The Silver Skull (12 page)

"They will be back the moment they find we are not in the street," Carpenter snapped, exasperated, "and this is the first place they will search."

"But they will not find us," Will said, "for we shall be disappeared."

Forcing his way through a door into a room filled with detritus and a bedroll on the bare boards in one corner, Will enjoyed the confusion for a moment and then pointed up to where a hatch led to the loft space. Mayhew and Launceston boosted him up, and then Will helped the others scramble into the dusty dark space filled with the flapping of nesting birds and the scurrying of rats along the rafters. Here and there, missing tiles allowed shafts of sunlight to punch through into the gloom.

Below, the muffled sounds of the mob washed around the tenement.

"You are still a fool," Carpenter raged. "They will find us here in time."

"Why, if I did not know better I would think you wanted us to fail," Will replied.

Keeping his head low, Will loped along a rafter to the end of the loft where a crawlspace led through to the loft of the adjoining tenement.

"The houses are all connected," Mayhew noted.

"The builders left the ways so they could move swiftly from roof to roof to finish their work. Now, follow."

Will crawled through the space into the next loft and continued along the row of tenements to the end house where they made their way down to the ground floor. While the hubbub continued further along the street, they took advantage of the billowing smoke to slip across to the opposite tenement and make their way rapidly up the stairs and into the loft space of the next row.

They finally came to rest halfway along the row where the roof was missing enough shingles to give them a view across Alsatia.

"We are surrounded by an army of cutthroats who will kill us the moment we emerge,"

Mayhew said, peering at the crowd milling along the street. "We are trapped here."

"We wait until nightfall and try again." Will hated wasting time when they were in danger of losing the Silver Skull at any moment, but after the disturbance all of Alsatia would be on watch for hours.

Launceston leaned in close and nodded towards Miller, who huddled in a corner, head bowed. "The boy was a mistake," he whispered. "It is not his fault, but that matters not now.

Look at him. He will break at any moment. That makes him a danger to what we do here."

Pausing, Launceston attempted to show a modicum of compassion, but all Will saw was cold efficiency. "We should dispatch him now and be done with it."

"Let me talk to him," Will said. "We all recall our introduction to this world. He may find his feet quickly."

"Or he may not. And what then?"

In Miller Will saw the innocence that the rest of them hardly remembered, the pleasant days of his rural upbringing, and he regretted the toll taken by the hard business of life. When he went over, Miller didn't look up.

"Was that the Devil's work?" Miller's voice was a ghostly rustle. The country burr was clear, and Will realised the youth had been suppressing it, probably to appear more sophisticated to his new associates.

"Not in the way you mean. But it is certainly devilish."

"I heard stories of these things, in the tavern, and around Swainson's hearth one winter night, but. .." He chewed his lip, drawing blood. "They were just stories. Not real. But that ...

That should not be!" Finally, he looked up at Will with wide eyes stung by tears.

"You are right. It should not."

"They burned him alive! Whatever happened, the poor soul was still inside somewhere.

And they burned him!"

"People do terrible things when they are scared. We are taught to see the world a certain way. A clockwork place, where the sun rises in the morning and sets at dusk, and all happens as it should. Tick-tock. But the world is not like that."

As Miller wiped away his tears, Will saw a hint of defiance that gave him hope. Perhaps that was what Walsingham had recognised. "What is it like, then?" Miller asked.

"It is a place where night can fall at noon, and cows give blood not milk. Where mothers can find strange creatures in the cribs where their babies lay only a moment before. Where mortal men do not rule and never have." He cast an eye towards Launceston, Carpenter, and Mayhew, who whispered conspiratorially on the far side of the loft. "I will tell you the truth of these matters," he said quietly, squatting next to Miller. "Listen carefully, and then I will answer any questions you have, as much as I can. But you must not cry, or rail to the heavens, or give any sign of fear. You must accept these things like the man that our Lord Walsingham saw when he chose you to defend our queen and country. Do you understand?"

