Mark Chadbourn - The Silver Skull

Dragging the man to his feet, Will threw him against the wall, pressing his own knife against his prisoner's throat. "England stands on the brink of war. The queen's life is threatened daily. A crisis looms for our country," Will said. "This is not the time for your games."

"This is not a game!" the man protested. "I dare not speak! I fear for my life!"

Will pressed the tip of his knife a shade deeper for emphasis. "Fear me more," he said calmly. "I will whittle you down a piece at a time-fingers, nose, ears-until you choose to speak. And you will choose. Better to speak now and save yourself unnecessary suffering."

Once the rogue had seen the truth in Will's eyes, he nodded reluctantly.

"You saw what happened out there?" Will asked.

"I was woken by the sounds of a brawl. From my window, I saw a small group of cloaked travellers set upon by a gang of fifteen or more."

"Cutthroats?"

The man nodded.

"Fifteen? At this time? They cannot find much regular trade in this area to justify such a number."

"It seemed they knew the travellers would be passing this way. They lay in wait. Some of them emerged only after the battle had commenced."

This information gave Will pause, but his prisoner was too scared to be telling anything but the truth. "Who were these cutthroats?"

The man shook his head. "I did not recognise them. But if they find I spoke of them they will be back for me!"

"I would think they now have more important things on their minds. What happened?"

"They surprised the travellers." He hesitated, not sure how much he should say. "The travellers ..." He swallowed, looked like he was about to be sick. "They turned on the cutthroats. I had to look away. I saw no more."

"The faces of the travellers?"

He shook his head. "They moved too fast. I ... I saw no weapons. Only the slaughter of three victims. It was madness! The other cutthroats fled-"

"And the travellers continued on their way?"

"One of them was different ... his head glowed like the moon."

"What do you mean?"

The man began to stutter and Will had to wait until he calmed. "I do not know ... it was a glimpse, no more. But his head glowed. And in the confusion, two of the cutthroats grabbed him and made good their escape into the alleys. He went with them freely, as though he had been a prisoner of the travellers."

"And the travellers gave pursuit?"

"Once they saw he was missing ... a minute, perhaps two later. By then, their chances of finding him would have been poor."

The frightened man had no further answers to give. Out in the street, Will summoned Leicester away from his men's ears.

"The prize the Enemy stole from the Tower was in turn taken from them by a band of cutthroats," Will told him. "Put all your men onto the streets of London. This threat may now have gone from bad to worse."

CHAPTER 3

ill clung on to the leather straps as the sleek black carriage raced towards the Palace of Whitehall, a solitary ship of light sailing on the sea of darkness washing against London's ancient walls.

Lanterns hung from the great gates and along the walls. From diamondpane windows, candles glimmered across the great halls and towers, the chapels, wings, courtyards, stores, meeting rooms, and debating chambers, and in the living quarters of the court and its army of servants. At more than half a mile square, it was one of the largest palaces in the world, shaped and reshaped over three hundred years. Hard against the Thames, it had its own wharf where barges were moored to take the queen along the great river and where vast warehouses received the produce that kept the palace fed. Surrounding the complex of buildings were a tiltyard, bowling green, tennis courts, and formal gardens, everything needed for entertainment.

The palace looked out across London with two faces: at once filled with the sprawling, colourful, noisy pageantry of royalty, of a court permanently at play, of music and masques and arts and feasting, of romances and joys and intrigues, a tease to the senses and a home to lives lost to a whirl that always threatened to spin off its axis; and a place of grave decisions on the affairs of state, where the queen guided a nation that permanently threatened to come apart at the seams from pressures both within and without. Whispers and fanfares, long, dark shadows and never-extinguished lights, conspiracies and open rivalries. The palace was a puzzle that had no solution.

The carriage came to a halt under a low arch in a cobbled courtyard so small that the buildings on every side kept it swathed in gloom even during the height of noon. Few from the court even knew it existed, or guessed what took place behind the iron-studded oak door beside which two torches permanently hissed. The jamb too was lined with iron, as was the step.

