The Scar-Crow Men (53 page)

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.’

‘What is this higher calling, if not God’s work?’ Rowland asked.

‘Why, friendship.’ Launceston looked up from the prick of blood and eyed the record-keeper. ‘Chill winds blow through this world, and I see no sign of God anywhere. Yet in the midst of all this misery, one man can still extend a hand of friendship to others, and lift them out of suffering, and offer them his strength, though they be strange and unfamiliar. Is that not the equal of any miracle?’

‘Blasphemy,’ Rowland hissed.

The Earl gave a humourless smile.

Cecil began to edge towards the door, his eyes flickering with uncertainty.

Launceston pointed the dagger at the secretary again. ‘Call the guards before I am finished with my business and I will take my ire out on you.’

The hunchbacked man came to a halt, unused to being ordered about in his own chamber, but knowing the Earl’s reputation too well to resist.

The spy turned to the record-keeper, raising one finger. ‘The work of the killer of spies has been much on my mind of late, Master Rowland. I imagine a bitter Catholic, trapped among his enemies, loathing the slow erosion of his religion, hating the state that inflicts
such a cruel policy. And hating more the agents who carry out that state’s design. Am I correct?’

Rowland glared. His right arm twitched, his hands still clasped behind his back.

‘And then my considerations turned to the initial plan to slay the spies involved in a secret mission to the seminary in Reims, who may or may not carry with them information that could destroy the wider plot.’ Tracing his index finger along his right eyebrow, the Earl sauntered towards the hearth. ‘Who could possibly know the identities of those spies? Why, Sir Francis Walsingham, of course. But Sir Francis is dead. His records? They are missing. Who could have stolen them? Who would have access to them? Who would know their content?’

‘The record-keeper,’ the secretary exclaimed.

From behind his back, Rowland brought the curved ritual knife and waved it towards the Earl.

Launceston was unmoved. ‘But there was also the matter of the black marks upon the bodies of the murdered spies. The final piece of the puzzle. And then, this evening, I saw the ink upon the fingers of Will Swyfte’s young assistant and I began to wonder: what kind of man would have fingers stained with ink that he could smear, by accident, upon the bodies of his victims? A man engaged in constant scribbling. In accounting. In the keeping of records.’

‘You would be wise not to threaten me,’ Rowland growled, stepping back.

‘If I were wise, I would not be a spy.’ The Earl glanced towards the secretary, but still spoke to his prey. ‘You failed this night to murder my friend, and instead slew his love, but not in any ritual way that would serve your purpose. And you ran, and as you did, you imagined a new plan, did you not? You thought, who would make the greatest sacrifice, if this pattern were to be concluded? Why, the greatest spy of all. The master of spies.’

Cecil blanched.

‘You murdered my friend’s love at a time when he had discovered a spark of hope in his dismal, troubled life. You shattered his heart into a thousand pieces.’ A single tear trickled from the corner of the Earl’s eye. He touched it with his bloodstained finger, the two liquids mixing. He examined it with wonder. His first tear. ‘My friend!’

Launceston’s dispassionate face exploded into terrifying fury. Transformed into a storm of emotion as if all the lost feelings of an entire life had rushed back into him, he threw aside the trestle and thundered towards Rowland. A whirl of papers flew through the air. The blood drained from the record-keeper’s fear-torn face.

But then a glimmer of the devil-masked killer flared in his mad eyes and he lunged forward, driving his knife into the Earl’s arm. Launceston did not flinch. He gave no sign that he felt any pain. And with the blade still protruding from his flesh, he advanced.

With one fluid sweep from left to right, the sallow spy slashed open the neck of his victim. Blood gushing from his wound, Rowland fell to his knees, clasping his hands in prayer.

The Earl did not stop there.

Launceston hacked and chopped and sliced and thrust and slit until he was slick with gore and what lay in front of him was barely recognizable. And with each blow, a little of the rage left him until his usual dispassionate expression returned.