Miller nodded.

"Good man. These secrets would have been revealed to you at the Palace of Whitehall over time, and they would have been allowed to settle on you, so they did not disturb your mind.

But there was no time for that, and so you must hear them now, hard, and cold, and painful."

"Tell me. Make sense of what I saw."

"Sense? No, there is no sense to any of this, but I will help you understand as best I can.

The stories that you heard at Swainson's hearth are true. Every story that you laughed off in the light of day but feared deep in your heart at night is true."

"The Devil-"

"Yes, by other names. Devils. A race of them. For as long as we have walked on this Earth, they have preyed on us, for sport, out of cruelty, for malign purposes. They have transformed us, like that poor wretch you saw in the street, tormented our nightmares, twisted our limbs, stolen our children, driven our old men to their graves, slaughtered our young men, and drunk their blood, and bathed in it. No forest was ever safe for us, no lonely moor, no quiet, moonlit pool or river's edge or mountaintop, for they would come from under hill and mound and treat us like cattle, or worse, like rats, forced to play for the mouser's enjoyment before one swipe of claw bares innards to the light."

Will paused to allow his words to sink in. Disbelief, and the hint of a smile flickered on Miller's face. It was the first sign, Will knew from long experience, and it would pass. There would be worse to come, not just then, but for many nights after, if not a lifetime.

"You have had an education of the history of this land?" Will asked.

"A little."

"Then let me tell you of the true history, the secret history. England has always been at war-"

"Always?"

"Not with the Spanish, or the French, the Scots or the Welsh or the Irish."

"With this race of devils?" Miller's disbelief had already started to turn.

"I dress it up in fine clothes to call it a war," Will continued, "but really we have been in rags, 'pon our knees. The Enemy did what they wanted with us. Killed, stole, tormented. And we could not fight back, for they were too powerful."

"They have magic?"

"They can do things we cannot. They have guile and secret knowledge. Magic? It seems that way at times, but I am just a humble spy and do not understand such things." Will spoke calmly and carefully, smiling to make his words appear simpler than they were. "In truth, they are more dangerous than wolves, they see like eagles, swim like fish, are stronger than bears, more cunning than snakes. They are there and gone in the twinkling of an eye. Most importantly, they value our lives not a whit. In their eyes, we are as far beneath them as the sheep of the field are beneath us."

"And this Enemy ... you say they have been attacking us forever? Then why have I not seen nor heard of them?"

"You have, in stories, in whispers. They are always known by other names. You called them the Devil yourself. But our kings and queens have always ruled that their existence should be kept a secret from the common man as much as is possible. For if the good men and women of England knew the terrors that could pluck them from their lives at any moment, they would be driven mad with fear, and all we have tried to build here would fall into an abyss."

In the street below, the clamour had ebbed away as the mob returned to their plots and plans. But even in the silence there was little peace.

"Tell me what they do," Miller said.

"I will tell you some of what they do," Will replied. "A flavour, but there is no time to tell you all." And I would not see your hope extinguished, Will thought. "In Chanctonbury Ring, in Sussex, the Devil appears every Midsummer Eve, the local people say, and plucks one poor wretch from his hearth to take beneath the clump.

"In Tolleshunt Knights in Essex, not far from your quiet home, these people of the dark engaged in carnal displays on the banks of the bottomless pool in the place known as the Devil's Wood. One year, a local landowner attempted to build a house there, and the unholy crew ripped out his heart, screaming that his soul was lost.

"At Wandlebury Camp, near Cambridge, a night rider will appear under the full moon to challenge all-comers. The wounds he inflicts bleed anew on the anniversary of the night they were inflicted. In the Lickey Hills in haunted Worcestershire, the local folk tell how the Devil and his chief huntsman Harry-ca-nab hunt wild boars, and if they cannot find their game they hunt the locals."

