The Devil's Looking-Glass - By Mark Chadbourn Page 0,30

line of his finger.

Hunched on the edge of the cold, black water squatted a man clad in the filthy corselet of an old soldier. His breeches were coated with river mud, his hair and beard wild, his face drawn from a life lived in hedgerow and street. He had the thin frame of a man who went too long between meals. Beside him, a rod and line was set in the mud and gravel and a small fire had been built with driftwood, ready to be lit. The figure didn’t move, his gaze fixed on the eddies lapping against the shore.

Dead, Carpenter thought. But even as the notion crossed his mind, he found himself unsettled by a faint shimmer across the man’s body.

Launceston must have seen it too, for he grabbed one of the torches and held it over the still form. The old soldier all but glowed, like some apparition.

Carpenter took an unconscious step back. The dead man was rimed with frost, his hair and beard white, his skin gleaming with ice crystals as though he had spent a night out in a Muscovy winter. ‘What is this?’ the spy exclaimed. An autumnal chill hung in the air, but nothing that could account for such a state.

Launceston squatted beside the soldier, moving the torch around so he could examine the frozen face for some clue as to what had occurred.

A murmur washed around the huddling watermen as if a dam had broken. One blamed the devil, another the Fair Folk, a third some curse or other.

The Earl withdrew his dagger and jabbed the point against the man’s cheek. A clink echoed above the gentle lapping of the river. ‘Solid,’ he mused. ‘Like ice.’ He jabbed harder and the side of the soldier’s face shattered. Shards of frozen flesh rattled on the gravel. The squatting body teetered for a moment, then fell back, cracking into a hundred hard fragments.

The watermen cried out as one and fled back along the river’s edge towards their boats.

‘Zounds! What evil is this?’ Carpenter gasped.

‘I fear it is the beginning of something,’ Launceston breathed, rising to his feet. He waved the torch over the glistening remains one final time and then turned to the water. ‘Of what, I am not entirely sure.’

‘Would the Unseelie Court attack a starving soldier fishing for his supper? There must be some other answer.’

‘If you leave this work, if you flee into a new life, I will come with you,’ the Earl murmured in a distracted tone. Gripped by the sight of the shattered body, Carpenter barely realized what his companion had said before the Earl added, ‘In this mystery lies the key to what we will face in the days ahead, if we can only divine it.’

‘And if we cannot?’ Carpenter asked.

‘Then winter comes early for all of us.’

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CANDLES SUMMONED GLITTERING Jewels from the Stained glass window above the altar. The Lady’s Chapel in the Palace of Whitehall had heard the whispered devotions of monarchs, lords and ladies, but this night it was Strangewayes’ low voice that rustled up into the shadows. Head bowed, he knelt on the cold flags, hollowed by too much doubt and fear.

‘Dear Father, hear my prayers,’ he entreated, his pressed palms shaking. ‘Deliver us from the evil that draws nearer by the day.’

The only answer did not come from God. ‘Tobias?’ His name echoed from the dark at the back of the chapel.

The young spy stumbled to his feet, running one trembling hand through his auburn hair. ‘Who goes?’ he snarled, shock adding a crack to his voice.

A hooded figure stepped into the candle glow. His heart leapt when he saw that it was Grace, wrapped in a thick woollen cloak against the growing chill. She folded back the cowl and forced a weak smile. ‘Come back to the fire. You have been here in the cold for too long.’

‘Soon,’ he said. ‘I find some peace here in the midst of all this turmoil. And if God hears my pleas, then we have hope in the struggle that is to come.’

Her brow furrowed. ‘We have defeated the Spanish before. Surely we can again.’

Strangewayes felt a pang of regret that he had to lie to her. It seemed a betrayal of the love they shared. And yet how could he not deceive her, when her sanity, perhaps even her life, was at stake? Swyfte had warned him time and again how many others had been driven mad by knowledge of the Unseelie Court. ‘You