The Alchemist of Souls: Night's Masque, Volume 1

by Anne Lyle

  "He's gone to inspect the fort at Tilbury," Monkton called after him. "Won't be back until after noon."

  Mal skidded to a halt, turned, and ran back along the outer ward. If Kiiren went to the hospital, he might see Sandy, and surely even a skrayling could not miss the resemblance. His other brother's gambling debts were shameful enough, but insanity in the family… There had to be a way to stop this.

  The ambassador's coach was stopped outside St Thomas's Tower, with the mounted skrayling guard lined up behind it, and Kiiren was already climbing in. Mal ran up to the driver.

  "There's been a change of itinerary." A plan was starting to form in his mind. Yes, that would do it. "Rumours of plague at the hospital. It's not safe for our guests."

  The coachman made the sign of the cross. "Wild horses wouldn't drag me there, sir, not if there's plague about. Where to, then?"

  "Bartholomew Fair," Mal said, climbing up beside him. "Where else?"

  Today being the day after St Bartholomew's, the fair was still in full swing. By the time the coach reached Newgate Market, near the western end of Cheapside, the traffic was so thick they could make no headway at all.

  "Best walk from here, good sirs," the coachman yelled down. Kiiren leaned out of the coach window and shouted some instructions to the skrayling guards. Eight of them dismounted, leaving the remaining four to look after the horses. The guards gathered around the coach door and then moved outwards to form a clear space in which the ambassador could safely disembark. The skrayling party was now causing an even bigger obstruction as fairgoers stopped to watch this latest diversion.

  After a moment's hesitation Mal jumped down from the driver's seat. He pushed his way through the crowds, scanning every face for any hint of malice towards the skraylings or, worse still, guarded neutrality. He saw nothing to arouse his suspicions, only open curiosity and the natural impatience of people whose holiday was not starting as quickly as they wished. Even so, he remained on alert. After Wednesday's attack he was taking no chances.

  At last the guard was formed up in a U-shape around Kiiren, with Mal at the front to close the square, and they moved off. He felt uncomfortably conspicuous, the object of so many stares that, in truth, probably slid straight past him to the peculiar party trailing in his wake. He led the skraylings through Newgate, the massive gatehouse in the city walls that also served as a prison, and up Giltspur Street towards the fair. The traffic was at its worst here, though no one seemed to want to get too close to a group of fearsome skrayling warriors, so they were able to move comparatively swiftly into Smithfield itself.

  The permanent buildings of London gave way to a temporary town of stalls and alleys, punctuated by larger spaces where entertainers tumbled, played instruments or performed tricks – or sometimes attempted all three at once. On a low wooden stage a fire-eater, stripped to the waist and with a belly even bigger than Sideways Jack's, was flourishing a blazing torch. A drum rolled, and the fire-eater thrust the torch into his mouth. His eyes bulged, his scarlet face dripped with sweat, then he removed the extinguished torch from his mouth with a grand gesture and bowed thrice. His audience whooped and cheered. The fire-eater's assistant, a lad as skinny as his master was gross, carried round his drum, which doubled as a collecting bowl. A rain of small coins beat a second drum-roll on its surface.

  "It is custom to give money for shows?" Kiiren asked Mal when the noise had died down enough to speak.

  "It is how these men earn their living, sir."

  Kiiren nodded thoughtfully, then produced a purse from his belt and took out a shilling. Mal dropped the coin onto the drum, reflecting that the sum was nicely calculated to be generous but not ostentatious. The fire-eater's assistant thanked him profusely and bowed towards the ambassador's party, hand on heart.

  The skraylings moved on, eager to see all the sights.

  "What are they?" Kiiren asked, leaning close to Mal to be heard over the crowd. "They are shape of people, but what is purpose?"

  Mal saw he was looking at a stall heaped with Bartholomew Babies, the gingerbread dolls decorated with dried fruit and gold leaf which were bought by the thousand to take home to children and grandchildren. He explained they were for playing with, and for eating.

