The Scar-Crow Men soa-2

by Mark Chadbourn

  The spy studied the brooding demonic presence to try to pick any truth from the stream of lies. He sensed, however, that on this occasion Mephistophilis felt he could cause more damage by openness.

  ‘Your Enemy sees there is nothing to gain from this carefully balanced war,’ the devil continued. ‘They have had their fill of the little irritations you pose. Away from the light of your attention, they weave their web, across this entire world. They stir great powers. They draw darkness up from the depths. They plot death and destruction on a scale only dreamed of by gods. War, plague, starvation — they pull these threads together, slowly but relentlessly, and by the time you see the shape of their thoughts it will be too late. Your kind are an infestation, in their eyes. A plague. And they will not rest until you have been eradicated.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  They’re coming .

  Slipping out into the moonlit corridor, Nathaniel was sickened to realize that once again he had been tormented by the dream that had haunted him for nigh on five years. Ghastly, cruel faces looming out of the shadows. Under a full moon, grey, fluttering shapes pursuing him across a lonely moor. And a feeling of dread so great that upon waking he was left in a pool of sweat, his heart pounding. But this time the terrible things they had whispered to him were new and strange. Who was coming?

  The way is beginning to open.

  What way? Was he losing his wits?

  The assistant had only closed his eyes for a while until the palace had drifted off into sleep and he could slip into Roger Cockayne’s chamber and steal back the play. Laced with mockery, the echoes of the dream-words still rustled around his head.

  As he entered the corridor in the western range, the young man paused. He heard a whisper of movement off in the dark towards the far end. Glancing around, he saw the only hiding place was in an alcove beside a large iron-studded chest underneath a gloomy portrait of Old Henry, the Queen’s father. As he eased into the space and crouched down, pulling his cloak over him, he noticed several doors were silently opening.

  Mouthing a silent prayer, he peeked out through a fold in his cloak. Five hooded figures skulked past, paying no attention to each other. What mischief would those creeping figures be planning at that time of night? he wondered. Who were they that they kept their faces hidden?

  His suspicions mounting, he held his breath and waited.

  Once he was sure the men had passed, Nat slipped out of his hiding place. Hoofbeats and the rattle of carriage wheels now echoed in the inner ward.

  Through the window, the young man glimpsed a black coach stark in the moonlight. He saw it was adorned with peacock feathers, and so the property of someone high and mighty, perhaps a Privy Councillor. Unsure why, he felt a tingle of unease.

  A cloaked and hooded man jumped down from the coach and held out his hand for a second passenger. A pale, slender hand extended from the shadows, a woman, Nat realized. As she stepped down to the cobbles, the assistant saw she too hid her identity in the depths of a hood.

  A pikeman ambled up from the direction of the gatehouse, his burgonet and cuirass agleam in the pale light. The woman and her escort paused, their heads turned away from the approaching man.

  Nathaniel felt an incomprehensible dread. As the pikeman stepped up, the escort whipped a gleaming dagger from the depths of his cloak and thrust it under the guard’s chin and into his skull. Withdrawing his blade just as quickly, the hooded man stepped back to avoid the gush of crimson as the poor pikeman fell to the cobbles.

  The young assistant clutched the wall in shock. The murder of a pikeman, in the open, within the palace ward? The like had never been heard of before.

  On the brink of raising the alarm, Nathaniel froze when he saw shadows sweeping across the open space from the palace. More men, all cloaked and hooded, perhaps some of them the ones who had passed him earlier. He thought he counted ten at least, but they moved too quickly for him to be sure, collecting the body of the pikeman and carrying it out of sight towards the western range. The escort led the mysterious woman to the palace as if nothing had happened.

  Nat’s heart beat faster.

  Silently, he ran back the way he had come. At the first set of stone steps, he began to creep down in search of the plotters, only to hear several soft treads rising from around the turn in the stairs. His breath caught in his chest. Dashing back into the corridor, he searched around, unsure where was the best place to hide.

