Mark Chadbourn - The Devil's Looking-Glass

Dee stalked past, his gown swishing across the floor. The animal skulls clinked on their silver chains at his chest. His wild mane of silver hair swung as he flung out his arms, gesticulating at invisible companions. Now he was near, the spy realized that what he had taken for Latin incantations was gibberish. The old man was lost to his world of madness.

As soon as the alchemist’s back was turned, Will kicked open the door and barrelled inside. Dee let out a bestial howl of rage. His eyes glinted with insanity, his lips pulling away from clenched teeth. The spy crashed into the older man, knocking him across the carpet of mildewed tomes. Pinning him down, Will pressed the tip of his dagger beneath Dee’s eye and said, ‘I will not insult you by treating you like a frail old man.’

Dee thrashed like a wildcat in a sack, but as the spy dug the steel deeper into his flesh he quietened. A trickle of blood ran down his ashen skin. Yet still his eyes ranged with madness and he snarled animal sounds.

‘What have you done to yourself, doctor? Where is that sharp wit that could cut a man half your age?’ Acutely aware of the Fay drawing nearer, Will searched the alchemist’s flickering gaze for any sign of comprehension and began to wonder if all their sacrifices had been for naught. ‘Let us talk, you and I,’ he said, ‘as we did so many times in the Black Gallery, and perhaps the echoes of those days will stir some sense within you.’

In a calm voice that belied the urgency he felt, Will recounted how Dee had taken him under his wing when he had first arrived at the Palace of Whitehall from Cambridge within days of Jenny’s disappearance. Though as gruff and uncompromising as always, the doctor had shown him some kindness then, recognizing the scars that had been inflicted and the worse things that lay ahead. Patiently, he had instructed Will in the ways of the Unseelie Court, and the horrors they had perpetrated for generations, and their wiles and their magics, and over days he had led the freshly minted spy to an accommodation with his new life.

‘Remember, doctor, how you spun your fable of an English empire, stretching across the shining seas, a world lifted free from the yoke of the Unseelie Court?’ he continued, lulling the old man with his steady tone. ‘Remember how we stood side by side at the court of Stephen Bathory, when you conjured the ghost of the Polish King’s long-dead father? How he trembled.’ Will smiled at the memory, another of Dee’s tricks to bend the foreign royal to the will of the English. ‘And how you poured a flask of sack over the head of that preening popinjay, the Earl of Leicester. What a waste of good wine.’

His soothing voice worked its spell and the old man calmed. Cautiously, Will removed the dagger and stood up, unsure if Dee would slip back into his madness. His heart pounding with awareness that time was slipping away, he looked around the small, windowless chamber until he found an ink-pot and a quill. Hastily, he sketched a few lines on a page torn from the front of a book. Once done, he dangled his work in front of Dee’s face. It showed a horned circle with a dot in the centre, a cross beneath and under that a wavy line, a representation of a devilish man.

‘Do you recognize your glyph, Dr Dee, the one you described at such length in your vast tome, the Monas Hieroglyphica ? You see the astrological symbols? The power it represents? You laboured over this design for years, did you not? You told me how this glyph showed the true secret of all there is, how everything is connected at the smallest and highest levels, and that all we see around is illusion, a stage on which we are the players. Once this wisdom, this glyph, is understood true power comes, you said. Here is your great work, doctor. Here is you, in essence. Remember.’

The alchemist’s eyes widened and the page was reflected in their depths. His madness was no natural loss of wits, Will felt sure, and if anything could breach his defences and reach the Dee that was, it was his true obsession, his life’s work; the source of all his beliefs, and, perhaps, his powers. The old man’s gaze swam, and for a moment Will felt sure he had failed. But then a mist appeared to rise in the depths of those eyes, and the brows drew together. Dee blinked once, twice, and his gaze drifted to Will. He scowled. ‘So, I am in Hell,’ he croaked.

‘As are we all, doctor,’ Will replied. But his smile faded as the lilting strains of pipe and fiddle floated through the smoky air like the waking echoes of a dream. The scent of honeysuckle wafted on the draught. When a drop of blood fell from the spy’s right nostril and spattered on the flags, Dee closed his eyes and mouthed a silent curse.

The spy drew his rapier and backed against the wall. His gaze drifted up as he heard a clattering overhead. ‘Time to leave, doctor,’ he called.

Amid the sound of rending, a hole appeared in the ceiling as tiles and wooden laths were torn away. Rain gusted into the dry atmosphere and the crack of thunder rolled all around.

‘Too late,’ Will said through gritted teeth. ‘If your wits have fully returned, now is the time to use them.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

THE CANDLE GUTTERED. Shadows flew across the chamber as the storm crashed against the tower like waves against a reef. In the flickering light, Will levelled his rapier and waited for the first of the Unseelie Court to crawl through the holes in the shattered ceiling. He could sense them, clinging to the rain-lashed roof as they waited for their moment. And then they would come like the storm, he knew, teeth and swords and talons, wild eyes and blood.

Dee clambered to his feet and lurched to an iron lever protruding from a slot in the flagstones. Gripping it with both hands, he wrenched it back. A deep grinding reverberated through the walls. ‘There,’ he exclaimed. ‘The path through the maze is open.’

‘Go, then,’ Will replied. ‘The Tempest waits in the cove. I will hold them off.’ Though death was closer than it had ever been, he set aside fear and doubt. He breathed deeply, bringing the stillness inside him. The storm faded away. The flickering light troubled him not. He was ready.

As Dee stumbled through the door, Will heard a distant shout, and another answering. Tapestries flapped in the gale. Rain pooled on the flags, soaking the age-old books. Still the Unseelie Court waited. Were they taunting him? Trying to frighten him? They knew what strategies worked from generations of torment at lonely farms and on paths through dark woods, but this time they would be disappointed.

The door crashed open and Carpenter and Launceston burst in, blades drawn. Behind them, Strangewayes stumbled, delirious. ‘Ignore him; he is less than useless,’ Carpenter sneered with a nod. ‘He failed to discover Dee’s paste upon the mirrors.’

‘Ah, John, you are sharp as a knife, as always,’ Will said with a flourish of his left hand.

The other man shrugged. ‘Only a fool would have failed to find it, sooner or later.’ Muttering to himself, Strangewayes stumbled back out of the door.

Launceston eyed the holes in the roof. ‘So, they wait for their moment, like rats in a barn at night.’ He shook his head and called, ‘You waste our time. Come now and be done with it.’

The candle guttered one final time and then winked out.

As the dark swept across the chamber, Will braced himself. He had the door at his back, Carpenter to his left, Launceston to his right, but they were at a disadvantage. The Fay always wrapped themselves in the night.

When the wind dropped for a moment, he heard the soft thud of someone dropping to the flagstones, then a second. He could sense the other presences in the room, like a yawning grave, but how many had entered he did not know. Gooseflesh prickled on his skin as the chamber grew colder.