The Scar-Crow Men

by Mark Chadbourn

Kit would have followed a trail with the same meticulous attention to detail that he had used to plot his intricate stories. But what had been his first hint?

  Will let his attention drift from the shadows plunging across the grassy centre of the sunlit cloister to the aged, carved columns along the walkway. He saw the light and the shade, the natural stone and its hand-worked state. He thought of angels and devils and where he stood ’twixt heaven and hell. And then he considered the two faces he – and all men – presented to the world.

  Within a moment his footsteps were echoing off the walls like shots from a matchlock. He found Hugh kneeling at the rear of the cathedral. Barely able to contain his urgency, the spy waited for the younger man to finish his contemplation. When the priest stood, Will said in a tone of hazy confusion, ‘Brother Hugh, I seek your help in my reflections.’

  ‘I am your servant, Francis. I will do whatever I can to shine a light along the path to God.’

  Urging the priest to walk with him, the spy said with one hand to his furrowed brow, ‘Forgive my questions. They may make little sense to you, but my thoughts often lead me on a merry dance. I have been reflecting on this great seminary in which I find myself – this breeding ground of thought. It is very old, no?’

  Hugh gave a shrug. ‘Old? Is fifty years old? The Cardinal de Lorraine founded the school through Papal Bull—’

  ‘Not the school, my friend,’ Will interrupted with a regrettable snap of irritation. ‘The stone and mortar and very fabric of this place. This part of Reims has been a centre of religious thought for many centuries.’

  Hugh held open the door for the spy to pass through. ‘Ah,’ the priest said. ‘Then hundreds of years. The cathedral, the basilica, the glorious buildings you see around … outside of Rome you will find no greater monument to Christianity.’

  Leading the way back to the seminary, Will continued to feign bafflement. ‘I have heard tell that the old masons who built these glorious structures often made hidden places below the ground, secret chambers to hide treasures in times of strife, or to keep safe the great teachings of God above.’

  ‘I know why you ask these things.’ The priest’s voice dropped to a lower register as he spoke.

  ‘You do?’

  ‘I have heard the same stories. And more besides. They say it is the reason we are locked in our chambers by night … that there is a secret place beneath the cathedral and the seminary where the Devil lives, with a gate to hell itself. Our brothers fight a daily battle to keep the Adversary locked below ground, but there is always the danger he will break through. And so it has proved.’ He rested a hand on Will’s shoulder. ‘I am sorry, Francis. I thought these tales had no more substance than the ones the old wives tell around their hearths. Nor did I wish to frighten you needlessly. Now we should all speak of them so that we remain on our guard.’

  Nodding, Will’s thoughts skipped several paces ahead. To lurk beneath the feet of godly men in one of the holiest places in Europe would suit the Unseelie Court’s perverse outlook, the spy decided. The sacred and the profane, joined as one. ‘And of course, no one knows the entrance to these hidden places, should they exist.’

  ‘No,’ Hugh said in a grim tone that suggested he did not want to discover such a thing.

  ‘There are records here of the priests who studied?’

  ‘Of course,’ the younger man replied, curious at this strange question. ‘And copies are sent to Rome.’

  So that the Pope knows where his best spies are, Will thought. ‘Take me to them, brother. I have questions about a former priest.’

  Puzzled, Hugh led the way to a large chamber at the rear of the seminary, lined with shelves creaking under the weight of parchments and volumes. It was deserted, as Will had expected in the atmosphere of terror that Mephistophilis had brought to the place. The air was filled with the sweet smell of the ink the scribes used to keep their records. Dust motes floated in a shaft of sunlight falling through the small window high on the west wall, but the rest of the chamber was gloomy.

  Lighting a candle with his flint, Will searched along the shelves while the young priest waited uneasily at the door. ‘When Brother Cuthbert returns, I am sure he will tell you all you wish to know.’

  ‘I am sure Brother Cuthbert has more important matters to concern him than my meanderings,’ the spy muttered.

  The candle flame illuminated a volume with the date 1587 inscribed on the spine. Removing it from the shelf, Will carried it to a cluttered trestle and flicked through the pages, each one headed by a name, followed by an account of their residence and studies at the seminary. He paused when he came to the name Christofer Marley. Tracing a finger along the flourishing script, he found the location of the playwright’s former chamber and then turned to the priest.

  ‘I need your help once more, my friend.’ The spy cast a concerned eye at the slant of the sunbeam. The hour was drawing late.

  From the silence that had fallen across the seminary, Will knew the rite of exorcism had ended and Father Mathias and his fellow priests would be resting. But not for long.

  Like all the other chambers of the young priests, Marlowe’s old room contained a single small window, a bed and a stool. Will’s eyes fell upon the item that held all his hopes, a Bible, well thumbed, the leather spine splitting. Placing the heavy volume on the bed, he turned the pages, scanning each one with a studied eye. The black print fell into a background blur. It was the white space between the lines that drew his attention. And there, in Genesis, he found what he had hoped for, and expected, from a spy as clever and diligent as Kit Marlowe: a single dot above the letter B of beginning.

  ‘Brother Hugh, I would thank you for the kindness you have shown me since I entered this place. You are a credit to your faith. I apologize now for any misery I may have brought into your house, but needs must when the devil drives.’ A wry smile flickered on to the spy’s lips.

  ‘You speak as if we will never meet again?’

  ‘This world is filled with mysteries, my friend, and I would not dare to predict what may happen even one hour hence. But for now I must be left alone with the word of God, to mull over the meaning hidden within.’

  ‘The meaning is plain, Francis,’ the priest said with a bow.

  ‘Indeed it is, if one has eyes to see.’ Will stood beside the door, waiting for the other man to leave.

  ‘I will pray for you, my friend.’

  ‘Pray for yourself, brother. I already have friends in low places.’

  When a confused Hugh departed, the spy returned to the Bible. He doubted Marlowe would have used an obscure keyword for his favourite cipher. The message had been left for any spy who followed in his tracks, and who would need to uncover his secrets.

  And there, on the very first page, on the very first line, was the sign: In the beginning God created heaven and earth. The word earth had been underlined.

  Good Kit, shunning heaven as always, Will thought.

  Once he had located a quill and some ink, the spy knew he could decipher the message in no time. He felt a bittersweet sensation of loss and warmth. His old friend continued to speak to him from beyond the grave, and sometimes, if he allowed himself, Will could almost imagine that Kit had never left.

  The thought was quickly drowned by his sense of urgency. Soon Father Mathias would come for him. Soon night would be falling and whatever walked the halls of the seminary after dark would be abroad.

  The sands of time were running rapidly through the glass, and he still needed to find the gateway to the underworld so he could begin his descent into hell.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  ONCE THE SHOUTS OF THE SEARCHING PRIESTS DIED DOWN, SILENCE fell across the seminary. In the shadows, high up in the vaulted roof of the hall where the priests ate their meals, Will lounged on a broad oak beam with his hands behind his head. The collapsible grapnel Dee had given him in Manchester lay farther along the beam, ready for his descent.

  With feline grace, the spy eased h
imself to his feet and strode along the rafter. In the atmosphere of candle smoke and the fading aroma of the hurried evening meal – a vegetable stew, he surmised – he listened to the distant music of locks turning and bolts being secured as the students were sealed in their chambers. He imagined them all praying desperately by their beds for God to keep them safe through the night, their hearts beating fast at the thought of the Devil loose in their home.

  Steadying himself with one hand against the rough ceiling plaster, he gazed down the dizzying drop to the stone floor far below where he had earlier watched the students searching for him in the candlelight. Father Mathias’ barked orders had reverberated throughout the entire building – ‘Find Francis! Bring him to me! He must answer questions about the Devil!’ – and they had grown angrier as his charges failed in the search. Eventually, in a conversation conducted directly beneath him, they had concluded he must have fled the school.

  Squatting, he waited for the last footsteps to fade away and the final business of the day to still, and then he hooked the grapnel on the edge of the beam and prepared to lower the rope.

  Away in the depths of the seminary, the spy caught the sound of a door opening. Cursing, Will hesitated. A straggler on the way to bed, or perhaps a watchman doing his rounds? The spy grew tense as he heard the soft tread of several people coming his way.

  Even though it would take a sharp pair of eyes to see him in the dark ceiling vault, the spy lay along the beam and peered over the edge. The tread grew louder as it neared, and now Will could hear it was not the shuffle of the priests but a step that was purposeful, strong.

  Through the door into the hall, ten figures passed, looking around as they entered. With the confidence of masters in their own territory, the Unseelie Court’s representatives in Reims prowled beneath the spy, their eyes glimmering with an inner fire as the candlelight caught them. Their features, though pale, appeared to glow with a faint golden light. Moving with grace and strength, like the most proficient swordsmen, they all wore their hair to their shoulders and their cheekbones were high and sharp, their eyes almond-shaped. Their colour-leached clothes had that familiar ageless quality, and although they harked back to ancient times in their material and cut – leather bucklers, silk sleeves, tight, hard-wearing breeches – they seemed in some way thoroughly modern. But all the garments appeared to glisten with silvery mildew, as if they had been stored in dank cellars. The fragrance of sandalwood and lime and some nameless spice wafted upwards. Each member of the group was armed, their swords rattling to the rhythm of their strides.

  Will’s attention fell on one at the centre of the knot, who was distinguished by a gentler, almost doleful face. His hair was black, and his eyes too, as were his doublet and breeches which shimmered like a pool of ink among those of his fellows. The way the group gathered round him suggested he was important, perhaps the leader. The spy wondered if this was Fabian of the High Family, whom Raleigh had described at Petworth House. Had the Fay survived his dunking in the ocean?

  As they passed beneath him, the spy felt their presence as if they burned with an intense but cold fire. A deep foreboding descended upon him.

  Once the pale figures had left the hall, Will attached the grapnel to the beam and lowered the rope. Swinging out over the edge of his roost, he threw his legs around the strong line, sliding down silently to the stone floor. A flick of the wrist brought the grapnel down, and he collapsed it, wrapped the rope tightly around it and hid it in one of the pockets in his cloak.

  Offering silent thanks to Dr Dee, the spy raced soundlessly across the hall, pausing briefly at the door to listen before slipping out into the corridor. Most of the candles had been snuffed out for the night, but a few still remained lit here and there. In the faint golden illumination, he followed the ten Fay through the seminary to the point where Kit’s secret message had told him they would finally arrive: a silky white alabaster statue of the Virgin and Child in an alcove on the corridor leading to the Mary Chapel.

  Peering round a corner, the spy watched the black-clad being stand before the statue and bow his head slightly. His actions were hidden by the clutch of figures around him, but a moment later the statue pivoted and the ten Unseelie Court representatives filed into a space behind it. Once the last had passed through, the statue spun silently back into place.

  Without Marlowe’s guidance Will knew he would have been at a loss. He followed his friend’s instructions to the letter, pulling forward on the Virgin’s left arm, and out to the right at the same time. There was a barely audible click and the statue pivoted freely. Drawing his rapier, the spy stepped into the chill dark. On the air currents, he smelled dank, deep earth, and heard distant, muffled sounds as though of a blacksmith’s hammer at the anvil. Behind the steady beat he caught occasional high-pitched notes that could have been screams cut off mid-cry.

  In the tunnel, Will sensed the oppressive atmosphere that always seemed to surround the Unseelie Court; it was as though a storm was about to break on a baking hot day. As the statue swung back, closing the way behind him, his eyes adjusted to a thin light reaching him from far along the tunnel.

  Keep low for ten paces, then step to your left. Listen for the whisper, then step right. Marlowe’s instructions had been precise.

  Crouching, Will stepped forward, counting his paces. On the fifth step, he heard a metallic ringing from the wall and he felt motion above his head. Whatever had passed clanged back into the stone again. The Unseelie Court liked their traps and their alarms to catch unwary mortals trespassing on their territory.

  At the tenth pace, Will stepped left. From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed glinting metal swinging down from above, passing through the place where he had been standing. When it returned to its fitting he caught a whisper of escaping air. The spy leapt to his right, just as another blade fell from above. He sensed it miss him by a hand’s-breadth.

  ‘Thank you, my friend,’ he whispered.

  With the muffled booming drowning out any potential warning sounds, Will crept cautiously towards a hissing torch affixed to the wall at the end of the passage. Another tunnel branched to the right. Crouching, the spy peered around the corner. A grey-cloaked sentry waited with his back turned. Sheathing his sword, the spy pulled out his dagger and darted forward. Though he made no sound, the sentry appeared to sense him, for the pale figure began to turn, his hand going to his own blade. Will was on the Fay in an instant, grasping his long hair with his left hand and whisking the dagger along the guard’s throat with his right. He continued to drag the head back as the lifeblood pumped out. And then, dropping his dagger, he clamped his free hand over the dying foe’s mouth to stifle the gargles.

  ‘For Kit,’ the spy whispered, but he felt no sense of elation, no triumph, only a flat bitterness, for he knew every kill destroyed another part of him.

  Once the sentry was still, Will laid the body down and reclaimed his dagger. The steady beat of metal upon metal growing louder by the moment, he ran along the passage until he came to a flight of steep stone steps.

  As the spy descended, he felt it grow colder, the worked-stone walls eventually giving way to a rough hewing into the natural bedrock. Acrid wisps of smoke wafted up, followed by more unpleasant smells: burned meat, excrement, the sweet-apple stink of rot.

  Unable to hear himself think above the thunderous metallic beat, Will drew his sword once more and slowed his step. He allowed a calm to settle upon him. He felt no emotion, no fear. Ready to react in an instant, his eyes continually probed the dark between the intermittent torches.

  The steps ended at a long, low-ceilinged stone chamber lit by a brazier at the far end. In the dim red light, he discerned dark squares on the walls marking other rooms opening out on either side. Chains ending in lethal-looking hooks hung from the ceiling. Swinging gently, a human-shaped cage was suspended to his left. Filthy, matted iron tools of unknown use leaned in a line against the opposite wall. Channels had been set into the floor so that the chamber
could be sluiced clean.

  Will felt a dismal mood press down upon him, a feeling that he recalled experiencing in only one other place: the torture chamber beneath the Tower of London, where all of England’s traitors eventually ended their days.

  ‘Hell, indeed,’ the spy whispered. His devil would have enjoyed that oppressive place, but Mephistophilis was undoubtedly still finding sport among the priests in the seminary.

  Stepping close to the wall, Will edged forward, eyes darting right and left.

  Thoom. Thoom. The beat echoed through the very stone.

  Where was the Enemy?

  Reaching a broad stone arch, the spy peered round the edge. In the far distance, more braziers glowed like summer fireflies. The shifting air currents told him what he already suspected: the place was vast, chamber after chamber reaching out for unknown distances in the shadows. How long would it take him to conduct a search?

  A woman’s anguished cry tore through the dark space.

  Will’s heart thundered in response. The cry was human, he was sure, and infused with fear; one of the Unseelie Court’s many victims.

  Rushing forward, the spy accepted that helping the mysterious woman was his immediate priority. His head rang from the hammer-and-anvil beat, so loud he could no longer tell if his running feet made any sound on the flags.

  As he neared one of the smoky braziers, Will saw the silhouette of the woman in the ruddy glare. Running wildly from another chamber, she glanced back in what must have been terror. She tripped and fell, crying out once again in shock.

  Before Will could react, figures separated from the dark ahead of him, unseen till now and unheard in the ringing din. Hoping they had not seen him, he attempted to step back into the shadows, but two pairs of strong hands caught him from behind, wrestling his rapier free and pinning his arms to his side. He was thrust forward and thrown on to the flags in front of the woman.

  The light from the brazier lit her tousled hair red, though her face fell into shadow still.