The Silver Skull

by Mark Chadbourn

  By the time Will finished explaining the task that lay ahead, Nathaniel had returned with a large, foul-smelling sack. From it, he distributed various items of clothing.

  “What is this?” Mayhew clutched a hand to his mouth. “Foul vinegar rags stolen from the backs of three-day-dead beggars?”

  “Master Mayhew, you are known around London as a man of exquisite taste for the finery of your dress,” Will said. “But if you walk into Alsatia as a gallant, flashing that costly silk lining of your cloak, you will find yourself a honeypot for bees with a deadly sting.”

  In the cramped carriage on the road to Fleet Street, they quickly changed into the stinking rags, with much complaining from Mayhew and stoic acceptance from Launceston. Miller was eager, but Carpenter made a show of the mass of scar tissue that covered his back and left arm, casting sullen glares towards Will.

  When they were done, Nathaniel said, “I have never seen … nor smelled a more convincing group of foul beggars. You wear it well.”

  “I hear the buzzing of a gnat, Master Swyfte.” Launceston sniffed. “I will swat it if I see it.”

  The carriage trundled to a halt next to a tiny alley where rats ran and clouds of flies swarmed in shafts of sunlight. “From here there is danger every step of the way,” Will said. “We will be surrounded by people who would gladly slit our throats for a shiny button, but they are the least of our worries. The Enemy races to reach the Silver Skull before us.” Will glanced down the alley to where it wound away into shadow. “And they come like the night. We must watch each other’s backs.” Will cast an eye towards Carpenter, who pretended not to notice. “Good luck, boys. We go for queen and country, and wine and a warm embrace when we are done. Let nothing keep us from our just rewards.”

  Leaping from the carriage, he plunged straight into the alley.

  The boundaries of Alsatia were clearly demarcated by a piercing whistle from an unseen watchman somewhere near the rooftops. Heads held low by the weight of a harsh life, furtive eyes cast down, Will and the other beggars limped and stumbled in a tight knot, faces smeared with dirt they had scraped up on the way.

  While the rest of London was filled with colour, noise, and life, on the boundaries Alsatia was eerily still. Stone tenements blackened by smoke and the accumulation of centuries of filth rose up four stories high. Overhanging upper floors on some of the newer buildings meant that little sun reached the rutted, puddled, narrow streets where a thin, grey light leached the colour from everything. Smoke blew back and forth along the byways like a constant fog from the blocked chimneys of the many who could not afford the services of a sweep.

  On the fringes, the houses appeared deserted, the stink of excrement drifting from shattered windows and ragged doors. But as they progressed towards the heart of the quarter, life began to appear, in ones and twos at first, talking in hushed tones in the entrances to alleys, or slumped on doorsteps watching with mean eyes. The clothes were brown and grey and muddygreen, rough cloth, hard worn, wide-brimmed felt hats that could hide the features, pale skin and stubble, filthy fingernails. The women hung out of windows, faces lashed pink by the elements, hair prematurely grey. The doxies barely bothered to dress after each short, grunting encounter, pendulous breasts hanging out of torn, filthy dresses, makeup applied so halfheartedly it appeared to be the work of children, turning each one into a rouge and cream grotesque, a pastiche of sexual attraction. It did not appear to deter the men. The doxies carried out their trade on the street, against a wall, or on their backs in hallways, doors thrown wide, skirts pulled high, their faces implacable as the men thrust into them, sweating and cursing.

  “Animals,” Launceston said under his breath.

  The stink grew more intense with each step. Rubbish was piled as high as a man on either side of every door, scraps of rotting meat, and bones, and vegetables, and the dung of animals, and the contents of chamber pots. Every heap was alive with rats. They carpeted the streets, swarming away from approaching feet to return a moment later. Clouds of flies filled the air, and white maggots glistened in the half-light.

  As Will led the way, the piercing whistles followed them, but their tone was merely observational and not insistent.

