The Devil's Looking-Glass Part 16

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX.

SHADOWS SWARMED AWAY from the hissing torch flame as Will bounded up the worn steps two at a time. At bay beyond the thick walls, the storm was barely more than a susurration. The other spies followed, their breath rasping. *They will keep coming,' Strangewayes wheezed, his gaze downcast. *They always do. Always. Nothing can hold them back.'

*Let us hear no signs of weakness.' Launceston had an edge in his voice.

Will felt relieved to see they had all survived, though from their drawn faces he could tell they had all fought hard. He would have liked to know the fate of the sailors who had accompanied them, but decided that question could wait. Constantly glancing back in case Dee's twisted creation, the Mooncalf, attacked, he had taken what seemed like an eternity to navigate the tower's vertiginous and winding steps and he had feared the worst. *Yes, like the tides they come and they come, but they have not overwhelmed us,' he said with determination. *We must use our wits and our guile to stay one step ahead, and soon the time will come when the tide will be turned.' After travelling half the world, he could scarce believe they were so close to their goal. He would not allow the Fay to stop him laying claim to Dee at this late stage.

*Such fine swordsmen have nothing to fear from any Enemy. Why, your prowess melts a woman's heart,' Meg teased, but her next words were edged with caution. *But the alchemist will have protected himself. If he hides in the highest room in the tower, he will be unreachable. In his madness and fear of attack, his mind has turned in these past years to fiendish traps which he has secreted on the approach to his chamber.'

*Dee's inventions were mad even when he professed to sanity,' Carpenter muttered. *How can we outwit such a man?' He paused, then added, *Strangewayes, you should lead the way.'

The younger spy glowered, but said nothing.

Will threw up his left arm to halt the others, c.o.c.king his head as he listened. Whispers floated all around, sounding like the voices of the dead piercing the thin veil between their world and his own. When he realized the eerie voices came and went with the strength of the draught whistling down the steps, he raised the torch to reveal carvings of grotesque faces following the curve of the wall just above their heads. Small holes had been fas.h.i.+oned in them. As they caught the air currents, they produced the unsettling whispers.

*In our first years here, Dee spent some time attempting to discover who built this place.' Meg's deep, sing-song voice drowned out the ghosts. *G.o.ds or Fay or men, he never found his answers, but they left many wonders behind.'

Will began to climb once more, torn between caution towards what lay ahead and haste from what was behind them. *Watch our backs, Robert,' he said to Launceston. *If you have even the slightest suspicion the Enemy are coming up, sing out.'

As they climbed, the bare walls became covered with faded tapestries or shelves of mouldering tomes, m.u.f.fling the echoes of their tread. They pa.s.sed bolted doors hiding silent chambers. Strange scents drifted on the dry air, some sweet and spicy, others with a bitter tang, but Will could smell no hint of any man. Just as he was beginning to wonder if Dee had hidden himself away somewhere else, he was confronted by a flare of light and a dark figure. It was his own reflection in a gilt-edged mirror that filled the width of the pa.s.sage.

*The way is barred?' Strangewayes asked. *Have we wasted our time?' He turned his narrowing eyes on Meg.

Her brow creased. *No. Dee told me another chamber lay at the top of the tower.'

Will traced his fingertips across the smooth, cold surface of the gla.s.s and after a moment gently applied pressure. A click echoed and the mirror pivoted to reveal a s.p.a.ce a sword's length square bounded by three more mirrors. On the low, vaulted ceiling, more twisted faces whispered their unsettling entreaties. *It seems,' he said with a hint of a smile, *we are now playing Dr Dee's game.'

As the five spies pressed into the tight s.p.a.ce, the mirror pivoted shut behind them. Launceston pressed his shoulder against it, but it held fast.

*Trapped,' Carpenter grumbled.

*Or not,' Will said. *That would be too simple for a man like Dee. Tricks and puzzles and games are what fire him, and in them he finds his own kind of torture.' He peered into each of the three facing mirrors in turn, then said, *I would wager we are in a maze.'

