breath caught with excitement. ‘It changed everything. All our plans, our very thoughts about what we should and could achieve.’
‘And what did you learn?’ the spy asked with contempt. ‘That we are more than the sum of our parts?’
‘That is understood.’ Fabian bowed. ‘The physical world can be altered by the great powers that surround us. Through ritual and potion, words of power, we can weave great things out of the lights of the world. The great and wise Deortha has been invaluable in these matters. You know him?’
With a nod, Will recalled the mystic’s appearance on misty Dartmoor all those years earlier.
‘With Deortha’s help, and the discoveries made in these silent chambers, we learned how to shape your mortal clay, and imbue a spark of life within it, some semblance of being.’ He waved a hand towards something hidden in the dark.
From the shadows stepped a lanky young man of perhaps twenty, a puzzled smile upon his smooth-cheeked face. Wearing a plain brown doublet, too large for him, and worn black breeches, he looked too innocent to survive in that awful place. And so it proved.
Whisking out his dagger, Fabian plunged it into the man’s heart.
‘No!’ When Will lunged, the Unseelie Court’s silent watchers hurled him back into the corner, drawing their rapiers to underscore their unspoken threat.
Almost comically baffled, the young man looked down at the blood pumping from his chest and then fell to the flags, dead.
‘Some semblance,’ Fabian continued as if nothing untoward had happened, ‘but not perfection.’
‘Devil,’ the spy growled.
‘These are straw men. Scar-Crow Men. They look like you, and speak, and think to a degree, but they cannot truly feel.’ Fabian wiped his dagger on the young man’s doublet and returned it to its sheath. ‘They do not understand emotions. And so they are useless as complete replacements for your people. But they can keep up appearances for a while, enough to adopt a position of power, and shepherd, and twist, and urge, and in that way achieve our aims, not yours.’
With a wave of his hand, the Fay directed his prisoner’s attention to the body. It was no longer the young man. Sprawled on the stone floor, leaking bodily fluids, was a rotting corpse, of the same size, shape and sex as the puzzled figure the spy had seen, but much older. Yet what caught Will’s eye were the blackened swellings on the grey body that revealed the presence of the plague.
The spy’s thoughts spun as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. Running one hand through his black hair, he gasped, ‘You build these Scar-Crow Men from the remains of the poor souls who die from the sickness.’
Fabian nodded slowly.
‘They are dead ... yet alive.’
‘They make a play of being alive, and give as good a performance as many of the players who walk your stages.’ The pale-skinned being waved his hand and two of his fellows grabbed the remains by the arms and dragged it away. A wet trail gleamed blackly in the ruddy half-light. ‘But their inability to comprehend emotions, that is what betrays them,’ he continued. ‘And that is proof that they are not truly human, for it is the acuity of feelings that makes a man.’
Will felt sickened by what he had heard, but he was already beginning to grasp the plot the Unseelie Court were weaving out of this frightfulness. ‘And with the plague in London you have no shortage of the raw materials you need to build your Scar-Crow Men.’
‘We brought the plague to London.’
The spy was stung by Fabian’s bald statement. In that moment all he could think of were the plague pits and the bodies discarded in them like so much cordwood. Innocents who had died needlessly. The blood throbbed in his temple.
‘But it is not a simple task to construct our agents. It takes time, and effort.’ Looming over him, Fabian studied Will with a note of curiosity, as if he had found a new breed of beast. ‘Slowly, though, we are replacing the ones who have influence at the heart of your government. Those who are close to power, but not so close that their failings will be revealed easily. The quiet people. The whisperers. Advisers, who stand in the shadows, ignored until their guidance is needed. Soon, though, we will replace more and more, until we rule your land completely without ever being seen by the common herd.’
‘And Grace. She too has been replaced?’
‘She holds a position close to your Queen, Elizabeth. We have influence there already, but one more is needed to achieve our aims.’
‘I thought you wanted to smite us all dead and burn the bodies. That was always the stated intent of the Unseelie Court.’
‘There will be some pain. There has to be vengeance for your grand betrayal, and the capture and imprisonment of our Queen,’ Fabian continued. ‘Once she is free ... once our agent has destroyed the final defences that keep us from her ... she will emerge from her prison like a tempest, furious and proud and terrible, blasting all that lies before her.’ A fleeting smile leapt to his lips. ‘But once her anger has abated, there is hope for your people. They will survive under the rule of our Scar-Crow Men ... and our Scar-Crow Queen.’
‘While you make the puppets dance from behind the scenes.’
‘There can never be rebellion if a country does not know it has been conquered.’
Will began to grasp the Unseelie Court’s plan, but there was one aspect he did not understand. ‘Why rule England from behind the veil? You have your own land, wherever it may lie, beneath hill or lake.’
Absently, Fabian strode to the fuming brazier and began to prod the glowing coals with an iron poker. ‘My people have been as unchanging as the seasons since the beginning of the world, but in recent days our thoughts have shifted greatly. And you have played a part in that.’
‘I?’
His face transformed into a grotesque mask by the ruddy light, the black-clad being looked at Will. ‘When you oversaw the murder of Cavillex of the High Family a vast shudder ran through the Unseelie Court,’ he said with a note of pity. ‘A mortal, killing one of our greatest! It was unheard of. And in that instant everything altered. We could no longer retreat to our home and pretend we were still the same.’
The spy felt a weight upon him. Since the war with the Unseelie Court began, every action had unforeseen consequences, one atrocity leading to a greater monstrousness. Where would it end? With the destruction of both races? And now he was responsible for the amplification of the Fay’s ambitions, and for the misery they would heap on his own people. He began to understand that the School of Night – and Marlowe – were right. There had to be another way. ‘Then what do you plan once you have seized control of England?’ he asked.
Fabian thrust the poker into the heart of the burning coals, sending up a shower of golden sparks. ‘We can no longer choose to ignore your world. We must engage with it. We must control it, and control you, mortals, who once were mere sport to us when we failed to understand your wondrous capabilities, and who now may well be a threat, not only to us but to all there is. Your capacity for destruction, betrayal, inflicting pain, slaughtering your own ...’ He placed one hand on his forehead in disbelief. ‘You think you are the hero in this business, Master Swyfte. You are not. Humankind is a sickness, like the plague that rots your own bodies, and it must be cured.’
‘You wish to eradicate us, all of us, wherever we roam.’ Will saw the future unfold grimly before his mind’s eye. Once the Unseelie Court controlled England they would have a foothold upon the world, a fortress from which they could exert their influence, and yet no one would ever know they were there. The Scar-Crow Men would put the orders of their hidden masters into effect, and all England would obey, blindly.
‘Eradication, yes, if we have to. But for now we will be satisfied with containment.’ Fabian strode back across the chamber and stood before the spy, one hand resting on the hilt of his rapier. ‘I did not wish this path. I would celebrate you, not destroy you, and now I am forced to take actions that destroy me. But you brought it upon yourselves.’
Will imagined Marlowe overcome by the horrors he witnessed in this place, and fleeing back to England to inform Sir Francis Walsingham. And the spymaster, in his usual way, would have taken note, and reflected, and filed away, not realizing that the seeds of his own death had already been planted.
‘And so you set out to cover your tracks,’ the spy said, ‘until you were ready to act. As the sacrificial victims required to enable the removal of our defences, you chose the spies who would know that you had unlocked the secret of creating life here in Reims, and who might piece together your great scheme. Two birds, one stone. Walsingham murdered first, then Clement, Makepiece, Gavell and the rest. And I was placed on your list because I met Kit Marlowe on his return to England, and you could not risk that he had told me of his nightmarish experience here beneath the seminary.’
But Kit sought to spare me, as he always did.
Fabian appeared truly sympathetic. ‘I would not have wished this pain upon you, but there it is. Now we have won. Our Scar-Crow Men are in position, with only your Queen yet to be replaced. One single death yet remains, and then all your defences will crumble. And our force waits in Paris, ready to sail to your shores once our own Queen has been freed from her imprisonment. Your time has passed. England is gone. The dawn of the Unseelie Court in your world now rises.’
Will ignored the Fay’s chilling words. Something had been troubling him, and now he thought he had it. ‘And yet I feel there is something missing from your words,’ he said. ‘Your decision to pursue our spies so ruthlessly tells me Kit Marlowe discovered more here than just the beginnings of your plot.’
Fabian nodded. ‘That is true. The discovery of the plot alone would not have been enough to stop us. But when your friend witnessed the creation of our Scar-Crow Men, he also saw the means by which we may destroy them.’
‘Because, if events turned sour, the soulless things could be a threat even to the great Unseelie Court.’
‘Every weapon cuts both ways.’
‘And what is this means of destruction?’ the spy pressed. ‘I would imagine ’twould need to be something that could extinguish the spark of life in your creations in one fell swoop, like the snuffing out of a candle flame. What would that be?’
The Corpus-Scythe, he thought. And I suspect that too lies in Paris.
Will waited for his captor to respond, but Fabian appeared distracted. With furrowed brow, the Fay half turned, cocking his head to one side as if listening to something beyond the reach of human hearing.
And then, echoing through the night-dark chambers, the spy heard the clamour of human voices drawing nearer.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
WITH HIS CAPTORS DISTRACTED BY THE CACOPHONY OF VOICES, Will rolled across the dusty stone flags to where he had seen his rapier and dagger tossed earlier. The spy felt around in the gloom until his fingers closed on cold steel. In the dim, ruddy light, he glimpsed three of the Fay turn towards him, drawing their own swords.
‘Put down your arms,’ Fabian demanded with a regretful note.
‘To relinquish them before I have used them would be a waste,’ Will responded.
Ferocious and fast, the three Fay moved like wolves, but the spy was ahead of them. With a heave of his leather shoe, he propelled the brazier forwards. Hot coals cascaded over the nearest foe. Piercing screams rang out, a column of flames lighting up the chamber. The air filled with the stink of seared flesh.
Shielding his eyes from the blinding light, Will darted out of the chamber. In the dense dark, he was lost in the disorienting din of the metallic booming and the nearing shouts. ‘Grace!’ he yelled. He just caught his friend’s shrill response under the clamour.
The spy found Grace pressed against a wall, her eyes burning with determination. Her Fay guard waited in front of her, rapier already drawn, eyes narrowed. When the supernatural being lunged, Grace hurled herself on to his back with a cry, tearing at his face with her nails. Seizing his moment, Will thrust his blade into his reeling foe’s heart. As the pale figure fell, Grace leapt free and rushed to her saviour’s side.
The spy was surprised to see such fierce emotion in her usually placid face. ‘Why, Grace,’ he said, ‘I will need you by my side in the next Bankside brawl.’
‘I have been battered and beaten and questioned and imprisoned and I have had my fill!’ she snapped. ‘Now get me out of here, Will, or so help me I will turn my fury ’pon you.’ Despite her resolve, the spy saw tears of fear flecking the corners of her eyes. Her trial had taken its toll on her.
Grabbing her hand, Will ran through the chambers towards the clamour. Not far from the stone steps leading down from the seminary, he confronted a mob of about twenty black-robed priests, their faces etched with terror. One near the front held a torch, others grasped golden crosses taken from the chambers of the senior priests. Their wide eyes searched the dark as they shouted encouragement to each other. Some muttered prayers. The spy saw Mathias at the centre of the crowd, Hugh on the edge, trembling with fear.
‘You wish to scar my conscience before you claim my soul, is that it, devil?’ Will hissed to the invisible Mephistophilis. ‘You have drawn these men to their slaughter.’
‘Who do you speak to?’ Grace asked.
The spy ignored her. A throaty chuckle crackled in his ear.
Distracted by their search for demons, the priests paid no heed to the two new arrivals. Will grabbed Hugh and pulled him aside. ‘You must leave this place, now,’ he urged.
‘Francis? Is it true, then? You brought the Devil into our midst?’
‘More than devils lurk down here. The evil loose in the seminary has brought you to your deaths. Flee!’
Seven of the Unseelie Court emerged from the dark at the far end of the chamber, rapiers drawn. With their grim, pallid faces and silvery-mildewed clothes, they looked like ghosts. The priests recoiled immediately.
A shadow crossed Grace’s face. ‘What are they? Since I was taken in Nonsuch, my days have passed like a dream from the potion I was given. I thought my captors were Spanish agents, but now—’
‘Later, Grace,’ Will snapped, drawing her attention from the supernatural figures. He would need to talk with her, but only when they were away from that place. He shook Hugh forcefully. ‘You must compel your companions to flee. Those creatures will fall upon you like wolves,’ he barked.
The young priest finally understood. Running back to the other men, he raised the alarm. Hauling Grace behind him, Will led the race back to the stone steps. Glancing back, he saw the gout-ridden Mathias had fallen behind, as had three of the elderly priests. Mouth torn wide, the lumbering father looked behind him, knowing what was coming. Out of the gloom swept the Unseelie Court, impassive, brutal. Their swords carved through the straggling priests with such ferocity the victims had no time to cry out. In a cascade of blood, Mathias went down. His killer barely paused.
Thrusting Grace up the steps with a promise that he would join her, Will waited, urging the remaining men behind the woman. With his rapier levelled in his right hand, he snatched the torch from the final passing priest and backed on to the steps.
Sensing the threat ahead, the Fay swordsmen slowed when they saw him. Waving the sizzling torch in front of him, Will edged up one step at a time. There was no room for more than one of his foes to strike at him.
As the spy crept upwards, the nearest opponent lunged. Parrying the thrust easily from his higher position, the spy jabbed the torch into his foe’s face. The Fay screamed, clutching at his ruined face as he tumbled backwards on to his companions. Turning heel, Will raced up the steps.
When he reached the long tunnel, he could see the priests had left open the alabaster statue of the Virgin and Child. The bodies of six men littered the stone floor, victims of the Unseelie Court’s traps. Avoiding the swinging blades, Will plunged out into the seminary and swung the statue shut behind him.
While the other priests fled, Hugh waited with Grace. ‘Where now?’ she gasped.
‘Where now, indeed?’ Will replied. ‘If I could take you straight to England, I would. But it is Paris that calls me, a city I now fear is in the grip of our greatest enemy.’ Sheathing his rapier, he turned to the young priest. ‘You are a good man, Hugh, and do not deserve to be wrapped up in this terrible affair,’ he said. ‘I have little love for priests who plot the end of my Queen, but warn your fellows to stay away from the spaces beneath the seminary. I do not think the forces that lurk there can remain now they have been uncovered, but it would be best not to take any risks.’
‘Who are you?’ Hugh asked, awed.
Will gave a deep bow. ‘Why, I am England’s greatest spy, my friend. I have been on a long journey to hell, but now I am back and determined to take some of damnation’s fire to my enemies.’
CHAPTER SIXTY
RECLAIMING HIS HORSE FROM THE SEMINARY STABLES, WILL WAS soon galloping through the narrow streets of Reims, with Grace clinging to his back. At the walls, a sleepy guard in a padded leather doublet opened the gates for them. As much as the spy hated passing through the lonely vineyards and meadows by night, he knew he could not remain in the town until daybreak. Fabian’s warped compassion for the human race would be tested to the limit in the coming hours.
