Mark Chadbourn - The Silver Skull

A constant succession of Catholic spies, and potential spies, criminals, traitors, and informants passed through his doors, Jesuit priests, minor aristocrats, lawyers, farmers, gentlewomen, and wealthy merchants. Kemp treated them all with equal care and attention.

"Welcome, my Lord Walsingham, Master Swyfte," he said with a shy smile and a deep bow. "All is ready for you."

"Pickering?" Walsingham asked.

"He has been softening. Please come and see." Kemp led them past every imaginable device of human torture to one of the wooden posts that supported the ceiling of that underground chamber. From near the top of the pillar, Pickering hung from an iron bar supported by staples in the wood, his hands fastened into iron gauntlets attached to the bar. It was a deceptively simple instrument. The weight of the suspended body caused the flesh in the arms to swell, creating the agonising sensation that blood was about to burst from the end of every finger.

His face drawn and badly bruised, Pickering watched them with dazed eyes.

"Are you ready to confess?" Walsingham asked him.

"I am but a lowly thief," Pickering croaked. "I know nothing of these matters of state." His weak voice sounded truthful, but Will caught the briefest shadow flicker in his eyes.

"You like games?" Will asked. "Chess?"

Pickering eyed him hatefully.

"The pawns are removed from the game early. There is little to be gained by extending their lives."

"Unless they are clever pawns, with aspirations to rise to be the true power on the board." Pickering's eyes gleamed.

Will nodded. "Then we know where we stand." Turning to Kemp, he said, "Let us introduce our guest to the Duke of Exeter's Daughter."

"Certainly, Master Swyfte." Kemp clapped his hands to summon the guards to bring Pickering down from his perch. Though he had only been on the pillar for a short while, his legs were too weak to support his weight.

The guards dragged him to the end of the chamber where the rack stood before a row of candles, a wooden bed stained with bodily fluids, a ratchet system for turning at one end.

"The Duke of Exeter was an inventive man when he was the constable of the Tower, and he devised this method to ensure full truth and honesty from those he entertained," Will said. "You are aware how this works?"

Pickering shook his head, but his expression suggested his imagination was already hard at work.

"The arms and legs are fastened thusly. This winch is turned, which extends the rack here, and here, and so the guest's limbs are stretched. I am told the pain is very great indeed, in the joints in particular. If the turning of the winch is continued, the limbs are dislocated, and eventually torn free."

"I will tell all you wish to know," Pickering said.

"Unfortunately, it is already too late for that," Will replied. "The moment has long since passed for caution. We can no longer risk wasting time on dissembling and half-truths in the hope that you might find some small advantage for yourself."

Pickering's face drained of blood as he realised what Will was saying. "You will torture me, even though I will tell you what you want to know?"

"Every act we perform in this dark room destroys our humanity a little more," Will said. "We strip our souls by degrees. But we are small men, all of us, and meaningless in the vast sweep of the nation's life. When we are gone, we shall be forgotten, but for now we have a part to play. The men and women of England deserve to live free, and earn their crust, and laugh and play, and sleep easy every night, free from fear. I gladly sacrifice my life to buy that liberty for them." He paused. "And I would gladly sacrifice your life for the same."

Walsingham nodded to the guards. Pickering's feeble struggles were quickly overpowered, but his mounting cries reverberated off the stone walls. Calming a little once he was strapped to the rack by his wrists and ankles, he began to babble everything he thought his captors wanted to hear.

Will stood back until the rack had been tightened to the point where every incremental turn of the winch pulled a cry of agony from Pickering. "You are inhuman!" he screamed.

"We are," Will said. "No good man should ever submit another to these deprivations. It would behoove neither of us to say you brought this upon yourself. Nor should we consider it a punishment, for I pass no judgment on you. But at this point all men and women in England are at risk of the worst death imaginable. I weigh my own soul, and your agonies, against that. Now, let us proceed slowly and carefully, so there is no room for doubt. You are the cousin of Bulle, the Tyburn hangman. Is that true?"

"Yes, yes, yes!"

Walsingham watched Will, curious to see where the line of questioning would take him.

"I am always troubled by seemingly random connections," Will stated. "This business began with the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, at the hands of Bulle. Now his cousin is involved in the next stage. By chance?" Will shook his head. "What did Bulle learn at Fotheringhay?"

It took a moment for Pickering to stifle his sobs, and then he began, "Mary ... Mary delayed her execution for hours, through pleas, and prayers, and lies, and deceit."

"That is true," Walsingham said.

"There was nothing to gain by delaying her execution. She was not afraid to die."

"Why, then?" Will pressed.

"She was waiting. For ... for news of the discovery of the Key to the Silver Skull."

"No news could reach her in Fotheringhay," Walsingham said. "Guards were at the door of her chamber continually. All letters in and out were carefully scrutinised." He nodded to Kemp to turn the winch another notch.

When Pickering's screams had died, the King of Cutpurses cried with a raw throat, "What I say is true. She did receive news by ..." He looked from face to face fearfully. "You will not believe me, but it is true!"

"Go on," Will said.

"By a mirror. A magic mirror!" He screwed his eyes shut and waited for the pain to lance through his joints. Kemp poised with one hand on the winch.

"A magic mirror," Will mused. "That is how the Enemy communicates?"

"Their own mirrors? Or all mirrors?" Walsingham queried aloud. "Should we remove every looking glass from the Palace of Whitehall? Are they spying on us as we look into our own faces?"

"'Tis true," Pickering gasped, relieved. "That is how Bulle told it to me. He spied upon Mary through the secret passage that ran behind her chamber."

"He knew of that?" Walsingham asked.

"He bribed the captain of the sheriff's guard," Pickering continued, still desperately eager to please. "Many of the women brought to execution offered their bodies to Bulle in return for their freedom, or at the least a quick end. He took them regardless. This time, he thought ... perhaps-"

"With a queen?" Walsingham said, disgusted.

"Mary was renowned for her skills between the sheets," Pickering noted.

"So, while Bulle spied on Mary in the hope that he could steal favours from her, he saw her speaking at the mirror?" Will enquired.

"Yes! As my cousin told it to me, the glass grew cloudy, as if the smoke of a great fire billowed within it. From his vantage point, he could not see any face within it, but he could hear a voice."

"What kind of voice?" Walsingham asked.

"A man. Or something that purported to be a man. It told Mary that the key had been recovered ... from the crypt beneath the Holy Rood-"

"The palace in Edinburgh." Will wondered how long the Enemy's plan had been in motion; when had they first seized control of Mary to manipu late their way into the Palace of Holyroodhouse to search for the key? Months ago? Years? Had she always been under their control, as they slipped into the spaces and the weaknesses between human prejudices?