The door swung open at Will's knock and admitted him to a long, win dowless corridor lit by intermittent pools of lamplight. The silent guard closed the door and slid six bolts home. Will's echoing footsteps followed him up one flight of a spiral staircase into the Black Gallery, a large panelled hall. Heavy drapes covered the windows, but it was lit by several lamps and a few flames danced along a charred log in the glowing ashes of the large stone fireplace.

A long oak table filled the centre of the hall, covered with maps, and at the far end sat Mayhew, one louche leg over the arm of his chair. His head was tightly bound in a bloodstained cloth and his left arm was in a sling. He was taking deep drafts of wine from a goblet, and appeared drunk.

Will always found Mayhew difficult. He was hard, in the manner of all spies forced to operate in a world of deceit, and had little patience for his fellows, more concerned with the latest courtly fashions. He liked his wine, too, when he was not working, but he was a sullen, sharp-tongued drunk.

Walsingham emerged at the sound of Will's voice, his features drawn. He listened intently as Will told him about the attack on the Enemy and their loss of the mysterious prisoner from the Tower, but he passed no comment.

"The queen has been informed?" Will asked once he had finished his account.

"I advised her myself," Walsingham replied. "She is fully aware of the magnitude of what lies ahead."

"Which is more than I am." Will expected a terse response, but the principal secretary was distracted by the sound of slamming doors and rapidly marching feet.

Through a door at the far end of the hall, two guards escorted a man wearing a purple cloak and hood that shrouded his features. The guards retreated as the new arrival strode across the room to the fire.

"I can never get warm these days," he said, holding out aged hands to the flames. "It is one of the prices I pay."

The man threw off his hood to reveal a bald pate and silvery hair at the back falling over his collar. As he turned to face the room, fierce grey eyes shone with a coruscating intellect and a sexual potency that belied his sixtyodd years.

"Dee!" Mayhew visibly started in his chair, slopping wine in his lap.

Dr. John Dee cast a disinterested eye over Mayhew. "You have not aged well," he said, before slipping off his cloak and throwing it over a chair.

To the outside world, Dee was a respected scholar and founding fellow of Trinity College in Cambridge who had been an advisor and tutor to the queen, whose General and Rare Memorials Pertaining to the Perfect Arte of Navigation had established a vision of an English maritime empire and defined the nation's claims upon the New World. Few knew that Dee had been instrumental in helping Walsingham establish the extensive spy network, providing intelligence and guidance as well as designing many of the tools the spies used to ply their dangerous trade.

But Will had heard other rumours: that Dee had turned his back upon his studies of the natural world for black magic and scrying and attempts to commune with angels. Will had presumed this had contributed to Dee's fall from favour-for five years he had been absent from the court in Central Europe. The last any of them had heard of him was in Bohemia a year ago.

"No word must be uttered of Dr. Dee's appearance here. He has been engaged on official business in Europe under my orders and will return there shortly," Walsingham stressed, in full understanding of what was passing through Will and Mayhew's minds.

"It appears there are secrets kept even from the gatekeepers to the world of secrets," Will noted.

"That is the way of things, Master Swyfte." Walsingham poked the fire absently, sending showers of sparks up the chimney.

"It was fortuitous that I arrived at this time to deliver the information I had secured." Filled with pent-up energy that revealed no hint of fragility, Dee prowled the room. "Events set in motion one year past are now coming to fruition. The Enemy are about to play their hand, and we must divine their secrets quickly before it is too late. Time is short. The queen's life and all of England are at stake."

Will carefully studied the way Walsingham held himself as he moved around the room. To the unfamiliar eye, there was an unruffled indifference to his seemingly detached state, but Will had observed the spymaster carefully since the day he had been brought from his chambers at Cambridge University to be inducted into the ranks of the secret service network. Although he had been overcome by grief and haunted by images of his loss, Will had seen from the first that Walsingham was a man whose deep thoughts were revealed in only the subtlest signs: the relaxation of the taut muscles around his mouth, the tension of a finger, a stiffness in his back. Walsingham was a man forged in the crucible of the secret war they fought, and a symbol of the toll that battle took. Though he hid it well, his mood at that moment was grim.

"Where is the weapon now?" Dee asked.

Once Will had spoken his piece, Mayhew added, "The operation was well planned and efficiently executed." He cast a furtive eye towards Walsingham. "When I was given my post, I was told the Tower was under special protection, even beyond the protection that keeps England safe."

