The Devil's Looking-Glass - By Mark Chadbourn Page 0,11
chamber.
Meg tensed. Once, in a dirty tavern in some forgotten village in the Midlands, she had used her charms to encourage him to teach her simple magics, and he had shown her how to use a glass to commune with another, miles distant. She closed her fingers round the dagger hidden in the folds of her skirt. If the alchemist was using this mirror to call for help, she would take off a finger or an ear or a nose if she had to.
After a moment, Meg decided Dee was no threat. She delved into her sack and withdrew a bunch of wilting herbs and the mortar. When she looked up again, her breath caught in her throat. Dee had stood silently and was peering at the wall as if he could see through it. The looking glass lay upon the bed.
‘Stay calm, my love,’ she whispered in honeyed tones, ‘and I will stroke your brow and soothe away all your worries.’ Usually the alchemist fell under the spell of her voice and returned to his dazed state, but this time he dropped to his knees and brushed aside the rushes on the floor with a feverish intensity. Meg watched him at work, wondering what strange thoughts were running through his head. He seemed oblivious of her presence. In all the time she had administered her concoction, never had she seen this reaction before.
Dipping into a hidden pocket in his cloak of furs, Dee withdrew a piece of chalk and began to draw a circle on the boards. His feverish fingers flew across the familiar design, inscribing inexplicable symbols at points along the arc.
Meg stroked his long hair. ‘You are troubled, my love,’ she pressed, her tone a little more insistent than she had intended. ‘Put aside these things and return to the bed. Enjoy the pleasures of my thighs one final time before sleep.’
Dee ignored her, the first time he had refused her charms. She felt worried by the alchemist’s actions now. He seemed possessed, his eyes glinting with an inner fire.
Finally he stopped his inscribing, squatting in the centre of the chalk circle. Her hand felt for her dagger once more. If she had to, she could wound him enough to incapacitate him until she had him aboard the ship bound for her homeland.
Before she could move, Dee’s head jerked up and his eyes swivelled towards her. His lips unfurled from his yellowing teeth and he uttered one word, one sound that made no sense to her, but it made the heavens ring.
CHAPTER FIVE
THUNDER RUMBLED AWAY to the west. Will paused at the end of the urine-reeking alley and glanced along the deserted high street. If the Unseelie Court were abroad there near the centre of Liverpool, they were keeping away from candles and lamps. He darted through the deep shadow under the overhanging eaves until he saw the grim faces of Launceston, Carpenter and Strangewayes. They waited for him at the assigned spot, in the lee of the silent stone bulk of the town hall.
‘Good news, lads,’ he said, forcing a cheery tone. ‘Or not. Our Irish vixen has made her lair in one Moll Higgins’s rooming house. Now the moment we dreaded must be addressed. Can we bear the lash of Dr Dee’s sour tongue all the way back to London, or should we leave him to his fate? Make your case now, and be quick about it.’
‘We have friends in Liverpool,’ Launceston said in his familiar monotone. ‘The kind of friends who would turn our bones to straw and mount us on sticks to scare the crows till Judgement Day.’
Will nodded. ‘I encountered those pale fiends too. They also search for Dee. The risks here are doubled, men. We must fly like arrows if we are to prevent this from becoming a disaster.’ He looked round the solemn faces. Not one of them, not even the raw Tobias Strangewayes, gave a hint that a mere four spies was a poor force against the supernatural might of the Unseelie Court. Will felt proud of them. ‘Come, then, good lads. There will be wine and doxies aplenty once this work is done.’
The spies weaved through the deserted streets back towards the jumble of stews and inns near the quayside. The night-time drunken revelry had started up again. Shouts and singing and the calls of women rang over the rooftops. Carpenter demanded directions from a whore pissing in the street and within moments they were picking their way