License to Quill (40 page)

*   *   *

“FIE! FIE! FIE!” Penny screamed as she stabbed the naked warrior under her with her dagger.

“I think that's the last of them,” sighed W, who was wielding two blood-covered broadswords. The spymaster's headquarters was littered with the bodies of countless Celtic fighters who valued fear more than armor. Fortunately, they found none of the former and plenty of the latter in Walsingham Mansion. The spymaster was wearing a steel breastplate under his doublet, and Penny's steel-boned corset had saved her life more than once during the melee. “I should go to the Tower. Will you be all right if I leave you?”

Penny's dagger broke in her attacker's eye socket. “I won't be bothered,” she said. She then took the fallen warrior's larger blade as a replacement.

Satisfied, the spymaster retreated to his arsenal for everything he needed to stroll down the road.

W emerged from his mansion carrying two eight-chambered matchlock revolvers that his predecessor Sir Francis Walsingham had smuggled out of the Neatherlands. He also wore two leather straps down his shirt like suspenders, each one containing six replacement revolvers. After looking over the mess that the cunning folk had made of his beloved Seething Lane, the spymaster put one revolver under his arm for a far more powerful weapon. He picked a wooden flute out of his pocket and blew it.

Several warriors heard him and turned in his direction.

No effect.

Frustrated, Walsingham blew the whistle again, this time while looking at the … clouded skies, he realized.

“Damn it,” he cursed. The only raven he summoned fell through the smog as lifelessly as a stone.

Bitter at the cunning folk for thwarting the Double-O's greatest weapon, the spymaster had to resort to his firearms as cunning warriors came screaming at him.

*   *   *

“Master Bacon! Master Bac—!” The Dark Lady's shouts were interrupted by retching.

“Mistress Bianca!” Bacon gasped. “What are you doing here? You look—”

“Shut it!” she coughed. “Our enemies are using bonfires to keep the ravens away. We need to destroy the fires!”

His face twisted. “You are sure of this?”

“Yes!” she hacked. “I saw everything from the top of the Tower.”

Shocked, the thinker looked at the clouds above him while Bianca covered her mouth with her bloodstained handkerchief. “There is nothing natural about this,” Bacon realized. “These are no storm clouds. It's a farce!”

“Bacon!” She struggled, seizing him. “Destroy the fires! Now!”

The Dark Lady sent Bacon running to the Tower stables. She then collapsed to the ground and, with a steady hand, took out her surgeon's knife.

*   *   *

“Take me to the Tower!”

“Master,” laughed the waterman, “the city is under siege!”

“I know. But London Bridge is broken. I cannot cross it.” Shakespeare threw a sack containing more than a thousand pennies into the boatman's lap. “Take me to Traitors' Gate!”

*   *   *

“Please tell me I'm riding that.”

“You are! It needs two horses.”

The squire strapped Marlowe's Turcoman and its brother into the enormous scythed chariot everyone at the Double-O thought would never see action. It was modeled after a design from Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks that Roberto di Ridolfi had leaked to the English government years before. Now in its full form and perfected as a maniacal machine, the chariot had four rotating blades on its front end large enough to cut a person in half, scythes on each of its wheels, and a final, spinning blade for any unfortunate man or horse trying to mount the monster.

The poet stepped into his horse's saddle. “Good morrow, Aston!” he bade its brother.

The silver stallion snorted.

Suddenly, Sir Francis Bacon burst into the stables. “Is the chariot ready?”

“Yes, Master Bacon.”

“Good. Assemble all the best horsemen in the Tower, yourself included. You will be following Marlowe into the fighting.”

“Aye, Master.”

“Also, bring out some gunpowder. Small barrels. The kind that can be carried and thrown.”

*   *   *

Outside the Tower's walls, Thomas Walsingham was in trouble. Although he walked into this fight with more than one hundred bullets, the cunning warriors outnumbered him by far greater numbers. He wanted to blow his flute again, but he did not want to risk it. He needed the skies to clear before summoning Bacon's ravens.

