The Silver Skull

by Mark Chadbourn

  Philip spun on his heel and marched to the door, coming to a slow halt when Will said, “You pray to God, but a devil whispers in your ear.”

  Uneasily, the king turned and fixed a warning eye on Will.

  “Do her kisses ease your conscience?” Will pressed. “Do her honeyed words cause blindness to the choices you make?”

  “Beat him,” Philip said to the guards. “Severely.”

  “You fail to understand,” Will continued. “You think you have taken me prisoner. But I am exactly where I wish to be.”

  A shadow crossed Philip’s face when he saw Will’s expression and he hurried from the room.

  HAPTER 39

  n the lee of a heap of ancient mine-workings on the edge of the spoiled land around El Escorial, Launceston, Carpenter, and Mayhew waited. Every now and then they scrambled over the blackened rocks to peer at the stone fortress through the yellowing grass and weeds. The sky was aflame with the end of the day, scarlet and gold and orange.

  “Do you think Will still lives?” Mayhew had a feverish air that had only grown worse as they made their way to the plateau from the Madrid road. His knuckles were red and raw from where he had worried at them.

  Balancing his throwing knife on the tip of his finger, Carpenter did all he could to show he really didn’t care what the answer was. “Perhaps,” he said.

  “Then why should we risk our own lives on a maybe?” Mayhew added desperately.

  “Because it is what we do.” Launceston studied the guards at the gates, and those patrolling around the walls. More came and went on the road winding around the small village that was now dwarfed by the sprawling complex. There was no visible way through the defences.

  Mayhew rested his head on his knees with a resigned sigh. They were all exhausted after tracking the carriage that had brought Will from Seville to El Escorial. But his plan had worked so far. As they had agreed on the journey from Cadiz, sooner or later Will would allow the Enemy to take him so they would deliver him to Grace for his punishment, and they were to follow at a distance. Hidden by the storm, Launceston had kept watch on al-Rahman’s shop, and had followed Will and his pursuers to the cathedral. He and the others were waiting when Will was brought out unconscious.

  “He took a great risk. They could have killed him the moment they captured him,” Mayhew said.

  “Will knows the Enemy well,” Launceston replied without taking his gaze off the palace. “Simple death does not provide enough revenge for them. Pain in the heart and mind is their preferred response to an act against them, and they had already told him he would be brought to his friend, Grace, to watch her suffer at his own slow torture and death. They would not walk away from such an exquisite response.”

  “Exquisite?” Mayhew repeated, unsettled.

  “Swyfte is a gambler. Risks filled his plan, as they always have, and it is others who pay the price,” Carpenter said bitterly. “We could have lost the Silver Skull if it had gone west to a port. While gaining his friend, we may have lost the battle and the war.”

  “He knew what he was doing,” Launceston said distractedly. “The girl would have been held at the centre of the Enemy’s plans. And where else would the Skull have gone before it was used?”

  “They could already have tortured him,” Mayhew continued. “Cut bits off him. He might be useless to us. He may not even be able to walk.”

  “Then we leave him and finish the important business—the girl and the Skull,” Carpenter said.

  “Do you hate him so much?” Mayhew asked.

  “He left me for dead.” The edge in Carpenter’s voice revealed his raw emotions, even after so much time had passed. “The tsar’s soldiers found me, and their allies …” He spat. “… and they called off the beast that was tearing me apart. If Swyfte had waited, he could have rescued me and I would not have had to suffer all those months of … of…” He swallowed, waved the remainder of the sentence away with the back of his hand.

  “You are a child,” Launceston said baldly.

  Carpenter was so taken aback by the insult, he could only gape.

  “Or a dog,” Launceston continued, not caring what Carpenter’s response might be. “You whine and whine. `Poor me, I have been so mistreated.’ But you live, do you not? You survive. You are stronger.”

  “You do not know what deprivations I suffered at the hands of the tsar’s torturers,” Carpenter snapped.

  “Whine and whine,” Launceston continued. “You think you are the only one to suffer? To experience pain in the line of our work?”