  "Your children eat images of people?" He shook his head. "It is… most strange to us."

  "It's traditional," Mal said. He had never thought about it before, but he supposed it might seem odd to a stranger.

  Out of loyalty to his own culture rather than any particular desire for gingerbread, he purchased one of the dolls, a fashionably dressed lady about eight inches high, in a gilded ruff and saffron-painted gown with currants dotted over her skirts.

  "For your little one, good master?" the stall-holder asked.

  "Erm, no," Mal said, though it occurred to him as he handed over his pennies that Sandy would like it.

  The man peered around Mal at the skraylings. "If you're looking for their quarter," he said, "it's over that way, at the Cow Lane end."

  "Thank you." He ought to have known the skraylings would be here in force, being ever ready with goods and trinkets to sell. He smiled to himself. This plan of his was turning out better and better.

  He turned back to the ambassador's party.

  "I'm told your people have a number of stalls here; perhaps Your Excellency would like to visit them?"

  Kiiren nodded. "It is my thought also. Please, lead on."

  Mal headed westwards, hoping the gingerbread-seller had not been wrong. The day was warm and humid after the recent rains – too warm to be traipsing round a crowded fair. He eased a finger under the collar of his doublet and wondered if he dare unbutton it. Leland wasn't here to see him after all, and the skraylings doubtless knew little of English etiquette.

  Fortunately, either the directions had been correct or luck was on Mal's side again. The rough rectangular booths of the regular stallholders gave way to circular tents with domed roofs, their sides decorated with the same geometric patterns as the skrayling guards' tunics. Everywhere Mal looked there were tattooed faces, silver-streaked manes and bared fangs. He swallowed hard. Daniel in the lion's den, he told himself. Stay calm. He wondered if this was how the skraylings felt whenever they walked the streets of Southwark.

  The crowds thinned out a little as the ambassador's party entered the skrayling quarter. The narrow lanes of the fair were still crowded, but people did not push or jostle as much, and their demeanour was more sober and reserved. Those here on serious business had no wish to offend the foreigners, and those who came to gawp were content to keep their distance.

  The skrayling merchants were selling their most popular wares at the fair: tobacco, carved beads and exotic herbal mixtures guaranteed to cure any ill. Here and there a charcoal brazier topped with a heavy clay pot shimmered in the summer heat, giving off an enticing scent. A sudden rattle of explosions from one had Mal reaching for his rapier, until the vendor lifted the lid with a flourish to reveal a pile of fluffy white grains. He offered a dish of them to Mal, who picked up a grain and cautiously put it in his mouth, expecting this new delicacy to be hot and perhaps spicy. It turned out to be chewy and rather bland, not nearly as flavoursome as the scent it gave off when cooking. He politely declined the rest.

  He continued to scan the crowd for signs of trouble, though what he expected to see, he was not certain. The skraylings' facial tattoos exaggerated some expressions and concealed others, making their intent difficult to read. Perhaps that was why he felt more at ease with the ambassador than he had expected. Perhaps old wounds were healing at last.

  Lost in these thoughts, he suddenly realised Kiiren was addressing him.

  "Catlyn-tuur, our esteemed Master of Lines wants know if you like have tattoo."

  "Ah, well, I don't know…" Mal glanced around. All the skraylings were staring at him, their patterned faces intent.

  "It is token of belonging, done to all men of our people," Kiiren added. "Is… traditional."

  "In t
hat case, I can hardly refuse." He hesitated. "I don't have to have it on my face, do I, sir?"

  Kiiren shook his head and smiled. "That is clan-marking, not for your people."

  The "Master of Lines" turned out to be a stocky skrayling with ink-stained fingers and hair more silver than black. Tattoos spread across his cheeks like ripples on water. He looked Mal up and down, his amber eyes expressionless, then took down a booklet which was hanging from the roof-pole and handed it to Mal.

