‘I know of children’s fairy stories. A village of ghosts. Empty houses where the living dare not walk.’
‘Ghosts! Would that that were the only horror.’ Nathaniel grew animated, his eyes widening. ‘Yes, that is the story they tell in the inns and markets to frighten the gullible, but the truth is worse. Wykenham is in Norfolk, a hamlet not far from the coast. Secluded. Little more than one street of pretty houses and a church. Empty houses, yes. Empty houses now.’ Nathaniel eyed Will suspiciously to see if the spy knew more than he was saying. ‘I heard tell that the truth was hidden by Sir Francis Walsingham, God rest his soul, to keep the peace in Norfolk, and farther abroad, I would wager.’
‘If that is true, Nat, I have not heard it. Sir Francis ensured a great many things were kept secret for the security of the realm, and it is certain he would not have shared them with me unless I needed to know.’ Intrigued by the unfolding story, Will leaned across the table. Shadows cast by the candle distorted his features and Nathaniel briefly trembled.
‘This business concerns one Griffin Devereux, a distant cousin of the Earl of Essex.’
Will hadn’t heard the name at court and his brow creased in doubt.
‘You will not have heard of him, for, with Essex’s complicity, Sir Francis spread untruths and rumours and false information until all who might have known the truth doubted the existence of Griffin Devereux. Even Essex denies him. Even Devereux’s own father denies he exists,’ Nathaniel stressed.
Will thought for a moment. Was this the man Kit had identified in the name scratched into the table in his lodgings — not Essex, but his cousin? ‘What did he do to deserve this treatment?’
‘Why, he set himself up as Faustus. I do not know if he had experience of those Latin pamphlets, or those books that Dr Dee kept under lock and key at the Palace of Whitehall and in his library in Mortlake, which the mob destroyed all those years ago, but Devereux had occult knowledge. He spoke to devils.’ The assistant laid the palms of his hands flat on the tabletop, steadying himself. ‘He bartered with them, and tried to control them. And on a November night four years ago, he travelled from his home to Norfolk to complete his bargain with Lucifer. They say the storm that swept in from the sea was the worst in living memory. Thunder so loud it made a man deaf, and rain like stones. Lightning shattered the steeple at Wykenham where Devereux was completing his incantation, unbeknown to the good people of the hamlet.’
Will smiled.
‘What?’
‘These stories always have these atmospherics. Would it be as good a tale if it happened on a summer’s day?’
‘I was told!’
‘I do not doubt you, Nat. But I take nothing at face value. People embellish these tellings to help them understand, or to cover up their own fears.’ Will pressed his fingers together and peered over the tips at the frightened young man.
‘Perhaps you are right,’ Nathaniel accepted, running a trembling hand through his hair. ‘For if Devereux had completed his foul act on a summer’s day, without the Devil whispering in his ear … If it had been Devereux and nothing more, it would have been too much for any man to bear, for then it might mean that we are all capable of such things.’
‘Go on, Nat.’
‘I will tell it as I was told, and leave it to you to judge the truth of it,’ the assistant replied, his unease bringing a crack to his voice. ‘Devereux called down the Devil to Wykenham, but Old Hob demanded more than the paltry offerings Devereux had brought with him. His incantation failed. He was forced to swallow the Devil whole, and with the thing inside him he went out into the night and killed every living soul in that place. He slit the throats of children in their beds, dashed in the heads of babies with a rock, set fire to farmers’ wives as they ran screaming from their homes, put out eyes, pulled out lights, hacked and cut and slaughtered all who moved like they were animals in the field. And when he was done, not a single man, woman or child lived in Wykenham. He had murdered the entire hamlet.’
‘What happened to him?’ Will still could not mask his disbelief.
‘He was found the next day, naked, in the churchyard, covered with the blood of his victims, wearing a hat of skin. His wits had been driven from him, and the Devil lived inside him.’ Crossing himself, Nathaniel bowed his head.
‘There was no trial? No execution?’