For nearly an hour, Will detailed the atrocities, the blood-soaked fields, the devastated lives and stolen children, the changelings, the disappeared, the hunted and the haunted and the corrupted. His litany of misery covered every quarter of England, and reached back as far into the past as historians had documented. It was as he had been told in the days after he had been recruited by Walsingham, and Miller's reaction was the same, the disbelief shading to shock, then to a creeping, cold devastation at the realisation that there was no safe place.

Stretching his legs, Will watched the clouds blowing across the afternoon sky as he completed the first part of his account. "In Atwick, in Yorkshire, no one dares drink at the local spring. In York ... at Alderley Edge ... at Kirkby Lonsdale and Castleton Fell ..." His words dried up, but the silence that followed said enough.

"My grandfather disappeared in the marshes at Romney, following a mysterious light.

We never found his body," Miller began hesitantly.

"They are everywhere, Tom Miller. In every part of this country, and beyond too, I would wager. We have all been touched by them, though we might not realise it. They may exist on the edges of what we see, but they are always there. They have always been there."

"What are they?" Miller asked. "Are they-?"

With a reassuring smile, Will held up a hand to silence him. "The farmers do not speak their name, lest they answer. They call them the Fair Folk or the Good Neighbours. You know who they are."

"My mother said they helped."

"Some did. But there is a cruel group among them who find us game for hunting, or sport when they are bored." As he looked out past the broken tiles, across the smoky city, Will could feel the eyes of Launceston, Mayhew, and Carpenter on his back, all waiting to see how Miller would deal with the news. He had revealed to him the problem and brought him down; now it was time to uncover the solution. "But no more," he added.

"But ... the scarecrow in the street. They do not leave us alone," Miller said, puzzled.

"No. There are other accounts, but fewer now. Mere skirmishes, to let us know they still exist. The hot war we fought with their kind has blown cold." Will struck a defiant tone as he turned back to Miller. "We found a way to fight back."

"Against a power like that? How?"

"Your thanks should go to Doctor Dee. When Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558 and received the truth of these matters passed down across the years through royal channels, she decided it was time to take a stand. The people of England could no longer be the plaything of an outside power. Determined to end generations of suffering, she turned to her teacher, advisor, and confidant Doctor Dee, and brought him close, charging him with the task. Through his esoteric studies, Dee came upon a solution, and after a night in which it is said storms tore England apart and ghosts walked in every churchyard, England's defences were secured."

"How did Doctor Dee achieve such a thing?"

"In this business of secrets, Dee keeps his closer than any. Whatever he did ... whatever price he paid ... it changed everything overnight. The Enemy could no longer attack us with impunity. They retreated to their distant homes, seething that those they considered so lowly had now risen up to challenge their rule."

"If we have locked them out, how do they return to torment us?" Miller asked.

"Over time, they still find a way through here or there, a quick blow, but it is nothing like before. Yet in their absence they are even more dangerous. Their loss of power has wounded them. Always arrogant, they refuse to accept they now have equals and are determined to bring us once again to our knees. Now, instead of seeing us as sport, they see us as a threat, and they are determined to destroy us for all time. And so they plot, and bide their time, and search for a way through our defences. We must be ever vigilant, for we do not know where or when their decisive blow will come. And it will come, sooner or later. Their intellect, and their anger, burn hot. They have been spurned, and they will want a vengeance that will clear us from the world."

"And this business with the Silver Skull?"

Will was pleased to see that Miller's unease had dissipated a little. His brow was furrowed as he turned over the information, weighing options, realising, Will hoped, that there was no need to be fatalistic.

"They have never launched such a bold attack before, which suggests this artefact is of the greatest importance to them. And the only thing they consider important now is our destruction."

"So ... so ... we do not fight the Spanish?"

"We do. We are in a bitter struggle with our Earthly enemies for our continued existence as a nation. That is how it always has been, though our lot was made more difficult by Henry's decision to break with Rome. But now the Enemy stirs and manipulates our Catholic opponents.