  "Do you choose," he growled, and sat down on a stool. He took up a pestle and mortar and began grinding some pigment.

  The booklet was a single long strip of paper, folded this way and that like a bellows, and on it were painted dozens of designs for tattoos. None of them were much like the ones on the faces of the skrayling guards: these were simpler, mostly roundels containing stylised animal heads, leaves or flowers. He wondered if they were genuine skrayling designs or just made up to suit English tastes.

  Kiiren peered around his shoulder, and shook his head. He said something in Vinlandic to the tattooist, who handed over a sheet of paper and a charcoal pencil. The young skrayling sketched a design: a knot of thorns surrounded by five-petalled flowers.

  "You like this?" He looked expectantly at Mal.

  "Well, yes, sir." He could not say no, not without offending the most important skrayling in England. "Very well, have him do it now before I change my mind."

  "Where you like he?" the tattooist asked.

  "Here.' Mal patted his left arm, just below the shoulder. No sense in damaging his sword-arm.

  "Do you neked," the skrayling instructed, and gestured to a low stool just inside the tent.

  Mal hesitated. He was starting to get the hang of Tradetalk, even without more lessons from young Hendricks, but this wasn't the time for a misunderstanding. He turned to Kiiren. "Did he really say what I thought he said?"

  "He ask you bare your arm," Kiiren said. "What did you think he say?"

  "It doesn't matter, sir," Mal muttered. The young skrayling might feign innocence, but there was a twinkle in his eye that said he understood more than he liked to let on.

  Mal took off his doublet and shirt and sat patiently whilst the tattooist copied Kiiren's design onto his bicep with a brush and ink. Then the old skrayling took up another bowl of pigment, and a needle. He grasped Mal's elbow with a rough grey-nailed hand.

  "Tell me about the design, if you would, sir," Mal said to Kiiren, partly because he was curious but mostly because he wanted a distraction from the fact that he was now at the mercy of a skrayling armed with a sharp instrument.

  "It is ancient Vinlandic symbol, tree of our homeland. There is English tree, much like it, with thorns and small berries."

  Mal thought for a moment. Blackthorn was too bushy to be considered a tree. "Hawthorn? The leaves are shaped like a hand, and the berries are –" he was about to say "red", but remembered what Hendricks had told him "– about so big." He measured the small size of the haws with thumb and forefinger.

  "Yes. Hawthorn."

  "May I ask why you chose it?" He winced as the needle punctured his skin.

  Kiiren looked down at him, his expression inscrutable. "It is for remembering."

  Mal looked away. The last thing he wanted to do was remember. For a brief moment he was tempted to pull away and refuse the tattoo, but the old skrayling had hold of him too tightly and besides, Leland would probably have Mal dismissed if he offended the ambassador. He forced himself to breathe slowly and deeply. It occurred to him that he was not exactly in a position to do his job right now, and he wondered what he would do if another assassin struck. It seemed unlikely, here in the heart of their own community, but stranger things had happened. Was not Caesar murdered by his best friend, on the steps of the Roman Senate?

  Preoccupied by these thoughts and by planning possible strategies, he hardly noticed the rest of the tattooing process. The next thing he was aware of, it was all over and the Master of Lines was bandaging his arm with a piece of snowy linen. Through Kiiren the old skrayling instructed him to keep it covered until morning and to keep it clean, though his expression suggested he had a low opinion of English cleanliness. He also gave Mal a pot of evil-smelling grey salve, to be used twice a day. Mal put his clothes back on, wincing as his sleeve rubbed against the bandage. "How much do I owe him?"

  "For you, is gift," Kiiren replied.

  "Thank you," Mal said, wondering if this put him in the skraylings' debt, and if so, what would be expected of him in return. Unlike the earring, he could not give this gift back.

  He looked up at the sky. The sun was high overhead, silvering the leading edge of an enormous grey cloud that had blown in from the west.

