The Silver Skull

by Mark Chadbourn

  “You will be back with your mother and father soon, little one,” he whispered. He laid the boy gently on the floor and turned to the body of the Silver Skull. The alarm would soon be raised, and he had little hope of making an escape with the corpse on his back.

  After a futile attempt to prise the mask free, he accepted his only course of action. With al-Rahman’s ritual knife, he took a moment to saw the head off the corpse. The knife was sharp and he met only brief resistance at the joint with the spine. Don Alanzo’s father had given no sign of being a true enemy—indeed his final act had suggested he had been as much a victim of the war as anyone—and Will wished he could treat his remains with more respect, but he had no choice.

  Once the head was free, he put it to one side and dragged lion Alanzo down to the front of the shop where he would be found. Once he’d reclaimed the swaddled child and head, he dropped a hot coal from the brazier onto a heap of drapes in the centre of the room. It would be easy to extinguish the fire before it spread. As the smoke rose, he tucked the head under one arm and the child under the other and slipped out into the raging storm.

  In a doorway opposite, he waited until the smoke billowed out and then shouted the Spanish for fire. The alarm soon rang from newly opened windows and doorways along the street. Pressing himself back into the shadows, he watched the guards run up to the shop and find the unconscious lion Alanzo. Unseen, he ghosted away while the men dragged lion Alanzo free and attempted to put out the blaze.

  With the Skull in his hands, he had done his duty to England. Now he could turn his attention to Grace.

  But as he moved quickly through the deserted, rain-lashed streets, he noticed grey shapes flitting behind him, caught from time to time in the brilliant glare of the lightning flashes. They appeared insubstantial, but he knew what they were, as he now knew what he had seen in the mirror in the room above the shop.

  Nothing good lay ahead, and he feared for the safety of the child in his care. His instinct was to escape the deserted streets for an area of night entertainment where he could lose himself in the crowds and where the Unseelie Court would be less effective. But if they caught him before he reached his destination their attack would show no mercy for an innocent child. His frustration turned quickly to anger.

  At a crossroads, a lightning flash revealed more grey figures racing from both sides. They were herding him away from the city’s busier areas towards the lonely streets behind the Real Alcazar.

  Blinking away the rain, he saw the best hope for his charge silhouetted against the roiling black clouds. “Not much farther, little one, and you will be warm and dry,” he whispered. He allowed his defiance to muffle the certain knowledge that by saving the boy he would leave himself trapped.

  He was ready.

  The reassuring glow of candlelight glimmered through the stained-glass windows of Seville Cathedral. The largest cathedral in Europe, it had only been completed a few decades earlier after more than a century of construction on the site of the great mosque, and the walls still had the creamy complexion of new stone.

  At the main entrance, he shouldered open the great oak doors and briefly placed his burdens down before drawing the iron bolts behind him. The nave was awash with golden light from row upon row of candles. Away from the booming storm, the cathedral felt safe and secure. Will knew it was a lie.

  As he raced along the nave past the lavishly carved wooden screens around the choir, his footsteps echoed up to the vaulted roof high overhead. At the cascade of gold over the high altar, the Retablo Mayor, he called for help. The figures on the gilded relief panels around the stately figure of the cathedral’s patron saint, Santa Maria de la Sede, appeared to mock him.

  “Sanctuary!” he called loudly in Spanish.

  From the passage to the right of the altar ran a priest, balding, bushy grey beard, eyes dark pools. Hesitating, he took in Will’s appearance, his sword, the Silver Skull.

  “Take this boy—he was stolen from his parents.” Will thrust the bundle towards the priest.

  From the far end of the nave came the low, grating sound of the first door bolt drawing back. No one was near it.

  When the priest gaped, unmoving, Will shouted, “Take him!”

  The priest grabbed the bundle and examined the child’s face with a nod. “You want sanctuary?”

  “For the child—nothing can be done to save me.”