  Carpenter thrust his knife towards Launceston, but the earl only gave it the merest attention before returning his attention to the guards swarming around the palace. “Master Swyfte remained true to his work. He completed his business, as directed, and England is better for it.”

  “Is it?” Carpenter growled. “I have seen no sign of the object we retrieved since the day Swyfte brought it back. And I paid for it with my agonies!”

  Launceston shrugged. “He was not distracted by emotions. There are bigger things here than your petty feelings. Child.”

  Trembling with emotion, Carpenter could barely hold the knife still, but Launceston no longer gave it, or Carpenter, even a cursory glance. Carpenter slumped back against the rocks and ran his still shaking hands through his hair, casting brief murderous glances towards Launceston.

  “You trouble me, Carpenter,” Launceston continued. “If you give in to your emotions so, it makes me wonder how far you will go to gain revenge to soothe your poor, hurt feelings.”

  “What are you saying?” Carpenter snapped.

  “Perhaps you would even go so far as to ally with the Enemy to see Master Swyfte paid back in full.”

  Barely had Carpenter begun the lunge with his knife when Launceston’s own knife was at his throat.

  “Stop now!” Mayhew interjected. “If we cannot trust each other, we will forfeit our own lives when we are in the thick of it. We must protect each other’s backs.”

  Slowly, Carpenter relented, although his emotions barely subsided.

  “You have never given in to your emotions?” Mayhew said to Launceston.

  “No.” The earl’s face became more ghastly as the shadows lengthened.

  Mayhew eyed him curiously. “You speak little about your past. We have all been touched by misery, or by the hand of the Enemy. Why have you given yourself to this business?”

  “Sport,” Launceston replied.

  “Sport?”

  “Yes, I like to kill our Enemies.”

  They sat in silence until night had fallen.

  Finally Launceston prised himself from the top of the spoil-heap and said simply, “It is time.”

  Across the desolate landscape they moved, hoods pulled down to hide their faces. As they neared El Escorial, Launceston motioned for them to use more caution. The guards watched the approach to the palace and continued to patrol the perimeter. Others were stationed in the vast formal gardens.

  “Impregnable, they say,” Launceston mused.

  “I do not know who I fear for the most,” Mayhew said. “Us trying to get in, or Swyfte trying to get out.”

  Launceston levelled his knife at the guards. “I fear for them.”

  HAPTER 40

  till raw from his beating earlier, Will was dragged through the palace by the guards. From a courtyard open to the moonless sky, and under one of several porticos, he eventually arrived at statues of David and Solomon flanking the entrance to the basilica, the central point of the whole complex. Philip waited for him there, and motioned for the guards to take him in.

  “A fine place for torture.” Will admired the huge dome overhead and the granite simplicity of the basilica’s interior, which perfectly reflected Philip’s character.

  Still dressed in mourning black, Don Alanzo waited by one of the Doric columns with Grace beside him. She met Will’s eyes once, then looked away.

  “There will be no torture here,” Philip said.r />
  “No physical torture,” Don Alanzo added, bowing apologetically when the king glared at him.

  Philip motioned for the guards to wait outside. They were reluctant to leave their monarch alone with a potential assassin, but they checked Will’s bonds one more time and whispered threats in his ear before departing.

  Once the door to the basilica was closed, Malantha appeared from behind one of the columns. Will had the briefest flash of chalky skin and her implacable gaze before she unveiled her potent sexuality, at odds with the sanctified surroundings.

  “I am starting to believe you are a guilty secret,” Will said. As she levelled her icy, unblinking stare at him, Will had the impression she was imagining slowly opening up his body.

  Shifting uncomfortably, the king quickly changed the subject. “Today saw the funeral of Don Alanzo’s father. A great man, brought low by a dog.”

  Will glanced over at Don Alanzo, whose hateful glare never left Will’s face. “You will not believe me, but I offer my condolences again, in good faith,” Will said.