  As the footsteps neared, the young man pressed himself into a doorway, hoping the hooded figures would not pass by. Screwing his eyes tight shut, he prayed.

  The footsteps emerged into the corridor and moved away from him. Peeking out, Nathaniel glimpsed the hooded figures with the woman among them gliding stealthily towards the Queen’s throne room, where she oversaw the meetings of the Privy Council almost every day.

  What could the plotters possibly want in that chamber? It would be empty at this time of night, and there was nowhere to hide; it contained only the throne, for the Privy Councillors always stood in Her Majesty’s presence.

  Stepping out from the doorway, Nathaniel resolved to follow. He had barely gone ten paces along the moonlit corridor when he realized his mistake. A single set of footsteps was approaching from the direction of the throne room. As he turned, he glimpsed a flurry of movement at the other end of the corridor; more plotters were drawing near.

  Trapped.

  Just as Nat thought his heart would burst in his chest, he felt a hand clamp across his mouth and he was dragged back into a chamber. The door whispered shut behind him and a woman’s voice hissed in his ear, ‘Make no sound.’

  His body pressed against the wood panelling in the inky room, the assistant’s eyes grew wide with terror. The footsteps approached. If the fingers had not been clamped so tight against his mouth, he was afraid he would have called out, but then the plotters passed by and he sagged with relief.

  His saviour withdrew her hand.

  ‘You,’ he whispered, shocked.

  In the gloom, the young man recognized the red-headed woman he had encountered outside the Rose Theatre. ‘Lady … Shevington?’ She too was cloaked and hooded, and for a moment he wondered if she was another of the plotters.

  ‘Do you always lumber around at night like a wounded bull?’ the Irish woman murmured as she opened the door a crack and peered out into the now-still corridor.

  Nathaniel made to ask another question, but the woman pressed a finger to her lips to silence him and stepped out. With her cloak billowing around her, she ghosted through the shadows on the edge of the moonbeams towards the throne room. The assistant wanted to call out a warning — there would have been no time for the plotters to leave the chamber — but she was too far ahead.

  Nat’s thoughts were a ball of confusion. He no longer had any idea what was happening, nor why the Irish woman was prowling the palace at night. Conflicted, he caught up with Lady Shevington as she pressed her ear to the door, her brow furrowed. All was silent.

  Gripped with horror, Nathaniel saw her reach for the handle, and though he lunged to stop her, she swung the door open.

  The throne room was empty.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Blood spattered into the filthy, urine-stinking straw scattered across the floor of the Abraham Ward. Will slammed into the stone flags, and before he could dispel the ringing in his skull, he felt fire blaze in his ribs, his thighs, his arms, his chest. Cudgels rained down. Foot after foot lashed out. He felt new agony sear upon old, but the ropes binding his hands behind his back gave him no chance of escape.

  Through the haze of pain he could hear a cacophony of shrieks, roars and catcalls, which sounded to him like feeding time at the Queen’s menagerie at the Tower. A crowd of Bedlam’s lost souls turned away from the display of violence, tearing at their greasy hair or pressing their hollow-cheeked faces into their filthy hands, fearing they would be next. The other inmates slumped in blank stupors in their dank cells, but still moaned with each blo
w struck.

  The three burly men surrounding Will paused, hands on knees, breath wheezing into chests that were unused to such concerted exertion. Through one half-closed eye, the battered man could see that his tormentors were little more than cut-throats and rogues, giving up their time drinking cheap ale to take the Keeper’s coin. Hair and beards unkempt, their doublets were worn and stained, the colours faded into muddy browns and greys, their jerkins mottled with the dirt of the street.

  ‘You dance around me like maids at the maypole,’ Will croaked through split lips, his swollen left cheek distorting his words.

  Angered, a heavy-set roisterer with broken veins on his chapped cheeks snarled and stepped in to launch another kick. Will rolled out of the way, and the attacker stumbled off-balance, his scuffed leather shoe swinging in mid-air. Continuing his roll, the spy drove his legs up sharply into the back of the brutish man’s supporting knee. With a surprised cry, the rogue crashed down. Drawing his knees together, Will rammed them against his attacker’s jaw. There was a crack like a snapping branch and the lower part of the man’s face skewed to one side. His agonized howl became a feeble whimper.

