The Silver Skull

by Mark Chadbourn

  Unsettled, Nathaniel wanted to know the identity of the new arrivals, and appeared only partly placated when Will told him they were Spanish agents, although Meg was convinced. “They are here because they know I have the cipher and they are afraid I will reach their prize before them,” Will said. He watched the Unseelie Court select unsettled women and men for dancing partners, and added, “Though how they knew I would be here this evening, I have not yet concluded. But they must not be allowed to follow us, or prevent us reaching the object of our search. Nat, you must come with me.”

  “You can count on us,” Meg said with a confident smile.

  “Do not take any risks,” Nathaniel said with concern.

  “We shall not fail you,” Reidheid added, “though our lives be forfeit.”

  “I said, do not take any risks!” Nathaniel stressed. He touched Meg’s hand briefly before Will tugged him away.

  “She has a brave heart, Nat. Trust her,” Will whispered as they slipped across the room. Nathaniel cast one backwards glance as Meg drew attention to herself by causing a commotion with one of the attendants. At the door a guard barred their way, but James caught his eye and nodded. The king exchanged a brief, curious glance with Will before accepting that whatever was planned was in his best interests. He turned away as Will and Nathaniel darted through the door.

  “I am in debt to the king,” Will said as they moved through a chamber where servants bustled into a long corridor with views across the darkening hunting grounds at the rear of the palace. The sky was a deep blue, turning rapidly to black, the trees stark silhouettes, the moon and the stars gleaming. “He is a good man, burdened by the demands of his office.” Will realised he felt a strong affinity for the young monarch.

  All the activity in the palace was centred on the State Rooms, and the rest of the corridors and chambers through which they passed were still and silent. Returning to the quadrangle, they found a door on the south side that led to a short corridor with another door leading directly into the abbey.

  Inside it was cool and dark, the glow from the candles flaring up the walls to the vast wooden beams supporting the roof and drawing sparkles of brilliant colours from the stained-glass windows. The empty abbey was filled with the pungent aroma of incense. Their footsteps echoed on the stone flags as they made their way into the nave and looked up to the transept and the choir where the shadows gathered.

  “Where do we begin?” Even though Nathaniel whispered, his voice carried far amid the perfect acoustics of the interior. He shivered and glanced towards the door to see if he had drawn any attention.

  “Search the interior for any sign of a martyr,” Will said. “A statue. A painting. An icon. An image hidden in the stained glass. A carving in the wood. It is here somewhere.”

  Nathaniel moved off to begin his search at the west end near the tower. Will approached the transept. The original design of the abbey overseen by King David had been altered here. During an attack by the English army forty years earlier, the eastern part of the abbey church was destroyed where it enclosed the royal tombs of James V, Magdalen, his first queen, and his infant sons by his second marriage to Mary of Guise. Will studied the rebuilt section and wondered if his search was futile. Perhaps a statue of the martyr had not been replaced during the restructuring, or some other clue to the location was missing.

  As he continued to scour the abbey, he began to fear he was correct for there was no sign of a martyr anywhere. Despondently, he returned to the nave where Nathaniel paced back and forth, scanning the interior.

  “Anything?” he asked.

  Nathaniel shook his head. “Perhaps we look in the wrong place.”

  “No, I am convinced the Templar Knights would have hidden the item here, beneath the protection of God, in the most reverent area of Edinburgh.”

  “Then perhaps there is some sign we are missing.”

  Will agreed. “Let us reconsider. We are dealing with a cipher after all. A martyr may not be a martyr.” While Nathaniel looked up to the heavens for inspiration, Will sank into one of the wooden pews and rested his chin in his hand. Thinking aloud, he said, “David dedicated this foundation to the Holy Rood. His mother, St. Margaret, brought that precious relic, a fragment of the True Cross, back to Scotland from the land of the Magyars.” He mused, “Margaret … martyr,” then shook his head with frustration.

