The Scar-Crow Men soa-2

by Mark Chadbourn

  I am his enemy, the one thing that may stop his plot.

  He knows I love Alice.

  He is going to kill her to punish me.

  To destroy me.

  Carpenter felt terror turn his thoughts to mulch. There was only the thunder of blood in his head and the sight of that billowing black cloak fading into the night as the killer closed on his woman. Distantly, he was aware of Launceston at his shoulder as he raced across the cobbles.

  ‘Run, John. I am with you,’ he heard as if through a veil.

  As the two spies sped into the ankle-deep dung of Newgate Street, the moon slipped behind a cloud and the only light came from candles gleaming through bedchamber windows. Carpenter glimpsed the shadowy outline of three rogues lurking in an alley and then alighted on a doxy sitting on the step of a timber-framed house.

  Before the man could question her, the woman gave a gap-toothed grin and pointed along the street. ‘That way, lovey,’ she laughed. Following her filthy finger, the scarred man saw a flurry of white disappear into an alley beside the Three Tuns inn, with the fluttering wings close behind.

  Carpenter plunged into the pitch-black alley, dimly aware of fiddle music, laughter and raucous voices leaking from the tavern. In the yard at the back of the three-storey building, golden candlelight flooded out of an open door. Bursting into the sweaty, crowded back room of the inn, the scar-faced man noted men arguing over spilled ale, others shaking their fist or shouting, and two scowling women helping another to her feet.

  Launceston pointed to a narrow set of wooden stairs. ‘Up there.’

  Frightened by the drawn rapiers, the angry customers threw themselves out of the way as the two spies barged through to the foot of the stairs. Carpenter took the steps two at a time, trying not to think what he would find.

  Candlelight revealed a wooden landing with doxies framed in the doorways of three bedchambers. A cursing, red-faced man lurched out of one room, pulling up his breeches.

  ‘Where are they?’ Carpenter roared, waving his blade for good measure. One of the doxies pointed to the fourth door, which hung ajar. The red-faced man threw himself against the wall as Carpenter crashed by. The spy kicked open the door and dashed inside.

  By the flame of a single candle, the desperate man saw that the sparsely furnished room was empty. The window hung open, the sticky scent of the hot night drifting inside. He felt a void within him. Fearing he would see Alice broken in the alley below, or worse, fearing he would not see her at all, he pushed his head out into the night.

  ‘John?’

  At the sound of the hesitant voice, the spy felt a heady rush that exceeded his most drunken night. He spun round to see Alice crawling out from beneath the bed, and within a moment he had her tight in his arms. ‘Clever girl,’ he whispered. ‘You saved yourself.’

  ‘Clever girl?’ Launceston stood in the doorway, his pale face a cold mask. ‘This foolish mare may well have damned us all.’

  ‘Do not speak to her that way!’ Carpenter thrust his blade towards his companion.

  ‘I only came to warn you, John. The Privy Council have branded you … and Robert … traitors, as they did your friend Will. There is a price on your head. The whole of London will be looking for you soon.’

  ‘It is too late now.’ The Earl’s unblinking stare lay heavy upon his companion.

  ‘Say one more word about her and I will run you through,’ Carpenter replied, his voice trembling. Turning to Alice, he exchanged a few quiet words of comfort and once he was sure she could return safely to Nonsuch, he saw her on her way.

  Carpenter found Launceston waiting for him in the cobbled square next to the market. Pennebrygg was gone. The ragged remains of his ear was still nailed to the post.

  His fists bunching, Carpenter stormed towards his companion. ‘Do not criticize me. I did what I did out of love. You would never understand that.’ He saw the familiar flare of blood lust in the Earl’s eyes, but he could not hold back. ‘Nothing matters to you apart from your own all-consuming urges.’

  Somehow Launceston restrained himself.

  Carpenter’s shoulders sagged. ‘You will never change — there will only be blood until they finally catch up with you and mount your head above Tower Bridge. I have ruined my life keeping your hunger contained, Robert, and it was all for nothing. It means nothing to you. I only wish to be free.’