  ‘One down, two to go,’ Will muttered, his body numb from two weeks of beatings.

  The remaining two attackers stared in shock for a moment and then assaulted Will with furious blows from their cudgels. One shattered on impact, so great was the force. ‘He is a madman,’ the wiry assailant said as he threw the broken weapon away. ‘Bedlam is the right place for him.’

  The spy gave in to the waves of pain, letting his thoughts find solace in the depths of his memory. It was a skill he had learned to master. This time he recalled Kit, and the first time they met, ten years ago on the second day of Christmas. Thick snow had blanketed the rooftops of Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, but the chill had spread deep into the hearts of the students who were being haunted by a series of mysterious events. Faces at windows. Locked doors mysteriously opening. Bodies washed up in the reed beds of the River Cam.

  Marlowe had been one of those students, but unlike his peers he had been fearless, demanding answers, and that night he had encouraged two of his terror-stricken friends to follow a trail of inhuman footprints through the snow to the chapel.

  ‘We do not give in to the dark beyond the fire. We do not give in to fear. We are men,’ the budding playwright had called into the night.

  Creeping into the incense-infused chapel, the three had been caught by a light around the altar. Kit had urged his two friends to investigate with him. The candle flames diminished. A low laugh rolled out, almost lost beneath the soughing of the wind. Unable to bear the fear any longer, one of the friends had turned and fled. As he reached the end of the choir, a whistle echoed, and the poor youth’s head flew from his shoulders, rolling across the flags to look up at Marlowe from his feet.

  The playwright was transfixed, but his other friend fled too. Kit found him a moment later, stock-still. In the lantern light, he saw with horror that white, fatty rivulets of flesh now ran down the student’s face from beneath the hairline, his features a mess of drooping, unrecognizable skin as if he had melted. To Marlowe, Edmund looked like nothing more than the dripping candle in the lantern.

  And that was when the thing that lurked there had revealed itself, pale and churchyard-thin like all its kind, black and blue concentric circles etched on its shaven head. Before it struck, Will burst into the chapel.

  He remembered his greeting on that day: ‘My name is William Swyfte and I am in the employ of Her Majesty. Some would call me ratcatcher, but the vermin I destroy are bigger and more malignant than any you would find in the kitchens of Corpus Christi, young student.’

  Wielding his rapier, the spy barely held the thing at bay. But he was only biding his time. When the pale attacker lunged through his defences, Will showered it with the contents of one of Dr Dee’s lethal pouches. The thing’s agonized cries rang off the vaulted roof and in a peal of thunder and a burst of darkness it was gone.

  Will had come to wonder if this was the same being Carpenter had described in Kit’s lodging house in Bankside. Had the foul creature been stalking Marlowe ever since that night, trying to gain vengeance for what had later transpired? Was that the source of the haunted look that always lay deep in the playwright’s eyes?

  It was the start of it, and the end of it. Will had taken Kit from the college and overseen his induction into the spy network. Over weeks, the playwright had learned all the horrors of the Unseelie Court and the demands that would be made of him to combat them.

  Through the pain, Will felt a deep blast of regret. Kit had been filled with so much life, so much potential, and the spy had been forced to watch it fade away over the years. All of Marlowe’s miseries were Will’s fault. He had recruited him into the life of spying. He had been responsible for him, for that innocence Will himself had lost, and however much he had tried to protect his friend on their dismal journey through the dark, he had ultimately failed. Kit was dead.

  With a crash of the door that made the inmates scurry into the shadowy corners of the ward, the Keeper hurried in. Sweating in the heat of the June day, his glowering gaze briefly took in the fallen rogue and then he growled, ‘Get that bastard back in his cell and make yourselves scarce. He has a visitor.’

  Will forced a grin that sent blood running from his lips.