‘Were you harmed?’ he asked. ‘You spoke of being battered and—’
‘It is nothing. I am well,’ the woman replied with a brusque tone that surprised him. He felt that he had offended her in some way.
For a while, he questioned Grace on the circumstances of her capture at Nonsuch and how she was brought to Reims, but her memory was addled by potions. He was, however, concerned to hear of the mounting fear and repression at the palace. But when Grace noted that she feared for Nathaniel, he added, ‘Nat has survived far worse. I would trust him to win through in any situation.’
‘Then you should tell him,’ she snapped, ‘instead of criticizing him at every turn.’
‘Grace, if there is something wrong—’
‘Nothing is wrong.’ The woman gripped the spy’s back as tightly as his devil.
Will rode on in silence. But as the dusty track passed from the vineyards into the woods, he noticed a light glimmering away in the trees. Two more appeared as he trotted on. Had Xanthus found him at last? The spy frowned. Reining in his steed, he considered riding back to the vineyards.
In silence, two musketeers stepped out from the trees and trained their weapons upon him. Their moustaches and beards waxed and pointed, they wore felt hats, short leather jerkins and bandoliers. From the well-tended weapons and clothes, the spy could see they were not roadside bandits.
In French, Will tried to explain that he and Grace were simply poor travellers who could not afford to pay for a night at an inn in Reims. The men’s cold eyes didn’t waver. With a thrust of their weapons they silently ordered the two travellers to dismount.
The spy could not risk injury to Grace. His anger simmering, he allowed the two of them to be marched through the trees.
On the other side of the small wood, canvas flapped in the breeze. Moths performed intricate dances in the pools of light thrown by lanterns at the entrances to a huddle of grey tents. The smell of roast pork still hung in the warm air around a crackling camp fire, and Will could hear horses snorting and stamping their hooves nearby. From the men sitting around in groups holding quiet conversations, he guessed it was a small fighting force.
As they neared the largest of the tents, a tall, balding man stepped out to greet them. His beard flecked with white, he wore a black gown, but he carried himself with the strength and grace of a fighting man. ‘My name is Maximilien de Béthune, duc de Sully. Follow me,’ he said in English, his voice deep.
‘There is some mistake. I am just a lonely traveller,’ Will began.
Maximilien gave a knowing smile. ‘No, you are not. You are England’s greatest spy, William Swyfte.’
For once, Will was silenced.
‘We are not fools here, sir. Our spies are as proficient as your own,’ the gowned man continued, holding open the tent flap for them to enter. ‘You have been under observation since you disembarked at Cherbourg.’
‘Then I apologize for my deceit,’ Will replied, stooping to enter the warm golden glow of the lamplit interior. ‘I doff my cap to fellow practitioners of the great art.’
Behind his wry exterior, the spy was instantly on his guard, his eyes darting around in search of any threat. A trestle stood to one side covered with charts, a flask and a half-eaten knob of bread with a knife stuck in it. But his attention was drawn to a tall, tanned man standing with his hands folded behind his back. He was expensively outfitted in a gleaming sapphire doublet, the buttons jewelled, the ruff extravagantly folded. His beard was well tended, his smiling face suggesting a man of good humour.
‘The King,’ Maximilien boomed.
‘Your Majesty.’ Will gave a deep bow. Grace curtsied at his side, her gaze fixed shyly on the ground. Henri let his eyes linger on her for a moment, his smile becoming playful.
‘The King indeed,’ he said in heavily accented English. ‘The word is still strange to my ears after this long, hard struggle. There were times when I thought I would always remain Henri de Navarre.’
‘The Catholic League now support your claim to the throne?’ the spy asked, puzzled.
Henri chuckled. ‘Why, I am a Catholic these days, Master Swyfte. Had you not heard? On the twenty-fifth of July I renounced my old faith completely. Now I am a committed Papist,’ he tweaked his waxed moustache, his eyes gleaming, ‘the resistance in Paris will eventually crumble and I will finally be allowed to ride into my capital city. And so, all things fall into place.’
The spy recalled Cecil’s suspicions at the Rose Theatre almost three months earlier. ‘And the Huguenots?’ he enquired.
‘After the bitter religious strife that has torn this country apart for so long, they are understandably distressed that I appear to have crossed to the other side. But they will come around. What other choice do they have?’
‘I imagine my Queen is not best pleased that you have renounced her faith.’ It was an understatement. Will imagined Elizabeth flying into one of her incandescent rages when the news was delivered to her.
‘Once I am crowned in Chartres, she will understand that I am still the same Henri.’ The King strode to the trestle and took a sip from his flask of wine. ‘Perhaps I will even be more useful to her. I see myself as a bridge, Master Swyfte, like the one I plan to build across the Seine when I am finally allowed into Paris, to unite the right and left banks. There will be peace in Europe only when our two religions can live side by side. When we achieve that, then we can join together against our common Enemy.’ His eyes flickered from Grace to Will, and he nodded to indicate that he would not elucidate while the woman was present. ‘For now,’ he continued, ‘Paris remains beyond my control.’
The spy inwardly winced. It would be difficult enough to spend time in the Unseelie Court’s midst without also having to deal with a city that had only recently survived Henri’s siege and would suspect any stranger of being one of the King’s spies.
‘There are other matters afoot, of which we will speak more in a short while.’ Draining his flask, the King smacked his mouth.
The tent flaps were furiously thrown open and in a flurry of skirts a woman stormed in.
‘You!’ Grace exclaimed.
Red Meg O’Shee cast only a fleeting glance at her. ‘I hear the buzzing of a fly,’ she sniffed.
Grace fumed, but the Irish woman had already turned her attention to Will, a cold fire in her green eyes.
With a hand to his high forehead, the King exclaimed, ‘Mistress, if Gabrielle finds you here—’
‘Do not worry, Your Majesty. Your true love’ – the red-headed woman gave the words a sardonic twist, her gaze still fixed on the spy – ‘will not be made aware of such an outrage.’
In Meg’s disrespectful attitude towards the monarch, Will saw the deep currents that run between old lovers.
‘Did you not find my blade sharp enough the last time, Master Swyfte?’ she asked scornfully.
‘About as sharp as your tongue, Mistress O’Shee, which is very sharp indeed.’
Meg turned to the King and said, ‘Send him away. He will never help our cause.’
Looking from the Irish woman to the spy, Henri gave another knowing smile. ‘Your passions are aroused, my sweet. Master Swyfte must have struck you a stinging blow to anger you so.’ He waved a hand, playfully dismissing the tension in the tent. ‘But enough of petty emotions. Mistress Meg, our friend here has been helping my cause for long weeks, unbeknown to himself. And so have you.’
The red-head’s eyes narrowed. ‘What web have you been weaving, Henri? If you have been playing me for a fool you will regret it.’
‘You threaten a king?’ Henri feigned astonishment, then laughed. ‘Ah, but that is why we all love you! You would shake your fist at the gods themselves.’ He turned to Will and said, ‘I would have a word, in private, about our common business.’
Understanding, the spy asked Grace if she would wait outside. Flashing a searing glance at Meg, she strode out.
After the monarch had called for Maximilien to pour them all flasks of wine, he said, ‘A drink then, to an alliance of all the nations against our mutual Enemy. And to give thanks for the aid you have given France in these dark times.’
Sipping his wine, Will studied the French king with growing respect. He wondered how far the royal’s clever scheming extended.
‘Once England antagonized the Unseelie Court they preyed less upon my countrymen. Though they would never admit it, I believe they feared resistance on more than one front,’ Henri continued. ‘Yet they were still a threat. Of course they were. Life in France was one of constant balance. We always waited for the sword to drop.’
‘Aye. Bastards all,’ Maximilien growled, throwing his wine down his throat.
‘And then, as I campaigned for the throne, a representative of the High Family asked me for my aid.’
‘An alliance?’ the spy asked.
The King snorted. ‘Do the Unseelie Court ever truly ally? They take what they want and spit out the rest. I had to tread cautiously – I could not risk alienating them.’
‘Your plans to win France would have been over in the blink of an eye,’ Meg observed, ‘and you would have been found stuffed with straw, with button eyes, a puppet with his strings cut.’
‘That is true,’ Henri said with a nod. ‘A wise king lives in this world and not in his head. They wished to use France as a staging post for their invasion of England, and Paris in particular. In the city they could mass their forces, and conjure up whatever dark magics would help them achieve their aims.’
‘I would wager that with Paris controlled by Catholics calling for your blood that decision did not trouble you for long,’ Will noted wryly.
Returning his flask to the trestle, Henri gave a quick smile. ‘I care for all my subjects equally, Master Swyfte. But, yes, I gave them Paris. I could not refuse. But I also knew that, once taken, they would not give it up again easily, if at all. You know they now seek to take this world for their own, sir?’
‘I do.’ Will mulled over his wine for a moment. ‘So, while acceding to their request for the use of your capital, you also had to put into effect a scheme that would ensure their plans failed.’
The King clapped his hands with glee. ‘You are a cunning fellow. I could find much employment for a man like yourself.’
‘His Majesty played his part convincingly,’ Maximilien said, pouring himself more wine. ‘Trusting that he secretly loathed England as much as they, the High Family let slip aspects of their plan that we could use to our advantage.’
‘I knew of their foul work beneath the seminary in Reims, and of their Scar-Crow Men.’ Henri’s smile darkened. ‘Those damnable things ...’
‘And you used me to save him,’ Meg pointed at Will, ‘so you could entice both of us into your web.’
‘And who better to use, my sweet?’ Henri smiled, teasing. ‘You fit in so well everywhere. And you refuse to fail, even when faced with the most daunting odds.’ He eyed Will. ‘And England’s greatest spy. How could such a man turn his back on this plot once he became aware of it? Why, he might even pursue my enemies into the heart of France itself, and undermine the foul works being carried out at Reims that were beyond my ability to influence. He might even – could this be – unseat the High Family themselves – a clan, I am told, that he has had some success against before.’
‘You should have told me your plan,’ Meg blazed. Will thought she was about to throw her flask at the King.
‘You are always more effective when you are left to your own devices, my sweet.’ Henri winked at Maximilien, who replied with a conspiratorial smile.
The Irish woman set her jaw. ‘And in what other way did you play me? Tell me now, for if I find out for myself later my temper will know no bounds.’
‘And your temper is a fearsome thing to behold. Then let me speak truly. As deep as my affection is for you, my sweet, I would not trust you with alms for the poor.’ The monarch waved a finger when he saw Meg clench her fists. ‘And I know you well. How could I not?’ he said, softening his harsh assessment with a tender note. ‘You love your country, and your people, and I knew you could not resist trying to steal Dr Dee away from under English noses. Which is why I had my own men waiting to steal the good doctor away from you.’
‘I thought those men at Petworth were there to save me,’ the woman exclaimed. Will held a hand out to restrain her. She glared at him.
Henri gave a dismissive shrug. ‘Sadly, Master Swyfte thwarted that part of my plan. I half expected that would be the case. But Dr Dee is a prize that all the countries of Europe desire.’ He bowed to Will. ‘Yet he is not truly valued in his own land. That is always the way. Keep a hold of him, Master Swyfte, or else your defences will become someone else’s.’
Meg rounded on the spy. ‘You have been the King of France’s performing ape,’ she blazed. ‘Where is your anger? He has had you dancing to his tune, tumbling and falling and fooling. And you have cleaned up his dirty business in Reims with your own life at stake.’
Will shrugged. ‘Though it pains me to say it, I have had worse jobs in my time.’
Meg gaped, incredulous.
‘Master Swyfte understands this business well, Mistress Meg,’ Henri noted. ‘He now has the soon-to-be-crowned King of France in his debt. That is a good card to hold in your hand in any game. So, what now, sir?’
‘Now we head to Paris, Your Majesty, and if you can find a way to get me past the city walls and into the very heart of the Unseelie Court’s forces, that would go some small way to repaying me for the work I have done on your behalf.’ Will gave a deep, ironic bow.
‘I think I can help you there, Master Swyfte. Yes, indeed.’
‘I am joining you,’ Meg snapped.
‘So you can thrust a dagger between my shoulder blades when I least expect it?’
‘I would not resist her request, sir.’ Henri laughed louder.
‘Very well,’ Will sighed. ‘Perhaps I can throw you to the Unseelie Court as a distraction.’ The spy could see the Irish woman was restraining herself, yet despite her betrayal at Petworth he was surprised at how appealing he still found her company.
‘Good,’ the redhead replied. ‘Then I will go and make my preparations.’ She flounced out, ignoring Grace, who stood outside the tent’s entrance and stuck out her tongue as the Irish woman passed.
Will’s tone darkened. ‘The Unseelie Court have something which could destroy the Scar-Crow Men in the blink of an eye. It is the key to ending this business.’
The monarch looked to Maximilien, whose expression became grim. ‘They gather at the Cathedral of Notre Dame. It stands on an island in the river and will be nigh on impregnable with so many of those bastards swarming around. You journey into hell, Master Swyfte.’
‘That place holds no surprises for me.’ The spy knew the immensity of the threat that awaited him, but he felt no fear for himself. All men died – it was a matter only of when, and how. ‘But we must set out immediately. The High Family know my intentions and will do all in their power to prevent me reaching Paris.’
‘Very well. Maximilien, give the men their orders,’ Henri said.
After the adviser had left, Will added, ‘If I can make good, I will need a ship to take me to England. It may already be too late if matters at home have taken an unfortunate turn. Speed is of the essence.’
‘That too can be arranged. I have a galleon moored upon the mouth of the Seine at Le Havre-de-Grâce.’
Lowering his voice, Will said, ‘I ask one further thing.’
‘Go on.’
‘If I am not to survive, look after my friend Grace. She is an innocent in these matters and she has suffered greatly. England may not be safe for her if we fail.’
The King gave a concerned smile. ‘I will care for her as if she were a member of my own family. But I warn you, Master Swyfte, if we fail there may be no safe place anywhere.’
When he stepped out of the tent, Will paused briefly to look at the stars in the vast vault of the heavens. He felt oddly at peace.
When she returned from the camp fire, Grace saw it too. ‘You seem changed,’ she said, peering curiously into his face. ‘That black mood that has gripped you for so long has lifted.’
And Will was surprised to realize she spoke the truth. Although death was closer than it had ever been, he had rediscovered the urge to live. He would have laughed if it would not have unsettled the young woman.
Thunder rolled out across the warm landscape, and the horizon flashed white with lightning.
‘Oh,’ Grace said, puzzled. ‘The weather has turned. How odd.’
The spy watched the black clouds rolling with unnatural speed across the hills. He knew what came with the storm.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
STANDING ON THE HILLTOP IN THE BUFFETING WIND, WILL LOOKED down at the twinkling lights of Paris and felt the stress of the last nine days’ hard travel begin to ease. The running could stop; now the fighting would begin.