  The priest shook his head forcefully. “The Church will protect you.”

  The second door bolt ground slowly back.

  “No, I am done. Protect the child and return him to his parents in the morning.”

  Quickly, he looked around for a place to make his stand. The nave was too open. The priest recognised what he was doing.

  “I will hold them off while you make good your escape,” he said.

  “No!” Will said firmly. “The child is your only responsibility now. Go. I will lead them on a merry chase before I arrive at my destination.” And in that way they will believe me, he thought.

  The great oak doors blew open with a resounding crash. Rain gusted up the nave. In the dark mouth, Will could see no movement, but he knew they could see him.

  “Go!” he shouted to the priest before running towards the north door. He felt a passing twinge of irony at his predicament after he had so abused the priest on the altar at Cadiz, and then he was out in the storm again, surrounded by the overpowering aroma of oranges. In the white glare of lightning, he saw rows of orange trees in a large, rectangular orchard with the Patio de los Naranjos at the centre, a fountain where worshippers would wash their hands and feet before praying.

  Will hoped the trees might obscure his progress, but he’d barely crossed the edge of the fountain square when another lightning flash revealed movement along the roofs of the low buildings that enclosed the orchard. Members of the Unseelie Court loped along the orange tiles oblivious to the violent winds and the rain, converging on him from all directions. Behind him, the door from the cathedral crashed open.

  He turned east and dashed to the cloistered walkway, his ultimate destination now within reach. Over his head, tiles rattled and shattered, fragments raining down in his wake. Across the orchard, the grey ghosts moved relentlessly towards him.

  Crashing back into the cathedral, Will followed the short corridor to the foot of La Giralda. He bolted the door to the bell tower behind him and bounded up the steps two at a time; the stairway was wide enough for the muezzin to ride on a horse to deliver the call to prayer.

  As he spiralled breathlessly upwards, it felt as if he was rising into the very heart of the storm. The wind and rain blasted through the open windows, and the lightning flashes allowed him views over the whole of Seville and the Andalusian countryside beyond. As the thunder boomed again, he only faintly heard the door at the foot of the bell tower crash open.

  No way back.

  The minaret accounted for the first two-thirds of the tower and then the stairs took him up to the belfry, added by the Christian rulers only twenty years before to replace the Moorish iconography that had originally topped the minaret. He locked the door into the belfry and ran up the final set of steps.

  At the very summit, he gripped the walls for support as the wind and rain tore through so forcefully they threatened to drive him through the large arched windows onto the ground far below.

  Drawing his sword, he prepared to fight to the last. It was a good, defensible position for the Enemy could only approach him up the short flight of steps from the belfry door, and he was determined to take as many with him as he possibly could.

  But as he stood poised, he became aware of sounds rising up the outside of the bell tower in the brief lulls when the thunder rolled away and the wind gusted in a different direction. Cautiously, he hung out of the window.

  As his eyes adjusted to the world of white flashes and all-consuming dark, he saw grey figures steadily climbing the outside of the bell tower like insects, clinging onto the carvings and ridges as
they made their progress oblivious to the storm. Quickly, he checked all four windows and saw the same from each one. Drops of blood began to fall from his nose to the wet flags, and a disorienting buzz echoed through his head.

  The door to the belfry flew open.

  HAPTER 36

  he cries of the hunting party echoed through the frozen forest, accompanied by the occasional crack of an arquebus that sent the birds shrieking through the black trees.

  “They waste their ammunition when they cannot see us,” Carpenter gasped, his breath clouding in the subzero temperatures. Shivering uncontrollably, he pulled his thick woollen cloak around him, but could find no warmth.

  “If fortune is with them, they can still hit us,” Will replied. In the pack under his arm, he clutched the object Dee had treasured for so long, the thing that could only add to England’s mounting power.