  “My sister refused to come to the funeral,” Don Alanzo said. “She blames me for our father’s death. She will have nothing more to do with me, she says, and has ensured I will be refused entry to her convent. Now you have taken two people from me. You will pay for both of them.” He bowed curtly to Malantha, who gave a brief, dismissive nod in return. “Our allies … your Enemies … are correct. Sometimes death is not enough to right a wrong. Pain must be inflicted in the heart, and the mind, and on the soul.”

  Will looked to Grace. “Do you see now what you stand with? Do not trust them, Grace.”

  Striding forwards, Don Alanzo struck Will forcefully across the face with his leather gauntlet. Blood bloomed on his lip.

  “Please do not hurt him,” Grace begged. “I will do anything.”

  “Of course you will,” Malantha said.

  “I have brought you here,” Philip said to Grace, “under the eyes of God, so you will know there is no treachery in my words when I make this offer: help us and we will spare your friend’s life.”

  “No!” Will shouted. “Do not believe them!”

  Don Alanzo struck him again.

  “You vow, before God?” Grace said.

  “I so vow.”

  “The Unseelie Court will not allow it,” Will spat. “He is so under their spell that even the threat of damnation will not deter him.”

  This time Don Alanzo knocked Will to the floor.

  “Please,” Grace sobbed, wringing her hands.

  “I so vow!” Philip said firmly.

  “I will do anything you ask. But please … please … do not hurt him anymore.”

  Philip nodded to Don Alanzo, who guided Grace to the door as Will struggled to his feet. By the time he had shaken off the effect of the blow, Grace had gone.

  “And so the torture begins,” Malantha said.

  “And you save my life?” Will sneered, spitting a mouthful of blood.

  “Once she has done her duty, we will allow you to live,” Malantha replied, “although you will be in no state to enjoy it. We will ensure your friend gets to see how you work. Inside. In your mind, when you scream and cry and beg for us to take her life instead. And then you will know she must live on with the knowledge of what she saw, and it will never leave her.” She raised her arms in a flamboyant request for applause. “My brother proposed your death, I know, but he lacks my assured touch in these matters.”

  “An honourable man,” Will accused Philip, who made to leave. “Wait. You have an aspiration to higher wisdom,” Will continued.

  “What do you mean?” Philip asked suspiciously.

  “The design of this building, your great monument, is based upon the Temple of Solomon, as described by Flavius Josephus.”

  “You are an educated man? And a spy who deals in death and deceit?”

  “I am a man of contradictions, like all men,” Will replied. “My point being that you would not have chosen this design, nor selected the statue outside that door, if you did not aspire to the Jewish king’s great wisdom. Then rise to it. There is still time to walk away from the path you have chosen.”

  “The war I fight is a just one. I have the support of the pope himself. God, Master Swyfte, is on my side.”

  “If God is on any side, it is certainly not the Devil’s.”

  A tremor crossed Philip’s face, but before it could spread, Malantha stepped behind him, her hand rising to caress his neck out of sight of Don Alanzo. But she kept her icy eyes on Will the whole time, flaunting her power.

  Philip’s face hardened. “This world will be a better place when England is crushed.”

  “Our differences are clear, but what we share is much stronger,” Will pressed. “I ask one final time, not as Protestant to Catholic, nor as Englishman to Spaniard, but as a man to another man, as members of the great brotherhood of men, I ask you again, turn away from the path you have chosen. Or else you must suffer the consequences.”

  Philip gave a weak, boyish laugh. “You stand before me in chains … on the brink of humiliation, and pain, and death … and you give we an ultimatum?”

  “You should kill me now. It is the only way you will be safe,” Will replied calmly, seeing in Philip’s eyes that he would not be swayed.

  Philip laughed again, but with an unsettled note, before stepping to the door near the altar that led to his private quarters. Before he left, he turned to Malantha and said, “You will come to me tonight?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  A simple smile leapt to the king’s lips and he hurried out, closing the door behind him.

  “Now the children have left, you can be about your adult business,” Will said.

