‘I wish I had a fire to burn out this infestation,’ Launceston hummed, ‘even if it took down all Liverpool.’
Will snatched open the door that backed on to the alley and led the way into a small scullery that smelled of lamb fat and cheap beer. Dirty cooking pots from that evening’s meal were stacked on a trestle to one side. Instantly, the spy recognized an unnatural feeling to the house. A chill hung in the air and intermittent tremors ran through the walls and floor under the old, dry rushes.
‘What is wrong here?’ Strangewayes hissed as he darted in behind the others and closed the door. He drew the bolt with a resonant clank.
Will sifted through his impressions for some clue to whatever was unnerving him. His face hardened, his eyes flickering around for any sign of threat. Raising his arm, he flicked his fingers forward and his men followed him without question, into a silent, cold kitchen and then into a hallway that smelled of damp. Everywhere was dark. A passage ran alongside a flight of ramshackle stairs. Though the gale whistled around the eaves, inside the house was so still it seemed devoid of life. Will felt troubled by the quiet — any rooming house was filled with a symphony of creaks, footsteps, snores and conversation for most hours of the day — and he could see from Carpenter’s darting eyes that his companion felt the same.
‘We go up,’ he said.
The first board protested like a wheezing old man. They all halted, listening. When no response came, they continued to climb.
Halfway up the first flight, a throaty laugh rolled out just above them, low and resonant. Behind him, Will felt his men bristle, their rapiers at the ready. Will’s eyes narrowed. He searched the dark at the top of the stairs for any sign of movement, and listened for a soft tread on the boards. After a moment of quiet, someone began to hum an old sea-song, a man’s deep voice, the melody punctuated by another laugh.
The four spies looked at each other, curious.
Will bounded up the remaining steps and rounded on to the second flight. A man in a dirty undershirt and stained breeches slumped halfway up the rise, his head against the wall. His greasy brown hair hung lankly around his unshaven face, but his eyes had rolled back so only the whites were visible. He waved one hand in front of his face as if in time to music, and then hummed the sea-song once more.
‘Has he lost his wits?’ Carpenter whispered. ‘The Unseelie Court have already ventured within?’
‘If not yet, then soon while we waste our time here gabbling,’ Will hissed. He dropped low in front of the man’s face until he smelled the ale-reeking breath. ‘An Irish woman and an old man,’ he demanded. ‘Where are they?’
After a moment the man appeared to hear and raised one finger. ‘The third,’ he said. As Will made to push by, the man grabbed his arm and whispered, ‘The eyes are afire. Say your prayers.’ Will shook him off and looked up the stairs into the dark.
At the top of the second flight, he heard a clatter on the roof high overhead. Movement flashed past the small window beside him. A crash echoed from the cobbles below; a tile had been dislodged. He raised his eyes, listening, then signalled to the other men with his eyes that the Enemy had reached the rooming house.
‘They go down as we climb up,’ Launceston said without a hint of fear, ‘and where in the middle shall we meet?’
At the top of the third flight, Will found a plump, pink-faced woman crumpled on the floor beside a younger man with the marks of the pox on his cheeks: Moll Higgins, perhaps, and the man another lodger. Both lived, but spittle drooled from the corners of their mouths and they looked right through him when he shook them.
‘What has happened here? These are all fit for Bedlam,’ Strangewayes whispered. He knelt beside the woman and took her hand.
Will had no answer. The Unseelie Court still sought entry; this was the work of another. He wondered what terrible thing had happened here to drive the wits from the occupants. In the silence, dread seemed to drift down the stairs like the unnatural fog along the river.
Mistress Higgins and her lodger began to convulse, crying out in a language that no one recognized. As he climbed the stairs, Will frowned, forcing himself not to look back. Launceston held up a hand to bring them to a halt, but Will had already felt it: a cool draught sweeping down the stairs, smelling of the smoky night air. A window had slid open. The boards overhead creaked.
Catching a glimpse of uncertainty in Strangewayes’ eyes, Will whispered, ‘If we walk away and leave Dee to the Enemy, all will be lost; for England, for us. There will be no coming back for a second chance. We must do what we can, though our lives be forfeit.’
On the third floor, they searched the first two rooms, small and cramped, with beds that had not been slept in. The third was larger, but also empty. ‘This is the place,’ Will whispered, recognizing Meg’s crimson taffeta dress hanging over the end of an unmade bed. While Carpenter crouched to peer underneath, Strangewayes moved to the window and glanced out. He shook his head: the Irish woman and her prisoner could not have escaped over the nearby rooftops.
Another creak echoed above them. Will imagined grey figures prowling around the darkened top floor. Soon those things would begin to descend. He stilled his thoughts and looked around. Ropes that had clearly been used to restrain the astrologer were coiled in one corner with a blue silk gag on top. The rushes had been brushed aside and a circle had been chalked on the floor with mysterious signs scrawled around the perimeter. Had Meg allowed Dee to cast a spell, he wondered? Surely she would not have taken such a risk. But there was a fat candle, half burned, and the sweet scent of incense hung in the air.
His gaze fell upon the obsidian mirror, lying on its side beside Meg’s bag. Such an object of power would never have been discarded so easily. He pushed past Carpenter to snatch up the looking glass. It was insignificant enough; few would have given it a second glance. But as he stared into the surface, cold prickled down his spine. He felt the weight of a presence looking back at him. Before he could dismiss the sensation, the glass misted, and a face began to form in the depths. A part of him wanted to hurl the mirror away, but he felt strangely gripped by what was revealing itself. And then the face formed and the shock jolted him.
It was Jenny, his Jenny, staring at him with wide, frightened eyes.
Carpenter jerked up, half raising his rapier in concern, but Will was caught in the grip of that vision. No illusion, this. So many years had passed since he had seen her, and yet it was Jenny as he remembered her, from that last day in the cornfield, brown hair tied back from her pale face. He reeled from the rush of emotions that accompanied the sight, the memories of quiet conversations at dusk, the sensation of her hand in his. And yet somehow he knew that this was Jenny now, and that she could see him as clearly as he saw her. Her eyes grew wider still when they took in his face, but if he expected a smile of relief, or love, he saw only worry in her features.
She vanished as quickly as she had appeared. Will almost cried out, pleading with her to return so he could see her for one moment longer, a moment that felt richer than any he had lived in the last ten years.
‘What ails you?’ Carpenter growled in annoyance.
Will began to explain, then caught himself. ‘At least we have the mirror now,’ he whispered, slipping it into the leather pouch at his side. ‘Now, let us find Dee and be away from this haunted place.’
The window rattled in the grip of the gale that now buffeted the house. ‘Perhaps they are long gone, and already aboard their ship,’ Carpenter ventured.
Will eyed the taffeta dress and flashed a reassuring smile. ‘Perhaps.’ Raising his rapier, he stepped out of the chamber and prowled towards the final flight of stairs.
For one moment, he stood, looking up into the dark. All was still.
His breath locked in his chest. He levelled his rapier, twirling the tip once, then placed his foot upon the first step.
A high-pitched whine screeched across the upper floor. Will reeled against the flaking plaster of the wall, clutching
his ears in agony. Steel barbs plunged into his head. He half glimpsed the other three men stumbling back with contorted features, hands pressed against their own ears.
A moment later, a boom resounded across the floor upstairs, bringing down a shower of dust. White light flared so brightly, Will wondered whether the house had been struck by lightning or a keg of gunpowder had exploded. Bedlam erupted before he had a chance to gather his thoughts. Throat-rending shrieks ripped through the house, sounding unnervingly like the cries of ravens. More flashes of light, a billow of acrid smoke. The very foundations of the house seemed to shake.
Will grabbed the rocking banister to keep his feet. The violent tremors threw the other three men across the landing. A body burst out of one of the rooms on the final floor and wheeled down the steps to crash in a broken-limbed heap at the foot of the stairs. Fearing it was Dee, or Meg, the spy wrenched himself round.
Will felt his chest tighten in shock. The figure crumpled in front of him wore a grey shirt and breeches silvered with mildew, the cut echoing a fashion of a time long gone. The skin was bone-white, the cheeks cadaverous. The eyes had been burned out so that only charred black sockets stared back at him. He struggled to comprehend what had happened. Never had he seen one of the powerful Unseelie Court despatched so easily, so brutally. He yanked his head back to peer up the stairs through the swirling smoke, wondering what force wreaked havoc up there.
Another figure lurched from the open doorway at the top. Will glimpsed a flash of auburn hair, a pale face, a bodice and skirt of black and gold. Red Meg O’Shee clutched on to the banister, casting one wide-eyed glance back into the room she had left. Her mouth formed an O of horror. Will felt another wave of disbelief. This spy, so hardened by the fight against the English in her homeland, who had suffered all manner of threat to her life and well-being, gripped by terror.
Before he could call out to her, she propelled herself down the stairs in desperation to escape what lay at her back. In a flurry of red hair and skirts, she crashed into him, fleeting surprise lost to mounting panic. ‘Leave!’ she screamed. ‘Leave or lose your soul!’
As they turned, another tremor hurled them to one side and they crashed through the splintering banister on to the flight of stairs below. Will took the brunt of the impact, pain lancing through his ribs. Meg landed on top of him, already craning her head in fear to see what followed.
Strangewayes was pointing and crying out a warning lost beneath the booming that now sounded like a cannon barrage. Cloaked in the swirls of acrid smoke, a figure was descending the stairs at a steady pace. Will felt gripped by the sight, and by the terrifying power he sensed in that apparition. It seemed he was in the centre of a storm, with lightning crashing all around and thunder breaking overhead.
And then the figure loomed out of the cloud, and Will saw a cloak made from the pelts of many woodland creatures, the still-attached heads swaying gently. White skulls of birds and mice rattled on a silver chain to the rhythm of each step. Wild silvery hair, a wrinkled face that mapped a life lived in the shadows.
‘Dee?’ Will gasped.
The alchemist turned his terrible gaze upon the spy. The eyes flickered with blue fire, and in them Will saw nothing that was human.
CHAPTER SIX
Black pebble eyes watched from the high Branches. Hunched like old men, the crows perched in silent attention, so great in number it seemed the stark winter trees were flourishing with sable growth. Sweating with fear, Tobias Strangewayes wrenched his head round as he ran. Their unnatural stares chilled him. Why had they gathered? Why were they silent? Why were they watching?
Relief flooded him when he burst from the great Kentish forest and saw the large, brick-built merchant’s house on the edge of the village, the family home, safe and secure. His father had made no little money, buying up the woodland to feed the endless demand for timber for the great seagoing vessels that had made England such a power across the world. His breath burning in his chest, Tobias scrambled up to the door, his only thought, odd yet somehow right, The crows shall not get me now.
And then he was in the bright morning room and his brother was there, good Stephen, strong and wise, sitting by the cold ashes in the hearth. Tobias felt a yearning that he couldn’t explain. But then Stephen turned his broad, rosy-cheeked face to him and gave a sad smile, and Tobias realized that his brother was dead, overseas, as so many of his family had died.
‘There is no reward in killing a King,’ Stephen said.
Tobias felt a cold reach deep into his bones, but before he could respond the vision shattered, the glittering shards falling away into the dark.
He jolted awake. The floor where he had been lying was cold. His mouth felt as arid as if he had swallowed a hogshead of ale the night before. A shaft of early morning sun fell through the open door of one of the rooms and caught a constellation of drifting dust motes. All was still. In the autumn chill, he pushed himself into a sitting position. Launceston and Carpenter were stirring behind him, and beyond them he saw the woman they had guessed to be the rooming house owner, Moll Higgins, sitting against the cracking plaster on the wall. Though dazed, she looked as if her wits had returned.
Strangewayes struggled to think clearly. Though the unsettling dream about his brother still had its hooks in him, fragments of the previous night emerged. He recalled Dee coming down the stairs, and the terror he felt, an unnatural terror as if all his senses were warning him of something he could not see. He remembered the flashes of light, and the smoke and the booming, like the swell of the ocean against a hull heard on the bilge deck. And the last thing that sprang into his mind was Will grabbing hold of the Irish spy and hauling her down the stairs.
Strangewayes heaved himself to his feet and made his way unsteadily down the creaking wooden treads. Swyfte was slumped next to the open front door, the woman nowhere to be seen.
‘Dee?’ Strangewayes gasped as his companion stood up. ‘The mirror?’
Will shook his head, running a hand through his tousled black hair. Gathering his wits, he spun out into the cobbled street. Liverpool was lit by a thin orange light as the sun edged up over the horizon. Across the still streets, a hum rose up from the direction of the docks.
‘Zounds, what happened last night?’ Strangewayes demanded. ‘Dee was filled with fire and brimstone. Never have I seen him that way. Was he possessed by devils?’
‘Possessed, aye, that is a good enough explanation,’ Swyfte replied, distracted. ‘When I looked in his eyes, I saw no sign of the man I knew. Something dark has been awakened within him.’ His tone was measured, his words free of shock or unease, and Strangewayes guessed he had already started to reach some understanding of the alchemist’s transformation.
‘He laid low those night-things as if they were drunken apprentices. Where did he get such power? And why did he only reveal it this past night?’
‘These are questions for another time,’ Will replied, dismissing any debate with a wave of his hand. ‘For now, we must hope we still have an opportunity to prevent a greater disaster. Let us to the docks, and pray that we are not too late.’ He threw himself down the cobbled slope towards the crack of sailcloth and barked orders, the cries of the gulls and the dank smell of the wide, grey river.
Strangewayes shielded his eyes from the bright morning light as they emerged from the shadowed alley on to the quayside. The dock-workers were already hard at their labours, grunting and sweating as they heaved bales on to the backs of carts. The horses stamped their hooves and snorted, the apple-sweet scent of their dung caught in the sharp wind off the water. The steady beat of wooden mallets echoed from the shipwrights’ dens. To that rhythm of seagoing life on the Merse, merchants waved their arms in the air as they auctioned their wares, haggling over prices, and sailors sang their work-shanties on board the great vessels at anchor.
Tobias followed Will’s gaze along the forest of masts large and small. His heart fell when he realized the carrack had already sailed.
> ‘We have lost Dee,’ he said with bitterness, ‘when we were so close. What now for us all?’
‘Keep your spirits up.’ Swyfte seemed oddly unmoved despite the desperate situation in which they found themselves.
‘What do you suggest? That we steal a boat and sail for Ireland? We will feel the sharp edge of a chieftain’s broadsword if we trespass into the interior of that benighted land.’
He felt another spike of annoyance as his companion ignored him, striding out to the edge of the quay where a black-bearded seaman knotted the frayed ends of a net. ‘Tell me, friend, the carrack that sailed for Ireland,’ Will asked, ‘how much of a head start does it have?’
‘Ireland?’ The sailor’s eyes sparkled. ‘It’s bound for farther shores now.’
‘What say you?’ Swyfte’s eyes narrowed.
The seaman drew the final knot on his net and admired his handiwork. ‘A new course was ordered before dawn, so I ’eard,’ he replied, glancing out across the glassy water. ‘They’ll be putting in somewhere or other to take on provisions. But then they’re bound for the New World.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
Red Meg shivered, pulling her Crimson cloak Tighter around her. The autumn wind bit hard, lashing her auburn hair, as she leaned against the oak rail and watched Liverpool disappear into the hazy distance. How easily she had sailed into uncharted waters, with Will Swyfte once again steering the new course of her life. She smiled. Though danger awaited, better a life of adventure and romance than a slow march to a grey death. She turned, looking towards the forecastle. Ahead lay the Irish Sea with its wild storms and soaring cliffs of black water. And beyond? She pushed aside all the questions that assailed her, unable to stare into the furnace of her true motivations. Time would judge if she were fool or not.
Captain Nicholas Duncombe emerged from his cabin. He was a strong man, tall and broad-shouldered, with a quiet nature that seemed more suited to scholarly pursuits than to command. He was kind, too, kinder than any other man of the sea she had encountered, most of whom always had a lustful look in their eye when they spoke to her.
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