SILVER SKULL
SWORDS OF ALBION
OTHER TITLES BY
MARK CHADBOURN
THE AGE OF MISRULE
WORLD'S END
DARKEST HOUR
ALWAYS FOREVER
SILVER SKULL
SWORDS OF ALBION
MARK CHADBOURN
an imprint of Prometheus Books
Amherst, NY
Published 2009 by Pyr®, an imprint of Prometheus Books The Silver Skull-Swords of Albion. Copyright © 2009 by Mark Chadbourn. All rights reserved.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
redit must go to four hundred and thirty years of authors responsible for the primary, secondary, and tertiary texts that provided the research and resources for this work.
On the matter of dates: at the time of this story, England still used the old Julian calendar while the rest of Europe had adopted the new Gregorian calendar, with which we are all familiar today. To avoid any confusion, I have used the Gregorian dates for all events.
Spies are men of doubtful credit, who make a show of one thing and speak another.
-Mary, Queen of Scots
PROLOGUE
ar beneath the slow-moving Thames, a procession of flickering lights drew inexorably towards London from the east. The pace was funereal, the trajectory steady, purposeful. In that hour after midnight, the spectral glow under the black waters passed unseen by all but two observers.
'There! What are they, sir?' In the lantern light, the guard's fear was apparent as he peered over the battlements of the White Tower, ninety feet above the river.
Matthew Mayhew, who had seen worse things in his thirty years than the guard could ever dream in his worst fever-sleep, replied with boredom, 'I see the proud heart of the greatest nation on Earth. I see a city safe and secure within its walls, where the queen may sleep peacefully.'
'There!' The guard pointed urgently.
'A waterman has met with disaster.' Mayhew sighed. With a temper as short as his stature, the Tower guards had learned to handle him with care and always praised the fine court fashions he took delight in parading.
The guard gulped the cold air of the March night. 'And his lantern still burns on the bottom? What of the other lights? And they move-'
'The current.'
The guard shook his head. 'They are ghosts!'
Mayhew gave a dismissive snort.
'There are such things! Samuel Hale saw the queen's mother walking with her head beneath her arm in the Chapel of Saint Peter ad Vincula. Why, the Tower is the most haunted place in England! The Two Princes, Margaret Pole, Lady Jane Grey ... all seen here, Master Mayhew. Damned by God to walk this world after their deaths.'
Mayhew studied the slow-moving lights, imagining fish in the deep with their own candles to guide their way through the inky dark.
The guard's fear made his lantern swing so wildly the shadows flew across the Tower.
Steadying the lantern, Mayhew said, 'When this great fortress was built five hundred years gone, King William had the mortar tempered with the blood of beasts. Do you know why that was?'
'No, no. I-'
'Suffice it to say,' Mayhew interrupted wearily, 'that you are safe here from all supernatural threat.'
The guard calmed a little. 'Safe, you say?'
'England's defences are built on more than the rock of its people.'
The lights veered away from the centre of the river towards the Tower of London where it nestled inside the