Meg nodded, understanding. *Each mirror opens on to another s.p.a.ce like this one. We lose hours, if not days . . . if not our wits or our lives . . . finding a way through.'

When Carpenter reached out to press one of the mirrors, Will caught his wrist. *We should choose carefully, John. If I know Dee's cunning, he will have arranged it that once a choice has been made, neither of the other two ways can be opened. Otherwise, it would be a matter of simply searching all possible paths.'

*And no going back,' Launceston mused, studying his reflection. He smoothed one eyebrow with his index finger.

*We have no time to dawdle. Let us make our choice and move on,' Strangewayes snapped. *They are all the same. How can we know which way to go?'

The younger spy was correct, Will accepted. They could not afford to tarry. He selected the mirror to his left and swung it open. As he had expected, another square of mirrors confronted him. Once the others had squeezed in, he heard the mirror at their backs close with an echoing click.

*This is madness,' Carpenter exclaimed. *We will be lost in this h.e.l.l until Judgement Day.'

For long moments, they pa.s.sed through an endless procession of themselves, their faces seeming more haunted in each new s.p.a.ce they entered. Will found his head swimming with flashes of reflected torchlight, sparkling eyes and the constant whispers from the carvings overhead. He shook his head, trying to dispel visions of other shadowy figures looking over their shoulders. He could see that the others also struggled with the a.s.sault upon their senses in the confined s.p.a.ces.

*There is more at play here than mirrors,' he said as he stepped through another opening. The words had barely left his lips when the door jerked from his grip and slammed with surprising force, separating him from the rest. He hammered on the gla.s.s, but it seemed unbreakable. Through the barrier, he could hear Carpenter's m.u.f.fled curses, but after a moment they died away. Only silence remained. Perhaps this too was part of Dee's trap. Divide, and conquer.

With grim determination, he turned to move forward alone.

Time seemed to stretch out in a constant parade of mirrors and doors. In every s.p.a.ce, images of himself reached out for ever, an unending but insubstantial pageant of Will Swyftes ineffectually fighting a battle that would never end. He began to notice that the incomprehensible droning whispers were starting to make a kind of sense, urging him on towards despair. The mirrors themselves p.r.i.c.ked his unease. The Unseelie Court communicated through them, lived within them, for all he knew. Were they now watching his every move? Laughing at his failures, luring him on to his doom?

Barely had the thought crossed his mind before he saw his reflection melt away. In its place loomed up the yellowing and hideous skull beneath the skin. Death is waiting for you, it told him, and it is closer than you think. His heart began to pound and a sheen of sweat glistened on his brow.

Reeling, he tore open another mirror and stepped through to the next small chamber, and the one after that. He felt hours pa.s.s; days; years. His reflection aged, the skin hanging from his face in loose folds, until it crumbled to dust, then became young and vital once more.

Wrenching open one mirror, he was greeted by an image of Dee. The old man sat in a high-backed wooden chair that resembled the Confessor's throne in Westminster Abbey. His eyes were black pebbles in a frozen face. Brooding, he was, plotting death; not the Dee that Will knew at all. The vision vanished in the blink of an eye, but not before Will felt it sear itself upon his mind.

More mirrors glittered, endless Will Swyftes.

As he stumbled into another chamber, the gla.s.s showed no reflection, nor a hint of what might be, but a memory. It was night, and he stood by the well in Arden on the day and night that had changed the course of his life for ever. It was the day Jenny was stolen from him, but that had not been the only a.s.sault upon his life. He was there, was.h.i.+ng his hands over and over again, desperately trying to rid them of the blood that now turned the water brown. And he heard the soft tread of small feet at his back, and knew that it was Grace. He could not let her see his crime, his failure. And so he turned to her and smiled and spoke as sweetly as he could. But that was the moment he knew he was not a good man, and could never be again. Redemption would never come for him. All that remained in life was saving Jenny. If he could do that, at least he could achieve something good in his miserable existence.

