Perhaps it is simply meant to distract us from the real threat.'
'All will become clear in time,' Will replied. So far he had only told Walsingham what he had witnessed of the Skull's capabilities, and Miller had been sworn to silence, although the disease-powers appeared to be the last thing on his mind.
Nathaniel appeared at the door to the Tryst Rooms and summoned Will over. 'Lord Walsingham is ready for you now,' he said. 'Should I be prepared for fanfares and fawning crowds?'
'Not this time, Nat. This matter is still a tangled web, which requires some unpicking.'
Nathaniel held the door open. 'A case not concluded in time for an ordinary in the tavern? Your reputation is in danger.'
'We all have our bad days, and I fear this one will get worse before it gets better.'
They took Walsingham's black carriage and followed the cluttered, noisy streets east to the Tower. As was often the case, Nathaniel pretended to show no interest in the matter under investigation while asking oblique, circuitous questions in an attempt to assuage his curiosity. And as was usual, Will pretended not to notice, and batted them away with an insouciant manner. It was a game between friends, but with serious intent: in his ignorance, Nathaniel rattled the cage door, but Will had made it his business never to let him realise what beast lurked within.
The carriage was admitted through the main gates of the Tower into a furious hive of activity, the like of which Will had not seen before. Soldiers brought weapons from the Tower's armoury, while other groups escorted bruised and battered prisoners to the cells for interrogation.
Will ordered Nathaniel to stay with the carriage, and then sought Walsingham out in his rooms in the White Tower. In a room filled with charts and documents, Will found him making plans for England's defences with a small army of advisors. The atmosphere was strained, the advisors failing to grasp the urgency of Walsingham's requests. By their reckoning, an invasion was weeks away, at the earliest, and his suggestion that disaster could strike within hours or days filled them with incredulity. Will realised he had never seen Walsingham lose his temper, but there was a frightening intensity about him that Will had witnessed before on occasion; in those times he appeared capable of anything.
Once the advisors had been dismissed, Walsingham led Will along the corridors and down the winding stairs into the bowels of the White Tower.
'It would be easier if you could guide them with more than hints and innuendo,' Will said.
'That is our burden,' Walsingham replied. 'Only a very few understand the true nature of the war we fight. The rest must accept our guidance on faith alone.'
'No sign of lion Alanzo or the Silver Skull?'
'Our informants watch all the highways out of London, and the ports of Kent and Norfolk, Sussex and Dorset. They have vanished like the mist.'
'You have informed the queen?'
'Of only the most basic details. One must walk a line between providing an adequate summation of the threat facing the nation and leaving the monarch paralysed by fear.' Walsingham waited for the guards to unlock a large, iron-studded door before continuing. 'We have struggled with the outbreak of disease many times during Elizabeth's reign. The thought that such devastation could be unleashed by an enemy in the blink of an eye, in one of our cities, perhaps even in London itself, is beyond the comprehension of most minds. But we know the depths to which the Enemy will go to destroy us. And the Spanish, of course, would seize upon such internal chaos to launch an invasion from without. We are in a state of high alertEngland's future hangs by a thread. Never have matters been so critical.'
'Then we cannot afford to delay here,' Will said. 'Pickering is our only link to the Skull, and the Enemy's plans.'
At the foot of the stairs, in the deepest part of the White Tower, they were confronted by another oaken door flanked by two guards, who unlocked it and closed it swiftly behind them. The room beyond was vast and unpleasantly gloomy. A handful of torches at large intervals created a permanent twilight that obscured many of the workings of that place. Occasional moans or cries emerged from the shadows, like the haunting voices of lost souls, and there was a heavy stink of excrement, urine, and blood.
A tall man in his early forties, fair-haired, with bright eyes and an easy smile, walked out of the dark to greet them. He clasped his hands before him with an expression of continual glee. Jeremiah Kemp, England's torturer- inchief, enjoyed his work.
A constant succession of Catholic spies, and potential spies, criminals, traitors, and informants passed through his doors, Jesuit priests, minor aristocrats, lawyers, farmers, gentlewomen, and wealthy merchants. Kemp treated them all with equal care and attention.
'Welcome, my Lord Walsingham, Master Swyfte,' he said with a shy smile and a deep bow. 'All is ready for you.'
'Pickering?' Walsingham asked.
'He has been softening. Please come and see.' Kemp led them past every imaginable device of human torture to one of the wooden posts that supported the ceiling of that underground chamber. From near the top of the pillar, Pickering hung from an iron bar supported by staples in the wood, his hands fastened into iron gauntlets attached to the bar. It was a deceptively simple instrument. The weight of the suspended body caused the flesh in the arms to swell, creating the agonising sensation that blood was about to burst from the end of every finger.
His face drawn and badly bruised, Pickering watched them with dazed eyes.
'Are you ready to confess?' Walsingham asked him.
'I am but a lowly thief,' Pickering croaked. 'I know nothing of these matters of state.' His weak voice sounded truthful, but Will caught the briefest shadow flicker in his eyes.
'You like games?' Will asked. 'Chess?'
Pickering eyed him hatefully.
'The pawns are removed from the game early. There is little to be gained by extending their lives.'
'Unless they are clever pawns, with aspirations to rise to be the true power on the board.' Pickering's eyes gleamed.
Will nodded. 'Then we know where we stand.' Turning to Kemp, he said, 'Let us introduce our guest to the Duke of Exeter's Daughter.'
'Certainly, Master Swyfte.' Kemp clapped his hands to summon the guards to bring Pickering down from his perch. Though he had only been on the pillar for a short while, his legs were too weak to support his weight.
The guards dragged him to the end of the chamber where the rack stood before a row of candles, a wooden bed stained with bodily fluids, a ratchet system for turning at one end.
'The Duke of Exeter was an inventive man when he was the constable of the Tower, and he devised this method to ensure full truth and honesty from those he entertained,' Will said. 'You are aware how this works?'
Pickering shook his head, but his expression suggested his imagination was already hard at work.
'The arms and legs are fastened thusly. This winch is turned, which extends the rack here, and here, and so the guest's limbs are stretched. I am told the pain is very great indeed, in the joints in particular. If the turning of the winch is continued, the limbs are dislocated, and eventually torn free.'
'I will tell all you wish to know,' Pickering said.
'Unfortunately, it is already too late for that,' Will replied. 'The moment has long since passed for caution. We can no longer risk wasting time on dissembling and half-truths in the hope that you might find some small advantage for yourself.'
Pickering's face drained of blood as he realised what Will was saying. 'You will torture me, even though I will tell you what you want to know?'
'Every act we perform in this dark room destroys our humanity a little more,' Will said. 'We strip our souls by degrees. But we are small men, all of us, and meaningless in the vast sweep of the nation's life. When we are gone, we shall be forgotten, but for now we have a part to play. The men and women of England deserve to live free, and earn their crust, and laugh and play, and sleep easy every night, free from fear. I gladly sacrifice my life to buy that liberty for them.' He paused. 'And I would gladly sacrifice your life for the same.'
Walsingham nodded to the guards. Pickering's feeble struggles were quickly overpowered, but his mounting cries reverberated off the stone walls. Calming a little once he was strapped to the rack by his wrists and ankles, he began to babble everything he thought his captors wanted to hear.
