Mark Chadbourn - The Silver Skull

"Nat, inside, now!" he shouted, afraid his friend had already seen too much. After the devastation he felt at Miller's suicide, Will could not bear for Nathaniel to be infected by the same creeping despair. The words he had spoken to Nathaniel's father all those months ago were still heavy on him. He would keep Nathaniel safe.

After another mile, he reined in the horses and called for Nathaniel to sit with him. Will could see clearly in his assistant's subdued demeanour how greatly he had been affected.

"What was that, Will?" Nathaniel asked quietly once they had set off again.

"What kind of question is that, Nat?" Will replied lightly.

"The face-"

"Did not have the ruggedly handsome features of my own, but that is no reason to pour scorn on a poor, afflicted highway robber. Perhaps those same unsavoury features were what drove him to a life of crime. Why, perhaps we should pity him, Nat! Were he not now a bloody smear 'pon the road."

Will's tone eased Nathaniel a little. "I felt I saw my own face looking back, though frozen in death ..." He gave a humourless laugh at how ridiculous that sounded.

"Exactly," Will affirmed. "An illusion. The mind plays strange tricks, especially when it is jolted free of its moorings by a runaway carriage ride."

"Then it was a highwayman I saw? Nothing more?"

"Nat-"

"Yes, I am a fool! I am sure you will find great humour at my expense when you are in your cups." Nathaniel feigned annoyance, but his relief was palpable.

Cracking the reins to urge the horses on, Will hid his own relief. At times, it felt like he was attempting to hold back a torrent that would wash away everything he held dear if he failed for a moment. Every word was a lie designed to create a world that did not exist. It was not surprising that the members of Walsingham's crew rarely survived long. Will was convinced many reached a point where they simply gave up, let themselves die, because they were worn down by the lies, and by the harshness of the reality that lay behind the fiction they created.

He put on a grin and showed it to Nathaniel. "Wine and women are within our grasp, Nat," he said. "Let us make haste so we can enjoy the night before it is gone!"

Nathaniel grumbled quietly, but sat back to watch the last of the countryside flash by.

Will let his own thoughts drift to what lay ahead. Whatever threat they had faced there on the road paled into insignificance compared to what waited for them in Edinburgh.

CHAPTER 20

dinburgh was a slash of forbidding grey against the soaring, craggytopped heights that ranged behind the city. Running along the top of -a granite spine from the ancient fort of Castle Rock in the west down the gentle slope of the king's High Street to the Netherbow Port, the east gate to the city, it consisted of little more than one broad, mile-long street of large houses, kirks, and shops, and hard against it jumbled, stinking rat-runs of alleys and side streets, the wynds and closes, all of them poorly constructed, dark, narrow, and filthy, and packed to the brim with the poor. Often several generations of a family were crammed into a single room. Beyond Netherbow Port, the street continued through the burgh of Canongate to the king's Palace of Holyroodhouse.

During the time of Elizabeth's rule south of the border, Edinburgh's population had soared, like London's, by more than a quarter to nearly seventeen thousand people, all of them constrained within the walls of a city little more than a mile square in area. With no new room for building, the only way to go was up. Newer residents added precarious, poorly constructed stories on top of tenements-known as the "lands"-designed to carry less than half their new height. Barely a week passed without a new collapse, plunging the occupants to their deaths on the cobbles far below. From the top of these teetering towers, a constant rain of excrement and urine fell at morning and night, as the uppermost residents cried out "Guardez-1'eau!" and emptied their chamber pots from the windows.

All Edinburgh society mixed in the lands, from lawyers and judges to merchants, nobility, and commoners. There was no space to breathe; no peace.

After the unsettling dark of the wild Scottish countryside, Will was comforted by the candlelight and lanterns glinting as the carriage rattled through the city gates and onto the cobbles of the main street. The boom of the closing gates behind, too, was oddly reassuring.

Though filled with high art, scholarship, and religious thought, Will could see Edinburgh was a world away from London. It was a city of shadows, still attached to the old world while London was scrambling into the bright modern future. In the claustrophobic gloom among the dour stone buildings, the overcrowded, filthy streets were a breeding ground for disease and crime, where cutthroats and murderers preyed upon their own and hope was thin. It was the perfect hunting ground for the Enemy.

No Dee here to keep the people safe, he thought. Only the harshness of daily life.

Will was not blind to the irony that the city's brooding aspect reflected his own state of mind. Miller's death lay heavy upon him. He would never reveal it to Nathaniel, or anyone else, for that matter, but he felt the world slipping under his feet as it had after jenny's disappearance, only this time the stew of emotions was infected with guilt and a sense of his own personal failure in defending Miller's life.

A cold anger seethed beneath the surface, demanding retribution, and answers. Nothing was going to stand in his way.