A sparkling island in the night-dark sea, the city was alight with lamps on all the municipal buildings and candles glimmering in the windows of the houses that faced the streets. Contained in its old walls, Paris squatted on the plain of the river that flowed through its heart. The spy had first considered the river to be the best route into the capital, but Maximilien, the King’s adviser, had warned him that the Unseelie Court had ‘set things roaming there to slaughter the unwary’.
‘And so we reach the end of the road,’ Meg said, brushing back a strand of her damp red hair. She loosely held the reins of her horse. The animal frothed at the mouth from its exertions.
‘Not in more ways than one, I hope,’ the spy muttered.
Grinning, the King strode over and clapped his hands. Will was impressed by the monarch’s seemingly inhuman good nature in the face of the last few days’ hardships. ‘Hup-hup, no time to rest! You have nations to save. And, of course, lives to risk.’
‘I thank you for reminding me,’ Will replied. He was distracted by the bulk of the great cathedral rising up from the island in the centre of the river. His gaze followed the walls around the city’s perimeter, but he could see no way of slipping into Paris unnoticed. Waiting until dawn and hiding in the back of some cart was not an option. Xanthus was an hour behind, possibly less.
The spy glanced back at all that remained of the King’s men. They were exhausted and scared. Night after night soldiers had stayed behind to try to slow the Hunter’s progress, and now, Will guessed, their bodies littered the countryside all the way back to Reims.
At least Grace was safe and on her way to the waiting galleon, with two of Henri’s most trusted men for company.
With thunder rumbling like distant cannon-fire and spitting rain caught in the wind, they rode down the hillside to the city. Moving along winding, dusty tracks, the riders came to the remnants of an abandoned quarry not far from the city walls, where yellow grass and lichen covered mounds of extracted rock. Dismounting, Maximilien ordered the King’s men to guard the path and then led Henri, Will and Meg through the quarry to a ragged black hole in the hillside.
‘Paris sits on the edge of an abyss,’ the monarch explained, peering into the dark. ‘Quarriers have dug mines here for three hundred years, perhaps more. Most of the stone was removed outside the city walls, and few know of the old tunnels that stretch deep under the city.’ He turned to Will and grinned. ‘I promised you safe passage and here it is.’
‘Keep to the left in the first cavern and the tunnel will present itself to you,’ Maximilien growled. ‘Were it more spacious it would have been of use during our siege, but only one man may pass through it at a time.’
The spy glanced up at the black clouds rolling overhead. ‘No time to lose. Your dancing ape thanks you for your aid, Your Majesty, and I hope we will meet again in this life.’ He bowed deeply.
Meg allowed the King to kiss her hand while feigning a lack of interest. ‘Enjoy the arms of your love, but remember the times when your passion reached its true heights,’ she told him.
Maximilien handed Will one of the torches he had brought from the cart containing the tents. The spy lit it with his flint, and as the rain began to pound he led the Irish woman into the dark cave. Before they disappeared into the underworld, he glanced back. For the first time since they had met, the King’s face was grim.
Through the dusty-dry atmosphere, the spy and his companion moved into low-ceilinged caverns supported by columns of stone left by the long-departed quarrymen. The rasp of the two cautious travellers’ feet made whispering echoes rustle around the edges of the vast space.
‘Keep four paces to my right and one pace ahead,’ Will said, holding the hissing torch in front of him. ‘Where I can see you.’
‘I walk where I choose,’ the Irish woman snapped. ‘And fear not, I have no wish to be by your side.’
‘Then I presume you will keep your mind on the task at hand, especially as there are no men down here to distract you.’
‘Says the one who has bedded every woman in London, if the stories are to be believed.’
‘Do I hear the merest hint of jealousy? Or is it simply regret?’ he asked.
‘Only in your dreams.’ Meg threw her red hair back, refusing to give Will even cursory notice.
The spy skirted the left-hand wall of the cavern until he found a tunnel carved into the rock, so small he had to stoop to enter. It gave way to rough-hacked caves and tiny rooms before continuing like an arrow into the heart of Paris. Will imagined passing beneath the old city walls, under the cobbled streets and the rough, filth-strewn lanes, the pale-faced men and women cowering indoors, away from the Enemy that now existed among them.
When Will heard a change in the quality of their echoing footsteps, he knew their underground journey was coming to an end. The golden glare of the torch dappled the timber that barred their way. Gently rapping on the wood, Will considered the hollow response and then glanced back at Meg. Her face looked serious and determined, her eyes glinting in the dancing flames.
‘I would step back. I may have to kick this down,’ the spy said.
‘Pray use your head and keep the damage to a minimum.’
Once she had retreated a few paces, Will gave two sharp kicks and the timber burst into a dark cellar. Raising one hand, he listened for a moment and then stepped into the cool space.
The torchlight revealed barrels and glinting bottles in a vaulted stone chamber, the air thick with the aroma of sour wine. Once he had satisfied himself that no one was coming to investigate, Will led the way up stone steps to an arched door that opened on to a wood-panelled corridor. Extinguishing the torch, he darted through the still house, the swishing of Meg’s skirts close behind.
The spy led them out on to a small cobbled street glistening in the rain. Water sluiced from the roofs into black puddles where the reflected candlelight from the windows sparkled and swam.
Meg followed Will’s gaze up to the roiling black clouds overhead. ‘The Hunter’s manipulation of the elements grows more intense with his frustration. Let us hope these magics drain him.’ The Irish woman paused. ‘Though I fear his hatred for you is now so great he would risk everything to see you destroyed.’
‘That is less of an unusual occurrence than you might think.’
Slipping in and out of the shadows close to the walls of the houses, Will tried to get his bearings. At the corner of a broad thoroughfare, he smelled the foetid river and glimpsed the silhouette of the great cathedral rising up against the sky. He brought up an arm to hold Meg back.
‘Hide.’
Ducking back around the corner, they pressed themselves against the wet wall. A faint light washed over the houses on the other side of the broad street. Within a moment, a bone-white carriage drawn by two colourless horses splashed through the pools of black water. Both beasts and vehicle emitted the ghostly light. It was soundless, a ghost-carriage, though clearly it had substance. There was no driver, but Will glimpsed two of the Unseelie Court through the window, a male in a broad-brimmed hat and a woman with hair piled high on her head, both equally leached of colour.
‘They travel so openly,’ the Irish woman hissed once the carriage had disappeared from sight.
‘It is their city now. I hope your former lover sleeps peacefully.’ The spy looked around at the streets devoid of human life, and the houses where nothing moved. Paris was not as populous as London, but it still contained almost two hundred thousand people, even without the many who had died of starvation during Henri’s siege. Many more refugees had fled to the city from the fighting in the countryside. Did they now all quake in fear beneath their beds?
‘Henri must make choices where there is no easy answer, ofttimes no winners, and only the extent of each side’s losses is the deciding factor,’ Meg replied, adding sharply, ‘and that is why he is king and you are not.’
‘I would think birth and blood had some part to play in it, but be it as you will.’ Once he was sure the street was empty, Will ran in the direction of the cathedral.
As they neared the river, the two spies ducked into an alley. Another Fay man rode past on a grey horse, his silver-mildewed doublet almost matching the tone of his bloodless face. Four other pale figures stalked by before Will and the Irish woman could leave their hiding place, and then they were running as fast as they could through the driving rain to the edge of the vast, stone-arched bridge that led to the island in the flow.
As they crouched out of sight, their attention was caught by a spectral glow from the river downstream. Peering over the small stone wall, the spy felt a chill. On the grey, choppy water, a fleet was moored, more galleons than Will could count, disappearing into the rain and night. They strained at anchor, their sails furled, no colours flying on their masts, but they needed none, for that eerie luminescence told him all he needed to know of ownership. There was no movement on deck that he could see, no frantic activity as the crews prepared to sail, and that gave him some comfort. But here, without doubt, was the Enemy’s invasion force, ready for England whenever the order was given.
From the hills above the city, the ships had been invisible, hidden by the Fay’s magics. And he felt no need to question how seagoing vessels could sail in the shallows of a summer river, nor how they could navigate the impassable sections of the Seine upstream. The Unseelie Court made their own rules.
Seeing the scale of the fleet, feeling the icy power that washed off it, Will was fearful of what lay ahead. If those ships were free to sail upon England, all would be lost.
Turning his attention back to the bridge, the spy saw that like London Bridge across the Thames in London, Pont Notre-Dame was lined on both sides by tall stone and brick houses, their pitched roofs topped with orange-brown tiles. In the daylight, at any other time, it would be bustling with merchants, the road across the centre of the span packed with carts and livestock. Now it was deserted apart from three pale figures waiting in the rain-drenched gloom halfway across.
‘There is no way past them,’ Meg whispered.
‘There is always a way.’
Studying the bridge, the spy saw only one perilous route open to him. Turning to the Irish woman, he whispered, ‘Despite my doubts about your loyalty, I acceded to your request to accompany me on this dangerous mission. But you must now wait here—’
‘I am no weak and cowardly woman. Do not treat me like your bloodless, flower-loving Grace. I will not be dismissed, abandoned, discarded. Ever.’ Her anger simmered.
Softening his tone, Will said, ‘Mistress Meg, you have proved yourself to have the heart of a lion and the skills and ferocity of any man. I would be proud to have you at my side in any battle. Although,’ he added with a tight smile, ‘not at my back. But this work now requires the stealth that can only be accomplished by one alone. You know this business well. See it with the eyes of a spy.’
Her anger faded, but she still surveyed him with hard eyes. ‘Very well then. But I will watch for your return. Do not try to leave me here.’
‘Though I am loath to say this, I need you.’
Her brow furrowed, her gaze becoming uncertain.
‘If I die here, I need you to take up this fight.’
Meg nodded. ‘If you die, I will carry the fight back to them. So do I now vow.’
Swinging one leg over the low wall, the spy paused again and, turning quickly, stole a kiss.
The Irish woman recoiled in surprise.
Will gave a rakish grin. ‘If I go to my grave, I would do so with a happy memory.’
And then he threw himself over the edge of the wall and was gone.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
RUSHING TO THE WALL, MEG FEARED WILL HAD PLUMMETED INTO the churning grey water below. Plucking her wind-whipped hair from her eyes, she peered into the dark. She could just discern the spy edging along a rain-slick ledge barely as wide as the span of a hand with only a cornice at head-height for support. Beneath him, the river eddied around the stone columns of the arches, calling for him to plunge into its lethal currents.
‘You are a fool, Will Swyfte,’ she breathed, with a grudging respect for her companion’s courage.
As she watched him disappearing into the gloom, an unsettling confusion of feelings washed through her. Ever since she was a child standing over the bloodied bodies of her elder brothers, she had felt she knew herself, and that she understood the strict rules of life. Survival was paramount. Freed of weak emotions, she had learned her trade well. She had needed for nothing. There were small joys to be had, here and there. And she had aided her countrymen well in the bitter wars they had fought, among themselves, against the English and, in secret rebellion, against the Unseelie Court. The loneliness that had crept up on her like an assassin in the night had troubled her only intermittently and she had succeeded in keeping it at bay through the diamond-hard edge of her will.
She had been able to maintain her life of red blades, and joyless coupling, and heart-rending deception, with the conviction that only one solitary path was open to her, and that no one else could ever understand her oceanic depths. But now she realized everything had changed.
Hammering one small but strong fist upon the stone wall, Meg let out her unfocused rage for one moment and then tore her gaze away from the bridge. Swyfte was lost to the night.
The wind blasted along the river, stinging her pale skin with stone-hard rain. Her skirts and bodice were soaked through and she was filled with a bone-deep chill that belied the summer warmth. The storm was getting stronger. Lightning flickered around the hills as if the gods were circling the city.
Further along the road that bounded the river, she glimpsed movement, pale figures flitting here and there. At a distance the Unseelie Court had all the substance of moon shadows. It was only up close that they took on the lethal presence of hunting beasts.
Eyeing their comings and goings, she decided there was not enough cover there at the edge of the river and she turned and ran back to the shelter of the tall merchants’ houses on the other side of the street. Though candles still gleamed in the windows, she saw no comfort anywhere. The Enemy were all over Paris, wherever she looked: carriages rolling silently along the street on the far side of the Seine, the spectral fleet bobbing on the choppy waves, riders emerging from the winding, narrow streets on to the large riverside thoroughfare and groups locked in conversation here and there, oblivious to the downpour. Secure in their control of the city, the Unseelie Court were not looking out for enemies. Perhaps there was hope the two spies could escape France with their lives.
But as Meg eased into the shadowy depths of a rat-infested alley, lightning flashed and she saw the silhouette of a figure on the roof of the first house on the Pont Notre-Dame. It was Xanthus, hunched on the edge of the house like a gargoyle, peering down into the street.
He had seen her.
Her heart thumping, Meg gripped her dagger tightly though she knew it would be useless.
Seemingly untouched by the tearing winds, the ghostly stalker raised himself up, balancing on the balls of his feet. As the Irish woman prepared herself for his descent, he turned and bounded like a wolf up the orange tiles and away across the connecting roofs of the houses on the bridge.
The Hunter wanted only Will Swyfte.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
LASHED BY THE STORM, WILL CLUNG ON TO THE CORNICE WITH aching fingers, edging forward one fumbling step at a time. Beneath him, the grey waters of the Seine churned around the base of the Pont Notre-Dame’s stone footings. One slip and he would be lost to the currents, never to surface again.
‘It would be easier to let go.’
Snapping his head round at the voice, the spy looked into glistening black eyes. Jenny clung to the ledge behind him, her mottled skin now tinged with broken veins as if she were decomposing a little more each time he saw her. Her rain-soaked hair hung lank, her skirts clinging to her too-thin frame.
‘Get thee away from me, devil,’ the spy growled. ‘I am not in the mood for your trickery.’
Jenny pressed her blue lips close to his ear and whispered, ‘You have betrayed me. Where is that deep love that you professed so strongly? A love that would never die, that would survive the vast gulfs of time and space between us, my sweet? It tripped off your tongue so easily. Were you lying to me? Were you lying to yourself?’
‘I love you still, as deeply as ever.’ Keeping his head turned away from that haunting face, Will focused all his attention on the gloom shrouding the end of the bridge. ‘Love is more complex than you would imagine in your narrow world of misery. And we are all pulled by currents we cannot fathom.’
Refusing to acknowledge any more of the whispered lies and threats and low, mocking laughter, he edged forward. When he passed the bridge’s midway point, he realized he could no longer sense the presence at his back, but the weight he felt upon his shoulders did not lift.
With cold, painful fingers, the spy pulled himself up the cornice at the far end and eased his head above the parapet. The towering bulk of the cathedral loomed over the rain-lashed island. He thought how the tall windows on the twin towers resembled the eyes of a judgemental god looking down upon him.