  "We should be getting back to the Tower, sir," he said. "Sir James will be expecting you for dinner."

  "You took him where?"

  Leland was scarlet with rage, pacing up and down in front of the fireplace like a lion in the menagerie. The parlour, now emptied of dinner guests, suddenly felt cramped to Mal, as though the panelled walls were closing in.

  "Bartholomew Fair, sir," Mal said.

  "Bartholomew Fair. Were you trying to get him killed?"

  "No, sir, of course not."

  "Yet you took the Ambassador of Vinland to the most crowded, filthy place in London, to be jostled by pickpockets and drunkards, gawped at by bawds and, and–" Leland broke off, almost apoplectic with fury. He took a deep breath. "Why did you not take them to Bethlem as had been arranged?"

  "I thought it an unfit diversion for a gentleman, even a skrayling one," Mal said truthfully.

  "You thought? You are not paid to think." Leland stopped in front of him. "You are paid to keep your eyes open and your sword at the ready."

  "Yes, sir."

  "What the Queen will say when she hears of this, I dread to think," Leland muttered.

  "The Queen, sir?"

  The lieutenant caught him a backhanded blow across the face. "Speak when you are spoken to, sirrah!"

  Mal kept his eyes on the floor. He could feel his lip swelling already. He heard the door open and booted footsteps approach.

  "Ah, captain," Leland said. "Take this man out to the barracks and have him flogged for insubordination."

  Mal's head jerked up, but he bit back a retort when he saw the malicious look on Monkton's face. No sense in goading the man further. He turned to Leland.

  "Permission to speak, sir."

  Leland inclined his head.

  "Sir, am I to be dismissed?"

  "If it were in my power, you would be out of this place faster than shit off a shovel." Leland grimaced. "Fortunately for you, the ambassador has the final say in the matter."

  Mal was marched across the green to the barracks. Leland had increased the garrison for the duration of the ambassador's visit, and there were around four dozen off-duty militiamen sitting around smoking and playing dice after dinner.

  "Right, lads," Monkton barked. "Look sharp! I have here for you a lesson in what happens to men who fail to follow orders."

  He held out his hand for Mal's sword, then gestured to him to remove his doublet. Mal complied, trying to ignore the soldiers' catcalls. Monkton led him over to the wall, where a pair of manacles was fastened at head height. Evidently this was a regular punishment.

  "Shirt off as well," Monkton said. "We don't want you dying of a festering cut."

  Mal stripped off his shirt, revealing the bandage on his left arm.

  "Been in the wars already, have we?" Monkton said with a sneer.

  Mal faced the wall and raised his arms, and the manacles were closed around his wrists. He sank his forehead on his hands, bracing himself for the first blow. Monkton exchanged banter with the soldiers, stretching out the moment of anticipation until Mal was almost ready to scream at him to get on with it, for God's sake. Then there was a whistle and snap of leather and sudden sickening pain that drove the breath from his lungs. Again and again the lash fell, until the soldiers' jeers blur
red into the sound of blood roaring in his ears.

  After a while he was aware of Monkton unlocking the shackles, and surmised his punishment was over. Someone pressed a tankard of ale into his hands. He gulped it down, hoping to dull the pain, and the soldiers laughed. When he had drained the tankard, Monkton thrust Mal's bundled-up garments and his sword into his hands and escorted him back to the tower. Mal stumbled along, his guts a cold knot of shame. He should have let the ambassador go to Bethlem; nothing he might have seen there could have been worse than this humiliation.

  Ned trudged along Thames Street in the pouring rain. He wanted to run back to Gabriel and forget all about yesterday's visit from Kemp, but his laggardly conscience had pricked at him all day. With the courage of several pints of beer inside him and Gabriel urging him to get it over with, it had seemed such an easy thing to do. Now, as he neared the Tower, his courage began to desert him.