The Silver Skull (45 page)

After a while, his head began to nod, and all the horrible images rose like spectres from his unconscious mind where he had locked them away for so long.

His father's funeral on a cold November day at their parish church in the village outside Hastings, the bitter air salty with the scent of the sea, stark trees black against the grey clouds, filled with crows, cawing their desolate chorus. At the graveside, he slipped his arm around his mother, whispering that he would look after her, provide her with a regular stipend from his new work under Lord Walsingham at the Palace of Whitehall. It was after he had privately agreed to work for the secret service, and three days before his induction into the true mysteries of existence, when he had still thought there was hope in the world ...

Eight weeks later, and the snow was heavy on the roofs of the village, and the ground as hard as his heart had grown. The crows were still thick in the trees, but now he viewed them in a different light. A visit home after his assignment to the guard at the Tower, what at the time had appeared to be a short-term posting, filled with long hours of tedium. As he stepped through the door, he thought how thin and pale his mother looked, her skin slightly jaundiced, and when he hugged her he could feel her bones like hoes and trowels. "You are working too hard. You must rest more," he told her. She smiled weakly, wiser than he was ...

Two months later, and he had missed three visits home because of the demands of his work. When he arrived at the cottage after dark, the parson waited, like one of the crows that never appeared to leave the surrounding trees. His mother was very ill, the parson said. He feared her time was short. She lay in her bed, delirious, calling out for his father, her own father and mother. She looked barely more than bones with skin draped over them. The rapid decline in such a short period shocked him, and he cursed himself, and the world, and wished for more and made deals with God. But she did not improve.

Under special petition from Lord Walsingham, he was given time away from his post to care for her in her final days. They were long, the nights longer, filled with tears, and anger, and her anguished cries as the pain gripped her. But she did not die within the week, as the parson had forecast, nor within two weeks, and by the end she was screaming in agony around the clock, and he clutched his ears, and then buried his head, and wept nonstop, until he was sure he was being driven mad by her unending suffering.

The desire to help her drove him on, but he could do nothing to relieve her agony, and finally his failure consumed him. He could bear to see her in pain no more. And then, after praying for her to live for so long, he prayed for her to die, soon, that moment, so her torment would be ended along with her awful cries, and that destroyed him even more; he had asked God for the death of his own mother.

But she did not die. And for a while he did go mad. He never left the house, and he did not eat for days, roaming from room to room cursing and yelling.

Then one night, when the moon was full, he saw from the window that the field beside the house was filled with statues, grey and wrapped in shadow. They watched, as the crows had appeared to watch. He ran to his mother, and prayed over her, but he was drawn back to the window time and again, and though the statues had disappeared, the shadows remained, flitting back and forth across the field in the moonlight.

The knock at the door came soon after. In the days following he could never remember the face, although at the time it burned into his mind, and he knew he would feel its eyes upon him for the rest of his days. But he recalled what passed between them. His mother would never die. She would remain in that purgatory of agony, and he would be with her for the rest of his days, never escaping her screams, cursed to watch her unending suffering.

He could not bear it, and he threw himself to the floor, and tore at his flesh, and for a while knew nothing.

When he had recovered a little, the honeyed voice told him there was hope; and he pleaded to know what it was, anything, he would do anything, and the voice said that was good.

He would work for them, just for a while, and do the little things they asked, inconsequential things, and in the meantime they would give his mother balm, and when his time of service was done, they would ease her suffering into death.

For a while the requests were inconsequential; gradually they became greater, but he had already set off along the road, and so each new thing was just one tiny step further. When he discovered knowledge of the Palace of Whitehall and what was there, and then passed it on, it was nothing; there were no consequences. And when he revealed what he knew of the Tower, it was worse, but not much. But then he was helping them to overcome the Tower's defences that Dee had put in place, and released the chain of misery and death that still had not come to an end.

The carriage jolted over a rut and he stirred sharply from his reverie. As his eyes opened, he was shocked to see Don Alanzo looming in front of him, the Silver Skull open and gleaming.