And then, in his befuddled mind, a single clear thought surfaced. It felt like a revelation, a burning truth. The Unseelie Court steal our innocence, he thought. That is their greatest crime. They corrupt our highest aspirations and force us to be base and grubby.

With shaking hands, he ripped open the mirror and teetered on the brink of a pure black abyss. Buffeting wind lashed rain into his face. Somehow his fingers clutched on to the jamb. The door had opened in the wall of the tower and he half hung over a vertiginous drop into the night. The blast of air and the wet cleared some of the delirium from his mind, and he understood what a trap Dee had set. Only reactions honed by a lifetime of battle had prevented him from plunging to his doom; others would not have been so fortunate.

As he dragged himself back, he glimpsed movement below him. Even in his feverish state, his senses jangled. Gripping on to the jamb, he leaned out into the storm once more and peered down. Squinting, he could just make out shapes s.h.i.+fting on the sheer wall. Like fat grey spiders, the Enemy scaled the tower, clinging on to the gale-lashed stone with supernatural skill.

Bypa.s.sing the mirror maze, they would be upon Dee in no time at all.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN.

THE MIRROR SWUNG open without a sound. Blinking in the glare of candlelight after so long stumbling through the dark, Carpenter looked round a small antechamber lined with leather-bound books. On a trestle in a corner stood rolls of yellowing charts, a human skull with a fragment of pate missing, an ivory-handled knife with a curved blade and a small silver casket. He could still smell the sweet aroma which had hung in the air since they had entered the mirror maze. But over the top of it now drifted the reek of human sweat.

His head swam from the visions that had floated across his mind's eye since he had become separated from the others. His love, Alice Dalingridge, calling to him, still as beautiful as when she had been alive. His father, now so long in the grave, showing him how to chop wood behind the thatched cottage in the forest clearing. And that thing tearing at his face in the frozen Muscovy woods, when Swyfte had left him for dead and he had felt all hope desert him. Time no longer meant anything to him. He might have been in that black, gla.s.s world for years.

With a shaking hand, he wiped the sweat from his brow and steadied himself. At least that d.a.m.nable whispering had left him in peace. Creeping forward, he listened at the door to the next chamber. When no sound reached his ears, he opened it a crack and peered inside. Amid shelves of books, Dee sat on a stool in front of the cold hearth, his back to Carpenter. The old man had his head in his hands, deep in thought.

The spy drew his dagger in case he had to p.r.i.c.k the alchemist to urge him to obey. As he prepared to step into the chamber, a hand fell on his shoulder. He almost cried out and lashed out with his knife. The steel whipped a hair's breadth from Launceston's throat. Pulling the door shut, Carpenter pushed the Earl to the other side of the antechamber and whispered, *You fool. I could have killed you.'

He flinched at the other man's penetrating gaze. *What was your intention?' the Earl asked in his blank, emotionless voice.

*To capture Dee, of course.' Carpenter's gaze flickered away from the other man's probing eyes.

After a moment, the Earl spoke, his tone measured. *I have had little comfort in my life, despite the land my family has owned, and the wealth we have ama.s.sed a or perhaps because of it. My father was not a man given to sentiment. Ledgers and balance sheets prescribed the limits of his life; the cold stone of our castle, rarely heated even in winter, was the womb of his existence. He sought to teach me harsh lessons, feeling, mayhap, that it would best prepare me for the kind of life he lived. Cellars and drains and holes were my billet. Days spent in dark and damp, with only rats and beetles for friends. Blood and bruises and broken bones. No traitor in the Tower fared worse. I wonder sometimes if G.o.d made me the monster I am, or if it was my father.' He wrinkled his nose and shrugged. *It matters little. We are what we are.'

Carpenter glanced towards the door, half expecting Dee to come out and cast some vile spell on them. *Why are you telling me these things?' he asked in irritation.

*I killed him. My father. He was my first. At the time I thought it would ease the ache that reached deep inside me.' Launceston c.o.c.ked his head, narrowing his eyes as he stared into the middle distance. *It only increased my appet.i.te. When something has been taken away, we try to replenish the s.p.a.ce left behind with other things, but that is like filling the sea with sand.'

