The Alchemist of Souls: Night's Masque, Volume 1 (45 page)

  "Who wrote the poem?"

  "I– I don't know. H-H-H-Harris gave it to me, I d-didn't ask."

  "Was it your intention to kill the Ambassador of Vinland, by burning the theatre with him inside it?"

  "How… How else do you think you kill a demon?" Wheeler tried to laugh but broke off, gasping against the fresh agony it caused him.

  "You think the skraylings are demons?"

  Wheeler looked up at him with bloodshot eyes. "Don't you?"

  "You said the other day you had seen me before," Mal replied. "Are you sure it was me, or someone who just looked like me?"

  "How should I know? Demons can look however they want. Perhaps it was one of them masquerading as you."

  "You've seen a man who looked like me but was not me?" Hope rose in his breast. Could Hendricks have been right, and these diverse plots were all one?

  "You tell me," the actor whispered. "Was it you I saw in the Bull's Head, conspiring with Suffolk's Men?"

  "What is your quarrel with Suffolk's Men?"

  "They consort with demons. They deserve to die."

  The memory of a boyish face, white with terror beneath a layer of ash, came vividly to mind. Mal leant on Wheeler's shoulder again, and this time he took satisfaction in the man's screams.

  "No one deserves to die like that," Mal growled. "Not even you."

  He got to his feet and went over to the door to summon the gaoler. Behind him, Wheeler's cries turned to manic laughter.

  "I die in God's grace," the actor cackled. "Can you say the same? Can you?"

  Mal walked back to the ambassador's quarters the long way round, more shaken by the encounter with Wheeler than he cared to admit. Try as he might to deny it, there was something unholy going on here, and he could not say for certain that his own soul was not destined for damnation.

 

Coby sat at table in the ambassador's quarters, staring sightlessly at the congealing supper on her plate. She knew Master Catlyn's anger over the day's events were not directed at her, but that had not made their discussion any pleasanter. Now he had gone to question Wheeler. She did not envy the man, though she could not pity him either.

  She looked round sharply as the front door opened. Master Catlyn stepped through the tiny vestibule into the dining chamber, his face hard as stone. He shook his head in response to her enquiring look, then sat down, poured a goblet of wine and drained it.

  "Wheeler knows nothing," he said at last.

  "But I thought–"

  "Oh, he was behind the attacks on the theatre. But the other business… no."

  She reached out a hand, placed it over his.

  "You should tell the ambassador," she said. "About your brother, I mean."

  "No." He glanced about the dining room. The skrayling guards had finished eating and were gathered round the other end of the table, watching four of their fellows play Five Beans. He refilled his goblet then stood up. "Come."

  They went through into the small parlour between the dining room and the ambassador's bedchamber. The door of the latter was closed. He gestured for her to sit down on the bench set against the panelled wall, and sat down next to her.

  "He is very afraid," Coby said, inclining her head towards the door.

  "It is one thing to know you are going into danger," Master Catlyn said. "Quite another to look Death in the face."

  She saw again Master Naismith lying bloody at her feet, and her throat tightened.

  "They won," she whispered. "I tried to stop them, but they, they destroyed everything–"

  He put an arm around her shoulder. Her last defences melted away and she began to weep, great sobs that tore at her throat and wounded side. He held her, saying nothing. At last she could cry no more, her ribs ached too much. She groped in her pocket for a handkerchief and found the handful of torn paper. The trapdoor. The cannon. Fresh tears welled in her eyes and she gasped for breath.

  "Here."

  Something hard and metallic was pressed into her hand. A pewter goblet. She sipped the wine, wiped her nose on her cuff, and drank again. The sweet spiced liquid burned a path to her stomach and out into her veins.

  "Better?"

  She nodded and handed the wine back to him, found the handkerchief in her other pocket and blew her nose. She dared not look up at him, not with her face all swollen and blotchy from crying, as she knew it must be. She picked at the hem on her handkerchief and wished she had brought her sewing basket with her.

  "You should sleep," he said. "It's been a long day."