A warren of dark, deserted buildings sprawled away from the wall. Pulling himself over the parapet, Will hurried through the narrow alleys until he overlooked a small cobbled square in front of the cathedral. The stained glass was afire, candlelight flooding out of the open doors.
Three pale figures moved on to the bridge and were lost among the towering merchants’ houses, while others drifted out of the cathedral, pausing to exchange brief words with their fellows. Watching the ebb and flow for long moments, Will decided there were only two guards who patrolled the fringes of the square.
The spy huddled in the shadows close to the wall, wrapping his black cloak around him, and waited for his moment.
Thunder pealed overhead, and lightning lit up the front of the church. When the glare faded, only the guards remained. One walked near to where Will hid, the other stood by the cathedral door, attention fixed on the bright interior.
Drawing Dee’s blowpipe from the hidden pocket in his cloak, the spy dipped a dart in the lethal blue paste and inserted it in the end of the tube. A pool of black ink in the deeper shadow, he waited with the pipe to his lips until the pale figure was only feet away. Will blew into the tube. The Enemy clutched at his face. The spy was moving before the guard crumpled to the wet cobbles.
His footsteps masked by the torrent of rainwater gushing off the cathedral roof, he slipped into the shadows next to the wall, unseen. Whisking out his dagger, he crept forward, sliding the blade across the sentry’s neck in a flash. He dumped the body out of sight just around the corner of the building.
The relentless pounding of the rain matched the beating of the spy’s heart. Peering in through the open door, he was relieved to see no further Enemies waited just inside the church. Notre Dame was flooded with golden light from the ranks of candles running along the nave. The Unseelie Court swarmed like ants in the far depths of the cathedral, studying charts, locked in discussions, or at work on tasks beyond Will’s ability to comprehend. Some appeared to be maintaining weapons of unknown use, while others chanted in low voices as they inscribed symbols on the stone flags.
Keeping low, Will slipped along the rear wall of the cathedral to what appeared to be a small storeroom. He slid inside, unseen. Crouching in the shadows, he continued to observe the activity in the cathedral through a narrow slit in the door.
A tall mirror in a gilt frame stood incongruously in the centre of the nave, surrounded by a circle of squat candles. As Will watched, the glass became opaque, attracting the attention of the Fay near to it. One of them hurried away, returning a moment later with a grotesquely obese figure, naked to the waist, his sweating, shaven head gleaming in the candlelight.
Wheezing from the exertion, he shuffled into the circle and peered into the looking glass with his porcine eyes. The milky haze cleared to reveal Fabian’s doleful reflection. He was standing in a dark place, perhaps still in the catacombs beneath the Reims seminary. For long moments, the two figures engaged in conversation. Although he couldn’t overhear what was said, Will suspected he was the subject of their debate. He began to formulate a plan.
Scrabbling through the contents of the storeroom, the spy uncovered a dirty sheet. He returned to the door, from where he watched the corpulent figure begin to lose his temper in a language the spy didn’t understand. The other pale figures crowded around the mirror to listen to the argument.
When one of the Fay passed near the door, the spy fired another poisonous dart. Leaping from the storeroom, Will flung the sheet over the convulsing being and tossed one of Dee’s powder-packages after it. The chemicals ignited in a flash of searing light. Ablaze, the being careered down the side aisle of the cathedral, his screams ringing off the walls.
Will threw himself behind the back row of heavy wooden pews and crawled to the other side of the church. While the Unseelie Court flocked to stifle the flames on the body of their dying fellow, the spy kept his attention on the bald-headed mound of shivering flesh. Just as he had hoped, the grotesque figure called out in his wavering, sibilant voice and directed four of the Fay towards the altar.
From his hiding place, the spy noticed a knee-high sculpture of human bones topped with a skull. Standing in another circle of squat candles, it glowed with a faint emerald light.
The Corpus-Scythe, Will guessed.
With alacrity, the four pale figures lifted it into a wooden chest with rope handles on either end, and carried it along the central aisle. Trying to protect it at all costs. Keeping below the Enemy’s line of sight, the spy slipped out into the storm-blasted night.
In front of the cathedral, the small cobbled area already lay under an inch of water. Will could barely see more than a few feet through the torrential rain, but that would help him. Crouching in the shadows along the wall, he took out the blowpipe and darts and waited.
The four Fay emerged with the wooden chest a moment later. Cloaked by the night and the gale, Will was invisible to them. His first dart struck the nearest Fay on the hand. As the pale figure began to convulse, the spy loaded a second poison-tipped dart and propelled it into the neck of one of the Enemy at the rear.
The chest splashed into the deepening pool of rainwater.
As the remaining two pale figures drew their rapiers, Will ghosted along the wall behind them and thrust his dagger under the ribcage of his third foe. When the final Fay began to turn, the spy plunged his blade into his opponent’s throat.
Sheathing his weapon, Will grasped the chest by both handles. It was lighter than he anticipated. But he had only splashed four steps across the cobbles when a warning cry rang out. A bedraggled Meg stood in the nearest alley. Her eyes were wide with terror and with a trembling hand she was pointing above him.
Will spun round. Above the main doorway ran a long gallery of statues of the kings of Israel. One of them was moving.
Lightning illuminated the graven relief. Crawling across the carvings like a giant spider was Xanthus, his shaven, symbol-etched head turned towards the spy.
Mouth torn wide in a bestial roar, the Hunter leapt.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
THROWING HIMSELF OUT OF THE PATH OF THE WHITE-FACED Hunter, Will heard the chest shatter. The spy rolled back to his feet only to see the Corpus-Scythe lying exposed in the deepening pool of rainwater and Xanthus crouching over it. Will felt a pang of bitter regret. He’d come so close to escaping with his prize, but a face-to-face fight at that moment was a battle he was unlikely to win.
Meg had already fled. He sprinted away from the square towards a narrow street on the northern side of the cathedral. The way ahead was long and straight with no alleys in which he could lose himself.
At his back, the spy heard splashing as the Hunter bounded across the cobbles.
A door to the cathedral hung ajar to his right. Will dived into the dark space and drew the heavy iron bolts, although he knew it would buy him only a few moments. He raced up a flight of broad stone steps two at a time, a plan already forming in his mind. Ignoring the door to what he guessed was the grand gallery connecting the two towers, he continued climbing until his breath burned in his chest.
From far below, the clang of the bolt being drawn back echoed up the well of shadows.
The steps ended atop one of the cathedral’s two towers. From the window space, he had a view across storm-buffeted Paris. Thousands of stars of candlelight flickered in inky space. On the grey Seine, the Unseelie Court fleet glowed with a ghostly luminescence.
Xanthus would think him trapped, the spy thought. That gave him an advantage.
Pulling the grapnel from his cloak’s pocket, Will hooked it on the coping and threw the attached rope out of the window. He had no time to test if it would hold. Hanging out into the tearing wind, the spy grasped the rope and slid down.
He was hurled around wildly by the gale and blinded by the downpour. Smashed against the stone of the tower, he held on with shaking hands, then kicked away from the wall to continue his descent. As he swung, he glimpsed a face in one of the open arched windows along the gallery between the towers. He was sure it had been Meg. Was it she who had left the tower door ajar?
Will felt a wrench and the grapnel gave way. Arms whirling, he fell, the rope tumbling around him.
Slamming into the rain-slick cathedral roof, the spy felt his breath driven from his lungs. He had no time to recover. Numb from the impact, he careered down the steep pitch on his back.
When he glanced down, he saw the edge of the roof racing towards him.
Will curled his hand around the tangled rope and yanked hard. The grapnel flew through the air and crashed ahead of him; jerking his arm up, caught the cold iron of the hook with his free hand as he sped by. With his stomach flipping, he shot over the edge.
Overcome by the dizzying sensation of falling, the spy felt every bone in his body jar when the grapnel caught on the coping at the edge of the roof. He slammed against the stone wall once more. His fingers slipped, then held tight.
He didn’t look down, but he could feel the drop pulling beneath his feet. On straining arms, he hauled himself up, grabbed the edge of the coping with his right hand and pulled himself back on to the roof.
Will kneeled on the brink of the abyss and caught his breath. He felt the furious gale tear at him, threatening to pitch him over the side, and he knew he had to move on. But when he looked up, he saw he was not alone. Near the north tower, Xanthus now balanced on the edge of the roof, seemingly oblivious to the wind and the rain. Illuminated by the white light of a lightning flash, the predator stretched out his arms and closed his eyes in beatific supplication to the heavens.
‘Across your world I have pursued you, for the vengeance demanded by my brother and my people,’ the Hunter roared above the howling gale. ‘But this ends now. Your time has come, spy.’
Your time has come, Will’s devil whispered in his ear.
Returning the grapnel to the pocket in his cloak, the spy saw there was still a chance that he could follow his original plan. In the shadow of the soaring spire where the transepts crossed, a white stone arm reached towards the Seine. Will identified numerous places where he could descend – if he could but reach the roof of the southern transept before Xanthus caught him.
But the spy was gripped by a puzzling sight. Stooping on the edge of the roof, the Hunter was removing an object from the sack he had strapped to his back. Silver gleamed.
The Wish-Crux.
The box the Enemy had attempted to use that rainswept night at Lud’s Church.
Transfixed, Will watched the hunched figure set the gleaming chest on the coping and open the lid with a careful, almost awed motion. Will thought the dark within the box seemed to suck as powerfully as the void beside him.
After a moment, he saw movement in the black depths. Small shapes emerged into the driving rain and began to skitter along the edge of the roof towards him. Overcome by a grim foreboding, Will turned and lurched into the buffeting wind along the edge of the abyss. His shoes slipped on the wet stone. Arms outstretched to steady himself, he fought to maintain his balance.
Above the south transept, the spy glanced back. In the hunch of the Hunter’s slowly loping form, Will saw weakness, perhaps exhaustion. Could it be that the predator’s strength had been drained by his control of the elements during their long pursuit?
The spy’s gaze was drawn back to that black trail of scurrying forms, each one almost as big as the palm of his hand.
Spiders?
Certainly like no spiders he had ever seen before.
On the south transept roof, Will was held fast by the crashing waves of wind. Bowing his head, he pressed on, one agonizing step at a time. Blinded by the driving rain, the thunder rolling out above and lightning crashing down in jagged forks, Will felt his world was in turmoil.
Turning, the spy saw the spiders had caught up with him. Although they looked insignificant, he was sure some dark power lurked within them.
Death is close, his devil whispered with a throaty laugh.
‘Damn you! Leave me be!’ the spy raged.
Hammering one shoe down upon the nearest spider, he sensed the black shape burst under his leather sole. It felt like crushing a hen’s egg. Black ichor oozed out from beneath his foot and was washed away by the rain.
Just as he began to think that the skittering things were too easily destroyed, one arachnid propelled itself on to his hose and scurried up his body. He felt each leg like a hot needle stabbing into his flesh. Too fast to be brushed off, it swept down his arm to the back of his hand. With a shiver, the creature sank its fangs into Will and tore away a chunk of flesh.
The spy yelled in pain, blood spraying from his hand. Tearing the spider free, he crushed it in his palm. The black ichor steamed as it gushed between his fingers, and he hurled the squashed remains away. By then the other spiders were swarming across his body, tearing and biting.
Fearful that his thrashing would pitch him over the edge, the spy battled towards a small spire at the end of the transept where there was a patch of shelter. Whenever the snapping jaws bit through his clothes, he felt like he was being burned by hot pokers. Blood ran freely down his arms and legs, and however much he tore the spiders away, others replaced them. Unopposed, they could strip a body in a matter of moments, he realized.
The sands of time run out finally, and hell awaits, the devil growled in his ear.
His hands slick with blood, Will gripped on to the spire for support. Through the sheet of rain, he could see the pale, hunched shape of Xanthus creeping towards him. The Hunter had drawn his rapier ready for the killing blow.
The spy ripped the spiders away with gore-drenched hands. He hurled his body repeatedly against the spire to crush more. Yet he felt his strength ebbing with each gout of blood he lost, and he didn’t know how much longer he could endure.
Then his pale foe stood before him, swordpoint twirling in line with Will’s heart. ‘You have led me a merry chase,’ Xanthus said, ‘but finally my brother can rest peacefully, and the High Family will know that Cavillex has been avenged. When your Queen’s head sits on a spike at Nonsuch Palace, yours will rest beside her.’
‘Your brother died as he lived, a coward,’ the spy snarled, drawing his own rapier. ‘I ran him through as if I were spearing fish in the pond on Whittington Green, and thought even less about it.’
Raging, the Hunter lunged wildly. With a flick of his wrist, Will parried the thrust easily, the force of his response almost unbalancing his opponent. Steadying himself on the edge of the giddy drop, Xanthus saw what the spy intended. He calmed himself, his eyes narrowing.
‘You appear weaker,’ Will said, pulling a snapping spider from his bloody left cheek and tossing it away. ‘You have allowed your hatred for me to get the better of you.’
‘I have strength enough for you.’
The Hunter thrust again, his sword-stroke more refined this time, and faster. Will clashed his blade against his foe’s, and returned the thrust. Xanthus deflected it with a twirl of his rapier.
They were only testing each other, the spy saw. Both of them had been weakened and each wanted to see the limits of the other’s resolve.
As the spiders swarmed across his chest, Will’s clothes were being eaten away. Through the tatters, he glimpsed bloody bites on his pale, wet flesh. He could feel his time on earth leaking away.
He thrust his rapier towards the Hunter’s heart, followed up with a slash towards the neck and then struck low, driving the pale figure back along the edge of the roof. Lost to the storm and the burning bites, Will sensed his world retreat to the small circle of his vision, and to Xanthus’ fierce face. Their swords clashed to the rhythm of the thunder.
The spy’s foot slipped on the wet stone and for one moment he thought he was about to plunge over the edge. For an instant, he teetered. The Hunter swung his sword in an arc, the steel shimmering in the fading glare of a lightning strike.
At the last, Will dropped to his knees, gripping the coping while he regained his spinning senses. His Enemy’s sword flashed over his head.
Seizing his moment, the spy thrust his rapier upwards into Xanthus’ exposed stomach.
Crying out, the Hunter fell back, clutching at his wound. As he lay, half hanging over the edge, Will tore off the last few spiders with shaking hands. In the corner of his eye, he spied pale figures moving in both the cathedral’s towers: the Unseelie Court had found him.
Retrieving the grapnel, Will affixed it to the mass of decorative carvings that cascaded from the small spire. As he wound the rope around his left wrist, he saw Xanthus was back on his feet, holding one hand over the blood-pumping wound.
‘If I am to die this night, I will take you with me,’ the Fay spat.
His strength draining from him by the moment, Will knew he had but a slim chance to survive another fight. Propelling himself up the pitch of the roof, he turned to swing towards his foe.
And in that instant the world went black.
So it ends, Mephistophilis laughed.
The spy’s thoughts rushed through his head in that frozen moment, and he knew exactly what had happened. During the flight to Petworth House, Mephistophilis had demanded a payment in return for his aid.
