The Devil

that last day in the cornfield, brown hair tied back from her pale face. He reeled from the rush of emotions that accompanied the sight, the memories of quiet conversations at dusk, the sensation of her hand in his. And yet somehow he knew that this was Jenny now, and that she could see him as clearly as he saw her. Her eyes grew wider still when they took in his face, but if he expected a smile of relief, or love, he saw only worry in her features.

She vanished as quickly as she had appeared. Will almost cried out, pleading with her to return so he could see her for one moment longer, a moment that felt richer than any he had lived in the last ten years.

‘What ails you?’ Carpenter growled in annoyance.

Will began to explain, then caught himself. ‘At least we have the mirror now,’ he whispered, slipping it into the leather pouch at his side. ‘Now, let us find Dee and be away from this haunted place.’

The window rattled in the grip of the gale that now buffeted the house. ‘Perhaps they are long gone, and already aboard their ship,’ Carpenter ventured.

Will eyed the taffeta dress and flashed a reassuring smile. ‘Perhaps.’ Raising his rapier, he stepped out of the chamber and prowled towards the final flight of stairs.

For one moment, he stood, looking up into the dark. All was still.

His breath locked in his chest. He levelled his rapier, twirling the tip once, then placed his foot upon the first step.

A high-pitched whine screeched across the upper floor. Will reeled against the flaking plaster of the wall, clutching his ears in agony. Steel barbs plunged into his head. He half glimpsed the other three men stumbling back with contorted features, hands pressed against their own ears.

A moment later, a boom resounded across the floor upstairs, bringing down a shower of dust. White light flared so brightly, Will wondered whether the house had been struck by lightning or a keg of gunpowder had exploded. Bedlam erupted before he had a chance to gather his thoughts. Throat-rending shrieks ripped through the house, sounding unnervingly like the cries of ravens. More flashes of light, a billow of acrid smoke. The very foundations of the house seemed to shake.

Will grabbed the rocking banister to keep his feet. The violent tremors threw the other three men across the landing. A body burst out of one of the rooms on the final floor and wheeled down the steps to crash in a broken- limbed heap at the foot of the stairs. Fearing it was Dee, or Meg, the spy wrenched himself round.

Will felt his chest tighten in shock. The figure crumpled in front of him wore a grey shirt and breeches silvered with mildew, the cut echoing a fashion of a time long gone. The skin was bone-white, the cheeks cadaverous. The eyes had been burned out so that only charred black sockets stared back at him. He struggled to comprehend what had happened. Never had he seen one of the powerful Unseelie Court despatched so easily, so brutally. He yanked his head back to peer up the stairs through the swirling smoke, wondering what force wreaked havoc up there.

Another figure lurched from the open doorway at the top. Will glimpsed a flash of auburn hair, a pale face, a bodice and skirt of black and gold. Red Meg O’Shee clutched on to the banister, casting one wide-eyed glance back into the room she had left. Her mouth formed an O of horror. Will felt another wave of disbelief. This spy, so hardened by the fight against the English in her homeland, who had suffered all manner of threat to her life and well-being, gripped by terror.

Before he could call out to her, she propelled herself down the stairs in desperation to escape what lay at her back. In a flurry of red hair and skirts, she crashed into him, fleeting surprise lost to mounting panic. ‘Leave!’ she screamed. ‘Leave or lose your soul!’

As they turned, another tremor hurled them to one side and they crashed through the splintering banister on to the flight of stairs below. Will took the brunt of the impact, pain lancing through his ribs. Meg landed on top of him, already craning her head in fear to see what followed.

Strangewayes was pointing and crying out a warning lost beneath the booming that now sounded like a cannon barrage. Cloaked in the swirls of acrid smoke, a figure was descending the stairs at a steady pace. Will felt gripped by the sight, and by the terrifying power he sensed in that apparition. It seemed he was in the centre of a storm, with lightning crashing all around and thunder breaking overhead.

And then the figure loomed out of the cloud, and Will saw a cloak made from the pelts of many woodland creatures, the still-attached heads swaying gently. White skulls of birds and mice rattled on a silver chain to the rhythm of each step. Wild silvery hair, a wrinkled face that mapped a life lived in the shadows.

‘Dee?’ Will gasped.

The alchemist turned his terrible gaze upon the spy. The eyes flickered with blue fire, and in them Will saw nothing that was human.

CHAPTER SIX

Black pebble eyes watched from the high Branches. Hunched like old men, the crows perched in silent attention, so great in number it seemed the stark winter trees were flourishing with sable growth. Sweating with fear, Tobias Strangewayes wrenched his head round as he ran. Their unnatural stares chilled him. Why had they gathered? Why were they silent? Why were they watching?

Relief flooded him when he burst from the great Kentish forest and saw the large, brick-built merchant’s house on the edge of the village, the family home, safe and secure. His father had made no little money, buying up the woodland to feed the endless demand for timber for the great seagoing vessels that had made England such a power across the world. His breath burning in his chest, Tobias scrambled up to the door, his only thought, odd yet somehow right, The crows shall not get me now.

And then he was in the bright morning room and his brother was there, good Stephen, strong and wise, sitting by the cold ashes in the hearth. Tobias felt a yearning that he couldn’t explain. But then Stephen turned his broad, rosy-cheeked face to him and gave a sad smile, and Tobias realized that his brother was dead, overseas, as so many of his family had died.

‘There is no reward in killing a King,’ Stephen said.

Tobias felt a cold reach deep into his bones, but before he could respond the vision shattered, the glittering shards falling away into the dark.

He jolted awake. The floor where he had been lying was cold. His mouth felt as arid as if he had swallowed a hogshead of ale the night before. A shaft of early morning sun fell through the open door of one of the rooms and caught a constellation of drifting dust motes. All was still. In the autumn chill, he pushed himself into a sitting position. Launceston and Carpenter were stirring behind him, and beyond them he saw the woman they had guessed to be the rooming house owner, Moll Higgins, sitting against the cracking plaster on the wall. Though dazed, she looked as if her wits had returned.

Strangewayes struggled to think clearly. Though the unsettling dream about his brother still had its hooks in him, fragments of the previous night emerged. He recalled Dee coming down the stairs, and the terror he felt, an unnatural terror as if all his senses were warning him of something he could not see. He remembered the flashes of light, and the smoke and the booming, like the swell of the ocean against a hull heard on the bilge deck. And the last thing that sprang into his mind was Will grabbing hold of the Irish spy and hauling her down the stairs.

Strangewayes heaved himself to his feet and made his way unsteadily down the creaking wooden treads. Swyfte was slumped next to the open front door, the woman nowhere to be seen.

‘Dee?’ Strangewayes gasped as his companion stood up. ‘The mirror?’

Will shook his head, running a hand through his tousled black hair. Gathering his wits, he spun out into the cobbled street. Liverpool was lit by a thin orange light as the sun edged up over the horizon. Across the still streets, a hum rose up from the direction of the docks.

‘Zounds, what happened last night?’ Strangewayes demanded. ‘Dee was filled with fire and brimstone. Never have I seen him that way. Was he possessed by devils?’

‘Possessed, aye, that is a good enough explanation,’ Swyfte replied, distracted. ‘When I looked in his eyes, I saw no sign of the man I knew. Something dark has been awakened within him.’ His tone was measured, his words free of shock or unease, and Strangewayes guessed he had already started to reach some understanding of the alchemist’s transformation.

‘He laid low those night-things as if they were drunken apprentices. Where did he get such power? And why