The Devil's Looking-Glass - By Mark Chadbourn Page 0,96
fears subside as her eyelids fluttered open. She smiled when she saw his face. ‘The angels have come to claim me,’ she said wryly.
The spy pulled her to her feet and she half fell into his arms. ‘Our lives are hard fought, Meg, but the richer for that,’ he said. Blowing a strand of auburn hair from her face from the side of her mouth, she rolled her eyes, feigning aloofness, but Will sensed the warmth between them.
As the smoke and dust cleared, they searched in the gloom among the trees until they had rounded up everyone and gathered at the end of the courtyard. From somewhere in the trees, Courtenay’s bellow assured them that he too was hale and hearty. Will turned to survey the wreckage of the tower. The wavering torchlight revealed a jagged stump licked by flames beneath a plume of black smoke reaching up to the lowering clouds. Of the Unseelie Court and the Mooncalf, there was no sign, nor did he expect one.
Courtenay strode into the circle of torchlight with Dee and Grace by his side. He raised an eyebrow when he saw Will’s accusing glance and said, ‘She insisted on coming ashore. Filled with fire, that one.’
‘I am glad to see you well,’ she said as blithely as if she had met him in the palace gardens.
‘Grace,’ Will sighed, ‘you are a fine bundle of trouble. Can you not stay out of harm’s way just once?’
‘I can well look after myself, Master Swyfte,’ she snapped, stepping past him to tend to Strangewayes, who sat on the low stone wall with his head bowed. ‘A fine thing to be scolded for worrying about close friends and loved ones,’ she called back.
Will shook his head wearily and turned to Dee, who seemed to have recaptured some of his vitality along with his wits. His back was straight, his eyes flashing with intelligence, his stride purposeful, but still Will worried that he might slip back into insanity. ‘I have had enough of cowering away like a whipped cur,’ the alchemist exclaimed, jabbing a finger at the spy. ‘My blood is up, and I am ready for the fight with those pale-skinned bastards back in England.’ He paused, then added, ‘If Elizabeth will have me, and if that hunchbacked plotter Cecil isn’t whispering in her ear to have me sent away to the darkest parts of the realm.’
‘We need you, doctor. And the Queen needs you,’ the spy reassured him.
Dee nodded curtly, satisfied. ‘I need the sun on my face.’ Glancing up at the clouded night sky, he spun on his heel. Off to work his magics, Will guessed. The island mirrored the alchemist’s mood.
While Courtenay’s men took the captured pirate Jean le Gris, still limping from the wound in his thigh, back to the Tempest to face justice, Will sat with Carpenter and Launceston, watching the dark sky. Steadily, the wind dropped until an eerie stillness lay over the woods. It seemed that all of nature was holding its breath. The storm clouds overhead scudded away without a whisper of a breeze and after a moment a silvery glow lit the sky on the eastern horizon.
‘At last,’ Carpenter muttered. ‘I thought this night would never end.’
Launceston pursed his lips, watching the light shade to gold. ‘Four hours, I would say.’
‘Four hours until what?’
‘Until I have to listen to you bemoaning the oven heat that beats you down to the deck and wishing it was night again,’ the Earl sniffed, walking away.
Carpenter hurled a stream of abuse at the other man’s back. Laughing to himself, Will stood and went in search of the sorcerer. As he walked, he sucked in a deep breath, relieved that this long night had ended far better than he could have hoped when he first set foot upon the island. Along the path to the beach, he found Dee resting beside a moss-draped statue of a nymph. ‘You have completed your ritual, then, doctor?’ he asked.
‘That business came so much easier when I was hiding behind the walls of my madness,’ the old man grumbled.
To the west, the lightening sky flickered with folds of a rainbow of illumination. Will felt reminded of the green lights he had seen in the northern skies in Scotland. ‘What is that strange display?’ he asked, his brow creasing. ‘More of your magics?’
Dee glanced up, the odd radiance playing in his eyes. ‘This island stands on the boundary between the world we know and whatever lies beyond.’