You will give me something, and only for five minutes, no more, then I shall return it.
His sight.
The devil had chosen his moment well.
Unseeing, Will felt his feet sliding on the slick tiles. He would continue down the slope, directly on to the end of Xanthus’ blade, and thus Mephistophilis would have claimed what he set out to achieve those long weeks ago in the Rose Theatre.
One last gamble, he thought. For Jenny, for Kit.
Yanking the rope taut, the spy leapt with all the force he could muster. His head spun as he flew.
In the dark of his head, Will felt the wild wind in his hair, rain drenching his face. His feet crashed into a solid mass, what could only be the Hunter. Pain seared his side. His foe’s blade, tearing his flesh.
A cry rang out, and then spiralled away from him.
In his mind’s eye, Will pictured Xanthus propelled over the edge of the roof, blood trailing from his stomach wound, his face contorted in impotent rage. And that pale figure falling away, down into the dark, and death.
Will continued to fly, off the roof and out into the void. When he reached the limits of the rope, his arm almost tore from its socket. Tumbling back, he crashed against the stone of the cathedral wall for the third time. His wits near knocked out of his head, he hung, too weak to descend. Every fibre of his being burned, and he could feel hot blood slicking his torso.
‘I die on my own terms, devil,’ he croaked.
With the Hunter’s passing, the rain slowly stopped and the thunder rolled away. In the silence that followed, Will could hear familiar chilling music and smell the syrupy scent of honeysuckle caught on the wind. The Unseelie Court were making their way across the cathedral roof.
He considered letting go of the rope and plunging to his death, rather than letting himself fall into the hands of those foul creatures. Yet even then, at the end, he found it impossible to relinquish life.
‘And are ye going to keep hanging there like a slab of meat in a butcher’s?’
‘Meg?’ The spy pictured the red-headed woman leaning over the edge of the roof. ‘My sight has been stolen from me, for now. I cannot climb down, but there is a way.’
There was silence for a moment and then she hissed, ‘Our Good Neighbours will be with us soon. You must trust me.’
Will laughed.
‘You must trust me,’ the woman repeated. ‘I will climb down. Take your hand off the rope and wrap your arms around me.’
‘So you can fling me into the void and be done with me?’
Ignoring him, she replied, ‘I am stronger than you think and I have a head for heights like no other. I can support your weight for a little while.’
Fading in and out on the breeze, the music of fiddle and pipes drew nearer.
‘Trust me,’ she whispered.
‘Very well,’ he heard himself saying.
As Meg grasped the rope, Will felt her breath on his ear. ‘This is the moment when everything changes,’ she whispered.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
SIR ROBERT CECIL PACED ANXIOUSLY OUTSIDE THE COUNCIL chamber, his hunchbacked form throwing off his gait so that it appeared he was on the deck of a seagoing galleon. Hands clasped behind his back, his face set, he looked the model of brooding contemplation. Nearby, the mercenary Sinclair and his shadow, Rowland the record-keeper, waited.
The Secretary of State’s concentration was broken by echoing, urgent footsteps and he glanced up to see Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, striding into the gloomy antechamber, blinding in white doublet with gold embroidery, white breeches and white cloak.
‘You,’ the Earl said, jabbing a finger at the black-gowned secretary. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘The same as your good self, I would wager,’ Cecil replied with a false smile. ‘Summoned to appear before Her Majesty, who has been ensconced for this past hour with the Privy Council.’
The flamboyant man blanched. ‘The council? Meeting without either of us in attendance?’
The secretary noted cruelly that his rival’s face and clothes now merged into one single pool of insipidity. ‘Perhaps we are both on our way to the Tower. It appears your cunning manipulations – some would say deceit – have not earned you the advantages you so fervently desired.’
The door to the Council Chamber swung open and Cecil shuffled in. Essex hastened to catch up, ensuring that he arrived in the Queen’s presence at the same time as his rival.
The throne stood with a row of arched windows behind it so that Elizabeth was always perceived in a halo of light. Even so, she looked old and withered, her chin falling to her breast, her white make-up and red wig serving only to exacerbate the cadaverous quality of her hollow cheeks and eye sockets.
The secretary was immediately struck by the presence of Her Majesty’s maid of honour, Elinor, erect and beady-eyed at the Queen’s left arm. A woman? Here? he thought, forgetting the gender of his monarch in a manner that would have made Elizabeth proud, were she aware of his thoughts.
But the Queen seemed unaware of almost everything in the room. Her lids hung heavily as though she were on the brink of sleep, her stare deadened.
Behind her, the Privy Council stood, black robes, grey beards, sallow skin, their expressions too emotionless for Cecil to read the intent of the gathering.
‘Robert. And Robert,’ the Queen drawled. ‘In these dark times, I find your rivalry ... tiresome.’
Essex shuffled uneasily and then gave a deep bow. ‘Your Majesty, may I offer my profound apologies.’
Cecil tried not to show his contempt.
‘You must put aside your differences, for there is a matter so pressing it demands all your abilities,’ the monarch continued. ‘It has been brought to my attention that the traitor William Swyfte is returning to England, from France, even as we speak.’
How has it been brought to your attention? the secretary thought, casting a sideways glance at his rival’s baffled face. The two masters of all England’s spies are here before you, and we are both unaware of this development. He saw no advantage in raising this question and instead gave a studied, thoughtful nod.
‘Our disgraced spy sails on a merchant’s vessel from Le Havre-de-Grâce and will dock at the legal quays between the Old Bridge and the Tower on the morrow.’ With an unblinking stare, Elizabeth shifted her gaze between the two men in front of her. ‘Swyfte plans my death, and the overthrow of this government. He must be prevented from reaching Nonsuch at all costs. You must prevent him reaching here. From this moment on, my two favoured councillors, you must work together. Use all the spies at your disposal, united in intent for the first time, and seize Swyfte the moment he sets foot on English soil. Then bring him before me, alive if possible, dead if necessary.’
Cecil flashed a quick glance at Essex’s slow-moving face and seized the moment to make his own deep bow.
‘Of course, Your Majesty,’ the Little Elf said in a confident tone. ‘I have a plan forming already.’
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
‘WHAT DO YOU WANT AT THIS TIME OF NIGHT?’ HOLDING A CANDLE high, Nathaniel scrutinized the face of Tobias Strangewayes in the flickering flame. The young man was shocked by what he saw. His late caller looked so pale and drawn it seemed he had suffered a terrible bereavement.
‘I would speak with you a while,’ Strangewayes muttered hoarsely.
Feeling a pang of compassion, Nat beckoned his visitor inside his chamber. The last thing he wanted was an interruption at such a late hour. After failing to find any way to gain access to Cockayne’s chamber to search for the play, he had heard news that Cecil’s adviser had left Nonsuch for parts unknown. Hastily, Nat had concocted a last, desperate plan: to lower himself from the roof and break into the sealed room through the window. He would probably break his neck, or be arrested the moment he set foot inside the chamber, but he could think of no other option.
‘I have not seen you around the court for many a day.’ Nathaniel waved a hand towards a stool, but Strangewayes ignored the offer and went straight to the trestle by the window. He dumped a sooty sack upon it and then turned to face his host. Nathaniel saw the man’s hand was shaking.
‘Let us not waste time with small talk,’ Strangewayes said. ‘For days now I have wrestled with my problem alone in my chamber and I can see no way out.’
‘The Bishop of Winchester has cautioned against lonely wrestling in chambers.’
‘I know you and your master have only contempt for me. You think I am not worthy of the part I play—’
‘I neither know nor care about your business.’ Nathaniel placed the candle on the table next to the sooty sack. ‘I know you have mocked and reviled Will publicly, and you despise the work carried out by Sir Robert Cecil’s men.’
Strangewayes shrugged. ‘We play rough and tumble in this business. I ask only that you hear me out with an open mind.’
The spy looked so troubled, Nat could only sigh and wave him to continue.
‘I have developed ... an affection for Grace Seldon. You may know this. I understand she is like a sister to you.’ Strangewayes’ eyes flickered with a touch of guilt. ‘I wish for her only the very best, though you might think otherwise. But she trusts me, and she trusts me deeply, for she told me of a work by Christopher Marlowe that was in the hands of Sir Robert’s adviser.’
Nathaniel flinched and turned away, pretending to search for a new candle.
‘She never mentioned your name,’ Strangewayes continued, ‘but I can see that my suspicions were correct. You know of the play, and of the cipher it contains, I wager. It is vital in opposing the plot that now grips all of Nonsuch, yes?’
‘I know nothing of this.’ Nathaniel found the candle and proceeded to tease out the wick with intense concentration. ‘I am but a lowly assistant, not privy to the great affairs of England’s spies.’
The red-headed man grasped the end of the sack and tipped out a thick slab of papers. Nathaniel saw the familiar signature of Kit Marlowe on the stained and dog-eared frontispiece.
‘Here is the play. The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus.’ Strangewayes all but choked on the words as if he had uncovered the skull of a friend. ‘I sought it out to win Grace’s heart.’
Unable to contain himself, Nathaniel grasped the sheaf of papers and flicked through the pages to check it was the thing he had sought for so long. ‘You stole this from Master Cockayne’s chamber?’
‘What I discovered in there was ...’ The spy paused and swallowed. ‘It convinced me this was not a matter for Grace ... nor for any woman. I could not deliver the play to her for fear it would draw her further into this monstrous affair.’ Growing even paler as he reflected, he pressed the back of his hand to his mouth. ‘For days I thought it would drive me mad. I slipped into a dark pit and was sure I would never be able to claw my way out. And yet ... I did.’ Strangewayes sounded amazed that he had survived his ordeal.
‘What did you discover?’ Nathaniel asked, unnerved. Memories of pale faces burst briefly in his mind, and he struggled to recall something that remained frustratingly elusive.
‘I would not wish that knowledge upon you. A month ago, perhaps. But I am a different man now. There is no going back from what I saw.’ The spy collapsed on to a stool, his head in his hands. ‘Yet, the play is here. Can you break the cipher?’
‘I can. But you should know, Grace is stronger than you think. Stronger than most men, though she acts at times in a reckless manner. She will not forgive you if you keep this from her.’
Strangewayes looked up with a haunted expression. ‘Tell me, what should I do? I no longer know myself.’
Pulling up a stool, Nathaniel examined the play in the circle of light from the candle. ‘You do not need to tell her what you found in that chamber. But we owe it to her to reveal we have this prize.’
Reluctantly, the spy nodded. ‘Very well. Break the cipher. Then I will do whatever is necessary to oppose this plot. I have a stain upon my mind that I can only expunge with honest toil, and if it costs me my life, so be it.’
The young man studied the older, and felt a wave of compassion. Never would he have imagined seeing the arrogant, unpleasant spy brought so low. He was interrupted by a knock at the door.
‘Grace,’ Nathaniel said, answering the door to find his friend waiting there. ‘We were just talking about you.’
The young woman stepped in and looked from one man to the other. ‘I confess, I saw Master Strangewayes making his way here. How are you, Tobias? I have missed you.’
The red-headed man looked surprised by her comment, but forced a weak smile. ‘It is good to see you too, Grace.’
Nathaniel closed the door and ushered the woman to the table. ‘You will not believe this. We have the play. Finally. Master Strangewayes recovered it from Master Cockayne’s chamber.’
Grace gave a strange smile.
The door swung open. Nathaniel spun round. ‘We are uncovered.’
The spy leapt to his feet, drawing his rapier.
In stepped Grace, another Grace, her face flushed, her brow knitted. ‘Now we shall have a reckoning,’ she hissed.
Before the two men could move, the newly arrived Grace strode across the chamber and grabbed her counterpart, throwing her against the wall. Snatching a candlestick from the mantelpiece, the furious young woman swung it with force at the temple of her rival. The first Grace slumped to the rushes, unconscious.
Nathaniel and Strangewayes gaped. Before either of them could make sense of what they had witnessed, another figure slipped into the room and closed the door.
‘What a merry dance,’ Red Meg O’Shee said with a sly smile. ‘There have been fools aplenty in these fun and games, but now we start to peel away the masks.’
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
‘I WANT TO SEE WILL SWYFTE’S BLOOD WASHING ACROSS THE quayside and into the filthy Thames,’ Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, announced from his commanding view over the legal quays. Dressed in his favourite white and gold doublet, he stood on the roof of a carriage surrounded by fifteen spies, one hand on his rapier. ‘By this day’s end, the man who was once England’s greatest spy will be dead.’
The air was thick with the stink of pitch from the barrels along the quayside, but behind it floated the sharp smell of cloves and the sticky aroma of cinnamon from the spice ships. Shielding his eyes against the morning sun glinting off the glassy, slow-moving river, Devereux surveyed the forest of masts that obscured the north bank. Only the grey Kentish stone bulk of the Tower of London loomed above the long queue of ocean-going vessels waiting for a free berth. Almost a hundred stretched prow to stern, from the shadow of London Bridge past St Katharine’s, bobbing in the gentle breeze.
Though London was still subdued under the yoke of the plague, the legal quays were throbbing with the yells and shanties of seamen and dockworkers, the slap of sailcloth and the creak of rigging, and the hammer of wooden mallets where hasty repairs were being carried out. Customs men buzzed back and forth assessing the cargo that had been landed from the foreign ships.
Swyfte had chosen his arrival point well, the Earl thought with a nod. In that hive of busyness, the spy could lose himself in the throng of sea-dogs shuffling towards the crowded ale-houses on the river bank, or in the jam of merchants’ carts, or the groups of cat-calling doxies seeking trade.
Devereux smiled to himself. Swyfte thought himself clever, but this time he had met his match.
Leeman, a plump, red-faced spy with a missing eye, clambered on to the seat of the carriage, wheezing. ‘All the cut-throats are where they need to be. I told ’em, not a penny until they brought Swyfte to us. Dead. You are still certain of that, sir?’
‘We take no chances, Master Leeman. Swyfte has proved himself a cunning dog. You would not want his sword between your shoulder blades, no?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Then dead it is.’
The Earl brushed a stray lock of hair from his forehead, reflecting on the curious change that had come over his Queen. A passing thing, he was sure. He watched the barrels being unloaded along the wharf while the ship carrying Swyfte prepared to moor. Pedalling furiously, a man sat inside a large wheel contained within a cabin raised on poles. A rope ran from the wheel, over a pulley, along a jib and over another pulley, where it dangled to the deck of a carrack. There, three seamen attached a barrel to the rope with hooks.
Devereux allowed his gaze to wander to the carefully positioned carts and stacks of barrels along the wharf where Swyfte’s caravel was about to dock. One by one he picked out the rogues they had rounded up, all of them in place, pretending to be dockworkers in felt hats moving barrels, or smartly cloaked merchants overseeing the unloading of cargo, or bare-chested seamen resting after hard labour. Ten strong-armed men, each carrying a musket. No chances.