‘No. Sir Francis, Essex and the Queen herself felt the truth would cause even more damage. We were facing uprisings within and invasion from Spain without. Better to shut Devereux away and pretend he never existed. Then it would be as if the things he did had never taken place either.’
‘If Sir Francis destroyed all signs that this happened, how does your informant know?’ Will pressed.
Nathaniel took another sip of wine and closed his eyes for a moment as he drove the terrifying visions from his mind. ‘A vicar from an adjoining parish was there on the day Devereux was found,’ he replied in a small voice. ‘He wrote a pamphlet. When it was published, all copies were seized and destroyed, and the vicar silenced. Most were destroyed. One or two found their way out, as these things do, and they are now kept in the libraries of scholars and debated at length, in secret to avoid the attention of your own kind.’
Will still wasn’t sure he believed the story. It sounded to him like a blood and thunder tale for a dark night, but if there was truth in it, it would certainly be the kind of thing that intrigued Marlowe. ‘And you say they let such a monster live? How? Where?’
‘Why, in London.’
Will laughed. ‘Where in London could such a man be kept without everyone knowing?’
‘In Bedlam, of course.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Murmuring a fearful prayer, Grace was gripped by the vision of death she spied through the crack in the Queen’s bedchamber door. Elizabeth lay rigid on the sheets, skin a waxy white and smallpox-scarred, cheeks hollow, tufts of greasy grey hair sprouting among the bald patches. Her Majesty’s wide eyes stared blankly at the ceiling.
On the brink of raising the alarm, Grace released her own tightly held breath when she noticed the faint rise and fall of the monarch’s chest. Without her red wig and make-up, Elizabeth looked much older than her sixty years, frail and withered and a far cry from the warrior queen who had told the world only five years ago that she had the heart of a king. The strain of maintaining power in the face of multiple threats to her rule had taken a terrible toll.
Relieved, the lady-in-waiting gathered up her dark grey overskirt and pulled away from the door, only to be caught by the sight of a shadow moving across the bedchamber. It had been so still within the room she had not known anyone else was present.
It was Elinor Makepiece, one of the six maids of honour who tended to the monarch most closely. Although the woman had dressed herself in pretty pale green, she could do little to disguise her plain looks and heavy features, or her unruly thick brown hair. Yet her manner was always pleasant. All the Queen’s other ladies had tongues like knives, but Elinor had offered many kindnesses when Grace first began her service in the royal household.
Her thoughts flashed to Will, who had helped secure the post for her, she knew, though he had denied it. He still treated her like the girl she was when they first met, at the cottage in the Forest of Arden, as he came courting her elder sister, Jenny. In frustration, she absently tugged at the blue ribbon holding back her chestnut ringlets, then glanced down at her slender frame. Could he not see she was a woman now? She had curbed her impulsiveness, a little at least, yet still he was blind to her charms. All he did was try to shield her from the work he did, and make light whenever she questioned him about serious matters.
Her simmering annoyance faded as she watched Elinor. At that hour, the older woman should have been hurriedly tidying the Queen’s make-up and removing the bowl of water she had used for her ablutions, Grace knew, but instead she moved with a puzzling lethargy. No maid of honour would ever dawdle in Elizabeth’s presence while she lay in bed. The oth
er ladies of the bedchamber had already departed.
Grace was transfixed by Elinor’s steady, purposeful steps, a cloth slowly folded here, an ornament brushed by fingers there, but no movement that could disturb Her Majesty in her half-sleep. To the younger woman, it seemed almost as if the maid of honour was circling Elizabeth, waiting for a moment to draw closer.
When the Queen’s eyes flickered, the other woman made her move. Like a snake, she darted low near Her Majesty’s pillow, her head turned away so Grace couldn’t tell what was being said. The younger woman was gripped by the oddness of the scene: against all convention, Elinor, rigid, looking away, speaking without being spoken to, and speaking at length.
The Queen appeared to be asleep, even as she responded.
After a long moment, the maid of honour stood up and Grace retreated from the door so she would not be seen. Hurrying across the Privy Chamber and out, she put on a bright smile to deflect the stern glance of the Gentleman Usher, but the incident continued to trouble her.
