‘Those who survived the wreck died over time. The Mooncalf has a taste for human flesh, and in those early days, soon after he was created, Dee struggled to control him. He kept one mirror in those first months on the island and taunted his enemies through it. One Fay of fierce beauty, a witch by any other name, attempted to seduce him with her charms. Her name was Malantha, one of the High Family, and she and Dee battled wits for long weeks while the Mooncalf stalked the island, killing men. Dee’s weakness was always the pleasures of the flesh, and the Unseelie Court see every man’s weakness clearly. Malantha spun a web around him with her seduction, and only when the old man appeared on the brink of revealing the location of this place did he break free of her spell and shatter the mirror.’
‘This island was hidden to the Unseelie Court? That is why Dee settled here?’ Will brooded for a moment. As he thought he played the Fay, had they in turn played him, pretending to try to stop him reaching Dee while in truth following him to the prize? He silently cursed himself for his overconfidence. Where the Unseelie Court were concerned, nothing could be taken for granted; he should have learned that long ago.
Thunder cracked overhead and rain sheeted down, forcing the sailors to move under the canopy of leaves to prevent the torches from being extinguished. Meg seemed oblivious of the downpour. ‘After these twelve long years, I am weary,’ she admitted. ‘I yearn to be free of this business, to walk once more across Ireland’s green meadows and hear the songs of my people.’
‘Twelve years on an island with only Dr Dee for company might have seemed like an eternity, Mistress Meg, but the world still waits for you, just as it always was. Nothing has been lost.’ Will understood well her doubts and sorrows – they were too much alike, the two of them. ‘That is a second chance few people get.’
For a moment longer, she kept her head down. But when she looked back at him with a seductive grin and the fire alight in her eyes once more, he saw the Meg he knew. ‘Then let us waste no more time on miserable thoughts. The sooner we can overpower the mad magician, the sooner we can return home. And then we can dance and make merry and . . . perhaps . . .’
He smiled at the promise in her eyes. Before he could reply, calls and the sound of running feet echoed from the path ahead. As the sailors drew their knives and rapiers, two men careered out of the gloom and the wall of rain. Will recoiled, fearing he was seeing ghosts. Hair plastered to their heads and clothes sodden, Carpenter and Launceston skidded to a halt. Will stared for a moment, stunned.
‘At last,’ Carpenter said, breathless. ‘I could not bear to run another mile.’
‘John!’ Will exclaimed, grasping the other man’s shoulders. He beamed, barely believing his own eyes. ‘Robert! You survived.’
‘The Unseelie Court took us aboard their ship,’ the Earl replied, his whispery voice almost lost beneath the pounding of the rain. ‘But we escaped them.’
Will laughed, relief flooding him. His conscience had been stained by many things, but here was one that would no longer haunt him. ‘Fortune indeed smiles on us. Grace has recovered, and Meg here and the two of you have wriggled out of death’s grasp. Only a day ago, I never would have believed it possible.’
‘Pfft. We have survived worse,’ Launceston sniffed, wiping the rain from his face.
‘Let us save our tales for another time,’ Carpenter insisted, glancing over his shoulder. ‘Lansing marches towards the tower to seize Dee, with the pirate le Gris and his dead crew alongside him. We have little time – they know a short cut.’
Will felt on fire. His spirits had been low, but now it seemed as if no obstacle was too great. ‘Come, then, lads. Now we are reunited, let nothing stand in our way. For England!’
Even as the other men gave full voice to his cheer, another oath seared through his mind: For Jenny. Soon now, he thought. Soon he would have answers, and then revenge.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
FROM OUT OF the driving rain, the dark finger of the tower appeared. Thunder boomed and lightning flashed, turning the world white. The column of sodden men raced up the final steps of the crumbling path into a forecourt of broken flagstones where yellowing grass pushed through the cracks. A low wall ran round the edge, overlooking a deep drop down the rocky hillside to the woods below. One by one the torches fizzled and went out in the deluge until they had to splash through pools to cross the final few feet to the foot of the soaring structure. Will looked up, but the summit was lost to the dark. No lights gleamed from the slit windows. Worn by the elements, the tower looked ancient, as old and rough as the stones standing in circles on England’s moors. Above his head, he could just glimpse carvings running round the periphery, their original shapes lost to the slow erosion of the years so that it appeared strange creatures were being birthed from the rock itself.
