The Alchemist of Souls: Night's Masque, Volume 1 (2 page)

  "Are you sure?"

  "Yes, yes! God's teeth, get out of here!"

  Mal scrambled over the rough wooden paling, wincing as a splinter dug into his thigh, and dropped down into the alley. He could hear the shouts of the guardsmen as they slithered around in the muddy yard, and Ned protesting his innocence. No time to hang around. He jogged off down the alley as fast as he dared in the near-darkness, hand on his dagger hilt.

  "Hold, sirrah!"

  Mal skidded to a halt. A helmeted figure was silhouetted in the lamplight at the end of the alley. "Goddamn beefeaters!" he muttered.

  He turned and ran back the way he'd come, looking for a side turning, but there was none. As he passed the back gate of the Catherine Wheel, it crashed open and two of the other guardsmen cannoned into him, crushing him against the brick wall opposite. He ducked slightly, elbowed the nearest man in the belly and pulled himself free of the mêlée. A moment later a fist like a half-brick impacted with his temple and he slumped against the wall, head reeling.

  Someone grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and hauled him to his feet. His arms were pinned behind his back, none too gently.

  "Maliverny Catlyn?" The captain held up a lantern and shone it in Mal's face.

  "No, I just happen to look like him."

  That earned him a fist in the guts. He gritted his teeth, forcing back the urge to puke up his beer.

  "That's him, all right," said one of the other guards. "I've seen him in the Wheel a few times. When I was off-duty, of course, sir."

  The captain grinned unpleasantly at Mal. "Right, boys, let's go."

  They stripped Mal of his dagger and escorted him through the streets of Southwark to the down-river side of London Bridge. A sleek skiff bobbed amongst the wherries, with six men at the oars. Mal was pushed into the boat and the captain waved for him to sit.

  "What are you arresting me for?" Mal asked, hoping they wouldn't risk upsetting the skiff by laying into him here.

  "How should I know?" Monkton replied. "I was just told to bring you in."

  Mal opened his mouth to protest again, but the captain shoved him onto the thwart. The skiff rocked alarmingly, and the soldiers laughed as he clutched at the gunwales.

  "Enough!" The captain glowered at his men, then turned to Mal. "You, my friend, can squeal all you like once we get to the Tower."

  The skiff cast off, and the rowers bent their backs, making slow headway against the incoming tide that threatened to drive it into the treacherous channel between the piers of the bridge. At last they broke free of the eddies and made their slow way downstream, bearing northwards towards the dark bulk of the Tower.

 

Crouched on the lower slopes of a hill on the eastern edge of the city, the Tower of London dominated the approach to the capital from the sea. Formerly the principal royal residence, the ancient fortress now housed Queen Elizabeth's chief enemies, detained at Her Majesty's pleasure in a style befitting their status. The Queen herself preferred the comforts of her father's palace of Nonsuch in Surrey, to which she had retreated in mourning for her late husband, Robert Dudley.

  On the south bank of the Thames, opposite the Tower, a much smaller fortress squatted by the waterside. Though naught but a wooden palisade surrounded by ditches, it was no less forbidding than its ancient rival. Coloured lamps floated amongst the trees within and eerie piping sounds, like dying seabirds, echoed across the water. The skrayling colony. Mal made the sign of the cross and looked away.

  The skiff lurched against the current as they turned sharply towards the water gate. Mal clutched the plank he was sitting on, hoping he didn't look as anxious as he felt. The severed heads of traitors, mercifully no more than silhouettes in the twilight, gave grim testimony to the fate awaiting those who defied their Queen. The splash of oars echoed from the stonework as they passed through a narrow tunnel under the wharf, then the skiff crossed the castle moat and entered the larger archway under St Thomas's Tower, emerging in a dank, shadow-hung pool where a flight of stone stairs led up to the outer ward. Mal was hurried up the steps and four of the guards closed in around him before he could so much as get his bearings.