‘Master Leeman, give the order to get ready.’
With a nod, the one-eyed man lurched to the cobbles, hurrying among the flow of sweaty labourers to whisper to each agent in passing. Essex watched hands go to muskets hidden in the bales of straw or under sailcloth or timber.
The caravel came in. Straining, grizzled sea-dogs tied up the creaking ropes and the gangplank clattered on to the wharf. Essex studied the men moving around on deck. Where was Swyfte?
Mopping his brow, Leeman climbed back on to the carriage seat. ‘All set, sir. He will be the first to disembark?’
‘The arrangements have been made, Master Leeman.’
With nods and sly glances, the cut-throats abandoned their false tasks and picked up their muskets. Keeping their heads down, they gathered by twin rows of carts and other obstacles that flanked the gangplank and which would funnel their intended victim towards the pitch-filled barrels. The matchlocks were primed, flints ready to ignite the fuses.
Calm, patient, the Earl folded his hands behind his back, puffing out his chest. Leeman shaded his one good eye. ‘There,’ the ruddy-faced man announced, pointing towards the caravel.
In his black cape and cap, Will Swyfte stepped on to the gangplank and hurried down, eager to lose himself in the wharfside crowd.
The ten men stepped into the mouth of the funnel and levelled their weapons. Flints sparked. Devereux saw the flare of fear in the spy’s face. At the foot of the gangplank, Swyfte skidded to a halt, caught in the grip of the terrible sight confronting him, and then he turned, preparing to bound back to the ship.
Ten barrels flamed. The cracks rang across the legal quay, sending the gulls shrieking up into the blue sky. Flung up the gangplank by the force of the shots, the black-clad spy convulsed and then grew still, one arm hanging down towards the black water.
Essex hammered a fist into the palm of his hand in jubilation and leapt from the carriage, thrusting his way through the curious dockworkers and seamen. The cut-throats milled around the body, avoiding the crimson pool gathering at the foot of the gangplank.
‘Stand back,’ the Earl ordered. ‘Master Leeman.’
The one-eyed man lumbered forward and turned over Will’s body. Essex’s grin became fixed, slowly turning into a snarl of rage. ‘That is not Swyfte,’ he exclaimed. ‘It is our agent on board this vessel.’
The dead man was about the spy’s age, but his face was pockmarked and the cap hid a bald patch. Beneath the cloak, his hands were bound behind his back and he had a kerchief shoved into his mouth to prevent him calling out.
‘Find Swyfte!’ the Earl barked, whirling round. He felt a pang of fear. Though Will presented a dashing front to the world, Devereux knew the spy had no reservations about killing his enemies, whatever their status in life.
A gush of crimson splattered across the cobbles at the end of the funnel of carts and barrels. One of the rogues, a big-boned slab of meat, stumbled forward, clutching his throat, his life’s blood pumping between his fingers.
The moment he collapsed, the cut-throats and spies erupted in cries of panic. Rapiers and daggers flashed. The men circled, looking this way and that.
‘Double the pay for the man who brings me Swyfte’s head,’ Essex shouted. As the rogues overcame their fear and fanned out across the wharf, the Earl beckoned to Leeman, whispering, ‘Gather our men and retreat to the carriage. There is no point risking our own lives when we have these low men to do our business for us.’
As Leeman gathered the spies, Devereux edged along the carts, eyes darting around. Too many curious men clustered around for him to get any sight of the spy.
If Swyfte has sense, he will be long gone by now, he thought.
The flurry of a black cloak on a pile of barrels drew the Earl’s attention, gone by the time he turned. But a rope tied loosely in a noose fell around the neck of one of the stalking cut-throats. It was yanked tight and the poor soul flew up, feet kicking, before his breaking neck cracked like a musket shot across the wharf.
While Devereux’s gaze was on the corpse falling back to the cobbles, more blood gushed away to his left. One rogue dropped to his knees, hands pressed tightly against his stomach, a second grasped at his slit throat, and a third was already face down in a growing pool when Essex’s gaze fell upon him.
‘’Swounds,’ the Earl muttered in horrified awe. Throwing aside caution, he ran towards the carriage, the spies bolting all around him. By the time he reached the safety of the coach roof, three more bodies littered the wharf.
Across the quays, sailors, merchants, doxies and labourers crowded, cheering. Through the bobbing heads and raised arms, Devereux glimpsed a whirling shadow and the flash of steel. He felt a chill run through him. Another dying scream rang up to the screeching gulls.
Pale-faced, Leeman clambered on to the seat. The spies gathered all around, fearfully glancing at Essex in case he sent them into the fray. But the Earl was caught fast by the unfolding drama. Through a gap in the bodies, he saw Swyfte thrust his rapier through the heart of the final cut-throat, and then the spy leapt on to the back of a barrel-laden cart. He gave a flamboyant bow to his audience, his right arm thrown wide.
‘This is not some stage,’ Essex stammered, barely able to contain his outrage.
A roar went up from the assembled throng and hats were thrown high.
‘Why are they cheering him? He is a traitor. The word has gone out to all parts of our nation,’ the Earl gasped. ‘Master Leeman, Swyfte must not escape or the Queen will have all our heads. Find him.’
Torn between two potential deaths, the one-eyed spy lurched away with three chosen men, but he returned in a few moments with a gap-toothed boy wriggling in his grasp. Leeman gave the youth a rough shake and barked, ‘Tell your betters what you saw.’
Snarling like an animal, the youth wrenched himself free. ‘For a penny!’
‘Pay the boy, Leeman,’ Essex said through clenched lips.
Once the exchange had been made, the boy calmed and said, ‘Sir, the man in black stole a horse and rode away.’
Closing his eyes, Devereux threw a hand to his forehead. ‘To Nonsuch,’ he muttered.
‘No, sir,’ the boy said. ‘I heard ’im say to his mount, “Away, to Tilbury.”’
Essex stared at the youth, his thoughts racing. ‘Tilbury?’ The blood draining from his face, he turned to the one-eyed spy and gasped, ‘Bloody John Courtenay is an old friend of Swyfte’s and he is captain of the Tempest, the fastest, most heavily armed galleon in all of Christendom. The Tempest is moored at Tilbury. If Swyfte gets hold of it, he can wreak untold havoc all around the coast of England. Master Leeman, gather our men. We ride for the docks.’
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
‘I DID WHAT YOU TOLD ME, SIR,’ THE GAP-TOOTHED BOY SAID, holding out a filthy hand.
Will slipped a penny into the youth’s palm. ‘Money well spent. You did the country a great service, lad.’
‘The country? Bugger that. You are Will Swyfte, England’s greatest spy. My father read me all your stories from the pamphlets.’ The boy’s eyes were bright with awe as he clasped the penny and bolted into the dispersing crowd of seamen and merchants.
The thunder of hooves and the rattle of carriage wheels echoed across the wharf. The spy allowed himself a smile at the fulfilment of his plan before slipping away to find a horse. Essex and the bulk of his local spies would spend the next day or two at Tilbury trying to prevent a plot that would never happen. That would make Will’s monumental task at Nonsuch a little easier, with fewer swords to get in his way.
Within half an hour, the spy was merging into the flow of heavily laden merchants’ carts trailing out of the legal quays towards London Bridge or routes to the south. His mind drifted back across the long, exhausting journey. After he had climbed down the vertiginous walls of Notre Dame in the dying storm his sight finally returned with a euphoric rush on the banks of the Seine. Stealing a small boat, they made their way to the coast. Meg had remained at his side throughout, but never once did they mention their feelings, though he was sure it was on both their minds.
At Le Havre-de-Grâce, Meg joined Grace aboard Henri’s galleon and sailed first to make arrangements back in England. Will meanwhile sought out an English merchant, a tall, serious-faced man by the name of Carrington, whom Raleigh had identified as a ‘close associate’ of the School of Night. The spy was surprised how quickly he was provided with safe passage on a ship bound for England, and more, how easily Carrington had acceded to Will’s strange request – a ship-to-ship transfer midway across the Channel to thwart the plans of Cecil or Essex, who, Will knew, would have spies watching for him in France. They would be waiting for one caravel, while the spy arrived a little earlier on another.
And when Will had discovered one of the Earl’s spies aboard the first vessel, the crew had been quick to follow his directions, which had resulted in the poor soul’s death at the legal quays.
Yet for all the help he had received, he was troubled by the influence of the School of Night. Their power and reach were greater than he had ever imagined, and Will wondered if they had hidden aims, perhaps great ones, beyond what he had heard at Petworth. But that was a matter for another day.
Following the lane east along the river, he came to a thick bank of oak and elm, directly opposite the grey stone mass of the Tower, just visible through the masts of the ships queuing for the legal quays. Dismounting, he led his horse under the cool canopy of the trees to an apple orchard. Beyond it were meadows, pools and gardens and beyond those lay Bermondsey House, where the Queen had accepted hospitality on many an occasion. The grand hall had been constructed from the stones of the Benedictine abbey, knocked down under the orders of Old Henry, and it was in the abbey grounds he now stood.
As Will searched among the trees, a piercing whistle drew his attention. Carpenter beckoned him over to where a seductively smiling Meg waited with the grim-faced Earl, Launceston, and four horses. One other was there: Essex’s man. Strangewayes.
Meg saw Will’s face darken and she stepped forward to block the spy’s path. ‘Leave him be, my sweet,’ the Irish woman said. ‘Master Strangewayes has suffered enough in recent days. The lash of your tongue is one punishment too many.’
Eyes cast down, the red-headed man looked deflated.
‘You can be trusted?’ Will demanded. ‘Or will you go running back to your master at the first opportunity?’
‘I stand with you,’ Tobias said flatly.
Carpenter cast a sideways glance at their new companion and whispered, ‘He has had a brush with dark forces. Not the Unseelie Court, yet, but he will need to be inducted into our understanding of their ways soon, or his wits will be at risk.’
Will felt a note of compassion for Strangewayes. He had seen more than one spy destroyed by the realization that the world was a truly terrifying place. ‘Very well. We will not turn away a strong sword-arm. And how goes the search for our killer of spies?’
‘We have failed to find him,’ Launceston replied in his whispery voice. ‘The last name on the list was crossed out, despite our best efforts.’ Carpenter looked away, his cheeks flushed.
‘And yet the defences of England still stand,’ Will mused. ‘He searches for one more victim, then. An unknown.’ He looked around the group. ‘It may be one of us here who will fulfil his task, and unleash all hell upon this land. We must be on our guard.’
‘And now?’ Meg asked, already knowing the answer.
Will swung himself into the saddle and proclaimed, ‘And now to Nonsuch, and blood, and vengeance.’
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
‘PRAY DRAW NEAR, GENTLEFOLK, FOR THIS SPECTACLE BEGINS. Witness now, a tale told, in homely verse and music plain, of England now and England then, when knights in silver were compelled to brave the perils of the night.’ The player boomed his speech with a flamboyant sweep of his right arm. His mask was plain white save for two eyeholes topped with a mane of peacock feathers, his cloak, doublet and hose all crimson. Prowling in front of the painted backdrop of a moonlit grove, he levelled one pointed finger at the audience with an air of menace. ‘See now two faces, and two worlds, and ponder which is true. Sun or moon, or man or maid, the mirror or its reflection. For hidden in these paltry words lies the secret of your existence.’
Will stepped into the back of the Great Hall at Nonsuch Palace as the player’s introductory words died away. His hood pulled up to preserve a sense of mystery, he wore a full-face black mask with gold around the eyeholes and the grinning mouth. He kept one hand upon his rapier but the audience paid him no heed, entranced by the first haunting chords of the music played on viol, hautboy and spinet.
The spy had been informed that the Earl of Essex had funded this lavish masque, but it had been left to the poet Sir Edmund Spenser to devise its themes and story. He had named his work The Maske of Heart’s Desire, a title that Will found oddly unsettling.
Yet he could not deny that Sir Edmund had created the most breathtaking masque that any royal palace had ever seen. The painted scenery, which stretched from floor to high in the shadows of the vaulted roof, covered every wall of the Great Hall so that each member of the court felt part of the unfolding spectacle. The silvery moonlight limning the ancient oaks of the greenwood and the starry sky sweeping like blue velvet above was so delicately painted that it created the illusion that the entire masque was taking place outdoors. Adding to that perception, there were trees standing throughout the hall, with wooden trunks and branches and paper leaves.
Looking around, Will guessed all the members of the court and royal household were there, everyone wearing a mask that they had laboured over for days, adding pointed noses or painting them with humorous or frightening visages. So colourful were their fine cloaks, doublets, skirts and bodices that in the candlelight the hall appeared to shimmer as if filled with rubies, emeralds, sapphires, opals and amethyst.
The Queen watched the proceedings from her throne, a large ruff of white and silver framing her powdered face, her skirts and bodice ivory so that she resembled one of the snow-people the children made on Cheapside. Will thought how ill she looked, her eyes heavy-lidded, her head drooping down into her shoulders. He saw none of the vivacity that she had always displayed in public.
After a few moments, the spy was joined by Meg, Launceston, Carpenter and Strangewayes, all wearing the masks that Grace had prepared for them. They had changed in Will’s old chamber after Grace had distracted the guards so they could slip through the palace gates.
‘How many here are Scar-Crow Men, their masks hiding yet further masks behind which is nothing but death?’ the spy mused. ‘Their plot is in its final hours. They will be alert to any threat, and so we must be on our guard.’
‘Then let us not delay,’ Meg murmured. Shaped to resemble the face of a doll, her mask was scarlet, as were her hood and cloak and skirts so that she resembled a pool of blood, a threat and a promise.
A shorter man sidled up, unruly brown hair topping a mask that had been so quickly and crudely completed it was impossible to tell if it was the face of a cat or a dog. ‘Will? ’Tis you?’
‘Nat, you would recognize me if I were disguised as a tree in a forest.’ The spy felt a surge of warmth at seeing his young assistant again.
‘Perhaps it is the whiff of recklessness that I smell.’ The younger man paused and then added less caustically, ‘It is good to see you, Will. When you survive such odds, even I may start to believe you truly are England’s greatest spy.’
‘Steady, Nat. That came dangerously close to a compliment. But enough pleasantries. I have work for you – to keep Grace safe and away from any trouble that may ensue.’ Will phrased his words blandly, but behind them was a deep worry that Nathaniel and Grace might encounter the Unseelie Court. He had seen the wits of strong men shattered by meeting the supernatural foe. Though his memory had created a callus, Nat still bore the scars deep inside him of his own brush with the Fay, the spy knew, and those deadened thoughts must never be stirred into life. Grace was a different case. After her experiences under the Reims seminary, she appeared more resilient, although the spy was sure Fabian had shielded her from much of the Unseelie Court’s malign influence. Will could not bear to think of harm coming to either of them.
‘That is like herding cats,’ Nathaniel grumbled, ‘but there is a more pressing matter.’ He leaned in and whispered urgently, ‘I have spent these past hours deciphering Kit Marlowe’s hidden message in his work, as you showed me. You must read it now.’
