Mark Chadbourn - The Devil's Looking-Glass

‘May good fortune watch over you, Captain Courtenay,’ Will said, clapping a hand on the other man’s arm. ‘You and your crew have earned the Queen’s gratitude, and a joyous release in the stews of Bankside.’

Courtenay’s eyes narrowed. ‘You speak as if you are not sailing with us.’

The spy glanced back to the dancing lights in the western sky. ‘It was never my intention to return to England. I am a lost soul, captain, and I must find my way to the land of the dead. This morning I will take le Gris’s ship and a skeleton crew and sail to the home of the Unseelie Court. Nothing shall stop me finding the answers I seek. And then I will bring the walls of that fortress crashing down, though it cost me my life.’

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

THE RIBBON OF white sand glowed in the morning sun. Sparkling blue sea lapped in the cove and a cooling breeze rustled through the woods as the two men wandered along the shore. The intoxicating scent of the large pink flowers on the spiky-leaved shrubs along the treeline drifted down to meet the salty air.

‘You are a fool,’ Dee growled. The skirts of his purple robe swept a wide path along the beach.

Will felt an unfamiliar lightness now he had finally given voice to the inevitability of his destination. ‘If it is foolishness to want an end to the torment of unanswered questions, then so be it.’

‘The answers may be worse. Have you thought of that?’

Will shrugged. ‘It is a gamble I am prepared to take.’ If only the alchemist knew how much he had risked, he thought. How long it seemed since that night in the Liverpool rooming house when he had first started to form his plan. The sight of Jenny in the obsidian mirror had let loose a rush of desperate emotions and thoughts, as if the dam holding back all those years of misery had suddenly broken. He still felt surprised how little it had troubled him to put the Queen, and all England, up as his stakes in his great gamble. Never would he alone have been able to amass the fortune necessary to fund a galleon to sail to the New World in search of Jenny. But once Meg had told him that was Dee’s destination, he knew he could trick the Crown or the School of Night into giving him what he needed. And so he had let the alchemist go, knowing full well that the old man could have fallen into the Unseelie Court’s hands and everything he held dear been washed away in a tide of blood. All for Jenny.

‘You have always been a gambler, Swyfte, with your own life and with others’. That recklessness will be your downfall.’ Though the tone of his voice was accusatory Dee’s look was not unkind.

‘My life was blown off course that day – the day the person I cared for more than any other disappeared,’ the spy replied, looking to the far horizon. ‘I have made do as best I can, but not a day has passed when I have not thought of her. I am trapped in a maze where my mind keeps me in one place, and I would be free of it. What happened to her that day? Why was she chosen, and not me? Has she suffered? Has she endured—’ The words caught in his throat. ‘These questions haunt me.’

Dee snorted. ‘You speak as if these things matter.’

Will’s head whipped round. ‘They matter to me.’

The old man swept out an arm to indicate the sea and the island. ‘All this is illusion, this world, a stage on which we play out parts assigned to us. We wallow in the mundane detail of our life, all the petty hardships and the struggles that occupy our every waking moment, and we lose ourselves in them. They take on an import that far exceeds their worth. They are a distraction, no more, and we are complicit in allowing ourselves to be distracted because those things, however hard, are easier to comprehend than the greater questions that hang over us. Who plays the fiddle and pipes, and why must we be forced to dance? The answers we seek are here, but they are hidden amongst the illusion, in the smallest detail.’ He snatched up a handful of sand and let the grains trail out of his clenched fist. ‘We only have to sift and look and pull the jewels from the mud.’

‘And yet these things you dismiss so easily cause us so much pain. That cannot be discounted so readily, doctor. Though all be illusion, we still hurt.’

Dee smiled. ‘Perhaps that is one of the jewels. When you hurt, you are forced to look more closely. The mundane details . . .’ he snapped his fingers, ‘dissolve.’

‘Perhaps.’ Will turned his face to the sun, enjoying the unfamiliar warmth on his skin. ‘But I know this, doctor. When you look away from that mortal suffering, you become inured to it, and thereby allow it to endure. Indeed, if there is no substance to it, only one further step is needed to perpetrate that hurt, for it is like the mist, insubstantial and soon gone.’ He waved his fingers in front of him. ‘There are dangers in thinking too much and removing yourself from human concerns, doctor.’

‘And you feel too much,’ the alchemist snapped before catching himself. ‘Perhaps the true path lies somewhere between, I give you that. I am not blind to my many and varied flaws, Master Swyfte, though you think me as hard-hearted as the rocks of that reef.’

‘I know the true nature of the Mooncalf.’ Will found himself unable to keep the cold tone from his voice.

After a long moment, Dee replied, ‘In my defence, I can only say that I was in the throes of my self-inflicted madness.’

‘You destroyed a man’s life to provide yourself with a guardian.’

The alchemist sighed. ‘You know as well as I that this business makes monsters of all of us. We each do things we never dreamed of in the days of our youth. You say I am too distracted by scholarly pursuits, but I have devoted my life to this long battle with the Unseelie Court, to keep men safe and dreaming sweet dreams in their beds at night. I have sacrificed my youth, driven an ache deep into my bones and shattered my mind. Sometimes we are forced to do terrible things to prevent even greater atrocities. Should one man suffer to prevent the deaths of a hundred? A thousand? These are questions we should not have to ask ourselves. Most men can hide away and pretend such dilemmas do not exist, or turn up their noses and pass judgement upon those forced to make sacrifices to keep the realm secure. We are faced with the harsh reality every day, and we cannot flinch from its glare.’

When they reached the end of the beach, Will perched on the rocks where he had peered into the devil’s looking glass the previous night. He felt a troubling confusion. ‘Not too long ago, I might have agreed with you, doctor. But now I wonder if we should hold ourselves to a higher standard. The question you ask – should one man die to save a hundred? – is too simple. There is comfort in making the choice so easy, but good men should always suffer to uncover the more challenging but truer course.’

With the toe of his shoe, Dee flicked a green-shelled scuttling crab into a rock pool. ‘And I am not a good man, is that what you say? There is some truth in that. I was certainly a fool for losing myself in intellectual pursuit and failing to see that the angels with whom I thought I communed were in fact the Unseelie Court. How they must have laughed at my arrogance. Dr Dee, who thought he of all men had the power to speak with Heaven’s messengers. How easy it was to expose my weakness and then play a game to try to twist me to their ends.’

‘You were not unprepared, though.’

Dee smiled, rubbing his hands together. ‘I knew the Fay would come for me at some point, just not in that way. Long ago, I built defences deep inside me that would come into play should they ever try to seize control of my wits. Madness would consume me and I would flee England to a place where the Unseelie Court could not find me and use me against the Queen and Albion.’