Mark Chadbourn - The Silver Skull

CHAPTER 7

o some, it was a monument to the globe-spanning power of the Spanish empire. Others saw a tribute to the power of God, a tomb, a menacing fortress, one man's grand folly. San Lorenzo de El Escorial, twentyeight miles northwest of the Spanish capital of Madrid, was all of them. Within the vast mountain of worked stone, its vertiginous walls punctuated by more than twelve thousand windows, seven towers reaching to the heavens, lay both a palace and a monastery, temporal and ecclesiastical power in perfect union.

Cold, empty, echoing, the sprawling complex was a perfectly sombre reflection of the man who directed its construction: King Philip II. At a cost of three and a half million ducats, it took twenty-one years to build, with a floor plan that also had a secret face. Many believed its design was chosen in honour of its patron, Saint Lawrence, but the truth was that it had been constructed to echo the Temple of Solomon, as described by the historian Flavius Josephus.

Now Philip retreated behind its forbidding walls, cutting himself off from advisors and family so that his relationship with his God could be so much more potent. A distant, deeply introspective man who rarely spoke, Philip preferred to dress in black to show his contempt for material things. Always extremely devout, as the years passed he had become hardened, listening so intently for God's voice that he was ripe for direction from much closer quarters than heaven.

Inside the monastic palace, Spain's riches from the New World and the Indies provided great works of art-statues, paintings, and frescoes-the finest furniture, the most lavish building materials-coral, marble, jasper, alabaster. Yet the long corridors and lofty halls rang with an abiding silence that was only intermittently interrupted by the soft, steady step of cowled monks or the deliberate murmur of priests. No hands of friends touched Philip, no warm words eased his frozen thoughts.

He lived, and died slowly, for his religion. His extensive library, which could have held the greatest literature of civilisation, contained only religious works. In the great church at the heart of the complex, second only to Saint Peter's in Rome, were seven thousand relics of saints in the reliquary in the Royal Basilica, not just shards of bone, but heads and entire bodies, magic symbols designed to ward off the evils of the world and point the way along the road to salvation.

As dawn broke across the mountains, Philip could be found where he spent a good deal of his day, kneeling in prayer before the altar. Lean, with a soft, gentle face, his dark eyes revealed only lonely depths. At sixty-one, his arthritic joints ached, but he forced himself to continue his devotions before struggling to the secret door beside the altar that led to his private rooms.

The sound of no other feet echoed here. It was Philip's sanctuary away from the rigours of the world, austere, chill, dominated by an office with a table before a blank wall where he spent the rest of each day and much of the night, signing the constant stream of papers from his government and planning the great enterprise that had dominated so much of his thoughts in recent times. The suite was silent and still and empty.

Padding across the cold flags before the fire blazing in the hearth, he smelled her before he saw her: the unusual heady aroma of sharp lime and perfumed cardamom, with a hint of Moorish spice just beneath. Heat rose instantly in his belly. He felt embarrassed by his body's earthy passion, which suggested troubling unexplored depths of his mind that he always thought well sealed. How did she do that to him, when nothing else in the world could stimulate him?

"Come out," he whispered.

As he turned slowly, he caught a flash of a reflection in the ornate mirror she had installed on the wall: a hollow-cheeked, bone white face with redrimmed eyes glaring at him with such malignancy he was overcome with terror. But it was gone in the blink of an eye, an illusion caused by his troubled mind.

Light shimmering off the glass blinded him, and when his eyes cleared, she stood before him, ageless, a beauty that burned like the sun and was as mysterious as the moon, dark brown hair cascading over bare shoulders, her eyes filled with a sexual promise that made his breath catch in his throat. She wore only a thin dress tied just above the curve of her breasts, clinging to her hips, her thighs, as she moved, barefoot, towards him.

"Malantha," he said. "I would not wish for you to be found here. It would not be seemly."

"No one will ever find me here. I am yours alone." Her unblinking eyes held him in her gravity.

When her cool fingers touched his cheek, he jolted as if burned. She continued up into his hair, and then down the nape of his neck, her eyes never leaving his, never blinking. Deep inside, at that moment lost to all conscious thought, he hated what she did to him, but could not get enough of it. Later he would be filled with so much revulsion he would vomit.