*You are a madman. Why speak like this, now, here?'

*You have lost the woman you loved, seen your face scarred and the very foundations of your life shaken. You are trying to fill the sea with sand,' the Earl said.

Carpenter furrowed his brow, trying to tease out the meaning in his companion's words. He sensed a weight there and it puzzled him. Launceston rarely spoke, and never expressed his innermost thoughts or feelings. Indeed, Carpenter had come to believe the Earl had none.

*I know not what Lansing offered you when you were his prisoner, but it was a deal with the devil,' the aristocrat said, his voice now a whisper. And then Carpenter understood: no one saw into the Earl, but Launceston had seen into him. *Your belief that you can achieve your heart's desire has blinded you to the truth.'

*The b.a.s.t.a.r.d offered me nothing,' Carpenter lied, with a derisive laugh. *I resisted all his attempts to torture me.'

*The Unseelie Court rarely have need to torture. And I know you better than you know yourself,' the other man replied, turning his gaze towards the candle flame. Carpenter thought he appeared to be trying to dredge up the remnants of whatever human emotion had survived from his earliest days; a monk trying to comprehend the ways of a Bankside doxy might have looked equally baffled. *The decision you make this day will define the course of the rest of your life,' Launceston continued. *I will not stand in your way, whatever you choose. You have stood by me when most other men would have walked away in disgust a that is something I have never known in my life, and I value it more than you could understand. For the first time in my dismal existence, I have found a place where I am at ease, here among men who deal in false faces and deceit yet hold themselves to a higher standard than most honest men-'

*I made no deal with Lansing,' Carpenter interrupted, trying to hide the bitterness in his voice.

Launceston continued as if the other man had not spoken. *-and I feel there is a place here for you too, if only you would open your eyes to it. In the midst of all this strife, we can find peace a yes, and Swyfte too a to replace the things that have been stolen from us. Seek out the morals that have always guided you-'

Carpenter laughed. *I am being lectured on morals by a man who has killed children.' If he had expected the Earl to be stung by the gibe, Launceston did not show it.

*We must not become the men the Unseelie Court believe us to be,' the aristocrat ended. His searching gaze fixed upon the other man's face.

Carpenter felt the guilt rise inside him. How weak he had been, and he had known it and tried to deny it. Yet here was a man without a heart refusing to judge him and wanting him to aspire to greater things. What a mad world they had entered when they had stepped within the tower.

*I made no deal with Lansing,' he repeated, adding in a gentler tone, *and I would never have given Dee up to them. Let us work together to capture the old man and deliver him to the Tempest. Then perhaps we can escape this steaming h.e.l.l and return home.'

But as they crept back to the door, he felt his falsehoods lying heavily upon him. Amends would need to be made. He shook his head to dispel the bitter taste of failure and saw traces of candlelight stream through the air. *There is still magic at play here,' he muttered.

Easing open the door, he peered through the crack. Dee still sat in the same position, bowed in front of the hearth. Carpenter wondered if the old man had died, so still was he, but he drew his dagger none the less. With a man like Dee he would take no chances. Holding his breath, he eased towards the hunched figure. His head throbbed and his mouth felt dry. When he crooked his arm to slip it round the alchemist's neck, he suddenly felt a fist grab the back of his s.h.i.+rt and drag him backwards.

A breeze whisked past his face as an axe-blade swung from the shadows above and smashed into Dee's side, throwing him to the flagstones. Carpenter gaped. One step further and it would have been his head rolling across the floor. Launceston knelt and picked up a thread that had been broken as Carpenter entered. Another of Dee's traps, but with this one he had paid the price.

Yet as Carpenter whirled back to the fallen figure, he saw the truth in the shapeless robes. Pulling them to one side, the spy revealed a frame of twisted saplings. *How could I ever have believed that was Dee?' he muttered.