  They struggled through the calf-deep snow in the face of the bitter wind, scrambling over fallen branches and plunging into hidden hollows where the brambles lost beneath the white blanket tore through their skin and left splashes of red in their wake. The wind was laced with snow and the grey clouds banking up overhead suggested another blizzard like the one that had disrupted their escape from Moscow.

  “If we do not find our man soon we will freeze to death out here,” Carpenter said. He no longer attempted to hide his fear. The bravado he had exhibited shortly after Walsingham had brought him into the fold had dissipated in the harsh reality of his very first undertaking. What he had seen in the snow-covered courtyards of the Kremlin fortress had changed his life forever. There would be no peace for him again. It was a feeling Will knew only too well, and he regretted it being inflicted upon Carpenter, however inevitable it had been.

  “We must first lose our pursuers.” Will glanced back, but there was no sign of the tsar’s men in the half-light. “We cannot lead them directly to our man or all will be lost. “

  A ferocious roar rolled out through the forest from somewhere at their backs.

  What little blood remained in Carpenter’s face drained away and he gripped Will’s arm. “What was that? A bear?”

  “Nothing to concern us.” Will tried to urge him on, but he was rooted.

  “It was with the tsar’s men. With them!”

  “The Enemy have many weapons at their disposal, and employ many beasts to do their work. You know that, ” Will said, trying to calm him. He watched the spiralling panic in Carpenter’s eyes with concern. At the outset, he had been afraid Carpenter had been sent on such an important mission too early, but as ever they were short of men.

  “Is that what killed Jack and Scarcliffe and Gedding?” The scene of slaughter in Kitai-gorod, the walled merchant town beside the fortress, still lay heavily on both of them, but it had taken all Will’s abilities to talk Carpenter through his devastation at the time.

  Will grasped Carpenter’s shoulders. The barks of the hunting party’s dogs drew closer by the minute. “John, our lives mean nothing here. We do this not for personal reward, or acclaim, or the queen’s favour, but for the people of England.”

  Carpenter stared at him, seeing only the pictures in his head.

  “John.” Will shook him, too hard. “Though we both give up our lives here, we must see our burden delivered to London and to Dee. The safety of our country depends on us. We do not matter. Our lives are not important. Once you accept that fact, you are free. Do you understand?”

  He nodded slowly, but Will was not sure he was convinced.

  “If one of us falls, the other must make sure the package reaches our man so he can deliver it to the ship. That is the only thing that should concern us. You know the laws of our business: do not risk all we seek to achieve for the sake of one man. We are already dead. Repeat that.”

  “We are already dead,” Carpenter said flatly. He blinked away a tear.

  Another roar, so loud it felt like whatever had made the noise was only feet away. The hairs sprang erect on Will’s neck.

  It jolted Carpenter out of his stupor and together they drove on into the forest, increasingly thankful for the white snow as the light began to fade. Branches tore at their faces and objects hidden underfoot threatened to trip them, but they continued as fast as they could.

  Another roar, close behind. The sounds of the hunting party had faded away as if they had decided to leave the pursuit to a more effective hunter.

  “If it has our scent, we will never lose it,” Carpenter gasped.

  “There is a storm coming and that may provide cover for us and our tracks,” Will replied.

  For ten more minutes, they scrambled through the bitter Russian winter, no longer feeling their feet. The heat drained from their limbs until they felt leaden and only the threat of what lay behind drove them on.

  Finally, as the gloom descended among the branches, a light appeared ahead: a lantern, gently swinging to draw them in.

  “There!” Carpenter said with exultation.

  Will was distracted by fleeting movement in the trees to his left. Afraid their pursuer had pulled ahead and was circling, he came to a halt and peered into the gloom. “We may need to take a different path,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “Whatever was at our backs could be lying in wait to attack us unawares. ” He searched the trees, listening intently, but the snow muffled all sound. Another movement shimmered on the edge of his vision, closer to hand, a figure that was nowhere near as large as the roars of their pursuer had suggested.

  “You see it?” Carpenter hissed.

  And then Will did, and the cold that crushed the forest in its grip swept into every part of him. Standing among the trees, almost swallowed by the encroaching dark, was a woman, her leaf green dress floating around her in the wind.

  Jenny.

  His Jenny.

  The cold did not appear to touch her. Her arms and head were bare, her skin so pale. She looked exactly as she had done that last time he had seen her, stepping through the cornfield to meet him, her eyes like the sun, her smile filled with love. Was she a ghost? A dream caused by the cold? Had she come to haunt him at the moment of his own death, as she had haunted him in the time since she had disappeared?

  His heart went out, and then he was running towards her, oblivious to all else but the dim sound of Carpenter calling his name anxiously.

  The roaring was so loud it felt like he was in the middle of a tempest. Whirling, he saw a huge, dark shape erupt from the trees and drive into Carpenter with such force he was thrown several feet against a tree. The beast descended on Carpenter in a storm of fangs and rending claws. Will was fixed to the spot in the shock and horror of the moment as the creature ripped through the clothes on Carpenter’s back and sent a mist of blood into the air. Carpenter’s screams were too painful to hear. Somehow he scrambled free and managed to draw his knife, but then the beast fell on him again.

  It looked like a bear, but somehow more than a bear.

  Will ran several steps towards the bloody scene and came to a slow halt. There was nothing he could do to save Carpenter.

  Whirling, he searched the trees for Jenny, but only the wind whistled through the area where she had stood. He ran, calling her name, but there was no response, nothing to show she had ever been there.

  Had she saved him from the beast’s attack?

  The ache in his heart was agonising, but he drove it down inside him, as he always had, and ran for the light, trying not to think about Carpenter and the awful sounds rising up behind him.

  Within minutes, he was packed under heavy blankets in the back of a sleigh, hurtling down a steep track through the trees, with the crack of a whip echoing around him, and promises from his saviour that he would not rest until Will was at Arkhangelsk on a ship chartered by the Muscovy Company. England beckoned.

  Lulled by the motion, his despair came and went on the edge of sleep. Wherever he was, he hoped Carpenter would forgive him, but the success of their task was paramount.
r />   Obliquely, he recalled Walsingham telling him, “There is no room for any emotion,” and at the time he thought he understood.

  And he thought of Jenny, and however much he told himself it was a vision, he was sure something substantial was there, a hint, a hope, although he couldn’t understand the whys of it.

  Jenny was alive, he was sure. And he would not rest until he had discovered the truth.

  HAPTER 37

  ill came round, not knowing how long he had been unconscious. Sensations flooded in: the fragrance of pine and the sweet scent of Spanish broom. Heat leavened by the occasional breeze of chill air. Dust on the back of his throat, and the rough rocking of a carriage.

  The bitterness of the Moscow winter lay heavily on his mind, and Jenny, always Jenny, her face fading as the world around him rose up. His wrists were manacled behind his back and his feet were shackled, and his body ached from too long in one position. Underneath that was the dull throb of new bruises.

  Fragmentary memories returned from his stand at the top of the bell tower in Seville, the lashing rain, figures climbing through the arched windows while others came up the steps from the belfry door, too many for him to fight. A flash of light like a glint from a mirror, a sudden pain at the base of his skull, and then nothing.

  As he had expected, they hadn’t hurt him too badly. They were saving him for the horrors to come, as Cavillex had promised.

  He wasn’t alone. A glowering Spanish guard sat on the opposite seat next to the other door, but however much Will tried to engage him in conversation, he gave no indication that Will was even there.

  Through the window, he could see a mountain peak, the source of the chill air occasionally blowing through the carriage. It was a blazing hot day with no sign of the storm that had swept Seville. The landscape around the road was dusty, and beyond that it drifted into a bleak, depressing vista of rock piles and detritus from old mine-workings scattered far and wide. Beyond that a pine forest rose up the windswept slopes to the foot of the mountain.