The Silver Skull - Mark Chadbourn

"The carriage will be leaving in due course. We cannot afford to delay," Will said.

"And what strategy have you dreamed up that will get us out of this mess?" Carpenter asked. "Or have you finally completed the process of killing me that you started in the Muscovy snow?"

"A bold strategy," Will said. "Did you expect anything less?"

It was bold, it was dangerous, and it had the potential to bring down upon his shoulders the wrath of Walsingham, Burghley, and the queen herself, and would probably see him consigned to the Tower with an appointment with the block. Yet as the cries rang out through the echoing halls of El Escorial, he realised he had little choice. "To the basilica," he said.

Their ploy among the dead had bought them a little time. The guards who had passed the door were the last wave and the passages beyond were now silent. Flitting through the dark of the final courtyard, they reached the still sanctity of the basilica. In the bright glow of scores of candles, they were instantly revealed to the three guards waiting near the altar.

One shouted an alarm and hammered on the door beside the altar, while the other two approached cautiously. Carpenter took one down with his throwing knife, while Will and Mayhew dispatched the second. So swift he was barely seen, Launceston slid his knife across the throat of the one guarding the door.

"What lies behind the door?" Mayhew asked.

Without responding, Will tried the door, but it was locked as he anticipated. He motioned to Carpenter and Mayhew to use a heavy bench as a battering ram, and within minutes the door was torn from its hinges.

On his knees, head bowed in prayer, Philip did not deign to acknowledge them. Will could see he was preparing to meet his God, and ready to be a martyr to his religion.

"The king," Carpenter said incredulously.

Launceston caught Will's arm and whispered, "It is one thing to beard the Spanish on their home ground, but quite another to threaten the life of a monarch. You are an ordinary man. To challenge a king in such a manner goes against the established order. You could bring all of Europe down on England's heads. The queen will not take this lightly."

"If I had another path I would take it." Will strode over to Philip and said, "You must come with us."

Philip did not look up from his devotions. Will nodded to Carpenter and Mayhew, and after a moment's hesitation, they took Philip's arms and helped him to his feet.

"You are our passage out of here," Will said. "You have my word you will not be harmed."

Philip was unmoved. "England will burn for this."

"Where is that witch who has your ear?" Will hastily searched the quarters, but there was no sign of Malantha, and it was clear Philip would never betray her.

Containing his desire for revenge, Will led the way out of the king's quarters, through the basilica, and into the courtyard. They were brought up sharp by fifty or more of the king's men racing to defend Philip's residence. Coming to an abrupt halt, the blood drained from their faces when they saw the king in the hands of their enemies.

Drawing his knife, Will pressed it to Philip's throat. "Safe passage," he called, "or the king's death will be on your conscience."

Swords drawn towards the massed ranks of hateful eyes, Launceston, Carpenter, and Mayhew huddled in a tight knot around Will and Philip. Will could feel the tremors running through Mayhew and hoped they weren't visible.

With a snarl, one of the soldiers raised his pike, but the captain quickly thrust an arm across his chest.

"Safe passage and he will not be harmed," Will stressed.

Slowly, the ranks parted and Will and the others moved steadily through, eyes flashing all around for any hint of an attack. But Will knew they could not risk the king's death; grave repercussions would surely follow if any harm came to the monarch. Would he go that far? he wondered.

The soldiers closed around them, until they were an island in a sea of steel armour, threatened from every side by pikes and swords. Step by step they advanced, Will's knife never leaving Philip's throat, the entire courtyard enveloped in an anxious silence. The tension demanded release, but that would only result in slaughter.

Hold steady, Will thought. He cast an eye towards Mayhew, the most likely to crack and bring everything falling down, and then to Launceston, who still had the gleam of his death-hunger in his eyes.

As they came to the portico leading out of the courtyard, Will ordered Carpenter to collect several pikes. When he had them, they moved through the first set of doors, which Launceston slammed shut. An eruption of anger blasted from the other side as the soldiers threw themselves against the doors as one, but Carpenter had already rammed one of the pikes through the iron ring-handles; the doors bowed, but the pike held-not for long, Will knew.

With the clamour ringing at their backs, they now raced through the palace, hauling Philip along with them, and using the remaining pikes to block door after door. Will hoped it would give them enough time.