*You were entranced by whatever spell the alchemist has woven here,' Launceston said. His tone was flat, but he clearly did not want Carpenter to blame himself.

Carpenter sighed. *So the old man still hides away. We must resume our search.' He turned towards the door so that the aristocrat would not see the worry in his face. Deep inside, he could feel the Caraprix wriggling, and whispering its seductive words. Deep inside, he could feel himself dying by the moment.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT.

THE TORCH GUTTERED and hissed. Will watched its endless reflections in the glittering mirrors, deep in thought. No shadows could exist in that blazing world of light, and for the first time the spy thought he could see clearly. Outside, the Unseelie Court still climbed the tower, drawing closer by the moment. He pushed his anxiety to one side and remained calm, focused.

When he had slammed the door and escaped back into the mirror maze, he realized the blast from the storm had cleared his head. The whispers from the carvings washed around him, but now he paid them attention. The dancing light of the torch flame was no more a mere distraction. He sucked in a deep breath, letting the sweet smell with its bitter undertones envelop him. All he needed had been there from the beginning, but as Dee had no doubt suspected, his attention had been elsewhere. The alchemist was a man of intellect, given to rigorous thought and reflection. He enjoyed his games of strategy, his chess, his nine men's morris. Puzzles with solutions that could be extracted through reflection. Will nodded to himself, ignoring the call to urgency.

Kneeling, he waved the torch close to one of the mirrors. Around the area where a hand would push the door open, a faint, sticky residue smeared the surface. Will smiled. Cunning Dee, who loved his concoctions, his herbs and clays and bubbling pots of lamb fat. In times past, the wise man had demonstrated the mysterious but effective potions he had brewed in his chambers. Some had been poisons with rapid lethal effect. Others sent a man to sleep, or made them foam at the mouth in a wild rage. And some turned wits to quicksilver and conjured visions out of thin air.

The spy stripped off his sodden s.h.i.+rt and flicked it round his right hand. With his skin covered, the paste would not seep into him and he would have time to recover from earlier contact. He held the torch high and watched the flames whip away from the hollow mouths of the whispering carvings. The unsettling sound had been designed to add to the off-kilter effects of Dee's paste, he realized, but they required a strong draught to work. The torch flame pointed away from the source. He lowered his eyes, refusing to look into the mirrors as he fought to overcome the subtle effects of the drug. Then, when he was ready, he pressed open the door with his covered hand and began to follow the trail back.

Watching the torch as he progressed through the mirror chambers, he saw the draught grow stronger. When the whispering became the chattering of madmen in Bedlam, the dancing light revealed the edges of a trapdoor in the vaulted ceiling. The breeze blew through small holes on each of the four sides. Will reached up to a shallow indentation in the centre of the trap and pressed. With a click, the door swung down followed by a coiled rope ladder. He squinted into that dark square and thought he could see a distant glimmer of faint light.

Determination burned through his foggy thoughts. The time of confusion had ended. Laying the torch on the cold flagstones, he set one foot on the ladder and began to climb into the dark.

He found himself at the foot of a flight of narrow stone steps, leading up to a small arched door standing slightly ajar. Candlelight gleamed through the crack. The sweet fragrance of incense drifted on the draught, and he could hear faint mutterings of incantations in Latin. Drawing his dagger, he crept closer. Through the slit of open door, he could just discern a small circular room. On the wall hung a purple tapestry covered with magical symbols of crescent moons, stars, runes, circles and squares in gold. Open volumes with stained pages were scattered across the flagstones.

Dee stalked past, his gown swis.h.i.+ng across the floor. The animal skulls clinked on their silver chains at his chest. His wild mane of silver hair swung as he flung out his arms, gesticulating at invisible companions. Now he was near, the spy realized that what he had taken for Latin incantations was gibberish. The old man was lost to his world of madness.

As soon as the alchemist's back was turned, Will kicked open the door and barrelled inside. Dee let out a b.e.s.t.i.a.l howl of rage. His eyes glinted with insanity, his lips pulling away from clenched teeth. The spy crashed into the older man, knocking him across the carpet of mildewed tomes. Pinning him down, Will pressed the tip of his dagger beneath Dee's eye and said, *I will not insult you by treating you like a frail old man.'