  “We have no need to sully our hands with your blood at this point,” Malantha replied archly. “For now, only one thing remains to be done.”

  Barely able to stop himself shaking with emotion, lion Alanzo loomed over Will. “The time for talk has passed. The end of Philip’s Enterprise of England and the end of this business begins this night. And your end too. I leave with your friend, Grace, within the hour, to join our Armada and to continue to England.”

  “What do you plan?” he demanded.

  “We will affix the Silver Skull to your friend’s head and when she is delivered to England she must choose, between her country and the man she loves,” Malantha intoned. “Release the power of the Skull, or see you torn apart as we discussed.”

  “You will do that anyway.”

  “We will,” Malantha said.

  “Grace will choose England,” Will stated.

  “You truly believe that?” Malantha nodded when she saw the response in Will’s eyes. “And in this way we will destroy everything.”

  HAPTER 41

  ising up like a spectre, Launceston slit the guard’s throat, holding his head back by the hair so the gush of arterial blood avoided his uniform. Once the guard’s convulsions had ended, Launceston stripped him naked and wrapped the uniform tightly in his cloak.

  As they emerged from the dark of the rough land still scattered with the detritus from El Escorial’s construction, Carpenter and Mayhew discarded the rattling stones they had used to attract the lone sentry from the approach to the palace. In the shadow of the monolithic building, they studied the clockwork maneuvers of the guards once again.

  Carpenter’s throwing knife drove deep into the temple of the second sentry. Catching the guard before he fell, Carpenter dragged him back into the shadows, away from the torch under which he had stood.

  When the sentry’s uniform was secured, Mayhew selected a young guard who had broken off from the patrol to urinate on the edge of the wasteland. But Mayhew’s clumsy approach dislodged a shower of rocks down a slope to splash in a muddy pool. Whirling, the guard saw Mayhew as he stumbled towards him, and struggled to lower his pike at the same time as he forced his manhood back in his clothes.

  As Mayhew desperately threw himself forwards, the p
ike head ripped a gash across his cheek. His pained cry shocked the guard so much he dropped both his weapons. Wild with fear that the noise would bring other guards, Mayhew flailed into the sentry. Thrashing together on the ground, Mayhew eventually managed to clamp his hands around his opponent’s throat. Spitting and gasping and clawing at Mayhew’s face, the guard continued to fight while Mayhew increased the pressure.

  Consumed by his desperation, he continued to choke the guard long after any motion had ceased. Carpenter and Launceston finally dragged him off and shook him roughly.

  “Steady yourself!” Carpenter hissed vehemently. “You are going to be the death of all of us!”

  Once Mayhew had calmed, Launceston rested his hands on his associate’s shoulders and said, as if offering friendly advice, “At even the first sign that you are allowing your emotions to run free, I will slit your throat and leave you for dead. Do you understand?”

  Mayhew nodded.

  Carpenter continued to flash murderous glares at Mayhew as they took the final guard’s clothes and wrapped them securely in Mayhew’s cloak before dumping all three bodies in the bog.

  “What if he does not come?” Mayhew asked.

  “This is the hour, this is the night. If he is able, he will be ready for us,” Launceston replied. “And if he is already dead or disabled, then we look for the Silver Skull, and then the girl.”

  “And leave him here?” Carpenter pressed.

  Launceston nodded. “We are ready?”

  Crossing the wasteland, they were all acutely aware they only had a little time before the sentries were missed and the alarm raised. Further down the slope towards the village, they found their location by nose alone. Like Hampton Court Palace, El Escorial utilised advanced construction techniques: water piped in, waste taken out.

  The sewer tunnel emptied onto the slope and flowed away from the palace so the stench never reached the walls. Lined with granite, the sewer was big enough for a grown man to crawl along, as black as pitch with a choking stink that left them all gagging as they stood at the opening. Tying kerchiefs across their mouths and noses, they fixed their cloak bundles on their backs, and then exchanged a brief glance as they decided who would go first.