‘Well done, Nat,’ the spy exclaimed. ‘You have done me proud. Hurry to your chamber. I will meet you there.’
Will could imagine Nathaniel grinning with pride behind his mask. But before the young assistant left, Launceston lunged forward to grab his wrist. The Earl, his ghastly features hidden behind a placid yellow mask with a black stripe down the centre, turned over the hand of the younger man and studied the palm and fingers.
‘What is it, Robert?’ Will asked.
‘A notion,’ the Earl muttered. ‘I must think.’
Unsettled, Nathaniel dragged his hand free and hurried away. Carpenter, who wore a sapphire mask with black circles around the eyes, gave a questioning glance at his companion. Launceston ignored the gaze.
‘We all have a part to play here,’ Will said, looking around the group. ‘John, Robert ... you have been diligent in your pursuit of the one who murders our associates. I believe he will be here, somewhere, searching for his final victim. Do what you can to find him, but take care lest you become the sacrificial lamb that brings England’s defences down.’
Nodding, the Earl and the scar-faced man melted into the audience.
The black-masked spy leaned into Meg and Strangewayes and whispered, ‘Should we fail in our tasks here, the Unseelie Court will sweep in like a storm. There will be hell upon this earth in the blink of an eye. We must be prepared to fight to the last.’
‘I am ready,’ Tobias muttered. ‘If I die this day, so be it. No great loss.’ His mask was a deep forest green with gold tracings of leaves all over it.
‘You have suffered a blow, my friend,’ Will said. ‘You have been offered a perspective on life that no man should have if he wishes to sleep peacefully again. But I can see you have a resilience that matches your arrogance, and so is great indeed. These feelings will pass and you will be strong again.’
Strangewayes seemed surprisingly touched by these words.
‘Our job is to find the Corpus-Scythe that will destroy the Scar-Crow Men. It will be in the hands of our hated Enemy, and I feel that at this late stage in their plot they will be closer than we dare imagine,’ Will continued. ‘While the last of the defences still hold by a thread, they will not be able to walk freely among us, or draw near to our Queen. Yet they have found a nest somewhere at hand where they make ready. It is my hope that Kit Marlowe’s cipher may guide us to it.’
The haunting music of the introductory passage transformed into an exuberant swirl of fiddle and pipe. Laughing, excited, the audience lined up along both sides of the Great Hall, dividing into couples ready to dance the pavane.
‘We will begin our search,’ Meg said to Will, holding out her hand for the spy to kiss. With her emotions hidden behind her red mask, the spy found the nod of her head enigmatic. ‘Come, Master Strangewayes,’ she said, waving one finger at the emerald-masked man. ‘You have the look of the Irish about you. Let us see if you have the heart.’
CHAPTER SEVENTY
BOUNDING UP THE ECHOING STONE STEPS TOWARDS NATHANIEL’S chamber, Will drew to a sharp halt at the first window. Sparks of red and gold light glimmered through the diamond panes. The spy felt uneasy as he undid the latch and threw the window open to the warm, fragrant evening.
Barely a sliver of red sun lit the horizon and the shadows now reached across the still hunting grounds which surrounded Nonsuch Palace. In the black line of trees beyond the grassland, bursts of fire came and went. No longer cowed by England’s fierce resistance, the Unseelie Court waited. Leaning out, Will followed the trail of flickering lights in the growing gloom. More than he had ever seen before, they reached around the palace on both sides. An army was there, waiting to sweep in once the final defence fell.
Running on, Will arrived at his assistant’s door and knocked lightly before pushing his way in. Caught in the light of the candle on the trestle, Grace stood with her back to Nathaniel, her arms folded, her chin stuck out defiantly. She glared at the spy. ‘You told Nat to look after me?’
‘I did.’
‘I will not be kept locked up like a child because you fear I will knock my elbows or my knees.’
‘It is your neck I am concerned about.’ Will tried to dampen the annoyed frustration he felt. He had little patience for his friend’s temper at this time. ‘You will do as you are told, Grace. When it comes to saving your life, I will act as I see fit and I will brook no arguments from you.’
The woman turned on him, her small hands bunching into little fists of rage. ‘How much have you kept from me these long years?’
Will felt a cold, hard stone form in his chest. Was this the moment he had long feared? For years he had wrestled with the dilemma of how to keep Grace and Nathaniel close so that he might protect them from the threat of the Unseelie Court, yet how to shield them from the knowledge of the same when the supernatural forces swirled around him like a storm? His two friends deserved to live normal lives, but he had always known that sooner or later the pressures would tear apart his carefully constructed façade. ‘This is not the time,’ he said flatly.
‘I cannot believe that mewling, laughing thing that we have locked away and fed on scraps was accepted as Grace,’ Nathaniel muttered. Will could see the same suspicion in his young assistant’s eyes that Grace took no pains to hide. They both felt betrayed. ‘’Tis the Devil’s work.’
‘There are devils and there are devils, Nat,’ the woman said. ‘In Reims, I saw and heard terrible things, but the ones who held me ... they are as shadows in my mind.’
With concern, Will glanced at his assistant, whose features darkened as he tried to recall old fears mercifully locked in his mind.
‘Though I can barely recall my captors, you knew them,’ Grace continued, jabbing a finger towards Will. ‘You have been keeping secrets from both of us, thinking that they would frighten us out of our wits. And, I would wager, secrets that involve the disappearance of my sister Jenny.’ Will was stung by what he saw in her cold eyes.
‘I am a spy. It is my business to keep secrets. There are many things that I do not tell either of you. And that is how it will remain.’
‘Very well then. So you set yourself against me, after all this time.’ The woman turned her back and marched into the shadows in the corner of the chamber. ‘I am not a child any more. It is not for you to decide what is right for me. From this moment on, I will do all in my power to find out the truths that you know, and I will accept the consequences of my actions, for good or ill.’
Putting aside his worry, Will turned to his assistant. ‘Nat, I need to see your good works with Kit’s cipher. Time is short, and this entire conversation may be moot before the night is out. But you should both be careful what you wish for.’
Nodding in understanding, Nathaniel gave a placatory smile and beckoned Will to the trestle where the dog-eared play sat at the edge of the candlelight. There was a quill and a pot of ink, and a single sheaf marked with the assistant’s precise handwriting. The black ink had splashed across the table and Nathaniel plucked a rag to wipe it up before attempting to clean his stained fingers.
Pulling up a stool, the spy studied what Nathaniel had written.
‘There is one last section I have not yet deciphered,’ the young man said. ‘But I will do that forthwith.’ He leaned over his master’s shoulder and added, ‘I know not what help it will be. It makes no sense to me.’
The spy read aloud: ‘As defences fall, the Enemy makes a nest in plain sight of the Queen. Take heed. They hide in mirrors. Four candles will mark the way, at the rose and cardinal, a full fathom deep. Beware.’
The magnitude of Marlowe’s message dawned on Will, and he sat back and repeated in an awed whisper, ‘They hide in mirrors.’
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
‘WHAT DO YOU KNOW? DO NOT KEEP IT TO YOURSELF, DAMN YOU,’ the sapphire-masked Carpenter growled to Launceston as they eased through the shadows on the edges of the Great Hall. The audience’s attention was gripped by a beautiful blonde-haired young woman sleeping on a bed of red roses and blue forget-me-nots while masked children dressed as elves gambolled around her. Among the gnarled trees, a tall man in a black cape and a white beak-nosed mask watched the sleeping maiden with an air of menace. Low, tremulous notes from a pipe-player added to the scene’s unsettling feel.
‘When I have something to say, I will say it,’ the Earl replied, thoughtfully looking up at the staring eye of a pale moon constructed out of candles, mirrors and white gauze.
‘Over these past years I have learned all your deep currents. You saw something on Swyfte’s man. What was it?’
‘In good time. These thoughts must settle on me like the morning dew on the meadows. Only then will I know if there is any value to them.’
Riddled with impatience, Carpenter cursed under his breath.
The Earl looked across the sea of bizarre masks until his gaze fell upon the short, hunchbacked figure of Cecil standing alone, familiar even in disguise. His black robes were topped by the face of a grinning ape.
‘Where is Sinclair?’ the sallow-faced spy mused.
‘That slab of beef? Probably roughing up some poor soul for a handful of pennies.’
Pausing beneath an unfurled banner of silver stars against a midnight-blue background, Launceston slowly searched the audience.
Carpenter snorted derisively. ‘You are a strange little man. Those beady eyes, always watching, watching, worming your way inside heads to chew on brains.’
The Earl gently touched the forehead of his yellow mask. ‘Because all men are governed by those deep currents you claim to see in me. Some are beyond my understanding, however much I strive to know them. Young lovers. The fathers and mothers of children. The men I understand see little value in compassion. They do not comprehend love, or faith, or the softer emotions. They are hollowed out. Or mares, ridden by devils.’
Carpenter watched the Irish woman and that red-headed clot-pole Strangewayes slip out of the Great Hall, having completed one circuit. Off to search the deserted palace, he presumed. When he noticed his companion was still gazing intently around the hall, he snapped, ‘What are you looking for?’
‘Patience, thou flap-mouthed ninny. Let us consider what we have learned. The killer of spies is a man who perceives his victims as less than human, for who could commit such atrocities if the victims were seen as father, brother, son?’
Carpenter felt unsettled by his companion’s perception. He knew the mind of the butcher too well. ‘Yes, a God-fearing Catholic perhaps, who has let his beliefs drive reason from his mind. Who believes he is doing God’s work.’
‘Hence the angel’s wings.’ Through the eyeholes, Launceston’s eyes flashed. ‘A Catholic who has been forced to deny his faith. Who lives a secret life.’
‘Many do.’
The yellow-masked spy continued to look purposefully around the entranced audience. Searching for someone in particular, the scarred man thought. ‘In the wrong man, these things build, like barrels filled with still-fermenting beer that blows the lids right off. Why, to contain such heartfelt beliefs can drive a man mad. And where, in all of England, would such a man most have to hide his beliefs?’
‘Here, in the heart of government.’
Launceston nodded. ‘Amid the very persecutors of his faith. Such a person would show the world the visage he saw on those he hated.’
‘A devil’s mask.’
‘A man who pretends to be a devil, but thinks himself an angel.’
The play paused for the moment with the maiden awoken by her menacing suitor, the elves scattering in fear. With the excitement deferred, the musicians teased the members of the court with another lively dance. The fiddles began, the hautboy rang out.
‘But who would be capable of such things?’ the scar-faced man asked.
‘Who, indeed?’
While the Earl studied the lines of men and women forming on both sides of the hall, Carpenter noticed a woman in pale yellow skirts and bodice waving from the doorway leading out of the Great Hall. Even in her mask and in the half-light, he recognized his love, Alice Dalingridge. She had clearly seen through his disguise too. Yet something in her frantic waving alarmed him. The sapphire-masked spy thrust his way through the throng. When he reached the door, he was troubled to discover Alice was no longer there.
Stepping outside the hall, he heard the scuffle of footsteps in the stillness ahead. He ran through the antechamber and up the four steps into the long corridor. Anxious, he noticed all the candles had been snuffed out. At the far end of the corridor, the scarred man glimpsed a ghost, a whirl of pale yellow skirts, gone in an instant.
‘Alice?’ Carpenter called. His voice rustled along the walls and disappeared into the dark.
He felt his skin prickle with apprehension.
His chest tightening, the scarred man raced along the inky corridor to where he had seen the pale form. He skidded to a halt next to the steps down to the kitchens, smelling the spicy aromas of that evening’s pork.
Grasping a candle in its iron holder, Carpenter lit it with his flint. Apprehensively, he watched the flame dance as he held it in front of the draughts rising up from below. He could hear no sound. Drawing his rapier, he descended.
He wanted to call Alice’s name, but resisted. Better to go stealthily, he thought. Refusing to think about what might be ahead, he settled into his five senses, the grip of cold steel in his hand, the echoes of his footsteps, the dancing shadows, the rising scents of baked bread and strawberry wine, and the taste ... the iron taste of fear in his mouth. But not for himself.
In the caverns of his mind, her name rang out: Alice ... Alice ... and the echoes of promises made in the dark.
Waves of heat from the crackling ovens washed up the stairs. With sweat beading his brow, the spy eased into the echoing kitchens, looking all around. Shadows drifted across the brick-vaulted ceiling. A row of trestles ran down the middle of the chamber, still streaked where they had been wiped down by the kitchen workers after the meal. Sacks of flour lined one wall. Fragrant cured hams hung from hooks overhead. One swung gently from side to side.
At first the spy refused to accept what his eyes told him. ‘Let her go,’ he whispered. Tossing the candle to one side, he tore off his blue mask and set it on the end of the trestle.
In front of the ovens, the black-cloaked man in the devil mask held Alice with one arm around her waist, the other holding a dagger to her neck. His angel wings cast a grotesque shadow on the orange bricks behind him. Alice’s mask had fallen away, and she stared at the spy with wide, terrified eyes.
‘It is me you want,’ Carpenter urged. ‘You have used Alice to draw me out, and now you have me. Set her free so you can complete your vile business and loose all hell upon this place.’
‘No, John!’ the woman cried, tears burning her cheeks.
His head spinning from fear for his love, the spy forced himself to remain calm. Making a show of it, he sheathed his rapier, but inside his cloak his left hand closed on his dagger unseen. ‘See, I am unarmed,’ he said. ‘Set her free.’
Carpenter’s eyes locked intently on Alice’s.
Keeping the dagger pricking the woman’s neck, the devil-masked man unfurled his other arm and beckoned for the spy to step forward. With a shudder, Carpenter saw a droplet of blood appear on his love’s pale skin.
The scar-faced man stepped forward, presenting his chest for the blade. ‘One final time: set her free now, or so help me I will carve you like those hams above.’
‘John, go now,’ Alice cried. ‘If you die, I do not want to live.’
‘Hush. Your life has more value than mine.’ Carpenter fixed his gaze on the slits in the devil mask. The eyes within were tinged with madness.
Sobbing, Alice was barely able to catch her breath.
For one long moment, two pairs of eyes were locked in concert. Then, fluidly, the devil-masked man hurled the woman aside, thrusting his dagger towards the spy’s chest.
Alice screamed.
Lurching away, Carpenter sought to bring his own blade out from beneath his cloak, but he was an instant too slow. He sensed death’s cold breath on his neck.
And then the spy felt Alice’s hands thrust him aside.
Stumbling to one knee, Carpenter jerked his head up to witness the devil-masked man’s blade plunge into Alice’s heart. The black stain spread too fast across her pale yellow dress. For one moment that seemed eternal, Carpenter was locked in hell.
Alice had given her life for his.
His love’s startled eyes fell on the spy, and a final, sad smile sprang to her lips. As she slipped to the floor, pulling the dagger from the hands of her murderer, the spy caught her and cradled her in his arms. Tears seared his eyes.