Dee thrashed like a wildcat in a sack, but as the spy dug the steel deeper into his flesh he quietened. A trickle of blood ran down his ashen skin. Yet still his eyes ranged with madness and he snarled animal sounds.

*What have you done to yourself, doctor? Where is that sharp wit that could cut a man half your age?' Acutely aware of the Fay drawing nearer, Will searched the alchemist's flickering gaze for any sign of comprehension and began to wonder if all their sacrifices had been for naught. *Let us talk, you and I,' he said, *as we did so many times in the Black Gallery, and perhaps the echoes of those days will stir some sense within you.'

In a calm voice that belied the urgency he felt, Will recounted how Dee had taken him under his wing when he had first arrived at the Palace of Whitehall from Cambridge within days of Jenny's disappearance. Though as gruff and uncompromising as always, the doctor had shown him some kindness then, recognizing the scars that had been inflicted and the worse things that lay ahead. Patiently, he had instructed Will in the ways of the Unseelie Court, and the horrors they had perpetrated for generations, and their wiles and their magics, and over days he had led the freshly minted spy to an accommodation with his new life.

*Remember, doctor, how you spun your fable of an English empire, stretching across the s.h.i.+ning seas, a world lifted free from the yoke of the Unseelie Court?' he continued, lulling the old man with his steady tone. *Remember how we stood side by side at the court of Stephen Bathory, when you conjured the ghost of the Polish King's long-dead father? How he trembled.' Will smiled at the memory, another of Dee's tricks to bend the foreign royal to the will of the English. *And how you poured a flask of sack over the head of that preening popinjay, the Earl of Leicester. What a waste of good wine.'

His soothing voice worked its spell and the old man calmed. Cautiously, Will removed the dagger and stood up, unsure if Dee would slip back into his madness. His heart pounding with awareness that time was slipping away, he looked around the small, windowless chamber until he found an ink-pot and a quill. Hastily, he sketched a few lines on a page torn from the front of a book. Once done, he dangled his work in front of Dee's face. It showed a horned circle with a dot in the centre, a cross beneath and under that a wavy line, a representation of a devilish man.

*Do you recognize your glyph, Dr Dee, the one you described at such length in your vast tome, the Monas Hieroglyphica? You see the astrological symbols? The power it represents? You laboured over this design for years, did you not? You told me how this glyph showed the true secret of all there is, how everything is connected at the smallest and highest levels, and that all we see around is illusion, a stage on which we are the players. Once this wisdom, this glyph, is understood true power comes, you said. Here is your great work, doctor. Here is you, in essence. Remember.'

The alchemist's eyes widened and the page was reflected in their depths. His madness was no natural loss of wits, Will felt sure, and if anything could breach his defences and reach the Dee that was, it was his true obsession, his life's work; the source of all his beliefs, and, perhaps, his powers. The old man's gaze swam, and for a moment Will felt sure he had failed. But then a mist appeared to rise in the depths of those eyes, and the brows drew together. Dee blinked once, twice, and his gaze drifted to Will. He scowled. *So, I am in h.e.l.l,' he croaked.

*As are we all, doctor,' Will replied. But his smile faded as the lilting strains of pipe and fiddle floated through the smoky air like the waking echoes of a dream. The scent of honeysuckle wafted on the draught. When a drop of blood fell from the spy's right nostril and spattered on the flags, Dee closed his eyes and mouthed a silent curse.

The spy drew his rapier and backed against the wall. His gaze drifted up as he heard a clattering overhead. *Time to leave, doctor,' he called.

Amid the sound of rending, a hole appeared in the ceiling as tiles and wooden laths were torn away. Rain gusted into the dry atmosphere and the crack of thunder rolled all around.

*Too late,' Will said through gritted teeth. *If your wits have fully returned, now is the time to use them.'

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE.