The Silver Skull

by Mark Chadbourn

  Cursing quietly, Mayhew levered himself from his chair and sloped out.

  Carpenter pushed his plate away and growled, “At least the failure of this mission left no one dead. Or scarred.”

  “There are no failures, and no victories either, you know that. Just a constant shifting back and forth, with casualties on both sides. That is the true tragedy of our war: it will never be won.”

  “Defeatist.” Carpenter sniffed. Then: “I presume Walsingham will want to hold someone accountable for our failure to recover the Silver Skull.”

  “Again, John, no failure, however much you want to apportion blame. This struggle continues. We have reached a turn in the road, and we must embark on another direction.”

  “Yet we still do not know what this Silver Skull does,” Launceston said, “or why it is so important to the Enemy. Perhaps it is simply meant to distract us from the real threat.”

  “All will become clear in time,” Will replied. So far he had only told Walsingham what he had witnessed of the Skull’s capabilities, and Miller had been sworn to silence, although the disease-powers appeared to be the last thing on his mind.

  Nathaniel appeared at the door to the Tryst Rooms and summoned Will over. “Lord Walsingham is ready for you now,” he said. “Should I be prepared for fanfares and fawning crowds?”

  “Not this time, Nat. This matter is still a tangled web, which requires some unpicking.”

  Nathaniel held the door open. “A case not concluded in time for an ordinary in the tavern? Your reputation is in danger.”

  “We all have our bad days, and I fear this one will get worse before it gets better.”

  They took Walsingham’s black carriage and followed the cluttered, noisy streets east to the Tower. As was often the case, Nathaniel pretended to show no interest in the matter under investigation while asking oblique, circuitous questions in an attempt to assuage his curiosity. And as was usual, Will pretended not to notice, and batted them away with an insouciant manner. It was a game between friends, but with serious intent: in his ignorance, Nathaniel rattled the cage door, but Will had made it his business never to let him realise what beast lurked within.

  The carriage was admitted through the main gates of the Tower into a furious hive of activity, the like of which Will had not seen before. Soldiers brought weapons from the Tower’s armoury, while other groups escorted bruised and battered prisoners to the cells for interrogation.

  Will ordered Nathaniel to stay with the carriage, and then sought Walsingham out in his rooms in the White Tower. In a room filled with charts and documents, Will found him making plans for England’s defences with a small army of advisors. The atmosphere was strained, the advisors failing to grasp the urgency of Walsingham’s requests. By their reckoning, an invasion was weeks away, at the earliest, and his suggestion that disaster could strike within hours or days filled them with incredulity. Will realised he had never seen Walsingham lose his temper, but there was a frightening intensity about him that Will had witnessed before on occasion; in those times he appeared capable of anything.

  Once the advisors had been dismissed, Walsingham led Will along the corridors and down the winding stairs into the bowels of the White Tower.

  “It would be easier if you could guide them with more than hints and innuendo,” Will said.

  “That is our burden,” Walsingham replied. “Only a very few understand the true nature of the war we fight. The rest must accept our guidance on faith alone.”

  “No sign of lion Alanzo or the Silver Skull?”

  “Our informants watch all the highways out of London, and the ports of Kent and Norfolk, Sussex and Dorset. They have vanished like the mist.”

  “You have informed the queen?”

  “Of only the most basic details. One must walk a line between providing an adequate summation of the threat facing the nation and leaving the monarch paralysed by fear.” Walsingham waited for the guards to unlock a large, iron-studded door before continuing. “We have struggled with the outbreak of disease many times during Elizabeth’s reign. The thought that such devastation could be unleashed by an enemy in the blink of an eye, in one of our cities, perhaps even in London itself, is beyond the comprehension of most minds. But we know the depths to which the Enemy will go to destroy us. And the Spanish, of course, would seize upon such internal chaos to launch an invasion from without. We are in a state of high alert—England’s future hangs by a thread. Never have matters been so critical.”