Carpenter returned from a circuit of the tower’s foot and yelled above the gale, ‘There is no doorway.’
‘Dee has hidden it since I departed,’ Meg shouted, ‘with his magics.’
‘The good doctor is greatly changed by his experiences,’ Will explained to the other men, his words barely audible above the blasting wind, ‘and he has powers now that allow him to walk with the gods. We must not underestimate him.’
‘All well and good,’ Strangewayes bawled, ‘but how do we get inside before the Enemy get here?’
Meg peered up the vertiginous walls of the tower, pointing. ‘Up there, at the height of five men, there is an arched window.’
‘Are we apes?’ Carpenter raged. ‘You expect us to climb that smooth wall, and in this storm? Even if we could find finger-holds, we would be dashed off by the gale in moments.’
The Irish spy narrowed her eyes at him. ‘Then it must be my second suggestion: ram your hard head against the wall enough times and you may batter your way through.’
When Carpenter bristled, Will rested a calming hand on his shoulder. ‘What choice do we have, John? Cup your hands for my shoe – I will try first.’
‘How high must one climb before bones break in the fall, I wonder?’ Launceston mused, stroking his chin. ‘Before organs burst?’
‘Curb your hunger, Robert,’ Will said. ‘You may find out for yourself once the rest of us have failed.’
‘Wait.’ Meg stepped forward, pressing the palms of her hand together as if in prayer. ‘There is another way. But it has many dangers—’
‘More dangers than climbing this tower in the storm?’ Strangewayes growled.
‘More suffering before you die,’ Meg said, arching one eyebrow. ‘The Mooncalf could climb this tower with ease. Indeed, I have seen him do it many a time. He could carry one of you on his back. But at any moment he might unleash the savagery in his breast, and rip you limb from limb and eat your heart before it has stopped beating.’
Will nodded to Meg. ‘Very well. We cannot be defeated at this stage. I will take that risk.’
‘Why not let him try?’ Meg said in a wry tone, pointing at Carpenter, who glowered back.
‘I have asked you all to put your lives in jeopardy in recent times. Now it is my turn,’ Will said. ‘Summon Dee’s beast.’
He instructed the Tempest’s crewmen to guard the perimeter of the courtyard, thus sparing them the sight of what might be to come. The sailors were only too ready to comply. The five spies stood shoulder to shoulder, peering into the dark as Meg called out to the creature. The howling wind dropped for an instant and the sound of snuffling and growling drew nearer. Will sensed the others grow tense. The reek of bloody offal whipped by on the wind. A low, hunched shape, darker than the clustering trees, appeared at the top of the steps leading to the courtyard. Loping forward with a rolling gait, it gathered speed, snarling as it bounded towards Will.
At the last, Meg stepped in front of him. She held her head up in a commanding stance. ‘Mooncalf, heed me,’ she called out into the night. ‘Do not harm these men. You will have other food soon enough.’
At the crack of her voice, the beast slowed and cam
e to a stop two sword-lengths away. ‘She controls it like a prancing pony,’ Strangewayes hissed. ‘How so?’ The spies took a step back as they took in the horror before them.
Will studied the shadows pooling in Meg’s face and thought he glimpsed the softening of her features. As the Mooncalf raised itself up on powerful legs, he caught sight of the outline of a broad, flattened head that reminded him of the bulls baited in the bear garden on Bankside. The skin was blacker than the night and seemed to gleam as it moved, like pitch. White eyes burning cold moved across the spies. Strangewayes gasped as a lightning flash revealed a face like melted candle wax, the flesh running down to the broad shoulders. The mouth was a black gash showing a hint of sharp, stained teeth. The strong body looked twisted, as if the Mooncalf had been tortured on the rack, yet its muscular power was unmistakable. Despite its terrifying appearance, though, Will sensed something oddly human about it.
‘Do not harm them,’ Meg repeated as a threatening growl rumbled deep in its throat.
‘You are mad to risk your life with that thing,’ Carpenter whispered. ‘It is a wild animal, barely tamed at all.’
‘I would be mad to stand here and do nothing,’ Will replied.
Meg flashed him a look of concern, but then put on a confident face and spoke to the Mooncalf so quietly that none could hear what she said. The beast lurched forward, its breath reeking of meat. It flung its arms round Will and lifted him effortlessly. Pinning him in the crook of its right arm, it bounded at the tower wall. Taloned feet and the long fingers of its left hand found cracks and crevices barely visible to the naked eye in the dark. With a rolling movement, the Mooncalf began to climb.
Pressed tight against the leathery flesh, Will glanced sideways and saw those eyes flicker towards him. In them, he recognized some semblance of intelligence, and it troubled him. What was this thing, not beast, not man? With a snarl of warning, the Mooncalf’s lips curled back from its yellow fangs, forcing Will to look away.
The anxious voices of the other spies slipped beneath the howl of the wind and the rattle of the driving rain. The dark closed in around them, an endless chasm threatening to suck them down. Higher the Mooncalf climbed, seemingly up into the very heart of the storm. Just when Will feared he would be dashed on to the courtyard far below, the beast’s fingers closed on the crumbling lip of an arched window. Heaved inside, Will crashed on to dry flagstones, the rainwater pooling around him. The creature crouched by the window, watching the spy through slit eyes. Its low growl echoed through the still chamber.
‘If you can understand my words, I thank you.’ Though Will was hesitant to turn his back on the beast, he felt along the wall until he found an extinguished torch and lit it with the flint from his leather pouch. The darkness danced away from the flame, and he saw he was in a bare stone room with an empty hearth. Two arched doorways led out of it. Though the tower was silent, he felt that it was not empty, as if someone waited only a chamber away. He imagined Dee sitting in the dark somewhere above him; not the Dee he knew, the wildly inventive but mad scholar who had devoted his life to holding the line against the forces of the moon that threatened to usurp the sunlit world, but a brooding Dee, corrupted by a different kind of madness and consumed by the well of power into which he had tapped, who saw all as his enemy. He had built his fortress here on this island, with the only human who meant anything to him, and he would not easily be shifted.
Edging along the wall with one eye on the Mooncalf, Will ghosted through the nearest doorway on to a spiral stone staircase leading down into shadows.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
HARD RAIN LASHED the knot of spies huddled against the tower wall. Suspended in a sea of night, they could have been a thousand miles away from any other living soul as they searched the dark for the coming attack. But the wind-thrashed trees sounded like waves crashing against their small island of stone, drowning even the noisiest approach, and the gale snatched at their hair and clothes to distract them.
Strangewayes gripped his rapier, remembering his days learning the blade in the precinct of Chelmsford Cathedral, under the tutelage of the master Adam Abell. A good student but hotheaded; that had always been his teacher’s assessment. And over the years, as he had earned his reputation and joined the employ of the Earl of Essex’s newly minted band of spies, he had fought hard to control that simmering temper. But now it burned hotter than ever. When he had left Essex to join Cecil’s more seasoned group, he had hoped to learn more at the feet of the lauded Will Swyfte, England’s greatest spy, but Swyfte had proved a straw man. He was only concerned with his own needs, caring little about the harm he caused to others. Even Grace; especially Grace. Strangewayes would never have survived his first brush with the Unseelie Court if Grace had not been his rock, and for that alone he would give his last breath to save her. If Swyfte placed her in danger one more time, Strangewayes would kill him, with no qualms. He thought back to the accusations the spymaster, Sir Robert Cecil, had made in London and realized that this battle was no longer between human and Fay, but between himself and Swyfte, for the soul of the woman he loved.
For an instant, the wind dropped, and in the space a low, unearthly moan rolled out across the courtyard. Strangewayes felt the hairs on his neck prickle. ‘What devilry is that?’ he demanded.
Launceston ignored him, as graven and unreadable as ever, and Carpenter only swore at him to stay silent. ‘Conjure up no nightmares,’ Meg told him. ‘There will be time enough to face our fears.’ Though they all treated him like a child, it was the Irish spy he hated the most. She acted as brazen as a Bankside doxy, spinning men round with her wiles. Of all of the spies, the Irish woman was the least trustworthy, he had decided.
