The Scar-Crow Men

CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO




HOLDING ALOFT ONE LIT CANDLE, WILL SLIPPED INTO THE DARKENED throne room, closing the door quietly behind him. Shadows flew away from the dancing flame. His footsteps echoing in the large, deserted space, he strode across the wooden floor towards the grand high-backed chair topped by gilt curlicues. The spy turned to his right and was confronted by a threatening figure, its shadowed features distorted by a harsh, glimmering light. For a moment, he stared back at his reflection in the large, silver-framed mirror. Gooseflesh prickled his arms.

What watched there, hidden behind the faces of all who looked into the glass?

Faint strains of lyrical music drifted up from the masque. The sound of laughter. A cheer of excitement. Applause. But in the spy’s head, the drum beat relentlessly.

At the mirror, Will turned to face the darkened room and took six measured paces. He pictured in his mind’s eye a compass rose lying at his toe and around it an invisible circle. Orienting himself, he imagined the north road running from the palace gates and set down the lit candle. The flame flickered sharply although there was no breeze, and from one corner he thought he heard a rustle as though of a giant serpent uncoiling.

The black-masked man collected three more candles and placed them at the remaining cardinal points around his imaginary circle. He lit the one to the south with his flint. When the chamber grew a shade colder, the spy recalled the chill in Griffin Devereux’s cell beneath Bedlam.

The candle to the east flickered into life. Will’s throat became dry with apprehension.

Hesitating for only a moment, he lit the final candle, to the west, where the dead go. All four flames bent away from the mirror and then returned to upright. His breath clouded.

Will felt a knot form in his stomach. Turning to the looking glass, he studied his brooding reflection and the four points of light at his feet. Despite the unsettling atmosphere that had developed in the room, he couldn’t see that anything had changed.

‘Go on,’ Mephistophilis urged in the spy’s ear, the first time his private devil had spoken to him since its near-lethal ploy in Paris had failed. It was a sign, Will knew, that danger was close.

‘Quiet, now,’ he said firmly. At the mirror, he levelled his left hand, slowly moving it forward until the tips of his fingers brushed the surface … and then continued on. The cool glass flowed around his hand like quicksilver. Shocked, he yanked his arm back.

Mephistophilis gave a low, throaty laugh.

Drawing his rapier, Will stepped forward, passing through the looking glass with a sensation that felt like light summer rain. He found himself in the same empty throne room, but here the candles on the floor were extinguished and the only light came from the silvery rays of the moon breaking through the window.

Where was he?

The spy felt oddly disorientated; the proportions in the chamber seemed slightly wrong, the lines of the walls, floor and ceiling distorted, but not enough for him to find it possible to pinpoint exactly where the sensation originated.

In the cool chamber, the sharp scent of limes hung in the air. Although Will could hear disquieting pipe and fiddle music fading in and out, the mirror-palace seemed still.

Opening the door a crack, the spy listened until he was convinced no one waited in the corridor beyond, and then he slipped out. No candles were lit, but as he moved along the corridor he found he could see by the light of the brightest moon he had ever experienced.

The Enemy, so close all this time and yet we never knew it.

When Dee’s defences began to crumble, the Unseelie Court must have moved into their nest, as Marlowe had put it, still unable to storm through the chambers of Nonsuch but close enough to extract the people they needed to replace – like Grace – and to set their Scar-Crow Men in motion.

Will’s skin crept at how the mirror-Nonsuch resembled the real palace in almost every aspect: but he saw no sign of life, no light, no warmth. He felt like he was looking at a stone-and-timber version of the Scar-Crow Men, an illusion of the human world but with something terrible lurking behind the façade.

The spy glided down the stone steps towards the ground floor. Somewhere in that dark palace the Corpus-Scythe was being held, he was sure, close enough to the Scar-Crow Men to be used if it were needed.

Where the steps emptied on to the long corridor, he spied a grey-cloaked, silver-haired figure marching towards the Great Hall. Will followed at a distance. When the hall door opened, he glimpsed a silent crowd of the Unseelie Court facing the far wall where the masque was being performed in the real Nonsuch.

What would happen if the devil-masked killer was allowed to make his final sacrifice? Will saw how the Fay army would sweep across the hunting grounds to storm Nonsuch, while the High Family stepped through the mirror to take control of England, with their Scar-Crows as puppets. The horrors that would follow seared through his mind.