  A yeoman warder in scarlet livery beckoned to the captain, and Mal was taken a short way along the ward, through a sheltered rose garden and thence into a great courtyard with a tower at each corner. The warder unlocked a low door at the base of one of the towers, and Mal was escorted up the spiral stair and through another low door. It thudded shut behind him, and the key grated in the lock.

  It was no filthy cell they had brought him to, but an octagonal chamber perhaps twenty feet across. Opposite him a blackened stone fireplace gaped like a bear's maw, and glazed windows to either side of it let in the last of the dim evening light. A second door, to the right of the one he had just come through, proved to be locked also.

  The chamber was plainly furnished with a bedstead curtained in plain woollen stuff, a table and bench, and a padded leather prie-dieu under the eastern window. Only the walls betrayed this place as a prison. His fingers traced the shapes carved painstakingly into the stone: names of former inhabitants, several Jesuitical inscriptions, and an E within a heart. Both Catholics and Protestants had been held here over the years.

  He knelt at the prie-dieu and began to pray that whatever mistake had been made in bringing him here, Our Lady would see fit to right it before his captors resorted to torture.

He spent a sleepless night alternately pacing his cell and praying. This was worse than the eve of battle. Death at the hands of the enemy was quick and clean compared to the punishment meted out to traitors. The fact that he had not to his knowledge committed treason was no comfort – why else would they drag him in off the streets and throw him in the Tower without charge? He tried not to think about what it must feel like to be disembowelled alive, and failed dismally.

  Some time after dawn the sound of a key scraping in the lock roused him from his contemplations and he leapt up from the prie-dieu, groping at his side for the absent rapier. A yeoman warder peered into the chamber, bleary-eyed and drunk judging by the smell of cheap wine that preceded him into the room. Mal wondered if he should rush the man and try to make his escape, but without planning or accomplices he doubted he would get far.

  The warder limped across the room, burdened by a heavy basket. From it he produced a battered pewter tankard and plate, an earthenware bottle and a loaf of bread. After setting these out on the table the warder left, locking the door behind him.

  Mal went over to the table and sat down to eat. The fear of the night before had subsided into a numb determination to face whatever cruelties his captors were planning. A man weakened by hunger would not resist torment for long.

  He had not managed more than a few mouthfuls of the dry bread, washed down with a small ale, when the warder returned.

  "You're wanted." The man beckoned him through the door.

  Mal's stomach flipped over. So soon?

  He was taken back along the narrow outer ward, still deep in shadow at this time of day, and through a tunnel that pierced one of the inner towers. A steep cobbled road led upwards between high walls, with the vast bulk of the Norman keep looming to their right. The warder turned left at the top of the slope and directed Mal across the green towards a handsome timber-framed house built into the angle of the south and west walls. The L-shaped building looked incongruously domestic against the Herculean masonry all around it.

  He was shown into a wood-panelled antechamber. Benches stood against the wall opposite the fireplace; above them, portraits of middle-aged men in elaborate armour or outdated clothing stared down at him with the indifference of the longdead. Mal distracted himself by going from one to another and reading the inscriptions below each: Thomas Grey Marquess of Dorset, Edward Lord Clinton, Sir John Gage.

  "My illustrious predecessors."

  The man in the doorway was forty or so, well built and a little above middle height, with fair curly hair and beard and a ruddy complexion. His doublet and hose were of sherry-coloured velvet, and his ruff was dyed with saffron. As if on cue, a lion roared in the Tower menagerie, and Mal had to keep his head down as he bowed, to hide a smile. A lion of a man indeed.

  "My lord?"

  "Master Catlyn." The steel in the man's voice belied his courtier's finery.

  "Yessir." Mal didn't quite snap to attention, but his back straightened of its own accord. Old habits died hard.

  "I am Sir James Leland, Lieutenant of the Tower. No doubt you are wondering why I invited you here?"

  Invited? Well, that was one word for it.

  "Yes, sir." Mal swallowed, anticipating the worst.

  Leland walked around him in a slow circle, eyeing him up and down as if he were a horse for sale. Mal stared straight ahead. If Leland thought to intimidate him, let him think again.

  "Not exactly what I expected," the lieutenant muttered. "But I suppose you'll have to do." He paced some more. "Maliverny. French name, isn't it?"