Also, he needed someone to let him through the Tower gates, and fast. A hideous, screaming figure had just chased him through the remains of Middle Tower, and Walsingham's last bullet bounced harmlessly off the villain's metal jaw.

“Open the goddamned gate!” Walsingham shouted as the Hobgoblin came closer.

*   *   *

“Open the gates!” Bacon ordered.

*   *   *

“Open the bloody gate!” Shakespeare pleaded.

*   *   *

The chariot's blades were whirling.
“Crepi il lupo!”
Marlowe cackled with delight.

 

Chapter L

The Passion of Christopher Marlowe

Marlowe spurred his mount, driving both horses out of the Tower. The cunning warriors could only watch in horror as Leonardo's war machine spun toward them.

Walsingham took one look at the scythed chariot and immediately dove out of the way.

The Hobgoblin was the first villain to breach the fortress. Marlowe mowed him down like wheat.

The poet plowed a crimson path of destruction from Byward Tower all the way to St. Paul's Cathedral while the Tower's squires followed him with their payloads: the gunpowder barrels Guy Fawkes had planned to destroy Parliament with. The riders fanned out and rolled their weapons into the bonfires. The barrels exploded, destroying the pyres in fierce blasts that robbed the cunning folk of their smokescreen.

The night skies filled with white smoke, but then started to clear.

With all the bonfires around the Tower of London quelled, the riders then charged their horses toward the waves of rats scurrying through the city. The horsemen emptied their barrels on top of them and then dropped torches.

The deadly vermin were incinerated while the stunned city watched and cheered.

Unfortunately, Marlowe's chariot had its limitations. His whirling blades caught a tree at St. Paul's courtyard, injuring his horse and nearly killing him in the process. Out of options, the poet abandoned his mount and cut Aston free of the chariot. Marlowe spun around and raced onto Cheapside atop the most magnificent horse anyone in the city had ever seen.

The poet galloped back to the Tower only to see the path that he opened close. Blocked, Marlowe rode back to the cathedral to find the remaining warriors in the city converging on him from everywhere. Impossibly outnumbered, Marlowe looked over his captivated audience and attempted something drastic. “People of London!” he hollered at the top of his lungs. “Hear me!”

“Who are you?” one spectator shouted.

“Christo—er M—l—e!” he shouted among the explosions of barrels. “Yes, it is me! Back from the dead! And I have come all the way from paradise to help you as your savior! Please, help me in return!”

There was some confusion from the crowds huddled in the streets and by their windows. But then …

“Christus!” a voice shouted.

Marlowe struggled atop Aston for a moment, but then realized: “YES! That's who I am! I am your—” The poet interrupted his speech to fire his rapier at two warriors charging at him. The men fell down while Marlowe's audience gasped in disbelief. The poet then raised his smoking sword, heralding: “You shall see me work miracles, for I am the Christ!”

Marlowe blessed the crowd, and a mighty cheer thundered through the city.

“CHRIST! CHRIST! CHRIST!…” the people chanted from the streets of Cheapside to the rooftops.

Marlowe smiled with flattery, graciously accepting their worship. After passing himself as a priest and an archangel, Jesus seemed like the only logical leap of faith left for him. “Yes!” he shouted. “I am Christ!” Marlowe then stepped down from Aston's saddle and announced: “My children! I have heard your prayers! I have come from Heaven on this day of thanksgiving to deliver you from your enemies, just as I did last year! I am here to gift you, my faithful, with everlasting life. Believe in me!” he cried, blessing the crowd as they kneeled. “Bleed with me!” he implored while covertly wiping blood onto his palms. “Fight with me!” he begged with tears streaming down his face. “For tonight, I will vanquish the forces of evil here, in your city! I will win this war against the Devil, and I will prove to all of you my existence! All I ask in return is that you share in this glory with me. Choose your weapons! Test your holy armor! Taste your immortality!”

A holy roar rang through the boulevard as men and women emerged from their homes and surrounded Marlowe from the approaching horde. The city of London had finally joined the fight for its own survival, and not a moment too soon. The poet sidestepped through the crowd back onto Aston and galloped off.