They left the carriage near Cowgate, where the noblemen, ambassadors, and rich clergy made their homes, and slipped quietly to the address Walsingham had given them, a three-hundred-year-old three-story house of solid stone with a fine oaken door and an iron knocker. Will gave the coded rap, and after a moment they were admitted by a man carrying a candle. He was in his early fifties, almost six foot six, thin and elegant, with a hooked nose and swept-back white hair.

"Alexander Reidheid?" Will said.

"Master Swyfte!" Reidheid shook his hand furiously. "It is an honoursuch an honour!-to have the great hero of England in my home!"

Nathaniel sighed loudly.

"Lord Walsingham speaks highly of you," Will said. "He claims you know the comings and goings of every man in Edinburgh, and that your understanding of the subtle moods of this city is beyond peer."

"He flatters me." Reidheid's cheeks flushed, but he was pleased with the compliment.

Primping her hair, a woman of around twenty-five entered shyly. She was pretty, with delicate, upper-class features, brown hair in ringlets, and green eyes that flashed when she saw the guests.

"My daughter, Meg," Reidheid said. She curtsied as her father introduced Will and Nathaniel. Will noticed Nathaniel about to register his tart weariness at another woman fawning over England's great hero when Meg's eyes skittered quickly across Will and settled on Nathaniel himself. Nathaniel was clearly taken aback by the attention and did not know how to respond.

"Perhaps Meg could show Nathaniel our quarters while we discuss more important matters," Will said. "And I would be grateful if your servant could also make arrangements to collect the body of our driver who met with misfortune on the way here. Nat will provide directions."

Shuffling with baffled discomfort at this new predicament, Nathaniel followed Meg to the rear of the house while Reidheid led Will into the drawing room where a fire roared in the grate.

"I apologise if you find the temperature unpleasant," he said. "Increasingly, I struggle to get warm. It appears to be an affliction that affects all our kind sooner or later, as though those damnable things suck the life and warmth from us."

"And you would have more experience of them here in Scotland than we south of the border." Will took a seat next to the fire, while Reidheid poured two crystal glasses of amber whisky.

"They torment the countryside as they have always done, haunting the glens and the lochs, and they move freely through our city. But here they have chosen to play a quiet game in recent years. They can pass for mortals, if they so choose, and they slip between the cracks of everyday life, causing mischief and misery in subtle ways and only intermittently."

"Their attention has been elsewhere," Will said, "on the search for a key to a great weapon, which had been hidden in the city. Now they hunt for the final thing they need to complete their plan."

Reidheid handed Will the glass. "Uisge beatha, in the native tongue. The Water of Life. It keeps me warm when there is no fire in the grate." He pulled his chair close to the hearth. "The poor and rich alike have long learned to protect their homes with salt and herbs and cold iron, and to watch where they walk after dark has fallen."

"You have seen new activity from them in recent days?"

"They call them the Unseelie Court here. It is an old name, coloured by centuries of torment." He sipped his whisky reflectively. "There is a place in Edinburgh not far from the castle that is known as the Fairy House. The local people understand it to be haunted, or cursed. It is said that anyone who ven tures within never comes out. No one is ever seen inside, although the lights blaze intermittently. The downstairs rooms are said to be guarded by a demonic black dog."

"They have a house they call their own within the city?" Will ruminated. "And no one has raided it?"

"We have an uneasy relationship with the Unseelie Court in Edinburgh." There was a rueful note in Reidheid's voice. "A black carriage stood outside two days ago. No one was seen leaving it, or entering the house, and it left shortly after."

"No one would ever be seen. I need to explore the inside of this Fairy House."

Reidheid started. "I have watched that foul place for many days and nights. I can see no safe way in."

"Then it will have to be unsafe."

Nathaniel and Meg entered with a platter of cold beef, bread, and cheese and some ale. They were both quiet and respectful, but Will saw them exchange warm glances as they laid out the food on the table.

"I would also have access to the Palace of Holyroodhouse," Will said as he sliced the beef.

"An audience with the king will not be an easy thing to arrange-" Reidheid began.

"I do not want an audience. I want to prowl around his private rooms, poke my nose in his closets, go through his clothes, sift his jewels, rap on his walls, prise up his floorboards, and generally skulk around and make a nuisance of myself."

"It is the most heavily guarded residence in all of Edinburgh," Reidheid protested.

"Then I have two impenetrable buildings to penetrate."

"And you do like to penetrate the impenetrable," Nathaniel whispered to him.

"Father?" Meg began. "The king has a ball tomorrow night."

Reidheid considered this for a moment, then said, "Perhaps I could garner you an invitation. A visiting luminary. I am sure James will think you might brighten up the festivities and perhaps provide a welcome talking point for the members of the court who find these events overly familiar. Would that serve your purpose?"

"A palace swarming with people in which to lose myself?" Will nodded. "Perfect."

"And wine, and women," Nathaniel muttered.

Will loaded his plate and poured some ale from the pitcher before settling back by the fire. "Then let us make haste, for there is little of the night left."