The Scar-Crow Men

CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE




‘SEAL THE DOORS. NOW,’ LAUNCESTON BARKED ACROSS THE ECHOING entrance hall. From the hidden pocket in his cloak, he pulled the pouches of herbs and salt that all Cecil’s spies carried and tossed them to Meg and Strangewayes. ‘Pour the concoction along the thresholds of doors and windows, anywhere where it is possible to gain access to the palace.’

‘This mixture will hold them only for a short time. The Enemy is determined. They will find a way inside.’ The Irish woman removed her mask and poured the carefully prepared grains along the foot of the door.

‘What is out there?’ Tobias stammered. ‘I … I saw lights, fires in the trees …’

‘If we live through this night you will learn everything you need to know. And if we do not live, the answer will be made plain to you in the most terrible way imaginable. Now, to work.’ As the sallow-faced Earl turned to leave, a thunderous hammering boomed at the door.

The red-headed woman leapt back in shock. Peering through the leaded window to the circle of torchlight around the entrance, her fearful expression turned to one of bemusement. Swinging open the door, Meg called, ‘Quickly. The Enemy draws near.’

‘Do you think I am blind?’ Dr Dee roared as he strode inside. Raleigh followed, and two men Launceston didn’t recognize. ‘We rode through hell to be here. Only my skill and experience enabled us to break through the Enemy’s ranks,’ the alchemist bragged, casting a lascivious glance at the Irish woman. She gave a flirtatious smile in return. ‘And you,’ the magician added, ‘are forgiven.’

Meg curtsied.

‘Why are you here?’ the Earl demanded.

‘Because you need me now more than ever,’ Dee snapped, his searing gaze a stark contrast to the hollow eyes of the dead creatures stitched into his cloak. ‘It was my intention to see you all fester in your own juices, until my associates pointed out that I would be festering alongside ye.’

‘Then do whatever you must, doctor,’ Launceston urged. ‘Begin the work of rebuilding your defences. I have a more pressing matter to attend to.’

‘What can be more pressing?’ the alchemist sneered.

‘Blood.’

The Earl strode away without giving the new arrivals a second glance. His thoughts were like the pristine winter snows, and a bitter wind blew through the ringing vaults of his mind. Returning to the Great Hall, he surveyed the members of the court and the palace workers, all entranced by the poetry of the masque. Launceston saw only meat upon bone.

At the front of the hall, in the centre of the twilit grove, a sturdy man in a peasant’s shabby jerkin was professing his love to the maiden on the bed of scarlet roses and blue forget-me-nots. Their words were an unknown language, their movements like the empty lumbering of the beasts in the field.

Making one rapid circuit of the hall, the ghastly-faced man saw no sign of the devil-masked killer, in either of his identities. The Earl knew the truth now. He understood the mind of his opponent, and the placid detachment it took to dismantle bodies, and the precision and the attention to detail. Launceston saw as the killer saw, and vice versa. They were of a kind. It was a simple enough observation, one that he could have made at any time in his frozen existence, and yet, in the clean, white world inside his head, he felt a troubling disturbance, a blemish, perhaps, or a crack.

As surely as the Earl put one foot in front of the other, events fell into place before him. There was only one path, one outcome.

Striding from the Great Hall, the pale spy ghosted through the gloomy, still palace to the chambers that had been set apart for Cecil and his work as secretary. The first room he tried was deserted. Without knocking, he removed his yellow mask and marched into the secretary’s own chamber.

His head in his hands as if he was afflicted by a terrible pain, the short, hunchbacked man stood at the window, looking out at the approaching fires. His crumpled face riven with sadness, the black-robed Robert Rowland stood by the cold, empty hearth watching his master. The record-keeper, his hands clasped behind his back, resembled a mourner at a funeral.

‘Leave us,’ Launceston said calmly, pointing his dagger.

Cecil whirled and looked down the length of cold steel in fury. ‘What is the meaning of entering my chamber unannounced?’

‘Urgency requires that convention is discarded. I am here to save one life and end another.’ The Earl’s empty, unblinking stare held the secretary’s gaze for a long moment, until, uncomfortable, the Queen’s Little Elf looked away.

‘I am your master. Leave now,’ Cecil demanded.

‘I have been cut adrift from the rules and regulations of the life I knew. At this moment, in this place, I answer to no man.’

‘To God, then?’ Rowland interjected, peering into the Earl’s face without understanding.

Launceston shook his head slowly.

‘You cannot make demands in my own chamber,’ the secretary insisted.

‘Then let us all stay together.’ The Earl looked from one man to the other. ‘Though know that you must live with the consequences of what you witness here. It will be inscribed in hellfire in the depths of your mind for all time.’

A shudder ran through the secretary. ‘You work for me no longer. You have always been a dangerous proposition, Launceston, but now you have crossed this line you have become a liability. And you must suffer the consequences.’