  Craning his neck, Nathaniel continued to examine the shadowy ceiling of the abbey with curiosity.

  “Nat! Concentrate on the matter at hand,” Will insisted.

  “There. Do you see that?” Nathaniel pointed at the main arching beam of the abbey roof.

  “This is no time to search for bats.”

  “There! On the beam!” Nathaniel urged.

  With irritation, Will followed his assistant’s pointing finger. After a moment of squinting, he identified a badge above the centre of the aisle: a red cross on a square, half white, half black. “One of the Templar flags,” he said thoughtfully.

  “If you had spent more time on your studies of the Christian faith, and less in the stews of Bankside, you would know that the red cross is the mark of a martyr.”

  “Nathaniel, you are a constant source of inspiration to me. Disregard all I said about you.”

  Will dropped to his knees to examine the stone flags of the aisle. Hammering his fist on the one directly beneath the badge resulted in a hollow echo.

  “Where the martyr stands in black and white,” he said with a pleased smile. “I think we have it.” With his nail and then with his knife, he scraped the dirt of centuries out from around the edge of the flag. “If we had a tool, we could prise it up,” he said.

  “I will search.” Nathaniel hurried off into the gloom of the abbey. Will heard him searching cupboards and opening doors, and after a while he returned and shook his head.

  “What now?” Nathaniel asked.

  Will looked towards the door to the palace. “We cannot afford to leave this to another day. The Enemy could arrive at any moment.” He paused, and said to himself, “Though Kintour said they could not walk near the entrance to where the Shield was kept.”

  “Why could they not walk here?” Nathaniel asked suspiciously.

  Will ignored him. “No, there is no choice. We must break through this flag. Fetch me that iron candleholder.”

  “I fear your constant desire for attention is getting the better of you,” Nathaniel said. The candleholder was several inches higher than Nathaniel, and he had to brace himself to lift it with a grunt. He staggered over to Will and lowered it slowly to the flags with another grunt.

  “You are growing soft, Nat. I must work you harder.” Will braced himself and lifted the candleholder as high as he could. When he brought it down hard, the resounding crash boomed off the walls of the abbey. Nathaniel jumped and looked to the door. At Will’s nod, he ran to it and peered out. Listening for a moment, he said, “Nothing yet. I can hear the music from the festivities. Perhaps it drowned out your attempts to bring disaster round our ears.”

  Once he had closed the door, Will brought the candleholder down again. A few flakes cracked off the centre of the flag, but it remained solid. With mounting anxiety, Nathaniel checked out of the door again.

  The third time Will thundered the candleholder against the flags there was a loud crack, but no sign on the surface of the stone. The fourth time the flag shattered into pieces that plunged into a dark hole beneath. Cold, damp air and the smell of great age rushed out of the space.

  Nathaniel checked out of the door one final time and then rushed back to Will with relief. But peering into the void by Will’s shoulder, he grew hesitant. “There is something about that sight that fills me with dread,” he said.

  “Then let your heart beat slower, Nat, for I would have you wait here,” Will told him.

  Nathaniel bristled. “Are you saying I cannot match the courage and fortitude of the great Will Swyfte?”

  “No, Nat, I am saying I need someone here to keep
watch at my back,” Will lied.

  This placated Nathaniel, and his relief showed in his face, which pleased Will quietly. Crouching on the edge of the hole, Will prepared to lower himself in. “Wish me luck, Nat. Fortune favours fools!”

  HAPTER 24

  ehind Will, a shaft of light plunged down into the hole from the abbey and he could hear Nathaniel moving around the edge, trying to follow his progress. With a single candlestick for light, he edged along walls lined with stone blocks, well aged and glistening with damp, the floor perfectly level. Despite the fine workmanship, he was aware that after four centuries collapses could lie ahead, perhaps even drops into the foundations.

  The stale air told him that wherever the tunnel led, it was sealed. After a few paces, it sloped down until Will estimated he was at least twenty feet beneath the floor of the abbey.