As she made her way to her chamber, she heard a faint commotion on the ground floor. Creeping down the echoing stone steps to the entrance hall, she saw an unfamiliar woman in a scarlet cloak ordering the servants to bring in her belongings. In the candlelight, Grace couldn’t see the woman’s face in the depths of her hood. All around her, the servants worked incessantly, carrying her possessions and preparing a room.
Grace caught the arm of one of the serving girls, still sleepy-eyed from being woken. ‘Who is that?’ she asked.
‘It is the Lady Shevington. Wife of the Viscount Shevington,’ the girl said with a country burr.
Grace’s puzzled expression brought a shy smile from the serving girl. ‘No one knew he had taken a wife,’ she whispered behind her hand. ‘He has not been seen at court for many months since he took up the Queen’s business in Ireland.’
Grace knew that meant Viscount Shevington was most likely a spy, reporting back on the tensions as the English attempted to secure control of Ulster, but news from that part of the world was always thin and frequently distorted.
‘Where is Viscount Shevington?’ she asked.
The serving girl flashed a glance at the woman in red. ‘Still in Ireland, Lady Margaret says. He will be joining her shortly to report back to the Queen.’
As the serving girl hurried about her business, Lady Margaret threw back her hood, revealing hair that was only a few shades darker than her cloak. It was the woman Grace had seen pressed against Will by the church in Deptford during Kit Marlowe’s funeral.
The lady-in-waiting felt a flush of anger tinged with jealousy. She hated feeling that way and left quickly, but she couldn’t stop herself wondering why the woman had come, what she wanted.
Back in her chamber, Grace threw the window open and leaned out into the warm summery night. As she looked around the inner ward below, she was caught by a curious sight. A man lowered himself by rope from a window and quickly found the dark at the foot of the walls. Shocked, she realized it was Will. He crept in the direction of the gatehouse.
As Grace began to wonder what secret business engaged her friend’s attention, the thought died suddenly. She thought she glimpsed more movement a few paces behind him, a blur as if it were only mist; or a ghost. Will was oblivious to his silent companion. She lost sight of the pursuer in the shadows, if it had even been there, but she couldn’t shake off the chill it left in her.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Bedlam .
The screams rang out into the still dawn air, even through stone walls as thick as a man’s arm. His grim face shadowed in the depths of his hood, Will Swyfte hid in the lea of the hospital wall, making sure his arrival had not been witnessed.
With each passing moment, he felt his sense of foreboding grow stronger. Where were the Unseelie Court? Like ghosts, the Enemy were defined by the subtle patterns of terror they drew in the world, the trail of blood and ruined lives, but those otherworldly predators remained unsettlingly elusive. Though he could feel their eyes upon him, the tug of their subtle manipulations, he could not understand why they had not yet shown their hand.
Eyeing the feared Hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem, Will saw only a crumbling wreck, like those inside. Moss and sprouting grass and sickly twirls of elder had turned the roof green. Panes were cracked or missing and the gaps filled with mildewed wood, the glass too dirty to see out or in. Open sewers flanked Bedlam so that the air was always heavy with the stink of excrement. In the courtyard in front of the hospital, yellow grass grew among the broken cobbles and the cracked flags, and when it rained a stagnant pond grew like a moat to keep out the world.
Will knew that on Bishopsgate Street Without, just beyond the city wall, merchants travelling north to the villages or south into London often paused, thinking they had heard someone call their name, or a whisper from one of the passers-by, or some other voice rustling in the spaces among the rumble of cartwheels, the rat-tat of horses’ hooves, and the back and forth of sellers and apprentices. When they realized the true origin of the sound, they moved on quickly, their heads bowed as if the mere act of hearing would infect them with the illnesses of Bedlam’s inhabitants.
His black cloak billowing around him, the spy dashed across the open courtyard to the main door. Will had heard that the governors of Bridewell, who had inherited the management of Bedlam from the City of London, were more concerned with the cut-throats and thieves in the great prison than with the insane patients of the Hospital of St Mary of Bethlehem. No one cared about those lost souls. No one remembered them, or wanted to remember them.
