one day attempt to take him. And when they did try to exert their control, he unleashed his moon-side, which still holds sway.’ Will wiped the raindrops from his eyes, enjoying the cooling touch on his skin. ‘In his madness, he is unpredictable and uncontrollable, and, he would hope, beyond their reach.’
‘Then why come so close to their home?’ the other man asked. ‘Surely he would flee
‘Dee is cunning. If he is here, there is a reason for it.’
The path wound round the hillside as it rose towards the tower. Emerging from the thickest part of the woods, they saw lightning crackling along the horizon and bands of heavier rain marching across the treetops towards them. In one white flash, Will found Meg staring at him and asked what troubled her.
‘You still look as young as that last day I saw you, so long ago, in Liverpool,’ she replied. ‘How can this be?’
‘And you have not altered one whit.’ He watched her face, ready to change the subject if she became distressed.
‘No,’ she said with a shake of her head, rubbing her fingers over her smooth cheeks.
‘’Tis true. Can you not see it?’
‘Dee allows me sight of no mirrors ’pon this island. The windows of the Unseelie Court, he calls them.’ Her brow furrowed. ‘You say the years have not taken their toll ’pon me?’
‘There have been no years, Meg,’ Will said gently. ‘For us, only ten weeks have passed since Liverpool.’
The Irish woman bowed her head, struggling to comprehend what she had heard. ‘This cannot be. My memory is filled with so many things happening here . . . so much struggle and misery, such loneliness that at times I thought I could not bear it. Coping with the old man’s caresses while my stomach turned, and listening to his ramblings about magic and philosophy and history. And yet . . . He told me once that in the home of the Fay, time did not march as you and I know it. It hovered or folded back upon itself. Oft-times the sands did not run at all. That is why, he said, the Fay never aged, and why their schemes run over years, and centuries, even. Perhaps this island has similar qualities.’
‘Perhaps so. If not the home of the Fay, mayhap it sits upon the borderlands in the shadow of that place.’ Will felt his heart go out to her as he saw her troubles laid bare in her face. ‘The other members of your crew?’
‘Those who survived the wreck died over time. The Mooncalf has a taste for human flesh, and in those early days, soon after he was created, Dee struggled to control him. He kept one mirror in those first months on the island and taunted his enemies through it. One Fay of fierce beauty, a witch by any other name, attempted to seduce him with her charms. Her name was Malantha, one of the High Family, and she and Dee battled wits for long weeks while the Mooncalf stalked the island, killing men. Dee’s weakness was always the pleasures of the flesh, and the Unseelie Court see every man’s weakness clearly. Malantha spun a web around him with her seduction, and only when the old man appeared on the brink of revealing the location of this place did he break free of her spell and shatter the mirror.’
‘This island was hidden to the Unseelie Court? That is why Dee settled here?’ Will brooded for a moment. As he thought he played the Fay, had they in turn played him, pretending to try to stop him reaching Dee while in truth following him to the prize? He silently cursed himself for his overconfidence. Where the Unseelie Court were concerned, nothing could be taken for granted; he should have learned that long ago.
Thunder cracked overhead and rain sheeted down, forcing the sailors to move under the canopy of leaves to prevent the torches from being extinguished. Meg seemed oblivious of the downpour. ‘After these twelve long years, I am weary,’ she admitted. ‘I yearn to be free of this business, to walk once more across Ireland’s green meadows and hear the songs of my people.’
‘Twelve years on an island with only Dr Dee for company might have seemed like an eternity, Mistress Meg, but the world still waits for you, just as it always was. Nothing has been lost.’ Will understood well her doubts and sorrows – they were too much alike, the two of them. ‘That is a second chance few people get.’
For a moment longer, she kept her head down. But when she looked back at him with a seductive grin and the fire alight in her eyes once more, he saw the Meg he knew. ‘Then let us waste no more time on miserable thoughts. The sooner we can overpower the mad magician, the sooner we can return home. And then we can dance and make merry and . . . perhaps . . .’
He smiled at the promise in her eyes. Before he could reply, calls and the sound of running feet echoed from the path ahead. As the sailors drew their knives and rapiers, two men careered out of the gloom and the wall of rain. Will recoiled, fearing he was seeing ghosts. Hair plastered to their heads and clothes sodden, Carpenter and Launceston skidded to a halt. Will stared for a moment, stunned.
‘At last,’ Carpenter said, breathless. ‘I could not bear to run another mile.’
‘John!’ Will exclaimed, grasping the other man’s shoulders. He beamed, barely believing his own eyes. ‘Robert! You survived.’
‘The Unseelie Court took us aboard their ship,’ the Earl replied, his whispery voice almost lost beneath the pounding of the rain. ‘But we escaped them.’
Will laughed, relief flooding him. His conscience had been stained by many things, but here was one that would no longer haunt him. ‘Fortune indeed smiles on us. Grace has recovered, and Meg here and the two of you have wriggled out of death’s grasp. Only a day ago, I never would have believed it possible.’
‘Pfft. We have survived worse,’ Launceston sniffed, wiping the rain from his face.
‘Let us save our tales for another time,’ Carpenter insisted, glancing over his shoulder. ‘Lansing marches towards the tower to seize Dee, with the pirate le Gris and his dead crew alongside him. We have little time – they know a short cut.’
Will felt on fire. His spirits had been low, but now it seemed as if no obstacle was too great. ‘Come, then, lads. Now we are reunited, let nothing stand in our way. For England!’
Even as the other men gave full voice to his cheer, another oath seared through his mind:
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
FROM OUT OF the driving rain, the dark finger of the tower appeared. Thunder boomed and lightning flashed, turning the world white. The column of sodden men raced up the final steps of the crumbling path into a forecourt of broken flagstones where yellowing grass pushed through the cracks. A low wall ran round the edge, overlooking a deep drop down the rocky hillside to the woods below. One by one the torches fizzled and went out in the deluge until they had to splash through pools to cross the final few feet to the foot of the soaring structure. Will looked up, but the summit was lost to the dark. No lights gleamed from the slit windows. Worn by the elements, the tower looked ancient, as old and rough as the stones standing in circles on England’s moors. Above his head, he could just glimpse carvings running round the periphery, their original shapes lost to the slow erosion of the years so that it appeared strange creatures were being birthed from the rock itself.
Carpenter returned from a circuit of the tower’s foot and yelled above the gale, ‘There is no doorway.’
‘Dee has hidden it since I departed,’ Meg shouted, ‘with his magics.’
‘The good doctor is greatly changed by his experiences,’ Will explained to the other men, his words barely audible above the blasting wind, ‘and he has powers now that allow him to walk with the gods. We must not underestimate him.’
‘All well and good,’ Strangewayes bawled, ‘but how do we get inside before the Enemy get here?’
Meg peered up the vertiginous walls of the tower, pointing. ‘Up there, at the height of five men, there is an arched window.’
‘Are we apes?’ Carpenter raged. ‘You expect us to climb that smooth wall, and in this storm? Even if we could find finger-holds, we would be dashed off by the gale in moments.’
The Irish spy narrowed her eyes at him. ‘Then it must be my second suggestion: ram your hard head against the wall enough times and you may batter your way through.’
When Carpenter bristled, Will rested a calming hand on his shoulder. ‘What choice do we have, John? Cup your hands for my shoe – I will try first.’
‘How high must one climb before bones break in the fall, I wonder?’ Launceston mused, stroking his chin. ‘Before organs burst?’