Emerging into the warm night, they saw a carriage waiting in the courtyard before the palace. The gates were already open. Beside it stood Don Alanzo and Grace. Cautiously holding the Silver Skull, opened on a hinge that was invisible when it was worn, the Don moved to fix it on Grace's head.

His gently persuasive voice floated through the still air: "Place this 'pon your head. You must do what I say. And we will release you from it when your task is complete." Yet Will could see the Don was reticent about what he had been guided to do.

"Grace, do not heed him!" Will called.

Whirling, Don Alanzo dropped the Skull as he went for his sword. Grace cried out and made to run to Will until the Don held her back with one arm.

"In case your eyes have failed you, we have your king here," Will said.

"And that will be added to the list of crimes for which you will pay," Don Alanzo replied. With a flourish, he brought his sword tip to Grace's breast. "Let us see where your loyalties truly lie." Don Alanzo scooped the Skull back up with his free hand and placed one foot on the step of the carriage.

Blood throbbed in Will's temples. He could feel the eyes of Launceston, Carpenter, and Mayhew upon him; and from somewhere unseen, too, he could feel the terrible regard of Malantha.

"Well?" Don Alanzo mocked. "Release the king or the girl dies."

"Give me the Skull or the king dies," Will responded.

"Then let us see whose life you consider more valuable." Don Alanzo pressed the sword tip against Grace.

"Kill the king," Will ordered. He couldn't bear to examine the devastation that flared in Grace's face.

Don Alanzo laughed, but the humour drained rapidly when he saw Will was not bluffing. Hesitantly, Carpenter drew his knife, and when Will gave the nod, moved in for the kill.

Eyes fixed on lion Alanzo as he estimated if he could save Grace before the killing blow, Will heard frantic activity at his back.

Carpenter's knife clattered across the flags. An instant later Carpenter was on his knees, his lips and nose bloody. Half turning, Will saw Philip flee across the courtyard to the palace. He was about to give chase when he was struck so heavily across the temple, it drove him to his knees, dazed.

Muffled voices rumbled through the dull haze in his head, and when he shook off the stupor, he saw Mayhew running to join lion Alanzo with Launceston in pursuit.

Mayhew, the traitor.

His head spinning, Will scrambled to his feet, just in time to see lion Alanzo thrust a screaming Grace into the carriage and bound in after her, with the Silver Skull safe under his arm.

Mayhew cried out, but the carriage began to move away. At the last, he flung himself onto the step, clutching the open window for dear life, and planted one boot into Launceston's chest to send him sprawling.

The carriage built up speed and rattled out of the gates and away across the dark Spanish countryside.

CHAPTER 43

cave me alone!" Mayhew shook his fist at Grace in a rage. Her tearstained face was filled only with contempt for him.

As the carriage raced away from the palace, lion Alanzo leapt forwards and drove Mayhew back into his seat, eyes blazing. "You do not speak to her like that!" he snarled. "You have no right to speak to anyone ... traitor."

Mayhew felt like his heart would burst. The strain of keeping his traitorous nature undercover for so long had led him to the brink of selfdestruction, but now a corrosive guilt had been added to the potent mix. He held his head in his hands and tried not to think about what he had sacrificed-his life in England, his countrymen, his queen, and his country itself-and he wondered how he would ever live with himself.

"But ... I helped you," Mayhew said. Even he could hear the pathetic note in his voice. Why was the Spaniard treating him so badly? He had brought victory to Spain.

Don Alanzo studied him intently for several long moments, and Mayhew couldn't meet the intensity of his gaze. Then he said: "You are not a Spanish spy or I would know."

"No. I ..." His shoulders sagged, and he could barely force out the words. "I help the Enemy. The ... the Unseelie Court."

Don Alanzo glared at him with contempt. "You sold your soul for what easy gain?"

It was a question he could not easily answer. "If only you knew," he said, his voice breaking.

Don Alanzo eyed Grace askance, who was watching Mayhew with disdain. "She does not need to hear these things."

Mayhew nodded. "Agreed."

"Then there is some humanity in you after all," Don Alanzo sniffed. He turned his attention to the view from the window as if Mayhew was beneath his notice.