  Gangs of men flowed past them, ready for an afternoon’s work seeking out the country gulls and foreign visitors who would be more amenable to the nip and foist relieving them of their gold-stuffed purses. They would prowl Saint Paul’s, all the bowling alleys and ordinaries, the brothels, baiting rings, and theatres, seeking out their likely marks.

  Everywhere was the glint of knives and cold, hard eyes. Will felt their gazes on his back, heard the rustle of whispers in his wake, but it passed as he knew it would; earning a dishonest living took precedence over the searching of a few beggars.

  “Do you hear that?” Mayhew brought them to a slow halt, cocking his head to listen to some sound that escaped the rest of them. All they heard was the wind beneath the eaves, the occasional frightened shout in the distance, and the murmur of plotting voices every now and then.

  “What do you hear?” Will caught sight of Mayhew’s oddly troubled face.

  “Music?” He strained to catch it. “The playing of some flute just beneath the wind, or behind it, or part of it?”

  “Why bother yourself with that, you fool?” Carpenter growled. “They make merry here like the rest of us.”

  “No, I have heard it before.” Mayhew appeared to be trying to recall a fading dream. “At … the Tower?”

  Miller had picked up on Mayhew’s unease. “Why should a flute trouble you so?”

  “‘Tis nothing,” Will interrupted. “Do not jump at shadows. There are harder dangers to concern you.”

  As they arrived at a crossroads, they all became aware of an eerie stillness lying across the area. It was as deserted as the first part of Alsatia they had entered. The cold wind had dropped and dense, choking smoke billowed all around.

  It was Launceston who noted the most unnerving aspect. “The rats have fled,” he said.

  A hint of the flute-playing Mayhew had heard rose up and disappeared. Peering down each of the streets in turn, Will tried to discern the origin of the music.

  Miller dabbed at his nose where a trickle of blood ran down to his upper lip. “What is this?” he asked, his eyes widening.

  Will urged him to be silent. The flute-playing ebbed away to be replaced by the faint tread of boots upon the baked mud, drawing nearer. The dim sound drifted through the smoke and reflected from wall to wall so it was difficult to identify the source.

  On a deeper level than their five senses, they understood the nature of what approached. Launceston slapped a cold hand on Miller’s shoulder to steady him.

  Turning slowly, Will stopped for the briefest moment at each street. “Which way, which way?” he muttered to himself.

  Then, along the route to the west, almost lost to the swirling smoke, two hot coals nearly a yard off the ground moved towards them. The moment he glimpsed that almost insignificant blaze of colour in that shadowy place, several sounds came to Will from the same direction: a low, growling breath, barely audible but which made his stomach clench and the hairs on his neck tingle; the pad of a paw, the slap of a tensing leather leash as something strained against it; and then the measured tread of boots.

  Will propelled Miller down the street that led to the south, the others following at his heels. They only came to a halt when the strained atmosphere had evaporated and there was no sign of pursuit.

  Miller had grown pale. “Who was that?” he asked. “A ghost?”

  “No spectre would haunt this foul place,” Will replied. “Not when there are peaceful churchyards and castle towers sheltered from the elements.” His grin took the edge off Miller’s anxiety. “A man with a dog, no more. Probably for the fighting pit. But we could not risk it smelling us out. Even with these foul rags, we are sweeter to the nose than anyone else in this place.”

  Calming a little, Miller moved his fingers unconsci
ously to the dried blood under his nose, but before any errant thoughts could resurface, Launceston gave him a rough shove and they were back on their journey.

  They had not gone far when Launceston appeared at Will’s shoulder. In a low voice that none of the others could hear, he said, “Bringing that youth was a mistake. The knowledge of what we face, revealed in one shattering blow, will destroy him, and us along with him if we are not careful.”

  “Then we protect him until he can be prepared for the truth.” Launceston was right, and in ideal circumstances Miller would have gone through the same slow stabilising process of induction and revelation as the rest of them. But Will understood Walsingham’s urge to circumvent procedure: these were desperate times, and they were always short-handed compared to the force arrayed against them. “This is the hand we have been dealt. We must play it as best we can,” he said firmly.