  She began to protest, but he was right. The day's exertions had turned her limbs to lead, and her head ached from weeping. He led her through into the small bedchamber where she had slept before. A greenish-blue lamp stood on a chest against the right hand wall, casting a sickly corpselight over the room. The square panes of the window glowed deep violet in the gathering dusk, and shadows thickened in the corners of the room and under the curtained canopy of the bed. Coby shivered, wishing she were back home in Thames Street.

  "Wheeler and his friends may have won their battle," Master Catlyn said softly, staring out across the river, "but the war is not over."

  She joined him at the window. The sun was sinking, somewhere to their right, gilding the dark waters of the Thames. Wherries hung with lanterns plied their way between the city and Southwark, taking revellers home. The skraylings' encampment was dark for once, a huddled mass of domed tents silhouetted against the fading sky. Had they doused their magical lamps out of respect for the dead?

  "You have to tell him," she said again.

  He made no reply. Coby wondered what had passed between the ambassador and his bodyguard whilst she was in Thames Street. Did Lord Kiiren blame Master Catlyn for seating them so near the cannon? None of them could have known. If it was anyone's fault, it was her own for not checking the flash-powder in daylight before using it.

  "Did you know," he said at last, "the skraylings believe they are reborn into new bodies when they die?"

  "No. I… I always wondered if they had a faith of their own, though. They resist the message of Christ so strongly."

  "But none of them has spoken to you about it."

  "No." She lifted her hand towards the cross hidden under her doublet, uncomfortable with this heretical turn of the conversation. "It's not something that comes up in business dealings. Anyway, what has that to do with your brother?"

  "It's not only skrayling bodies they can take."

  She stared at him. "No. That's…"

  "Possession?" He turned towards her, dark eyes glinting in his shadowed face. "How else do you explain my brother's madness?"

  "No."

  "He – the ambassador – sought me out." His voice was low, urgent. "Why? Because he knew one of his kinfolk had been murdered near my father's lands, and a boy born there soon afterwards. What he does not, I think, know is that there were two of us."

  "Sandy is possessed by a skrayling."

  "Yes."

  "And those men who stole him away?"

  He sighed. "I don't know. Perhaps hired by the Huntsmen."

  She recalled his reluctant confession. "Do the Huntsmen know about the skraylings, about what they can do?"

  "It would explain why they hate and fear them so much. But I cannot say for sure. After that night, I did not hide my distaste for their methods, and Charles did not confide in me again." He laughed bitterly. "I would be far more use to Walsingham if he had."

  "If the Huntsmen have him and know what he is…" She felt sick at the thought. Possessed or no, he was Master Catlyn's brother.

  "We should both get some rest; there is much to do on the morrow." He turned to leave.

  "Don't go!" she cried out. The thought of being left alone in the dark, in a building full of demonic creatures that were willing and able to violate her very soul, terrified her. "Please, stay with me."

  His jaw tightened. "Do not tempt me. I am in no humour to be gentle."

  "I…" Shame turned to indignation. "I was not offering my body."

  "No?"

  "No." She sat down on the edge of the bed and pulled off a shoe. "Faith, you men think of but one thing."

  "One
thing
, aye." He leant on the door jamb, grinning at the double entendre.

  She mimed throwing the shoe at him, then let it fall to the floor. She had not the spirit for this game, not tonight. She swallowed past a lump in her throat, afraid she would break down in tears again if he made another jest at her expense.

  "Forgive me." He dropped to one knee at her feet and took her hands in his. "This business has put us both out of sorts. I presumed too much."

  And I too little, she thought, but dared not say it. She could not meet his eye. His touch, his closeness already threatened her resolve. She had not offered, but she was not sure she could resist if he chose to take.

  "Go to sleep," he said. "I will keep vigil, if you wish."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "Please, call me Mal."

  "Thank you. Mal." He was still holding her hands; she could feel her palms and fingertips beginning to sweat. "And… and you can call me Jacomina."

  "I think it would be better if I stick to 'Hendricks'," he said with a smile. "Unless you are ready to tell the world?"

  She shook her head. "Not just yet."

  "Come then,
boy
, into bed with you."

  He released her hands and pulled off her other shoe. She shuffled back on the bed and lay down, still fully clothed. He pulled off his own boots and sat down next to her. After a moment he sprang up and disappeared into the next room, returning soon afterwards with his lute. She smiled, recalling that first meeting at Goody Watson's. Half a lifetime ago, it seemed.

  He settled himself against the headboard and began to play – a slow, melancholy tune she had never heard before. The ghostly lamplight picked out the planes of his face, throwing them into sharp relief against the dusky night. Black lashes caught the light now and again as he blinked, and his left hand moved along the neck of the instrument, only inches from her face. She sighed and closed her eyes. Now she might sleep.

 

Mal glanced down at the sleeping girl, lying on her side with her head pillowed on a fold of the counterpane. The bluish light stole all the colour from her face; she might have been dead but for the slow rise and fall of her shoulder. Too exhausted to dream tonight, by the looks of it. Thank the saints. Nightmares enough awaited her, faces of dead friends, screams, gunfire… At least she had not killed anyone, even if misplaced guilt told her otherwise.

  He carefully lowered the lute to the floor and slid down the bed until he was lying next to her. He ought to go back to the ambassador's chamber, but he did not like to think of her waking alone, perhaps from death-haunted dreams, her cries summoning the skraylings to investigate. He lay back on the bolster, laced his hands across his chest like a stone effigy and closed his eyes, letting the now-familiar sounds of the Tower lull him to sleep.

  He opened them again to a bright spring day, the air full of white petals blowing in a stiff breeze off the hills. Rows of espaliered apples and pears, as tall as his head, stretched into the distance. He was in the walled garden tucked into the slope behind Rushdale Hall, playing with Sandy whilst Maman and the other grownups fussed over Charlie. All because their brother was getting betrothed, whatever that meant.

  Sandy had a new bow and a quiver of blunt-tipped arrows, and was pretending to be one of the New World savages from the illustrated book in their father's library. Mal could see him, creeping along on the far side of the espalier, a pheasant's tail feather sticking up from his bonnet like a pennant. Mal had a wooden sword slung at his hip, but right now he was brandishing a crooked length of apple branch, pretending it was one of Charlie's guns.

  "Bang, bang! You're dead!"

  "No I'm not!"

  Sandy ran to the end of the espalier and fired an arrow that missed Mal completely.

  "Yes you are," Mal said. "I shot you through the branches."

  "You can't do that, it's cheating." Sandy threw down his bow and arrows and launched himself at Mal.

  "Is not." Mal rolled over, pinning his brother to the ground. "I killed you fair and square."

  Sandy went limp underneath him, and the sky darkened.

  "Sandy? Oh Sweet Jesu, no!"

  Mal looked about him, but the woods were empty. They had been abandoned here, cast out by the Huntsmen for their cowardice. The stink of woodsmoke and burnt flesh drifted on the night breeze. Mal felt something tug at him, deep inside: an instinct like that of a homing pigeon.

  "Come on, Sandy, get up!"

  He shook his brother, who moaned but did not wake. Mal felt dampness on his cheeks and tried to wipe it away. Not tears. Blood. He scrambled to his feet and heaved his brother up and over his shoulder.

  At first the going wasn't too difficult. Deer tracks led through the bracken, in roughly the direction Mal wanted to go. He stumbled along, bent under Sandy's dead weight. Sweat dripped into his eyes and trickled down his back. His limbs were heavy and sluggish, as if he were wading through water. It was as much as he could do to put one foot in front of the other. Then another. And another.

  After a while he felt, rather than saw, the trees give way to open moorland, wreathed in mist. Far above, the sky swirled with silver and lead and palest gold. Not a creature moved across that dead landscape, nor any bird sang.

  The inner call tugged at him again, and he staggered onward. The earth was lumpen here, bound together in tussocks of dry, slippery grass, impossible to walk across without turning an ankle, even unburdened. And the creatures were circling, just on the fringes of his vision. He wanted to drop Sandy and run, but then they would both be dead. He wished Kiiren would come, with his bright light that drove away the nightmares.