And the Spaniard was right, Mayhew accepted. He was a traitor, and a despicable human being. He deserved the loathing that would be inflicted upon him. He closed his eyes to hide the tears and sat back in the seat, pretending to sleep.

After a while, his head began to nod, and all the horrible images rose like spectres from his unconscious mind where he had locked them away for so long.

His father's funeral on a cold November day at their parish church in the village outside Hastings, the bitter air salty with the scent of the sea, stark trees black against the grey clouds, filled with crows, cawing their desolate chorus. At the graveside, he slipped his arm around his mother, whispering that he would look after her, provide her with a regular stipend from his new work under Lord Walsingham at the Palace of Whitehall. It was after he had privately agreed to work for the secret service, and three days before his induction into the true mysteries of existence, when he had still thought there was hope in the world ...

Eight weeks later, and the snow was heavy on the roofs of the village, and the ground as hard as his heart had grown. The crows were still thick in the trees, but now he viewed them in a different light. A visit home after his assignment to the guard at the Tower, what at the time had appeared to be a short-term posting, filled with long hours of tedium. As he stepped through the door, he thought how thin and pale his mother looked, her skin slightly jaundiced, and when he hugged her he could feel her bones like hoes and trowels. "You are working too hard. You must rest more," he told her. She smiled weakly, wiser than he was ...

Two months later, and he had missed three visits home because of the demands of his work. When he arrived at the cottage after dark, the parson waited, like one of the crows that never appeared to leave the surrounding trees. His mother was very ill, the parson said. He feared her time was short. She lay in her bed, delirious, calling out for his father, her own father and mother. She looked barely more than bones with skin draped over them. The rapid decline in such a short period shocked him, and he cursed himself, and the world, and wished for more and made deals with God. But she did not improve.

Under special petition from Lord Walsingham, he was given time away from his post to care for her in her final days. They were long, the nights longer, filled with tears, and anger, and her anguished cries as the pain gripped her. But she did not die within the week, as the parson had forecast, nor within two weeks, and by the end she was screaming in agony around the clock, and he clutched his ears, and then buried his head, and wept nonstop, until he was sure he was being driven mad by her unending suffering.

The desire to help her drove him on, but he could do nothing to relieve her agony, and finally his failure consumed him. He could bear to see her in pain no more. And then, after praying for her to live for so long, he prayed for her to die, soon, that moment, so her torment would be ended along with her awful cries, and that destroyed him even more; he had asked God for the death of his own mother.

But she did not die. And for a while he did go mad. He never left the house, and he did not eat for days, roaming from room to room cursing and yelling.

Then one night, when the moon was full, he saw from the window that the field beside the house was filled with statues, grey and wrapped in shadow. They watched, as the crows had appeared to watch. He ran to his mother, and prayed over her, but he was drawn back to the window time and again, and though the statues had disappeared, the shadows remained, flitting back and forth across the field in the moonlight.

The knock at the door came soon after. In the days following he could never remember the face, although at the time it burned into his mind, and he knew he would feel its eyes upon him for the rest of his days. But he recalled what passed between them. His mother would never die. She would remain in that purgatory of agony, and he would be with her for the rest of his days, never escaping her screams, cursed to watch her unending suffering.

He could not bear it, and he threw himself to the floor, and tore at his flesh, and for a while knew nothing.

When he had recovered a little, the honeyed voice told him there was hope; and he pleaded to know what it was, anything, he would do anything, and the voice said that was good. He would work for them, just for a while, and do the little things they asked, inconsequential things, and in the meantime they would give his mother balm, and when his time of service was done, they would ease her suffering into death.

For a while the requests were inconsequential; gradually they became greater, but he had already set off along the road, and so each new thing was just one tiny step further. When he discovered knowledge of the Palace of Whitehall and what was there, and then passed it on, it was nothing; there were no consequences. And when he revealed what he knew of the Tower, it was worse, but not much. But then he was helping them to overcome the Tower's defences that Dee had put in place, and released the chain of misery and death that still had not come to an end.

The carriage jolted over a rut and he stirred sharply from his reverie. As his eyes opened, he was shocked to see Don Alanzo looming in front of him, the Silver Skull open and gleaming.