The Devil's Looking-Glass - By Mark Chadbourn Page 0,22
and untouched by the suffering of others, but perhaps they had more in common than he had come to believe.
‘Jane’s body was never found,’ the spymaster continued. ‘No search was made of that pond for her drowned form. Three nights later, I woke from sleep and went to the window. Jane stood below, her dress sodden, her hair plastered to her head and filled with rotting pond leaves, and she reached up her arms and silently called to me. And I wanted to go, God help me, for I knew from that moment I would be alone in the world. But then I saw the shapes dancing in the night beyond her, and I was filled with such dread that I thought I would die. I ran back to my bed, but for nights after I sensed her out there, calling to me, and I thought how could one so kind become so cruel. And that notion told me all I needed to know about this world.’
He turned back to Will, his face drawn. ‘We have all had our lives blighted by the Unseelie Court in some way. You . . . it was some village girl, was it not?’
‘A childhood friend,’ Will replied, feigning disinterest, but the vision of Jenny in that haunted cornfield blazed across his mind.
Cecil stalked forward, his hands raised and clutching in the grip of his passion. ‘Think, then, sirrah, what England will be like without Dee to offer a modicum of protection against those night-terrors. When the Unseelie Court have freedom to do as they wish, my nightly visits from Jane will be nothing compared to the horrors foisted upon every man, woman and child.’
The spectre still visited Cecil? Will reflected on the scars that must have been inflicted upon his master through that relentless haunting by the only one who had ever been kind to him. ‘Yes, for the Enemy will want even greater revenge for England’s betrayal,’ he snapped, surprised by his own rush of emotion. ‘For stealing their Queen and holding her prisoner when they thought we were offering the hand of peace.’
Cecil gulped like a codfish. ‘You are never to speak of that thing!’
‘Why? We are among friends, are we not?’ Will swigged back his sack and tossed the flask aside. Cecil squirmed under his cold gaze. ‘Despite the play you make to the world, there are no heroes here. We are all tainted.’
‘England had no choice, you know that. Our “betrayal”, as you define it, was a matter of survival—’
‘And that is justification?’
‘Yes!’ Cecil roared. ‘The survival of our Queen, of England, of us all, a life free from the shackles of fear. That is worth any action. And you know, too, that the Faerie Queen is the heart of Dee’s defences. The power that rages within her like a furnace burns the night away from this land.’
Will’s thoughts returned to the story as he had been told it, his own Queen Elizabeth meeting the Faerie Queen on windswept Dartmoor to seal a pact that might end the long years of conflict between the two races who lived side by side on England’s green land, though one in day and one in night. The meeting had been hard-won, the mistrust both sides felt barely overcome. But after that night the Unseelie Court would never trust the mortals again. England’s forces emerged from their hiding places among the gorse and granite, slaughtered the Fay cohort and took their Queen prisoner. And in her meagre cell she had resided for more than thirty years, her miserable incarceration keeping England safe. Will shrugged, fighting to contain his simmering anger. ‘Let us not squabble,’ he said, pretending he cared little when in truth he found it harder by the day to tell friend from foe.
Cecil rested both arms on the table and released a weary sigh. ‘Oh, for your simple world, Swyfte, where the only concerns are fresh wine, doxies and a bowl of the ordinary.’
The Secretary of State searched through the heap of yellowing charts until he found the one he wanted. Will recognized the outline of Europe stretching to the far Orient. ‘We now know the Unseelie Court have been planning for this moment for many a year. Word has reached me of the Enemy’s maintaining positions of influence in the great courts. One of those fiends advised the rebel leader Severyn Nalyvaiko as he led his Cossacks through Galicia, Volhynia and Belarus in his struggle against the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth. Another