  The two men snatched time for a few more kicks as the spy was dragged through the straw back to his dank cell. Hurled against the far wall, he lay where he fell, laughing quietly to himself. The door slammed shut and the shrieking of the inmates reached a crescendo, drowning out the Keeper as he bellowed for silence.

  The cool stone floor soothed the fire burning through every fibre of Will’s body. Away from his captors, he accepted the waves of pain and let his thoughts wash on to the dark shores of his mind. He was only half aware when the door was opened once more and the Keeper said gruffly, ‘Call when you want out.’

  Will’s eyelids flickered. As his gaze came into focus, he discerned a woman standing near the door, one hand sheltering the flame of a candle. Through his daze he was struck by the vibrant colour of her cloak, the blue of forget-me-nots, which reminded him of the dress Jenny was wearing on the day she disappeared. And then he felt sickened to realize that the colour now reminded him also of the devil that had taken his love’s form. Even his last, pure memory was turning towards death and decay, he thought with bitterness.

  The woman’s hood was pulled low so that her face was lost to shadow.

  ‘Grace,’ the spy croaked. ‘You should not be in this foul place.’ He realized his mistake when the candlelight caught the visitor’s growing smile. He saw a hardness to the shape of the lips that his young friend had never exhibited.

  ‘The love-sick child was eager to visit the man of her dreams.’ The musical notes of the Gaelic tongue rang in the honeyed voice. ‘But I persuaded her to defer to a woman of experience.’

  ‘Mistress Penteney,’ Will noted. ‘I have yet to decide if you are an angel or a devil. I have had my fill of the latter.’

  ‘Lady Shevington actually.’ Throwing back her hood with a flourish, she smiled at Will’s puzzled expression. ‘I apologize for my earlier deceit. I was not yet ready for you to know my true identity.’

  ‘Viscount Shevington is in Ireland, carrying out the Queen’s business.’

  ‘Spying, you mean. Let us speak clearly.’ Casting a narrow-eyed glance through the bars in the cell door, the Irish woman satisfied herself they were not being overheard. ‘And I have been called both devil and angel in my time, but today, for you, I am undoubtedly a gift from heaven.’

  Levering himself up on one elbow, the battered man struggled to form words through the dried blood on his puffed lips. ‘And I apologize for not receiving you in a better condition. Although at least I am alive.’

  ‘Not for much longer,’ the woman sighed. ‘The Privy Councillors have been directed to visit you here.’

  �
�In Bedlam?’

  ‘Your enemies will not risk you spreading dissent among your benighted countrymen out in the world of sane men, even for one moment. And so, for the first time, the Privy Council come to the accused, to this filthy, godforsaken hole. Why, it would be worth suffering this vile place for a while longer just to see those grey-bearded fools turning up their noses at the grime and the stink and the screams.’

  Despite the pain, a wry smile crossed Will’s lips. ‘You have little love for our Queen’s foremost advisers, my lady. Why, that would be considered traitorous in some quarters.’

  ‘I am no daughter of this country. I do not need to bow my head and pretend.’

  ‘What? Not even now that you have taken the hand and name of Viscount Shevington?’ the spy said pointedly.

  The Irish woman gave a sly smile in response. ‘Ah, yes.’

  With shaking arms, Will pushed himself up the cold stone wall until he was in a sitting position. ‘Unless you were not his wife, of course,’ he said in a light tone that continued the game they were playing. ‘Unless, say, Viscount Shevington was dead, lost, perhaps, in one of the bogs of your homeland.’

  ‘Who knows what may have transpired in the long weeks since I last saw my beloved husband? Certainly, if that were to be true, I would mourn him dearly.’ The Irish woman set the candle down on the floor. ‘As much as I enjoy this banter with so great a hero, Master Swyfte, time is short.’

  Tipping his head back so he could study her from beneath his swollen eyelids, Will replied, ‘I have all the time in the world, with only the rats, and my fellow inmates, and my friends with cudgels for company.’

  ‘Alas, were that so. I have heard the decision of the Privy Council has already been made. You will be judged of sound mind and taken directly from this place to the Tower for execution.’