  Finally, he came to a raised step. The change in the timbre of the echoes suggested a large space lay beyond, but the candlelight barely penetrated a foot into the chamber.

  A stone column topped by a plinth stood just inside the entrance. Carved into the top was the Templar cross and an image of two Knights on a horse, underneath which was engraved Sigillum Militurn Xpisti—the Seal of the Soldiers of Christ.

  Lowering the candle, Will saw a legend had also been engraved:

  Under God’s ever-watchful eye,

  A Shield against Earthly decay shall lie.

  But the fires of heaven and hell consume

  The unworthy seeker who enters this tomb.

  Studying the message of damnation, Will was puzzled by the reference to the “fires of heaven,” but could see some greater meaning was coded into the legend. “There is a mystery here,” he mused aloud.

  Amid the disorienting echoes, Will edged past the plinth into the suffocating darkness of the chamber. It was impossible to tell how large the space was, or where the Shield was located. As he progressed, the candle revealed that plain flagstones were about to give way to ones engraved with the Templar cross, stretching as far as the candlelight penetrated.

  The tone of the legend encouraged Will to advance with caution. Pausing at the line of Templar stones, he took one hesitant step. When the flag cracked and fell away beneath his boot, he threw himself back. From above, a stream of silvery powder fell towards a gleaming black liquid smelling of pitch that lay beneath the broken stone. As the powder landed, the liquid burst into a column of fire.

  Kicking back several more steps as the heat scorched past his face, Will caught his breath and realised how close he had come to being incinerated. The flaming column died down a little, but still blazed intensely at its base. Its glare revealed a vast chamber bigger than the floor of the abbey, with the cross-marked flags reaching to the far wall where a niche held an object that he couldn’t quite discern.

  As Will rapidly processed what had happened, he realised some of the meaning of the legend on the plinth. Fires of hell, burning beneath his feet. He guessed what fires of heaven meant. Returning to the tunnel, he reclaimed a heavy chunk of the broken entrance flag and tossed it out onto the crossmarked stones. Two flags shattered. One ignited another hidden pool of the pitch-like liquid, while the other released a gush of the flaming liquid from above.

  Somewhere, he guessed, there was a path across the flags to the niche that would not end in death, one the Templars had left should they, or their heirs, ever need to reclaim the Shield for their own use.

  Will was acutely aware of the pressure of time. Sooner or later, the Unseelie Court would realise he was no longer at the festivities and would come searching for him, if they had not done so already. But the ferocity of the fire showed he could not take any risks. Even testing the flags with his boot could result in death, and the heat from too many blazing locations would destroy him, even if he did find a path among them.

  For a few minutes, he walked up and down the boundary of the crossmarked flags, searching for any that were different, an angled cross, perhaps, or a completely bare flag, but even before he had completed one pass he knew that would be too easy. The Templars wanted to protect the Shield from anyone who wished to use it for malign purposes.

  Yet they also recognised the Shield could be of benefit, perhaps in protecting against one of the Skull’s attacks, and so they would have incorporated a way to it for someone who wished to use it for good. But how could they differentiate?

  Leaning against the wall at the back of the chamber, he carefully turned over everything he had learned about the Templars. He knew of their public works, of course, and of their secret war against the Enemy that had been revealed to him by Dee. He had discovered that they used ciphers to disguise their true meaning, and that they enjoyed the use of symbolic representations.

  Thoughtfully, he returned to the plinth. The key was there, he was sure. The warning to those who wished to use the Shield for evil, that was clear. But a clue to help the needy? He read the legend again, carefully.

  The second half of the legend was specific in its warning. What if the first half was too? Under God’s ever-watchful eye.

  Walking back to the line of cross-marked stones, Will peered up to the ceiling high overhead. It would normally have been obscured by gloom, but a sacrifice in the fires of heaven and hell had revealed in blazing illumination what was hidden there. Will smiled, understanding the minds of the good Christian Templar Knights. The unworthy would focus on the perils of the fires. The worthy would look to the heavens for salvation.

  The stones across the ceiling mirrored the ones on the floor, each marked with a Templar cross—as above, so below—except that a few were marked with an eye.

  God’s watchful eye.

  If he followed the trail of the eyes, would he find his way through to the Shield? The reasoning appeared sound, but there was only one way to be certain. Placing his boot firmly on the flagstone beneath the first eye, Will shifted his weight onto it. The flag held.

  Quickly, he followed the route, shying away from the roaring columns of flame. Occasionally, he had to wait for the thick smoke to clear so he could follow the safe path, and he realised that if he had cracked any more of the fire-stones, the smoke would have completely obscured the guiding eyes above. There was something symbolic in that, too.

  The path turned left and right, weaving across the entire width of the chamber, but moving inexorably towards the niche. Finally, he stood before it. In the niche, resting on an angled plinth, was a silver amulet on a chain, inscribed in black filigree with symbols and words in a language Will did not recognise.

  Snatching the amulet and turning to retrace his steps, he spied Reidheid waiting on the far side of the chamber, his sword drawn. Reidheid nodded slowly as he saw the thoughts play out on Will’s face.

  “Traitor,” Will intoned gravely.

  “I am not alone,” Reidheid replied. “There are traitors everywhere among Walsingham’s men. Sometimes I wonder if there are more traitors than loyal followers of the queen.”

  Holding the amulet behind him, Will strode back along the path. “How could you betray England?”

  “England endures, whatever happens. The question is: how could you not betray the queen and her government? You have seen the Enemy’s abilities. We can never win.”

  “What have they promised you, Reidheid? Riches? Congress with the most beautiful women in the land? A life eternal? They prey on human weakness, and find the spaces in our character that they can prise open from crack to chasm. You know that. They cannot be trusted.”

  “They promised me freedom from fear.” A fleeting expression of desperation crossed Reidheid’s face. “Imagine what that would be like. No longer glancing over your shoulder in search of death’s looming, bony face. No longer waking with such bleak thoughts in the morning that you are unable to appreciate the new dawn, and no longer fighting to find sleep each night as the terrors race through your mind.”

  “We are mortals. There is no true freedom from fear. We live with it and learn to accommodate i
t. That makes us human. And that is where we gather our strength.”

  “Yes, we are mortals. We hate each other for being Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Moor, English, Spanish, or French. There is no hope for us. We must get what we can from this world, before heaven beckons.”

  “Or hell.”

  Steadying himself, Reidheid waved his sword towards Will. “Enough. Our philosophic discourse can be continued at another time. Give me the Shield.”

  “So you can in turn give it to the Enemy.” Will held the amulet by the chain so that it turned slowly, reflecting the gold and scarlet of the flames.

  “It matters not to you.” Reidheid stepped to the edge of the crossmarked flags. “Another turn in a war that goes on forever.”

  Will smiled tightly. “I see the Enemy treats you like their dog, chained up in the kennel and thrown tidbits. Do you not know what is truly at stake here? You betray not only the queen and England, or your fellow man, but your own family, your daughter, Meg.”

  “And why should I believe you either?” Reidheid snapped. “Will Swyfte, who lives a lie as the greatest hero England knows, a fairy tale to soothe the nightmares of men and women so they think themselves protected by gods, and not, in truth, by an assassin … a torturer … a man of grey morals. You are no better than me. We have our ambitions and we pursue them vigorously.”

  Protecting the amulet in his fist, Will came to a halt a few flags short of Reidheid and drew his sword. “You speak like a child. Is this some revelation to you? That we all wear masks? Which is the true face? The truth is, there is none. We are all many things, and all of them insubstantial. Good and evil are elusive. But there is one thing that divides us. You do what you do for your own gain.”

  Reidheid’s cheeks flushed and he held out his hand. “The Shield.”

  “It is here. You may take it, or try to.” Will raised his sword.