Will glanced back down the steps to his master, assuring himself that Cecil could not overhear the conversation. ‘I know my own heart well enough.’
‘No, you do not. No man does. You only think that is the case, and that is why the truth drives you from the illusion you all hide behind to stay sane.’ Beyond her muted words, he heard a faint scraping as if she were stroking the door. He imagined a lover’s caress and shivered, despite himself.
‘You waste your breath—’
‘I see sadness, a deep, abiding sadness.’ The Queen rolled the words around her tongue with pleasure. ‘I see the pain of loss and separation, a life that has become corrupted by mystery to such a degree that it can no longer be lived. You would rather know the truth and be destroyed than live in this twilight world any longer.’
Will raised his head in defiance. ‘And I feel anger,’ he replied in a low voice, ‘for you stole from me the only thing I ever valued.’ He shook his head and his blood spattered across the door.
‘I hear the impotent cry of the wounded child.’ Her breathy words sounded low and closer still. He presumed she had pressed her cheek against the wood. Now they were barely separated, like two lovers teasing towards an embrace, her seductive voice luring him in. The hairs on his neck tingled as if she had brushed his skin. He should break the enchantment and leave that place without a backward glance, he knew, but the rage in his heart held him fast. He sensed her smiling. Yes, she knew his weaknesses well.
‘You see sadness,’ he whispered, ‘you see rage, I know, but you do not see fear.’
She laughed again. ‘Fear is the sane response to us.’
‘Then I am not sane, and proud of it. Tell me your weakness.’
‘The very definition of insanity. You presume I would bare my throat to you.’
Will glanced back at Cecil who had retreated further down the steps. The spymaster quivered in the wan light of the guttering lantern flame. ‘You will tell me.’ Will kept the confidence in his voice, luring her in as she had attempted to ensnare him. ‘For sport. A mere man is no threat, you have said so yourself. What have you to lose by indulging my desire to seek my own destruction?’
‘You think yourself clever. Perhaps you are, by the standards of man. Yet there is much you do not know – about the Unseelie Court, about yourself, and your place in this world. Nevertheless, I agree. Our weakness is something your kind would never understand – honour. Our word is unbreakable, even though it mean pain, or loss, or defeat. Do you find any gain in that knowledge? Does your kind even understand what honour means? I think not,’ she added with cold contempt.
Will folded the information away and continued lightly, ‘Is it true that you have made your home in the New World?’
‘Would you visit my palace, O man?’ she enquired. He heard a crackle of dark humour in her voice.
‘I am sure you would offer me all the courtesies extended to every mortal who has crossed from this world of hard things into your moonlit realm.’ He waited a moment and then added, ‘Yet perhaps I could offer a few common courtesies of my own.’
The Faerie Queen laughed. ‘Oh, what sport that would be. Would you wave your sword at us? Would you rage and curse and threaten? Before we fell upon you like wolves?’
‘We have more steel in us than you imagine, Your Highness.’
‘Then I extend an invitation to you, should you wish to prove yourself,’ she replied with cruel glee. ‘Damn yourself. Sail to the New World. Cross the gulf between our realms, if you can find a gate, to the place where both lands exist as one, and then follow the great Orinoco until you reach the confluence with the Caroni. Along that river you will discover the fortress of the Unseelie Court.’
Will felt a squirming sensation deep in his head. He reeled away from the door as his mind’s eye was flooded with a vision of startling richness. At first he struggled to comprehend what he was seeing. A monstrous black spider as big as Hampton Court Palace squatting on a verdant landscape, where green hills rose above the treetops of a mighty forest. Iron cartwheels wider than the grey Thames, revolving within a sphere. And then he found himself looking down on a grim fortress with soaring walls of black basalt and gold.
The Fortress Crepuscule, the Faerie Queen’s voice echoed in his skull. Your kind will always find our home, should that be your wish. But it is much harder to leave.
His gaze drifted down a vertiginous cliff, across a stone labyrinth set in the forest to a high tower with a soft white glow emanating from the summit. He heard himself murmuring, ‘What is that?’
The Tower of the Moon. The beacon that illuminates the way between our worlds. As long as the light shines, the paths remain open.
‘Swyfte!’ Will heard Cecil’s strained voice as if it were rising from a deep well. ‘Take your leave now before she steals your wits!’ The spy snapped out of his delirious vision into the cold grey of the Lantern Tower.
The Queen of the Unseelie Court scraped her nails down the door. ‘While you mortals are base lead, my people are gold.’ For the first time Will heard a hint of yearning in her voice. ‘And our home is gold. A golden city, which the men of that hot land call Manoa. The wonders you would see there, mortal. It would drive you mad.’
‘One day, Your Highness. One day I will sail there and bring the vengeance of the English to your doorstep.’
‘And as your life ebbs away, try to read some meaning in the entrails of your suffering. There will be none.’
Will forced himself to break her spell and turned away from the door. ‘I have purpose in my life, Your Majesty. I will never be deterred from finding the truth.’
‘Truth?’ she repeated with dark humour. ‘Would you know the greatest secret of all? We are all in cells, to greater or lesser extent. This world you see around you is a prison, though the bars and locks are hidden. But who is the gaoler, ask yourself that? And what does it take to escape?’ Her voice grew fainter. Will imagined her drifting away from the door into the confines of her dismal cell. ‘Even as we speak my people rise from their silent chambers under hill and under lake. I hear them in my heart, drawing nearer. One vow is on their lips: to stop you recovering the mad magician, who is your final hope. You will never set sail from this city. You will die here, all of you. The end is close. Say your prayers. Kiss your loved ones. The end is close.’
A laugh, like cold crystal, fading away into the lonely dark.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THE MAN SURGED through the sea of bodies flowing along Cheapside in the wan morning sunlight. Furious servants heading to the market yelled curses and apprentices searched for stones to hurl at his back, but still he ran, casting anxious glances over his shoulder. He was swarthy-skinned, the wide-brimmed felt hat he had used to hide his identity long since lost.
Will thundered in the running man’s wake. ‘Queen’s business,’ he bellowed. The crowd peeled away on either side. He was lighter on his feet than the other man, stronger and faster, though he had barely slept since his haunting conversation with the Faerie Queen.
Sensing his pursuer was closing the distance, the fugitive threw himself into a flock of geese, kicking wildly until he drove them into a frenzy of honking and beating wings. The birds scattered across the street in Will’s path. Without missing a step, the spy vaulted on to the back of an apple cart trundling through the flock, scrambled over the seat beside the startled carter and leapt across the flapping obstruction, allowing himself a tight smile. His prey was oblivious of what lay ahead. As they passed the towering five-storey houses near the Great Conduit where apothecaries sold herbs and spices, he watched the runaway glance round in shock. At the eastern end of Cheapside, at the Stocks Market confluence of three great thoroughfares, an army of labourers was milling around with armfuls of cordwood for the ring of beacons that were to be built beyond the city’s northern wall, while men in sun-burnished burgonets and cuirasses looked on.