Mark Chadbourn - The Silver Skull

"This war with our long-standing Enemy has blown cold for many years, but if it has now turned hot, we shall do what we always do: trap and eradicate them at every level," Walsingham continued.

Will watched the evidence of Walsingham's cold, monstrous drive and wondered what had made him that way. The war shaped them all, and never for the better.

"We must move quickly, and find this Silver Skull before the Enemy does," Walsingham stressed. He turned to Will and said, "All of England's resources are at your disposal. Do what you will, but keep me informed at every step. Take Mayhew here, and Launceston." He considered his options and added, "Also Tom Miller, a stout fellow, if simple, who has just joined our ranks. He has yet to be inducted in the ways of the Enemy, so take care in bringing him to understanding."

Will attempted to hide his frustration. Putting an agent into the field without time to educate them in the true nature of the Enemy was cruel and dangerous. More than one spy had been driven out of their wits and into Bedlam after the heat of an encounter.

"And John Carpenter," Walsingham concluded.

Will flinched.

"I know there has been business between the two of you, but you must put it behind you for the sake of England, and our queen."

"I would prefer Kit."

"Marlowe is your good friend and true, but he wrestles with his own demons and they will be the end of him. We need a steady course in this matter."

Will could see Walsingham's mind would not be changed. He turned to Dee and asked, "Have you developed any new tricks that might aid me?"

"Tricks, you say!" Dee's eyes flared, but he maintained his temper. "I have a parcel of powder which explodes in a flash of light and heat and smoke when exposed to the air. A new cipher that even the Enemy could not break. And a few other things that will make your life more interesting. I will present them to you once I have apprised Lord Walsingham of my findings in Bohemia."

Briefly, Will wondered what matter Dee could be involved in that was as pressing as the search for the Silver Skull. But the thought passed quickly; the burden he had been given was large enough and it would take all his abilities to shoulder it.

"There are many questions here," Will said. "Who took the prisoner from the Enemy and why? Were they truly rogues, or were they Spanish spies, and the Silver Skull is now in the hands of a different enemy?"

"And can we possibly find one man in a teeming city before the Enemy reaches him first?" Mayhew added sourly.

"Let us hear no more talk like that, Master Mayhew," Will said. "Time is short and we all have a part to play." As Mayhew grunted and lurched to his feet, Will turned to Walsingham. "Fearful that their hard-won prize might slip through their fingers, the Enemy will be at their most dangerous at this time."

The log in the hearth cracked and flared into life, casting a ruddy glow across Walsingham's face. "The next few hours will decide if we march towards hell or remain triumphant," he replied. "Let nothing stand in your way, Master Swyfte. God speed."

CHAPTER 6

rapped in a heavy woollen cloak against the chill, Grace Seldon waited in the shadowy courtyard outside the Black Gallery. Whatever danger lay nearby, it would not deter her; it would never deter her. Surely Will understood that by now.

Beside her, Nathaniel shifted anxiously. "You will have me whipped and my wages docked for this, Grace. Go back to your room before you are seen."

Easing off her hood, she tied back her chestnut ringlets with a blue ribbon, but her fumbling fingers only emphasised her irritation. "Because I have a slender frame and a face that does not curdle cream, every man treats me like a delicate treasure to be protected at all times."

"Will is only concerned-"

"Will is always concerned for me!" she snapped. "We have both seen our fair share of tragedy and are stronger for it. I will not swoon at the first sign of threat."

Nathaniel continued to look uncomfortable at her refusal to comply with the order he had been given.

"Besides," she continued, "you know as well as I that Will would no more punish you than hurt a dog."

"I thank you for putting me on a level with a cur, Mistress Seldon," Nat said tartly, "but if I am not whipped, I will have to endure a day of his lectures and I do not know which I prefer."

"You are right there," she muttered to herself, adding, "If he sent you to ensure I was well cared for, then it is because there is great danger."

"Yes, that is the nature of his business." Nathaniel sighed. "You make my work very difficult, Grace."

Will emerged from the Black Gallery alongside a man who lurched drunkenly. Nathaniel made to restrain her, but she dodged past him. Half stumbling in her haste, her hands went to Will's chest, and he caught her at the waist.

"Grace." His eyes flickered towards Nathaniel, who pretended to scrub a spot from his shirt.

"You would deny me the opportunity to wish you well as you embark on one of your dangerous missions?" she said sharply.

"This is not the time for one of our lively debates, Grace."

"Did you think I would lock myself away because you told me to?"

He sighed. "No, Grace. You would never do anything I told you to do. I know that."

"What, then?"

"These are dangerous times. I would see you safe, that is all."

"From whom?"

"From yourself, mostly," he said with exasperation. "Your capacity for recklessness exceeds that of any other person I know."