  In the icy flash of the glance Launceston levelled at Miller, Will saw the earl would not shy from taking matters into his own hands if Miller placed them, or their mission, at risk. None of them were strangers to shedding blood, but killing came particularly easy to Launceston. Marlowe had once said something was missing inside him. Will would need to pay careful attention.

  As they pressed deeper into Alsatia, the residents felt safer from the unwanted scrutiny of the law-keepers. Dice was played noisily on doorsteps, or cards on ramshackle tables at the side of the street. Disabled men and women abandoned by society tried to scrape a living begging, and sometimes the criminals would take pity and toss them a coin.

  Outside a tavern, amid heaps of vomit and reeking lakes of urine, people sprawled drunkenly across the street with no one to move them on. The noise from the open doors and windows of the tavern was deafening, inebriated conversations delivered at a bellow against a backdrop of fiddle music and ferociously contested gambling.

  Occasionally brawls would begin, but they were swiftly broken up by men armed with cudgels who kept the order among the unruly class. They were likely in the pay of the gangs, Will guessed, ready to be sent to the defence of any member of the community being dragged out to face justice.

  One man lay facedown, his skull split open and his blood flowing into the mud and the urine. Will saw the hands of his own men going instinctively to their swords, knowing what they would face if they were found out. The close call with the Enemy and his dog had unnerved them all.

  As Will prepared to enter the tavern to search for information, an uproar echoed from the end of the street where men and women ran towards the entrance to one of the tenements.

  “Someone is in danger,” Will guessed from the tone of the cries. “Let us investigate.”

  HAPTER 11

  s Will and the others were taking their first steps into Alsatia, Grace was already progressing into the filthy, smoke-filled streets. Marlowe had always liked her, and it had not taken a great effort to worm Will’s destination out of him. Although he would not speak directly of the nature of Will’s business in the Thieves’ Quarter, his occasional unguarded comment told Grace her instincts were correct: there was some connection to Jenny’s disappearance. Marlowe warned her of the dangers awaiting a young woman alone in Alsatia—it was not the court, it was certainly not Warwickshire—but the drive to discover the truth about her sister overrode all else.

  But as she stood on a street where a man at a table took receipt of purses, jewellery, silk handkerchiefs, and occasionally coats and boots, she cursed her ignorance. She thought she would be able to find Will easily—he was often recognised and hailed by upstanding men and women—but here there was no trace of his passing, and she was lost, and her perfumed handkerchief could not keep the foul smells from her nose. And now a group of four men were casting surreptitious glances her way, and muttering among themselves. She was not naive; she recognised the hunger in their eyes.

  At least a woman alone was no threat and she was not troubled by the majority of the other unsavoury characters she saw. But as she attempted to retrace her steps to the London she knew, the men began to follow her.

  Her heart beat faster, but she tried not to give in to panic, for she knew that would only attract more unwanted attention. Keeping her head down, she skipped a stinking puddle, unsure whether she should move down the centre of the street where everyone would see her or keep in the shadow of the tenements where she could be snatched in through one of the open doors. Opting for somewhere between the two, she kept up a fast pace, deciding that she hated that place more than anywhere she had been in her life. Every face had either a hint of cruelty or the stain of life’s crushing ills. She saw no hope anywhere. The desolation made her yearn for Will; he had kept his own hope alive in the face of, as she saw it, all reason. He truly believed Jenny still lived. More than anything she didn’t want that hope crushed, but she feared the worst. Soon he might find out the truth, and what then for him?

  That thought prompted a stark memory: on the fourth day after Jenny’s disappearance when a black carriage had arrived at the home of Will’s family just as night fell, a waning moon casting a silver light over the Warwickshire cornfields. A mysterious visitor, armed guards at the door, and then Will emerging at dawn to tell her, “There is a great secret to the way the world works. Nothing is as it seems.”

  Will appeared to dread that was true, but as Grace glanced back at the four men loping in her wake, elbowing each other and flashing lascivious grins while their eyes remained furtive and hard, she fervently hoped that was the case.