"You do not want me here?" she asked, knowing the answer.

"You know that I do. Since you came into my life, you have haunted my every waking hour, my every dream. I hear your honeyed words when you are not around. I feel your hand in mine when you are not at my side. How could I not want you with me?"

She appeared to sense the furious competition of desire and loathing, but all it brought was the faintest smile. She leaned in closely, her warm breath playing against his ear. "The Enterprise of England. How goes it?"

"The monetary cost is high, but I have support for my God-given endeavour from across Europe. Emperor Rudolf has agreed to send troops, but no coin. The Doge stands beside us, though may not say so publicly. The English continue with their peace negotiations, blind to our true intentions."

"And the Armada?"

Philip smiled. "Formidable. Our success is assured. One hundred and thirty ships. Thirty thousand men. Near three thousand cannon."

"And England will be defeated?"

"Broken on the rack of Spanish might. The English will attack our ships no more, nor steal our gold and silver, and the true religion will return to that land. It did not have to be this way. If Mary had not been executed. If Elizabeth had married me-"

Malantha pressed a finger to his lips. "If Elizabeth had married you, you would not be here with me."

"Yes ... yes ..." he stuttered. Her scent, her beauty, filled his senses, speaking of other lands far from Spain.

"The English are devils," she breathed in his ear. "They cannot be trusted. They think themselves higher than all others, but there are things that are higher by far."

"Yes. God."

She smiled.

"I will do all in my power to break the English."

He was happy that his words pleased her. Releasing the tie on her dress, she let it fall from her, presenting her body to him for a moment before pushing him back to a divan and climbing astride him. Her skin was luminous, her scent heady. Pressing her breasts against his chest, she kissed him on the lips in a way that no one else had kissed him, deep and slow, with the subtle probing of her tongue. Her groin gently rubbed against his, up and down, up and down. Every sensation was so potent, his thoughts broke up and he was cast adrift in the moment.

He perceived only flashes-of her removing his clothes, working down his body with her lips, using her hands and her mouth, and then climbing astride him once more to slide him inside her-before he was overwhelmed.

When he awoke later, he was alone, as he always was in the aftermath, but fragments of memory mixed with dreams. He thought he recalled Malantha standing naked in front of the ornate mirror, and speaking to it. The mirror was smoky, but reflected flashes of sunlight.

She was saying, "All proceeds well. Spain readies its forces. The pieces move into place."

And then another voice came back, decadent and sly, and spoke briefly about something being lost and something else being found, and another object close to being found.

Though Malantha used the term brother, her voice was laced with the sexual flirtation he knew so well. "And how is life in the night-dark city, Cavillex?" she enquired.

"Here they call us the Unseelie Court," the voice came back drolly.

"Unseelie?"

"Unholy," the voice explained.

Her laughter filled his senses and it all slipped away from him once again.

A dream, nothing more.

CHAPTER 8

hese are dark times." Still drunk, Mayhew stared out of the carriage window with a dazed expression that revealed a depth of troubles. The White Tower was silhouetted against the rosy sky, the first rays of the sun gleaming across the rooftops as London slowly stirred.

"Take charge of your tongue, Master Mayhew," Will cautioned. "A man in his cups says the strangest things."

Mayhew flashed Will an apologetic look for speaking out of turn with Nathaniel in the carriage.

"Worry not about me," Nat said tartly. "I have no interest in the affairs of Lord Walsingham's great men."

Returning his gaze to the waking street, Mayhew sniffed, and said, "You should watch your servant. A sharp tongue and an independent mind are dangerous flaws."

"Nat keeps me honest, Matthew, and I will hear no word against him," Will replied. He watched the first market traders spill onto the street, blearyeyed and yawning. Soon there would be a deafening throng heading for Cheapside, the broadest of the capital's streets, where the market sprawled along the centre from the Carfax to Saint Paul's. There, it was possible to buy produce from all over London and the rapidly expanding villages just beyond the city walls: pudding pies from Pimlico and bread from Holloway or Stratford, root vegetables and sweet cakes, horses and hunting dogs, and peacocks and apes from the foreign traders.

