The Devil's Looking-Glass - By Mark Chadbourn Page 0,20

they never saw another dawn?

Will turned away from his companions. His plan, so insubstantial only days ago, was growing stronger. And he would see it through to its end though he brought down the Crown, the country, even all of this world, into damnation’s flame.

When the black bulk of the Palace of Whitehall loomed up out of the night, the call of the guards along the river wall echoed over the water. The master oarsman responded with a piercing three-blast whistle and guided his vessel in to the short jetty. Candles glowed in the palace windows. The Queen and her court had returned from Nonsuch in search of shelter from the approaching storm. Grasping at straws.

Strangewayes caught Will’s arm as he climbed out of the tilt-boat. ‘Tell me you can see a way out of this predicament. Or are prayers my only hope?’ Fear flickered behind the younger spy’s eyes. The new recruit had come far in the short time since he had discovered that the world was not the way he had been told since he was a child. Few coped easily with such a dark revelation, and with each passing day Strangewayes clung more tightly to God to guide him out of the horrors. Will hoped madness was not a few steps away.

‘When life appears at its darkest and most desperate, Tobias, then it is time to gamble everything.’ Will flashed a reassuring grin. ‘Caution is our enemy, coz. We will shake this matter up, one way or another.’

He beckoned for Launceston and Carpenter to follow. He felt a responsibility to his men. Though they did not yet know it, their lives were the stake in his gamble. Was he, then, any better than the Unseelie Court?

The four men passed through the River Gate, across the echoing cobbled courtyard in front of the silent palace and into the maze of narrow passages among the towering brick and stone halls. Entering another gloomy courtyard, they came to an iron-studded oak door behind which lay many secrets. Torches burned on either side of the entrance so there would always be light even in the darkest night. Will hammered on the door with the hilt of his dagger. While the other men went in search of beef and ale after their long journey from Liverpool, a guard in a burnished cuirass led him inside and up a spiral staircase to the Black Gallery. The walnut-panelled room echoed to the rhythm of his leather heels. Shadows danced away from the light of the logs burning in the stone hearth.

At a long, heavy table in the centre of the hall, Sir Robert Cecil looked up with a startled expression as if he feared he was about to be attacked. His features were drawn, the result of long nights without sleep, Will suspected. The Queen’s Little Elf took his work as spymaster seriously, but not as seriously as his personal advancement. He was a humourless man, who spent his days weaving webs and his nights dreaming of what life would be like if his hunched back were straight and true.

When the spymaster recognized his guest, he scowled and covered the charts before him with a book. Always a keeper of secrets, Will thought. Cecil wheeled around the table with his rolling gait and peered up at the spy. ‘’Tis true, then?’

‘It is. I am adored by all.’

Cecil bared his teeth. ‘Swyfte, what others think charm, I think callow. So, you have failed? Dee has been spirited away under your very nose?’

Will perched on the edge of the creaking table and pushed the heavy tome to one side so he could eye the charts. With an incensed snort, the spymaster snatched the stained and creased maps and rolled them up.

‘Dee is gone, yes, but not to Ireland,’ the spy said with a bored shrug. Cecil had a temper much larger than his stature, and Will knew how to play him to achieve the best advantage.

‘Then he was taken to the New World?’ With a trembling hand, the Little Elf tapped an insistent finger on the table to gain the spy’s attention. ‘To what end? Hugh O’Neill needs Dee now, to protect Ireland from our great Enemy.’

‘It seems that Red Meg O’Shee bit off more than she could chew when she stole Dee from under our noses. This detour was not planned by the Irish.’

‘And the mirror?’

‘Gone too,’ Will lied. Before any further questions came, he moved on to describing the alchemist’s dreadful transformation in the