  The street to her right was wider and had more traffic. Grace took it in the hope that the men would leave her alone under the gaze of others. But she had not gone more than twenty paces when a rough hand grabbed her arm.

  The youngest of the men, with sandy hair and a ruddy complexion covered with pox scars, said, “Walk with us, lady. These are rough parts and you need strong arms to keep you safe.”

  “I fear that cure will be worse than the disease,” Grace said. “Leave me. I would walk alone.”

  She tried to throw off his hand, but he only held her tighter, and then the other three men were moving to surround her.

  “Aid me!” Grace called to the people moving along the street. A man with grey hair and hollow cheeks only winked at the men and moved on. A fat woman threw back her head and laughed, and her friend pointed and made a sexual gesture at the men, who laughed and called back rudely.

  “You will get no help round these parts,” the pox-scarred man said.

  Grace launched a sharp kick at his shins, and as he yelped and staggered back towards his associates, she ran. Along the street, jeers and encouragement to pursuit rose up loudly. Catching her quickly, the men bundled her through the open door of one of the tenements.

  Grace careered across the mud floor to come to rest against a damp wall. The place was bare apart from a table and a chair, and a fire stoked with cheap coal smoked into the room.

  Laughing as they loosened their hose, the four men ranged across the room, blocking her escape.

  “Come near me and I will tear out your eyes,” she hissed. The men only laughed harder.

  Sliding up the wall, Grace hooked her fingers like claws as her attackers approached. Through the filthy window, she glimpsed movement: more of the jeering locals coming to witness her degradation, she guessed.

  But when the door clattered open, it was four cloaked men who burst in. Grace had as little time to react as her attackers before a drawn sword was thrust into the heart of the pox-scarred man, and just as quickly withdrawn and slashed across the throat of another. Grace had only ever seen one person exhibit that degree of skill with the blade.

  “Will,” she murmured with relief.

  The remaining two attackers had only a second to plead for their lives before they too were run through. Sickened by the cold efficiency of the kills, Grace turned away, but she was also troubled that a part of her was triumphant.

  When she turned back, her saviour stood before her. She went to throw her
arms around Will, only for an unfamiliar face to be revealed when the hood was thrust back: aristocratic, with an aquiline nose and dark eyes that were as charismatic as Will’s, a waxed moustache and chin hair, swarthy skin.

  “Greetings, mistress,” he said. “I am lion Alanzo de las Posadas, and you will now accompany me.”

  “Spanish spies,” Grace gasped.

  Don Alanzo gave a curt bow.

  HAPTER 10

  assing through the flow of drunks from the tavern, Will and the others joined the rear of the crowd at the entrance to the tenement. As people jostled for a view of the mysterious spectacle, Will eased his way past sharp shoulders and elbows until the laughter and quizzical shouts gave way to sudden silence. A moment of confusion ended in panic, shrieks, and barked warnings, as those near the front tried to drive back into the flow of the ones joining the crowd.

  When Will broke through the flow with renewed urgency, at first he couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Slumped across the step against the door jamb, the local children had placed a scarecrow, straw protruding from the sleeves and neck of worn clothes, head lolling on the chest beneath a wide-brimmed felt hat. Yet something about the well-stuffed shape held him fast.

  A moment later, the scarecrow shifted.

  “A game!” Miller chuckled under his breath. “I have seen this before, in my village. A child hides inside it!”

  “Away,” Will urged as gently as he could, trying to push Miller back against the weight of the crowd behind him.

  The scarecrow lurched to its feet, stumbling and swaying on the step, straw hands going to a face that was at once twisted knots of straw and hazel switches and also completely human. Terrified eyes rolled insanely. Twig fingers clawed at the place where the mouth should have been, and a mad mewling came from deep inside it. With a pleading arm, the scarecrow reached out to the crowd, but as it staggered around the arc, everyone moved back, unnerved, trying to believe it was some joke, knowing in their hearts what they were really seeing.