  The Earl looked towards the empty post as if he had not heard a word his companion had said. ‘This play is almost over,’ he whispered. ‘The players are about to leave the stage. And when they are gone, there will be no applause. Only silence.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  Hiding in the alcove midway along the Grand Gallery, Tom Barclay watched the door to the throne room suspiciously. He was a bear of a lad, with muscles built from carrying sides of beef in the kitchens and shouldering barrels of ale in the cellars, but he had enough grace to creep along empty corridors without drawing attention to himself. Like everyone in Nonsuch, he had been caught up in the potent stew of mistrust and doubt that filled the palace from morning to night, and so when he glimpsed Elinor, the Queen’s maid of honour, leading a hooded figure through the silent passages at first light, he had feared the worst.

  A plot. Intrigue. Murder!

  The kitchen ovens could do without him for a while, the young man decided. If he discovered something of import, he might be rewarded by the Privy Council, perhaps Her Majesty herself.

  The throne-room door creaked open and Elinor slipped out alone. Tom thought there was something almost rat-like about her in the way she scurried, shoulders slightly hunched, casting sly glances all around. He imagined her with whiskers and tiny paws, two sharp front teeth protruding over her bottom lip. He had never liked her.

  Once the woman had disappeared at the far end of the gallery, the kitchen lad eased out of the alcove and crept along the panelled wall to the door. It stood ajar. No sound came from within.

  Peeking through the gap, Tom saw the hooded figure standing in front of the large, silver-framed mirror on the far wall. He could see now it was a woman, her head slightly bowed as if in deep thought. The rest of the chamber was empty apart from the low dais on which the Queen’s throne sat. Determined to discover the identity of the mysterious woman, he dropped low and crept around the edge of the door.

  After a moment, the woman let out a deep sigh which appeared to echo loudly in the stillness of the chamber. She raised her head and removed her hood.

  The young lad was shocked to see it was the Queen. She wore her fiery red wig and had applied her white make-up, which he always found gave her an unsettling corpse-like appearance. She looked as tired as he had seen her on every occasion recently, her shoulders slightly hunched, her arms hanging limply at her side and her eyes containing a faraway look as if she were drifting in a daze.

  Afraid that he would be seen, Tom began to creep out. But then he glimpsed something troubling.

  The mirror.

  At first, the young lad couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing. The Queen’s reflection stared back at her, but this Elizabeth held her head proudly, her eyes flashing, and a darkly knowing smile played on her lips. And she was not alone. In the looking glass, elegantly tall, pale-skinned figures stood around the monarch. Tom saw they wore doublets and bucklers and robes that harked back to a different time, and their eyes blazed with an unnatural light. The man who stood next to the Queen was slender, with long silver hair streaked black down the centre. The lad was terrified by the unaccountable cruelty he saw in that face. The figure clutched what Tom at first took to be an ape, but it was hairless and its eyes glowed golden in the early light.

  Ghosts.

  Tom felt a rush of dread as he recalled every terrifying story he had heard on dark nights by the hearth. But he was caught fast by that eerie sight.

  The silver-haired man gave a small, victorious smile to the true Elizabeth, and mouthed the word, ‘Soon.’

  And then young Tom could bea
r it no more. He bolted from the room, only to run straight into a small crowd waiting just outside the door. Stuttering, he began to recount the terrifying thing he had seen, only for the words to die in his throat. Elinor was there, and Lord Derby of the Privy Council, and Roger Cockayne, the adviser to Sir Robert Cecil, and others he didn’t recognize, but they were all as still as statues, their unblinking gazes fixed upon him.

  ‘Please help me,’ Tom whispered.

  As one, the faces were torn by savagery. The waiting figures became snapping and snarling wild beasts, and they set upon the kitchen lad.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  ‘The Devil!’

  Fearful whispers clashed with cries of terror and then resolved into a tumult that tolled relentlessly throughout the echoing corridors of the English College.

  ‘The Devil!’

  ‘The Devil!’

  ‘The Devil has come to Reims!’