  “Then we cannot afford to delay here,” Will said. “Pickering is our only link to the Skull, and the Enemy’s plans.”

  At the foot of the stairs, in the deepest part of the White Tower, they were confronted by another oaken door flanked by two guards, who unlocked it and closed it swiftly behind them. The room beyond was vast and unpleasantly gloomy. A handful of torches at large intervals created a permanent twilight that obscured many of the workings of that place. Occasional moans or cries emerged from the shadows, like the haunting voices of lost souls, and there was a heavy stink of excrement, urine, and blood.

  A tall man in his early forties, fair-haired, with bright eyes and an easy smile, walked out of the dark to greet them. He clasped his hands before him with an expression of continual glee. Jeremiah Kemp, England’s torturer-in-chief, enjoyed his work.

  A constant succession of Catholic spies, and potential spies, criminals, traitors, and informants passed through his doors, Jesuit priests, minor aristocrats, lawyers, farmers, gentlewomen, and wealthy merchants. Kemp treated them all with equal care and attention.

  “Welcome, my Lord Walsingham, Master Swyfte,” he said with a shy smile and a deep bow. “All is ready for you.”

  “Pickering?” Walsingham asked.

  “He has been softening. Please come and see.” Kemp led them past every imaginable device of human torture to one of the wooden posts that supported the ceiling of that underground chamber. From near the top of the pillar, Pickering hung from an iron bar supported by staples in the wood, his hands fastened into iron gauntlets attached to the bar. It was a deceptively simple instrument. The weight of the suspended body caused the flesh in the arms to swell, creating the agonising sensation that blood was about to burst from the end of every finger.

  His face drawn and badly bruised, Pickering watched them with dazed eyes.

  “Are you ready to confess?” Walsingham asked him.

  “I am but a lowly thief,” Pickering croaked. “I know nothing of these matters of state.” His weak voice sounded truthful, but Will caught the briefest shadow flicker in his eyes.

  “You like games?” Will asked. “Chess?”

  Pickering eyed him hatefully.

  “The pawns are removed from the game early. There is little to be gained by extending their lives.”

  “Unless they are clever pawns, with aspirations to rise to be the true power on the board.” Pickering’s eyes gleamed.

  Will nodded. “Then we know where we stand.” Turning to Kemp, he said, “Let us introduce our guest to the Duke of Exeter’s Daughter.”

  “Certainly, Master Swyfte.” Kemp clapped his hands to summon the guards to bring Pickering down from his perch. Though he had only been on the pillar for a short while, his legs were too weak to support his weight.

  The guards dragged him to the end of the chamber where the rack stood before a row of candles, a wooden bed stained with bodily fluids, a ratchet system for turning at one end.

  “The Duke of Exeter was an inventive man when he was the constable of the Tower, and he devised this method to ensure full truth and honesty from those he entertained,” Will said. “You are aware how this works?”

  Pickering shook his head, but his expression suggested his imagination was already hard at work.

  “The arms and legs are fastened thusly. This winch is turned, which extends the rack here, and here, and so the guest’s limbs are stretched. I am told the pain is very great indeed, in the joints in particular. If the turning
of the winch is continued, the limbs are dislocated, and eventually torn free.”

  “I will tell all you wish to know,” Pickering said.

  “Unfortunately, it is already too late for that,” Will replied. “The moment has long since passed for caution. We can no longer risk wasting time on dissembling and half-truths in the hope that you might find some small advantage for yourself.”

  Pickering’s face drained of blood as he realised what Will was saying. “You will torture me, even though I will tell you what you want to know?”

  “Every act we perform in this dark room destroys our humanity a little more,” Will said. “We strip our souls by degrees. But we are small men, all of us, and meaningless in the vast sweep of the nation’s life. When we are gone, we shall be forgotten, but for now we have a part to play. The men and women of England deserve to live free, and earn their crust, and laugh and play, and sleep easy every night, free from fear. I gladly sacrifice my life to buy that liberty for them.” He paused. “And I would gladly sacrifice your life for the same.”

