That makes him a danger to what we do here.' Pausing, Launceston attempted to show a modicum of compassion, but all Will saw was cold efficiency. 'We should dispatch him now and be done with it.'
'Let me talk to him,' Will said. 'We all recall our introduction to this world. He may find his feet quickly.'
'Or he may not. And what then?'
In Miller Will saw the innocence that the rest of them hardly remembered, the pleasant days of his rural upbringing, and he regretted the toll taken by the hard business of life. When he went over, Miller didn't look up.
'Was that the Devil's work?' Miller's voice was a ghostly rustle. The country burr was clear, and Will realised the youth had been suppressing it, probably to appear more sophisticated to his new associates.
'Not in the way you mean. But it is certainly devilish.'
'I heard stories of these things, in the tavern, and around Swainson's hearth one winter night, but. ..' He chewed his lip, drawing blood. 'They were just stories. Not real. But that ... That should not be!' Finally, he looked up at Will with wide eyes stung by tears.
'You are right. It should not.'
'They burned him alive! Whatever happened, the poor soul was still inside somewhere. And they burned him!'
'People do terrible things when they are scared. We are taught to see the world a certain way. A clockwork place, where the sun rises in the morning and sets at dusk, and all happens as it should. Tick-tock. But the world is not like that.'
As Miller wiped away his tears, Will saw a hint of defiance that gave him hope. Perhaps that was what Walsingham had recognised. 'What is it like, then?' Miller asked.
'It is a place where night can fall at noon, and cows give blood not milk. Where mothers can find strange creatures in the cribs where their babies lay only a moment before. Where mortal men do not rule and never have.' He cast an eye towards Launceston, Carpenter, and Mayhew, who whispered conspiratorially on the far side of the loft. 'I will tell you the truth of these matters,' he said quietly, squatting next to Miller. 'Listen carefully, and then I will answer any questions you have, as much as I can. But you must not cry, or rail to the heavens, or give any sign of fear. You must accept these things like the man that our Lord Walsingham saw when he chose you to defend our queen and country. Do you understand?'
Miller nodded.
'Good man. These secrets would have been revealed to you at the Palace of Whitehall over time, and they would have been allowed to settle on you, so they did not disturb your mind. But there was no time for that, and so you must hear them now, hard, and cold, and painful.'
'Tell me. Make sense of what I saw.'
'Sense? No, there is no sense to any of this, but I will help you understand as best I can. The stories that you heard at Swainson's hearth are true. Every story that you laughed off in the light of day but feared deep in your heart at night is true.'
'The Devil-'
'Yes, by other names. Devils. A race of them. For as long as we have walked on this Earth, they have preyed on us, for sport, out of cruelty, for malign purposes. They have transformed us, like that poor wretch you saw in the street, tormented our nightmares, twisted our limbs, stolen our children, driven our old men to their graves, slaughtered our young men, and drunk their blood, and bathed in it. No forest was ever safe for us, no lonely moor, no quiet, moonlit pool or river's edge or mountaintop, for they would come from under hill and mound and treat us like cattle, or worse, like rats, forced to play for the mouser's enjoyment before one swipe of claw bares innards to the light.'
Will paused to allow his words to sink in. Disbelief, and the hint of a smile flickered on Miller's face. It was the first sign, Will knew from long experience, and it would pass. There would be worse to come, not just then, but for many nights after, if not a lifetime.
'You have had an education of the history of this land?' Will asked.
'A little.'
'Then let me tell you of the true history, the secret history. England has always been at war-'
'Always?'
'Not with the Spanish, or the French, the Scots or the Welsh or the Irish.'
'With this race of devils?' Miller's disbelief had already started to turn.
'I dress it up in fine clothes to call it a war,' Will continued, 'but really we have been in rags, 'pon our knees. The Enemy did what they wanted with us. Killed, stole, tormented. And we could not fight back, for they were too powerful.'
'They have magic?'
'They can do things we cannot. They have guile and secret knowledge. Magic? It seems that way at times, but I am just a humble spy and do not understand such things.' Will spoke calmly and carefully, smiling to make his words appear simpler than they were. 'In truth, they are more dangerous than wolves, they see like eagles, swim like fish, are stronger than bears, more cunning than snakes. They are there and gone in the twinkling of an eye. Most importantly, they value our lives not a whit. In their eyes, we are as far beneath them as the sheep of the field are beneath us.'
'And this Enemy ... you say they have been attacking us forever? Then why have I not seen nor heard of them?'
'You have, in stories, in whispers. They are always known by other names. You called them the Devil yourself. But our kings and queens have always ruled that their existence should be kept a secret from the common man as much as is possible. For if the good men and women of England knew the terrors that could pluck them from their lives at any moment, they would be driven mad with fear, and all we have tried to build here would fall into an abyss.'
In the street below, the clamour had ebbed away as the mob returned to their plots and plans. But even in the silence there was little peace.
'Tell me what they do,' Miller said.
'I will tell you some of what they do,' Will replied. 'A flavour, but there is no time to tell you all.' And I would not see your hope extinguished, Will thought. 'In Chanctonbury Ring, in Sussex, the Devil appears every Midsummer Eve, the local people say, and plucks one poor wretch from his hearth to take beneath the clump.
'In Tolleshunt Knights in Essex, not far from your quiet home, these people of the dark engaged in carnal displays on the banks of the bottomless pool in the place known as the Devil's Wood. One year, a local landowner attempted to build a house there, and the unholy crew ripped out his heart, screaming that his soul was lost.
'At Wandlebury Camp, near Cambridge, a night rider will appear under the full moon to challenge all-comers. The wounds he inflicts bleed anew on the anniversary of the night they were inflicted. In the Lickey Hills in haunted Worcestershire, the local folk tell how the Devil and his chief huntsman Harry-ca-nab hunt wild boars, and if they cannot find their game they hunt the locals.'
For nearly an hour, Will detailed the atrocities, the blood-soaked fields, the devastated lives and stolen children, the changelings, the disappeared, the hunted and the haunted and the corrupted. His litany of misery covered every quarter of England, and reached back as far into the past as historians had documented. It was as he had been told in the days after he had been recruited by Walsingham, and Miller's reaction was the same, the disbelief shading to shock, then to a creeping, cold devastation at the realisation that there was no safe place.
Stretching his legs, Will watched the clouds blowing across the afternoon sky as he completed the first part of his account. 'In Atwick, in Yorkshire, no one dares drink at the local spring. In York ... at Alderley Edge ... at Kirkby Lonsdale and Castleton Fell ...' His words dried up, but the silence that followed said enough.
'My grandfather disappeared in the marshes at Romney, following a mysterious light. We never found his body,' Miller began hesitantly.
'They are everywhere, Tom Miller. In every part of this country, and beyond too, I would wager. We have all been touched by them, though we might not realise it. They may exist on the edges of what we see, but they are always there. They have always been there.'
'What are they?' Miller asked. 'Are they-?'
With a reassuring smile, Will held up a hand to silence him. 'The farmers do not speak their name, lest they answer. They call them the Fair Folk or the Good Neighbours. You know who they are.'