It was the perfect place to keep a devil-haunted man who had slaughtered an entire village.
Hammering on the old, splintered door with the hilt of his dagger, the spy waited for long moments until he heard unhurried footsteps shuffle near from the other side. The door creaked open to reveal the Keeper. The face was not one Will recalled from his last visit five years ago, but the hospital’s overseer was cut from the same cloth. It was not work for soft men, and his features carried the same marks of easy cruelty and quick brutality. Unkempt black hair, a beard that had not been trimmed in weeks, a filthy undershirt and brown jerkin, he could have been any rogue found in the more dangerous streets of the capital.
‘I would speak with one of the patients,’ Will said, keeping his head low so his face remained shrouded.
The Keeper hawked phlegm and spat. ‘Too early. Later. Family?’
Will pulled a leather pouch from his black and silver doublet and waved it in front of the overseer so the coins jangled.
Lizard-tongue flicking out over his lips, the man’s eyes sparkled. ‘Who do you want to see?’
‘One Griffin Devereux.’
The light died in the man’s face, and his sullen gaze flitted around the deserted courtyard over the visitor’s shoulder. ‘Nobody here by that name.’ Will found the lie so obvious he almost sighed at the Keeper’s brazen stupidity.
‘My time is short, my patience shorter. Take the money. Buy yourself a shave and a haircut. Some clean clothes. You may then be able to look in the mirror without retching.’
Growling, the man made to close the door.
Will kicked the heavy door so the sharp edge smashed into the Keeper’s broken-veined face. Blood spattering from pulped lip and gouged nose, the man howled as if he was one of his own inmates. The spy dived in, driving his fist into the dazed face, and as the overseer went down backwards, arms windmilling, Will caught the neck of his filthy undershirt to lower him slowly to the cold flagstones.
Whipping out his dagger, he pressed the tip against the man’s neck and leaned in so his face was close enough to smell the Keeper’s beer-sour breath. A droplet of blood rose where steel met flesh. ‘A good man has been murdered. My friends’ lives hang by a thread. Do not cross me,’ the hooded man hissed.
‘You … you are Will Swyfte,’ the Keeper gasped, his eyes glistening with tears of dread.
‘Take me to Griffin Dev
ereux or I will cut you into chunks and feed you to the dogs on Bishopsgate.’
Dragging the whimpering man to his feet, the spy thrust him across the gloomy entrance hall and towards the Abraham Ward. Pitiful cries echoed from behind the locked door. Will kept his dagger at the man’s back as he fumbled through his jangling ring of iron keys and then they stepped into a long, dark hall that reeked of despair. Scattered with filthy straw, with cells on either side for the patients, the ward fell silent at first. But when the Keeper slammed the door and turned the key in the lock, the throat-torn screams echoed as one as if a great beast had been woken.
‘How many patients?’ Will asked, casting his gaze towards the clutching hands reaching through the barred windows of the cells. His nose wrinkled at the choking stench that rose up from the Great Vault, the hospital’s overflowing cesspit beneath the ward.
‘Twenty-one.’ The Keeper’s eyes flickered towards Will’s blade. ‘On the books.’
‘And the one we are visiting?’
The Keeper shrugged, said nothing.
Some of the patients were kept in chains in their filthy, vermin-infested cells and allowed no contact, ‘for the sake of their wits’. The calmer ones were free to roam around the Abraham Ward for a few hours a day. Some wore little more than rags.
‘Poor wretches. Who pays for their keep?’ Will enquired, his attention caught by one inmate who had the fresh, unmarked face of a child.
‘Their parishes, or a family member, or a livery company,’ the surly man grunted in reply.
‘And who pays for our patient?’
Again the Keeper didn’t respond. After a moment, he muttered, ‘I ask what I think I can get, depending on how fine their companions are dressed. No less than ten shillings a quarter. Some here have wealth. Merchants. Men from the law courts. We have a fellow from the university at Cambridge. One has been here for twenty-five years, another for nigh on ten.’
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