The danger was apparent with each face Will saw. London was the boom town of Europe. The population had more than doubled since Elizabeth came to the throne, and the city elders struggled to cope with the problems caused by the influx: the overcrowding, the crime, the beggars, the filth, the disease. Larger now than the great cities of Bristol and Norwich, London bloated beyond the city walls, eating up all the villages that lay beyond. In that thick, seething mass of life, an emboldened Enemy could bring death on a grand scale.

What was the nature of the missing weapon? Was it truly as dangerous as Walsingham feared?

"You have your directions?" he asked Mayhew.

"I will wait among the rabble on Cheapside for the others to join me while you attend your secret assignation. We question the market traders about the gangs who prey on the innocent near the Tower, and meet again at noon to exchange what we have learned."

"Very good, Master Mayhew. I like a man whose brain stays sharp even after wine."

Mayhew didn't attempt to hide his displeasure. As Will stretched an arm out of the window and banged a hand on the roof of the carriage, the driver brought the horses to a halt with a loud, "Hey, and steady there!"

Half stumbling, Mayhew clambered out of the carriage without a backward glance and weaved his way towards the shade at the side of the street.

"Master Mayhew has a choleric disposition," Nathaniel noted. "And he likes his wine more than you do."

"Life is a constant struggle between virtue and vice, Nat. We cannot all be as worthy as you. Master Mayhew has served the queen well across the years, but what has been asked of him has taken its toll. Do not judge him harshly."

Will banged the carriage roof again and the wheels lurched into motion. After a pause, Nathaniel enquired with an air of studied disinterest, "This business is truly pressing?"

"You know I cannot say more."

"Yes. Better I remain in ignorance than be dragged into duplicitous affairs that could cost me my sanity or my life. The view from the poles above the gatehouse tower at London Bridge is not one to which I aspire." He paused. "But still. An assistant's work is better carried out with a little light."

"You do your job well enough, Nat. I have no complaints. I would not add to your burdens."

Nathaniel shrugged, but Will could see the curiosity burning inside him. It was difficult to move so close to the secrets without peering too deeply into the shadows; Will understood that urge well and had learned to control it within himself. But to know more about Will's work truly would be dangerous to Nat's life and his sanity. The less he knew, the safer he would be. In his ignorance, Nathaniel did not understand, of course, thinking the only threat was a few Spanish agents, but for all his barbed comments he remained an obedient assistant, and had worked much harder than Will had anticipated when he promised Nathaniel's father that he would employ him, and keep him well.

The carriage turned north away from the cobbles of Cheapside into the rutted, narrow tracks that formed the majority of the city's streets. Soon the choking stink of the city swept in through the open windows, the dung and the rotting vegetables and household waste deposited morning, noon, and night from doors and windows of the ramshackle hovels into the narrow thoroughfares. Even the mayor's order to burn each home's rubbish three times a week appeared to have little effect. Nathaniel coughed and spluttered and clutched his hand to his mouth and nose, futilely banging the pomanders hanging within the carriage to try to extricate more scent.

The heat of the day was already growing by the time they arrived at Bish- opsgate. The Bull Inn was a three-story stone building with rows of tiny windows looking out from dark, low-ceilinged rooms. Without breaking its pace, the carriage rushed through the arch into the cobbled yard at the back where plays were regularly performed. In one corner, members of the resident acting troupe intoned loudly and performed tumbles, though many of them were still clearly hungover. A pair of carpenters lazily erected a temporary trestled stage.

Nathaniel waited with the carriage, and after a brief exchange with the vintner, Will made his way to a small back room set aside for "private affairs," usually gambling or the plotting of criminal activity. Smelling of stale beer and sweat, it was uncomfortably warm. While two men snored loudly in drunken sleep on the floor, a third wrote at a table.

Dark eyes that appeared old and sad stared out of a young, pale face framed by long black hair. A small moustache and close-clipped chin hair attempted to give him some appearance of maturity, though his sensitive face still made him look much younger than his twenty-four years.

"Kit," Will said. "I thought I might find you hiding here."

Lost to his imagination, Christopher Marlowe blinked blankly until his thoughts returned to the room and he recognised Will. He smiled shyly. "Will, good friend. I am currently not in my Lord Walsingham's favours and thought it best to lay low to avoid his wrath. He has a cold face, but a terrible fire within."