‘I am not scared of anything,’ he replied.
‘Then you are a fool,’ she came back as quick as a flash.
Strangewayes felt stung for only a moment before movement away in the dark caught his eye. A figure lurched towards them. It was one of the crewmen, and his gait was as rolling as if he stood on deck in a storm. The spy grew cold, though he did not know why. The staggering sailor seemed to glow in the dark, as pale as Launceston, his clothes as well as his skin. The sight reminded the spy of the fish he had once seen swimming in a cave pool. He swallowed, uneasy.
‘The Unseelie Court have arrived,’ Launceston intoned.
As the man stumbled nearer, a lightning flash lit him clearly. He was white from head to toe, as if encrusted in salt, his eyes staring in terror from his scabrous face. Mewling, he reached out to the spies with one clutching hand, which seemed to diminish with each passing moment.
The rain is washing him away, Strangewayes thought, horrified.
In the deluge, the sailor dissolved piece by piece, a part of his jaw gone here, an arm there, his body dissipating yet still alive, still calling out in that incomprehensible whine. The flood of white crystals frosted the rain pools in the courtyard. Barely able to believe what he was seeing, Strangewayes watched as the man sank to his knees, which melted away to leave the torso flailing from side to side, until finally only a crumbling face peered up from the wet stone, still crying.
When that too was gone, Strangewayes reeled out of his sickened trance. Shadows whirled in the rainswept night, the remnants of the shore party fighting with le Gris’s decaying crew. The spy watched one of the Tempest’s men hacking into pieces an unrecognizable but still quivering piece of dead flesh. Strangewayes would have run to the aid of the men, but a hand fell hard on his shoulder.
‘They need our aid,’ he protested.
‘Set aside feelings and be cold. We have work to do,’ Launceston replied.
Struggling to ignore the cries of the dying, Strangewayes reminded himself that returning Dee to London was all that mattered; all their lives meant nothing in the pursuit of that aim. Then le Gris emerged from the dark, and three other grey pirates followed, one missing an arm, another an eye.
‘Once your entrails hang from my sword, I can claim the treasure
I have been promised,’ le Gris yelled above the cacophony of the storm. He levelled his rapier, daring one of the spies to confront him.
Carpenter broke away from the others and leapt to cross swords with the French pirate. ‘The Unseelie Court jangle shiny things in front of weak men, but they are as insubstantial as rainbows,’ the spy said with a vehemence that puzzled Strangewayes. ‘They can never be reached and men waste a lifetime trying.’
Le Gris only laughed. As the two men danced around each other, thrusting and parrying in the downpour, Strangewayes glimpsed a figure bearing down upon him. Spinning, he swung up his rapier just as a dead pirate hacked with its own blade. A dull ache burned in his shoulder from the force of the walking corpse’s blow. Choking on the stink of decaying flash, he easily sidestepped the next thrust. Yet what the thing lacked in expertise it made up for with untiring force. The unblinking face loomed closer, ragged lips hanging off clenched teeth, fat white maggots at play on exposed cheek flesh. When the spy pierced the heart for a second time, he grasped the futility of his strategy. Before he could find another approach, he saw Carpenter slip to one knee on the wet stone. Defenceless, the other man could only look up as a leering le Gris levelled his rapier for the killing stroke.
Without a second thought, Strangewayes dropped his own defence and parried le Gris’s thrust. He sensed the dead pirate swing for his neck, and screwed his eyes shut in the certain knowledge that his life was over. When the blow failed to strike, he looked round to see Meg whisking her dagger back as the pirate’s entrails splashed into the puddles. Sweeping an arm out, the Irish woman gave Strangewayes a theatrical bow.
Carpenter recovered and thrust his blade into le Gris’s thigh. The pirate howled in agony and staggered away, blood seeping between his fingers as he clutched his leg. Brushing back his wet hair from his pink scars, Carpenter turned to Strangewayes and gasped, ‘I owe you my life.’
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