  Will threw himself from his hard bed and hammered upon the locked door of his chamber, calling to be set free. His shouts were picked up by the other young priests who had yet to be released from their night-prisons, and after a moment a key turned in the lock and the bolt was drawn. When the door was thrown open, an ashen-faced older priest held Will’s gaze with a look of abject despair before he lurched on to the next chamber.

  Turning in the direction of the loudest cries, the spy felt a hand on his arm. It was Hugh, his expression etched with concern. ‘Perhaps it would be wise to remain in your chamber,’ the young man suggested. ‘You have not yet allowed God’s great spirit inside you and so you may be vulnerable-’

  ‘I am strong,’ Will replied. ‘Come.’

  Following the throb of conversation, he raced ahead of Hugh past several praying priests to a small crowd gathered around the entrance to the Mary Chapel. Shouldering his way through the unsettled men, Will was greeted by a scene of devastation, pews upended, the altar shattered, candles smashed into shards of wax, iron candlesticks twisted in ways that would require an inhuman show of strength.

  And at the end of the chapel the great gold cross had been turned on its head and rammed into the shattered flagstones.

  In one corner squatted a young man wearing a priest’s black robes, his arms gripping his knees. Will saw madness in the roaming eyes and the tight grin. The priest’s scalp was bloody where he had clearly torn out handfuls of hair. One bleeding lock still hung from his fingers.

  Hugh appeared at the spy’s shoulder. ‘Charles,’ he whispered, crossing himself.

  The priest in the corner began to claw at his cheeks with jagged fingernails. ‘Caelitus mihi vires,’ he called, but the resonant voice was that of an old man. The other priests recoiled from the doorway with cries of horror.

  My strength is from heaven, Will translated. The devil played his part well.

  Stifling a pang of guilt that he was responsible for the priest’s suffering, Will allowed Hugh to lead him back along the corridor where a clutch of grim-faced older priests were approaching from the opposite direction. At the front of the group lumbered the gout-ridden bulk of Father Mathias.

  ‘Leave this place immediately,’ the limping priest boomed. ‘We shall cast the Devil out of our brother in this house of God and send the thing back to hell with his arse afire.’

  As he pushed his way through the younger men to begin the exorcism, Father Mathias’ suspicious eyes fell briefly on Will. Soon it would be a time for accusations and interrogation to determine who had brought the Devil into the seminary. The spy guessed he had the better part of a day before they came for him.

  ‘Come, Francis, pray with me for the soul of our brother Charles,’ Hugh gently advised.

  ‘You were right, my friend, and I should have heeded you. This business lies heavily on me. Allow me a while to reflect in solitude in my chamber. I must decide if I am capable of waging this war against the powers of evil.’

  When the priest gave a sad, understanding nod and joined the flow of serious young men heading towards the cathedral for mass, Will moved quickly away from the hubbub.

  ‘Damn you, Mephistophilis,’ the spy muttered. ‘When the time comes for you to drag me down to hell, I will fight you every step of the way.’

  Despite his guilt, Will saw that his plan had worked perfectly. Fear lay heavy across the seminary. The priests saw the Devil in every shadow, and the day’s lessons were soon abandoned as the men bustled in confusion, seeking solace from the older priests or rushing to prayer time and again. The spy used the chaos to his advantage, ranging back and forth across the length and breadth of the school in his search for anything that might have raised Marlowe’s suspicions during his stay.

  By late afternoon Will had cast a dispassionate eye on teaching chambers filled with stools, the deserted studies of the older priests, the silent library, gloomy chapels, the kitchens, the stores and every other space he could find.

  Frustrated, he returned to the cloisters where he watched the lengthening shadows. Chanting floated across the square of grass, punctuated every now and then by curses and screams from poor Charles.

  Kit would have followed a trail with the same meticulous attention to detail that he had used to plot his intricate stories. But what had been his first hint?

  Will let his attention drift from the shadows plunging across the grassy centre of the sunlit cloister to the aged, carved columns along the walkway. He saw the light and the shade, the natural stone and its hand-worked state. He thought of angels and devils and where he stood ’twixt heaven and hell. And then he considered the two faces he — and all men — presented to the world.