"What-?" he began, but his question was cut short as Don Alanzo pressed the mask against his face and closed it with a clang. Instantly, his head swam with frightening images, things he had never seen and could never possibly have known. The sensation of movement all across his head unsettled him, until he felt a thousand points of agony as if insects were burrowing into him, through skin, and bone, and into his brain, and he wanted to scream, but could not utter a sound.

Dimly, he heard Don Alanzo saying, "Do as you are ordered and the mask will be removed. Resist us and be damned forever."

And he wondered if he was cursed to be a slave to others for all time, and if his suffering would never end.

SPECIAL_IMAGE-00065.jpg-REPLACE_ME

SPECIAL_IMAGE-00029.jpg-REPLACE_ME rashing on horseback through the dense forest encroaching upon Lisbon on three sides, Will crested a ridge to look down on a scene that was at once breathtaking and chilling. In the bay on the estuary, edged with the silvery light of the moon amid pools of stark shadows, were around one hundred and thirty ships. The formidable fleet was so dense it was like another city floating alongside Lisbon, candlelight glimmering here and there aboard each ship, banners fluttering gently in the warm night breeze.

The Armada.

Somewhere in the teeming city, lion Alanzo would be meeting with the Armada's commander, the duke of Medina Sidonia, to secure a place for him and Grace on one of the ships about to depart. Will had to find him before the fleet sailed.

Weariness sapped him of any response beyond a dull relief that he had finally reached his destination after constant riding along dusty, deserted back roads, stealing a new horse whenever his mount tired.

It was May 8, and more than two week had passed since his escape from El Escorial with Carpenter and Launceston, close behind lion Alanzo's carriage. At their back, the still night had been shattered by the outcry as the king's men flooded from the palace to scour the surrounding countryside for the escaped spies. They had moved quickly across the desolate terrain, using the spoil-heaps and thickets for cover until they reached the village, where they escaped on three old nags, eventually exchanging them for other mounts along the way. Once they were sure they had left their pursuers behind, Will had instructed Carpenter and Mayhew to proceed to the location where they had agreed to rendezvous with the Tempest. Their orders were to carry the news of what had happened to whatever forces waited to confront the Armada. England's future hung by a thread and they all had a part to play.

Will took a moment to study the array of ships of different styles and strengths before wearily guiding his horse down the road winding around the hillside. At the foot of the hills, Lisbon nestled amid its walls, an ancient city whose narrow streets wound in confusion away from the quay. The architecture, like Cadiz and Seville, bore the influence of the Moors expelled by the Crusaders more than four hundred years earlier, the arches and geometric designs on the grander buildings, the minarets rising above the orange roof tiles.

For eight years now, Lisbon had been under Spanish rule following Philip's determined invasion. He knew how crucial the city was to his plans for his empire's dominance of Europe and the New World, as a hub for trade with Africa, the Far East, India, and the Spanish colonies in the New World. But thanks to the vast harbour in the estuary where the River Tagus flowed into the Atlantic, it played an even more crucial role as the home of the Armada.

As Will passed through the walls he left the fragrant pine-tinged air behind and plunged into a foul-smelling atmosphere where excrement and urine fought with rot in the dark streets.

Instantly he could see something was wrong. Lisbon should have been awash with the riches of the New World, evident in the faces and the clothes of its citizens, in overflowing shops, and well-tended buildings, and streets filled with the heady air of exuberance he had encountered in Seville.

Instead an oppressive sense of decay hung everywhere. The narrow streets of the Alfama area were crowded with beggars calling to him and reaching out for his boots, sometimes clamouring so tightly around his horse he could barely continue forwards. Shops along the way were empty and closed, some boarded up. The area swarmed with prostitutes, some of them the roughest and most pox-ridden Will had ever seen; far from their stews, they competed in shrill voices for trade that often ended in violence. In the even darker alleys reaching from the main thoroughfares, Will glimpsed sudden movement and a flash of silver, heard cries cut suddenly short. He passed a body on the side of the street in a state of decomposition, unclaimed.