  Walsingham nodded to the guards. Pickering’s feeble struggles were quickly overpowered, but his mounting cries reverberated off the stone walls. Calming a little once he was strapped to the rack by his wrists and ankles, he began to babble everything he thought his captors wanted to hear.

  Will stood back until the rack had been tightened to the point where every incremental turn of the winch pulled a cry of agony from Pickering. “You are inhuman!” he screamed.

  “We are,” Will said. “No good man should ever submit another to these deprivations. It would behoove neither of us to say you brought this upon yourself. Nor should we consider it a punishment, for I pass no judgment on you. But at this point all men and women in England are at risk of the worst death imaginable. I weigh my own soul, and your agonies, against that. Now, let us proceed slowly and carefully, so there is no room for doubt. You are the cousin of Bulle, the Tyburn hangman. Is that true?”

  “Yes, yes, yes!”

  Walsingham watched Will, curious to see where the line of questioning would take him.

  “I am always troubled by seemingly random connections,” Will stated. “This business began with the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, at the hands of Bulle. Now his cousin is involved in the next stage. By chance?” Will shook his head. “What did Bulle learn at Fotheringhay?”

  It took a moment for Pickering to stifle his sobs, and then he began, “Mary … Mary delayed her execution for hours, through pleas, and prayers, and lies, and deceit.”

  “That is true,” Walsingham said.

  “There was nothing to gain by delaying her execution. She was not afraid to die.”

  “Why, then?” Will pressed.

  “She was waiting. For … for news of the discovery of the Key to the Silver Skull.”

  “No news could reach her in Fotheringhay,” Walsingham said. “Guards were at the door of her chamber continually. All letters in and out were carefully scrutinised.” He nodded to Kemp to turn the winch another notch.

  When Pickering’s screams had died, the King of Cutpurses cried with a raw throat, “What I say is true. She did receive news by …” He looked from face to face fearfully. “You will not believe me, but it is true!”

  “Go on,” Will said.

  “By a mirror. A magic mirror!” He screwed his eyes shut and waited for the pain to lance through his joints. Kemp poised with one hand on the winch.

  “A magic mirror,” Will mused. “That is how the Enemy communicates?”

  “Their own mirrors? Or all mirrors?” Walsingham queried aloud. “Should we remove every looking glass from the Palace of Whitehall? Are they spying on us as we look into our own faces?”

  “‘Tis true,” Pickering gasped, relieved. “That is how Bulle told it to me. He spied upon Mary through the secret passage that ran behind her chamber.”

  “He knew of that?” Walsingham asked.

  “He bribed the captain of the sheriff’s guard,” Pickering continued, still desperately eager to please. “Many of the women brought to execution offered their bodies to Bulle in return for their freedom, or at the least a quick end. He took them regardless. This time, he thought … perhaps—”

  “With a queen?” Walsingham said, disgusted.

  “Mary was renowned for her skills between the sheets,” Pickering noted.

  “So, while Bulle spied on Mary in the hope that he could steal favours from her, he saw her speaking at the mirror?” Will enquired.

  “Yes! As my cousin told it to me, the glass grew cloudy, as if the smoke of a great fire billowed within it. From his vantage point, he could not see any face within it, but he could hear a voice.”

  “What kind of voice?” Walsingham asked.

  “A man. Or something that purported to be a man. It told Mary that the key had been recovered … from the crypt beneath the Holy Rood—”

  “The palace in Edinburgh.” Will wondered how long the Enemy’s plan had been in motion; when had they first seized control of Mary to manipulate their way into the Palace of Holyroodhouse to search for the key? Months ago? Years? Had she always been under their control, as they slipped into the spaces and the weaknesses between human prejudices?

  “And then the voice proceeded to tell Mary about the plot to steal the Silver Skull from the Tower, and the time and the date.”

