The Scar-Crow Men (30 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Ah. You are amenable to me.’

Her cheeks flushed. ‘I simply meant—’

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

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

Meg’s brow furrowed in thought.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER FORTY

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

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

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

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

Launceston sighed and nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

‘Bring him in,’ Carpenter spat.

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

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

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

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

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

‘I know nothing of any list!’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carpenter sighed and rolled his eyes.

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