  Within a moment his footsteps were echoing off the walls like shots from a matchlock. He found Hugh kneeling at the rear of the cathedral. Barely able to contain his urgency, the spy waited for the younger man to finish his contemplation. When the priest stood, Will said in a tone of hazy confusion, ‘Brother Hugh, I seek your help in my reflections.’

  ‘I am your servant, Francis. I will do whatever I can to shine a light along the path to God.’

  Urging the priest to walk with him, the spy said with one hand to his furrowed brow, ‘Forgive my questions. They may make little sense to you, but my thoughts often lead me on a merry dance. I have been reflecting on this great seminary in which I find myself — this breeding ground of thought. It is very old, no?’

  Hugh gave a shrug. ‘Old? Is fifty years old? The Cardinal de Lorraine founded the school through Papal Bull-’

  ‘Not the school, my friend,’ Will interrupted with a regrettable snap of irritation. ‘The stone and mortar and very fabric of this place. This part of Reims has been a centre of religious thought for many centuries.’

  Hugh held open the door for the spy to pass through. ‘Ah,’ the priest said. ‘Then hundreds of years. The cathedral, the basilica, the glorious buildings you see around … outside of Rome you will find no greater monument to Christianity.’

  Leading the way back to the seminary, Will continued to feign bafflement. ‘I have heard tell that the old masons who built these glorious structures often made hidden places below the ground, secret chambers to hide treasures in times of strife, or to keep safe the great teachings of God above.’

  ‘I know why you ask these things.’ The priest’s voice dropped to a lower register as he spoke.

  ‘You do?’

  ‘I have heard the same stories. And more besides. They say it is the reason we are locked in our chambers by night … that there is a secret place beneath the cathedral and the seminary where the Devil lives, with a gate to hell itself. Our brothers fight a daily battle to keep the Adversary locked below ground, but there is always the danger he will break through. And so it has proved.’ He rested a hand on Will’s shoulder. ‘I am sorry, Francis. I thought these tales had no more substance than the ones the old wives tell around their hearths. Nor did I wish to frighten you needlessly. Now we should all speak of them so that we remain on our guard.’

  Nodding, Will’s thoughts sk
ipped several paces ahead. To lurk beneath the feet of godly men in one of the holiest places in Europe would suit the Unseelie Court’s perverse outlook, the spy decided. The sacred and the profane, joined as one. ‘And of course, no one knows the entrance to these hidden places, should they exist.’

  ‘No,’ Hugh said in a grim tone that suggested he did not want to discover such a thing.

  ‘There are records here of the priests who studied?’

  ‘Of course,’ the younger man replied, curious at this strange question. ‘And copies are sent to Rome.’

  So that the Pope knows where his best spies are, Will thought. ‘Take me to them, brother. I have questions about a former priest.’

  Puzzled, Hugh led the way to a large chamber at the rear of the seminary, lined with shelves creaking under the weight of parchments and volumes. It was deserted, as Will had expected in the atmosphere of terror that Mephistophilis had brought to the place. The air was filled with the sweet smell of the ink the scribes used to keep their records. Dust motes floated in a shaft of sunlight falling through the small window high on the west wall, but the rest of the chamber was gloomy.

  Lighting a candle with his flint, Will searched along the shelves while the young priest waited uneasily at the door. ‘When Brother Cuthbert returns, I am sure he will tell you all you wish to know.’

  ‘I am sure Brother Cuthbert has more important matters to concern him than my meanderings,’ the spy muttered.

  The candle flame illuminated a volume with the date 1587 inscribed on the spine. Removing it from the shelf, Will carried it to a cluttered trestle and flicked through the pages, each one headed by a name, followed by an account of their residence and studies at the seminary. He paused when he came to the name Christofer Marley. Tracing a finger along the flourishing script, he found the location of the playwright’s former chamber and then turned to the priest.

  ‘I need your help once more, my friend.’ The spy cast a concerned eye at the slant of the sunbeam. The hour was drawing late.