  “And Bulle passed this information on to you, for you to find some way to gain financial advantage from a blow against England itself,” Will said sharply. “You did not pass this on to the authorities. You sought only your own personal gain. That is treason in and of itself.” He nodded to Kemp to tighten the winch another notch.

  Pickering’s shrieks ended in a series of juddering sobs. “I did not seek to harm my country or my queen!” he wailed. “I simply saw an opportunity.”

  “As all men of business do,” Will said sardonically.

  “I planned to return the Skull to the authorities—”

  “Once you had played England and Spain off against each other, and grown fat on the proceeds. What else did Bulle tell you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing that you remember?”

  “No.”

  Will gave the nod to Kemp, who tightened the rack another notch. Briefly, Pickering blacked out from the pain, and when he finally came round, Will said, “Jog your memory, while your limbs are still attached.”

  Babbling incoherently, Pickering eventually attempted to run through everything his cousin had told him, one drunken night in the Bear in Alsatia. It was only after two more turns of the winch that he recalled something new.

  “The voice said … they still search … beneath the palace,” he gasped.

  “For what?”

  “I do not remember! I … I …” Kemp moved a hand onto the winch. “A shield! Yes, my cousin said a shield!”

  “A shield,” Walsingham repeated.

  “Thank you for your time,” Will said to Pickering. “You have been most helpful. Now, I believe Master Kemp has some further questions for you on other matters.”

  From a brown leather bag, Kemp removed a sheaf of documents an inch thick. Pickering began to sob gently.

  As Will and Walsingham made their way back to the light, Walsingham mused, “The Shield. The third and final item required for the Silver Skull’s operation. It lies—or lay—beneath the Palace of Holyroodhouse. The Enemy searched at the time of Mary’s execution, but do they now have the object they sought?”

  “If the Enemy had the Shield, the Hunter would have used it in Alsatia,” Will replied. “As it was, the Skull’s power was only released briefly, the display stopped before it could do harm to all present. It was a warning to us … mockery, perhaps … nothing more.”

  “My agents in Hertfordshire reported a black carriage moving north at great speed, all curtains drawn. It did not stop at the usual places,” Walsingham said.

  “Then I will be away to Edinburgh within the hour,” Will
announced. “There may still be hope if we act swiftly.”

  “Godspeed,” Walsingham said. “But remember, Scotland and England may now have a steady relationship, but Dee’s defences do not extend beyond the border. The Enemy has always thrived on the lonely moors and misty mountains of that northern land, aye, and in their cities too. One reason why King James is so keen to bring England into an even closer embrace. It is said he rankles nightly to his advisors about yawning churchyards, straw dolls in babies’ cribs, and the threat that waits for him and all Scotsmen under the Hill of Yews. You must watch your back at all times.”

  “Nathaniel will do that for me. Our spies in Edinburgh are to be trusted?”

  “As much as any. I will alert them to your arrival.”

  “No,” Will said. “Let my arrival be a surprise. I will contact them when I reach the north.”

  In the carriage on the journey back to the Palace of Whitehall, Will ordered Nathaniel to pack his bags to accompany him on the journey to Edinburgh.

  “Scotland.” Nathaniel sighed. “I hear it is a place of hard, grey skies and a constant drizzle that dampens the spirit as much as the clothes.”

  “But you’ll have the joy of my company, and such learned and witty discourse that many would pay for such a privilege.” Will watched the faces pass the window, afraid that with every one he would see some sign of disease starting to flower.

  “My heart sings already,” Nathaniel replied.

  In the courtyard next to the Black Gallery, the carriage pulled into a stream of activity, with several servants accompanying the court physician and bystanders whispering in doorways. Almost as ashen as Launceston’s natural complexion, Mayhew dashed from the Black Gallery and tore open the carriage door.

  “What is wrong?” Will enquired. “The queen—?”

  Mayhew shook his head. “The boy.”

  He led Will at speed from the Black Gallery through the Tryst Rooms and into a loft where pigeons cooed. The physician was just leaving as they arrived, shaking his head as they passed.