And straight into an incoming throwing ax. The same one that struck Shakespeare in the Arden.

No!
the poet thought as he tumbled off Aston's back.
How can someone die so fast?

Unfortunately, the seemingly unkillable Christopher Marlowe just did.

 

Chapter LI

The Curtain

Walsingham could not afford to wait once he was inside the Tower's walls. Cunning warriors rushed in after him, holding the portcullis open after Marlowe and his fellow saviors emerged. The spymaster looked to the skies, desperate for some sign that Bacon's ravens were still with him. Finally, with the bonfires quelled, the skies parted and Walsingham saw a black ripple above him like fabric.

The spymaster blew his whistle.

Every raven in the city descended upon the Tower, tearing the cunning warriors to pieces while the Tower guards finished the rest. One after another, the painted foes screamed into the fortress, and one after another, they were silenced. A black curtain fell over the city, claiming almost all of London's enemies.

And then, that same curtain fell over the departed.

Marlowe was dead. Laying facedown in the street that served as his last stage.

As Shakespeare ran into the Tower, he turned his head toward the whinnies of a familiar friend. Aston had spotted him through the battle and was charging straight at him, trampling the painted warriors holding open the Bloody Tower's gate.

The portcullis came crashing down on the silver stallion, bringing him to his knees.

“ASTON!” Shakespeare cried.

The playwright raced toward his companion only to see him cut down by the swords and spears of Celts unleashing centuries of anger against the most beautiful creature they could kill. Aston disappeared beneath their blows, as did the painted men behind the ravens.

But then the birds began to drop all around the bard like rain. Walsingham's weapon of last resort proved fatal for the Tower's most trusted guardians. Summoning the ravens when he did cost nearly every one of their lives.

Horrified, Shakespeare covered his head and raced toward the Tower Green. Death was all around him. Soldiers, savages, beasts, heroes, and …

The world stopped.

The Dark Lady lay on the ground in a pool of blood.

Shakespeare ran to Bianca and collapsed to his knees. Her eyes were closed. Her flesh was cold. Her dark skin almost completely drained of color.

But then the bard looked to her injuries.

There was no life left inside her. Not anymore. Her unborn child had been untimely ripped from her mother's womb.

Shakespeare turned his head aimlessly around him. There was no sign of the child anywhere.

Tragedy turned to anger.

Anger turned to madness.

As a black cloud of ravens fell over the bard and the Dark Lady, three figures passed unmolested though the veil.

Shakespeare looked up from his fallen love to see three women circle him, each one wearing the leather faces of his former enemies.

Two of them, the elder and the younger, had blood all over their hands.

The third figure was completely new to Shakespeare.

“Who are you?” the playwright begged with dying breath.

The three sisters locked eyes with Shakespeare as they spoke.

“We are the product of war,” replied the elder. “We are the issue of our enemies.”

“We are the blood that stains the ground,” the younger added. “We are the corpse that feeds the soil.”

“You think you can defeat us,” the third one taunted in a young, almost childlike voice, “but we will
never
leave these isles.”

The bard rose from Bianca and drew his rapier.

“We are Albion.”

He shot the elder woman dead.

“We will never forgive.”

He shot the younger.

“And we will never forget.”

Shakespeare turned his sword to the last witch, who was wearing Guy Fawkes's face.

But then, to the bard's horror, he saw something familiar.

He looked into the eyes glaring back at him. The eyes peeking through their veil of stolen flesh.

Shakespeare seized the figure by her mask and tore it off.

The playwright froze.

Staring back at him was a girl no older than thirteen. Her face was scarred with claw marks, and one of her eyes had been blinded. She was the one who had followed Shakespeare to his apartment on Silver Street.

Silver.

Shakespeare's eyes widened. He backed away from the girl and dropped his sword.

The cunning youth smiled.

She was the beggar he had seen outside the Mermaid the day he met Guy Fawkes. The day he was commissioned to write the play. She was the one he threw his bag of silver to. She was the one who had haunted him from the beginning.