Seeing his advantage was gone, the devil-masked man ran, the crack of his footsteps echoing off the brick walls.
In the silence that followed, Carpenter thought the world had tumbled into darkness. His heart felt like it was going to burst. Tears burning his cheeks, he held Alice while the last of her life drifted away and then his body was racked with sobs.
After a while his wits returned and he looked up to see Launceston watching him with an unsettlingly placid expression. The Earl held his mask in his left hand and his head was half-cocked, as if he was trying to grasp something beyond his comprehension.
‘You can never understand!’ Carpenter raged. ‘You feel nothing! And, God help me, I wish I was like you!’
Screwing his eyes tight shut, Carpenter allowed his head to drop to his chest, so broken he was sure he would never heal again.
And when he looked up, Launceston was gone.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
HOLDING ALOFT ONE LIT CANDLE, WILL SLIPPED INTO THE DARKENED throne room, closing the door quietly behind him. Shadows flew away from the dancing flame. His footsteps echoing in the large, deserted space, he strode across the wooden floor towards the grand high-backed chair topped by gilt curlicues. The spy turned to his right and was confronted by a threatening figure, its shadowed features distorted by a harsh, glimmering light. For a moment, he stared back at his reflection in the large, silver-framed mirror. Gooseflesh prickled his arms.
What watched there, hidden behind the faces of all who looked into the glass?
Faint strains of lyrical music drifted up from the masque. The sound of laughter. A cheer of excitement. Applause. But in the spy’s head, the drum beat relentlessly.
At the mirror, Will turned to face the darkened room and took six measured paces. He pictured in his mind’s eye a compass rose lying at his toe and around it an invisible circle. Orienting himself, he imagined the north road running from the palace gates and set down the lit candle. The flame flickered sharply although there was no breeze, and from one corner he thought he heard a rustle as though of a giant serpent uncoiling.
The black-masked man collected three more candles and placed them at the remaining cardinal points around his imaginary circle. He lit the one to the south with his flint. When the chamber grew a shade colder, the spy recalled the chill in Griffin Devereux’s cell beneath Bedlam.
The candle to the east flickered into life. Will’s throat became dry with apprehension.
Hesitating for only a moment, he lit the final candle, to the west, where the dead go. All four flames bent away from the mirror and then returned to upright. His breath clouded.
Will felt a knot form in his stomach. Turning to the looking glass, he studied his brooding reflection and the four points of light at his feet. Despite the unsettling atmosphere that had developed in the room, he couldn’t see that anything had changed.
‘Go on,’ Mephistophilis urged in the spy’s ear, the first time his private devil had spoken to him since its near-lethal ploy in Paris had failed. It was a sign, Will knew, that danger was close.
‘Quiet, now,’ he said firmly. At the mirror, he levelled his left hand, slowly moving it forward until the tips of his fingers brushed the surface ... and then continued on. The cool glass flowed around his hand like quicksilver. Shocked, he yanked his arm back.
Mephistophilis gave a low, throaty laugh.
Drawing his rapier, Will stepped forward, passing through the looking glass with a sensation that felt like light summer rain. He found himself in the same empty throne room, but here the candles on the floor were extinguished and the only light came from the silvery rays of the moon breaking through the window.
Where was he?
The spy felt oddly disorientated; the proportions in the chamber seemed slightly wrong, the lines of the walls, floor and ceiling distorted, but not enough for him to find it possible to pinpoint exactly where the sensation originated.
In the cool chamber, the sharp scent of limes hung in the air. Although Will could hear disquieting pipe and fiddle music fading in and out, the mirror-palace seemed still.
Opening the door a crack, the spy listened until he was convinced no one waited in the corridor beyond, and then he slipped out. No candles were lit, but as he moved along the corridor he found he could see by the light of the brightest moon he had ever experienced.
The Enemy, so close all this time and yet we never knew it.
When Dee’s defences began to crumble, the Unseelie Court must have moved into their nest, as Marlowe had put it, still unable to storm through the chambers of Nonsuch but close enough to extract the people they needed to replace – like Grace – and to set their Scar-Crow Men in motion.
Will’s skin crept at how the mirror-Nonsuch resembled the real palace in almost every aspect: but he saw no sign of life, no light, no warmth. He felt like he was looking at a stone-and-timber version of the Scar-Crow Men, an illusion of the human world but with something terrible lurking behind the façade.
The spy glided down the stone steps towards the ground floor. Somewhere in that dark palace the Corpus-Scythe was being held, he was sure, close enough to the Scar-Crow Men to be used if it were needed.
Where the steps emptied on to the long corridor, he spied a grey-cloaked, silver-haired figure marching towards the Great Hall. Will followed at a distance. When the hall door opened, he glimpsed a silent crowd of the Unseelie Court facing the far wall where the masque was being performed in the real Nonsuch.
What would happen if the devil-masked killer was allowed to make his final sacrifice? Will saw how the Fay army would sweep across the hunting grounds to storm Nonsuch, while the High Family stepped through the mirror to take control of England, with their Scar-Crows as puppets. The horrors that would follow seared through his mind.
His breath hard in his chest, the spy peered into the room. In eerie silence, almost a hundred and fifty members of the Unseelie Court stood mesmerized before a tall, slender male of such imposing presence that he could only be a member of the High Family, Will guessed. The Fay’s hair was silver-streaked with black along the centre, his expression fierce. As he communicated soundlessly, the Fay traced patterns in the air with elegant movements of his hand. A small creature resembling a hairless ape crawled around his body, its eyes gleaming with a golden light.
Another hooded figure stood just behind the silver-haired leader, a woman. As Will watched, the Fay waved a hand towards her and she removed her hood. It was his Queen, Elizabeth, the same powdered face, the same red wig, but filled with more vibrancy than the monarch he had seen at the masque in the real Nonsuch. A Scar-Crow, he thought. The final piece in their plan. The Unseelie Court would replace the real Elizabeth with this simulacrum and rule unquestioned, with complete obedience from the entire population.
Straining, Will peered around the door to see more of the hall. One sound, one too-sudden movement, and he knew he would be torn apart in the blink of an eye.
From the rear wall of the vast chamber to the first line of Fay was a space of about five men lying head to toe, and in it, on a dais like the font in a church, was the artefact of human bone topped with a skull glowing with a faint green light. The Corpus-Scythe.
Will saw his great opportunity, but to move so close to the Enemy and hope not to be seen was a madness that would have done his former Bedlam mates proud.
His breath tight in his chest, he slipped into the gloomy Great Hall and dropped to a crouch, balancing on the tips of his fingers and toes. He cast one eye towards the ranks of the Unseelie Court.
At the far end of the hall, the silver-haired leader held the attention of the Fay. Shrouded in his black cloak, Will crept forward, every movement slow and precise.
Time seemed to stop. The spy felt his hated Enemy so close that he could almost reach out and touch them. One glance back, one slight turn of the head and he would be seen. Barely breathing, Will’s muscles burned with the effort of control.
When he reached the dais, he kneeled, one hand on each side of the Corpus-Scythe. The door seemed a world away.
As the spy raised himself up a little more to grasp his prize, a series of high-pitched shrieks and squeals ripped through the silence. Will’s heart thundered.
At the far end of the hall, the hairless ape-creature was bounding up and down on the shoulder of its master, waving its arms in his direction. Its cries of alarm rang up to the rafters.
As one, the Unseelie Court turned.
Will was overwhelmed by row upon row of searing eyes and fierce, cadaverous faces.
As one, the Unseelie Court moved.
Grabbing the Corpus-Scythe, the spy bounded towards the door in a billow of black cloak. He threw the door open with a resounding crash and raced into the corridor, his own footsteps drowned out by the thunder of an army of boots at his back.
Flashing one glance behind him, Will saw the Fay only a hand’s-breadth away from his cloak, their eyes filled with hatred, their mouths snarling with fury, their silence only making them more terrifying.
To his left, the shadowy entrance to the narrow stairs loomed up in the moonlight. Will threw himself into the opening, taking the steps two at a time. The clatter of hundreds of boots rang off the walls behind him. His Enemies were closing.
Halfway up the steps, the spy tucked the Corpus-Scythe under his left arm and drew his rapier, whirling and thrusting in one movement. The tip of his blade drove into the neck of the nearest Fay. Amid a spurt of crimson, the foe grasped the wound and pitched backwards into his fellows. Will followed through with a stroke up and to his left, ripping open the face of another Enemy, and then he thrust once more into the heart of a third.
As the wounded and dying Fay fell, they blocked the steps and slowed the pursuit of the Court’s army. Spinning, the spy bounded up the remaining steps. At the corridor, he heard his Enemies drawing nearer again. Blood thundered through his head. Grimly determined, he ran as fast as his feet would carry him, crashing through the door into the throne room.
He was met by a terrible sight. Reflected in the great mirror, a swarm of white-faced, corpse-like things raced, grasping hands outstretched, mere inches from his back. He could almost feel their icy breath upon his neck.
Sprinting the final distance, Will leapt directly at the mirror. Those bony fingers tore the air a hair’s-breadth from his cloak. Passing through the shimmering reflection, he landed in the real throne room. In one fluid movement, he slid the Corpus-Scythe along the boards, upending and extinguishing two of the candles.
Turning, the spy slammed the hilt of his rapier into the mirror. The glass shattered, a thousand shards raining down to the floor. Will threw himself backwards, his eyes locked on the empty frame, still not believing.
After a moment, his rapid breathing began to subside. He was safe, for now. But there was no time to waste.
Snatching up the Corpus-Scythe, Will ran to the window and flung it open on to the warm late August night. The flickering fires of the Unseelie Court army were drawing ever closer.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
‘SEAL THE DOORS. NOW,’ LAUNCESTON BARKED ACROSS THE ECHOING entrance hall. From the hidden pocket in his cloak, he pulled the pouches of herbs and salt that all Cecil’s spies carried and tossed them to Meg and Strangewayes. ‘Pour the concoction along the thresholds of doors and windows, anywhere where it is possible to gain access to the palace.’
‘This mixture will hold them only for a short time. The Enemy is determined. They will find a way inside.’ The Irish woman removed her mask and poured the carefully prepared grains along the foot of the door.
‘What is out there?’ Tobias stammered. ‘I ... I saw lights, fires in the trees ...’
‘If we live through this night you will learn everything you need to know. And if we do not live, the answer will be made plain to you in the most terrible way imaginable. Now, to work.’ As the sallow-faced Earl turned to leave, a thunderous hammering boomed at the door.
The red-headed woman leapt back in shock. Peering through the leaded window to the circle of torchlight around the entrance, her fearful expression turned to one of bemusement. Swinging open the door, Meg called, ‘Quickly. The Enemy draws near.’
‘Do you think I am blind?’ Dr Dee roared as he strode inside. Raleigh followed, and two men Launceston didn’t recognize. ‘We rode through hell to be here. Only my skill and experience enabled us to break through the Enemy’s ranks,’ the alchemist bragged, casting a lascivious glance at the Irish woman. She gave a flirtatious smile in return. ‘And you,’ the magician added, ‘are forgiven.’
Meg curtsied.
‘Why are you here?’ the Earl demanded.
‘Because you need me now more than ever,’ Dee snapped, his searing gaze a stark contrast to the hollow eyes of the dead creatures stitched into his cloak. ‘It was my intention to see you all fester in your own juices, until my associates pointed out that I would be festering alongside ye.’
‘Then do whatever you must, doctor,’ Launceston urged. ‘Begin the work of rebuilding your defences. I have a more pressing matter to attend to.’
‘What can be more pressing?’ the alchemist sneered.
‘Blood.’
The Earl strode away without giving the new arrivals a second glance. His thoughts were like the pristine winter snows, and a bitter wind blew through the ringing vaults of his mind. Returning to the Great Hall, he surveyed the members of the court and the palace workers, all entranced by the poetry of the masque. Launceston saw only meat upon bone.
At the front of the hall, in the centre of the twilit grove, a sturdy man in a peasant’s shabby jerkin was professing his love to the maiden on the bed of scarlet roses and blue forget-me-nots. Their words were an unknown language, their movements like the empty lumbering of the beasts in the field.
Making one rapid circuit of the hall, the ghastly-faced man saw no sign of the devil-masked killer, in either of his identities. The Earl knew the truth now. He understood the mind of his opponent, and the placid detachment it took to dismantle bodies, and the precision and the attention to detail. Launceston saw as the killer saw, and vice versa. They were of a kind. It was a simple enough observation, one that he could have made at any time in his frozen existence, and yet, in the clean, white world inside his head, he felt a troubling disturbance, a blemish, perhaps, or a crack.
As surely as the Earl put one foot in front of the other, events fell into place before him. There was only one path, one outcome.
Striding from the Great Hall, the pale spy ghosted through the gloomy, still palace to the chambers that had been set apart for Cecil and his work as secretary. The first room he tried was deserted. Without knocking, he removed his yellow mask and marched into the secretary’s own chamber.
His head in his hands as if he was afflicted by a terrible pain, the short, hunchbacked man stood at the window, looking out at the approaching fires. His crumpled face riven with sadness, the black-robed Robert Rowland stood by the cold, empty hearth watching his master. The record-keeper, his hands clasped behind his back, resembled a mourner at a funeral.
‘Leave us,’ Launceston said calmly, pointing his dagger.
Cecil whirled and looked down the length of cold steel in fury. ‘What is the meaning of entering my chamber unannounced?’
‘Urgency requires that convention is discarded. I am here to save one life and end another.’ The Earl’s empty, unblinking stare held the secretary’s gaze for a long moment, until, uncomfortable, the Queen’s Little Elf looked away.
‘I am your master. Leave now,’ Cecil demanded.
‘I have been cut adrift from the rules and regulations of the life I knew. At this moment, in this place, I answer to no man.’
‘To God, then?’ Rowland interjected, peering into the Earl’s face without understanding.
Launceston shook his head slowly.
‘You cannot make demands in my own chamber,’ the secretary insisted.
‘Then let us all stay together.’ The Earl looked from one man to the other. ‘Though know that you must live with the consequences of what you witness here. It will be inscribed in hellfire in the depths of your mind for all time.’
A shudder ran through the secretary. ‘You work for me no longer. You have always been a dangerous proposition, Launceston, but now you have crossed this line you have become a liability. And you must suffer the consequences.’
The Earl tested the tip of his dagger with his finger. A droplet of blood emerged and he studied it curiously for a moment. ‘So be it. There is a greater calling in life,’ he said, distracted. ‘There is a vast space within me that you have all filled with the minutiae of your lives. I do not claim to know or understand you. But now I hear a single voice ringing through that endless cavern. It is a new experience, and a troubling one, and I wonder if this is what it is like to be you.’ The sallow spy hummed for a moment, looking at the speck of blood this way and that. ‘To pass each day in the pain of emotion? How terrible that must be. I understand your actions a little now, and I fear for myself. For the first time in my cold life.’