  "My father's second wife – my mother – was Béatrice de Maliverny, from Aix-en-Provence. Being her first-born son, I was named in her family's honour."

  "You are half French, then?" Leland frowned at him.

  "By blood only, sir. I am an Englishman born and bred." Mal could not help adding, "The French
are
our friends, sir."

  Leland muttered something under his breath, then turned to face Mal again. "How old are you?"

  "Sir?"

  "It's a simple enough question, surely?"

  "I am five-and-twenty, sir."

  "That dagger you were carrying is of fine workmanship. I fancy it is part of a matched set, a mate to a rapier?"

  "Yes, sir." Was that what this was all about? Surely they wouldn't haul him into the Tower over an illegal duel. "I've had lessons from Saviolo himself."

  "Hmm. Italian swordplay is all very well, but what about real fighting? I have been told you served under the Earl of Devon."

  "I was at the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom, and afterwards I fought in Italy against the Turk."

  The lieutenant nodded approvingly. Mal kept his features impassive, trying to follow the course of this interrogation to its logical conclusion. There was none he could see, or none that made any sense.

  Leland cleared his throat noisily. "I have a commission for you, Catlyn. From Her Majesty the Queen, no less."

  Mal stared at him.

  "Have you nothing to say for yourself, man?"

  "I – Thank you, sir." Mal began to laugh, near drunk with relief, then fell silent. Leland did not look amused. "Forgive me, sir, I… Well, after last night I thought for certain I had been arrested for treason."

  "Arrested? I sent Captain Monkton to find you, certainly, since no one knew your whereabouts. If there has been any misunderstanding, well, that is very regrettable."

  Mal went over the previous evening's events in his mind. He was the one who had bolted like a guilty thing and thus begun the chase. On the other hand, this Captain Monkton had taken great delight in letting him think he was under arrest. Had the captain misunderstood his instructions, or was he merely brutal and malicious?

  "Now, about this commission," Leland said. "You are to guard a foreign ambassador who will be visiting England later this summer."

  "An ambassador? Of where?"

  "Vinland."

  "Vinland? But–"

  "He is a skrayling, yes. You have an objection to that?"

  "N-no, sir," Mal said. His thoughts were racing. Bodyguard to a skrayling? Why had he of all people been chosen for such a task? And how could he get out of it? "I was merely surprised. I didn't know they had an ambassador."

  "The savages seem to have taken a while to grasp the idea, but it pleases their fancy to have one now. And of course he must be treated with all the courtesy due a foreign ally."

  "Of course."

  "The pay is four shillings a day," Leland went on, "also board, lodgings and a suit of livery. You will report here on the twentieth day of August and learn your way around the Tower and the ambassador's quarters."

  Four shillings a day. Twenty-four shillings a
week
. That was not a sum he could turn down easily, not the way things were going. But August was a long way off. Too long. He cursed under his breath in frustration.

  "Well, what is it?" Leland asked.

  Mal swallowed. It was a gamble, but if they really wanted him for this job… "I am, as you undoubtedly know, sir, out of work at the moment. How I shall shift for myself in the next few weeks, I know not, but I doubt I can find a position for so short a while…"

  "You are asking for a retainer?"

  Mal lowered his gaze. "Yes, sir."

  "Very well," Leland said after a pause for consideration. "Half pay until you start – and of course no board or lodgings."

  Two shillings a day – and now it was barely two weeks until Midsummer Day. Nowhere near enough to pay off what he owed.

  Leland sighed. "Come on, man, out with it."

  Mal could not meet the lieutenant's eye. He feared this was a step too far. "I have some small but pressing debts. I–"

  "How much?"

  "Three pounds, sir." Or thereabouts. He prayed the lieutenant would not ask what the money was for.

  After a long moment Leland began to laugh. "Three pounds. Well, we cannot have His Excellency's bodyguard thrown in the Clink for so paltry a sum. Here." He took out a purse and counted out six gold angels.

  "Thank you, sir," Mal said, pocketing the coins. "I am in your debt."