The Earl tested the tip of his dagger with his finger. A droplet of blood emerged and he studied it curiously for a moment. ‘So be it. There is a greater calling in life,’ he said, distracted. ‘There is a vast space within me that you have all filled with the minutiae of your lives. I do not claim to know or understand you. But now I hear a single voice ringing through that endless cavern. It is a new experience, and a troubling one, and I wonder if this is what it is like to be you.’ The sallow spy hummed for a moment, looking at the speck of blood this way and that. ‘To pass each day in the pain of emotion? How terrible that must be. I understand your actions a little now, and I fear for myself. For the first time in my cold life.’

‘What is this higher calling, if not God’s work?’ Rowland asked.

‘Why, friendship.’ Launceston looked up from the prick of blood and eyed the record-keeper. ‘Chill winds blow through this world, and I see no sign of God anywhere. Yet in the midst of all this misery, one man can still extend a hand of friendship to others, and lift them out of suffering, and offer them his strength, though they be strange and unfamiliar. Is that not the equal of any miracle?’

‘Blasphemy,’ Rowland hissed.

The Earl gave a humourless smile.

Cecil began to edge towards the door, his eyes flickering with uncertainty.

Launceston pointed the dagger at the secretary again. ‘Call the guards before I am finished with my business and I will take my ire out on you.’

The hunchbacked man came to a halt, unused to being ordered about in his own chamber, but knowing the Earl’s reputation too well to resist.

The spy turned to the record-keeper, raising one finger. ‘The work of the killer of spies has been much on my mind of late, Master Rowland. I imagine a bitter Catholic, trapped among his enemies, loathing the slow erosion of his religion, hating the state that inflicts such a cruel policy. And hating more the agents who carry out that state’s design. Am I correct?’

Rowland glared. His right arm twitched, his hands still clasped behind his back.

‘And then my considerations turned to the initial plan to slay the spies involved in a secret mission to the seminary in Reims, who may or may not carry with them information that could destroy the wider plot.’ Tracing his index finger along his right eyebrow, the Earl sauntered towards the hearth. ‘Who could possibly know the identities of those spies? Why, Sir Francis Walsingham, of course. But Sir Francis is dead. His records? They are missing. Who could have stolen them? Who would have access to them? Who would know their content?’

‘The record-keeper,’ the secretary exclaimed.

From behind his back, Rowland brought the curved ritual knife and waved it towards the Earl.

Launceston was unmoved. ‘But there was also the matter of the black marks upon the bodies of the murdered spies. The final piece of the puzzle. And then, this evening, I saw the ink upon the fingers of Will Swyfte’s young assistant and I began to wonder: what kind of man would have fingers stained with ink that he could smear, by accident, upon the bodies of his victims? A man engaged in constant scribbling. In accounting. In the keeping of records.’

‘You would be wise not to threaten me,’ Rowland growled, stepping back.

‘If I were wise, I would not be a spy.’ The Earl glanced towards the secretary, but still spoke to his prey. ‘You failed this night to murder my friend, and instead slew his love, but not in any ritual way that would serve your purpose. And you ran, and as you did, you imagined a new plan, did you not? You thought, who would make the greatest sacrifice, if this pattern were to be concluded? Why, the greatest spy of all. The master of spies.’

Cecil blanched.

‘You murdered my friend’s love at a time when he had discovered a spark of hope in his dismal, troubled life. You shattered his heart into a thousand pieces.’ A single tear trickled from the corner of the Earl’s eye. He touched it with his bloodstained finger, the two liquids mixing. He examined it with wonder. His first tear. ‘My friend!’

Launceston’s dispassionate face exploded into terrifying fury. Transformed into a storm of emotion as if all the lost feelings of an entire life had rushed back into him, he threw aside the trestle and thundered towards Rowland. A whirl of papers flew through the air. The blood drained from the record-keeper’s fear-torn face.

But then a glimmer of the devil-masked killer flared in his mad eyes and he lunged forward, driving his knife into the Earl’s arm. Launceston did not flinch. He gave no sign that he felt any pain. And with the blade still protruding from his flesh, he advanced.

With one fluid sweep from left to right, the sallow spy slashed open the neck of his victim. Blood gushing from his wound, Rowland fell to his knees, clasping his hands in prayer.

The Earl did not stop there.

Launceston hacked and chopped and sliced and thrust and slit until he was slick with gore and what lay in front of him was barely recognizable. And with each blow, a little of the rage left him until his usual dispassionate expression returned.

The Earl took a long, deep breath.

Cocking his head to one side, he examined the mess at his feet as if he was considering from where it came and what it might have been.

‘May God have mercy on your soul,’ Cecil croaked, clutching on to the wall for support.

Launceston pulled the knife from his arm and threw it. The blade spun, glinting in the candlelight, until it rammed into the panelling, singing for a moment before falling still.

‘I have no soul,’ the Earl said.