"It is," Dee replied. "And how those defences were breached remains a mystery."

"That need not concern us now," Walsingham interrupted. "Master Swyfte, you are charged with finding the weapon before it can be used and bringing it back to our control, or destroying it, whichever course is necessary. But first you must be apprised of the facts of the matter."

Sifting through the charts on the table, he came to one of the New World and traced his finger along the coastline until he came to the name San Juan de Ulua in the Spanish territories, the main port for the shipment of silver back to Spain.

"A poor harbour by English standards," Walsingham said. "Little more than a shingle bank to protect it from the storms. Twenty years ago, on December 3, 1568, John Hawkins put in for repairs to his storm-damaged trading fleet, including two of the queen's galleons."

"Into a Spanish port?" Mayhew said, surprised.

"Hawkins paid his taxes and more besides. In the past the Spanish had always left him alone once their coffers were full. But on this occasion their own spies had told them there was more to Hawkins's visit than the repair of rigging and the patching of hulls." Walsingham looked to Dee.

"Since I first arrived at court," Dee began, "I have been advising the queen on the threat that has faced England since the Flood. Every moment of my life has been directed towards finding adequate defences to protect the Crown, the people, the nation."

"And you have succeeded. England has never been safer," Will noted.

"We can never rest, for the Enemy are wise as snakes, and all of their formidable resources are continually directed towards recapturing the upper hand they once enjoyed. And so we too search for new defences, new weapons." In Dee's eyes, the gleam of the candles suggested an inner fire raging out of control.

"My enquiries into the secrets of this world pointed me towards a weapon of immeasurable power that the Spanish were attempting to unlock in the hills not far from San Juan de Ulua," Dee continued. "So fearful were they of the weapon that the king had insisted it be tested far away from the homeland. A weapon that had brought devastation to the great rulers in the far Orient. A weapon that had surfaced during the Crusades and had been fought over by the Knights Templar and the enemies of Christendom." Dee looked from one to the other, now incandescent with passion. "With a weapon like that, England would be a fortress. The Enemy would retreat to their lakes and their underhills and their lonely moors and we would be safe. Finally."

"What is the nature of the weapon?" Will asked.

"Therein lies the greatest mystery of all." Kneading his hands, Dee paced the room. A tremor ran through him. It is a mask, a silver skull etched with the secret incantations of the long-forgotten race that first created it. A mask that must be bonded with a mortal to unleash its great power. But all we have are stories, fragments, hints. The nature of that power is not known. All that is known for sure is that nothing can stand before it and survive."

"So Hawkins was charged with seizing the weapon from the Spanish," Will surmised.

"That, at least, was England's fervent hope," Walsingham replied. "While his fleet was being repaired, Hawkins, Francis Drake, and a small group of men slipped secretly into the interior. Five men gave their lives to secure the skull from the Spanish, but before Hawkins could reach his ships, the viceroy, Don Martin Enriquez, took his fleet into the harbour and launched an attack while the English guard was down. Hawkins, Drake, and a small crew escaped in two ships, but the remainder of the English party were tortured and killed by the viceroy as he attempted to discover what we knew about the skull." A shadow passed over Walsingham's face that was like a bellow of rage against his usual detachment. "One of the few survivors, job Hortop, told how the Spanish dogs hanged Hawkins's men from high posts until the blood burst from the ends of their fingers, and flogged them until the bones showed through their flesh. But not a man spoke of the skull. Heroes all."

Nodding in agreement, Mayhew bowed his head for a moment.

"Hawkins and Drake returned in two storm-torn ships with just fifteen men," Walsingham said. "Eighty-five stout fellows had starved to death on the journey home. But the skull was ours."

Several elements of the story puzzled Will. "Then why did we not use this great weapon to drive back the Enemy, and our other, temporal enemies. Spain would not be so bold if it knew we held such a thing," he asked.

"Because the skull alone is not enough," Dee replied sharply to the note of disbelief in Will's voice. "The stories talk of three parts-a Mask, a Key, and a Shield. All are necessary to use the weapon effectively, though its power can be released without direction and with great consequences for the user by the Mask and Key alone."

Mayhew refilled his goblet, his hands shaking. "And the Key and the Shield?"