The Devil's Looking-Glass - By Mark Chadbourn Page 0,97
where the dead go?’
‘Some call it such. Since our most ancient times we have always looked to where the sun sets . . . the light fades . . . and thought it the home of those who have moved on. When I was a boy, my father told me about the boat that waits by the shore to ferry the souls of the newly departed across the great wide ocean for judgement. And then, on the night he died, I saw the boat waiting and his own pale shade walking the lane from our house.’ He shook his head as if to dispel the memory, and looked away. ‘It is the home of the Unseelie Court,’ he said in a quiet voice.
Will sensed a confusion of thoughts in the old man. Dee had spent his days probing the great mysteries that enveloped life, and here was one of the greatest, a puzzle that wrapped up life and death and grief and yearning, the promise and threat of greater powers than man’s, and all man’s fears about the purpose of life.
‘What if,’ Dee had said to him once, staring deep into the blazing fire in the Black Gallery, ‘man was only placed upon this world as sport for higher powers?’
Without another word, the old man trudged down the path towards the shore. Will was about to follow, but heard Courtenay calling him. With a sigh, he returned to the courtyard where a few men had been sifting through the wreckage of the tower for anything that could be salvaged.
‘Le Gris’s men have been released from their torment and can now face their just rewards in Heaven or Hell,’ he said, cracking his knuckles. ‘Another triumph for England’s finest. By noon I will have charted a course for the island of Hispaniola to take on fresh water and supplies. And if we encounter any Spanish dogs, it will be a joy to despatch them after the things we have battled these past weeks. And then to fair Albion. With a good wind, Dee can be rebuilding our defences with his cursed sorcery before the bluebells have gone from the woods in Kent.’
‘May good fortune watch over you, Captain Courtenay,’ Will said, clapping a hand on the other man’s arm. ‘You and your crew have earned the Queen’s gratitude, and a joyous release in the stews of Bankside.’
Courtenay’s eyes narrowed. ‘You speak as if you are not sailing with us.’
The spy glanced back to the dancing lights in the western sky. ‘It was never my intention to return to England. I am a lost soul, captain, and I must find my way to the land of the dead. This morning I will take le Gris’s ship and a skeleton crew and sail to the home of the Unseelie Court. Nothing shall stop me finding the answers I seek. And then I will bring the walls of that fortress crashing down, though it cost me my life.’
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
THE RIBBON OF white sand glowed in the morning sun. Sparkling blue sea lapped in the cove and a cooling breeze rustled through the woods as the two men wandered along the shore. The intoxicating scent of the large pink flowers on the spiky-leaved shrubs along the treeline drifted down to meet the salty air.
‘You are a fool,’ Dee growled. The skirts of his purple robe swept a wide path along the beach.
Will felt an unfamiliar lightness now he had finally given voice to the inevitability of his destination. ‘If it is foolishness to want an end to the torment of unanswered questions, then so be it.’
‘The answers may be worse. Have you thought of that?’
Will shrugged. ‘It is a gamble I am prepared to take.’ If only the alchemist knew how much he had risked, he thought. How long it seemed since that night in the Liverpool rooming house when he had first started to form his plan. The sight of Jenny in the obsidian mirror had let loose a rush of desperate emotions and thoughts, as if the dam holding back all those years of misery had suddenly broken. He still felt surprised how little it had troubled him to put the Queen, and all England, up as his stakes in his great gamble. Never would he alone have been able to amass the fortune necessary to fund a galleon to sail to the New World in search of Jenny. But once Meg had told him that was Dee’s destination, he knew he could