"You say reckless. I say fearless. I am not afraid. Of anything."

"As always, this conversation goes nowhere, and I have urgent matters that require my attention-"

Calming herself, she chose the words she knew would stop him walking away. "I could not say farewell to jenny and I have regretted it ever since. I will not be denied this by you."

He hesitated, softened. "I am not your sister."

In the subtle attenuation of his smile, she recognised the ghost of his true feelings. "You wear your masks well," she said quietly, so no one else could hear, "but I know the true you, as you know me. You are not my sister. Because you live still, and jenny is dead-"

The blaze in his eyes scared her a little.

"Dead, Will. I spent long months yearning for answers, like you, but I have slowly come to an accommodation. I still need to know who took her, and why, and then I can rest. Then we both can. On that warm, starlit night in Arden, by the churchyard, with the owls hooting and the bats flitting, you told me you had been given the tools to discover the truth, and you vowed to me that the answers we both sought would be forthcoming. I ask now, though you always say one thing with your mouth and another with your eyes: is this mission the one that will allow us to find peace?"

"No." A moment, then: "Perhaps." Frustration laced his words. "Jenny is in my every thought and every deed, Grace, but these things are not as easy as you would believe. Now-"

She caught his arm to stop him leaving, and though he feigned irritation, she could see his affection, though whether it was for her alone or for her long-gone sister she did not know. The drunken man watched their encounter intently, and then, out of embarrassment or boredom, dragged open the carriage door and lurched inside.

"Let me accompany you," she pleaded.

"And do what?" he said incredulously. "Carry my sword? Distract the enemy so I could more easily strike the killing blow?" His mockery was faint, but her cheeks still reddened. "No, Grace," he continued, softening, "you must stay safe from harm's way."

"You wish to protect me because you could not protect my sister," she said defiantly.

"I could say the same of you." He gave a confident smile, a slight bow, and walked towards the carriage.

"A fine pair we are," she called after him, flushed with the heat of her frustration. "Both trapped in a dead woman's snare and neither able to release us."

As Will climbed into the carriage without looking back, Nathaniel hurried over. "Make haste back to your room, Grace-I must depart with Will. These times are too dangerous to be abroad at night, even in the Palace of Whitehall."

Nathaniel hurried to the carriage and soon the iron-clad wheels were rattling across the cobbles. Grace watched it leave with mounting defiance. She would never go as jenny went. Nor would she lose Will the same way, if it was in her power to prevent it.

CHAPTER 7

o some, it was a monument to the globe-spanning power of the Spanish empire. Others saw a tribute to the power of God, a tomb, a menacing fortress, one man's grand folly. San Lorenzo de El Escorial, twentyeight miles northwest of the Spanish capital of Madrid, was all of them. Within the vast mountain of worked stone, its vertiginous walls punctuated by more than twelve thousand windows, seven towers reaching to the heavens, lay both a palace and a monastery, temporal and ecclesiastical power in perfect union.

Cold, empty, echoing, the sprawling complex was a perfectly sombre reflection of the man who directed its construction: King Philip II. At a cost of three and a half million ducats, it took twenty-one years to build, with a floor plan that also had a secret face. Many believed its design was chosen in honour of its patron, Saint Lawrence, but the truth was that it had been constructed to echo the Temple of Solomon, as described by the historian Flavius Josephus.

Now Philip retreated behind its forbidding walls, cutting himself off from advisors and family so that his relationship with his God could be so much more potent. A distant, deeply introspective man who rarely spoke, Philip preferred to dress in black to show his contempt for material things. Always extremely devout, as the years passed he had become hardened, listening so intently for God's voice that he was ripe for direction from much closer quarters than heaven.

Inside the monastic palace, Spain's riches from the New World and the Indies provided great works of art-statues, paintings, and frescoes-the finest furniture, the most lavish building materials-coral, marble, jasper, alabaster. Yet the long corridors and lofty halls rang with an abiding silence that was only intermittently interrupted by the soft, steady step of cowled monks or the deliberate murmur of priests. No hands of friends touched Philip, no warm words eased his frozen thoughts.

He lived, and died slowly, for his religion. His extensive library, which could have held the greatest literature of civilisation, contained only religious works. In the great church at the heart of the complex, second only to Saint Peter's in Rome, were seven thousand relics of saints in the reliquary in the Royal Basilica, not just shards of bone, but heads and entire bodies, magic symbols designed to ward off the evils of the world and point the way along the road to salvation.

As dawn broke across the mountains, Philip could be found where he spent a good deal of his day, kneeling in prayer before the altar. Lean, with a soft, gentle face, his dark eyes revealed only lonely depths. At sixty-one, his arthritic joints ached, but he forced himself to continue his devotions before struggling to the secret door beside the altar that led to his private rooms.