Will battened down his guilt at his failure. He had let the Skull and Grace slip through his fingers, and now he was sure Grace was trapped within that supernatural weapon. He couldn't bring himself to consider what that meant.

The one thing he could not shake from his mind was Grace's look of betrayal when he ordered the king to be killed in the full knowledge that lion Alanzo would respond in kind and kill Grace. It was an expression he had never seen before, as if all her hopes had been shattered in one moment. The decision had almost destroyed him, but there was no way he could go back on it; what was done was done, and he would have to live with the consequences of his actions.

He channelled his feelings into a slow-burning hatred for Mayhew. So much misery would not have come to pass if not for him, and so many of his strange actions were now explicable. How the Unseelie Court had managed to breach the Tower's defences, where Mayhew's post had made him uniquely aware of its defences and its prisoner. How knowledge of Will's destination in Cadiz had fallen into Spanish hands before the soldiers tried to surround him near the cathedral. And the one that angered him the most, how Grace's secret hideaway at Hampton Court Palace had been brought to the attention of the Enemy. Her life would not be in danger now if not for Mayhew.

Will was happy to move away from the worst-afflicted region of the city and head towards the slopes leading up to the Castle of Sao Jorge overlooking the city. Once the royal residence, the homes of the city's wealthier inhabitants clustered close to its protection. Here the streets were quieter. Will eventually located the house he required in a long, white terrace of the wellkept homes of merchants, far enough away from the rich and important residents to avoid attention.

A gentle knock was answered by a man in his late twenties, strong, clean-shaven, and tanned, black hair framing an intelligent face. He matched the description that had been made available in the Palace of Whitehall.

"You are Luis Inacio dos Santos?" Will asked.

"I am," he said in heavily accented English and gave a formal bow. Once Will had announced the password, Santos admitted him into the gloomy interior. The Portuguese man carried himself with the strength and control of a soldier, but his face had the sensitivity of an artist. Both were true. Will knew he had been an acclaimed artist in Lisbon until the Spanish invasion, when he had fought in the resistance. The Portuguese lost in the face of Philip of Spain's overwhelming force, but resentment boiled away in the shadowy streets, and Santos was an easy turn for Walsingham's men. He hated Spain, and Philip, in a more visceral manner than any Englishman.

"You have a ship moored off the coast," Santos said. "Word came through this morning to prepare for the possible arrival of an English agent. Though," he added, "that word has been flying back and forth for months now. I sent missive after missive about the buildup of the Armada. Why was I ignored?"

"The queen has her favourites," Will replied, "and she does not always heed the most trustworthy voice."

"You must be exhausted after your journey. I can offer you food."

"A bite, but matters are pressing and I cannot rest." He explained to Santos about lion Alanzo and Grace.

"This afternoon word reached me of a new Spanish nobleman in the city, but I have no knowledge of where he stays or which ship he will be joining. You can afford at least a few hours' rest. This past hour also saw the arrival of a messenger from Philip's palace. He is believed to be carrying orders for Medina Sidonia to launch the Armada, but that will not take place until tomorrow at the earliest. The duke has waited two weeks for the order already. Another day will matter little."

Will wondered if the attack on El Escorial had prompted Philip-and Malantha-to move with haste. If preparations were not wholly complete, that could work in England's favour. "I cannot rest. If it is not possible to locate lion Alanzo in the city quickly, I must get aboard one of the ships," Will pressed. "The arrangements will take time, if that is even possible. Even though I speak Philip's tongue, or could pass as a French mercenary, the chances of discovery are high."

Laughing, Santos held up a hand to slow Will's anxious words. "These matters are in hand. Rest. The world will not end before dawn."

Although Will knew the truth of Santos's words, he couldn't shake an oppressive feeling of mounting doom, of secret plans coming together in the darkness. Yet after weeks with only a snatched hour of rest here and there, his eyes drooped quickly and he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. He was woken by Santos later when the room was filled with the warming aromas of food.