His breath hard in his chest, the spy peered into the room. In eerie silence, almost a hundred and fifty members of the Unseelie Court stood mesmerized before a tall, slender male of such imposing presence that he could only be a member of the High Family, Will guessed. The Fay’s hair was silver-streaked with black along the centre, his expression fierce. As he communicated soundlessly, the Fay traced patterns in the air with elegant movements of his hand. A small creature resembling a hairless ape crawled around his body, its eyes gleaming with a golden light.

Another hooded figure stood just behind the silver-haired leader, a woman. As Will watched, the Fay waved a hand towards her and she removed her hood. It was his Queen, Elizabeth, the same powdered face, the same red wig, but filled with more vibrancy than the monarch he had seen at the masque in the real Nonsuch. A Scar-Crow, he thought. The final piece in their plan. The Unseelie Court would replace the real Elizabeth with this simulacrum and rule unquestioned, with complete obedience from the entire population.

Straining, Will peered around the door to see more of the hall. One sound, one too-sudden movement, and he knew he would be torn apart in the blink of an eye.

From the rear wall of the vast chamber to the first line of Fay was a space of about five men lying head to toe, and in it, on a dais like the font in a church, was the artefact of human bone topped with a skull glowing with a faint green light. The Corpus-Scythe.

Will saw his great opportunity, but to move so close to the Enemy and hope not to be seen was a madness that would have done his former Bedlam mates proud.

His breath tight in his chest, he slipped into the gloomy Great Hall and dropped to a crouch, balancing on the tips of his fingers and toes. He cast one eye towards the ranks of the Unseelie Court.

At the far end of the hall, the silver-haired leader held the attention of the Fay. Shrouded in his black cloak, Will crept forward, every movement slow and precise.

Time seemed to stop. The spy felt his hated Enemy so close that he could almost reach out and touch them. One glance back, one slight turn of the head and he would be seen. Barely breathing, Will’s muscles burned with the effort of control.

When he reached the dais, he kneeled, one hand on each side of the Corpus-Scythe. The door seemed a world away.

As the spy raised himself up a little more to grasp his prize, a series of high-pitched shrieks and squeals ripped through the silence. Will’s heart thundered.

At the far end of the hall, the hairless ape-creature was bounding up and down on the shoulder of its master, waving its arms in his direction. Its cries of alarm rang up to the rafters.

As one, the Unseelie Court turned.

Will was overwhelmed by row upon row of searing eyes and fierce, cadaverous faces.

As one, the Unseelie Court moved.

Grabbing the Corpus-Scythe, the spy bounded towards the door in a billow of black cloak. He threw the door open with a resounding crash and raced into the corridor, his own footsteps drowned out by the thunder of an army of boots at his back.

Flashing one glance behind him, Will saw the Fay only a hand’s-breadth away from his cloak, their eyes filled with hatred, their mouths snarling with fury, their silence only making them more terrifying.

To his left, the shadowy entrance to the narrow stairs loomed up in the moonlight. Will threw himself into the opening, taking the steps two at a time. The clatter of hundreds of boots rang off the walls behind him. His Enemies were closing.

Halfway up the steps, the spy tucked the Corpus-Scythe under his left arm and drew his rapier, whirling and thrusting in one movement. The tip of his blade drove into the neck of the nearest Fay. Amid a spurt of crimson, the foe grasped the wound and pitched backwards into his fellows. Will followed through with a stroke up and to his left, ripping open the face of another Enemy, and then he thrust once more into the heart of a third.

As the wounded and dying Fay fell, they blocked the steps and slowed the pursuit of the Court’s army. Spinning, the spy bounded up the remaining steps. At the corridor, he heard his Enemies drawing nearer again. Blood thundered through his head. Grimly determined, he ran as fast as his feet would carry him, crashing through the door into the throne room.

He was met by a terrible sight. Reflected in the great mirror, a swarm of white-faced, corpse-like things raced, grasping hands outstretched, mere inches from his back. He could almost feel their icy breath upon his neck.

Sprinting the final distance, Will leapt directly at the mirror. Those bony fingers tore the air a hair’s-breadth from his cloak. Passing through the shimmering reflection, he landed in the real throne room. In one fluid movement, he slid the Corpus-Scythe along the boards, upending and extinguishing two of the candles.

Turning, the spy slammed the hilt of his rapier into the mirror. The glass shattered, a thousand shards raining down to the floor. Will threw himself backwards, his eyes locked on the empty frame, still not believing.

After a moment, his rapid breathing began to subside. He was safe, for now. But there was no time to waste.

Snatching up the Corpus-Scythe, Will ran to the window and flung it open on to the warm late August night. The flickering fires of the Unseelie Court army were drawing ever closer.