The Scar-Crow Men soa-2

by Mark Chadbourn

  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 himself 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 at
mosphere 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.

  ‘Be strong,’ the spy whispered to her, ‘all is not yet lost.’

  Will realized the woman was staring at him in what he guessed was shock. No, he thought, recognition.

  She turned her head slightly so that the glow illuminated her face for the first time, and then it was Will’s turn to gape.

  ‘Grace?’ he gasped.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  In the ruddy light of the setting sun, Grace hurried along the Grand Gallery from the Queen’s chambers at the end of her day’s labours. With his black cloak wrapped around him and his red hair hidden beneath a felt cap, Strangewayes waited in the shadows to intercept her. He thought how beautiful she looked with her chestnut hair tied back with a blue ribbon, and a bodice the colour of forget-me-nots emphasizing her slim waist. From the moment the Earl of Essex’s spy had first laid eyes upon her, he had not been short of lascivious thoughts, imagining the body beneath the skirts, the young breasts, the pleasure of throwing her breathless with passion upon his bed.

  But from that day in the garden when she had offered him only sympathy and care after he had heard the news of his brother’s death, Strangewayes had been shocked by deeper feelings, each slow emergence changing how he felt about himself and how he saw the world.

  ‘Grace.’ He stepped out into the gallery.

  ‘Hello, Tobias.’ The young woman showed no surprise.

  Strangewayes was stung by the lack of warmth in Grace’s face, but it had been that way for days. ‘I do not want it to be this cold between us. You have ignored me for too long-’

  ‘I have work to do, Tobias. The Queen needs my full attention.’

  ‘I spoke harshly that day we stood outside the garden door. You had concerns. I was wrong to brush them aside as if they … as if you did not matter.’

  The woman gave the spy a practised smile and made to push by him.

  ‘Grace, you are the only person to have shown me any warmth in many a year,’ Strangewayes said, the desperation forming a hard weight in his chest. ‘I want us to be friends again.’

  In a moment of madness, the young man grabbed Grace’s shoulders and pulled her to him. He expected her to resist in her usual high-spirited way, but she folded compliantly into his arms and he pressed his mouth upon her. The spy was disturbed to find her unresponsive lips had a texture like fish-skin, and when he opened his eyes, she was staring at him, unblinking and emotionless, as if he had merely enquired about her health. Ruffled, the red-headed man broke the embrace.

  ‘What will it take to win you back?’ Tobias stuttered.

  Ignoring the question, the young lady-in-waiting gave another chill smile and walked away. The spy felt crushed.

  ‘I will do what you asked of me,’ Strangewayes called. ‘I will prove to you that I am deserving of your affection.’

  Grace continued on her way without looking back.

  The spy wante
d to hate the young woman for making him feel such a fool. He had always mocked the lovelorn, and yet there he was, in the midst of great danger, facing a plot that could sweep away the Queen and important affairs of state, and all he could think of were his own petty feelings.

  Clenching his fists, Tobias swept through the deserted palace corridors. The Privy Council was meeting late and all of the advisers and record-keepers and snivelling hangers-on would be gathered in the Banqueting House, waiting for their masters to emerge from their discussions with Her Majesty. He had a brief opportunity.

  The sun had set by the time he reached the quiet rooms of the Secretary of State. None of the candles had yet been lit and he realized he would have to complete his business in the dark. Kneeling in front of Cockayne’s door, he took out his velvet pouch of tools and set to work.

  While probing the brass tumblers, he wondered if his loathing of Swyfte had been fired by the gossip that Grace mooned over his rival like a little girl, or if it had been because England’s greatest spy received all the adulation that he so deserved. When Essex had recruited him into his nascent spy network, the red-headed man had dreamed of fortune, adventure and acclaim. He had learned to loathe the less flamboyant spies of Cecil’s network — the killers, the thieves, the liars and torturers — and all the choices, and his future, had appeared clearly delineated. When had it all changed?

  The tumblers turned with a dull clunk. Strangewayes slipped into the chamber. Through the single window, the moon cast a silvery light over the jumbled piles of parchments, charts and books.

  After a few moments, the spy realized it would take him all night to sift through every paper in that cluttered chamber. He had to think clearly. Stepping back to the door, he looked around the sparse furniture and the towers of dusty volumes. There was nowhere to hide something of importance.

  Moving around the chamber walls, Tobias gently rapped each wooden panel. When none sounded false, he turned back to the room in frustration. In that moment, his gaze alighted on the honey-coloured Kentish ragstone of the hearth.