‘Curb your hunger, Robert,’ Will said. ‘You may find out for yourself once the rest of us have failed.’
‘Wait.’ Meg stepped forward, pressing the palms of her hand together as if in prayer. ‘There is another way. But it has many dangers—’
‘More dangers than climbing this tower in the storm?’ Strangewayes growled.
‘More suffering before you die,’ Meg said, arching one eyebrow. ‘The Mooncalf could climb this tower with ease. Indeed, I have seen him do it many a time. He could carry one of you on his back. But at any moment he might unleash the savagery in his breast, and rip you limb from limb and eat your heart before it has stopped beating.’
Will nodded to Meg. ‘Very well. We cannot be defeated at this stage. I will take that risk.’
‘Why not let him try?’ Meg said in a wry tone, pointing at Carpenter, who glowered back.
‘I have asked you all to put your lives in jeopardy in recent times. Now it is my turn,’ Will said. ‘Summon Dee’s beast.’
He instructed the
At the last, Meg stepped in front of him. She held her head up in a commanding stance. ‘Mooncalf, heed me,’ she called out into the night. ‘Do not harm these men. You will have other food soon enough.’
At the crack of her voice, the beast slowed and came to a stop two sword-lengths away. ‘She controls it like a prancing pony,’ Strangewayes hissed. ‘How so?’ The spies took a step back as they took in the horror before them.
Will studied the shadows pooling in Meg’s face and thought he glimpsed the softening of her features. As the Mooncalf raised itself up on powerful legs, he caught sight of the outline of a broad, flattened head that reminded him of the bulls baited in the bear garden on Bankside. The skin was blacker than the night and seemed to gleam as it moved, like pitch. White eyes burning cold moved across the spies. Strangewayes gasped as a lightning flash revealed a face like melted candle wax, the flesh running down to the broad shoulders. The mouth was a black gash showing a hint of sharp, stained teeth. The strong body looked twisted, as if the Mooncalf had been tortured on the rack, yet its muscular power was unmistakable. Despite its terrifying appearance, though, Will sensed something oddly human about it.
‘Do not harm them,’ Meg repeated as a threatening growl rumbled deep in its throat.
‘You are mad to risk your life with that thing,’ Carpenter whispered. ‘It is a wild animal, barely tamed at all.’
‘I would be mad to stand here and do nothing,’ Will replied.
Meg flashed him a look of concern, but then put on a confident face and spoke to the Mooncalf so quietly that none could hear what she said. The beast lurched forward, its breath reeking of meat. It flung its arms round Will and lifted him effortlessly. Pinning him in the crook of its right arm, it bounded at the tower wall. Taloned feet and the long fingers of its left hand found cracks and crevices barely visible to the naked eye in the dark. With a rolling movement, the Mooncalf began to climb.
Pressed tight against the leathery flesh, Will glanced sideways and saw those eyes flicker towards him. In them, he recognized some semblance of intelligence, and it troubled him. What was this thing, not beast, not man? With a snarl of warning, the Mooncalf’s lips curled back from its yellow fangs, forcing Will to look away.
The anxious voices of the other spies slipped beneath the howl of the wind and the rattle of the driving rain. The dark closed in around them, an endless chasm threatening to suck them down. Higher the Mooncalf climbed, seemingly up into the very heart of the storm. Just when Will feared he would be dashed on to the courtyard far below, the beast’s fingers closed on the crumbling lip of an arched window. Heaved inside, Will crashed on to dry flagstones, the rainwater pooling around him. The creature crouched by the window, watching the spy through slit eyes. Its low growl echoed through the still chamber.
‘If you can understand my words, I thank you.’ Though Will was hesitant to turn his back on the beast, he felt along the wall until he found an extinguished torch and lit it with the flint from his leather pouch. The darkness danced away from the flame, and he saw he was in a bare stone room with an empty hearth. Two arched doorways led out of it. Though the tower was silent, he felt that it was not empty, as if someone waited only a chamber away. He imagined Dee sitting in the dark somewhere above him; not the Dee he knew, the wildly inventive but mad scholar who had devoted his life to holding the line against the forces of the moon that threatened to usurp the sunlit world, but a brooding Dee, corrupted by a different kind of madness and consumed by the well of power into which he had tapped, who saw all as his enemy. He had built his fortress here on this island, with the only human who meant anything to him, and he would not easily be shifted.
Edging along the wall with one eye on the Mooncalf, Will ghosted through the nearest doorway on to a spiral stone staircase leading down into shadows.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
HARD RAIN LASHED the knot of spies huddled against the tower wall. Suspended in a sea of night, they could have been a thousand miles away from any other living soul as they searched the dark for the coming attack. But the wind-thrashed trees sounded like waves crashing against their small island of stone, drowning even the noisiest approach, and the gale snatched at their hair and clothes to distract them.
Strangewayes gripped his rapier, remembering his days learning the blade in the precinct of Chelmsford Cathedral, under the tutelage of the master Adam Abell. A good student but hotheaded; that had always been his teacher’s assessment. And over the years, as he had earned his reputation and joined the employ of the Earl of Essex’s newly minted band of spies, he had fought hard to control that simmering temper. But now it burned hotter than ever. When he had left Essex to join Cecil’s more seasoned group, he had hoped to learn more at the feet of the lauded Will Swyfte,
For an instant, the wind dropped, and in the space a low, unearthly moan rolled out across the courtyard. Strangewayes felt the hairs on his neck prickle. ‘What devilry is that?’ he demanded.
Launceston ignored him, as graven and unreadable as ever, and Carpenter only swore at him to stay silent. ‘Conjure up no nightmares,’ Meg told him. ‘There will be time enough to face our fears.’ Though they all treated him like a child, it was the Irish spy he hated the most. She acted as brazen as a Bankside doxy, spinning men round with her wiles. Of all of the spies, the Irish woman was the least trustworthy, he had decided.
‘I am not scared of anything,’ he replied.
‘Then you are a fool,’ she came back as quick as a flash.
Strangewayes felt stung for only a moment before movement away in the dark caught his eye. A figure lurched towards them. It was one of the crewmen, and his gait was as rolling as if he stood on deck in a storm. The spy grew cold, though he did not know why. The staggering sailor seemed to glow in the dark, as pale as Launceston, his clothes as well as his skin. The sight reminded the spy of the fish he had once seen swimming in a cave pool. He swallowed, uneasy.
‘The Unseelie Court have arrived,’ Launceston intoned.
As the man stumbled nearer, a lightning flash lit him clearly. He was white from head to toe, as if encrusted in salt, his eyes staring in terror from his scabrous face. Mewling, he reached out to the spies with one clutching hand, which seemed to diminish with each passing moment.
In the deluge, the sailor dissolved piece by piece, a part of his jaw gone here, an arm there, his body
